The amiable shopman pressed various toys on monsieur and madame "pour les enfants"

The Sentimental
Adventures of
Jimmy Bulstrode

BY

MARIE VAN VORST

With Illustrations by
ALONZO KIMBALL

NEW YORK
HURST & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published March, 1908

TO THE MEMORY
OF
H. E. TESCHEMACHER

CONTENTS

THE FIRST ADVENTURE

In which he buys a Christmas tree

THE SECOND ADVENTURE

In which he tries to buy a portrait

THE THIRD ADVENTURE

In which he finds there are some things which one cannot buy

THE FOURTH ADVENTURE

In which he makes three people happy

THE FIFTH ADVENTURE

In which he makes nobody happy at all

THE SIXTH ADVENTURE

In which he discards a knave and saves a queen

THE SEVENTH ADVENTURE

In which he becomes the possessor of a certain piece of property

THE EIGHTH ADVENTURE

In which he comes into his own

ILLUSTRATIONS

From drawings by ALONZO KIMBALL

The amiable shopman pressed various toys on monsieur and madame
"pour les enfants" . . . . . . Frontispiece

"I only like him like a kind, kind friend"

In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing

"I've had a telegram from my husband"

THE FIRST ADVENTURE

I

IN WHICH HE BUYS A CHRISTMAS TREE

There was never in the world a better fellow than Jimmy Bulstrode. If he had been poorer his generosities would have ruined him over and over again. He was always being taken in, was the recipient of hundreds of begging letters, which he hired another soft-hearted person to read. He offended charitable organizations by never passing a beggar's outstretched hand without dropping a coin in it. He was altogether a distressingly impracticable rich person, surrounded by people who admired him for what he really was and by those who tried to squeeze him for what he was worth!

It was a general wonder to people who knew him slightly why Bulstrode had never married. The gentleman himself knew the answer perfectly, but it amused him to discuss the question in spite of the pain, as well as for the pleasure that it caused him to consider—the reason why.

Mary Falconer, the woman he loved, was the wife of a man of whom Bulstrode could only think in pitiful contempt. But, thanks to an element of chivalry in the character of the hero of this story the years, as time went on, spread back of both the woman and the man in an honorable series, of whose history neither one had any reason to be ashamed.

Nevertheless, it struck them both as rather humorous, after all, that of the three concerned her husband should be the only renegade and, notwithstanding, profit by the combined good faith of his wife and the man who loved her.

Oh, there was nothing easy in the task that Jimmy set for himself! And it did not facilitate matters that Mary Falconer scarcely ever helped him in the least! She was a beautiful woman, a tender woman, and there were times when her friend felt that she cleverly and cruelly taunted him with Puritanism and with his simple, old-fashioned ideas and crystal clearness of vision, the culte he had regarding marriage and the sacred way in which he held bonds and vows. It was no help at all to think she rebelled and jested at his reserve; that she did her best to break it—and there were times when it was a brilliant siege. But down in her heart she respected him, and as she saw around her the domestic wrecks with which the matrimonial seas are encumbered, and knew that her own craft promised to go safely through the storm, Mary Falconer more than once had been grateful to the man.

As far as Bulstrode himself was concerned, each year—there had been ten of them—he found the situation becoming more difficult and dangerous. Not only did the future appear to him impossible as things were, but he began to hate his arid past. He was sometimes led to ask, what, after all, was he getting out of his colossal sacrifice? The only reward he wanted was the woman herself, and, unless her husband died, she would never be his. Bulstrode had not found that he could solve the problem, and now and then he let it go from sheer weariness of heart.

In the face of the window of the drawing-room where Bulstrode sat on this afternoon of an especial winter's day the storm cast wreaths of snow that clung and froze, or dropped like feathers down against the sill. The gentleman had his predilections even in New York, and in the open fireplace the logs crumbled and disintegrated to ashen caves wherein the palpitating jewels of the heat were held. Except for this