Calderwell was thinking of that letter now, as he sat at a small table in a Paris café. Opposite him was the six feet of muscular manhood, broad shoulders, pointed brown beard, and all--and he had just addressed it, inadvertently, as “Mary Jane.”
During the brief, sickening moment of silence after the name had left his lips, Calderwell was conscious of a whimsical realization of the lights, music, and laughter all about him.
“Well, I chose as safe a place as I could!” he was thinking. Then Arkwright spoke.
“How long since you've been in correspondence with members of my family?”
“Perhaps you thought of it yourself, then--I'll admit you're capable of it,” he nodded, reaching for a cigar. “But it so happens you hit upon my family's favorite name for me.”
“_Mary Jane!_ You mean they actually _call_ you that?”
“Yes,” bowed the big fellow, calmly, as he struck a light. “Appropriate!--don't you think?”
Calderwell did not answer. He thought he could not.
“Well, silence gives consent, they say,” laughed the other. “Anyhow, you must have had _some_ reason for calling me that.”
“Arkwright, what _does_ 'M. J.' stand for?” demanded Calderwell.
“Oh, is that it?” smiled the man opposite. “Well, I'll own those initials have been something of a puzzle to people. One man declares they're 'Merely Jokes'; but another, not so friendly, says they stand for 'Mostly Jealousy' of more fortunate chaps who have real names for a handle. My small brothers and sisters, discovering, with the usual perspicacity of one's family on such matters, that I never signed, or called myself anything but 'M. J.,' dubbed me 'Mary Jane.' And there you have it.”
“Oh, well, what's the difference? Would you deprive them of their innocent amusement? And they do so love that 'Mary Jane'! Besides, what's in a name, anyway?” he went on, eyeing the glowing tip of the cigar between his fingers. “'A rose by any other name--'--you've heard that, probably. Names don't always signify, my dear fellow. For instance, I know a 'Billy'--but he's a girl.”
Calderwell gave his friend a glance from scornful eyes.
“Do I know Billy Neilson?” he cried. “Does a fellow usually know the girl he's proposed to regularly once in three months? Oh, I know I'm telling tales out of school, of course,” he went on, in response to the look that had come into the brown eyes opposite. “But what's the use? Everybody knows it--that knows us. Billy herself got so she took it as a matter of course--and refused as a matter of course, too; just as she would refuse a serving of apple pie at dinner, if she hadn't wanted it.”