The White Elephant (Cameron and Rector)

BY MARGARET CAMERON AND JESSIE LEACH RECTOR

S Rand, entering late, looked about the crowded drawing-room in search of his hostess, he smiled reminiscently, remembering his own comment that the decorations of Betty Aldrich's house were always an echo of day after to-morrow. Presently he caught sight of her passing through the hall, and with the privilege of an intimate friend he followed, overtaking her in a small reception-room where she was giving final instructions to the maid in charge of a huge pile of parcels, each wrapped in white tissue and tied with ribbon.

"Hello, Betty!" he said. "Sorry I'm so late."

"Oh, Cliff! I didn't know you were in town." She greeted him enthusiastically, both hands outstretched, and he explained:

"I'm just off the train. Found your card, and it excited my curiosity. What's it all about?"

"I'm so glad you could come!"

"As a matter of fact, I couldn't. I'm up to my neck in work. But then"—his whimsical smile appeared—"where you're concerned, all my trains are accommodations. Tell me, what's a white-elephant sale?"

"Dear man, did you never own a white elephant?"

"Never." He shook his head gravely, only his twinkling eyes betraying his humor. "Mine always prove to be blind kittens and meet an untimely end."

Betty's light laughter made quick response.

"You must be loved of the gods," she declared; "if, in that annual exchange of 'something you can't afford for something you don't want' you've never acquired a white elephant, you couldn't drown!" Again he shook his head, and she demanded, "Clifford Rand, have you no sentiment?"

"My dear Betty, there's no end to that! Whistler's 'damned little thing on the mantelpiece that gives the whole show away' increases and multiplies in the sunshine of sentiment until it's all over the place."

"Then one acquires merit by sacrificing love's offering on the altar of charity"—she indicated the pile of multiformed parcels—"and it becomes a pig in a poke for somebody else. That's what a white-elephant sale is."

"And all the world contributes to it," he appended, nodding toward the adjoining rooms, whence came the confused babble of many voices. "By the way, who's the chap out there who looks like Grove Carrington?"

"It is Grove Carrington."

"I thought he was building bridges and draining swamps and cutting roads through the jungle somewhere."

"He was—and is. He's going back next month." After a moment she added, significantly, "Eleanor's coming to-night, too."

"Is she?" He also hesitated. "I wonder—"

"Yes, we all wonder. You were with us last summer at Murray Bay, Cliff, and you know him awfully well. What broke off that affair?"

"I don't know."

"When she went up there we all thought she was going to marry Clayton Page. I think she thought so herself. But then she and Grove renewed their acquaintance, and seemed so much more than friends, that everybody thought it was serious, until—one day it wasn't, and he was gone."

"Still, the whole thing was so sudden," he reminded her. "When he went out he didn't expect to stay, you know. He was summoned by cable—as consulting engineer in an emergency, don't you remember?—and left the same day for New York. Surely she had nothing to do with that."

"No. But even when the work went wrong and he had to stay she never spoke of him. Apparently, in all this time—almost a year—she's never heard from him. Cliff, something happened. What was it?"

"I wish you'd tell me! He isn't the sort of chap one questions. He's always on guard against daws."

"They're well matched there! Eleanor doesn't wear a decorated sleeve, either. But in all the years I've known her that was the only time when her interest seemed equal to the man's. Of course, people said she had decided to marry Mr. Page, after all—but she didn't. She hasn't even seen him since—and certainly she's never encouraged anybody else." Betty, whose kindly soul rejected all gossip, hesitated before crystallizing in words even an old conjecture, but experience had taught her that she might trust Rand's discretion, so she continued: "For a long time I thought Grove might be going to marry Miriam Latimer, but that's never been announced, either. She and her mother came to Murray Bay just after he arrived, you remember, and her interest in him was very manifest."

"But she's his cousin," he demurred.

"What has that to do with it? Something evidently came between Grove and Eleanor. Why not an earlier attachment?"

"Oh, woman! woman! I'll bet it was a woman who first said 'Cherchez la femme'" Rand cast his fly with deliberate intention, and Betty rose to it characteristically, retorting:

"I dare say. Women have said most of the clever things men take credit for. But just the same, I've never been able to convince myself that Eleanor's decision was not influenced in some way by Miriam's arrival—and I've never really liked Miriam since." Laughing as she made this confession, she added: "Eleanor's so dear to me, I always want to fight her battles. You see, she's too generous. Her claws are atrophied."

