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FRIENDSHIP AND FOLLY




[Illustration: "THERE WAS A LITTLE BLACK SHAPE SITTING ON SOME
LUGGAGE."]




[Illustration: Title page]




    FRIENDSHIP AND FOLLY


    A Novel

    BY

    MARIA LOUISE POOL

    AUTHOR OF

    "IN A DIKE SHANTY," "BOSS," ETC.

    [Illustration]

    BOSTON

    L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY

    (INCORPORATED)

    1898




    _Copyright, 1898_
    BY THE J. B. LIPPINCOTT CO.

    _Copyright, 1898_
    BY L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY

    (INCORPORATED)

    Colonial Press
    Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
    Boston, U.S.A.




CONTENTS.


    CHAPTER                                      PAGE

        I. AT SAVIN HILL                           15

       II. A SLIGHT ACCIDENT                       43

      III. "I WANT TO ASK YOU A QUESTION"          59

       IV. "I REALLY OUGHT TO HAVE BEEN AN
              ACTRESS"                             84

        V. BEING A CHAPERON                       101

       VI. THE EVENING BEFORE                     114

      VII. "A BLESSED CHANCE"                     128

     VIII. ON BOARD THE SCYTHIA                   140

       IX. "COLD PORRIDGE HOT AGAIN"              150

        X. THE PASSENGER LIST                     169

       XI. A KNOCK-DOWN BLOW                      178

      XII. "DON'T BE CRUEL TO ME"                 186

     XIII. AN INVOLUNTARY BATH                    205

      XIV. A BULL TERRIER                         216

       XV. "TOO MUCH FOR ANY WOMAN TO FORGIVE"    230

      XVI. TETE-A-TETE                            251

     XVII. "ARE YOU GOING TO MARRY LORD MAXWELL?" 261

    XVIII. LEANDER AS A MEANS                     274

      XIX. "I SHALL COME BACK"                    289




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.


                                                 PAGE

    "THERE WAS A LITTLE BLACK SHAPE SITTING ON
       SOME LUGGAGE."                   _Frontispiece_

    "'I BORE YOU SO,' SHE SAID."                  119

    "'LET ME SEE IT,' SAID CAROLYN."              174

    "LAWRENCE SPRANG TO HIS FEET."                235




FRIENDSHIP AND FOLLY.




CHAPTER I.

AT SAVIN HILL.


There was one large wicker chair on the piazza, and in the chair sat
a girl. It was a spacious piazza, the roof of which was supported
by gnarled tree-trunks, the bark and the knots carefully preserved
so as to look "rustic." The deep eaves drooped in a rustic manner
also, and there were trumpet-vines and wistaria, and various other
creeping things of the vegetable world, wandering about in a careful
carelessness, like the hair of a woman when it is dressed most
effectively.

The lawn swept down rather steeply and stopped suddenly against a
thick stone wall that was covered with ivy.

On top of this wall, ruthlessly trampling back and forth on the
leaves, was a small boy dressed in the fashion of a member of the
navy. His blue pantaloons flapped very widely at the ankles, and were
belted about him by a leather belt on which was the word "Vireo," in
gilt letters; his brimless cap was tipped perilously on that part of
his head where the warm affections used to be located in the days
of phrenology. On this cap also appeared the word "Vireo," in gilt.
This figure, outlined as it was against the bright blue of the sky,
had the effect of not being more than about sixteen inches long. And
in truth Leander Ffolliott was very small for his age, which was ten
years and five months. He did not feel small, however; his mind might
suitably have inhabited a giant's frame, so far as his estimation of
himself and the Ffolliott family generally was concerned. But the
rest of the family did not always agree with him in this estimation,
and at such times of disagreement the boy was given to screaming and
kicking until the air round about this summer residence resounded,
and seemed actually to crackle and glimmer in sympathy with the mood
of Leander.

Just now he had stopped in his trampling of the ivy leaves. He was
standing with his legs wide apart, and was bending forward somewhat,
stirring with a stick something on the top of the wall in front of
him. His atom of a face was screwed up, his lips sticking out.

"Sis!" he suddenly shrieked; "I say, sis!"

The girl on the piazza stopped reading, and looked at the boy.

"What's the matter?" she called out.

"You just come here; you come here this minute! Stop readin' that
nasty book, 'n' come along!"

"Carolyn, you'd better go," said a voice from the inner side of an
open window; "if you don't he may be so tried with you that he'll
fall off the wall. I've told him not to get on that wall, anyway."

