The Tenderfoots by Francis Lynde

"I SAW what you saw as we were leaving the room -- yes. But what did Philip do afterward? " Jean asked, looking up from her seat in the low wicker rocking-chair.

After taking Jean home on the night of the tragedy, Bromley had gone back to the tenement building to stand by as a loyal partner should, and for the three succeeding days his room in the West Denver cottage had remained unoccupied. Late the third evening he had returned to find Jean sitting up, sewing, with the two younger girls poring over their school books in the rear half of the double sitting-room.

"Phil did his full duty," was his answer to the low-voiced question. "Took everything upon his own shoulders -- funeral arrangements, and all that; acted just as if there had been no breach between his father and himself -- a thing he wouldn't have done six months ago, not if the heavens had fallen."

"And you have been helping?"

"Naturally, I did what I could -- which wasn't much beyond backing Phil up and running errands. He seemed glad to have me to lean upon, so I stayed with him. It was the least I could do."

"Of course. Where is his father now?"

"Vanished into thin air, right after the funeral; wouldn't tell Phil where he was going; wouldn't take any of Phil's money; wouldn't talk, except to say that he wouldn't get in Philip's way again -- not if he had to take the other side of the world for his."

"And Philip -- where is he?"

"He left on to-night's train for New Hampshire. He is going back to square the -- er -- the matter with the bank -- so far as a return of the money can do it."

"But he didn't need to go in person to do that, did he?"

"That is what I told him; but he seemed to think he ought to go and face it out, man to man; that it was part of the price he must pay for the sake of the name -- since his father wouldn't pay any of it. I imagine, too, that he wants to be there to bargain that his mother and sisters are not to be harried by a revival of talk about the old scandal."

She nodded complete intelligence, saying, "I told you you didn't know the real Philip, Harry."

"I didn't; I admit it. He is as gentle and compassionate now as he used to be opinionated and hard. But he still believes he has put himself entirely beyond the pale."

She made a swift little gesture of appeal. "You must try to make him understand that there isn't any pale -- not in his sense of the word -- after he comes back. " Then: "He is coming back, isn't he?"

Bromley nodded. "Yes; I think he is coming back. But as to making him understand: I fancy there is only one person in the world who can do that successfully, Jean. That person is yourself."

She bent lower over her sewing. "What makes you say that, Harry?"

He was not looking at her when he answered. His gaze had wandered to the far end of the room; to a girlish face framed in a tousled mass of yellow hair; ripe lips pressed together and the fair brow wrinkled as their owner puzzled over her lesson for the next day.

"I say it, Jeanie, dear, because, in spite of everything he has been and has done, Philip loves you, even as you love him," he said. "But he believes he has sinned beyond your forgiveness. If you can forgive him -- -- "

She looked up to see why he had let the sentence lapse, and when the distracting reason became apparent, she laid her work aside and slipped away to the bed-room she shared with Mysie. When she came back she was holding one hand behind her. Suddenly the play-boy found himself staring at a reflection of his own face in a little hand-mirror. He glanced up at her with the boyish smile that endeared him to all women.

"You are a little wretch, Jean! " he laughed. "You caught me red-handed, didn't you? -- just as you said you would that day when we were out in the Highlands. All right; it's a fact, and I plead guilty. But I'll be good and patient and wait until you won't have to say that I'm robbing the cradle. Now that you know what I was dreaming about, may I go and see if I can't give Mysie a bit of help? She seems to be finding her trigonometry harder than usual to-night, judging from the way she is making faces at it."