CHAPTER III

“DOGFENNEL”

Frank Barton stepped into the car beside Miss Fuller and was whirled away, a willing captive. To tell the truth, the general manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company had been so busy fitting himself for his present situation with the corporation, which he had now held two years, that he had found little play-time. Having been motherless since childhood, and always sisterless, he probably knew less about women than any normal man in Mailsburg who had arrived at the age of twenty-eight.

No girl had before so plainly shown that she was interested in him--and Miss Fuller only recently. Her curiosity had first been piqued by hearing Grandon Fuller speak in strong approval of the manager. Barton had pulled the concern out of a slough of financial trouble that had threatened to ruin the Hapwood-Diller Company.

The Fullers had not always been wealthy. At least, not the Grandon-Fuller branch. Not until Israel Diller died and left them the bulk of his holdings in the Hapwood-Diller Company were they any better off than their neighbors on the far end of Burnaby Street, where Ethel Clayton and her mother and the Chases still lived.

With the money Mrs. Fuller--an ambitious woman--had set out to be the leader of Mailsburg’s society. To a certain degree she had succeeded. Helen was growing up to be a society devotee and with scarcely a sensible idea in her head. But she had beauty, and she made the most of that.

It was the thing, too, to be alive with interest in some semi-public topic or other; and Helen was alive to the value of self-advertising. A week never went by that her name did not appear in the society news of the city or county papers. She had been out just as long as Frank Barton had been manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company.

She did not really care a fillip for Frank Barton--not at this time--nor for any other man. But she thoroughly enjoyed the reputation of having more men dangling after her than any other girl in Mailsburg. She even endured the society of that “tame cat,” Morrison Copley; for at least he counted!

“Really, Mr. Barton,” Helen said, having got the manager beside her in the driving seat of the car. “Really, you show very little interest in your country’s welfare. Don’t you realize _yet_ we are _at war_?”

Barton’s face was rather glum, but he tried to speak lightly. “I read something about it in the papers. I’ve been so extremely busy, Miss Fuller, I fear I should only know of it from hearsay if the Germans sailed up the creek and landed at old Hammerly’s dock.”

“The boys of the National Guard marched away to-day!” she cried.

“Yes. That does make it look serious,” he agreed in a graver strain.

“Everybody should do his or her bit, Mr. Barton,” the girl said with an admonitory air. “I am _astonished_ at you. As I tell Morry Copley, if I were a man nothing should keep me out of uniform. I _do_ think those khaki colors are awfully _sweet_.”

“I fear,” Barton said grimly, “that the fellows who put on khaki because it looks ‘sweet’ will not make particularly good soldiers.”

“Morry Copley, for instance?” and she laughed at herself and at the non-present Copley. “Oh, well, you know what I mean. It really seems _too_ bad that so many of you men in this town are not a bit patriotic.”

“You’ve got me wrong, Miss Fuller,” the manager said hastily and in considerable earnestness. “I do not think I lack patriotism. But one must fulfill one’s duty.”

“Oh, business!” she exclaimed, scornfully.

He was on the defensive. “Your father’s income from our company is what enables you to drive about in this car, Miss Fuller,” he said bluntly.

“Now, _don’t_, for pity’s sake, talk _business_ to me. I really don’t understand a thing about it. I presume that girl who passed us just now--Clayton is her name?--may possess all the business acumen needed. I haven’t _her_ experience.”

And Frank Barton, startled, wondered why Helen Fuller had taken the trouble to slur Ethel Clayton.

The Fuller house, built on the exodus of the family from Burnaby Street, was just the dwelling one knowing Grandon Fuller and his wife would expect it to be. It was very large and very important looking, with a lot of gingerbread trimming about the eaves and veranda roof and the porte-cochère.

A footman in a conspicuous livery stood at attention as Helen stopped her car under the covered way. With a silver whistle this flunky summoned a man from the garage to take the automobile. Barton followed his hostess to the other end of the veranda where quite a party--mostly the younger matrons and the girls of Mailsburg’s smart set--were gathered. Tea had been made and two other liveried servants were rolling service tables about from group to group.

