# Conflict (Prouty)/Book 2/Chapter 3

Sheilah came tripping down the long flight of gray steps, as light of foot as she had tripped up them a half-hour ago, and took her place between Hunt LeBaron and Peggy in the back of the automobile, apparently as light of heart.
'Now let's go and dance somewhere,' she exclaimed, 'and get some food. I'm starved.'
'Look, boys! Look what she's got!' sang out Peggy, and she tapped the big square package on Sheilah's knees. 'Gosh! your friend may live in a God-forsaken place, but he's certainly all right when it comes to "saying-it-with-candy." A ten-pounder, boys! Come, Sheilah, we're starved, too. Open it up, and pass it round.'
'Is that a hint?' laughed Sheilah, grateful with all her heart that Felix's box was of such conventional shape and size. Then, shaking her head tantalizingly, 'Candy isn't good for children before meals. After dinner I'll give you some, perhaps, if you don't tease.'
'Pig!' spat Peggy.
Sheilah ignored her.
'Nevin,' she called out, 'mind stopping at the ​telegraph-office as you go through the town? I must wire the family that I'm coming home on the night train.'
A dreadful thing happened when Sheilah was in the telegraph-office. She left Felix's box on the seat she vacated with never a thought that any one would dare touch it. But Peggy would dare touch anything that wasn't labeled dynamite. The first intimation that Sheilah had of the catastrophe was the telltale odor of rose and heliotrope as she approached the car. A moment later she caught a glimpse of bright blue satin and white lace on Peggy's knees, and two bent figures—Hunt and Bertie—evidently picking things up from the floor of the car. Nevin sat in his place behind the wheel.
'I'm terribly sorry,' burst out Peggy at sight of Sheilah, 'but the darned thing was upside down, and every blamed piece of the candy fell out.'
Quite true. Practically everything in Felix's box had become dislodged. What wasn't scattered on the seat and in Peggy's lap, Hunt and Bertie were rescuing from beneath her feet, with accompanying remarks meant to be witty, Sheilah supposed.
'Here's a glacéd strawberry,' scintillated Bertie, holding up the strawberry emery-bag by its loop.
'And a butter-scotch kiss,' Hunt Le Baron followed suit, dangling the mould of beeswax.
'And see the pink lollie-pop, boys, extra size,' ​laughed Peggy, waving on high the enameled darning-ball with the handle.
Sheilah ought to have laughed, she supposed, as she thought of the episode afterwards, made light of the joke-making, but she couldn't—she simply couldn't with that old queer feeling of loyalty to Felix, pressing and pushing again. Very quietly she said, 'Please just put them back in the box.' So quietly, in fact, that a pall fell upon the merrymaking group.
'Gosh! She's peeved, boys!' ejaculated Peggy.
'Will you let me get in?' asked Sheilah, in the same deadly calm voice. The boys fell back and she stepped up into the car.
'No need of getting mad,' said Peggy. 'I swear I thought it was candy. I'm awfully sorry.'
Sheilah sat down. 'Please give the box to me,' she said, with no sign of relenting.
'Oh, take it! Take your old box!' exclaimed Peggy. If she wouldn't accept an apology, very well!
Sheilah took it, with the dignity it seemed to her a gift, bought at such a price, deserved. In a sort of protecting manner, too, picking out a bit of stray material from the jumble inside, and tossing it away, then putting down the cover and brushing her hand over the inlay work, as if to make sure it had suffered no injury.
'Oh, don't be afraid,' flashed Peggy, 'we haven't ​hurt the pretty letters. Oh, look, Hunt! It's her name! I hadn't noticed that before. Did he make it for her all himself?' she mocked.
Sheilah, without so much as a glance at Peggy, proceeded to fold the now torn and crumpled wrapping-paper around the box again.
Peggy continued, 'That's right, don't let it catch cold.'
Hunt snickered out loud at that.
'Oh, shut up,' said Nevin from behind the wheel.
Sheilah didn't go out with Nevin alone in the car that night, after all.
She was still clasping Felix's box when her eyes first encountered Nevin's, five minutes after he had ordered silence. He was standing on the curbing by the open door of the car as she stepped out in front of the fraternity house. They were alone for a minute, Peggy and the others having escaped as hastily as possible up the long walk to the door.