The girl rose and turned her book down open upon her chair. Then she
sauntered slowly along over the lawn, so slowly that her brother
Leander stamped his foot and called to her to hurry, for he couldn't
wait.

"You'd better hurry, Carolyn," said the gentle voice at the window;
"I'm so afraid he may fall."

So the girl hastened, and in a moment was leaning against the wall
and asking, without much interest:

"What is it, Lee? You do shriek so!"

Leander was now standing upright. He had put his foot, encased in
yellow leather, hard down on the something he had been poking at. His
freckled face was red, his eyes shining with excitement.

"By George!" he exclaimed; "you can't guess in a million years what
I've found! No, not in ten million! I ain't picked it up yet. I
wanted you to see me pick it up. Oh, thunderation! won't I just do
what I darn please with the money? You bet! Fifty dollars! Cousin Rod
owes me fifty dollars! I don't s'pose he'll be so mean as to say that
ad. of his has run out 'n' he don't owe me anything. Do you think
he'll be so mean as that, Caro? Say!"

At this thought Leander's face actually grew pale beneath tan and
freckles.

The girl was not very much impressed as yet by her brother's
excitement. She was used to seeing him excited.

"You know Rod wouldn't do anything mean," she replied, calmly. "But
what are you talking about? Of course it can't be--"

"Yes, 'tis, too. And it's fifty dollars. Now you needn't go 'n' tell
Rod he no need to pay it, 'cause 'twas one of the family. I won't
stand it if you do! I--"

"Stop your gabble!" interrupted the girl, imperatively. "Lift up your
foot."

She took hold of the boy's arm as she spoke. A certain spark had come
into her eye.

The foot was withdrawn. In a cleft between the stones, where the ivy
leaves had hidden it, lay a ring. It was turned so that the stone
could but just be seen.

She extended her hand, but it was promptly twitched away by her
brother.

"None er that!" he cried. "I ain't goin' to let you pick it up;
then you'll be wantin' to share in the fifty dollars. You can't do
that,--not by a long streak. Here she goes!"

He stooped and then held up a ring between his finger and thumb. The
sun struck it, and made the engraved carbuncle shine dully red.

"That's the very critter!" exclaimed Leander, triumphantly.

"Let me take it," said the girl.

She spoke shortly, and in a way that made the boy turn and look at
her curiously. But he obeyed instantly. He laid the ring in the palm
of her hand, thrust his own hands into his pockets, and stood gazing
down at his sister.

Carolyn Ffolliott looked at the trinket with narrowing eyes. Her lips
were a trifle compressed.

"There ain't any mistake, is there?" the boy asked, at last, speaking
anxiously. "That's the ring Rod lost, ain't it? Anyway, it's one
exactly like it,--that red stone with something cut into it."

"There isn't the least chance of any mistake," was the answer. "Of
course it's Rod's."

Carolyn gave back the ring.

"And I sh'll have the reward?"

"Of course."

The girl appeared to have lost all interest in the matter. She turned
to go back to the piazza.

Leander made an extremely tight, hard, dingy fist of one hand, with
the ring enclosed, and then he leaped down from the wall, landing so
near to his sister that she staggered away from him.

"I wish you would behave respectably!" she cried.

"Pooh!" said Leander. He ranged up by her side and walked across the
lawn with her towards the house.

He had now put the ring on his thumb and was holding it up in front
of him, gazing at it. He was greatly surprised that his sister took
no more notice of it. But you never knew what to expect of a girl.
Anyway, she shouldn't have any of that money.

"I'll bet I know how the ring got there," he remarked, presently.

"How?"

"Why, you gaby you, the crow, of course. But I don't know how he got
it. Flew into Rod's room sometime, I s'pose. If he thinks such an
almighty lot of it, Rod better look out. I guess fifty dollars'd get
a lunkin' lot of cannon crackers, don't you think, sis?"

"Yes," absently.

"But I better have some pin-wheels, 'n' Roman candles, don't you
think?"

"Yes."

Leander turned, and peered up at his sister's face.

"You mad 'cause you didn't find it?" he asked.

"No."

"All right. I guess I'll get you 'n' marmer some kind of a present.
I'll make marmer tell me what she'd like for 'bout fifty cents. Hi!
marmer! I'll let you have three guesses 'bout what I've found--"

Here Leander slammed in through the wide screen door which opened
from the piazza into the hall.