"My dear Betty," he said, a sincere warmth underlying his light tone, "adequate defense implies a consistent scratcher, which you are not. At the mere sight of blood you run for your first-aid kit!"

Just then the curtain which partially screened the door, preserving for this gray-toned little room its air of semi-privacy, was hastily pushed aside, and there entered a woman of perhaps thirty, still wearing the fur coat in which she had left her motor—a woman, one saw at a glance, fastidious, discriminating, and humorously intellectual, but at the moment much perturbed, as was evinced by her breathless: "Oh, Betty, Betty! Where's my parcel?"

"Eleanor! What's the matter?" Rand asked, with solicitude, startled by her obvious agitation.

"I didn't know you were in town, Cliff." She gave him a careless, friendly hand, and turned at once to her hostess, repeating: "Betty, where is my parcel? I want it back!"

"Here's one whose candle burns dimly on the altar. She wants it back," commented Rand, with a return to his customary whimsical manner, but Eleanor gave no heed to him.

"I'd know it anywhere," she urged, feverishly. "Do help me find it! We can't miss it! It's tied with green rafia."

"But everything's been rewrapped—and a lot of them boxed," Betty told her, "so no one could possibly recognize his own."

"Didn't you know this was a domino party?" jested Rand.

"Oh, Cliff, do be still! Can't you see I'm in trouble? I must find it!" Slipping out of her coat, Eleanor had snatched a parcel from the pile and was unwrapping it.

"But why?" Betty questioned.

"Don't ask me why! I've got to find it!" Discovering in her hand a piece of art nouveau pottery, she put it aside with an impatient ejaculation and seized another parcel.

"Betty"—Rand was regarding the porcelain with an appraising eye—"the vintage of that might almost place it as one of your wedding-presents."

"You underestimate the devotion of my friends," was her dry retort. "On that happy occasion they scorned clay and cast their bread upon the waters in the form of imperishable silver. But I assure you, Cliff, I've always returned breakable crusts!"

"And still a man's friends ask him why he doesn't marry!" he commented, with a grin. Then, as Eleanor's nervous fingers uncovered a piece of sculpture of the sentimental school, he took it from her and held it at arm's-length, exclaiming: "O Art! How many crimes in thy name—"

"I do think you people are perfectly heartless! Why don't you help me?" Eleanor reproached them. "This is really vital to me. Won't you please be serious?"

But Rand, caught in the irresistible current of his own humor, extended the bit of marble toward her, demanding: "Doesn't that strike you as being serious, in Heaven's name? Yesterday that was art! To-day—" Looking about the room, he picked up a little portrait in bronze of Betty's child, signed by one of the most advanced of modern sculptors, and placed the two side by side. Then, with a shrug: "My children! What of to-morrow?"

"Never mind to-morrow! I can't wait! I must find it now! I must!" Only half-listening, Eleanor began untying another knot, and Betty, determined to rescue the remainder of her parcels, covered her friend's cold fingers with her own warm ones, insisting:

"But why? Why?"

"Because I—I just happened to realize that the person who gave it to me may be here."

"Don't let that trouble you," laughed Betty. "We're all in the same boat."

After a speculative glance at Eleanor, Rand mentioned, dryly: "There are boats and boats, Betty. Yours may be a pleasure-craft, but hers seems to be a destroyer."

"Plaze, Mrs. Aldrich, they're afther wantin' to begin," said a maid at the door. "Which 'll I be takin' first?"

As Betty handed her an imposing parcel there was a rattle of applause in the drawing-room; the hum subsided, and a resonant voice proclaimed, with the intonation approved of all auctioneers:

"Ladies and gentlemen: I am to have the pleasure to-night of offering you an unparalleled aggregation of artless art and untreasured treasures. And in calling attention to the fact that the proceeds of this sale are to swell the ever-depleted coffers of home charities I may mention, in passing, that each of us is definitely demonstrating for himself—and herself—the truth of that good old adage, 'Charity begins at home.'"

The voice was drowned in laughter and applause, and Rand cocked his head a little to one side, saying: "Me for the firing-line! Coming?"

"We'll be there presently, Cliff," Betty promised, and with a nod he went out. Meanwhile Eleanor fell upon another parcel, and again her hostess laid arresting hands upon it, crying: "Eleanor, stop it! You mustn't! You've no idea how we worked tying all those up! Anyway, there are scores of them. I'm sorry, but you can't possibly find it, dear."

