“I’ll keep my eyes open for you and let you know,” he persisted. “A pretty girl like you ought to go around in society. We may be kin to each other, you see, and us Powells ought to stick together.”
“What are you going to do in New York?”
They were now almost at the gate and the tourist pointed to the two depressing sectors of his automobile.
“I’m goin’ to drive a taxi. This one right here. Only it’s got so it busts in two all the time.”
“You’re going to drive that in New York?”
Jim looked at her uncertainly. Such a pretty girl should certainly control the habit of shaking all over upon no provocation at all.
“Yes mamm,” he said with dignity.
Amanthis watched while they placed the upper half of the car upon the lower half and nailed it severely into place. Then Mr. Powell took the wheel and his body-servant climbed in beside him.
“I’m cer’nly very much obliged to you indeed for your hospitality. Convey my respects to your father.”
“I will,” she assured him. “Come back and see me, if you don’t mind barbers in the room.”
He dismissed this unpleasant thought with a gesture.
“Your company would always be charming.” He put the car into gear as though to drown out the temerity of his parting speech. “You’re the prettiest girl I’ve seen up north—by far.”
Then with a groan and a rattle Mr. Powell of Georgia with his own car and his own body-servant and his own ambitions and his own private cloud of dust continued on north for the summer.
II
She thought she would never see him again. She lay in her hammock, slim and beautiful, opened her left eye slightly to see June come in and then closed it and retired contentedly back into her dreams.
But one day when the midsummer vines had climbed the precarious sides of the red swing in the lawn, Mr. Jim Powell of Tarleton, Georgia, came vibrating back into her life. They sat on the wide porch as before.
“I’ve got a great scheme,” he told her.
“Did you drive your taxi like you said?”
“Yes mamm, but the business was right bad. I waited around in front of all those hotels and theatres an’ nobody ever got in.”
“Nobody?”
“Well, one night there was some drunk fellas they got in—only just as I was gettin’ started my automobile came apart. And another night it was rainin’ and there wasn’t no other taxis and a lady got in because she said she had to go a long ways. But before we got there she made me stop and she got out. She seemed kinda mad and went walkin’ off in the rain. Mighty proud lot of people they got up in New York.”
“And so you’re going home?” asked Amanthis sympathetically.
“No mamm. I got an idea.” His blue eyes looked closely at her. “Has that barber been around here—with hair on his sleeves?”
“No. He’s—he’s gone away.”
“Well, then, first thing is I want to leave this car of mine here with you. It ain’t the right color for a taxi. To pay for its keep I’d like to have you drive it just as much as you want. Long as you got a hammer an’ nails with you there ain’t much bad that can happen——”
“I’ll take care of it,” interrupted Amanthis, “but where are you going?”
“Southampton. It’s one of the swellest places they got up here, so that’s where I’m going.”
She sat up in amazement.
“What are you going to do there?”
“Listen.” He leaned toward her confidentially. “Were you serious about wanting to be a New York society girl?”
“Deadly serious.”
“That’s all I wanted to know,” he said inscrutably. “You just wait here on this porch a couple of weeks and—and sleep. And if any barbers come to see you with hair on their sleeves you tell ’em you’re too sleepy to see ’em.”
“What then?”
“Then you’ll hear from me, mamm,” he continued decisively. “You talk about society! Before one month I’m goin’ to have you in more society than there is.”
Further than this he would say nothing. His manner conveyed that she was going to be suspended over a pool of gaiety and periodically immersed: “Is it gay enough for you, mamm? Shall I let in a little more excitement, mamm?”
“Well,” answered Amanthis, lazily considering, “there are few things for which I’d forego the luxury of sleeping through July and August—but if you’ll write me a letter I’ll run up to Southampton.”
Three days later a young man wearing a yellow feather in his hat rang the doorbell of the enormous and astounding Madison Harlan house at Southampton. He asked the butler if there were any people in the house between the ages of sixteen and twenty. He was informed that Miss Genevieve Harlan and Mr. Ronald Harlan answered that description and thereupon he handed in a most peculiar card and requested in fetching Georgian that it be brought to their attention.
