The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary

by Anne Warner · English · Gutenberg #15775 · 390,241 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary

Author: Anne Warner

Release date: May 6, 2005 [eBook #15775]
Most recently updated: May 8, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15775

Credits: Suzanne Shell, Josephine Paolucci, Joshua Hutchinson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REJUVENATION OF AUNT MARY ***

[Illustration]

The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary

by Anne Warner

Author of “A Woman’s Will,” “Susan Clegg and Her Friend
Mrs. Lathrop,” “Susan Clegg and a Man in the House,”
etc.

NEW EDITION
With Additional Pictures from the Play

Boston
Little, Brown, and Company
1910

Fourteenth Printing

Printers
S.J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U.S.A.

Contents

Chapter One—Introducing Aunt Mary
Chapter Two—Jack
Chapter Three—Introducing Jack
Chapter Four—Married
Chapter Five—The Day After Falling in Love
Chapter Six—The Other Man
Chapter Seven—Developments
Chapter Eight—The Resolution He Took
Chapter Nine—The Downfall of Hope
Chapter Ten—The Woes of the Disinherited.
Chapter Eleven—The Dove of Peace
Chapter Twelve—A Trap For Aunt Mary
Chapter Thirteen—Aunt Mary Entrapped
Chapter Fourteen—Aunt Mary En Fête
Chapter Fifteen—Aunt Mary Enthralled
Chapter Sixteen—A Reposeful Interval
Chapter Seventeen—Aunt Mary’s Night About Town
Chapter Eighteen—A Departure And A Return
Chapter Nineteen—Aunt Mary’s Return
Chapter Twenty—Jack’s Joy
Chapter Twenty-One—The Peace and Quiet of the Country
Chapter Twenty-Two—“Granite”
Chapter Twenty-Three—“Granite”—Continued.
Chapter Twenty-Four—Two Are Company
Chapter Twenty-Five—Grand Finale

Illustrations

“Aunt Mary en fête” (May Robson as “Aunt Mary”)
“‘Do not let us play any longer,’ she said. ‘Let us be in earnest’”
“‘She’s goin’ to the city all alone!’ Lucinda’s voice suddenly proclaimed behind him”
Aunt Mary and Her Escorts
“The carriage stopped three hundred feet below the level of a roof-garden”
“And now the fun’s all over and the work begins”
“‘Yesterday I played poker until I didn’t know a blue chip from a white one’”
“Aunt Mary had also had her eyes open”

Chapter One
Introducing Aunt Mary

The first time that Jack was threatened with expulsion from college his
Aunt Mary was much surprised and decidedly vexed—mainly at the college.
His family were less surprised, viewing the young man through a clearer
atmosphere than his Aunt Mary ever had, and knowing that he had barely
escaped similar experiences earlier in his career by invariably leaving
school the day before the board of inquiry convened.

Jack’s preparatory days having been more or less tempestous, his family
(Aunt Mary excepted) had expected some sort of after-clap when he
entered college. Nevertheless, they had fervently hoped that it would
not be quite as bad as this.

Jack’s sister Arethusa was visiting her aunt when the news came. Not
because she wanted to, for the old lady was dreadfully deaf and
fearfully arbitrary, but because Lucinda had said that she must go to
her cousin’s wedding, and the family always had to bow to Lucinda’s
mandates. Lucinda was Aunt Mary’s maid, but she had become so
indispensable as a sitter at the off-end of the latter’s ear-trumpet
that none of the grand-nephews or grand-nieces ever thought for an
instant of crossing one of her wishes. So it was to Arethusa that the
explanations due Aunt Mary’s interest in her scapegrace fell, and she
bowed her back to the burden with the resignation which the
circumstances demanded.

“Whatever is the difference between bein’ expelled and bein’
suspended?” Aunt Mary demanded, in her tone of imperious impatience.
“Well, why don’t you answer? I was brought up to speak when you’re
spoken to, an’ I’m a great believer in livin’ up to your bringin’ up—if
you had a good one. What’s the difference, an’ which costs most? That’s
what I want to know. I do wish you’d answer me, Arethusa; there’s two
things I’ve asked you now, an’ you suckin’ your finger an’ puttin’ on
your thimble as if you were sittin’ alone in China.”

“I don’t know which costs most,” Arethusa shrieked.

“You needn’t scream so,” said Aunt Mary. “I ain’t so hard to hear as
you think. I ain’t but seventy, and I’ll beg you to remember that,
Arethusa. Besides, I don’t want to hear you talk. I just want to hear
about Jack. I’m askin’ about his bein’ expelled and suspended, an’
what’s the difference, an’ in particular if there’s anything to pay for
broken glass. It’s always broken glass! That boy’s bills for broken
glass have been somethin’ just awful these last two years. Well, why
don’t you answer?”

“I don’t know what to answer,” Arethusa screamed.

“What do you suppose he’s done, anyhow?”

“Something bad.”

Aunt Mary frowned.

“I ain’t mad,” she said sharply. “What made you think I was mad? I
ain’t mad at all! I’m just askin’ what’s the difference between bein’
expelled an’ bein’ suspended, an’ it seems to me this is the third time
I’ve asked it. Seems to me it is.”

Arethusa laid down her work, drew a mighty breath, very nearly got into
the ear-trumpet, and explained that being suspended was infinitely less
heinous than being expelled, and decidedly less final.

Aunt Mary looked relieved.

“Oh, then he’s gettin’ better, is he?” she said. “Well, I’m sure that’s
some comfort.”

And then there was a long pause, during which she appeared to be
engaged in deep reflection, and her niece continued her embroidery in
peace. The pause endured until a sudden sneeze on the part of the old
lady set the wheels of conversation turning again.

“Arethusa,” she said, “I wish you’d go an’ get the ink an’ write to Mr.
Stebbins. I want him to begin to look up another college with good
references right away. I don’t want to waste any of the boy’s life, an’
if bein’ suspended means waitin’ while the college takes its time to
consider whether it wants him back again or not I ain’t goin’ to wait.
I’m a great believer in a college education, but I don’t know that it
cuts much figure whether it’s the same college right through or not.
Anyway, you write Mr. Stebbins.”

Arethusa obeyed, and the authorities having seen fit to be uncommonly
discreet as to the cause of the young man’s withdrawal, no great
difficulty was experienced in finding another campus whereon Aunt
Mary’s pride and joy might freely disport himself. Mr. Stebbins threw
himself into the affair with all the tact and ardor of an experienced
legal mind and soon after Lucinda’s return to her home allowed Arethusa
to follow suit, the hopeful younger brother of the latter became a
candidate for his second outfit of new sweaters and hat bands that
year.

Aunt Mary wrote him a letter upon the occasion of his new start in
life, Mr. Stebbins delivered him a lecture, and things went smoothly in
consequence for three whole weeks. I say three whole weeks because
three whole weeks was a long time for the course of Jack’s life to flow
smoothly. At the end of a fortnight affairs were always due to run more
rapidly and three weeks produced, as a general thing, some species of
climax.

The climax in this case came to time as usual his evil genius inciting
the young man to attempt, one very dark night, the shooting of a cat
which he thought he saw upon the back fence. Whether he really had seen
a cat or not mattered very little in the later development of the
matter. He was certainly successful as far as the going off of the gun
was concerned, but the damage that resulted, resulted not to any cat,
but to the arm of a next-door’s cook, who was peacefully engaged in
taking in her week’s wash on the other side of the fence. The cook
ceased abruptly to take in the wash, the affair was at once what is
technically termed looked into, and three days later Jack became the
defendant in a suit for damages.

Naturally Mr. Stebbins was at once notified and he had no choice except
to write Aunt Mary.

Aunt Mary was somewhat less patient over the third escapade than she
had been with the first two.

The letter found her alone with Lucinda and she read it to herself
three times and then read it aloud to her companion. Lucinda, whose
thorough knowledge of the imperious will and impervious eardrums of her
mistress rendered her, as a rule, extremely monosyllabic, not to say
silent, vouchsafed no comment upon the contents of the epistle, and
after a few minutes Aunt Mary herself took the field:

“Now, what do you suppose possessed that boy to shoot at a cook?” she
asked, regarding the letter with a portentous frown. “Cooks are so
awful hard to get nowadays. I don’t see why he didn’t shoot a tramp if
he had to shoot somethin’.”

“He wa’n’t tryin’ to shoot a cook, ’pears like,” then cried
Lucinda—Lucinda’s voice, be it said, _en passant_, was of that sibilant
and penetrating timbre which is best illustrated in the accents of a
steamfitter’s file—“’pears like he was tryin’ for a cat.”

“Not a bat,” said her mistress correctively; “it was a cat. You look at
this letter an’ you’ll see. And, anyway, how could a man shootin’ at a
cat hit a cook?—not ’nless she was up a tree birds’-nestin’ after owls’
eggs. You don’t seem to pay much attention to what I read to you,
Lucinda; only I should think your commonsense would help you out some
when it comes to a boy you’ve known from the time he could walk, an’ a
strange cook. But, anyhow, that’s neither here nor there. The question
that bothers me is, what’s to pay with this damage suit? I think myself
five hundred dollars is too much for any cook’s arm. A cook ain’t in no
such vital need of two arms. If she has to shut the door of the oven
while she’s stirrin’ somethin’ on the top of the stove, she can easy
kick it to with her foot. It won’t be for long, anyway, and I’m a great
believer in making the best of things when you’ve got to.”

Lucinda screwed up her face and made no comment. Lucinda’s face in
repose was a cross between a monkey’s and a peanut; screwed up, it was
particularly awful, and always exasperated her mistress.

“Well, why don’t you say somethin’, Lucinda? I ain’t askin’ your
advice, but, all the same, you can say anything if you’ve got a mind
to.”

“I ain’t got a mind to say anythin’,” the faithful maid rejoined.

“I guess you hit the nail on the head that time,” said Aunt Mary,
without any unnecessary malevolence concealed behind her sarcasm; then
she re-read the note and frowned afresh.

“Five hundred dollars is too much,” she said again. “I’m going to write
to Mr. Stebbins an’ tell him so to-night. He can compromise on two
hundred and fifty, just as well as not. Get me some paper and my desk,
Lucinda. Now get a spryness about you.”

Lucinda laid aside her work and forthwith got a spryness about her,
bringing her mistress’ writing-desk with commendable alacrity. Aunt
Mary took the writing-desk and wrote fiercely for some time, to the end
that she finally wrote most of the fierceness out of herself.

“After all, boys will be boys,” she said, as she sealed her letter,
“and if this is the end I shan’t feel it’s money wasted. I’m a great
believer in bein’ patient. Most always, that is. Here, Lucinda you take
this to Joshua and tell him to take it right to mail. Be prompt, now.
I’m a great believer in doin’ things prompt.”

Lucinda took the letter and was prompt. “She wants this letter took
right to the mail,” she said to Joshua, Aunt Mary’s longest-tried
servitor.

“Then it’ll be took right to mail,” said Joshua.

“She’s pretty mad,” said Lucinda.

“Then she’ll soon get over it,” replied the other, taking up his hat
and preparing to depart for the barn forthwith.

Lucinda returned to Aunt Mary with a species of dried-up sigh. One is
not the less a slave because one has been enslaved for twenty years,
and Lucinda at moments did sort of peek out through her bars—possibly
envying Joshua the daily drives to mail when he had full control of
something that was alive.

Lucinda had been, comparatively speaking, young when she had come to
wait upon the pleasure of the Watkins millions, and her waiting had
been so pertinent and so patient that it had endured over a quarter of
a century. Aunt Mary had been under fifty in the hour of Lucinda’s
dawn; she was over seventy now. Jack hadn’t been born then; he was in
college now; and Jack’s older brothers and sisters and his
dead-and-gone father and mother had been living somewhere out West
then, quite hopeful as to their own lives and quite hopeless as to the
stern old great-aunt who never had paid any attention to her niece
since she had chosen to elope with the doctor’s reprobate son. Now the
father and mother were dead and buried, the brothers and sisters
reinstated in their rights and had all grown up and become great
credits to the old lady, whose heart had suddenly melted at the arrival
of five orphans all at once. And there was only Jack to continue to
worry about.

Jack was not anything particularly remarkable; he was just one of those
lovable good-for-nothings that seem born to get better people into
trouble all their lives long. He had been spoiled originally by being
ten years younger than the next youngest in the family; and then, when
the children had been shipped on to Aunt Mary’s tender mercies, Jack
had won her heart immediately because she accidentally discovered that
he had never been baptized, and so felt fully justified in re-naming
him after her own father and having the name branded into him for keeps
by her own religious apparatus. It followed naturally that John
Watkins, Jr., Denham, for so her father’s daughter had insisted that
her youngest nephew should be called, was the favorite nephew of his
aunt.

And it was lucky for him that he was the favorite, for Aunt Mary, who
was highly spiced at fifty, became peppery at sixty, and almost biting
at seventy. And yet for Jack she would sign checks almost without a
murmur. Mr. Stebbins was much more censorious and impatient with the
young man than she ever was; and to all the rest of the world Mr.
Stebbins was an urbane and agreeable gentleman, whereas to all the rest
of the world Aunt Mary was a problem or a terror. But Mr. Stebbins
needed to be a man of tact and management, for he was the real manager
of that fortune of which “Mary, only surviving child of John Watkins,
merchant and ship owner,” was the legal possessor; and so tactful was
Mr. Stebbins that he and his powerful client had never yet clashed, and
they had been in close business relations for almost as many years as
Lucinda had been established on the hearthstone of the Watkins home.
Perhaps one reason why Mr. Stebbins endured so well was that he had a
real talent for compromising, and that he had skillfully transformed
Aunt Mary’s inherited taste for driving a bargain into an acquired
pleasure in what is really a polite form of the same action.

So, when it came to the matter of Jack’s difficulties, Mr. Stebbins
could always find a half-way measure that saved the situation; and when
he received the letter as to the cook and her claim he hied himself to
the city at once, and wrote back that the claim could be settled for
three hundred dollars.

“And enough, I must say,” Aunt Mary remarked to Lucinda upon receipt of
the statement; “three hundred dollars for one cat—for, after all, Jack
blames the whole on the cat, an’ he didn’t hit it, even then.”

Lucinda did not answer.

“But if the boy settles down now I shan’t mind payin’ the three—Where
are you goin’?”

For Lucinda was walking out of the room.

“I’m goin’ to the door,” said she raspingly. “The bell’s ringin’.”

After a minute or two she came back.

“Telegram!” she announced, handing the yellow envelope over.

Aunt Mary put on her glasses, opened it, and read:

Cook has blood poison. Sues for a thousand. Probable amputation.

STEBBINS.

Aunt Mary dropped the paper with a gasp.

Lucinda looked at her with interest.

“It’s that same arm again,” said Aunt Mary, “just as I thought it was
settled for!” Her eyes seemed to fairly crackle with indignation. “Why
don’t she put it in a sling an’ have a little patience?”

Lucinda took the telegram and read it.

“’Pears like she can’t,” she commented, in a tone like a buzz saw;
“’pears like it’s goin’ to be took off.”

Aunt Mary reached forth her hand for the telegram and after a second
reading shook her head in a way that, if her companion had been a
globe-trotter, would have brought matadores and Seville to the front in
her mind in that instant.

“I declare,” she said, “seems like I had enough on my mind without a
cook, too. What’s to be done now? I only know one thing! I ain’t goin’
to pay no thousand dollars this week for no arm that wasn’t worth but
three hundred last week. Stands to reason that there ain’t no reason in
that. I guess you’d better bring me my desk, Lucinda; I’m goin’ to
write to Mr. Stebbins, an’ I’m goin’ to write to Jack, and I’m goin’ to
tell ’em both just what I think. I’m goin’ to write Jack that he’d
better be lookin’ out, and I’m goin’ to write to Mr. Stebbins that next
time he settles things I want him to take a receipt for that arm in
full.”

The letters were duly written and Mr. Stebbins, upon the receipt of
his, redoubled his efforts, and did succeed in permanently settling
with the cook, the arm being eventually saved. Aunt Mary regarded the
sum as much higher than necessary, but still pleasantly less than that
demanded of her, and so life in general moved quietly on until Easter.

But Easter is always a period of more or less commotion in the time of
youth and leads to various hilarious outbreaks. Jack’s Easter took him
to town for a “little time,” and the “little time” ended in the
station-house at three o’clock on Sunday morning.

Accusation: Producing concussion of the brain on a cab driver.

Chapter Two
Jack

The news was conveyed to Aunt Mary through private advices from Mr.
Stebbins (who had been hastily summoned to the city for purposes of
bail); she was very angry indeed, this time—primarily at the indignity
done her flesh and blood by arresting it. Then, as she re-read the
lawyer’s letter, other reflections crowded to the fore in her mind.

“Funny! Whatever could have made the boy get up and go downtown at
three in the morning, anyway?” she said. “Seems kind of queer, don’t
you think, Arethusa? Do you suppose he was ill and huntin’ for a drug
store?”

Arethusa had been sent for the second day previous because Lucinda’s
youngest sister’s youngest child had come down with scarlet fever, and
the family wanted Lucinda to enliven the quarantine. Arethusa had sent
invitations out for a dinner party, but she had recalled them and
hastened to obey the summons. It was an evil hour for her, for she
loved her brother and was mightily distressed at the bad news.

“I don’t believe he can have been ill,” she said, at the top of her
voice; “if he’d been ill he wouldn’t have had the strength to hit the
cab driver so hard.”

“I don’t blame him for hittin’ the cab driver,” said Aunt Mary warmly.
“As near as I can recollect, I’ve often wanted to do that myself. But I
can’t make out where he got the man to hit, or why he was there to hit
him. I can’t make rhyme or reason out of it. I wish we knew more. Well,
I presume we will, later.”

Her surmise was correct. They knew much more later. They knew more from
Mr. Stebbins, and they knew profusely more from the evening papers.

“I think our boy’d better have come home for his Easter,” Aunt Mary
remarked, with a species of angry undertow threading the current of her
speech. “There’s no sayin’ what this will cost before we’re done with
it.”

Arethusa choked; it was all so very terrible to her.

“What is it that the cabman wants, anyhow?” her aunt demanded
presently.

“He doesn’t want anything,” yelled the unhappy sister. “He’s going to
die.”

“Well, who is going to sue me, then?”

“It’s his wife; she wants five thousand dollars damages.”

Aunt Mary’s lips tightened.

“Five thousand dollars!” she said, with a bitter patience. “I can see
that this is goin’ to be an awful business. Five thousand dollars!
Dear, dear! I must say that that wife sets a pretty high price on her
husband—at least, a’cordin’ to my order of thinkin’, she does. From
what I’ve seen of cabmen, I’d undertake to get her another just as good
for a tenth of the money, any day.”

Arethusa was silent, staring thoughtfully at the newspaper cuts of a
great Tammany leader and a noted pugilist, which had been labeled as
the principals in the family tragedy.

Aunt Mary turned over another of the many papers received, and scanned
its sensational columns afresh.

“Arethusa,” she exclaimed suddenly, “do you know, I bet anythin’ I know
what this editor means to insinuate? It just strikes me that he’s
tryin’ to give the impression that our boy’s been drinkin’.”

“Perhaps so,” Arethusa screamed.

“Well, I don’t believe it,” said Aunt Mary firmly, “and I ain’t goin’
to believe it. And I ain’t goin’ to pay no five thousand dollars for no
cabman’s brains, neither. You write to Mr. Stebbins to compromise on
two or maybe three.”

She stopped and bit her lips and shook her head. “I don’t see why Jack
grows up so hard,” she murmured, half in anger and half in sorrow.
“Edward and Henry never had such times. Oh, well,” she sighed, “boys
will be boys, I suppose; an’ if this all results in the boy’s settlin’
down it’ll be money well spent in the end, after all.
Maybe—probably—most likely.”

The days that followed were anxious days, but at last the cabman
rallied and concluded not to die, and Jack went off yachting with a
light heart and a choice collection of good advice from Mr. Stebbins
and Aunt Mary.

Nothing happened to mar his holiday. He ran a borrowed steam launch on
to some rocks with rather heavy consequences to his aunt’s exchequer,
and returned from the West Indies so late that she never had a visit
from him at all that summer; but, barring these slightly unwelcome
incidents, he did remarkably well, and when he returned to college in
the fall he was regarded as having become, at last, a stable
proposition.

“I wonder whether our boy’s comin’ home for Christmas?” Aunt Mary asked
her niece, Mary, as that happy period of family reunions drew near.
Mary had come up to stay with her aunt while Lucinda went away to bury
a second cousin. Mary was very different from Arethusa, having a voice
that, when raised, was something between an icicle and a steam whistle,
and a temperament so much on the order of her aunt’s that neither could
abide the other an hour longer than was absolutely necessary. But
Arethusa had a sprained ankle, so there was no help for existing
circumstances.

“No, he isn’t,” said Mary, who had no patience at all with her brother,
and showed it. “He’s going West with the glee club.”

“With the she club!” cried poor Aunt Mary, in affright.

Mary explained.

“I don’t like the idea,” said the old lady, shaking her head.
“Somethin’ will be sure to happen. I can feel it runnin’ up and down my
bones this minute.”

“Oh, if he can get into trouble, of course, Jack will,” said Mary
cheerfully.

Aunt Mary didn’t hear her, because she didn’t raise her voice
particularly. Besides, the old lady was absorbed for the nonce in the
most dismal sort of prognostications.

And they all came true, too. Something unfortunate beyond all
expectations came to pass during the glee club’s visit to Chicago, and
the result was that, before the new year was well out of its incubator
Jack had papers in a breach-of-promise suit served on him. He wrote Mr.
Stebbins that it was all a joke, and had merely been a portion of that
foam which a train of youthful spirits are apt to leave in their wake;
but the girl stood solid for her rights, and, as she had never heard
from her fiancé since the night of the dance, her family—who were
rural, but sharp—thought it would take at least fifteen thousand
dollars to patch the crack in her heart. If the news could have been
kept from Aunt Mary until after Mr. Stebbins had looked into the
matter, everything might have resulted differently. But the Chicago
lawyer who had the case took good care that the wealthy aunt knew all
as quickly as possible, and it seemed as if this was the final straw
under which the camel must succumb.

And Aunt Mary did appear to waver.

“Fifteen thousand dollars!” she cried, aghast. “Heaven help us! What
next?”

