The Tenderfoots by Francis Lynde

THE next morning at breakfast, with the midnight reaction still daggering him, Philip was shamefacedly reticent until after he found that Bromley, charitably or otherwise, was completely ignoring the Corinthian episode. Though he was far from being capable of banishing it himself, he contrived to push it aside sufficiently to enable him to carry his part in the table talk.

"No, I hadn't thought of camping down in a hotel," was his reply to Bromley's question as to his plans for the summer. "Comfortable as this place is, it isn't quite my idea of living: too monotonous. What I'm thinking of is a bachelor apartment in one of the down-town buildings, with meals wherever the eating is best; something of that sort for the present, at least. How about you?"

"To tell the truth, I haven't been thinking much more than a minute or so ahead," the play-boy confessed, with his disarming smile at its attractive best. "This sudden cataracting of filthy lucre has a tendency to make me lightheaded -- that is, more lightheaded than usual, which you will say is gilding the lily. I did have some vague notion of taking a trip back home and astonishing the natives. It would astonish them, you know."

"To see you back again?"

"To see me come back with money in my purse -- and more of it to follow. They'd think the world was coming to an end. But, on second thought, I guess it wouldn't do. I shouldn't care to give any of them heart failure."

"But if you don't go home? " Philip queried.

"In that event your bachelor apartment idea has an irresistible appeal. Unless you particularly long for complete solitude, I'd be glad to join you. Say a couple of bed-rooms, a bath and perhaps a common sitting-room?"

"Done," said Philip shortly. "What next?"

"For me? -- oh, confound your picture! You are bound and determined to make me think more than one day ahead, in spite of everything, aren't you? All right, if I must. After we are settled, perhaps I shall look around and try to find some safe investment niches into which I can dribble my share of the golden showers from the ‘Little Jean' as they come in."

"Good. That is the most sensible thing I've heard you say in a week of Sundays! " said the one in whom the reaction to the New England normalities had by this time wrought its perfect work.

"And the least expected, you would add -- if you were not too soft-hearted. That, too, is all right; I wasn't expecting it myself. Nothing has ever been farther from my promptings heretofore, I can solemnly assure you."

Philip became banal. "It is never too late to mend. I've been hoping -- -- "

"You mustn't hope too violently, Philip mine. I am a creature of impulse, and just now the spirit moves me to become a money grubber; to hang on to what I have, and to plant it and watch it grow like Jack's beanstalk. Past that, the same spirit is moving me to get acquainted with some really good people; if there be any such in this infatuated town."

"Don't be snobbish. There are plenty of them, no doubt."

"You don't happen to know any of them yourself, do you?"

"Not socially; I wasn't here long enough last spring to go about any, though I did meet some of the solider citizens in the railroad connection: Governor Evans, ‘Uncle Johnny' Smith, -- he owns the American House, you know, -- Colonel Eicholtz, Mr. Walter Cheesman, the Barth brothers, Kountze, president of the Colorado National; men like that, most of them old residents."

"The ‘First Families," Bromley mused. "Of course there would be some dating back to the 'sixties and the ox-team and ‘Pike's-Peak-or-bust' days; not so very ancient, at that, but still with the distinguishing hallmark of the pioneers. We'll fish around for some introductions."

Philip sat back in his chair, shaking his head.

"I'm not at all sure that I want to go in for the social whirl just yet, Harry," he deprecated. "I want to find the Dabneys first, if I can; and after that. perhaps you may remember that I once told you what my principal object was in heading for the west?"

"About your father; yes, I remember. You said at the time that you had no definite clue to his whereabouts. Has anything come to light since?"