"I must find it!" Eleanor turned a tragic face toward her. "Grove Carrington gave it to me—and he's here! I had no idea that he would be—but he was the first person I saw as I came in, and—Betty, there's a reason why I must have it! I can't have him see that here! You don't know—and I can't tell you—but it just can't happen! It can't!"

Realizing at last that the situation held grave possibilities for two of her guests, Betty was at once resourceful, announcing: "There's only one sure way to prevent that. You distract his attention until your thing has been discovered and I've suppressed it."

"Oh, I couldn't!"

"My dear child, you're a woman, aren't you? Talk! Talk! That was Eve's first garden implement!"

"But Eve had no temperament—and no competition. Besides, I've nothing to say to him now."

"Then talk patter—high-brow art patter," Betty prescribed, briskly. "You can do that in your sleep. You go out and find him. I'll see every parcel opened until your thing turns up— By the way, what is it?" "My Ming statuette."

"Why—Eleanor! You've always contended that that thing was genuine!"

"I know! Don't ask me to explain. I can't!"

"But why on earth do you want it back?"

"I've told you. He's here!" Eleanor's tone was still desperate, but this time it elicited only an incredulous stare from her friend.

"Grove? Surely Grove Carrington never gave you a spurious Ming!"

The other responded only with a helpless gesture.

"But—Eleanor, were we all wrong? Is it genuine?"

"No."

"Of course it isn't, or you'd never have sent it here! But—Grove knows! Nobody better! He has a wonderful Ming himself that he bought at Christie's. Heaven knows what he paid for it! He never would tell, but we heard rumors that it was a tremendous price. How could he send you that thing? Was it a joke?"

"No; it wasn't a joke." Even to Betty, Eleanor could not confess that a man she had loved had sent her a clever counterfeit, at the same time assuring her that it was a symbol of his devotion.

"Well, if he really sent it seriously, I should think you'd be glad to have him discover it here!" her friend declared, indignantly; "Why aren't you?"

"I don't know! Don't ask me! When I saw him, I—I just knew I couldn't stand it to have him see it! I've always intended that he should find it in my drawing-room when he returned. Then, on an impulse, I sent it here, but now— Betty, I must have it back!"

"All right." Betty, ever practical, turned toward the door. "You find him. I'll— Eleanor, here he comes!" The younger woman dropped into a chair, and her hostess spurred her with an energetic whisper, "Brace up! Brace up!" before going forward, still amazed by Eleanor's revelation, to greet this man whom she thought she had known so well, and of whose taste she had been so sure.

Grove Carrington was a big, tanned, crisp-haired man, whose years in the open had accentuated his authoritative manner and helped him forget that he was born on the water side of Beacon Street and educated at Harvard. He came in quickly, with a certain eagerness, smiling at Betty, but looking beyond her as if seeking some one, and she asked: "What's the matter, Grove? Are you finding our elephant-hunt too tame?"

"I'm on the trail, all right, but it's not elephants I'm hunting. Didn't I catch a glimpse of Eleanor Baird?"

"Yes. Haven't you seen her? Eleanor, here's Grove." Her tone conveyed no hint of her consciousness that the situation was not casual. Then, after one stimulating glance at the other woman, she slipped out, and they were alone.

A burst of laughter and applause had died away; the maid had taken out another parcel, and now the auctioneer's unctuous tones again filled the rooms as Carrington stepped quickly toward Eleanor, exclaiming, half under his breath, "Have I really found you again?"

She gave an unresponsive hand into his eager clasp, saying, "How do you do?"

"Did they tell you I called yesterday? And again to-day?"

"Yes, they told me." Her manner was friendly, but remote.

Determined not to recognize the chill wall she had built between them—of which, nevertheless, he was acutely conscious—he demanded, "Why haven't you answered my letters?"

"Oh, no one writes letters these days," she evaded, to which he insistently retorted:

"But you did write! Eleanor, why did you write that last letter?"

"Evidently yours is a great soul." She summoned a faint smile. "You scorn consistency. First you take me to task because I didn't write, and then because I did."

"But that last letter! What did it mean? To be followed into the wilds by an extinguisher like that—and then nothing! Weeks—and months—and nothing! I wrote twice, and when you didn't answer I knew I must wait until I could see you face to face. Then I began to hear that Page was going about everywhere with you, and I thought—"

"Page!" For a moment surprise made her manner almost natural. "Clayton Page? I haven't seen him for nearly a year."