It was Lucinda who was seated calmly opposite at this crisis.

“Do you suppose he really did it?” the aunt continued, after a minute
of appalled consideration.

“It’s about the only thing he ain’t never done,” the tried and true
servant answered, her tone more gratingly penetrative than ever.

Aunt Mary eyed her sharply, not to say furiously.

“I wish you’d give a plain answer when I ask you a plain question,
Lucinda,” she said coldly. “If you’d ever got a breach-of-promise suit
in the early mail you’d know how I feel. Perhaps—probably.”

“I ain’t a doubt but what he done it,” Lucinda screamed out; “an’ if I
was her an’ he wouldn’t marry me after sayin’ he would I’d sue him for
a hundred thousand, an’ think I let him off cheap then.”

Aunt Mary deigned to smile faintly over the subtlety of this speech;
but the next minute she was frowning blacker than ever.

“A girl from Kalamazoo, too, just up in Chicago for a week—just up in
Chicago long enough to come down on me for fifteen thousand dollars.”

“Maybe she’ll take five thousand instead,” Lucinda remarked.

“Maybe!” ejaculated her mistress, in fine scorn. “Maybe! Well, if you
don’t talk as if money was sweet peas an’ would dry up if it wasn’t
picked!”

Lucinda screwed up her face.

Aunt Mary gave her one awful look.

“You get me some paper an’ my desk, Lucinda,” she said. “I think it’s
about time I was takin’ a hand in it myself. I’ve been pretty patient,
an’ I don’t see as it’s helped matters any. Now I’m goin’ to write that
boy a letter that’ll settle him an’ his cats, an’ his cooks, an’ his
cabmen, an’ his Kalamazoo, just once for all. I guess I can do what I
set out to do. Pretty generally—most always.”

Lucinda brought the desk, and Aunt Mary frowned fearfully and began to
write the letter.

It developed very strongly. As her pen sized up the situation in black
and white, the old lady seemed to realize the iniquities of the case
more and more plainly; and as the letter grew her wrath grew also. The
whole came, in the end, to a threat—made in good earnest—to take a very
serious step indeed if any more “foolishness” developed.

Aunt Mary prided herself on her granite-like will. She had full faith
in her ability to slay her nearest and dearest if it seemed right and
best to do so.

She sealed her letter tight, stuck the stamp on square and hard, and
bid Lucinda convey it to Joshua and tell him never to quit it until he
saw it safe on to the evening train.

“She’s awful mad at him for sure, this time,” said Lucinda after she
had delivered her message, and while Joshua was considering the front
and back of the letter with a deliberateness born of long servitude.

“I sh’d think she would be,” he said.

As nearly all of Jack’s private difficulties were printed in every
newspaper in America, Joshua naturally was on the inside of all their
history.

“She scrinched up her face just awful over that letter,” Lucinda
continued. “I’m sure I wish he’d ’a’ been by to ’a’ taken warnin’.”

“He ain’t got nothin’ to really fret over,” said Joshua serenely; “he
knows it, ’n’ I know it, ’n’ you know it, too.”

“You don’t know nothin’ of the sort,” said Lucinda. “She’s madder’n
usual this time. She’s good an’ mad. You mark my words, if he goes off
on a ’nother spree this spring he’ll get cut out o’ her will.”

Joshua laughed.

“You mark my words!” rasped Lucinda, shaking her finger in witchlike
warning.

Joshua laughed again.

“Them laughs best what laughs last,” said Aunt Mary’s handmaiden. She
turned away, and then returned to give Joshua a look that proved that
the peppery mistress had inculcated some cayenne into the souls of
those about her. “You mark my words—them laughs best what laughs last,
an’ there’ll be little grinnin’ for him if he ain’t a chalk-walker for
one while now.”

Joshua laughed.

But, as a matter of fact, Jack’s situation was suddenly become
extremely precarious.

“There ain’t no sense in it,” said Aunt Mary to herself, with an
emphasis that screwed her face up until she looked quite like Lucinda;
“that life those young men lead on their little vacations is to blame
for everything. Cities are wells of iniquity; they’re full of all kinds
of doin’s that respectable people wouldn’t be seen at, and I’m proud to
say that I haven’t been in one myself for twenty-five years. I’m a
great believer in keepin’ out of trouble, an’ if Jack’d just stuck to
college an’ let towns go, he’d never have met the cabman and the
Kalamazoo girl, an’ I’d have overlooked the cook an’ the cat. As it is,
my patience is done. If he goes into one more scrape he’ll be done too.
I mean what I say. So my young man had better take warnin’.
Probably—most likely—pretty certainly.”

Chapter Three
Introducing Jack

It has been previously stated that Aunt Mary’s nephew, Jack, was a
scapegrace, and as delightful as scapegraces generally are. It goes
without saying that he was good-looking; and of course he must have
been jolly and pleasant or he wouldn’t have been so popular. As a
matter of fact, Jack was very good-looking, unusually jolly, and
uncommonly popular. He was one of the best liked men in each of the
colleges which he had attended. There was something so winning about
his smile and his eternal good humor that no one ever tried to dislike
him; and if anyone ever had tried he or she would not have succeeded
for very long. It is probably very unfortunate that the world is so
full of this type of young man, but that which should cause us all to
have infinite patience with them is the reflection of how much more
unfortunate it would be if they were suddenly eliminated from the
general scheme of things.

Like all college boys, Jack had a chum. The chum was Robert Burnett,
another charming young fellow of one-and-twenty, whose education had
been so cosmopolitan in design and so patriotic in practice that he
always said “Sacre bleu” and “Donnerwetter” when he thought of it, and
“Great Scott” when he didn’t. He and Jack were as congenial a pair as
ever existed, and they had just about as much in common as the aunt of
the one and the father of the other had had to pay for.

In the February of the year of which I write, Washington, celebrating
his birthday as usual, gave all American students their usual chance to
celebrate with him. Celebrations were temptations incarnate to Jack,
and he was feeling frowningly what a clog Aunt Mary’s latest epistle
was upon his joys, when his friend came to the rescue with an
invitation to spend the double holiday (it doubled that year—Sunday,
you know) at the brand-new ancestral castle which Burnett père had just
finished building for his descendants. It may be imagined that Jack
accepted the invitation with alacrity, and that his never-very-downcast
heart bounded gleefully higher than usual over the prospect of two days
of pleasure in the country.

It is not necessary to state where the castle of the Burnetts was
erected, but it was in a beautiful region, and the monthly magazines
had written it up and called it an architectural triumph. The owner
fully agreed with the monthly magazines, and his pride found vent in a
house-warming which filled every guest chamber in the place.

The festivities were in full swing before the youngest son and his
friend arrived; and when the dog-cart, which brought them from the
station, drew up under the mighty porte-cochère with its four stone
lions, rampant in four different directions, Jack felt one of those
delicious thrills which run through one under particularly hopeful and
buoyant circumstances.

“It’s like walking in a novel,” his friend said; as they entered under
some heavy draperies which the footman pushed aside and found a tiny
spiral staircase, which wound its way aloft in a style that Jack liked
immensely and the latter agreed with all his heart.

The staircase led them to the third floor and when they emerged
therefrom they found themselves in a big semi-circular billiard room,
with a fireplace at each end large enough to put one of the tables in,
and cues and counters and stools and divans and smoking utensils
sufficient for a regiment.

“I tell you, this is the way to do things,” exclaimed Burnett; “isn’t
it jolly? Time of your life, old man, time of your life!—And, oh, by
the way,” he said, suddenly interrupting himself, “I wonder if my
sister’s got here yet!”

“Which sister?” Jack inquired; for his friend was one of a very large
family, and he had met several of them on their various visits to town.

“Betty—the one who beats all the others hollow,”—but just there the
conversation was broken off by the servants coming up with the luggage
and setting two doors open that showed them two big rooms, both
exquisitely furnished, and both with windows that looked out, first on
to a stone balustrade, and secondly on to a superb view over the river
and the mountains beyond.

The men unstrapped the things and went away, leaving such a plenitude
of comfort behind them as led Jack to fling himself into the most
luxurious chair in the room and stretch his arms and legs far and wide
in utter contentment.

Burnett was fishing for his key ring.

“It’s a great old place, isn’t it?” he remarked parenthetically. “Great
Scott! but I’ll bet we have fun these two days! And if my sister Betty
is here—” He paused expressively.

“Doesn’t she live at home?” Jack asked.

“She’s just come home; she’s been in England for three years. Oh, but I
tell you she’s a corker!”

“I should think—”

The sentence was never completed because a voice without the
not-altogether-closed door cried:

“No, don’t think, please; let me come in instead.” And in the same
instant Burnett made one leap and flung the door open, crying as he did
so:

“Betty!”

Then Jack, bunching somewhat his starfish attitude, looked across the
room and realized instantly that it was all up with him forever after.

Because—

Because she who stood there in the door was quite the sweetest, the
loveliest, the most interesting looking girl whom he had ever laid eyes
on; and when she was seized in her brother’s arms, and kissed by her
brother’s lips, and dragged by her brother’s hands well into the room,
she proved to be a thousand times more irresistible than at first.

“I say, Betty, you’re absolutely prettier than ever,” her brother
exclaimed, holding her a little off from him and surveying her
critically; and then he seemed to remember his friend’s existence, and,
turning toward him, announced proudly:

“My sister Bertha.”

Jack was standing up now and thinking how lovely her eyes were just at
that instant when they were meeting his for the first time, thinking
much else too. Thinking that Monday was only two days away (hang it!);
thinking that such a smile was never known before; thinking that he had
_years_ ahead at college; thinking that the curl on her forehead was
simply distracting (whereas all other like curls were horrid); thinking
that he might cut college and—

“My chum, Jack Denham,” Burnett continued, proving in the same instant
how rapidly the mind may work since his friend had compassed his
encyclopedia of sentiment and probability between the two halves of a
formal introduction.

“Oh, I’m very glad to meet you, Mr. Denham,” she said, putting out her
hand—and he took and held it just long enough to realize that he really
was holding it, before she took it away to keep for her own again.
“I’ve often heard of you, and often wished I might know you.”

“I’m awfully glad to hear you say that,” he said, “and if I should have
the royal luck to be next to you at dinner, it doesn’t seem to me that
I shall have the strength to keep from telling you why.”

She clapped her hands at this, just as a very little girl might have
done.

“If that is so, I hope that they will put you next to me at dinner,”
she said gayly; “but if they don’t, you’ll tell me some other time,
won’t you? I’m always _so_ interested in what people have to tell me
about myself.”

Burnett began to laugh.

“Jack,” he said, “I see that we’d better have a clear and above-board
understanding right in the beginning and so I’ll just tell you that
this sister of mine, who appears so guileless, is the very worst flirt
ever. She looks honest, but she can’t tell the truth to save her neck.
She means well, but she drives folks to suicide just for fun. She’d do
anything for anybody in general, but when it’s a case of you
individually she won’t do a thing to you, and you must heed my words
and be forewarned and forearmed from now on. Mustn’t he, Betty?”

At this the sister laughed, nodding quite as gayly as if it were a
laughing matter, instead of the opening move in a possibly
serious—tremendously serious—game of life.

“It’s awful to have to subscribe to,” she said, with dancing eyes; “but
I’m afraid it’s true. I’m really quite a reprobate, and I admit it
frankly. And everyone is so good to me that I never get a chance to
reform. And so—and so—”

“But then, I suppose I ought to warn her about you, too,” said Burnett,
turning suddenly toward his friend. “It isn’t fair to show her up and
not show you up, you know. And really, Betty, he’s almost as bad as you
are yourself. I may tell you in confidence—in strict confidence (for
it’s only been in a few newspapers)—that he hasn’t got his
breach-of-promise suit all compromised yet. Ask him to deny it, if he
can!”

The sister looked suddenly startled and curious and Jack felt himself
to be blushing desperately.

“I don’t look as if he was lying, do I?” he asked smiling; “be honest
now, for you can see that Burnett and I both are.”

“No, you don’t,” she said. “You look as if it was a very true bill.”

“It is,” he said; “and it’s going to be an awfully big one, too, I’m
afraid.”

“I wouldn’t have thought you were such a bad man,” said the sister ever
so sweetly; “but I like bad men. They interest me. They—”

“There!—I see your finish,” said Burnett. “That’s one of her favorite
opening plays. It’s all up with you, Jack, and your aunt will have to
to go down for another damage suit when you begin to perceive that you
have had enough of our family. But you’ll have to get out now, Betty,
and let him get dressed for dinner. You needn’t cry about it either for
he’s even more attractive in his glad rags than he is in his railway
dust—my word of honor on it.”

“I look nice myself when I’m dinner-dressed,” said the sister, “so I
sympathize with him and I’ll go with pleasure. Good-bye.”

She sort of backed toward the door and Jack sprang to open it for her.

“You can kiss her hand, if you like,” Burnett said kindly. “They do in
Germany, you know. I don’t mind and mamma needn’t know.”

“May I?” Jack asked her; and then he caught her eye over her brother’s
bent head and added, so quickly that there was hardly any break at all
between the words: “Some other time?”

“Some other time,” she said, with a world of meaning in the promise;
and then she flashed one wonderful look straight into his eyes and was
gone.

“Isn’t she great?” Burnett asked, unlocking his suit-case in the most
provokingly every-day style, as if this day was an every-day sort of
day and not the beginning and end of all things. “Oh, I tell you, I’m
almost dotty over that sister myself.”

“Do you suppose that I could manage to have her for dinner?” Jack
asked, feeling desperately how dull any other place at the table would
be now.

“I don’t know. When I go down to my mother I’ll try to manage it; shall
I?”

“I wish you would.”

“I reckon I can; but, great loads of fire, fellow! don’t think you can
play tag with her, and feel funny at the finish. She’ll do you up
completely, and never turn a hair herself. She’s always at it. She
don’t mean to be cruel, but she’s naturally a carnivorous animal. It’s
her little way.”

Jack did not look as dismal as he should have done; he smiled, and
looked out of the window instead.

“She’ll have to marry someone some day, you know,” he said
thoughtfully.

“Have to marry someone some day!” Burnett cried. “Why, she is married.
Didn’t you know that?” and he unbuckled the shirt portfolio as he spoke
just as if calamities and tragedies and shooting stars might not follow
on the heels of such a simple statement as that last.

It was an awful moment, but poor Jack did manage to continue looking
out of the window. If any greater demand had been made upon him he
might have sunk beneath the double weight.

“No,” he said at last, his voice painfully steady; “I didn’t know it.”

Burnett laughed heartlessly, hauling forth his apparel with a refined
cruelty which took careful heed of possible interfolded shoes or
cravats.

“She married an Englishman when she was nineteen years old,” he said.
“That was when they sent me to Eton that little while,—until I drove
the horse through the drug shop. The time I told you about, don’t you
know?”

“Yes, I remember,” said Jack. He observed with sickening distinctness
that the night had begun to fall, the river’s silver ribbon had become
a black snake, and that the mountain range beyond loomed chill and dark
and cheerless. “I guess I ought to be getting into my things,” he said,
moving toward his own door.

“There’s a bath in here,” his friend called after him. “We’re to divide
it.”

“Sure,” was the reply. It sounded a trifle thick.

“I don’t think that she ought to,” said the brother to himself, as he
began to draw out his stick-pin before the mirror, “I don’t care if she
is my favorite sister—I don’t think that she ought to.”

Then he went on to make ready for the securing of his half of the bath,
and forthwith forgot his sister and his friend.

Chapter Four
Married

It was almost like a scene at a ball, the great white-and-gold music
room before dinner that night. The Burnett family proper numbered
fifteen among themselves, and there were nearly thirty guests added. It
was entirely too large a house party to have handled successfully for
very long, but it would be most awfully jolly for three or four days;
and now, when the whole crowd were gathered waiting for dinner, the
picture was one of such bubbling joy that Jack’s very heavy heart
seemed to himself to be terribly out of place there and he wondered
whether he should be able to put up even a fairly presentable front
during the endless hours that must ensue before the time for breaking
up arrived.

Burnett took him all around and introduced him to people in general,
and people in general seemed to him to merely bring the fact of her
pre-eminence more vividly than ever before his mind. He found himself
looking everywhere but at them too, and listening with an acutely
sensitive ear for sounds quite other than those of their various lips.
But eternal disappointment rewarded his eyes and ears. She was nowhere.

So he talked blindly about nothing to all the nobodies and laughed
stupidly over all their stupidities until—suddenly and without any
warning—a fearful jump in his throat sent the mercury in his
constitution shooting up to 160, and he saw, heard, felt, gasped, and
knew, that that radiant angel in silver tissue who had just entered the
farther end of the room was indubitably Herself.

(Married!)

He quite forgot who, what and where he was. There was a somebody
talking to him—a very awful and bony young lady, but she faded so
completely out of the general scheme of his immediate present that all
the use he made of her was to stare over her head at the distant
apparition that was become, now and forever, his All in All. The
distant apparition had not lied when she had told him up in her
brother’s room that she too, looked “nice” when dressed for dinner.
Only the word “nice” was as watered milk to the champagne of her
appearance. She was gowned superbly and her throat and arms were half
bared by the folds of silvered lace; her hair fitted into the back of
her neck in the smoothest mass of puffs and coils, and the curl on her
forehead was more distracting than ever.

(Married!)

She seemed to be speaking to everyone, and everyone seemed to be
crowding around her. He couldn’t go up like everyone else, because the
awful and bony young lady was talking hard at him and heightened her
charms with a smile that took up two-fifths of her face, and wrinkled
all the rest.

Her name was Lome—Maude Lome. He knew that she must be a relative
without being told, because otherwise she wouldn’t have been invited at
all. Anyone could divine that.

“Oh, isn’t dear Betty just lovely?” this fearful freak said. “I think
she’s just too lovely for anything! She’s my cousin, you know; we’re
often mistaken for one another.”

“I can well believe it,” said Jack, heavily, not ceasing to stare
beyond as he said it.

(Married!)

“Oh, you’re flattering me! Because she’s ever so much prettier than I
am, and I know it.”

He didn’t reply. It had suddenly come over him to wonder whether there
ever had been an authentic case of heartbreak. Because he had the most
terrible ache right in his left side!

(Married! Married!)

“But, then,” Miss Lome continued, “I’m younger than she is. Her being
married makes her seem young, but she’s really twenty-four. I’m only
twenty.”

He shut his eyes, and then opened them. He wished he hadn’t come here,
and then grew shivery to think that he might have happened not to; and
all the while that awful twisting and wrenching at his heart was
getting worse and worse.

(Married! Married! Married!)

Burnett came up just then with a man wearing a monocle and presented
him to Denham, and forthwith handed the bony cousin to his
safe-keeping.

“She’s a great pill, isn’t she?” he began, as the couple moved away;
and then he stopped short. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Sick?”

“I hope not,” said Jack, trying to smile.

“You look hipped,” his friend said anxiously. “Better go get a bracer;
you’ll have time if you hurry. You can’t be sick before dinner, because
I’ve been moving all the cards around so as to get Betty next to you,
and I could never get them back as they were before if you gave out at
the last minute.”

“I don’t believe I’m ill,” said Jack, trying to realize whether the
news that she was to be his (for dinner) made him feel any better or
only just about the same. “I don’t know what ails me. Do I look seedy?”

“You look sort of knocked out, that’s all,” said Burnett. “Perhaps,
though, it was just the having to talk to my cousin Maude so long.
Isn’t she the limit, though? But I’ll tell you the one big thing about
that girl: She’s just the biggest kind of a catch. She was my uncle’s
eldest child; she’s worth twelve times what any of us ever will be.”

“I’m sure she’ll need it,” said Jack heartily.

“You’re right there,” laughed his friend; “but you’ve got to hurry and
get your brandy now if you want it, because they’ll be going out in a
minute.”

“Oh, I’m all right,” said the poor chap, straightening his shoulders
back a little. “I can make out well enough, I’m sure. I think I’d
better go over by your sister and let her know that I’m ready when the
hour of need shall strike.”

Burnet nodded and then he went on and his friend walked down the room,
no one but himself knowing that he was making his way into the lion’s
(or, rather, lioness’s) den.

And then he paused there beside her. Oh! she Was seven million times
lovelier close to than far away. All the rot about Venus and statues
and paintings and Helen of Troy was nowhere beside Her and he felt his
strength come surging mightily upward and then—oh Heavens!

She looked up—looked so sweetly up—right into his eyes and smiled.

“I expect you are to take me into dinner,” she said; and at her words
the man who had been talking to her murmured something meaningless and
got out of their way.

“I believe so,” he said.

She rose and he noticed that the top of her head was just level with
his coat lapel. He wondered, with a miserable pang, where she came to
on her husband’s coat and with the wonder his surging strength surged
suddenly out to sea again and left him feeling like Samson when he
awoke to the realization of his haircut.

“Dinner’s very late,” she said, quite as if life presented no problem
whatever; “you see, it’s the first big company in the house. We were
only seventeen last night, and to-night we’re forty-five. It makes a
difference.”

“I can imagine so,” he said. He was suddenly acutely aware of feeling
very awkward, and of finding her different—quite different from what
she had seemed up in her brother’s room.

“What is it?” she asked after a minute, looking up at him; and then she
showed that she was conscious of the change, for she added: “Something
has happened; Bob has been saying mean things about me to you?”

“Yes, he did tell me something,” he admitted; and just then the butler
announced dinner.

“What did he tell you?” she asked, as they moved away. “How could he
say anything worse than what he said before me?”

“He told me something that was worse—much worse.”

She looked troubled and as if she did not understand.

“But he said that I was a flirt, and that I couldn’t speak the truth,
and that I drove people—”

“Yes, I remember all that; but this was infinitely worse.”

“Infinitely worse!”

“Yes.”

She stopped in an angle where the big room dwindled into a narrow
gallery, and stared astonished.

“I can’t at all understand,” she said.

“No, you can’t,” he said, “and I can’t tell you—I mustn’t tell you—how
terrible it is to me to look at you and think of what he told me.”

After a second she went on again and presently they entered the
dining-room. The confusion of rustling skirts and sliding chairs quite
covered their speech for a moment and made them seem almost alone. Her
hand had been resting on his arm and now she drew it out, looking up at
him again as she did so. Her eyes had a premonitory mist over them.