He said politely, 'Shall I take it for you?' referring with a nod to Felix's box. The wrapping-paper folded about it was flapping awkwardly in the breeze, and what with the heavy fur coat Sheilah was attempting to carry at the same time, she was obviously overburdened.
'No, thank you,' she replied, instinctively com​pelled to bear Felix's box herself into the crowded fraternity house, if for no other reason than because it had been jeered at.
Nevin replied, 'Very well,' and shrugged.
'But I'd love to have you take my coat.'
'I see!'
'What do you see?'
'Why, that the coat's less precious. I certainly got your number all wrong, Sheilah,' he went on in a light tone. 'I had no idea there was anything serious between you and that Nawn fellow.'
He simply wanted her to deny that there was anything serious. He wanted her to deny it very much. But she didn't!
Instead, holding her head a little higher she replied, 'Why do you refer to him as "that Nawn fellow"? Just because he isn't in a fraternity?' And the conversation that might have led but for that impulsive wrong turn of Sheilah's to an explanation, and a firm road-bed of understanding, swerved down into miry soil where it sunk deeper and deeper.
'Good Lord, no!' exclaimed Nevin. 'There are lots of good fellows not in fraternities. How protective you are of him! I suppose I should have said "Mister Nawn."'
'You were scornful of him. You know you were!'
'And of course I shouldn't be scornful of any one ​who means so much to you. When do you announce it?'
Not that he thought for a minute that there was anything to announce, but it had suddenly become imperative to him to hear her say that there wasn't. He gave her a second opportunity to tell him there was nothing serious in her relationship with Felix Nawn, and she didn't take the opportunity!
'I think you're going pretty far, Nevin,' she flashed.
'Not so far, I guess, as Nawn has gone.'
She shrugged.
They were hurting each other intentionally now.
'And to think I took you there for the purpose. In my car! Say, that's funny!' And he laughed out loud. 'Took you there, and sat outside in the cold and waited, while you and he were up there in his room having a nice warm time, I suppose.'
Sheilah replied, 'I think I'd rather go to the concert to-night, after all.'
He retorted lightly, 'Very well.'
He kept up a gay, blithe manner all the evening and Sheilah responded. He simply scintillated at the dinner-table. So did Sheilah. At the Glee Club Concert, with Sheilah on one side and Peggy on the other, he divided highly amusing remarks equally between them. And Sheilah laughed quite as spontaneously as Peggy. When, at midnight, he stood ​with Sheilah on the platform of the railroad station waiting for her train, his indefatigable good spirits still showed no signs of flagging. To the very end he wore the armor gallantly. And Sheilah too.
'I've had a great time,' conventionally she called down to him from the platform of her train.
'Same here,' he called back, as the train began to' move.
She saw him, standing below her, bare-headed, high-headed, too, smiling, steadily waving his arm back and forth at her as if he held a banner he'd rather die than lay down. A cloud of smoke crawled up behind him and swallowed him up, unbowed head, waving banner and all. It was the last time Sheilah ever saw Nevin.
Peggy and Sheilah shared the drawing-room on the train that night. The impulsive Peggy was already sorry for the part she had played in the automobile that afternoon.
'I was horrid, I guess. I get just full of the dickens sometimes. Do forgive me, Sheilah.'
'I have, long ago,' shrugged Sheilah. 'It's all right.'
Later Peggy said, 'I suppose you know all about him?'
'Felix Nawn, you mean?'
​Peggy nodded.
'I ought to. I've known him all my life'
'Too bad about his being expelled. Hunt LeBaron told me about it, to-night, on the quiet.'
'He's not being expelled. He's being dropped. There's a difference,' said Sheilah.
'Oh, you don't know, then!'
'Know what?' Was there something besides Felix's obscurity to account for the strange smile that had passed between the two boys of whom she had inquired for him?
'I hate to tell you,' said Peggy.
'Well, then, don't.'
But Peggy couldn't resist the temptation.
'He and two other boys are expelled because they were caught cheating in the midyear exams,' she announced.
Sheilah climbed into her berth that night with a heart heavier than she had carried since Dr. Sheldon had sent her away to boarding-school. She didn't sleep until towards morning, and then a strange thing happened. For the first time since that terrible night, when her father had held her in his arms, she dreamed about the Chinaman.