Leander's sister resumed her seat. She had taken up her book, and now
sat looking at it in much the same attitude that had been hers when
her brother called her. She could hear his shrill voice inside the
house, as he told his mother of his find.

After a few moments Carolyn heard the clock in the hall strike ten.
At about ten the mail for "Savin Hill," as their place was called,
was brought over from the village.

But she continued to look intently down at her book for several
minutes more. Then she rose slowly; she stood and gazed off across
the lawn to where a sharp line of glitter showed between some
savin-trees that had been left standing on the other side of the
wall. These trees slanted south-westerly, as do most of the trees on
the south shore of Massachusetts, being blown upon so much of their
lives by the northeast wind.

That line of glitter was Massachusetts Bay. Across the girl's vision
moved two or three sails; but she did not seem to see them. Her eyes
showed that she was not thinking of what was before her.

Presently a clock somewhere in the house struck the half-hour after
ten.

A servant came out on the piazza with some papers and letters in her
hand. She hesitated, then came forward. "You told me to bring the
mail out here, Miss Ffolliott," she said, as if in apology.

"So I did; thank you."

"Why, Carolyn!" exclaimed a middle-aged lady, hurrying by the
servant, "isn't this odd about Rodney's ring?"

"Very," answered the girl. She held the papers in her hand and did
not raise her eyes as she spoke.

"I do wonder what he'll say," went on her mother. "I do wonder if he
still cares. How upset he was! And how curious that he should have
lost the ring just before the engagement was broken! It did seem
almost like a forerunner."

Mrs. Ffolliott held the trinket in her hand. Her son was standing
beside her still, with his hands in his pockets. He was watching the
ring somewhat as he would have watched it if his mother had been
likely to devour it.

"You know Devil took it, of course," answered Carolyn, without
raising her eyes. "There's no other way to account for its being in
the wall there."

"It always seems so profane to speak of the crow in that way,"
murmured Mrs. Ffolliott.

Whereat her son frankly exclaimed, "Oh, marmer, don't be a jackass!
That's the crow's name, you know."

"But he ought never to have been named in that way. I objected to it
from the first."

"Pooh!"--this from Leander.

"I know," went on the lady, "that it was Rodney himself who named
him, but--"

"Come, now, marmer," the boy interrupted, impatiently, "you always
say that."

"Here's a letter from Prudence at last."

It was the girl who spoke, now looking up at her mother.

"Read it to me, dear," was the response. But it was some moments
before the mother and son could finish the altercation now entered
into as to who should have charge of the ring until such time as it
could be returned to the owner.

Mrs. Ffolliott succeeded in gaining permission, Leander perceiving
that the article would be safer in her care. But he cautioned her not
to expect any share of the reward.

Then he walked out of sight to some region momentarily unknown to his
parent, and peace reigned on the piazza.

Mrs. Ffolliott sat down in the chair and placidly waited.

Carolyn stood leaning against the wall of the house. The open letter
hung from her hand.

"That new man hasn't brought back the veranda chairs since he swept
here," now remarked Mrs. Ffolliott. "I wish you'd tell him--"

"Yes, I will, presently," replied the girl. "Shall I read this to you
now? She's coming home."

"Coming home!"

"Yes. Here's what she says: 'My dear old fellow--'"

"Does she call you that?" interrupted Mrs. Ffolliott.

There was a slight smile on the girl's face as she answered:

"Yes; she seems to mean me."

"Oh, dear! Well, it's just like her. But then, anything is just like
her. Go on, please."

"'My dear old fellow,'" again began Carolyn, "'I suppose there is
stuff that martyrs are made of, but none of that stuff got into my
make-up, so I don't mean ever to pose for that sort of thing. That
is, never again; but I've been doing it for the last four weeks.

"'You see, mamma would have me stay with her at Carlsbad. It has
seemed as if I should die. And how horrid you would feel if you
should have to tell people, "My dear cousin Prudence died at
Carlsbad." Because, you see, they don't die at Carlsbad; they hustle
off somewhere to die and be buried. And if I should give up the ghost
here I should be thought quite odd. But I shouldn't care for that.
Only I want to live, and I mean to. That's why I'm not going to stand
it.

"'There hasn't been a man here that it would pay to speak to, much
less to look at. I might just as well have been a nurse. I shouldn't
have been so bored, for if I had really been one that knowledge would
have sort of upheld me,--at least I think it would.

"'