“For Heaven’s sake,” she said very earnestly, “tell me what he said?”

He was silent.

“Tell me,” she pleaded.

He was still silent.

“Tell me,” she said imperiously.

He continued silent. They sat down.

“Mr. Denham,” she said, as she took up her napkin, and her voice grew
very low, and yet he heard, “I don’t think that we can pretend to be
joking any longer. You are my brother’s friend, and I am a married
woman. Please treat me as you should.”

“That’s just it,” said Jack; “that’s all there is to it. It wouldn’t
have amounted to anything except for that—or perhaps, if it hadn’t been
for that, it might have amounted to a great deal.”

“If it hadn’t been for what?”

“For your being married.”

She quite started in her seat.

“What do you mean?”

“You see I never knew it before.”

“You never knew what before?”

“That you were married.”

“Until when?”

“Until after you went out of the room to-night.”

The men were putting the clams around. She seemed to reflect. And then
she peppered and salted them before she spoke.

“Bob is very wrong to talk so,” she said at last, picking up her fork,
“when you’re his friend, too.”

He poked his clams—he hated clams.

“I suppose men think it’s amusing to do such things,” she continued,
“but I think it’s as ill-bred as practical joking.”

“But you are married,” he said, trying fiercely to pepper some taste
into the tasteless things before him.

“Yes, I’m married,” she admitted tranquilly, “but, then, my husband
went to Africa so soon afterwards that he hardly seemed to count at
all. And then he was killed there; so, after that, he seemed to count
less than ever.”

The air danced exclamation points and the man on the other side spoke
to her then so that her turning to answer him gave Jack time to rally
his wits.

(A widow!)

Then she turned back and said:

“I think Bob mystified you unnecessarily. Of course I don’t flatter
myself that you’ve suffered.”

“Oh, but I have,” he hastened to assure her.

(A widow! A widow!)

“But it always makes a difference whether a woman is married or not.”

“I should say it did,” he interrupted again. “It makes all the
difference in the world.”

At that she laughed outright, and someone suddenly abstracted the
distasteful clams and substituted for them a golden and glorious soup,
and music sounded forth from some invisible quartet, and—and—

(A widow! A widow! A widow!)

Chapter Five
The Day After Falling in Love

The next day was a very memorable day for Jack. The day after a falling
in love is always a red-letter day; but the day after _the_ falling in
love—ah!

One looks back—far back—to the day before, and those hours of the day
before, when her sun had not yet dawned, and struggles to recollect
what ends life could have represented then. And one looks forward to
the next day, the next week, the next year—but, particularly to the
next morning with sensations as indescribable as they are delightful.

Whichever way you tip it, the kaleidoscope of the future arranges
itself in equally attractive shapes of rainbow hue, and the prospect
over land or sea—even if it is raining—looks brilliant green, and
brighter red, and brightest yellow.

Upon that glorious “next day” of Jack’s the weather was quite a thing
apart for February—partaking of the warmth of May, and owing that fact
to a sun which early June need not have scorned to own. Under the
circumstances the house party overflowed the house and ravaged the
surrounding country, and Jack and Mrs. Rosscott began it all by having
the highest cart and the fastest cob in the stables and making for the
forest just as the clock was tolling ten.

“Do you want a groom?” asked Burnett, who was occasionally very cruel.

“Well, I’m not going to wait for him to get ready now,” replied his
sister, who had sharp wits and did not disdain to give even her own
family the benefit of them.

Then she gathered up the reins and whip in a most scientific manner,
and they were off. Jack folded his arms. He was simply flooded,
drenched, and saturated with joy. The evening before had been Elysium
when she had only been his now and again for a minute’s conversation,
but now she was to be his and his alone until—until they came back—and
his mind seemed able to grasp no dearer outlines of the form which
Bliss Incarnate may be supposed to take. He didn’t care where they went
or what they saw or what they talked of, just if only he and she might
be going, seeing, and talking for the benefit of one another and of one
another alone.

They bowled away upon a firm, hard road that skirted the park, and then
plunged deeply into the forest. Mrs. Rosscott handled the reins and the
whip with the hands of an expert.

“I like to drive,” said she.

“You appear to,” he answered.

“I like to do everything,” she said. “I’m very athletic and energetic.”

“I’m glad of that,” he told her warmly. “I like athletic girls.”

He really thought that he was speaking the truth, although upon that
first day if she had declared herself lazy and languid he would have
found her equally to his taste—because it was the first day.

“That’s kind of you, after my speech,” she said smiling, “but let’s
wait a bit before we begin to talk about me. Let us talk about you
first—you’re the company, you know.”

“But there’s nothing to tell about me,” said Jack, “except that I’m
always in difficulties—financial—or otherwise,—oftenest ‘otherwise,’ I
must confess.”

“But you have a rich aunt, haven’t you?” said Mrs. Rosscott. “I thought
that I had heard about your aunt.”

“Oh, yes, I have a rich aunt,” Jack said, laughing, “and I can assure
you that if I am not much credit to my aunt, my aunt is the greatest
possible credit to me.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that, too,” said Mrs. Rosscott, joining in the laugh,
“you see I’m well posted.”

“If you’re so well posted as to me,” Jack said, “do be kind and post me
a little as to yourself. You don’t need information and I do.”

She turned and looked at him.

“What shall I tell you first?” she inquired.

“Tell me what you like and what you don’t like—and that will give me
courage to do the same later,” he added boldly.

She laughed outright at that and then sobered quickly.

“I told you that I liked to drive and to do everything,” she said
lightly; “what else do you want to know about?”

“What you dislike.”

“But I don’t know of anything that I dislike;” she said
thoughtfully—“perhaps I don’t like England; I am not sure, though. I
had a pretty good time there after all—only you know, being in mourning
was so stupid. And then, too, I didn’t fit into their ideas. I really
didn’t seem to get the true inwardness of what was expected of me. Oh,
I never dared let them know at home what a failure I was as an
Englishwoman. I mortified my husband’s sisters all the time. Just
think—after a whole year I often forgot to say ‘Fancy now!’ and used to
say ‘Good gracious!’ instead.”

Jack laughed.

“My husband’s sisters were very unhappy about it. They did want to love
me, because I had so much money; but it was tough work for them. Did
you ever know any middle-aged English young ladies?” she asked him
suddenly.

“No, I never did,” he said.

“Really, they seem to be a thing apart that can’t grow anywhere but in
England. Every married man has not less than two, nor more than three,
and they always are a little gray and embroider very nicely. Someone
told me that as long as there’s any hope they wear stout boots and walk
about and hunt, but as soon as it’s hopeless they take to
embroidering.”

“It must be rather a blue day for them when they decide definitely to
make the change,” said Jack.

“I never thought of that,” said Mrs. Rosscott soberly. “Of course it
must! I was always very good to them. I gave them ever so many things
that I could have used longer myself, and they used to set pieces of
muslin in behind the open-work places and wear them.”

She sighed.

“It’s quite as bad as being a Girton girl,” she said. “Do you know what
a Girton girl is?”

“No, I don’t.”

“It’s a girl from Girton College. It’s the most awful freak you ever
saw. They’re really quite beyond everything. They’re so homely, and
their hands and feet are so enormous, and their pins never pin, and
their belts never belt. And no one has ever married one of them yet!”

She paused dramatically.

“I won’t either, then,” he declared.

She laughed at that, and touched up the cob a trifle.

“Did you live long in England?” he asked.

“Forever!” she answered with emphasis; “at least it seemed like
forever. Mamma left me there when I was nineteen (she married me off
before she left me, of course) and I stayed there until last
winter—until I was out of my mourning, you know—and then I was on the
Continent for a while, and then I returned to papa.”

“How do we strike you after your long absence?”

“Oh, you suit me admirably,” she said, turning and smiling squarely
into his face; “only the terrible ‘and’ of the majority does get on my
nerves somewhat.”

“What ‘and’?”

“Haven’t you noticed? Why when an American runs out of talking material
he just rests on one poor little ‘and’ until a fresh run of thought
overwhelms him; you listen to the next person you’re talking with, and
you’ll hear what I mean.”

Jack reflected.

“I will,” he said at last.

The road went sweeping in and out among a thicket of bare tree trunks
and brown copses, and the sunlight fell out of the blue sky above
straight down upon their heads.

“If it don’t annoy you, my referring to England so often,” said she
presently, “I will state that this reminds me of Kaysmere, the country
place of my father-in-law.”

“Is your father-in-law living yet?”

“Dear me, yes—and still has hold of the title that I supposed I was
getting when I was married to his eldest son. My father-in-law is a
particularly healthy old gentleman of eighty. He was forty years old
when he married. He didn’t expect to marry, you know—he couldn’t see
his way to ever affording it. But he jumped into the title suddenly and
then, of course, he married right away. He had to. You’d know what a
hurry he must have been in to look at my mamma-in-law’s portrait.”

“Was she so very beautiful?”

“No; she was so very homely. Maude’s very like her.”

Jack laughed.

She laughed, too.

“Aren’t we happy together?” she asked.

“My sky knows but one cloud,” he rejoined, “and that is that Monday
comes after Sunday.”

“But we shall meet again,” said Mrs. Rosscott. “Because,” she added
mischievously, “I don’t suppose that it’s on account of my cousin Maude
that you rebel at the approach of Monday.”

“No,” said Jack. “It may not be polite to say so to you, but I wasn’t
in the least thinking of your cousin.”

“Poor girl!” said Mrs. Rosscott thoughtfully; “and she was so sweet to
you, too. Mustn’t it be terrible to have a face like that?”

“It must indeed,” said Jack; “I can think of but one thing worse.”

“What?”

“To marry a face like that.”

She laughed again.

“You’re cruel,” she declared; “after all her face isn’t her fortune, so
what does it matter?”

“It doesn’t matter at all to me,” said Jack. “I know of very few things
that can matter less to me than Miss Lorne’s face.”

“Now, you’re cruel again; and she was so nice to you too. Absolutely, I
don’t believe that the edges of her smile came together once while she
was talking to you last night.”

“Did you spy on us to that extent?” said Jack. “I wouldn’t have
believed it of you.”

“Oh, I’m very awful,” she said airily. “You’ll be more surprised the
farther you penetrate into the wilderness of my ways.”

“And when will I have a chance to plunge into the jungle, do you
think?”

“Any Saturday or Sunday that you happen to be in town.”

“Are you going to live in town?”

“For a while. I’ve taken a house until the beginning of July. I expect
some friends over, and I want to entertain them.”

Jack felt the sky above become refulgent. He was in the habit of
spending every Saturday night in the city—he and Burnett together.

“May I come as often as I like?” he asked.

“Certainly,” said she; “because you know if you should come too often I
can tell the man at the door to say I’m ‘not at home’ to you.”

“But if he ever says: ‘She’s not at home to you,’ I shall walk right in
and fall upon the man that you are being at home to just then.”

“But he is a very large man,” said Mrs. Rosscott seriously; “he’s
larger than you are, I think.”

Jack felt the blue heavens breaking up into thunderbolts for his head
at _this_ speech.

“But I’m way over six feet,” he said, his heart going heavily faster,
even while he told himself that he might have known it, anyhow.

“He’s all of six feet two,” she said meditatively. “I do believe he’s
even taller. I remember liking him at the first glance, just because he
struck me as so royal looking.”

He was miserably conscious of acute distress.

“Do—do you mind my smoking?” he stammered.

(Might have known that, of course, there was bound to be someone like
that.)

“Not at all,” she rejoined amiably. “I like the odor of cigarettes.
Shall I stop a little, while you set yourself afire?”

“It isn’t necessary,” he said. “I can set myself afire under any
circumstances.”

He lit a cigarette.

“Is he English?” he couldn’t help asking then.

“Yes,” she said; “I like the English.”

“You appear to like everything to-day.” He did not intend to seem
bitter, but he did it unintentionally.

(Confounded luck some fellows have.)

“I do. I’m very well content to-day.”

He was silent, thinking.

“Well,” she queried, after a while.

He pulled himself together with an effort.

“I think perhaps it’s just as well,” he said.

“What is just as well?”

“That I know.”

“Know what?”

“About him. I shan’t ever take the chances of calling on you now.”

She laughed.

“He wouldn’t put you out unless I told him to,” she said. “You needn’t
be too afraid of him, you know.”

His face grew a trifle flushed.

“I’m not afraid,” he said, as coldly as it was in him to speak; “but
I’ll leave him the field.”

She turned and looked at him.

“The field?” she asked, with puzzled eyebrows.

“Yes.”

Then she frowned for an instant, and then a species of thought-ray
suddenly flew across her face and she burst out laughing.

“Why, I do believe,” she cried merrily, “I do believe you’re jealous of
the man at the door.”

“Weren’t you speaking of a man in the drawing-room?” he asked, all her
phrases recurring to his mind together.

“No,” she said laughing; “I was speaking of my footman. Oh, you are so
funny.”

The way the sun shone suddenly again! His horizon glowed so madly that
he quite lost his head and leaning quickly downward seized her hand in
its little tan driving glove of stitched dogskin, and kissed it—reins
and all.

“I’m not funny,” he said, “it was the most natural thing in the world.”

She was laughing, but she curbed it.

“You’d better not be foolish,” she said warningly. “It don’t mix well
with college.”

“I’m thinking of cutting college,” he declared boldly.

“Don’t let us decide on anything definite until we’ve known one another
twenty-four hours,” she said, looking at him with a gravity that was
almost maternal; and then she turned the horse’s head toward home.

Chapter Six
The Other Man

That evening Burnett felt it necessary to give his friend a word of
warning.

“Holloway’s going to take Betty in to-night,” he said, as they
descended the tower stairs together.

“Who’s Holloway?” Jack asked.

“You can’t expect to have her all the time, you know,” Burnett
continued: “She’s really one of the biggest guns here, even if she is
one of the family.”

“Who’s Holloway?”

“Last night the _mater_ had her all mapped out for General Jiggs, and I
had an awful time getting her off his hook and on to yours, and then
you drove her all this morning and walked her all the afternoon, and
the old lady says she’s got to play in Holloway’s yard to-night—jus’
lil’ bit, you know.”

“Who’s Holloway?” Jack demanded.

“You know Horace Holloway; we were up at his place once for the night.
Don’t you remember?”

“I remember his place well enough; but he hadn’t got in when we came,
and hadn’t got up when we left, so his features aren’t as distinctly
imprinted on my memory as they might be.”

“That’s so,” said Burnett, pushing aside the curtains that concealed
the foot of the wee stair; “I’d forgotten. Well, you’ll meet him
to-night, anyhow; he came on the five-five. Holly’s a nice fellow, only
he’s so darned over-full of good advice that he keeps you feeling
withersome.”

Jack laughed.

“Did he ever give you any advice?” he asked.

“Why?”

“I don’t recollect your taking it.”

“I never take anything,” said Burnett; “I consider it more blessed to
give than to receive—as regards good advice anyhow.”

“Who will I have for dinner?” Jack asked presently, glancing around to
see if there were any silver tissues or distracting curls in sight.

“Well,” his friend replied, rather hesitatingly, “you must expect to
balance up for last night, I reckon.”

“Your cousin, I suppose!”

Burnett nodded.

“She wanted you,” he said. “She’s taken a fancy to you; and she can
afford to marry for love,” he added.

“I’m thankful that I can, too,” the other answered fervently.

His friend laughed at the fervor.

“You make me think of her teacher,” he said. “She sings, and when she
was sixteen she meant to outrank Patti; she was lots homelier then.”

“Oh, I say!” Jack cried. “I can believe ’most anything, but—”

Burnett laughed and then sobered.

“She was,” he said solemnly; “she really and truly was. And her mother
said to her teacher,—there in Dresden: ‘She will be the greatest
soprano, won’t she?’ And he said: ‘Madame, she has only that one
chance—to be _the_ greatest.’”

Jack laughed.

“But why ‘Lorne’?” he asked suddenly. “Why not ‘Burnett,’ since she’s
your uncle’s child?”

“Oh, that’s straight enough; there’s a hyphen there. My uncle died and
my aunt married a title. My aunt’s Lady Chiheleywicks, but the family
name is Lorne. And you pronounce my aunt’s name Chix.”

“I’m glad I know,” said Jack.

“Oh, we’re great on titles,” said Burnett, modestly. “If the Boers
hadn’t killed Col. Rosscott, Betty would have been a Lady, too, some
day. But as it is—” he added thoughtfully, “she’s nothing but a widow.”

“‘Nothing but’!” Jack cried indignantly.

“Oh, well,” said Burnett, “of course it’s great, her being a widow—but
then she’d have been great the other way too.”

“But if he was English and a colonel,” Jack said suddenly, “he must
have been all of—”

“Fifty!” interposed Burnett; “oh, he was! Maybe more, but he dyed his
hair. It was a splendid match for her. It isn’t every girl who can get
a—”

Their conversation was suddenly cut short by voices, accompanied by a
sort of sweet and silky storm of little rustles and the sound of
feet—little feet—coming down the great hall. Aunt Mary’s nephew felt
himself suddenly wondering if any other fellow present had such a
tempest within his bosom as he himself was conscious of attempting to
regulate unperceived.

And then, after all, she wasn’t among the influx! Miss Maude, was,
though, and he had to go up to her and talk to her; and terribly dull
hard labor it was.

While he was rolling the Sisyphus stone of conversation uphill for the
sixth or seventh time, Jack noticed a gentleman pass by and throw a
more than ordinarily interesting glance their way. He was a very
well-built, fairly good-sized man of thirty-five or forty years, with a
handsome, uninteresting face and heavy, sleepy dark eyes.

“Who is that?” he asked of his companion, his curiosity supplementing
his wish that she would begin to bear her share of the burden of her
entertainment.

“Don’t you know?” she said in surprise. “That’s Mr. Holloway. He’s just
come. Oh, he’s so horrid! I think he’s just too awfully horrid for any
use.”

“Why?”

“Because he does such mean things. I just know Bob must have told you
how he treated me. Bob’s always telling it. Surely he’s told you. It’s
his favorite story.”

“No, never,” said Jack (his eyes riveted on the staircase); “he never
told me. But do tell me. I’ll enjoy hearing your side of it.”

“But I haven’t any side. It’s just Horace Holloway’s meanness. There’s
nothing funny.”

“But tell me anyway.”

“Do you really want to hear?”

“Indeed, I do.”

“Well, it’s just that we were up in the mountains, and I was rowing
myself, and the boat didn’t go well, and Mr. Holloway came down off the
hotel piazza and called to me that she needed ballast, and—and I said:
‘Is that the trouble?’ And he said: ‘Yes, row ashore, and I’ll ballast
you.’ And so, of course I rowed ashore to get him, and (of course, I
supposed he meant himself), and when I was up by the dock he picked up
a great stone and dropped it in, and shoved me off, and called after
me: ‘She’ll go better now,’ and—everyone laughed!”

Miss Lome stopped, breathless.

“I never would have believed it of him,” Jack exclaimed, turning to see
where Holloway kept his sense of humor; but just as his eye fell upon
the latter, the latter’s eyes altered and suddenly became so bright and
intent that his observer involuntarily turned his own gaze quickly in
the same direction.

It was Mrs. Rosscott who was approaching, all in cerise with lines of
Chantilly lace sweeping about her. It seemed a cruelty to every woman
present that she should be so beautiful. Jack wanted to fly and fall at
her feet, but he couldn’t, of course—he was tied to her hyphenated
cousin.

But Holloway went forward and greeted her with all possible
_empressement_, and the man who was so much his junior felt an awful
weight of youth upon him as he saw her led out of his sight.

“I think dear Betty will marry Mr. Holloway,” her cousin chirped
blandly, thus settling her fate forever. “He came over in her party,
you know, and—she’s always been fond of him.”

Jack suddenly recollected how Mrs. Rosscott had commented on the
terrible tendency to land upon “and,” and wondered why he had never
noticed before how disagreeable said tendency was.

(Going to marry Holloway!)

“But, then, dear Cousin Betty’s such a coquette that no one can ever
tell whom she does like. She’s very insincere.”

Jack twisted uneasily. If there was any comfort to be derived from Miss
Lorne’s last speech, it was certainly of a most chilly sort.

(Probably going to marry Holloway!)

“Now, I think it’s too bad, when there are so many simple, sweet girls
in the world, that men seem to adore those that flirt like dear Cousin
Betty. I don’t approve of flirting anyway. I wouldn’t flirt for
anything. I don’t want to break men’s hearts.”

“That’s awfully good of you,” Jack said, looking eagerly to where
Holloway and Mrs. Rosscott stood together.

“Oh, no it isn’t,” said Miss Lorne, “I don’t take any credit for it—I
was born so. Dear Betty was a regular flirt when she was ever so small,
but I never was. I’m sincere and I can’t take any credit for it. I was
born so.”

Holloway was talking and Mrs. Rosscott’s eyes were uplifted to his.
Jack was sure there was adoration in them. He knew Holloway was in love
with her. How could he be a man and help it. Oh, it was
damnable—unbearable.

He stood up suddenly. He couldn’t help it. He was crazed, maddened,
choked, stifled. The fates must intervene and rescue his reason or
else—

There was a blessed sound—the announcing of dinner.

Later there was music in the great white salon where the organ was.
Maude Lome sang, and the man with the monocle accompanied her on the
organ. Mrs. Rosscott sat on a divan between Holloway and General Jiggs.
Jack was left out in the cold.

(Surely in love with Holloway!)

It was only twenty-six hours since he had first met her, and he hated
to consider his life as unalterably blasted, or to even give up the
fight. Nevertheless, whenever he looked across the room he saw fresh
signs of the most awful kind. Even the way that she didn’t trouble to
trouble over the one man, but devoted herself to General Jiggs, was in
itself a very bad portent. Well, such was life and one must bear it
somehow and be a man. Probably he would suffer less after the first
five or ten years—he hoped so at any rate. But, great heavens, what a
fearful prospect until those first five or ten years were gone by!

Finally he went up to his own room and put on another collar and sat
down at the open window and thought about it for a good while all quiet
and alone by himself. After that he went back downstairs.

She was gone, and Holloway, too. He felt freshly unhappy. When you come
to consider, it was so damned unjust for one man to be thirty-five
while another—just as decent a fellow in every way—was in college. He—

A hand touched his arm.

He turned from where he was standing in the window recess, and looked
into her eyes.

