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."




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