"What? But I certainly heard— Anyway, Betty wrote afterward that he had disappeared, and I began trying to get home again. But the work delayed me. I couldn't get away until now. Tell me what it meant!"

There could be no question that his emotion, of its kind, was genuine, and in spite of her conviction that the thing he had done would have been impossible to a man to whom she could trust her life, she still realized that she must fortify herself for more than passive resistance if she would withstand the charm of his pleading presence. Therefore she arose, exclaiming, with an attempt at lightness:

"Oh, why talk about it? It's all ancient history now, and there are so many nice new things to talk about." Then, in her extremity, she fell back upon Betty's parting injunction, conscious of its inadequacy, but fearing her own emotion. "New people, new books, new music, new art— Why, it's a brand-new world you've come back to! How does it feel to be born again?"

"I don't want a new world," he declared. "I want the old world—and you!"

"That's because you don't know how many amusing things there are in all these new ones—and there are such a lot of them! It's a poor creator who hasn't a new heaven and a new earth of his own these days, and the rest of us are breathless keeping pace with their creations." His puzzled gaze made her keenly aware of the flippancy of her tone, but she was unable to control it, and now he brushed her words aside with a gesture:

"I don't care anything about that! Eleanor, I've come all the way back to ask you this question. Tell me, tell me definitely, why you wrote that letter."

"You're reverting to an earlier manner, Grove." She was resolved to withhold from him at all costs any knowledge of the emotions he had stirred. "One isn't definite these days."

"These evasions of yours make me want to revert to type! I feel like a cave-man!" he growled, to which she retorted:

"Get you to a studio, then. Primitive impulses are encouraged, at the moment, in the arts."

"Only in the arts?" He placed himself directly before her. "Eleanor, won't you at least let me tell you what this has meant to me? Just for a moment, won't you be serious?"

Strongly moved, she almost swayed into his arms, but remembering the bitterness of her first disillusionment, and knowing that her own heart might betray her into an acceptance of his explanation, no matter how specious, she turned away, forcing herself to reply, with a shrug: "Oh, you forget! This is not a serious occasion."

For a moment he vainly tried to make her meet his level glance. Then, withdrawing a step, he said, formally: "I beg your pardon. I had an impression that it was. I thought that when a man had traveled half around the globe to say one thing to a woman he had earned the right to be treated seriously. I'm sorry if I have bored you."

He bowed and turned to go, and she realized that if he left her then he would go permanently out of her life. Scorning herself for her desire to hold a man whose standard of ideals had proved to be so much lower than her own, but impelled by an irresistible impulse, she contrived to smile, and said: "I'm sorry if I seem unsympathetic. Time was when you always modulated into my key, Grove."

"But in this long silence you've imposed I seem to have lost the pitch," he said, pausing. From without came the sound of the auctioneer's voice, calling: "Are you all done? Ten twenty-five!—last bid!—going!—going!—" Carrington strode back to her side. "Eleanor, I don't know you! I don't know you in this mood! Tell me what has come between us."

"Many months—and several thousand miles," she began, and stopped short, looking over his shoulder. He turned, impressed by her manner, and saw their hostess approaching. As Mrs. Aldrich entered the room, he heard Eleanor breathe, "Oh, Betty, have you—?"

"Cliff hasn't been here yet?" the other asked, glancing quickly about.

"Cliff? No—yes—he was here, you know," Eleanor faltered. Then, catching the significance of her friend's question: "Clifford Rand? Did he get it? And he doesn't understand! Oh, why didn't you stop him?"

"You forget that mob of people! He was gone before I could get to him."

"Well, don't waste time here. Go and find him!"

"Let me go. I'll find him," Carrington volunteered, but again Eleanor stayed him.

"No, no; you can't go! Why should we let Clifford Rand interrupt the first talk we've had in months?" Turning to Betty, she explained, "We're endeavoring to build bridges."

"With Grove's help that should be easy," was the quick response. "Building bridges is his genius."

"But my bridges demand solid foundations," he said, looking at Eleanor, and she returned:

"Do you always find bed-rock on the surface? Betty, do go and find Cliff!" Once more alone with Carrington, she attempted to steer the conversation into less perilous channels. "You know Clifford Rand, don't you?"

"Very well. We were at college together."

"Then you also know his over-developed sense of humor. We all rather dread him at times, fond as we are of him."

"Coming back to this new world you emphasize," he remarked, "my jungle-fed mind is rather bewildered, apparently, by any facetious point of view. But I suppose it does make a difference whose ox is gored."