“I’m very wicked, am I not?” she asked, looking up at him so straight
and honest.

“I can’t admit that,” he replied.

“But I am. I know it myself. What Bob told you was all true. I’m a
heartless wretch.”

She spoke so earnestly that his heart sank lower and lower.

“I wanted to speak to you about to-morrow morning,” she said, after a
little pause. “You know we were going to drive at ten together, and—and
I wondered if—you see, Mr. Holloway’s an old friend, and he’s had so
much to tell me to-night, and he isn’t half through—”

She was drawing him with a chain, a hair chain, which she had woven out
of her eyelashes in the twinkling of an eye (either eye).

He felt himself helpless—and choked.

“Of course I don’t mind. You go with him. It’s quite one to me.”

She gave a tiny little start.

“Oh, I didn’t mean that at all,” she cried. “I meant—I meant—you see
it’s all been a little tiring—and to-morrow’s Sunday anyway and I—I
Wanted to—to ask you if we couldn’t go out at eleven instead of ten?”

She looked so sweetly questioning, and his relief was so great, and his
joy—

(Probably don’t care a rap for Holloway!)

—so intense, that he could hardly refrain from seizing her in his arms.

But he only seized her little hand instead and pressed it fervently to
his lips. When he raised his eyes she was smiling, and her smile filled
him with happiness.

“You’re such a boy!” she said softly, and turned and left him there in
the window recess alone again,—but this time he didn’t care.

Chapter Seven
Developments

It was during that drive the next morning that Jack buoyed up by
memories of Saturday and hopes of coming Saturdays, poured out the
history of his life at Mrs. Rosscott’s knees. He told her the whole
story of Aunt Mary, and _his_ side of the cat, the cabman, and
Kalamazoo. It interested her, for she had arrived too recently to have
had the full details in the newspapers beforehand, but when he spoke of
Aunt Mary’s last letter she grew large-eyed and shook her head gravely.

“You will have to be very good now,” she said seriously.

“Why?” he asked. “Just to keep from being disinherited? That wouldn’t
be so awful.”

“Wouldn’t it be awful to you?” she asked, turning her bright eyes upon
him. “What could be worse?”

“Things,” he said very vaguely.

Then she touched up the cob a little; and, after a minute or two, as
she said nothing, he continued:

“I almost fancy quitting college and going to work. I was thinking
about it last night.”

She touched up the cob a little more, and remained silent.

Finally he said:

“What would you think of my doing that?”

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “You see, I’m a great philosopher. I
never fret or worry, because I regard it as useless; similarly, I never
rebel at the way fate shapes my life—I regard that as something past
helping. I believe in predestination; do you?”

She turned and looked at him so seriously—so unlike her _riante_
self—that he felt startled, and did not know what to say for a minute.

Then:

“I don’t know,” he said slowly; “I don’t know that I dare to. It rather
startles me to think that maybe all of our future is laid out now.”

“It doesn’t startle me,” she said. “It seems to me the natural plan of
the universe. I believe that everything that crosses our path—down to
the tiniest gnat—comes there in the fulfillment of a purpose.”

“I’m sure that all the mosquitoes that ever crossed my path came there
in the fulfillment of a purpose,” Jack interrupted. “I never doubted
_that_.”

She smiled a little.

“It’s the same with people,” she went on.

[Illustration: “Do not let us play any longer,’ she said. ‘Let us be
in earnest.’”]

“Only less painful,” he interrupted again.

“Sometimes not,” she said, with a look that silenced him. “Sometimes
much more so—my Cousin Maude, for example.”

“Hip, hip, hurrah for the mosquito!” he murmured. They laughed softly
together. Then she grew earnest, and looked so grave that he became
serious too.

“There is always a purpose,” she said, with a touch of some feeling
which he had never guessed at. “If you and I have met, it is because we
are to have some influence over one another. I can’t just see how; I
can’t form any idea—”

“I can,” he said eagerly.

She looked up so suddenly and steadily that he was silent.

“Do not let us play any longer,” she said. “Let us be in earnest.”

“But I am in earnest,” he asseverated.

“You don’t know what I mean,” she went on very gently. “You’re in
college. Let’s fight it out on those lines if it takes all summer.”

He looked up into her face and loved her better than ever for the frank
kindliness that shone in her eyes.

“All right, if you say so,” he vowed.

“I do say so,” she said. “I like to see men stick it through in college
if they begin. I like to see people finish up every one of life’s jobs
that they set out on.”

“But I’m coming to see you in town, you know,” he went on with great
apparent irrelevance.

She laughed merrily.

“Yes, surely. You must promise me that.—No,” she stopped and looked
thoughtful, “I’ll tell you what I want you to promise me. Promise me
that you’ll come once a week or else write me why you can’t come. Will
you?”

“You can’t suppose that you’ll ever see my handwriting under such
circumstances—can you?” Jack asked.

She laughed again.

“Is it a promise?”

“Yes, it’s a promise.”

Oh, joy unmeasured in the time of spring! No other February like that
had ever been for them—nor ever would be. The drive came to an end, the
day came to an end, but the good-nights, which were good-bys, too, were
not so fraught with hopelessness as he had dreaded, for the promise
asked and given paved a broad road illuminated by the most hopeful kind
of stars,—a broad road leading straight from college to town,—and his
fancy showed him a figure treading it often. A figure that was his own.

Chapter Eight
The Resolution He Took

That first meeting was in February, you know, and by the last of April
it had been followed by so many others that Burnett remarked one day to
his chum:

“Say, aren’t you going a little faster than auntie’ll stand for?”

Jack turned in surprise.

“I never went so straight in my life before,” he exclaimed, not in
indignation but in astonishment.

“I didn’t mean that,” said Burnett. “Perhaps instead of ‘auntie’ I
should have said ‘Betty.’”

Jack hoisted the colors of Harvard, and was silent.

“I warned you at first that that was Tangle town,” his friend went on.
“Don’t suppose I’m saying anything against her—or against you; but
she’s just as much to ten other men as she is to you, and they all are
old enough to carry lots of weight.”

“And I suppose I’m not,” Jack answered, going over by the fireplace. “I
know that as well as anyone, of course.”

“_Natürlich_,” said Burnett, with conclusiveness that was not meant to
be cruel, yet cut like a two edged knife.

There was silence in the room. Jack stood by the chimney-piece, his
hands upraised to rest upon its lofty shelf, his head dropped forward,
and his eyes fixed on the empty blackness below.

“I wonder,” he said at last, “I wonder what will become of me if—if—”

He stopped.

Burnett didn’t speak.

“I wonder if she thinks of me as a boy,” the young man continued. “I
wonder if she’s so good to me because I’m her youngest brother’s
friend.”

Burnett did not comment on this speech.

“I don’t know what to do,” the other said. “When I first met her I
wanted to cut college and get out in the world and go to work like a
man. I told her so. But she wanted me to stay in college, and as it was
the first thing she’d ever wanted of me, I did it. I’d do anything she
asked me. I’ve quit drinking. I’m going at everything as hard as it’s
in me to go; but—I don’t know—I feel—I feel as if it isn’t me—it’s just
because she wants me to, and, do you know, old man, it frightens me to
think how—if she—if she went out of my—my life—”

He stopped and his broken phrases were not continued to any ending.

Another long silence ensued.

It was finally terminated by the brother’s saying:

“You must confess, old man, that you aren’t fixed so as to be able to
say one really serious word to any woman—unless it is, ‘Wait.’”

“I know that,” Jack answered; “but I suppose—”

“She’d be taking so many chances,” the friend interrupted. “A man in
college is never the real thing. You’d better give it up.”

Then the other whirled about and faced him.

“Give it up, did you say?” he asked almost angrily.

“Yes, that’s what.”

For a minute they looked at one another. Then:

“I shall never give it up,” the lover said very slowly and
steadily—“never, until she gives me up.”

Burnett sucked in his breath with a sudden compression of his lips.

“All right,” he said, not unkindly; “but I don’t believe you’ll ever
get her, and that’s flat. There are too many being entered for that
race, and long before you and I get out of here she’ll be Mrs. Somebody
Else.”

Jack stared at him as if he hardly heard, and then suddenly he stepped
nearer and spoke.

“Did she ask you to have this talk with me?”

“No,” said the brother in surprise, “she never says anything about you
to me.”

A look of relief fled across his friend’s face, and then a look of
resolution succeeded it.

“I’m not going to be discouraged,” he said; “not for a while, at any
rate.”

“You’d better be.”

Jack laughed. The laugh sounded a trifle hollow, but still it was a
laugh, and that in itself was a triumph of which none but himself might
ever measure the extent.

Because in that moment he decided to lay the whole case before her the
next time that he went to town, and the coming to a resolution was a
relief from the uncertainty that clouded his days and nights—even if a
further black curtain of darkest doubt hung before the possibilities of
what her answer might be.

Chapter Nine
The Downfall of Hope

It was on a Saturday about the middle of May that Jack came to town,
his mind well braced with love and arguments, and his main thoughts
being that when he returned something would be settled.

It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, and at five in the afternoon
both of the drawing-room windows of Mrs. Rosscott’s house were wide
open, and the lace curtains were taking the breeze like little sails.

Just as Jack mounted the steps, the door opened, and a plainly dressed,
unattractive-looking man was let out. The servant who did the letting
out saw Jack and let him in without closing the door between the egress
of the one and the ingress of the other. So he entered without ringing,
and, as he was very well known and intensely popular with all of Mrs.
Rosscott’s servants, the man invited him to walk up unannounced, since
he himself was just “bringing in the tea.”

Jack went upstairs, and because the carpet was of thickly piled velvet
and his boots were the boots of a well-shod gentleman, he made no noise
whatever in the so doing.

There were double parlors above stairs in the domicile which Burnett’s
sister had taken until July, and they were furnished in the most
correct and trying mode of Louis XIV. The chairs were gilt and very
uncomfortable. The ornaments were all straight up and down and made in
such shapes that there was no place to flick off cigarette ashes
anywhere. Nothing could be pulled up to anything else and there was not
a single good place to rest one’s elbows anywhere. The only saving
grace in the situation was that after five minutes or so Mrs. Rosscott
invariably suggested removal to the library which lay beyond—a very
different species of apartment where no mode at all prevailed except
the terrible _démodé_ thing known as comfort. To prevent her visitors,
when seated (for the five minutes aforementioned) amid the correct
carving of French art, from looking longingly through at the
easy-chairs of American manufacture, Mrs. Rosscott had ordered that the
blue velvet portières which hung between should never be pushed aside,
and it was owing to this order that Jack, entering the drawing-room,
heard voices, but could not see into the library beyond. Also it was
owing to this order that those in the library could not see or hear
Jack.

The result was that the young man, finding the drawing-room unoccupied,
was just crossing toward the blue velvet curtains, intending to wait in
the library until the returning servant should advise him of the
whereabouts of his mistress, when he was stopped by suddenly hearing a
voice—her voice—crying (and laughing at the same time)—

“Kisses barred! Kisses barred!”

It may be understood that had Mrs. Rosscott known that anyone was
within hearing she certainly would never have made any such speech, and
it may be further understood that, had whoever was with her, also
mistrusted the close propinquity of another man, he would never have
replied (as he did reply):

“Certainly,” the same being spoken in a most calm and careless tone.

Jack, the eavesdropper, stood transfixed at the voices and speeches,
and forgot every other consideration in the overwhelming sickness of
soul which overcame him that instant. All his other soul-sicknesses
were trifles compared to this one, and the world—his world—their
world—seemed to revolve and whirl and turn upside down, as he steadied
himself against a spindle-legged cabinet and felt its spindle-legs
trembling in sympathy with his own.

“Darling,” said Holloway, a second or two later (and this time his
voice was not calm and careless, but deep and impassioned), “the letter
was very sweet, and if you knew how I longed to take the tired little
girl to my bosom and comfort her troubles, and replace them by joys!”

“Will that day ever come, do you think?” Mrs. Rosscott answered, in low
tones, which nevertheless were most painfully clear and distinct in the
next room.

“It must,” Holloway replied, “just as surely as that I hold this dear
little hand—”

But Jack never knew more. He had heard enough—more than enough. Four
thousand times too much. He turned and went out of the rooms, back down
the stairs and out of the door, closed it noiselessly behind him, and
found himself in a world which, although bright and sunny to all the
rest of mankind, had turned dark, lonely, and cheerless to him.

At first he hardly knew what to do with himself, he was so altogether
used up by the discovery just made. He drifted up and down some unknown
streets for an hour or two—or stood still on corners—he never was very
sure which. And then at last he went downtown and took a drink in a
half-dazed way; and because it was quite two months since his last
indulgence, its suggestion was potent.

The pity—or rather, the apparent pity—of what followed!

Burnett was Sundaying at the ancestral castle; and Burnett wasn’t the
warning sort, anyhow. He was always tow and pitch for any species of
flame. So his absence counted for nothing in the crisis.

And what ensued was a crisis—a crisis with a vengeance.

That tear upon which Aunt Mary’s nephew went was something lurid and
awful. It lasted until Monday, and then its owner returned to college,
as ill of body and as embittered of spirit as it was in him to be. The
lightsome devil who had ruled him up to his meeting with Mrs. Rosscott
resumed its sway with terrible force. The authorities showed a tendency
to patience because young Denham had appeared to reform lately and had
been working hard; but young Denham felt no thankful sentiments for
their leniency, and proved his position shortly.

There was a man named Tweedwell whom circumstances threw directly in
the path of destruction. Tweedwell was an inoffensive mortal who was
studying for the ministry. He was progressive in his ideas, and
believed that a clergyman, to hold a great influence, should know his
world. He thought that knowledge of the world was to be gained by
skirting the outside edge of every species of worldliness. The result
of this course of action was not what it should have been, for
Tweedwell was an easy mark for all who wanted fun, and the
consciousness of his innocence so little accelerated the pace at which
he got out of the way that he was always being called to account for
what he hadn’t done.

The Saturday night after his Saturday in town, Jack concocted a piece
of deviltry which was as dangerous as it was foolish. The result was
that an explosion took place, and the author of the gun-powder plot had
all the skin on both hands blistered. Burnett, in escaping, fell and
broke his collarbone and two ribs. The house in which the affair took
place caught fire, and was badly damaged. And Tweedwell was arrested on
the strongest kind of circumstantial evidence, and had to answer for
the whole. Naturally, in the investigation that followed, the two who
were guilty had to confess or see the candidate for the ministry
disgraced forever.

The result of their confession was that Burnett’s father, a jovial,
peppery old gentleman—we all know the kind—lost his patience and wrote
his son that he’d better not come home again that year. But Aunt Mary
lost her temper much more completely and the result, as affecting Jack,
was awful.

She might not have acted as she did had the disastrous news arrived
either a week later or a week earlier; but it came just in the middle
of a discouraging ten days’ downpour, which had caused a dam to break
and a chain of valuable cranberry bogs to be drowned out for that year.
The cranberry bogs were especially dear to their owner’s heart.

“Why can’t they drain ’em?” she had asked Lucinda, who was particularly
nutcracker-like in appearance since her quarantine episode.

“’Pears like they’re lower’n everywhere else,” Lucinda answered, her
words sounding as if she had sharpened them on a grindstone.

Aunt Mary bit her lip and frowned at the rain. She felt mad all the way
through, and longed to take it out on someone.

Ten minutes after Joshua arrived with the mail and the mail bore one
ominous letter. Joshua felt something was wrong before the fact was
assured.

“She wants the mail,” Lucinda said, coming to the door with her hand
out as usual.

“She’ll get the mail,” said Joshua, and as he spoke he gave the seeker
after tidings a blood-curdling wink.

“There isn’t a telegram in one o’ the letters, is there?” Lucinda
asked, much appalled by the wink.

“No, there isn’t no telegram in none o’ the letters,” said Joshua.

“Joshua Whittlesey, I do believe you was born to drive saints mad. What
_is_ the matter?”

“Nothin’ ain’t the matter as I know of.”

“Then what in Kingdom Come did you wink for?”

“I winked,” said Joshua meaningly, “cause I expect it’ll be a good
while before we’ll feel like winkin’ again.”

Lucinda gave him a look in which curiosity and aggravation fought
catch-as-catch-can. Then she turned and went in with the letters.

Aunt Mary was sitting stonily staring at the rain.

“I thought you’d gone to take a drive with Joshua,” she said coldly.
“Well, ’s long ’s you’re back I’ll be glad to have my mail. Most folks
like to get their mail as soon as it comes an’ I—Mercy on us!”

It was the letter from the authorities enclosed in one from Mr.
Stebbins.

Lucinda stood bolt upright before her mistress.

“What’s happened?” she yelled breathlessly, after a few seconds of the
direst kind of silence had loaded the atmosphere while the letter was
being carefully read.

Then:

“Happened!—” said Aunt Mary, transfixing the terrible typewritten
communication with a yet more terrible look of determination.
“Happened!—Well, jus’ what I expected ’s happened an’ jus’ what nobody
expects ’ll happen now. Lucinda, you run like you was paid for it and
tell Joshua not to unharness. Don’t stop to open your mouth. You’ll
need your breath before you get to the barn. Scurry!”

Lucinda scurried. She splashed and spattered down through the lane that
led to Joshua’s kingdom with a vigor that was commendable in one of her
age.

“She says ‘don’t unharness,’” she panted, bouncing in through the
doorway just as Joshua was slowly and carefully folding the lap-robe in
the crease to which it had become habituated.

Joshua continued to fold.

“Then I won’t unharness,” he said calmly. He hung the robe over the
line that was stretched to hang robes over and Lucinda gasped for wind
with which to inflate further conversation.

“She says what nobody expects is goin’ to happen,” she panted as soon
as she could.

“What nobody expects is always happenin’ where he’s concerned,” said
Joshua.

“I s’pose he’s in some new row,” said Lucinda.

“I’m sure he is,” said Joshua, “an’ if you don’t go back to her pretty
quick you won’t be no better off.”

Lucinda turned away and returned to the house. She found Aunt Mary
still staring at the letters with the same concentrated fury as before.

“Well, is Joshua a’comin’ to the door?” she asked when she saw her maid
before her.

“You didn’t say for him to come to the door,” Lucinda howled, “you said
for him to stay harnessed.”

Aunt Mary appeared on the verge of ignition.

“Lucinda,” she said, “every week I live under the same roof with you
your brains strike me ’s some shrunk from the week before. What in
Heaven’s name should I want Joshua to stay harnessed in the barn for? I
want him to go for Mr. Stebbins an’ I want him to understand ’t if Mr.
Stebbins can’t come he’s got to come just the same’s if he could
anyhow. I may seem quiet to you, Lucinda, but if I do, it only shows
all over again how little you know. This is a awful day an’ if you knew
how awful you’d be half way back to the barn right now. I ain’t
triflin’—I’m meanin’ every word. Every syllable. Every letter.”

Lucinda fled out into the open again. Her footprints of the time before
were little oblong ponds now and she laid out a new course parallel to
their splashes. She found Joshua sponging the dasher.

“She wants you to go straight out again.”

Joshua flung the sponge into the pail.

“Then I’ll go straight out again,” he said, moving toward the horse’s
head.

“You’re to bring Mr. Stebbins whether he can come or not.”

“He’ll come,” said Joshua; and then he backed the horse so suddenly
that the buggy wheel nearly went over Lucinda.

“She says this is an awful day—” began Lucinda.

Joshua got into the buggy and tucked the rubber blanket around himself.

“She says—”

Joshua drove out of the barn and away.

Lucinda went slowly back to the house. Aunt Mary had ceased to glare at
the letter and was now glaring at the rain instead.

“Lucinda,” she said “I’ll thank you not to ever mention my nephew to me
again. I’ve took a vow to never speak his name again myself. By no
means—not at all—never.”

“Which nephew?” shrieked Lucinda.

Aunt Mary’s eyes snapped.

“Jack!” she said, with an accent that seemed to split the short word in
two.

After a little she spoke again.

“Lucinda, it’s all been owin’ to the city an’ this last is all city. ’F
I cared a rap what happened to him after this I’d never let him go near
a place over two thousand again as long as he lived. It’s no use tryin’
to explain things to you, Lucinda, because it never has been any use
an’ never will be—an’ anyway, I’m done with it all. I sh’ll want you
for a witness when I’m through with Mr. Stebbins, and then you can get
some marmalade out for tea an’ we’ll all live in peace hereafter.”

Joshua returned with Mr. Stebbins and the latter gentleman went to work
with a will and willed Jack out of Aunt Mary’s. Later Joshua took him
home again. Lucinda got the marmalade out of the cellar and Aunt Mary
had it with her tea. It was a bitter tea—unsugared indeed—and the days
that followed matched.

Chapter Ten
The Woes of the Disinherited.

It was some days later on in the world’s history that Holloway was
calling on Bertha Rosscott.

They were sitting in that comfortable library previously referred to
and were sweetly unaware that any untoward series of incidents had ever
led to an invasion of their privacy.

Holloway lay well back in a sleepy-hollow chair and looked indolently,
lazily handsome; his hostess was up on—well up on the divan, and he had
the full benefit of her admirable bottines and their dainty heels and
buckles.

“Honestly,” he said, looking her over with a gaze that was at once
roving and well content, “honestly, I think that every time I see you,
you appear more attractive than the time before.”

“It’s very nice of you to say so,” she replied. “And, of course, I
believe you, for every time that I get a new gown I think that very
same thing myself. Still, I do regard it as strange if I look nicely
to-day, for I’ve been crying like a baby all the morning.”

“You crying! And why?”

She raised her eyes to his.

“Such bad news!” she said simply.

“From where? Of whom?”

“From mamma, about Bob.”

“Have _his_ wounds proved serious?” Holloway looked slightly distressed
as was proper.

“It isn’t that. It’s papa. Papa has forbidden him the house. He’s very,
very angry.”

Holloway looked relieved.

“Your father won’t stay angry long, and you know it,” he said. “Just
think how often he has lost his temper over the boys and how often he’s
found it again.”

“It isn’t just Bob,” said Mrs. Rosscott. “I’ve someone else on my mind,
too.”

“Who, pray?”

“His friend.”

“Young Denham?”

“Yes.”

With that she threw her head up and looked very straightly at her
caller whose visage shaded ever so slightly in spite of himself.

“Have his wounds proved serious?” he asked, smiling, but unable to
altogether do away with a species of parenthetical inflection in his
voice.