As a result he was closeted for almost an hour with Mr. Ronald Harlan (who was a student at the Hillkiss School) and Miss Genevieve Harlan (who was not uncelebrated at Southampton dances). When he left he bore a short note in Miss Harlan’s handwriting which he presented together with his peculiar card at the next large estate. It happened to be that of the Clifton Garneaus. Here, as if by magic, the same audience was granted him.
He went on—it was a hot day, and men who could not afford to do so were carrying their coats on the public highway, but Jim, a native of southernmost Georgia, was as fresh and cool at the last house as at the first. He visited ten houses that day. Anyone following him in his course might have taken him to be some gifted bootlegger.
There was something in his unexpected demand for the adolescent members of the family which made hardened butlers lose their critical acumen. As he left each house a close observer might have seen that fascinated eyes followed him to the door and excited voices whispered something which hinted at a future meeting.
The second day he visited twelve houses. He might have kept on his round for a week and never seen the same butler twice but it was only the palatial, the amazing houses which intrigued him.
On the third day he did a thing that many people have been told to do and few have done—he hired a hall. Exactly one week later he sent a wire to Miss Amanthis Powell saying that if she still aspired to the gaiety of the highest society she should set out for Southampton by the earliest possible train. He himself would meet her at the station.
Jim Powell was no longer a man of leisure, so when she failed to arrive at the time her wire had promised he grew restless. He supposed she was coming on a later train, turned to go back to his project—and met her entering the station from the street side.
“Why, how did you——”
“Well,” said Amanthis, “I arrived this morning instead, and I didn’t want to bother you so I found a respectable boarding house on the Ocean Road.”
She was quite different from the indolent Amanthis of the porch hammock, he thought. She wore a suit of robin’s-egg blue and a rakish young hat with a curling feather—she was attired not unlike those young ladies between sixteen and twenty who of late were absorbing his attention. Yes, she would do very well.
He bowed her profoundly into a taxi-cab and got in beside her.
“Isn’t it about time you told me your scheme?” she suggested.
“Well, it’s about these society girls up here.” He waved his hand airily. “I know ’em all.”
“Where are they?”
“Right now they’re with Hugo. You remember—that’s my body- servant.”
“With Hugo!” Her eyes widened. “Why? What’s it all about?”
“Well, I got—I got sort of a school, I guess you’d call it.”
“A school?”
“It’s a sort of academy. And Pm the head of it. I invented it.”
He flipped a card from his case as though he were shaking down a thermometer.
“Look.”
She took the card. In large lettering it bore the legend
JAMES POWELL; J. M.
“Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar”
She stared in amazement.
“Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar?” she repeated in awe.
“Yes mamm.”
“What does it mean? What- do you sell ’em?”
“No mamm, I teach ’em. It’s a profession.”
“Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar? What’s the J. M.?”
“That stands for Jazz Master.”
“But what is it? What’s it about?”
“Well, you see, it’s like this. One night when I was in New York I got talkin’ to a young fella who’d been drinking some. He was one of my fares. And he’d taken some society girl somewhere and lost her.”
“Lost her?”
“Yes mamm. He forgot her, I guess. And he was right worried. Well, I got to thinkin’ that these girls nowadays—these society girls—they lead a sort of dangerous life and my course of study offers a means of protection against these dangers.”
“You teach ’em to use brassknuckles?”
“Yes mamm, if necessary. Look here, you take a girl and she goes into some cafe where she’s got no business to go. Well then, her escort he gets a little too much to drink an’ he goes to sleep an’ then some other fella comes up and says ‘Hello, sweet mamma’ or whatever one of those mashers says up here. What does she do? She can’t scream, on account of no real lady’ll scream nowadays. She just reaches down in her pocket and slips her fingers into a pair of Powell’s Defensive Brassknuckles, debutante’s size, executes what I call the Society Hook, and Wham! that big fella’s on his way to the
