The Call of the Cumberlands

"In short, your charge is that I am a shirker--and, since it's the

same thing, a coward?"

Adrienne did not at once answer him, but she straightened out for an

uninterrupted run before the wind, and by the tiny moss-green flecks,

which moments of great seriousness brought to the depths of her eyes,

he knew that she meant to speak the unveiled truth.

"Besides your own holdings in a lot of railways and things, you handle

your mother's and sisters' property, don't you?"

He nodded.

"In a fashion, I do. I sign the necessary papers when the lawyers call

me up, and ask me to come down-town."

"You are a director in the Metropole Trust Company?"

"Guilty."

"In the Consolidated Seacoast?"

"I believe so."

"In a half-dozen other things equally important?"

"Good Lord, Drennie, how can I answer all those questions off-hand? I

don't carry a note-book in my yachting flannels."

Her voice was so serious that he wondered if it were not, also, a

little contemptuous.

"Do you have to consult a note-book to answer those questions?"

"Those directorate jobs are purely honorary," he defended. "If I

butted in with fool suggestions, they'd quite properly kick me out."

"With your friends, who are also share-holders, you could assume

control of the Morning Intelligence, couldn't you?"

"I guess I could assume control, but what would I do with it?"

"Do you know the reputation of that newspaper?"

"I guess it's all right. It's conservative and newsy. I read it every

morning when I'm in town. It fits in very nicely between the grapefruit

and the bacon-and-eggs."

"It is, also, powerful," she added, "and is said to be absolutely

servile to corporate interests."

"Drennie, you talk like an anarchist. You are rich yourself, you know."

"And, against each of those other concerns, various charges have been

made."

"Well, what do you want me to do?"

"It's not what I want you to do," she informed him; "it's what I'd

like to see you want to do."

"Name it! I'll want to do it forthwith."

"I think, when you are one of a handful of the richest men in New

York; when, for instance, you could dictate the policy of a great

newspaper, yet know it only as the course that follows your grapefruit,

you are a shirker and a drone, and are not playing the game." Her hand

tightened on the tiller. "I think, if I were a man riding on to the

polo field, I'd either try like the devil to drive the ball down

between the posts, or I'd come inside, and take off my boots and

colors. I wouldn't hover in lady-like futility around the edge of the

scrimmage."