“Well, I have accomplished something,” Helen said, after an apology for not being at home when her guests arrived and dropping with assumed weariness into a comfortable chair. Immediately her maid put a knitting bag into her lap and her mistress seized the needles with avidity. “Every stitch counts, you know,” she went on. “I only wish I might knit while I drive my machine. But that is impossible. And I told father I’d drive the car myself and so let Charles, our chauffeur, enlist. We women must do our part. Let’s see, Marie; how many of these sweaters have I done for the soldiers?”

“That is Mam’selle’s second this fortnight,” said the French maid, without losing her composure. That she did nine-tenths of the work, Helen merely rattling the needles while company was present, was not a matter for the world to know.

“You all know Mr. Barton, I think,” Helen went on, placing the manager in a chair near her, as though he were a stray kitten she had picked up on the street and brought home as a curiosity. “I’ve managed to interest _him_ in our garden party. Really, he should be made to do a good deal for the Red Cross. He has not done a sin-gle sol-i-ta-ry thing as yet for the _cause_. I tell him he is a slacker of the first water.”

Some who chanced to hear her smiled. Frank Barton’s ears fairly burned. It was no joke for him; yet he admitted that Miss Fuller did not understand--_would_ not understand, perhaps--why he was not in khaki.

“Bah Jove!” drawled the high and somewhat effeminate voice of Morrison Copley, “Mr. Barton has plenty of company in this burg. I heard old Hammerly say he thought of offering a reward for the discovery of a single man within the conscription age here who joins from patriotic motives. He says patriotism died out in Mailsburg in the last generation.”

“By the way, Morry,” asked a fellow with the bulging shoulders of a prizefighter together with a dissipated face, “how did _you_ get exempted?”

“Dependent parent,” returned Copley. “You know, mothaw really couldn’t get on without me.”

“That’s true enough,” sneered the other. “Madam Copley would be lost without her baby boy.”

Morrison Copley did not, however, lack the keener weapons of retort. “That’s all right, Bradley. I understand you gave the exemption board the names of two dependent barkeepers.”

The laugh that followed this sally enabled Frank Barton to recover his composure. These fellows boldly acknowledged their lack of patriotic feeling. He knew that his reasons for claiming exemption until the Hapwood-Diller Company was in good shape again were, at least, commendable.

In a desultory way plans were made for the forthcoming garden party to raise funds for the local Red Cross chapter. Barton did not find that either his advice or his efforts were much needed. But he did get a chance to talk with Miss Fuller; and he was not a deep enough student of feminine nature to understand just how shallow she was.

The Fullers were of the best socially there was in Mailsburg, despite the fact that their money had come to them comparatively late. Mrs. Fuller’s maiden name had been Diller, and the Dillers dated their aristocracy in the county back to pre-Revolution days. To Barton, whose antecedents had been quite unimportant, such connections in a social way seemed worthy.

“Come again to see me, Mr. Barton, when I am alone,” Helen whispered, when he rose to follow the very first group with their knitting bags that made its departure. “One must give one’s self more or less to one’s guests when there is a crowd like this. I want you to take dinner with us soon--quite _en famille_. Will you?”

Barton promised. Grandon Fuller had always been cordial with him, and he was glad to be _persona grata_ with the family. After all, it meant considerable to him to be taken up by the Fullers.

He was the only person on this occasion to walk away from the house. The others rode in some kind of vehicle. But somebody got into step with Barton less than ten yards from the gateway.

“What brings you into the swagger part of the town, Frank?” demanded a harsh voice. “You are not hatching something with Fuller to double-cross the rest of the Hapwood-Diller stockholders?”

The young manager knew the character of the speaker too well to be offended. Macon Hammerly wore an apparent grouch to shield himself from the importunities of his fellowmen. He actually could not say “No” to any request or favor asked, unless he shouted it.

