Page:The Popular Magazine v72 n1 (1924-04-20).djvu/30

 much joy from it. It's cost me a lot, one time and another, politeness has; but it's becoming in a Harnway. How long do you intend being here—is it impertinent in me to ask?”

“I can't tell,” Jimmy said, looking through the window and thinking of his pledge of the previous night. “I've got some—er—business that I wish to see through. My time is not entirely my own.”

The elder man grunted deeply as if amused and at the same time skeptical.

“Unless you've squandered all that money your father left, I shouldn't think business with you could ever be urgent. You've certainly got—or at least had—money enough. But if you've been making a fool of yourself, you know—well—you know I've got more money than I can ever use—unless I find the Fountain of Youth, which doesn't seem likely.”

He looked at the younger man with an unmistakable mixture of envy and of affection in his clear old eyes. Jimmy smiled and shook his handsome head that was shaped not entirely unlike that of his kinsman, and was unaware that the family resemblance extended much farther—so far that his uncle was recalling as he sat there, staring, that thirty-five or perhaps forty years before he must have looked enough like this nephew to have passed for his twin brother. And again he unconsciously sighed as he waited for a reply.

“No, Uncle Lem, it's not what you think at all. I haven't squandered my patrimony. In fact, I believe it's gone in the opposite direction. I haven't tried to make more money, but it seems to have piled up a little without much effort on my part.”

His kinsman sighed again, this time as if disappointed that he could not step into a financial breach.

“Then if it isn't money, I suppose it's that fool ship that keeps you from”

“No, it's not exactly that, either. It's—it's He stopped and stared thoughtfully at the pattern of the rare old stained-glass window through which the evening sun was painting a marvelous-colored mosaic on the floor of the reception salon. The old man sat up suddenly and his eyes twinkled with understanding.

“By gad! It's a woman, then. It's about time you were getting married if our race isn't to die out entirely. That was my mistake. I liked too many of 'em when I was young, and I put off marrying too long. And Lord A'mighty! I've got it, Jimmy! Never thought of it before. If you'd only marry some nice girl and change your name to Harnway, or No? You don't like that idea? Well how about compounding it to—say—Ware-Harnway, or even Harnway-Ware?”

“Be too much like patterning after the English custom,” Jimmy said, grinning with the remembered knowledge that once upon a time, long before, his uncle had at least pretended a violent Anglophobiaism. He could have no greater proof of time's changes in this once-violent old man than when the latter slowly shook his head, displayed no signs of annoyance and said, “They've got a lot of customs that are admirable when there is no alternative. This is one of them. They take pride in their forbears. Why not? We breed horses down in Kentucky. When we find a great sire, we continue his name, don't we? Now take our family, for instance, there was a Colonel Merivale Harnway who fought in the War of the Revolution, and afterward”

Jimmy hastily interrupted lest he be compelled to listen to a family genealogical history with which he was already familiar.

“Oh, it's a good name, all right. So is Ware. But—coming back to the invitation, I really can't accept your hospitality, Uncle Lem, because I've promised to help do something that would keep me from such acceptation.”

“Well, why didn't you say so, then? I never yet asked any man to break a promise, even if he pledged himself to come out at sunrise and try to shoot me. A promise is a promise. So we'll let it go at that. I hope it's got something to do with your love affair Oh, it's not a merely casual thing, eh? It's serious, I can see, by the expression on your face. Lord bless me, boy! You don't need to scowl at me as if you were about to challenge me! I meant no disrespect. Listen! I'd help you marry any fine young woman on earth unless, of course, she was one of that danged Powell tribe!”

He had paused, frowned, and seemed interested in studying the tips of his outstretched shoes as he concluded with that solitary reservation.

“But—but suppose, Uncle Lem, that it happened to be one of the Powells?”

“Nonsense! There are a lot of fine young