“It wasn’t over his wounds that I cried.”

“Did you really cry at all for him?”

“I cried more for him than I did for Bob,” she admitted boldly.

“He is a fortunate boy! But why the tears in his case?”

“I felt so badly to be disappointed in him.”

“Did you expect to work a miracle there, my dear? Did you think to
reform such an inveterate young reprobate with a glance?”

“I’m not sure that I ever asked myself either of those questions,” she
replied, slowly; “but he promised me something, and I expected him to
keep his word.”

“Men don’t keep such promises, Bertha,” the visitor said. “You
shouldn’t have expected it.”

“I don’t know why not.”

“Because a man who drinks will drink again.”

“I didn’t refer to drinking,” she said quietly. “It was quite another
thing.”

“Ah!”

She looked down at her rings and seemed to consider how much of her
confidence she should give him, and the consideration led her to look
up presently and say:

“He promised me that if he could not call any week he would write me a
line instead. He came to town last week, and he neither called nor
wrote. That wasn’t like the man I saw in him. That was a direct
breaking of his word. I can’t understand, and I’m disappointed.”

Holloway took out his cigarette case and turned it over and over
thoughtfully in his hands.

“He’s nothing but a boy,” he said at last, with an effort.

“He’s no boy,” she said. “He’s almost twenty-two years old. He’s a
man.”

“Some are men at twenty-two, and some are boys,” Holloway remarked. “I
was a man before I was eighteen—a man out in the world of men. But
Denham’s a boy.”

He rose as he spoke, and she held out her hand for him to raise her,
too.

“It’s early to go,” she remarked parenthetically.

“I know,” he replied; “but I hear someone being shown into the
drawing-room. I don’t feel formal to-day, and if I can’t lounge in here
alone with you I’d rather go.”

“How egotistical!” she commented.

“I am egotistical,” he admitted.

And went.

The footman passed him in the hall; he had a card upon his silver
salver, and was seeking his mistress in the library. But when he
entered there the room was empty. Mrs. Rosscott had slipped through the
blue velvet portières, expecting to see a friend, and had stopped short
on the other side, amazed at finding herself face to face with an utter
stranger.

“I gave the man my card,” said the stranger, in a tone as faded as his
mustache. He was a long, thin man, but what the Germans style “_sehr
korrect_.”

“I didn’t wait to get it,” the hostess said. “I supposed that, of
course, it was somebody that I knew.”

“That was natural,” he admitted.

There was a slight pause of awkwardness.

“Won’t you sit down?” she asked.

“Certainly,” said the caller, and sat down.

Then she sat down, too, and another awkward pause ensued.

“You didn’t expect to see me, did you?” said the stranger, smiling.

“No, I didn’t,” said Mrs. Rosscott frankly. “I expected to see someone
else—someone that I knew. Nearly all my visitors are people whom I
know.”

Her eyes rather demanded an observance of the conventionalities while
her words were putting the best face possible on the queer five
minutes. The stranger smiled.

“My name is Clover,” he said then. “Of course, as you never saw me
before, you want to know that first of all.”

“I’d choose to know,” she said. And then the uncompromising neutrality
of her expression deepened so plainly that he hastened to add:

“I’m H. Wyncoop Clover.”

“Oh!” she said. And then smiled, too; having heard the name before.

“Why don’t you ask me my business?” went on H. Wyncoop Clover. “I must
have come for some reason, you know.”

“I didn’t know it,” said Mrs. Rosscott—“I don’t know anything about you
yet.”

They both smiled—and then H. Wyncoop resumed his colorless sobriety at
once.

“It’s about Jack,” he said—“these terrible new developments—” he
stopped short, seeing his _vis-à-vis_ turn deathly white, “it’s nothing
to be frightened over,” he said reassuringly.

Mrs. Rosscott was furious with herself for having paled. She became
instantly haughty.

“I was alarmed for my brother,” she said. “I always think of them both
as together.”

“Oh, in that case, I can reassure you instantly,” said the caller.
“Burnett is doing finely.”

Mrs. Rosscott was conscious of being suddenly and skillfully
countercharged. She blushed with vexation, bit her lip in perturbation,
and cast upon the trying individual opposite a look of most appealing
interrogation.

“You see,” said Clover pleasantly, “I was coming to town, so I came in
handy for the purpose of telling you.”

She gave him a glance that prayed him to be decent and go on with his
errand.

“Burnett is about recovered,” he said.

She clasped her hands hard.

“I wouldn’t be a man for anything!” she exclaimed with sudden fervor,
“they are so awfully mean. Why _don’t_ you go on and tell me _what_
you’ve come about?”

He raised his eyebrows.

“May I?” he asked.

She choked down some of her exasperation.

“Yes, you may.”

“Oh, thank you so much. I’ll begin at once then. Only premising that as
I go to school with your little brother, and as he is rather under a
cloud just at present, we clubbed together to bring you a letter about
him and Jack. He was going to dictate it, but in the end Mitchell wrote
it all. Here it is.”

With that he put his hand into his pocket, drew out an envelope and
handed it to her.

“How awfully good of you,” she said gratefully. “Do excuse my reading
it at once, won’t you? You see, I’ve been so anxious about—about my
brother.”

He nodded understandingly, and she hastily tore open the envelope and
ran her eyes over the written sheets.

MY DEAR MRS. ROSSCOTT:—
Being the prize writer of the class, I am chosen to take down the
ante mortem confessions of our shattered friends. It is in a sad
hour for them that I do so, because I am naturally so truthful that
I shall not force you to look for my meaning between the lines. On
the contrary, I shall set the cold facts out as neatly as the
pickets on the fence. And in evidence thereof, I open the ball by
telling you frankly that they both look fierce. If they had looked
less awful, and Burnett had had more lime in his bones, we might
have escaped the Powers That Be by simply admitting a sprained
ankle and carefully concealing everything else. But if one man
cracks where you can’t finish the deal, even by the most unlimited
outlay of mucilage and persistence, and another blazes his whole
surface-area in a manner that seems to make the underbrush dubious
to count on forever henceforth; why, you then have a logarithm the
square of which is probably as far beyond your depth as I am beyond
my own just at this point of this sentence.
The long and short of my fresh start is, that your brother wants to
write you, but he is so handicapped (forgive me, but you’re the
only one who hasn’t had that joke sprung on them!) with bandages,
that it’s cruel to expect much of him. It is true that he has his
bosom friend to fall back upon, but if you could see that friend as
we see him these days you wouldn’t be sure whether it was true or
not. The old woman, who had the peddler-and-petticoat episode, was
not in it the same day with your brother’s friend! I do assure you.
And anyhow—even if he still has brains—his writing apparatus is all
done up in arnica, so there you are!
But do not allow me to alarm you unduly! When all’s said and done,
they’re not so badly off physically. Hair and ribs are mere
vanities, anyhow, and we’re here to-day and gone to-morrow!
Something much worse than disfigurements and broken bones has
sprung forth from chaos, and has almost stared them out of
countenance since. It is the wolf that is at the door, and the
howling and prowling of their particular wolf is not to be sneezed
at, let me tell you. To put a modern political face upon an ancient
Greek fable, the wolf in their case symbolizes the bitter question
of whose roof is going to roof them when they get out of the
plaster casts that are bed and board to them just at present. Where
are they to go? All those which used to be open to them are
suddenly shut tight. They’ve both been expelled, and both been
disinherited. If I was inclined to look on the blue side of the
blanket, I should certainly feel that they were playing in very
tough luck. Burnett, of course, can come to you, and his soul is
full of the wish to bring his fellow-fright along with him. Which
wish of his is the gist of my epistle. Can he bring him? He wants
to know before he broaches the proposition. I’m to be skinned alive
if Jack ever learns that such a plea was made, so I beg you
whatever other rash acts you see fit to commit during your meteoric
flight across my plane of existence, don’t ever give me away.
Firstly, because if I ever get a chance to do so, I’m positive that
I should want to cling to you as the mistletoe does to the oak, and
could not bear to be given away; and secondly, because I’m so
attached to my own skin that I should really suffer pain if it was
taken from me by force. Bob wants you to think it over, and let him
know as to the whats and whens by return mail.
You are so inspiring that I could write you all day, but those
relics of what once was, but alas! will never be again, need to be
rolled up afresh in absorbent cotton, and so I must nail my Red
Cross on to my left arm, and get down to business. If you saw how
useful I am to your brother, you’d thank his lucky stars that I
came through myself with nothing worse than getting my ear stepped
on. I was hugging the ladder (being canny and careful), and the man
above me toed in. Isn’t it curious to think that if he’d worn
braces in early youth my ear would be all right now.
Behold me at your feet.

Respectfully yours,
HERBERT KENDRICK MITCHELL.

When Mrs. Rosscott had finished the letter she looked across at her
caller, and said:

“You’ve read this, haven’t you?”

“No,” said he. “I tried to unstick it two or three times coming on the
train, but it was too much for me.”

“Don’t you really know what it says?” she asked more earnestly.

“Yes, I do,” Clover answered, “but Denham must never know that I do.”

“I won’t tell him,” she said smiling faintly. “But surely he can’t be
as badly off as this says. Has he really lost all his hair?”

“Not all—only in spots,” Clover reassured her; but then his
recollections overcame him, and he added, with a grin: “But he’s a
fearful looking specimen, all right, though.”

“About my brother,” she went on, turning the letter thoughtfully in her
fingers; “when can he get out, do they think?”

“Any time next week.”

“I’ll write him,” she said. “I’ll write him and tell him that
everything will be arranged for—for—for them both.”

Clover sprang to his feet.

“Oh, thank you,” he exclaimed. “That’s most awfully good in you!”

“Not at all,” she answered. “I’m very glad to be able to welcome them.
You must impress that upon them—particularly—particularly on my
brother.”

Clover smiled.

“I will,” he said, rising to go.

“I’d ask you to stay longer,” she said, holding out her hand, “but I’m
due at a charity entertainment to-night, and I have to go very early.”

“I know,” he said; “I’ve come up on purpose to go to it.”

“Then I shall see you there?” she asked him.

“It will be what I shall be looking forward to most of all,” he said.

“It’s been a great pleasure to meet you,” she said, holding out her
hand, “you’re—well, you’re ‘unlike,’ as they say in literary
criticisms.”

“Thank you,” he replied; “but may I ask if you intend that as a
compliment?”

“Dear me,” she laughed, “let me think how I did intend it.—Yes, it was
meant for a compliment.”

“Thank you,” he said, shaking her hand warmly, “it’s so nice to know,
you know. Good-by.”

“Good-by.”

Then he went away.

Chapter Eleven
The Dove of Peace

The first result of Mrs. Rosscott’s invitation was that Jack refused.
He said that he had a sister of his own—two, if it came to that—and so
he could easily manage for himself. He was very decided about it, and
somewhat lofty and bitter—a stand which no one understood his taking.

His flat refusal was communicated to his would be hostess and it goes
without saying that she was as unable to understand as all the rest. It
keyed well enough with his lately shown indifference, but the
indifference keyed not at all with all that had gone before and still
less with her very correct comprehension of Jack himself. She was quite
positive as to the sincerity of those protestations which he had made
so haltingly—so boyishly—and in such absolutely truthful accents. Why
he had turned over a new—and bad—leaf so suddenly she did not at all
know, but her woman’s wit—backed up by the many good instincts which
good women always get from Heaven knows just where—made her feel firmer
than ever as to her hospitable intentions. Jack had told her many times
that she was his good angel, and it did not seem to her that now, when
he was so deeply involved in so much trouble, was the hour for a man’s
good angel to quietly turn away. Suppose he was haughty!—she knew men
well enough to know that in his case haughtiness and shame would be two
Dromios that even he himself would be unable to tell apart. Suppose he
did rebel against her kindness!—she knew women well enough to know that
under some circumstances they can put down rebellion single-handed—if
they can only be left in the room alone with it for a few minutes. As
regarded Jack, she knew that there was something to explain; and as to
herself she was delightfully positive as to her own irresistibleness.
Given two such statements and the conclusion is easy. Mrs. Rosscott
wrote to Mitchell and here is what she wrote:

MY DEAR MR. MITCHELL:
I should have answered your letter before only that in the
excitement of corresponding with my brother I forgot all else. But
my manners have returned by slow degrees and in hunting through my
desk for a bill I found you and so take up my pen.
I am quite sure that—in spite of that beautiful opening play of
mine—you are wondering why I am really writing and so I will tell
you at once. When Bob comes here to stay with me I want Mr. Denham
to come too. I have various reasons for wanting him to come. One is
that he has nowhere else to go where he will have half as good a
time as he will here and another is that if he goes anywhere else I
won’t have half as good a time as if he comes here. Pray excuse my
brutal candor, but I am only a woman; brutal candor and womanly
weakness always have gone about encouraging one another, you know.
I cannot see any good reason for Mr. Denham’s not coming except
that he declines my invitation. It is very silly in him, and I
regard it as no reason at all. I am quite unused to being declined
and do not intend to acquire the habit until I am a good deal older
than I was my last birthday. Still, I can understand that he is too
big to force against his will, so I think the kindest way to break
the back of the opposition will be for me to do it personally. As
an over-ruler I nearly always succeed. All I require is an
opportunity.
Please lay the two halves of your brain evenly together and devise
a train and an interview for me. Of course you will meet me at the
train and leave me at the interview. These are the fundamental
rules of my game. I know that you are clever and before we have
left the station you will know that I am. As arch-conspirators we
shall surely win out together, won’t we?

Yours very truly,
BERTHA ROSSCOTT.

This missive posted, Jack’s good angel made herself patient until the
afternoon of the next day when she might and did expect an answer.

She was not disappointed. The letter came and it was pleasantly bulky
and appeared ample enough to have contained an indexed gun powder plot.
She was so sure that Mitchell had been fully equal to the occasion that
she tore the envelope open with a smile—and read:

MY DEAR MRS. ROSSCOTT:

To think of my having some of your handwriting for my own!—I was
nearly petrified with joy.
You see I know your writing from having read Burnett all those
“Burn this at once” epistles. And I know it still better from
having to catalogue them for his ready reference. You know how
impatient he is. (But I have run into an open switch and must
digress backwards.)
I shall preserve your letter till I die. In war I shall wear it
carefully spread all over wherever I may be killed, and in peace I
intend to keep my place in my Bible with it. Could words say more!
(Being backed up again, I will now begin.)
I was not at all surprised at your writing me. If you had known me
it would have been different. But where ignorance is bliss any
woman but yourself is always liable to pitch in with a pen, and you
see you are not yourself but only “any woman” to me as yet.
Besides, women have written to me before you. My mother does so
regularly. She encloses a postal card and all I have to do is to
mail it and there she is answered. It’s a great scheme which I
proudly invented when I first went away to school and I recommend
it to you if you—if you ever have a mother.
How my ink does run away with me! Let me refer to your esteemed
favor again! Ah! we have worked down to the bed-rock, or—in Hugh
Miller’s colloquial phrasing—to the “old red sandstone,” of the
fact that you want Jack. You state the fact with what you designate
as brutal candor—and I reply with candied brutality, that I have
thought that all along. If you are averse to my view of the matter,
you must look out of the window the whole time that I continue, for
once entered I always fight to a finish and I cannot retire to my
corner on this auspicious occasion without announcing through a
trumpet that even if Jack is a most idiotic fellow I never have
caught the microbe from him, and, as a sequence, have always seen
clear through and out of the other side of the whole situation. Of
course I should not say this to any woman but you because it would
not have any meaning to her, but, between you and me all things are
printed in plain black and white and, therefore, I respectfully
submit a program consisting of the two o’clock train Tuesday and
myself, to be recognized by a beaming look of burning joy, upon the
platform. Beyond that you may confide yourself to waxing waxy in my
hands. They are not bad hands to be in as your brother and
whatever-you-call-Jack can testify. I will lay my lines in the dark
to the end that you may bloom in the sun.
Trust me. You need do no more—except buy your ticket.
The two o’clock on Tuesday. You can easily remember it by the
T’s—if you don’t get mixed with three o’clock on Thursday. Try
remembering it by the 2’s. A safe way would be to put it down.

Yours to obey,
HERBERT KENDRICK MITCHELL.

P.S. Please recollect that I am only handsome according to the good old
proverb, and do not mistake me for an enterprising hackman.

Mrs. Rosscott clapped her hands with delight when she finished the
letter. She was overjoyed at the success of her “opening play,” and she
wrote her new correspondent two lines accepting his invitation, and
went down on the appointed train on the appointed day. He met her at
the depot and they divined one another at the first glance. It was
impossible not to know so pretty a woman—or so homely a man. For the
ancestors of Mitchell had worn kilts and red hair in centuries gone by,
and although he proved the truth of the red-hair proposition, no one
would ever believe that anything of his build could ever have been
induced to have put itself into kilts—knowingly. Furthermore, his voice
had a crick in it, and went by jerks, and his eyebrows sympathized with
his voice, and the eyes below them were little and gray and twinkling,
and altogether he was the sort of man who is termed—according to a
certain style of phrasing—“above suspicion.” But she liked him, oh!
immensely, and he liked her. And when they were riding up in the
carriage together she felt how thoroughly trustworthy his gray eyes and
good smile declared him to be, and had no hesitation in telling him
what she wanted to do, and in asking him what she wanted to know.

Mitchell certainly had a talent for plotting, for when they reached the
house where the culprits were temporarily domiciled, Burnett had gone
out to give his mended ribs some exercise, and Jack was reading alone
in the room where they shared one another’s liniments with friendly
generosity.

The arch-conspirator went upstairs, came down, and then, seeking the
lady whom he had left in the parlor, said to her:

“Denham’s up there and you can go up and say whatever you have to say.
You know ‘In union there is strength.’ Well you’ve got him alone now,
and he’ll prove weakly as a consequence or I miss my guess.”

Then he walked straight over by the window and picked up a magazine as
if it was all settled, and she only hesitated for half a second before
she turned and went upstairs.

There was a door half open in the hall above, and she knew that that
must be the door. She tapped at it lightly, and a man’s voice (a voice
that she knew well), called out gruffly:

“Come in!”

She pushed the door open at that and entered, and saw Jack, and he saw
her. He turned very pale at the sight, and then the color flooded his
face, and he rose from his chair abruptly, and put his hand up to the
strips that held the bandage on his head.

“Burnett isn’t here,” he said quickly. “He went out just a few minutes
ago.”

His tone was hard, and yet at the same time it shook slightly.

She approached him, holding out her hand.

“I’m glad of that,” she said, “because it was to see you that I came.”

To her great surprise something mutinous and scornful flashed in his
eyes as he rolled a chair forward for her.

“You honor me,” he said, and his tone and manner both hardened yet
more. His general appearance was that of a man ten years older; he had
changed terribly in the weeks since she had last seen him. She took the
chair and sat down, still looking at him. He sat down too, and his eyes
went restlessly around the room as if they sought a hold that should
withhold them from her searching gaze. There was a short pause.

“Don’t speak like that,” she said at last. “It isn’t your way, and I
know you too well—we know one another too well—to be anything but
sincere. You owe me something, too, and if I forbear you should
understand why.”

“I owe you something, do I?” he asked. “What do I owe you?”

Mrs. Rosscott caught her under lip in her teeth.

“You gave me a promise, Mr. Denham,” she said, quite low, but most
distinctly—“a promise which you broke.”

Jack flushed; his eyelids drooped for a minute.

“I didn’t break it,” he said. “I gave it up.”

“Is there any difference?”

“A great difference.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Do you want to have the truth?” he said. “If you really do, I’ll tell
you. But I don’t ask to tell you, recollect, and if I were you I’d drop
the whole—I certainly would.—If I were you.”

She looked at him in astonishment.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Tell me what you mean.”

He raised his hand to his bandaged head again.

“I think,” he said, fighting hard to speak with utter indifference, “I
think that it would have been better if you had told me about
Holloway.”

At that her big eyes opened widely.

“What should I tell you about Mr. Holloway?” she asked. “What could I
tell you about him?”

“It isn’t any use speaking like that,” he said; and with the words he
suddenly leaped from his chair and began to plunge back and forth
across the small room. “You see I’m not a boy any more. I’ve come to my
senses. I know now! I understand now! It’s all plain to me now. Now and
always. I’ve been fooled once but only once and by All that Is, I never
will be fooled again. Your’re pretty and awfully fascinating, and it’s
always fun for the woman—especially if she knows all her bets are
safely hedged. And I was so completely done up that I was even more
sport than the common run, I suppose; but—” she was staring at him in
unfeigned amazement, and he was lashing himself to fury with the
feelings that underlaid his words—“but even if you made it all right
with yourself by calling your share by the name of ‘having a good
influence’ over me (I know that’s how married women always pat
themselves on the back while they’re sending us to the devil), even
then, I think that it would have been better to have been fair and
square with me. It would have been better all round. I’d have been left
with some belief in—in people. As it is, when I saw that you’d only
been laughing at me, I—well, I went pretty far.”

He stopped short, and transfixed her paleness with his big, dark eyes.

“Why weren’t you honest?” he asked angrily. And then he said again,
more bitterly, more scornfully, than before: “Why wasn’t I told about
Holloway?”

She clasped her hands tightly together.

“What has been told you about Mr. Holloway and myself?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Then why do you speak as you do?”

At that he thrust his hands into his pockets and again began to fling
himself back and forth across the room.

“Perhaps you’ll think I’m a sneak,” he said, “but I wasn’t a sneak. I
went in to see you that Saturday as usual, and when I went upstairs—you
were with him in the library. I heard three words. God! they were
enough! I didn’t know that anything could knock the bottom out of life
so quickly. My sun and stars all fell at once—I reckon my Heaven went
too. At all events I went out of your house and down town and I drank
and drank—and all to the truth and honor of women.”

He halted with his back to her, and there was silence in the room for
many minutes.

When he faced around after a little, she was weeping bitterly, having
turned in her seat so that her face might be buried in the chair back.
Her whole body was shaking with suppressed sobs. He stood still and
stared down upon her and finally she lifted up her face and said with
trembling lips:

“And all the trouble came from that. Oh, what shall I do? What shall I
say?”