Evidently he was not to be diverted from his purpose, and sounds of merriment from the drawing-room suggested an effective barrier to intimate conversation, now that her statuette was sold, so she said:

"Oh, well, if you're homesick for the jungle, let's go out and buy white elephants. We're not contributing our share."

"And leave our bridge resting on shifting sands? I can't do that! Won't you help me make a solid foundation?"

For once she looked directly into his eyes, and his seeming frankness troubled her. Wavering between her impression of what he seemed and her memory of what he had done, she forced herself to say, lightly, if somewhat incoherently, "Why is a bridge without a foundation any worse than a foundation without a bridge?"

"The foundation may safely wait for years without the bridge, but the bridge without the foundation comes to grief," he mechanically explained, perceiving at last that her evasions were more than caprice, and studying her gravely.

"Even an ephemeral bridge may be a thing of beauty on the sky-line," she supplied.

"But I want a bridge that will span the years—a foundation on which I can rest my life! And only you can help me build it!"

"Your life rests lightly on its foundations, Grove. You keep bed-rock and cement for your profession."

She turned wearily away, but he caught her arm, demanding: "Eleanor, what do you mean? There's something under this that I don't understand."

"Oh, why equivocate?" For the first time, she showed visible impatience and dropped her light manner. "You know perfectly well!"

"Know? Know what? What do you mean?"

Before she could frame a reply Rand appeared in the doorway, looking very much amused, and when he discovered her only companion to be a man well known as a connoisseur of porcelains, he gleefully exclaimed, "Carrington, for once I've done you!" Then, turning to Eleanor: "I owe you a lifetime of gratitude, for if you had not kept this inveterate old bargain-hunter occupied I should never have been permitted to acquire the most unblushing white elephant now in captivity. Behold!" Triumphantly he displayed his new possession, a mandarin in brilliantly tinted porcelain, and bowed ironically as he added, "A glowing spark from your burnt-offering, I think?"

"Mine?" She regarded the thing dully. For the moment her feeling was almost one of detachment. "It does look a little like mine, doesn't it?" Then, realizing that it was Carrington who stood beside her, she affected to look closely at the porcelain lest she should look at him, unconscious that he was quietly watching her.

"Like!" Rand laughed. "I've heard his every seductive curve defended in your drawing-room! After being so gallant a champion in private, do you repudiate him in public? I wouldn't have believed it of you!" Carrington, who had been turning the statuette about in his hands, now remarked: "There can be only one reason why Eleanor should defend a thing like that. Our sentimental associations are frequently chosen for us."

Amazed at his effrontery, she turned indignantly toward him, gasping, "Well!" Then, pointedly, "I assure you I've never been able to find an excuse for that!"

"Is it possible I've been rendering honors where no honors were due?" Rand's smile was quizzical, and Carrington asked:

"Then this was not yours?"

"I've been the unhappy possessor of one like it," she said, coldly.

"Can I believe my senses?" teased Rand. "Is that an admission?"

"If it is, it's not for publication." Her tone betrayed her nervous tension, but the irrepressible Rand continued, with a touch of grandiloquence:

"I'll guard your secret as my own! But that empty niche in your drawing-room will bear mute testimony to woman's emancipation from sentimental slavery."

"It must have been a strong sentiment," Carrington intimated, with a critical glance at the porcelain, "that could give a thing like that even a temporary place in your drawing-room."

"Temporary!" jeered the other man, with enjoyment. "He's been there long enough to have acquired squatter's rights!" The entrance of the maid for another parcel reminded him that the sale was not over, and he lifted an impressive hand, calling to their attention the ceaseless flow of the auctioneer's eloquence. "Hark to the voice of the tempter! I'm off to acquire a few more sentimental misfits. But I think Jumbo will be happier with you, Eleanor. He hasn't learned to know his master's voice yet. Will you guard him for me?"

"No. Take it away." She was almost brusque.

"Why, I thought you were so anxious to keep it dark!" marveled Rand, in genuine surprise, and she impatiently agreed:

"Oh yes, I am! Leave it here, by all means."

"But treat him tenderly, you two! He's been told he was genuine until his faith in himself is akin to hope!"

"Well, if that's true," said Carrington, "there's no question that the blind god inspired this gift. He couldn't see the difference between 1519 and 1915."

"Here's a new beatitude! Since blindness and gifts go hand in hand, blessed is the receiver who is also blind." Rand took his departure, and Carrington turned to the woman, asking:

"But you weren't blind, Eleanor? You knew?"

