The Fighting Chance

Ferrall, his legs swinging busily, thought again; then: "Who was the girl, Stephen?"

"I don't think the papers mentioned her name," said Siward gravely.

"Oh--I beg your pardon; I thought she was some notorious actress--everybody said so. … Who were those callow fools who put you up to it? … Never mind if you don't care to tell. But it strikes me they are candidates for club discipline as well as you. It was up to them to face the governors I think--"

"No, I think not."

Ferrall, legs swinging busily, considered him.

"Too bad," he mused; "they need not have dropped you--"

"Oh, they had to. But as long as the Lenox takes no action I can live that down."

Ferrall nodded: "I came in to say something--a message from Grace--confound it! what was it? Oh--could you--before dinner--now--just sit down and with that infernal facility of yours make a sketch of a man chasing a gun-shy dog?"

"Why yes--if Mrs. Ferrall wishes--"

He walked over to the desk in his shirt-sleeves, sat down, drew a blank sheet of paper toward him, and, dipping his pen, drew carelessly a gun-shy setter dog rushing frantically across the stubble, and after him, bare-headed, gun in hand, the maddest of men.

"Put a Vandyke beard on him," grinned Ferrall over his shoulder. "There! O Lord! but you have hit it! Put a ticked saddle on the cur--there!"

"Who is this supposed to be?" began Siward, looking up. But "Wait!" chuckled his host, seizing the still wet sketch, and made for the door.

Siward strolled into the bath-room, washed a spot or two of ink from his fingers, returned and buttoned his waistcoat, then, completing an unhurried toilet, went out and down the stairway to the big living-room. There were two or three people there--Mrs. Leroy Mortimer, very fetching with her Japanese-like colouring, black hair and eyes that slanted just enough; Rena Bonnesdel, smooth, violet-eyed, blonde, and rather stunning in a peculiarly innocent way; Miss Caithness, very pale and slimly attractive; and the Page boys, Willis and Gordon, delightfully shy and interested, and having a splendid time with any woman who could afford the intellectual leisure.

Siward spoke pleasantly to them all. Other people drifted down--Marion Page who looked like a school-marm and rode like a demon; Eileen Shannon, pink and white as a thorn blossom, with the deuce to pay lurking in her grey eyes; Kathryn Tassel and Mrs. Vendenning whom he did not know, and finally his hostess Grace Ferrall with her piquant, almost boyish, freckled face and sweet frank eyes and the figure of an adolescent.

She gave Siward one pretty sun-browned hand and laid the other above his, holding it a moment in her light clasp.