“I don’t know what you can do, or what you can say,” he said, remaining
still and watching her sincere distress. “I’d feel pretty blamed mean
if I were you, though. Understand, I don’t question your good taste in
choosing Holloway, nor your right to love him, nor his right to be
there; but I fail to understand why you were to me just as you were,
and I think it was unfair—out-and-out mean!”

“Mr. Denham,” she said almost painfully, “you’ve made a dreadful
mistake.” Then she stopped and moistened her lips. “I don’t know just
what words you overheard, but the dramatic instructor was there that
afternoon drilling Mr. Holloway and myself for the parts which we took
in the charity play that week; after he went out we went over one of
the scenes alone. Perhaps you heard part of that.” She stopped and
almost choked. “Mr. Holloway has never really made any love to
me—perhaps he never wanted to—perhaps I’ve never wanted him to.”

Jack stared. His misconception was so strongly intrenched in the
forefront of his brain that he could not possibly dislodge it at once.

Mrs. Rosscott continued to dry the tears that continued to rise; she
seemed terribly affected at finding herself to have been the cause (no
matter how innocently) of this latest tale of wrack and ruin.

“Do you mean to say,” the young man said, at last, “that there was no
truth in what I heard? Don’t you expect to marry Holloway?”

“I never expect to marry anyone, but certainly not him,” she replied,
trying to regain her composure.

“Honest?”

“Assuredly.”

It was as if an unseen orchestra had suddenly burst forth just near
enough and just far enough away. He came to the side of her chair and
laid his hand upon its back.

“Then what have you been thinking of me lately?” he asked.

“Very sad thoughts,” she confessed—hiding her face again.

“Did you care?”

“Yes, I cared.”

He stood beside her for a long time without speaking or moving. Then he
suddenly pulled a chair forward, and sat down close in front of her.

“Don’t cry,” he said, almost daring to be tender. “There’s nothing to
cry about now, you know.”

“I think there’s plenty for me to cry about,” she said, looking up
through her long wet lashes. “It is so terrible for me to be the one
that is to blame. Papa swears he’ll never forgive Bob, and your aunt—”

“Lord love you!” he exclaimed; “don’t worry over me or my aunt. I
don’t. I don’t mind anything, with Holloway staked in the ditch. I can
get along well enough now.”

He smiled—actually smiled—as he spoke.

“Oh, you mustn’t speak so,” she said, blushing; “indeed, you must not.”
And smiled, too, in spite of herself.

“Who’s going to stop me?” he said. “You know that you can’t; I’m miles
the biggest.”

She looked at him and tried to frown, but only blushed again instead.
He put out his hand and took hers into its clasp.

“I’m everlasting glad to shake college,” he declared gayly; “it never
was my favorite alley. I’ve made up my mind to go to work just as soon
as I get these pastry strips off my head.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Anywhere. I don’t care.”

“But you’ll come to my house when Bob comes next week, won’t you?” she
asked suddenly. “I can see now why you wouldn’t before, but—but it’s
different now. Isn’t it?”

“Is it?” he said, asking the question chiefly of her pretty eyes. “Is
it honestly different now?”

“I think it is,” she answered.

A door banged below.

“That’s Burr!” he exclaimed, remembering suddenly the proximity of
their chairs, and making haste to place himself farther away.

Burnett’s step was heard on the stair.

“You never said anything to him, did you?” she questioned quickly.

“Certainly not.”

The next instant Burnett was in the room, and his sister was in his
arms. (Astonishing how coolly he accepted the fact, too.)

“Mr. Denham is coming to me with you, Bob,” she said when he released
her. “I’ve persuaded him.”

“How did you do it?” she was asked.

“By undertaking to reconcile him with his aunt, dear,” she replied,
blandly. “It’s a contract that we’ve drawn up between us. You know that
I was always rather good in the part of the peacemaker.”

As she spoke, her eyes fell warningly on the manifest astonishment of
Aunt Mary’s nephew.

“You don’t know what you’re undertaking, Betty,” said her brother. “You
never had a chance to take Aunt Mary for better, for worse—I have.”

“I’m not alarmed,” said she, “I’m very courageous. I’m sure I’ll
succeed.”

“Can the mender of ways—other people’s ways—come in?” asked a voice at
the door.

It was Mitchell’s voice, and he came in without waiting for an
invitation.

“Is it time that I went?” Mrs. Rosscott asked him, anxiously.

“Half an hour yet.”

“Oh, I say Jack,” cried Burnett, “let’s boil some water in the
witch-hazel pan, and make a rarebit in the poultice pan, and have some
tea here.”

“Sure,” said Jack, suddenly become his blithe and buoyant self again.
“You just take off your hat and look the other way, Mrs. Rosscott, and
we’ll have you a lunch in a jiffy.”

Chapter Twelve
A Trap For Aunt Mary

In Aunt Mary’s part of the country the skies had been crying themselves
sick for the last six weeks. The cranberry bog was a goner forever, it
was feared, and a little house, very handy for sorting berries in, had
had its foundations undermined, and disappeared beneath the face of the
waters also.

Under such propitious circumstances, Aunt Mary sat by her own
particular window and looked sternly and severely out across the garden
and down the road. Lucinda sat by the other window sewing. Lucinda
hadn’t changed materially, but her general appearance struck her
mistress as more irritating than ever. Everything and everybody seemed
to have become more and more irritating ever since Jack had been
disinherited. Of course, it was right that he should have been
disinherited, but Aunt Mary hadn’t thought much beforehand as to what
would happen afterward, and it was too aggravating to have him turn out
so well just when she had lost all patience with him and so cast him
off forever, and for him to develop such a beautiful character, all of
a sudden too—just as if education and good advice had been his undoing
and seclusion and illness were the guardian angels arrived just in time
to save him from the evil effects thereof.

It hadn’t occurred to Aunt Mary that people keep on living just the
same even after they have been cut out of a will. And she never had
counted on Jack’s taking his bitter medicine in the spirit he was
manifesting. She had not calculated any of the possible effects of her
hasty action very maturely, but she certainly had not anticipated a
lamblike submission to even the harshest of her edicts, nor had she
expected Jack to be one who would strictly observe the Bible
regulations and so return good for evil—in other words, write her now
when he had never written her in the bygone years (unless under
sharpest financial stress of circumstances).

Yet such was the case. Jack had become a “ready letter-writer” ever
since his removal to the city, whither some kind friends had invited
him directly he could leave his sick-room. Aunt Mary did not know who
the friends were and had hesitated somewhat as to opening the first
letter. But it had borne no sting—being instead most sweetly pathetic,
and since then, others had followed with touching frequency. Their
polished periods fell upon the old lady’s stony hardness of heart with
the persistent frequency of the proverbial drop of water. After the
second she had ceased to regard the instructions given Lucinda as to
mentioning her nephew’s name, and after the third he became again her
favorite topic of conversation.

It seemed that the poor boy had had the misfortune to contract measles,
and in his weakened state the disease had nearly proved fatal. You can
perhaps divine the effect of this statement on the grand-aunt, and the
further effect of the words: “But never mind, Aunt Mary,” with which he
concluded the brief narration.

Aunt Mary had tried to snort and had sniffed instead; she had turned
back to the first page, read, “All my head has been shaved, but I don’t
care about having any more fun, anyhow,” and had let the letter fall in
her lap. Every time that she had thought since of “our boy,” her anger
had fallen hotter upon whoever was handiest. Lucinda (who was used to
it) lived under a figurative rain of cinders, and thrived
salamander-like in their midst; but Arethusa—who had come up for a
week—found herself totally unable to stand the endless lava and boiling
ashes, and fled back to the bosom of Mr. Arethusa the third morning
after her arrival.

“I’ve got to go, I find,” she had yelled the night before her
departure.

“I certainly wish you would,” replied her aunt. “I’m a great believer
in married women paying attention at home before they begin to pry into
their neighbors’ affairs. It’s a good idea. Most generally—most
always.”

This was bitterly unkind, since Arethusa was in the habit of taking the
long journey purely out of a sense of duty and to keep Lucinda up to
the mark; but grateful appreciation is rarely ever a salient point in
the character of an autocrat.

“I’m glad she’s gone,” Aunt Mary told Lucinda, when they were left
together once more. “She puts me beyond all patience. She chatters
gibberish that I can’t make out a word of for an hour at a time, and
then, all of a sudden, she screams, ‘Dinner’s ready,’ or something
equally silly, in a voice like a carvin’ knife. It’s enough to drive a
sane person stark, raving mad. It is.”

Lucinda acquiesced with a nod. Lucinda herself was glad that Arethusa
had gone. She resented the manner in which the latter always looked
over the preserve closet and counted the silver. Nothing was ever
missing, because Lucinda was as honest as a day twenty-five hours long,
but the more honest those of Lucinda’s caliber are, the more mad they
get if they feel that they are being watched. So Lucinda acquiesced
with a nod.

The mistress and maid were sitting alone together, with the June rain
falling without, and it was that pleasantly exciting hour which comes
only in the country and is known as “about mail-time.”

“There’s Joshua now,” Aunt Mary exclaimed, presently, “I see him
turnin’ in the gate. He’ll be at the door before you get there,
Lucinda,—he will. There, he’s twistin’ his wheel off. He’s tryin’ to
hold Billy an’ hold the letters an’ whistle, all at once. Why don’t you
go to him, Lucinda? Can’t you hear a whistle that I can see? Or, if you
can’t hear the whistle, can’t you hear me? Do you think whoever wrote
those letters would be much pleased if they could see you so slow about
gettin’ them? Do—”

Just here the old lady, turning toward Lucinda, perceived that she had
been gone—Heaven knew how long. She felt decidedly vexed at finding
herself to be in the wrong, rubbed her nose impatiently, and waited in
a temper to match the rubbing.

“My Lord! how slow she is!” she thought. “Well, if I don’t die of old
age first, I presume I’ll get my letters some time. Maybe.”

As a matter of fact, the door had blown shut behind Lucinda, and the
latter personage was making her way, with well-hoisted skirts, around
the house to the back door. She didn’t pass the window where the
Argus-eyed was looking forth; because that lady had strong opinions of
those who let doors bang behind them without their own volition.

Five minutes later the maid did finally appear with one letter.

“I thought you was waitin’ to bring to-morrow’s mail at the same time,”
said Aunt Mary, icily.

Then she found that the letter was from Jack, and Lucinda was
completely forgotten in the pleasure of opening and reading it.

DEAR AUNT MARY:

It seems so strange how I’m just learning the pleasure of writing
letters. I enjoy it more every day. When I see a pen I can hardly keep
from feeling that I ought to write you directly. I think of you, then,
because I’m thinking of you most always. It seems as if I never
appreciated you before, Aunt Mary.

I want to tell you something that I know will make you happy. I’ve
never made you very happy Aunt Mary, but I’m going to begin now. I’ve
got a place where I can earn my own living, and I’m going to work just
as soon as I am strong enough. I’m as tickled as a baby over it. I’ll
lay you any odds I get to be a richer man than the other John Watkins.
I reckon money was bad for me, Aunt Mary, and I can see that you’ve
done just the right thing to make a man of me. That isn’t surprising,
because you always did do just the right thing, Aunt Mary; it was I
that always did just the wrong thing, but I’m straightened out now and
this time it’s forever—you just wait and see.

There’s one thing bothers me some, and that is I don’t get strong very
fast. They want me to take a tonic, but I don’t think a tonic would
help me much. I feel so sort of blue and depressed, and perhaps that’s
natural, for Bob’s away most of the time and I’m here all alone. It’s a
big house and sort of lonely and sometimes I find myself imagining how
it would seem to have someone from home in it with me, and I find
myself almost crying—I do, for a fact, Aunt Mary.

Next week, Bob is going to be away more than usual, and I’m dreading it
awfully; but never mind, Aunt Mary, I don’t want to make you blue,
because honestly I don’t think I’m going into a decline, even if the
doctor does. And, after all, if I did sort of dwindle away it wouldn’t
matter much, for I’m not worth anything, and no one knows that as well
as myself—except you, Aunt Mary. I must stop because it’s nine o’clock
and time I was in bed. I’ve got some socks to wash out first, too; you
see, I’m learning how to economize just as fast as I can. It’s only two
miles to my work, and I’m going to walk back and forth always—that’ll
be between fifty cents and a dollar saved each week. I’m figuring on
how to live on my salary and never have a debt, and you’ll be proud of
me yet, Aunt Mary—if I don’t die first.

Think of me all alone here next week. If I wasn’t steadfast as a rock I
believe I’d do something foolish just to get out of myself. But never
mind, Aunt Mary, it’s all right.

Your afft. nephew,
JOHN WATKINS, JR., DENHAM.

When Lucinda returned from drying her feet, Aunt Mary had her
handkerchief in one hand and spectacles in the other.

“Saints and sinners!” cried the maid, in a voice that grated with
sympathy. “He ain’t writ to say he’s dead, is he?”

“No,” said Aunt Mary; “but he isn’t as well as he makes out. There’s no
deceivin’ me, Lucinda!”

“Dear! dear!” cried the Trusty and True; “is that so? What’s to be
done? Do you want Joshua to run anywhere?”

Aunt Mary suddenly regained her composure.

“Run anywhere?” she asked, with her usual bitter intonation. “If you
ain’t the greatest fool I ever was called upon to bed and board,
Lucinda! Will you kindly explain to me how settin’ Joshua trottin’ is
goin’ to do any mortal good to my poor boy away off there in that
dreadful city?”

“He could telegraph to Miss Arethusa,” Lucinda suggested. The
suggestion bespoke the superior moral quality of Lucinda’s make-up—her
own feeling toward Arethusa being considered.

“I don’t want her,” said Aunt Mary with a positiveness that was final.
“I don’t want her. My heavens, Lucinda, ain’t we just had enough of
her? Anyhow, if you ain’t, I have. I don’t want her, nor no livin’ soul
except my trunk; an’ I want that just as quick as Joshua can haul it
down out of the attic.”

“You ain’t thinkin’ of goin’ travelin’!” the maid cried in
consternation; “you can’t never be thinkin’ of _that?_”

“No,” said her mistress with fine irony; “I want the trunk to make a
pie out of, probably.”

Lucinda was speechless.

“Lucinda,” her mistress said, after a few seconds had faded away
unimproved, “seems to me I mentioned wantin’ Joshua to get down a
trunk—seems to me I did.”

The maid turned and left the room. She felt more or less dazed. Nothing
so startling as Aunt Mary’s wanting a trunk had happened in years.
Disinheriting Jack was not in it by comparison. She went slowly away to
find Joshua and found him in the farther end of the rear woodhouse—John
Watkins, like several of his ilk, having marked each forward step in
the world by a back extension of his house.

Joshua was chopping wood; his ax was high in the air. He also was calm
and unsuspecting.

“She’s goin’ to the city all alone!” Lucinda’s voice suddenly
proclaimed behind him.

The ax fell.

“Who says so?” its handler demanded, facing about in surprise.

“She says so.”

Joshua picked up the ax and poised it afresh. He was himself again.

“She’ll go then,” he said calmly.

Lucinda marched around in front of him, and planted herself firmly
among the chips.

“Joshua Whittlesey!”

“We can’t help it,” said Joshua stolidly. “We’re here to mind her. If
she wants to go to New York, or to change her will, all we’ve got to do
is to be simple witnesses.”

“She don’t want Miss Arethusa telegraphed,” said Lucinda.

“I don’t blame her,” said Joshua; “if I was her and if I was goin’ to
New York I wouldn’t want no one telegraphed.”

“She wants her trunk out of the attic.”

“Then she’ll get her trunk out of the attic. When does she want it?”

“She wants it now.”

[Illustration: “She’s goin’ to the city all alone!’ Lucinda’s voice
suddenly proclaimed behind him.”]

“Then she’ll get it now,” said Joshua. From the general trend of this
and other remarks of Joshua the reader will readily divine why he had
been in Aunt Mary’s employ for thirty years, and had always been
characterized by her as “a most sensible man,” and anyone who had seen
the alacrity with which the trunk was brought and the respectful
attention with which Aunt Mary’s further commands were received would
have been forced to coincide in her opinion.

The packing of the trunk was a task which fell to Lucinda’s lot and was
performed under the eagle eye of her mistress. Aunt Mary’s ideas of
what she would require were delightfully unsophisticated and brought up
short on the farther-side of her tooth brush and her rubbers.
Nevertheless she agreed in Lucinda’s suggestions as to more extensive
supplies.

Late that afternoon Joshua drove into town (amidst a wealth of mud
spatters) and dispatched the answer to Jack’s letter. Aunt Mary was
urged to haste by several considerations, some well defined, and others
not so much so. To Lucinda she imparted her terrible anxiety over the
dear boy’s health, but not even to herself did she admit her much more
terrible anxiety lest Arethusa or Mary should suddenly appear and
insist on accompanying her. She wanted to go, but she wanted to go
alone.

Jack telegraphed a response that night, and his aunt left by the Monday
morning train. She had a six o’clock breakfast, and drove into town at
a quarter of nine so as to be absolutely certain not to miss the train.
Joshua drove, with the trunk perched beside him. It was a small and
unassuming trunk, but Aunt Mary was not one who believed in putting on
airs just because she was rich. Lucinda sat on the back seat with her
mistress.

“I’m sure I hope you’ll enjoy yourself,” she said.

“Of course he’s nothing but a boy,” Aunt Mary replied,—“an’ I’ve told
you a hundred times that boys will be boys and we mustn’t expect
otherwise.”

They arrived on time, and only had an hour and three-quarters to wait
in the station. Toward the last Aunt Mary grew very nervous for fear
something had happened to the train; but it came to time according to
the waiting-room clock. Joshua put her aboard, and she soon had nothing
left to worry over except the wonder as to whether Jack would be on
hand to meet her or not.

Joshua drove back home, let Lucinda out at the door, and put the horse
up before going in to where she sat in solitary glory.

“I wonder what _he’s_ up to?” she said with a pleasant sense of
unlimited freedom as to the subject and duration of the conversation.

“Suthin’, of course,” was the answer.

“Do you s’pose he’s really sick?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Do you s’pose she thinks he’s really sick?”

“Mebbe.”

“Ain’t you goin’ to sit down, Joshua?”

“I don’t see nothin’ to make me sit down here for.”

“What do you think of her going?” she said, as he walked toward the
door.

“I think she’ll have a good time.”

“At her age?”

“Havin’ a good time ain’t a matter o’ age,” said Joshua. “It’s a matter
o’ bein’ willin’ to have a good time.”

Lucinda screwed her face up mightily.

“If I was sure she’d be gone for a week,” she said, “I’d go a-visitin’
myself.”

“She’ll be gone a week,” said Joshua; and the manner and matter of his
speech were both those of a prophet.

Then he went out and the door slammed to behind him.

Chapter Thirteen
Aunt Mary Entrapped

Aunt Mary’s arrival in the city just coincided with the arrival of that
day’s five o’clock. Five o’clock in early June is very bright daylight,
therefore she was rather bewildered when the train pulled up in the
darkness and electricity of the station’s confusion. The change from
sunlight to smoke blinded her somewhat and the view from the car window
did not restore her equanimity. When the porter, to whom she had been
discreetly recommended by Joshua, came for her bags, she felt woefully
distressed and not at all like her usual self.

“Oh, do I have to get out?” she said. “I ain’t been in this place for
twenty-five years, and I was to be met.”

The porter’s grin hovered comfortingly over her head.

“You can stay here jus’ ’s long as you like, ma’am,” he yelled, in the
voice of a train dispatcher. “I’ll send your friends in when they
inquiahs.”

Aunt Mary eyed him gratefully, and gave him the nickel which she had
been carefully holding in her hand for the last hour.

Then she looked up, and saw Jack!

A perfectly splendid Jack, in resplendent attire, handsome, beaming,
with a big bouquet of violets in his hand!

“For you, Aunt Mary,” he said, and dropped them into her lap, and
hugged her fervently. She clung to him with a cling that forgot the
immediate past, disinheriting and all. Oh! she was so glad to see him!

The porter approached with a beneficent look.

“Has he taken good care of you, Aunt Mary?” Jack asked, as the man
gathered up the things and they started to leave the car.

“Yes, indeed,” Aunt Mary declared.

So Jack gave the porter a dollar.

Then they left the train.

“I was so worried,” Aunt Mary said, as she went along the platform
hanging on her nephew’s arm. “I thought you’d met with an accident.”

“I couldn’t get on until the rest got off,” he said, gazing down on her
with a smile; “but I was on hand, all right. My, but it’s good to think
that you’re here, Aunt Mary! Maybe you think that I don’t appreciate
your taking all this trouble for me, but I do, just the same.”

Aunt Mary smiled all over. Everyone who passed them was smiling, too,
and that added to the general joy of the atmosphere. Aunt Mary felt
proud of Jack, and rejoiced as to herself. Her content with life in
general was, for the moment, limitless. She did not stop to dissect the
sources of her delight. She was not in a critical mood just then.

“Why don’t you stick those flowers in your belt, Aunt Mary?” her nephew
asked, as they penetrated the worst of the human jungle, and the
preservation of the violets appeared to be the main question of the
day. “That’s what the girls do.”

His aunt looked vaguely down at herself. She had no belt to stick her
violets in. She wore no belt. She wore a basque. A basque is a beltless
something that you can’t remember, but that females did, once upon a
time, cover the upper half of their forms with. Basques buttoned down
the front with ten to thirty buttons, and may be studied at leisure in
any good collection of daguerreotypes. Ladies like Aunt Mary are apt to
scorn such futilities as waning styles after they pass beyond a certain
age, and for that reason there was no place for Jack’s violets.

“Never mind,” he said cheerfully, having followed her dubiousness with
his understanding. “Just hang on to them a minute longer, and we’ll be
out of all this.”

His words came true, and they finally did emerge from the seething mass
and found a carriage, the door of which happened to be standing
mysteriously open. Within, upon the small seat, some omniscient hands
had already deposited Aunt Mary’s bags. It did not take long to stow
Aunt Mary, face to her luggage, and she was barely established there
before her trunk came, too; and, although the coachman looked so
gorgeous, he was nevertheless obliging enough to allow it to couch
humbly at his feet.

Then they rolled away.

Jack sat sideways and looked at his aunt, holding her hand. His eyes
were unfeignedly happy, and his companion matched his eyes. Neither
seemed to recollect that one was bitterly angry, and that the other was
on the verge of melancholia. Instead, Jack declared fervently:

“Aunt Mary, I’ve made up my mind to give you the time of your life!”