"Our eyes are holden sometimes from choice. Grove, there is such a thing as loyalty."

"How, then, could you send this here?" he asked, watching her keenly. "Since you have treasured it so long, you must once have cared for the giver, if not for the gift. How could you send it to a place like this?"

"Remember your own words. A flawed foundation brings any structure to grief in time. Even now you're not sincere enough to admit that the faulty stone was yours!"

"Mine! What do you mean?" he questioned, sharply.

"Oh, why can't you be honest? You know that I kept this statuette because you gave it to me."

"That? I?" He looked entirely mystified. "I never saw the thing before!"

"But—Grove! You sent it to me! It was your parting gift!"

"That? I sent you my own Ming figure, that I bought at Christie's ten years ago!"

"This is what came to me," she told him, shaking her head.

"I knew it had some unhappy association for you. I could see that, but I never dreamed— Why, Eleanor, how could you think for a moment that I'd send you—you—a thing not genuine?"

"Still—there it is," she mentioned indicating the porcelain. "The label was addressed in your hand, and inside the box was your card, saying that this would remind me during your absence of the quality of your devotion."

For a moment Carrington stared at her in utter incredulity, and then, glimpsing the truth, he exclaimed with conviction, "That's why you wrote that cruel letter!"

"I was cruelly hurt," she said.

"But couldn't you see that it was a hideous mistake?"

"How could it be a mistake? I've tried—oh, I have tried to find excuses," she faltered, brokenly. "If it had been something you bought for me, sent from a shop— But you wrote that you were sending me the first piece you ever owned, the foundation-stone of your wonderful collection. And that is what came to me as a symbol of the quality of your devotion!"

A quick illumination, as quickly masked, had come into Carrington's eyes, but he said only: "It's a hideous mistake! Eleanor, won't you believe me when I say I never saw that thing before?"

"Then how did it reach me with that card? And that label?"

"I don't know!" He made a despairing gesture. "I can't explain it!"

"But you saw it packed!"

"No, I didn't. You know I was here only one day, and I was fearfully busy. I wrote the card and the label, and left instructions that the figure was to be carefully packed and sent to you as soon as you got home. I supposed—until this moment—that it had been done!" His sincerity was unquestionable, and, perceiving this, Eleanor demanded, with a flash of intuition:

"To whom did you give the instructions?"

"I don't yet understand how such a mistake could occur," he evaded.

"How could there be a mistake about this, Grove? Tell me, who had your instructions?"

"You see, she's no judge of these things. She didn't know."

"Who didn't know?"

"My cousin Miriam. You remember she and her mother lived in my apartment last fall." He made the explanation reluctantly, realizing its inadequacy. "I left a letter in the apartment, asking her to have the Ming packed and sent to you, and somehow—"

"But what about this?" she asked, appreciating his hesitation, but feeling that they both had suffered too much to leave any depths unprobed now. "You insist that you never saw it before. Was this in your apartment?"

"I didn't know it was. I don't remember it. But I suppose it must have been. And you know Miriam is not a connoisseur. She wouldn't understand the difference."

"Oh, wouldn't she! It was Miriam who came the day after I received this, and pounced upon it at once as a brilliant imitation. Was it she who wrote you that I was going about with Clayton Page?"

Carrington made a helpless gesture, and the only reply possible to him, "I can't explain it!"

"Ah, well, now that we understand, do you think—" Hesitating only an instant, she let him see deep into her eyes as she continued, unsteadily, "do you really think, Grove, that any further explanations are necessary?"

"Eleanor! Do you mean—" He checked his quick movement toward her as he caught sight of Mrs. Aldrich and Rand in the doorway.

"How are the bridges coming on?" Betty asked, lightly, but with an anxious glance at Eleanor.

"They're strong enough now to carry all your white elephants," Carrington buoyantly asserted, but Rand expostulated:

"Heaven forbid! I've seen 'em and you haven't! Apropos of elephants, where's my property?"

"Here he is," said Eleanor, radiantly.

"Cliff, what will you take for that object?" Carrington asked.

"He's not for sale."

"I'll buy him back at your own price," Carrington persisted.

"Look here. What is this critter?" Rand's twinkling glance interrogated Eleanor and Carrington. "I always was weak on zoology. What I want to know is whether this is a white elephant or a blind kitten?"

"For a long time I was sure he was a serpent," Eleanor began, and Carrington finished:

"But now he's going to be a household pet."