Page:Czecho-Slovak Student Life, Volume 18.djvu/82

especially, “the Queen can do no wrong”, and such things as pride and selfishnes are foreign to it. So Jimmy said nothing and continued to feel miserable. And Janey was too young to know that it is a matter of course for a handsome bachelor well in his thirties to have at his beck and call every girl in the vicinity under twenty.

She knew that Durand’s conversation, his manner, his gallantry, his sympathetic understanding were incomparably beyond Jimmy’s efforts. She did not know that years ago a very wise man said “No woman can ever tell the difference between a gentleman and a cad—”; and she was only a girl.

Durand, undoubtedly, was interested in her. Her freshness and lack of sophistication intrigued him, somehow. Also, he found her pleasant company both at her home, and on the rides to the theater in the neighboring town. His conduct at these times was almost perfect. If not quite so, at least Janey was too interested in the conversation to notice his appraising glances and the sidelong look he gave her at times.

In the meanwhile, Jimmy’s good humor gradually changed to a feeling of uncertainty and finally to real worry. Not that Janey had “cut him dead”. There were evenings when he did manage to see her alone, but she seemed a little aloof, a little as if she were watching him and comparing him with the other man. Her former gaiety, he noticed, seemed a little forced at times and her brown eyes were shadowed by something very much like doubt.

It was at just about this time that there came to Middleboro a stranger who excited the interest of the few who saw him. He drove up to the post-office late one cloudy autumn afternoon in a low-slung gray car, “as big as a battleship” as old Deemer, one of the few, put it. He himself seemed to be modelled on the lines of his car and as he loomed imposingly in the doorway, gave one the impression of a red-headed, jovial-faced Gargantuan.

He leaned in at the single window the office boasted and beckoned to Jim.

“C’mere, Bud,” he said, and continued very softly, almost in Jimmy’s ear. “Is there a fellow in town posing as a painter, an artist?”

“Posing” Jim was surprised. “You must mean Mr. Durand”.

“So that’s what he calls himself now, eh? Has there been any mail for him recently?” the big man queried.

“Really, I’m sorry,—” protested Jim.

The man turned back his coat lapel and showed a badge of the Burns’ Agency.

Jim exclaimed softly and then recovering himself said, “No, there’s been nothing for him here for two days. But why—why—?”

The red-headed one looked at him keenly for an instant and then said suddenly, “Say, perhaps you can help me. Remember, though, this is in confidence”.

“If your Durand is the fellow I’m looking for, he’s wanted in