And Aunt Mary drew a sigh of relief in his words and anticipation of
their fulfillment.

“I’ll be happy takin’ care of you,” she said, benevolently. “My!—but
your letter scared me. An’ yet you look well.”

He laughed.

“It’s the knowing you were coming that’s done that, Aunt Mary. You
ought to have seen me when I got your telegram. I almost turned a
somersault.”

Aunt Mary smiled rapturously and patted his hand.

And just then they drew up in front of the house. She looked out, and
her face fell a trifle.

“It’s awful high and narrow,” she said.

“They all are,” Jack replied, opening the carriage door and jumping out
to receive her.

The door at the top of the steps opened, and a man came down for the
bags. In the hall above, a pretty maid waited with a welcoming smile.

Jack piloted his aunt, first up the entrance steps, and then up the
staircase within, and led her to the lovely room which had been vacated
for her. The maid followed with tea and biscuits, and the man brought
the luggage and ranged it unobtrusively in a corner. There was a lavish
richness about everything which made Aunt Mary and her trunk appear as
gray and insignificant as a pair of mice, by contrast; but she didn’t
feel it, and so she didn’t mind it.

Jack kissed her tenderly.

“Welcome to town, Aunt Mary,” he said heartily, “and may you never live
to look upon this day as other than the luckiest of your life!” Then,
turning to the servant, he said:

“Janice, you see that you do all that money can buy for my aunt.”

The maid courtesied. She had arranged the tray upon a little table and
the spout of the tea pot and the round hole in the middle of the
toast-cover were each pouring forth a pleasant suggestion.

Aunt Mary began at once to haul forth her keys.

“Why, Aunt Mary,” Jack cried, wondering if her nose was deaf, too, or
whether she didn’t feel hungry, “don’t you see your tea? Or don’t you
want any?”

Aunt Mary thumbed her trunk key.

“I want a nightgown,” she said; “maybe I’ll want something else later.
Maybe.”

“You’re not going to _bed!_”

She drew herself up.

“I guess I can if I want to; I guess I can. There’s the bed and here’s
me.”

“Whatever are you saying? It isn’t half-past six o’clock.”

“I’m not _prayin_’ about anything,” said the old lady. “I don’t pray
about things. I do ’em when needful. And when I’m tired I go to bed.”

“All right, Aunt Mary,” with sugary sweetness and lamb-like
submissiveness. “I thought we’d dine out together, but if you don’t
want to, we needn’t. And if you feel like it when you waken, we can.”

“Dine out,” said Aunt Mary, blankly; “has the cook left? I never was a
great approver of goin’ and eatin’ at boarding houses.”

“Well, never mind,” Jack said in a key pitched to rhyme with high C.
“I’ll leave you now—and we can see about everything later.”

He kissed her, and retired from the room.

“Did he say we’re goin’ out to dinner?” Aunt Mary asked, when she was
left alone with the maid, who hurried to take her bonnet and shawl, and
get her into juxtaposition with the tea-tray as rapidly as possible.

“Yes, ma’am,” the girl screamed, nodding.

“I don’t want to,” said the old lady firmly. “Lots of trouble comes
through gettin’ out of house habits. I’ve come here to take care of a
sick boy and not to go gallivantin’ round myself. I’ve seen the evils
of gallivantin’ a good deal lately and I don’t want to see no more. Not
here and not nowhere.”

Then she began to eat and drink and reflect, all at the same time.

“By the way, what’s your name?” she asked, suddenly. “Jack didn’t tell
me.”

“Janice, ma’am.”

“Granite?” said Aunt Mary. “What a funny idea to name you that! Did
they call you for the tinware or for the rocks?”

“I don’t know,” shrieked Janice, who was busily occupied in unpacking
the traveler’s trunk.

Her new mistress watched her with a critical eye at first, but it
became a more or less sleepy eye as the warmth of the tea meandered
slowly through its owner. There was a battle within Aunt Mary’s brain;
she wanted to please Jack, and she was almost dead with sleep.

“Do you think that I ought to try and go out with my nephew to-night?”
she asked Janice.

“If it was me, I should go,” cried the maid.

“I never was called slow before,” Aunt Mary said, bridling. “I’ll thank
you to remember your place, young woman.”

Janice explained.

“Oh! I didn’t hear plainly,” said Aunt Mary. “I don’t always. Well go
or not go, I’ve _got_ to sleep first. I’m dreadfully sleepy, and I’ve
always been a great believer in sleepin’ when you’re sleepy.”

The fact of the sleepiness was so evident that no attempt was made to
gainsay it. Janice brought down a quilt from the closet and tucked her
charge up luxuriously on the great bed. Five minutes later she was in
dreamland.

Jack came in about seven and looked at her.

“She mustn’t be disturbed,” he said thoughtfully. “If she wakes up
before ten we’ll go out then.”

She awoke about nine, and when she opened her eyes the first thing that
she saw was Janice, sitting near by.

“I feel real good,” said Aunt Mary.

“I’m so glad,” yelled Janice, and smiled, too.

The old lady sat up.

“I believe I could have gone out, after all,” she said. “Only I don’t
want to take dinner anywhere.”

Then she paused and reflected. It was surprising how good she felt and
how she did want to make Jack happy. “After all boys will be boys,” she
thought, tenderly, “an’ I ain’t but seventy, so I don’t see why I
shouldn’t go out with him if he wants to. I’m a great believer in doin’
what you want to—I mean, in doin’ what other folks want you to. At any
rate I’m a great believer in it sometimes. To-day—this time.”

“Your nephew is waiting,” the maid howled. “Shall I tell him you want
to go after all?”

“Is it late?” the old lady inquired.

“Oh, dear, no!”

“Wouldn’t you go if you was me?” asked the old lady.

Janice smiled.

“Indeed I would.”

Aunt Mary rose. A flood of metropolitan fever suddenly surged up and
around and over and through her.

“Tell him I’ll be down in five minutes,” she said.

“Can you change in that time?” Janice stopped to shriek.

“What should I change for?” Aunt Mary demanded in astonishment. “Ain’t
I all dressed now?”

Janice did not attempt to shriek any counter-advice, and while she was
gone to find Jack, her mistress brushed herself in some places, soaped
herself in others, and considered her toilet made. When Janice returned
she caught up a loose lock of hair, and put the placket-hole of her
skirt square in the middle of Aunt Mary’s back, and dared go no
further. There was an air even about the back of Jack’s influential
aunt which forbade too much liberty to those dealing with her.

Chapter Fourteen
Aunt Mary En Fête

[Illustration: Aunt Mary en Fête. May Robson as “Aunt Mary.”]

Aunt Mary descended the stairs about half-past nine; she thought it was
about a quarter to eight, but the difference between the hour that it
was and the hour that she thought that it was will be all the same a
hundred years from now.

Jack came out of the Louis XIV. drawing room when he heard her step in
the hall. There was another young man with him.

“This is my friend Burnett, Aunt Mary,” her nephew roared. “You must
excuse his not bowing lower, but you know he broke his collarbone
recently.”

Aunt Mary shook hands warmly; she knew all about the ribs and the
collarbone, because they had formed big items in the testimony which
had momentarily and as momentously relegated Jack to the comradeship of
the devil himself, in her eyes. However, she recalled them merely as
facts now—not at all in a disagreeable way—and gave Burnett an extra
squeeze of good-fellowship, as she said:

“You had a narrow escape, young man.”

“I didn’t have any escape at all,” said Burnett. “The escape went down
at the back, and I had to jump from a cornice.”

“Burnett is going out to dine with us, Aunt Mary,” said Jack. “There’s
so little he can eat on account of his ribs that he’s a good dinner
guest for me.”

Jack’s aunt felt vaguely uncomfortable over this allusion to her
grand-nephew’s circumstances, and coughed in slight embarrassment.

Burnett opened the door, and the carriage lamp shone below. (Is there
ever anything more delightfully suggestive than a carriage lamp shining
down below?) They took her down and put her in, and the carriage rolled
away.

It was that June when “Bedelia” covered nearly the whole of the
political horizon; it was the date of June when West Point, Vassar, the
Blue, the Red, the Black and Yellow and every known device for getting
rid of young and growing-up America are all cast loose at once on our
fair land. The streets were a scene of glorious confusion, and but for
Aunt Mary no considerations could have kept Burnett’s collarbone and
Jack’s melancholia cooped up in a closed carriage. As it was, they were
both fidgeting like two youthful Uncle Sams in a European railway
coupé, when the latter suddenly exclaimed: “Here we are!” and threw
open the door as he spoke. Then he got out and Burnett got out and
between them they got Aunt Mary out.

Aunt Mary regarded the awning and carpet and general glitter with a
more or less appalled gaze.

“Looks like—” she began; and was interrupted by a voice at her side:

“Hello, Jack!”

“Hello, Clover!”

She turned and saw him of the pale mustache whom we once met in Mrs.
Rosscott’s drawing room. He was in no wise altered since that occasion
except that his attire was slightly more resplendent and he had on a
silk hat.

Jack shook hands warmly and then he turned to his relative.

“Aunt Mary, this is my friend Clover; he’s often heard me speak of
you.”

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Rover,” said Aunt Mary, cordially, and she, too,
shook hands with that cordiality that flourishes beyond city limits.

Her nephew bent over her ear-trumpet.

“Clover!” he howled, with all the strength he owned.

“I heard before,” said Aunt Mary, somewhat coldly.

“Come on and dine with us, Clover,” said Jack; “that’ll make four.” (By
the way, isn’t it odd how many people ask their friends to dinner for
the simple reason that, arithmetically considered, each counts as one!)

“All right, I will,” said Clover, in his languid drawl.

Aunt Mary saw his lips.

“It’s no use my deceivin’ you as to my bein’ a little hard of hearin’,”
she said to him, “because you can see my ear-trumpet; so I’ll trouble
you to say that over again.”

“All right, I will,” Clover wailed, good-humoredly.

“What?” asked Aunt Mary. “I didn’t—”

Jack cut her short by leading the party inside.

The scene within was as gorgeous with golden stucco as the dining-room
of a German liner. Aunt Mary was so overcome that she traversed half
the room before she became aware of the mighty attention which she and
her three escorts were attracting. In truth, it is not every day that
three good-looking young men take a tiny old lady, a bunch of violets
and an ear-trumpet out to dine at ten o’clock.

“Everyone’s lookin’,” she said to Jack.

“It’s your back, Aunt Mary,” he replied, in a voice that shook some
loose golden flakes from the ceiling. “I tell you, not many women of
your age have a back like yours, and don’t you forget it.”

The compliment pleased Aunt Mary, because she had all her life been
considered round-shouldered. It also pleased her because she never had
received many compliments. The Aunt Marys of this world love flattery
just as dearly as the Mrs. Rosscotts; the sad part of life is that they
rarely get any. The women like Mrs. Rosscott know why the Aunt Marys go
unflattered, but the Aunt Marys never understand. It’s all sad—and
true—and undeniable.

They went to a table, and were barely seated when another man came up.

“Hello, Jack!”

“Hello, Mitchell!”

It was he of Scotch ancestry. Jack sprang up and greeted him with
warmth, then he turned to Aunt Mary.

“Aunt Mary,” he screamed, “this is my friend”—he paused, put on all
steam and ploughed right through—“Herbert Kendrick Mitchell.”

“I didn’t catch that at all,” said Aunt Mary, calmly, “but I’m just as
glad to meet the gentleman.”

Mitchell clasped her hand with an expression as burning as if it was
real.

“I declare,” he yelled straight at her, “if this isn’t what I’ve been
dreaming towards ever since I first knew Jack.”

Aunt Mary fairly shone.

“Dear me,” she began, “if I’d known—”

“You’d better dine with us, Mitchell,” said Jack; “that’ll make five.”

“It won’t make but three for me,” said Mitchell. “I haven’t had but two
dinners before to-night.”

Clover smiled because he heard, and Aunt Mary smiled because she
didn’t, but was happy anyway. She had altogether forgotten that she had
demurred at dining out. They all sat down and shook out their napkins.
Mitchell and Clover shook Aunt Mary’s for her and gave it a beautiful
cornerways spread across her lap.

Then the waiter laid another plate for Mitchell, and brought oyster
cocktails for everyone. Aunt Mary eyed hers with early curiosity and
later suspicion; and she smelled of it very carefully.

“I don’t believe they’re good oysters,” she said.

“Yes, they are,” cried Mitchell reassuringly. His voice, when he turned
it upon her, was pitched like a clarionet. The blind would surely have
seen as well as the deaf have heard had there been any candidates for
miracles in his immediate vicinity. “They’re first-class,” he added,
“you just go at them and see.”

The reassured took another whiff.

“You can have mine,” she said directly afterwards; and there was an air
of decision about her speech which brooked no opposition. Yet Mitchell
persisted.

“Oh, no,” he yelled; “you must learn how. Just throw your head back and
take ’em quick—after the fashion that they eat raw eggs, don’t you
know?”

“But she can’t,” said Clover. “There’s too much, particularly as she
isn’t used to them. I’ll tell you, Miss Watkins,” he cried, hoisting
his own voice to the masthead, “you eat the oysters, and leave the
cocktail. That’s the way to get gradually trained into the wheel.”

Aunt Mary thought some of obeying; she fished out one oyster, wiped it
carefully with a bit of bread, regarded it with more than dubious
countenance, and then suddenly decided not to.

“I’d rather be at home when I try experiments,” she said, decidedly;
and the waiter carried off her cocktail and gave her food that was good
beyond question thereafter.

The dinner went with zest. It was an enlivening party that consumed it,
and what they consumed with it enlivened them still more. The gentlemen
soon reached the point where they could laugh over jokes they could not
understand, and the one lady member became equally merry over wit that
she did not hear. She forgot for the nonce that there were any phases
of life in which she was not a believer, and whether this was owing to
the surrounding gayety or to the champagne which they persuaded her to
taste it is not my province to explain.

“Now we must lay our lines for events to come,” Jack said, when they
advanced upon the dessert and prepared to occupy an extensive territory
of ices, fruit, and jellied something or other. “It would be a sin for
Aunt Mary to leave this famous battlefield without a few honorable
scars! We must take her out in a bubble for one thing and—”

“In mine!” cried Clover. “To-morrow! Why can’t she?—I held up my hand
first?”

“All right,” said Jack; “to-morrow she’s your’s. At four o’clock.”

“She must have goggles,” cried Mitchell. “She must have goggles and be
all fixed up, and when you have got her the goggles and she has been
all fixed up, I ask, as a last boon, that I may go along, just so as to
see everyone who sees her.”

“We’ll all go,” Clover explained. “I’ll ‘chuff’ her myself and then
there’ll be room for everyone.”

“To the auto and to to-morrow!” cried Burnett, hastily pouring out a
fresh toast, which even Aunt Mary applauded, not at all knowing what
she was applauding.

“And now for the next day,” said Jack. “I think I’ll give her a
box-party. Don’t you want to go to the theater in a box, Aunt Mary?”

“Go where in a box?” said Aunt Mary, starting a little. “I didn’t quite
catch that.”

“To the theater,” Jack yelled.

“To the theater,” repeated his aunt a trifle blankly, “I—”

“And the next day,” said Mitchell suddenly (he had been reflecting
maturely), “I’ll take you all up the sound in my yacht.”

“Oh, hurrah,” cried Burnett, “that’ll be bully! And the day after I’ll
give her a picnic.”

“Time of your life, Aunt Mary,” Jack shrieked in her ear-trumpet; “time
of your life!”

“Dear me!” said Aunt Mary, “I don’t just—”

“Aunt Mary! glasses down!” cried Clover; “may she live forever and
forever.”

“To Aunt Mary, glasses up,” said Mitchell. “Glasses up come before
glasses down always. It’s one of the laws of Nature—human nature—also
of good nature. Here’s to Aunt Mary, and if she isn’t the Aunt Mary of
all of us here’s a hoping she may get there some day; I don’t just see
how, but I ask the indulgence of those present on the plea that I have
indulged quite a little myself to-night. Honi soit qui mal y pense; ora
pro nobis, Erin-go-Bragh. Present company being present, and impossible
to except on that account, we will omit the three cheers and choke down
the tiger.”

They all drank, and the dinner having by this time dwindled down to
coffee grounds and cheese crumbs a vote was taken as to where they
should go next.

Aunt Mary suggested home, but she was over-ruled, and they all went
elsewhere. She never could recollect where she went or what she saw;
but, as everyone else has been and seen over and over again, I won’t
fuss with detailing it.

The visitor from the country reached home in a carriage in the small
hours in the morning, and Janice received her, looking somewhat
nervous.

“This is pretty late,” she ventured to remind the bearers; but as they
didn’t seem to think so, and she was a maiden, wise beyond her years,
she spoke no further word, but went to work and undressed the aged
reveller, got her comfortably established in bed, and then left her to
get a good sleep, an occupation which occupied the weary one fully
until two that afternoon.

When she did at last open her eyes it was several minutes before she
knew where she was. Her brain seemed dazed, her intellect more than
clouded. It is a state of mind to which those who habitually go about
in hansoms at the hour of dawn are well accustomed, but to Aunt Mary it
was painfully new. She struggled to remember, and felt helplessly
inadequate to the task. Janice finally came in with a glass of
something that foamed and fizzed, and the victim of late hours drank
that and came to her senses again. Then she recollected.

“My! but I had a good time last night!” she said, putting her hand to
her head. “What time is it now, anyhow?”

“Breakfast time,” cried the handmaiden. “You’ll have just long enough
to eat and dress leisurely before you go out.”

“Oh!” said Aunt Mary blankly; “where ’m I goin’? Do you know?”

“Mr. Denham told me that you had promised to attend an automobile party
at four.”

“Oh, yes,” said Aunt Mary hastily. “I guess I remember. I guess I do. I
saw Jack wanted to go, so I said I’d go, too. I’m a great believer in
lettin’ the young enjoy themselves.”

She looked sharply at Janice as she spoke, but Janice was serene.

“I didn’t come to town to do anything but make Jack happy,” continued
Aunt Mary, “and I see that he won’t take any fresh air without I go
along—so I shall go too while I’m here. Mostly. As a general thing.”

“Mr. Mitchell called and left these flowers with his card,” Janice
said, opening a huge box of roses; “and a man brought a package. Shall
I open it?”

Aunt Mary’s wrinkles fairly radiated.

“Well, did I ever!” she exclaimed. “Yes; open it.”

Janice proceeded to obey, and the package was found to contain an
automobile wrap, a pair of goggles and a note from Clover.

“My gracious me!” cried Aunt Mary.

“Mr. Denham sent the violets,” Janice said, pointing to a great bowl of
lilac and white blossoms.

Just then the doorbell rang, and it was a ten-pound box of candy from
Burnett.

Aunt Mary collapsed among her pillows.

“I _never_ did!” she murmured feebly, and then she suddenly exclaimed:
“An’ to think of me livin’ up there all my life with plenty of money—”
she stopped short. I tell you when you come to New York on a mission
and stay for the Bacchanalia it is hard to hold consistently to either
standard.

But Janice had gone for her lady’s breakfast, and after the lady had
eaten it and had herself dressed for the day’s joys, Jack knocked at
the door.

“Well, Aunt Mary,” he roared, when he was let in, “if you don’t look
fine! You’re the freshest of the bunch to-day, sure. You’ll be ready
for another night to-night, and you’ve only to say where, you know.”

“Granite did my hair,” said his aunt; “you must praise her, not me.”

“And you’ve got your goggles all ready, too,” he continued. “Who sent
’em?”

“Oh, I shan’t wiggle,” said Aunt Mary “although I can’t see how it
could hurt if I did.”

“Come on and let’s dress her up,” said Jack to the maid, “Glory! what
fun!”

Thereupon they went to work and rigged the old lady out. She was
certainly a sight, for she stood by her own bonnet, and that failed to
jibe with the goggles.

Burnett was summoned in to view the proceedings, but just as he caught
the first glimpse he was taken with a fearful cramp in his broken ribs
and was forced to beat the hastiest sort of a retreat.

“I hope he’ll get over it and be able to go out with us,” said Aunt
Mary anxiously.

“I guess he’ll recover,” Jack yelled cheerfully. “Oh, there’s Clover!”

A sort of dull, ponderous panting sounded in the street without, and
let all the neighbors know that “The Threshing Machine” (as Clover had
christened his elephantine toy) was waiting for someone.

Its owner came in for a stirrup cup; Mitchell was with him. Both were
togged out as if entered for the annual Paris-Bordeaux.

Burnett brought out the cut-glass jugs.

“Ye gods and little fishes! Sapristi! Sacre bleu!” he said to his
friends. “Just you wait till you see our Aunt Mary!”

“Has she got ’em all on?” Clover asked.

“Has she got ’em all on!” said Burnett. “She has got ’em all on; and
how Jack held his own in the room with her I cannot understand. I took
one look, and if mine had been a surgical case of stitches the last
thread would have bust that instant. I don’t believe I dare go out with
you. This is a life and death game to Jack, and I won’t risk smashing
his future by not being able to keep sober in the face of Aunt Mary.”

“Oh, come on,” Clover urged in his wiry voice. “You needn’t look at
her; or, if you do look at her, you can look the other way right
afterwards, you know.”

“I’ll sit next to her,” Mitchell explained. “As a sitter by Aunt Mary’s
side I shone last night; and where a man has sat once, the same man can
surely sit again.”

Burnett hesitated, and just then voices were heard in the hall. Jack
and Janice were convoying Aunt Mary below.

Mitchell went out into the hall.

“Well, Miss Watkins,” he said, in a tone such as one would use to call
down Santos-Dumont, “I’m mighty glad to see you looking so well.”

Aunt Mary turned the goggles full upon him.

“A present from Mr. Clover,” she said smiling.

“I never knew him to take so much trouble for any lady before,” said
Mitchell; and as she arrived just then at the foot of the staircase he
pressed her proffered hand warmly and forthwith led her in upon the two
men in the library.

She looked exactly like a living edition of one of the bug pictures,
and Clover had to think and swallow fast and hard to keep from being
overcome. But he was true blue, and came out right side up. Aunt Mary
was acclaimed on all sides, and escorted to the “bubble.”

Burnett couldn’t resist going, too, at the last moment; but, as his
ribs were really tender yet, he sat in front with Clover. Jack and
Mitchell sat behind, and deftly inserted the honored guest between
them.