He was a dry old fellow with stiff, badly brushed iron-gray hair and an aggressive chin-whisker. He was the last man in Mailsburg to wear “half leg” boots and had a local cobbler make them for him. He kept a feed and grain store down on the docks and possessed in all probability more cash in the bank than any other man in town. But he made no display of it.

He was distantly related to the Fullers; and he made no display of that, although Helen called him “Uncle.” He bent a curious and somewhat disapproving eye upon Barton as he waited for his answer.

“I was just calling there.”

“Huh! On whom?”

“Miss Fuller took me up into her car and brought me over. It seems there is to be a garden party for the Red Cross----”

“Expected it must be something about a cross,” grumbled Macon Hammerly. “Red Cross or what not, it will be the double-cross for you if you don’t look out. You’ve nothing in common, Frank, with that dogfennel.”

“With _what_?” asked Barton, chuckling. “That’s a new one!”

“A new name for that inconsequential, useless crowd that circle about Grandon Fuller’s gal? Huh! D’you know any better name for them? There ain’t nothing more useless and picayune along the road than dogfennel. That whole bunch isn’t worth the powder to blow it to Halifax!”

“‘Dogfennel’,” and Barton still chuckled. “I don’t know but you are rather hard on our common may-weed. But I grant you that some of those people I met back there are quite as futile as the name implies. But Miss Fuller herself! She is a remarkably pretty girl.”

The old man in the linen duster and the broad-brimmed hat was quite as emphatic as Barton expected him to be. “So’s dogfennel pretty--if you like weeds. I don’t want to see you mixing in with that crowd, Frank. How’s business?”

“Better. Had to turn down a big order to-day, but I think we were justified in doing so.”

“Huh! Who says so? You and Jim Mayberry?” growled Hammerly, who kept in quite close touch with the factory affairs.

“Not altogether,” Barton smilingly replied. “We took the advice of Miss Clayton.”

“Huh! You _did_?” Hammerly listened quietly to the manager’s explanation, commenting in his usual tart way, but with open satisfaction: “You do show some sense once in a while, Frank. She’s got a head on her, that Ethel Clayton. And you are right, I’ll bet a cooky! The Bogata people are due to bust inside of three months. Mark my words.”

The two men separated at a corner and Barton strode on to his boarding house and the dinner which he knew would be dished up cold to him now. Mrs. Trevor played no table favorites in her ménage. The manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company was not happy. His reflections were tinged with a hue of disgust at his own equivocal situation.

He knew he had good and sufficient reason for not enlisting the minute of the declaration that a state of war with Germany existed. The same reason had kept him at home when many of his comrades in the Guard had gone to the Mexican Border.

He had been spending his strength and thought to one end since being placed in charge of the Hapwood-Diller Manufacturing Company. The war had struck the concern hard, cutting off or doubling the price of supplies without broadening the market for manufactured wares or increasing the profit on them.

Upon the dividends of the company many families in Mailsburg depended for their very daily bread. Had the dividends been reduced or even passed for several successive quarters, the Fullers would have got along all right; but there were stockholders whose livelihood depended utterly upon the factory running on full time and turning a profit on every dollar’s worth of product that left the shipping room. And Frank Barton seemed to be the only man to keep it so running.

For the most part these needy folk were widows or orphans or old people past working age, who had received their stock from one or another of the original owners of the factory. These helpless people Barton had felt particularly his charge. To throw up his job and join the colors might ruin the small fry depending upon the success of the Hapwood-Diller Company’s affairs. Until of late he had scarcely found breathing space to think of anything save the business of the factory.

But now! The boys marching away earlier in the day had stabbed Frank Barton to the quick. He was not a man who wore his heart on his sleeve. It was only those who knew him best who suspected the rankling wound he suffered when his course was unfavorably compared with that of the guardsmen whose brother-in-arms he had been.

Even Helen Fuller had accused him of being a slacker, and had compared him with Morry Copley and that Bradley fellow. Barton’s gorge rose as he thought of this.

“A slacker, eh?” he muttered to himself. “A slacker, am I?”