When they went into the living room, Steve and the Judge broke off their discussion and stood up, smiling.
“I think I’ll go for a walk,” said Lynn lightly. “It’s such a lovely night — full moon and everything — I’d like to smell some fresh air after what I’m used to in Atlanta.”
“I’m not quite sure you should go alone,” Steve said hesitantly. “If you wouldn’t mind my walking with you.”
“Why, no,” Lynn answered, smiling at him. “I was hoping you’d suggest that.”
Steve looked inordinately pleased. A little later, they were walking along the street toward the downtown section; walking in silence, Lynn with her hands sunk deeply in the pockets of her light topcoat. Steve, smoking his pipe, watched her as they strolled.
“Anything special on your mind, Lynn?” he asked quietly at last.
“A lot,” Lynn answered, and looked up at him, wishing that he were facing the moonlight so that she could see his expression. “Mother has been telling me how good you’ve been to them.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Steve interrupted her sharply. “That’s the silliest thing I ever heard of. Did she tell you that if I worked the rest of my life, I’d never be able to repay them for one-tenth, one-millionth of what they’ve done for me?”
“Well, no,” Lynn stammered, bewildered by the vigor of his words. “She said you had helped take care of Dad. Bud and I should have been here — we would have been if we’d known we were needed.”
“Dr. Anderson was against your being sent for,” Steve told her brusquely. “He felt that having you both come in the middle of your schooling would make the Judge feel he was much more seriously ill than it would have been wise for him to feel.”
“And, of course, with you here, Bud and I weren’t really needed.” Lynn hadn’t meant to let her jealousy escape in such words, and felt a hot tide of color burn in her face.
“That’s pretty small of you, Lynn,” said Steve grimly, “to be jealous of me.”
“Jealous?” She tried to deny it, but he wouldn’t listen.
“To resent the fact that I had a very small chance to do something to show how I felt about them both,” Steve went on as though she had not spoken. “I have no family. I’ve been an orphan since I was fourteen. I wanted to study law because ever since your father came to my rescue when my father was killed in the mills, and got a settlement that was enough to help me start the study of law, well, I’ve just about worshipped the Judge. I think he is the finest, the most decent, the best man I’ve ever known. And when he and your mother took me into their home, sort of adopted me, the burden of my gratitude, my feeling of obligation has been such that I felt I could never repay it. Now do you see why I am so grateful that I was lucky enough to be here, and to be of some very slight service to them both? And you’d dare be jealous, resentful …”
“Steve, Steve, be quiet!” Lynn protested, standing in front of him on the narrow, tree-lined sidewalk, half-laughing, half-crying. “I’m sorry, I mean I’m glad that you were here. I hope you’ll always he here, and they don’t feel that you are under any burden or obligation …”
“That was an awkward way of trying to say what I feel.”
“I think I understand, Steve. And I guess I was jealous that it was you and not Bud and I who were here to help when they needed it. After all, I love them very dearly and so does Bud; they’re the only parents we have, you know!”
“And two luckier people there couldn’t be than you and Bud,” Steve told her.
“I know, and I am sorry that I behaved so badly,” Lynn told him sincerely.
For a moment they stood smiling at each other, and then Steve looked up and beyond where they stood. A block away the lights from the three blocks of the business section were shining, and Steve said cheerfully, “Well, shall we celebrate our new understanding with a drink? The drugstore stays open until eleven o’clock!”
“Goodness! Aren’t we metropolitan in Oakville?” Lynn pretended to be deeply impressed.
“Oh, we’re no longer a town that rolls up the sidewalks and puts them away at eight-thirty,” he assured her grandly, and they both laughed as though that were very funny.
Lynn remembered the drugstore, of course, though it had been enlarged and restocked until it was a surprisingly reasonable facsimile of a big-city drugstore. It was well-filled, because the movie had just released its audience and a number of them were there. The tables were all occupied, and there was a double line at the soda fountain.
As Lynn and Steve entered, a group of boys were scuffling in front of the counter, their voices raised. One of them plunged from the group, turned toward the door and collided with Steve and Lynn, making them stagger.
Steve’s hand shot out and clutched the boy’s shoulder, and there was a dangerous glint in his eyes.
“Take it easy, young fellow.” His voice was low-pitched but angry. “You nearly knocked the lady down.”
The boy, fourteen or fifteen and large for his age, in skin-tight dungarees and a T-shirt, glared at Lynn. Then he seemed to recognize Steve, and some of the fight went out of him.
“Sorry, Steve,” he growled. “But that gang made me so mad I didn’t look where I was going.”
“Well, you’d better next time, Larry,” Steve told him grimly. “Now apologize to the lady.”
The boy’s sullen, murky eyes glanced indifferently at Lynn and widened slightly as they slid over her.