“It’s an even thing as to which is the ear-trumpet side,” Mitchell
said, as they all stood about preparatory to climbing in. “Of course,
that side don’t need to holler quite so loud; but then, to balance, he
may get his one and only pair of front teeth knocked out any minute.”

“I’ll take that side,” said Jack. “I’m used to fighting under the
inspiration of the trumpet.”

“And God be with you,” said his friend piously. “May he watch over you
and bring you out safe and whole—teeth, eyes, etc.”

“Come on,” said Clover impatiently; “don’t you know this thing’s
getting up power and you’re wasting it talking.”

“Curious,” laughed Burnett. “I never knew that it was gasolene that men
were consuming when they kept an automobile waiting.”

And then they got in and were off—a merry load, indeed.

“Dear me, but it’s a-goin’!” Aunt Mary exclaimed, as the thing began to
whiz and she felt suddenly impelled to clutch wildly at her flanking
escorts. “Suppose we met a dog.”

“We’d leave a floor mat,” shrieked Mitchell. “Oh, but isn’t this
great—greater—greatest?”

“Time of your life, Aunt Mary!” Jack howled, as they went over a
boarded spot in the pavement, and the old lady nearly went over the
back in consequence. “You’re in for the time of your life!”

“How do you like it?” yelled Clover, throwing a glance over his
shoulder.

Aunt Mary started to answer, but they came to four car tracks one after
another, and the successive shocks rendered her speechless.

“Where are we going?” Burnett asked.

“Nowhere,” said Clover. “Just waking up the machine.” And he turned on
another million volts as he spoke.

“Oh, my bonnet!” cried poor Aunt Mary, and that bit of her adornment
was in the street and had been run over four times before they could
slow up, turn around, and get back to the scene of its output.

It speaks volumes for the permeating atmosphere of “having the time of
your life” that its owner laughed when the wreck was shown to her.

“I don’t care a bit,” she said. “I can go down to Delmonico’s an’ get
me another to-morrow mornin’, easy.”

“What a trump you are, Aunt Mary!” said Jack admiringly. “Here,
Burnett, fish her out that extra cap from the cane rack; there’s always
one in the bottom. There—now you won’t take cold, Aunt Mary.”

The cap, with its fore-piece, was the crowning glory of Aunt Mary’s
get-up. The brain measurements of him who had bought the cap being to
its present wearer’s as five is to three, the effect of its
proportions, in addition to the goggles and the ear-trumpet, was such
as to have overawed a survivor of Medusa’s stare.

“Oh, I say,” said Mitchell, “it’s a sin to keep as good a joke as this
in the family! We must drive her around town until the night falls down
or the battery burns out.”

“I say so too,” said Burnett. “This is more sport than oiling railroad
tracks and seeing old Tweedwell brought up for it. Say, set her
a-buzzing again. It’s a big game, isn’t it?”

Clover thought so, with the result that they speeded through tranquil
neighborhoods and churned leisurely where the masses seethed until
countless thousands were wondering what under the sun those four young
fellows had in the back of their car.

The sad part about all good fun is that it has to end sooner or later;
and about six o’clock the whole party began to be aware that, if
refreshments were not taken, their end was surely close at hand. They
therefore called a brief halt somewhere to get what is technically
known as a “sandwich,” and the results were thoroughly satisfactory to
everyone but Aunt Mary. She took one bite of her sandwich, and then
opened it with an abruptness which merged into disgust when it proved
to be full of fish eggs.

“Why didn’t you tell me what it was made of?” she asked in annoyance.
“I feel just as if I’d swallowed a marsh—a green one!”

“That’s a shame!” said Clover indignantly. “I’ll get you something that
will take that taste out of your mouth double quick. Here!” he called
to a waiter, and then he gave the man certain careful directions.

The latter nodded wisely, and a few minutes later brought in a tiny
glass containing a pousse-café in three different colors.

“It’s a cocktail. Drink it quick,” Clover directed.

Aunt Mary demurred.

“I never drank a cocktail,” she began.

“No time like the present to begin,” said Clover, “you’ll have to learn
some day.”

“Cocktails,” said Mitchell, “are the advance guard of a newer and
brighter civilization. They—”

“If she’s going to take it at all she must take it now,” said Clover
authoritatively. “The green and the yellow are beginning to run
together. Quick now!”

His confiding guest drank quick and became the three different colors
quicker yet.

“What’s the matter?” Jack asked anxiously.

Aunt Mary was speechless.

“He mixed it wrong,” said Clover in a sad, discouraged tone. “What she
ought to have got first she got last, that’s all. The cocktail is
upside down inside of her, and the effect of it is upside down on the
outside of her.”

“Feel any better now, Aunt Mary?” Jack yelled.

“I can’t seem to keep the purple swallowed,” said the poor old lady. “I
want to go home. I’ve always been a great believer in going home when
you feel like I do now. In general—as a rule.”

“I would strongly recommend your obeying her wishes,” said Mitchell,
with great earnestness. “There’s a time for all things, and, in my
opinion, she’s had about all the queer tastes that she can absorb for
to-day. Things being as they are and mainly as they shouldn’t be, I
cast my vote in with what looks as if it would soon become the losing
side, and vote to bubble back for all we’re worth.”

There was a general acquiescence in his view of the case, which led
them all to pile into “The Threshing Machine” with unaffected haste and
rush Aunt Mary bedward as rapidly as was possible considering the hour
and the policemen.

Janice received her mistress with the tender welcome that every
prodigal may count on and was especially expeditious with tea and toast
and a robe de nuit. Aunt Mary sighed luxuriously when she felt herself
finally tucked up.

“After all, Granite,” she said dreamily, “there’s nothin’ like gettin’
stretched out to think it over—is there?”

But Janice was turning out the lights.

Chapter Fifteen
Aunt Mary Enthralled

Jack’s aunt slept long and dreamlessly again. That thrice-blessed sleep
which follows nights abroad in the metropolis.

When, toward four o’clock, Aunt Mary opened her eyes, she was at first
almost as hazy in her conceptions as she had found herself upon the
previous day.

“I feel as if the automobile was runnin’ up my back and over my head,”
she said, thoughtfully passing her hand along the machine’s imaginary
course. Then she rang her bell and Janice appeared from the room
beyond.

“I guess you’d better give me some of that that you gave me yesterday,”
the elderly lady suggested; “what do you think?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Janice—and went at once and brought it in separate
glasses on a tray, and mixed it by pouring, while Aunt Mary looked on
with an intuitive understanding that passed instinct and bordered on a
complete comprehension of things to her hitherto unknown.

“They’d ought to advertise that,” she said, as she set down the empty
glass a few seconds later. “There’d be a lot of folks who’d be glad to
know there was such a thing when they first wake up mornin’s
after—after—well, mornin’s after anythin’. It’s jus’ what you want
right off; it sort of runs through your hair and makes you begin to
remember.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Janice, turning to put down the tray, and then
crossing the room to seek something on the chimney-piece.

Aunt Mary gave a sudden twist,—as if the drink had infused an
effervescing energy into her frame. “Well what am I goin’ to do
to-day?” she asked.

“Mr. Denham has written out your engagements here,” said Janice,
handing her a jeweler’s box as she spoke.

Aunt Mary tore off the tissue paper with trembling haste—lifted the
cover—and beheld a tiny ivory and gold memoranda card.

“Well, that boy!” she ejaculated.

“Shall I read the list aloud to you?” the maid inquired.

“Yes, read it.”

So Janice read the dates proposed the night before and Aunt Mary sat up
in bed, held her ear-trumpet, and beamed beatifically.

“I don’t believe I ever can do all that,” she said when Janice paused;
“I never was one to rush around pell-mell, but I’ve always been a great
believer in lettin’ other folks enjoy themselves an’ I shall try not to
interfere.”

Janice hung the tiny memoranda up beside its owner’s watch and stood at
attention for further orders.

“But I d’n know I’m sure what I can wear to-night,” continued the one
in bed; “you know my bonnet was run over yesterday.”

“Was it?”

“Yes,—it was the most sudden thing I ever saw. I thought it was the top
of my head at first.”

“Was it spoiled?”

“Well, it wouldn’t do for me again and I don’t really believe it would
even do for Lucinda. We didn’t bring it home with us anyhow an’ so its
no use talkin’ of it any more. I’m sure I wish I’d brought my other
with me. It wasn’t quite as stylish, but it set so good on my head. As
it is I ain’t got any bonnet to wear an’ we’re goin’ in a box, Jack
says,—I should hate to look wrong in a box.”

“But ladies in boxes do not wear anything,” cried Janice reasuringly.

Aunt Mary jumped.

“Not _anything?_”

“On their heads.”

“Oh!—Well, then the bonnet half of me’ll be all right, but what _shall_
I wear on the rest of me? I don’t want to look out of fashion, you
know. My, but I wish I’d brought my Paisley shawl. I’ve got a Paisley
shawl that’s a very rare pattern. There’s cocoanuts in the border and a
twisted design of monkeys and their tails done in the center. An’ there
ain’t a moth hole in it—not one.”

Janice looked out of the window.

“I’ve got a cameo pin, too,” continued Aunt Mary reflectively. “My, but
that’s a handsome pin, as I remember it. It’s got Jupiter on it holdin’
a bunch of thunder and lightnin’ an’ receivin’ the news of somebody’s
bein’ born—I used to know the whole story. But, you see, I expected to
just be sittin’ by Jack’s bed and I never thought to bring any of those
dress-up kind of things,” she sighed.

Janice returned to the bed side.

“Hadn’t you better begin to dress?” she howled suggestively. “They are
going to dine here before going to the theater and dinner is ordered in
an hour.”

“Maybe I had,” said Aunt Mary, “but—oh dear—I don’t know what I _will_
wear!” She began to emerge from the bedclothes as she spoke.

“How would my green plaid waist do?” she asked earnestly.

“I think it would be lovely,” shrieked the maid.

“Well, shake it out then,” said Aunt Mary, “it ought to be in the
fashion—all the silk they put in the sleeves. An’ if you’ll do my hair
just as you did it yesterday—”

“Yes, I will.”

Then the labor of the toilette began in good earnest, and
three-quarters of an hour later Aunt Mary was done, and sitting by the
window while Janice laced her boots.

A rap sounded at the door.

“Come in,” cried the maid.

It was Jack with a regular fagot of American Beauties.

“Well, Aunt Mary,” he cried with his customary hearty greeting. “How!”

“How what?” asked Aunt Mary, whose knowledge of Sioux social customs
had been limited by the border line of New England.

Jack laughed. “How are you?” he asked in correction of his imperfect
phrasing. And then he handed over the rose wood.

“I’m pretty well,” said his aunt; “but, my goodness you mustn’t bring
me so many presents—you—”

Jack stopped her words with a kiss. “Now, Aunt Mary, don’t you scold,
because you’re my company and I won’t have it. This is my treat, and
just don’t you fret. What do you say to your roses?”

Aunt Mary looked a bit uneasy.

“They’re pretty big,” she hesitated.

“That’s the fashion,” said Jack; “the longer you can buy ’em the better
the girls like it. I tried to get you some eight feet long but they
only had two of that number and I wanted the whole bunch to match—”

He was interrupted by another rap on the door.

“Hallo!” he cried. “Come in.”

It was Mitchell with several dozen carnations, the most brilliant yet
prized—or priced.

“Well, I declare!” exclaimed Aunt Mary.

“For you, Miss Watkins,” cried the newcomer, gracefully offering his
homage, “with the assurance of my sincere regret that I came on the
scene too late to have been making a scene with you fifty years ago.”

“I didn’t quite catch that,” said Aunt Mary, rapturously. But never
mind,—Granite, get a tin basin or suthin’ for these flowers.”

“Where’s Burnett?” Jack asked the newcomer,—“isn’t he dressed? It’s
getting late.”

“He’s all right,” said Mitchell; “he and Clover are—here they are!”

The two came in together at that second. Clover’s mustache just showed
over the top of the largest bunch of violets ever constructed, and
Burnett bore with assiduous care a bouquet of orchids tied with a Roman
sash.

Aunt Mary leaned back and shut her eyes. If it hadn’t been for her
smile, they might possibly have feared for her life.

But she was only momentarily stunned by surpassing ecstasy.

“You’d better put some water in the bath-tub, Granite,” she said,
recovering, “nothing else will be big enough.”

The four young men drew up chairs and rivalled her smiles with theirs.

“I d’n know how I ever can thank you,” said the old lady warmly. “I’ve
always had such a poor opinion o’ life in cities, too!”

“Life in cities, my dear Miss Watkins,” screamed Mitchell, “is always
pictured as very black, but it’s only owing to the soft coal—not to the
people who burn it.”

Aunt Mary smiled again.

“I guess the bath-tub will be big enough to keep ’em fresh,” she said
simply, and Mitchell gave up and dried his forehead with his
handkerchief.

They dined at home upon this occasion and afterwards took two carriages
for the theater. Aunt Mary, Jack, Clover, the American Beauties and the
violets went in the first, and what remained of the party and the
floral decorations followed in the second.

“I mean to smoke,” said that part of the second load which habitually
answered to the name of Mitchell. “There is nothing so soothing when
you have thorns in your legs as a cigarette in your mouth.”

“Too—too;” laughed his companion. “Jimmy! but our aunt is game, isn’t
she?”

“To my order of thinking,” said Mitchell thoughtfully scratching a
match, “Aunt Mary has been hung up in cold storage just long enough to
have acquired the exactly proper gamey flavor. It cannot be denied that
to worn, worldly, jaded mortals like you and me, the sight of fresh,
ever bubbling, youthful enthusiasm like hers is as thrilling and
trilling and rilling as—as—as—” he paused to light his cigarette.

[Illustration: Aunt Mary and Her Escorts.]

“Yes, you’d better stutter,” said Burnett. “I thought you were running
ahead of your proper signals.”

“It isn’t that,” said Mitchell, puffing gently. “It is that I suddenly
recollected that I was alone with you, and my brains tell me that it is
a waste of brains to use them in the sense of a plural noun with you.
The word in your company,—my dear boy—only comes to me as a verb—as an
active verb—and dear knows how often I have itched to apply it
forcibly.”

Then they drew up in front of the theater and saw Aunt Mary being
unloaded just beyond.

“Great Scott, I feel as if I was a part of a poster!” said Burnett,
diving into the carriage depths for the last lot of flowers.

“I feel as if I were a part of the Revelation,” said Mitchell, “I
mean—the Revel-eration.”

They rapidly formed on somewhat after the plan of the famous “Marriage
under the Directoire.” Aunt Mary commanded the center-rush, leaning on
Jack’s arm, and the rest acted as half-backs, left wings, or
flower-bearers, just as the reader prefers.

They made quite a sensation as they proceeded to their box and more yet
when they entered it. They were late—very late—as is the privilege of
all box parties and their seating problem absorbed the audience to a
degree never seen before or since.

Jack put Aunt Mary and her green plaid waist in the middle and flanked
her with purple violets and red carnations. The ear-trumpet was laid
upon the orchids just where she could reach it easily. Then her escorts
took positions as a sort of half-moon guard behind and each held two or
three American Beauties straight up and down as if they were the
insignia of his rank and office.

The effect was gorgeous. The very actors saw and were interested at
once. They directed all their attention to that one box, and at the end
of the act the stage manager got the writer of the topical song on the
wire and had a brand new and very apropos verse added which brought
down the house.

Jack and his party caught on and clapped like mad, Aunt Mary beat the
front of the box with her ear-trumpet, and when Clover suggested that
she throw some flowers to the heroine she threw the orchids and came
near maiming the bass viol for life. Burnett rushed out between acts
and bought her a cane to pound with, Jack rushed out between more acts
and bought her a pair of opera glasses, Mitchell rushed out between
still further acts and procured her one of those Japanese fans which
they use for fire-screens, and agitated it around her during the rest
of the evening.

“Time of your life, Aunt Mary,” Jack vociferated under the cover of a
general chorus; “Time of your life!”

“Oh, my,” said Aunt Mary, heaving a great sigh, “seems if I’d _die_
when I think of Lucinda.”

They got out of the theater somewhat after eleven and Clover took them
all to a French café for supper, so that again it was pretty well along
into the day after when Janice regained her charge.

“Granite,” said Aunt Mary very solemnly, as she collapsed upon her bed
twenty minutes later yet, “put it down on that memoranda for me never
to find no fault with nothing ever again. Never—not ever—not never
again.”

The second day after was that which had been set for Mitchell’s
yachting party. They allowed a day to lapse between because a yachting
party has to begin early enough so that you can see to get on board.
Mitchell wanted his to begin early enough so that they could see the
yacht too.

“A yacht, Miss Watkins,” he said into the ear trumpet, “is a delight
that it takes daylight to delight in. If my words sound somewhat mixed,
believe me, it is the effect of what is to come casting its shadow
before. I speak with understanding and sympathy—you will know all
later.”

Aunt Mary smiled sweetly. Sometimes she thought that Mitchell was the
nicest of the three—times when she wasn’t talking to Clover or Burnett.

Jack took his aunt out to drive on the afternoon of the intervening day
and bought her a blue suit with a red tape around one arm, and some
rubbersoled shoes, and a yachting cap and a mackintosh. There was
something touching in Aunt Mary’s joyful confidence and
anticipation—she having never been cast loose from shore in all her
life.

“When do you s’pose we’ll get home?” she asked Jack.

“Oh, some time toward night,” he replied.

She smiled with a trust as colossal as Trusts usually are.

“I’m sure I shall have a good time,” she said. “I always liked to see
pictures of waves.”

“You’ll see the real things now, Aunt Mary,” cried her nephew heartily.
He was not a bit malicious, possessing a stomach whose equilibrium
could not conceive any other anatomical condition.

Janice, however, had doubts, and on the morning of the next day her
doubts deepened. She looked from the window and shook her head.

“Feel a fly?” inquired Aunt Mary.

“No, I see some clouds,” yelled her maid.

“I didn’t ask you to speak loud,” said the old lady. “I always hear
what you say. Always.”

Janice went out of the room and voiced her views of the weather to the
proprietors of the expedition. The proprietors were having an
uproarious breakfast on ham and eggs—all but Mitchell, who sat somewhat
aloof and contented himself with an old and reliable breakfast food
long known to his race.

“Are you really going to take her up the Sound to-day?” the maid
demanded of the merry mob.

“I’m not,” said Burnett; “it’s the yacht that’s going to take her. Pass
the syrup, Jack, like the jack you are.”

“Doesn’t she feel well?” Jack asked, passing the syrup as requested.
“If she doesn’t feel well, of course, we won’t go.”

“I like that,” said Mitchell, “when it’s my day for my party and my
cook all provisioned with provisions for provisioning us all. How long
do you suppose ice cream stays together in this month of roses,
anyhow?”

“She is very well,” said the maid quietly, “but it’s blowing pretty
fresh here in the city and I thought that out on the Sound—”

“Blowing fresh, is it?” laughed Burnett; “well, it’ll salt her fast
enough when we get out. Don’t you fuss over what’s none of your
business, my dear girl; just trot along upstairs and dress dolly, and
when she’s dressed we’ll take her off your hands.”

Jack appeared unduly quiet.

“Do you think it is going to storm?” he asked Mitchell. Mitchell was
scraping his saucer with the thrift that thrives north of the Firth of
Forth and hatches yachts on the west shores of the Atlantic.

“I don’t think at all during vacation,” he said mildly. “I repose and
reap ‘Oh’s’—from other people.”

“If there was any chance of a storm——?” said the nephew, thoughtfully.

“Fiddle-dee-dee,” said Burnett impatiently, “what do you think yachts
are for, anyhow? To let alone?” He looked at the maid as he spoke and
pointed significantly to the door. She went out at once and returned
upstairs to her mistress whom she found quite restless to “get-a-goin’”
as she expressed it.

The boxes filled with yesterday’s purchases were brought out at once
and Janice proceeded to rubber-sole and blue-serge Aunt Mary. The
latter regarded every step of the performance in the huge three-fold
cheval glass which had been wont to tell Mrs. Rosscott things that
every woman longs to know.

When her toilette was complete it must be admitted that as a
yachtswoman Aunt Mary fairly outshone her automobile portrait. She
surveyed herself long and carefully.

“I expect it’ll be quite an experience,” she said with many new
wrinkles of anticipation.

“Yes,” said Janice, with a glance at the fluttering window curtains, “I
expect it will be.”

Aunt Mary went downstairs and was greeted with loud acclamations. The
breakfast party broke up at once and, while Janice phoned for cabs,
Aunt Mary’s quartette of escorts sought hats, coats, etcetera. After
that they all sallied forth and took their places as joyfully as ever.

It was quite a long drive to where “Lady Belle” had been brought up,
and they had to stop once to lay in two or three pounds of current
literature.

“Do you read mostly?” asked Aunt Mary.

“It’s best to be on the safe side,” said Clover vaguely.

Then they entered the tangle of docks and express wagons and obstacles
in general and Mitchell had great difficulty in finding where his
launch had been taken to meet them.

But at last they got Aunt Mary down a flight of very slippery steps and
into a boat whose everything was labeled “Lady Belle,” and Mitchell
said something and they cast loose and were off.

“Seems rather a small yacht,” said Aunt Mary, glancing cheerfully
about. “I ain’t surprised that you’d rather come in nights.”

“Bless your heart, Aunt Mary,” shrieked Jack, “this isn’t the yacht,
this is the way we get to her.”

“Oh,” said Aunt Mary blankly.

“That’s the yacht,” yelled Burnett, “that white one with the black
smoke coming out and the sail up.”

“What are they getting up steam for?” asked Clover. “The time to get up
steam is when you get down sails generally.”

“They aren’t getting up steam,” said Mitchell, “they’re getting up
dinner. It looks like a lot of smoke because of the shadow on the sail.
And, speaking of getting up dinner, reminds me that the topic before us
now is, how in thunder are we to get up Aunt Mary?”

“Put a rope around her and board her as if she was a cavalry horse,”
suggested Burnett.

“I scorn the suggestion,” said their host; “if the worst comes to the
worst I can give her a back up, but I trust that Aunt Mary will rise to
the heights of the sail and the situation all at once and not make me
do any vertebratical stunts so early in the day.”

They were running alongsid

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