They planned, too, to go into lodgings afterward in London.
The thought of lodgings gave Leila a thrill. She hunted out her fat
little volume of Martin Chuzzlewit and gloated over Ruth Pinch and her
beef-steak pie. She added two or three captivating aprons to the
contents of the fragrant boxes. She even bought a cook-book, and it
was with a sigh that she laid the cook-book away when Barry wrote that
in such lodgings as he would choose the landlady would serve their
meals in the sitting-room. And this plan would give Leila more time to
see the sights of London!
But what cared Little-Lovely Leila for seeing sights? Anybody could
see sights--any dreary and dried-up fossil, any crabbed and cranky old
maid--the Tower and Westminster Abbey were for those who had nothing
better to do. As for herself, her horizon just now was bounded by
primrose wreaths and fragrant boxes, and the promise of seeing Barry in
May!
But fate, which has strange things in store for all of us, had this in
store for little Leila, that she was not to see Barry in May, and the
reason that she was not to see him was Jerry Tuckerman.
Meeting Mary in the street one day early in February, Jerry had said,
"I am going to run over to London this week. Shall I take your best to
Barry?"
Mary's eyes had met his squarely. "Be sure you take your best,
Jerry," she had said.
He had laughed his defiance. "Barry's all right--but you've got to
give him a little rope, Mary."
When he had left her, Mary had walked on slowly, her heart filled with
foreboding. Barry was not like Jerry. Jerry, coarse of fiber, lacking
temperament, would probably come to middle age safely--he would never
be called upon to pay the piper as Barry would for dancing to the tune
of the follies of youth.
She wrote to Gordon, warning him. "Keep Barry busy," she said. "Jerry
told me that he intended to have 'the time of his young life'--and he
will want Barry to share it."
Gordon smiled over the letter. "Poor Mary," he told Constance; "she
has carried Barry for so long on her shoulders, and she can't realize
that he is at last learning to stand alone."
But Constance did not smile. "We never could bear Jerry Tuckerman; he
always made Barry do things."
"Nobody can make me do things when I don't want to do them," said
Gordon comfortably and priggishly, "and Barry must learn that he can't
put the blame on anybody's shoulders but his own."