“Sure, sure, Steve,” he answered. “Sorry, lady, no offense meant. Hope I didn’t hurt you.”
“Oh, I’m sure you didn’t,” Lynn managed with a faint smile, and could not quite keep the distaste from her eyes.
“Aren’t you out a bit late, Larry?” asked Steve quietly.
The boy’s dark, sullen face was flooded with fury, and his eyes spat words he dared not speak.
“That’s what the gang’s been telling me, and it was what made me so mad,” he literally snarled. “Why do I have to obey a curfew and they don’t?”
“I’m sure you don’t want me to explain that in front of the young lady,” Steve said quietly. “She is Judge Carter’s daughter, you see.”
For just a moment a light of alarm flickered in the boy’s eyes, and he muttered something and slid out of the drugstore into the night.
Lynn looked up at Steve.
“And what was that all about?” she asked.
Steve had spotted a table just being vacated and guided her toward it, even as he answered, “Larry Holland’s been in some fairly serious trouble. He’s on probation; and it was your father who kept him from being sent to reform school. That’s why he is required to be at home every night by eleven, and to avoid bad company.”
A boy about fifteen or sixteen, very conscious of his position of authority, took their order and rushed back to the fountain.
Lynn’s eyes roamed over the other young boys approximately Larry’s age, then looked back at Steve.
“Well, I suppose it is very irritating to him to be the only one who has to be in by eleven, when the others are still roaming around,” she pointed out.
“Well, I’m sure he’d rather do that than be sent to reform school, and if it hadn’t been for the Judge, that’s where he would have been sent,” Steven assured her grimly. “Larry’s father runs a tavern on the mill side of the river, and his mother is dead. He’s an only child, and his father thinks the world of him. He’d give him the moon, if he could; he gets furious when anybody indicates that Larry is not the little tin angel he wants to believe. You can see it’s not a situation that could help Larry make a man of himself, without help from somebody like the Judge.”
Lynn nodded slowly, thoughtfully.
“Funny, you don’t think of small towns like Oakville being plagued with juvenile delinquency. You always think big cities are the ones that breed that sort of thing,” she said at last. “I had no idea that Oakville had changed so much.”
“Well, now you know,” Steve mocked her lightly. “Wherever there are young people, and too much money, or too little, I suppose there will be juvenile delinquency. Yet I wonder if money or the lack of it is really the root of the whole thing.”
Lynn smiled at his seriousness.
“Now you’re getting into an area that worries people all over the country, so don’t think you can settle it even in one small place like Oakville,” she reminded him, and looked about her, anxious to change the subject and get him out of his serious mood. “I suppose the girls and boys I used to know here have married and settled down, with families and budgets to worry about.”
“And that sort of thing never appealed to you?”
Steve asked curiously.
“Oh, I always had my heart set on being a top-flight career gal, and I’ve never felt careers and marriage went hand in hand,” she answered.
Steve nodded thoughtfully. “Now, to me, that makes a lot of sense.”
Lynn laughed at him. “Oh, don’t tell me that you are one of those old-fashioned males who insists a woman’s place is in the home!”
“Only if that’s the way she feels about it too,” Steve told her firmly.
“But you would want your wife to be there in the rose-covered cottage, warming your slippers and filling your pipe, when you got home from a hard day over the torts and leases and habeas corpuses,” Lynn mocked.
“I’m afraid so,” he admitted without shame. “But then I can’t imagine ever being married to any other kind of wife. Career girls scare me.”
“Oh, come now,” Lynn teased him.
He was unexpectedly serious.
“I mean it,” he told her. “I admire a girl who can make a career for herself; I respect her; but I run from her! Not, of course, that I’ve had much experience with girls like that. Oakville doesn’t seem to run to careers that would interest such girls.”
“I’ll have to agree with that,” Lynn mused slowly. “It’s why I pulled up and went to Atlanta. A girl can rise to just about any heights she wants to there, if she’s willing to work hard enough. And I am!”
“I’m sure you are, and that you’ll achieve anything you set your heart on,” Steve told her, and his smile was friendly and admiring.
“Thanks,” said Lynn. “That takes in quite a lot of territory!”
“Oh,” Steve assured her lightly, “you’re a girl who can handle quite a lot of territory.”
Lynn eyed him with a trace of suspicion.
“You wouldn’t be making fun of me, would you?” she demanded.
Steve’s brows went up and he looked honestly surprised.
“Me? I wouldn’t dare!” he assured her. “No, Lynn, I have heard a lot about you from your parents and from friends here. I’m convinced that you’re a very smart girl and that you’re very definitely going places.”
“Well, that’s very kind of you,” Lynn told him briskly as she stood up. “At the moment, I’m smart enough to know it’s time we were both going home. It’s been quite a day.”
Steve nodded and rose with her.