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Under the Country Sky

by Grace S. Richmond · English · Gutenberg #20719 · 453,458 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Under the Country Sky

Author: Grace S. Richmond

Illustrator: Frances Rogers


        
Release date: March 1, 2007 [eBook #20719]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20719

Credits: Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNDER THE COUNTRY SKY ***




Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net





[Illustration: "'Come, George--you need a good tramp,' Stuart urged at
Jeannette's elbow"]

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UNDER THE COUNTRY SKY

By GRACE S. RICHMOND

Author of

"Red Pepper Burns," "Mrs. Red Pepper,"
"The Twenty-Fourth of June,"
"The Second Violin," Etc.

With Frontispiece in Colors
By FRANCES ROGERS

A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York

Published by Arrangements with DOUBLEDAY, PAGE AND COMPANY

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COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

COPYRIGHT, 1915, 1916, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER                                       PAGE

    I. Heart Burnings                            3
   II. Something Really Happens                 15
  III. A Semi-Annual Occurrence                 31
   IV. A Literary Light                         39
    V. Shabbiness                               50
   VI. When Royalty Comes                       60
  VII. Snowballs                                71
 VIII. Soapsuds                                 84
   IX. A Reasonable Proposition                 96
    X. Stuart Objects                          105
   XI. Borrowed Plumes                         119
  XII. Early Morning                           135
 XIII. A Copyist                               143
  XIV. Out of the Blue                         153
   XV. "Great Luck!"                           164
  XVI. A Little Trunk                          176
  XVII. Reaction                               187
 XVIII. "Steady On!"                           199
   XIX. Revelations                            212
    XX. Five Minutes                           228
   XXI. Messages                               236
  XXII. Toasts                                 248
 XXIII. Why Not?                               259
  XXIV. Magic Gold                             270
   XXV. Great Music                            283
  XXVI. Salt Water                             295
 XXVII. "Cakes and Ices"                       310
XXVIII. A Tanned Hercules                      323
  XXIX. Milestones                             332
   XXX. Questions and Answers                  342

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CHAPTER I

HEART BURNINGS


She did not want to hate the girls; indeed, since she loved them all, it
would go particularly hard with her if she had to hate them; love turned
to hate is such a virulent product! But, certainly, she had never found
it so hard to be patient with them.

They were all five her college classmates, of only last year's class,
and it was dear and kind of them to drive out here into the country to
see her, coming in Phyllis Porter's great family limousine, the
prettiest, jolliest little "crowd" imaginable. They had been thoughtful
enough to warn her that they were coming, too, so that she could set the
old manse living-room in its pleasantest order, build a crackling
apple-wood fire in the fireplace, and get out her best thin china and
silver with which to serve afternoon tea--she made it chocolate, with
vivid recollection of their tastes; and added deliciously substantial
though delicate sandwiches, with plenty of the fruitiest and nuttiest
kinds of little cakes. She had donned the one real afternoon frock she
possessed, a clever make-over out of nothing in particular. Altogether,
when she greeted her guests, as they ran, fur-clad and silk-stockinged
after the manner of their kind, into her welcoming arms, she had seemed
to them absolutely the old Georgiana.

They had brought her a wonderful box of red roses--and Phyllis had
caught her kissing one of the great, silky buds as she put it with the
rest in a bowl. "I don't believe she's seen a hothouse rose since she
left college," thought Phyllis, with a stab of pity at her tender heart.
But for the first hour of their stay Georgiana had been her gay and
brilliant self, flinging quips and jests broadcast, asking impertinent
questions, making saucy comments, quite as of old. It was only when Dot
Manning, toward the end of the visit, began a sober tale of the
misfortunes which had come thronging into the life of one of their
classmates, that Georgiana's face, sobering into sympathetic gravity,
betrayed to her companions a curious change which had come upon it since
they saw it last.

Meanwhile, in answer to her questioning, they had told her all about
themselves. Phyllis Porter and Celia Winters were having a glorious
season in society. Theo Crossman was deep in settlement work--"crazy
over it" was, of course, the phrase. Dot Manning was going abroad next
week for a year of travel in all sorts of beguiling, out-of-the-way
places. As for Madge Sylvester, who was getting ready to be married
after Easter, the first of the class, she sat mostly in a dreamy,
smiling silence, looking into the fire while the others talked.

No, Georgiana did not want to hate the girls, but before their stay was
over she found herself coming dangerously near it--temporarily, at
least. They were dears, of course, but they were so content with
themselves and so pitiful of her. Not, of course, that they meant to let
her see this, but it showed in spite of them. They wanted to know what
she did with herself, whether there were any young people, and any good
times going on--Georgiana led them to the window, just at this point,
and pointed out to them a vigorous young man striding by in ulster and
soft hat, who looked up and waved as he passed, showing one of those
fine and manly young faces, glowing with health and hopefulness, which
always challenge interest from girlhood.

"Oh, have you many like that?" Celia had asked, and when Georgiana had
owned that James Stuart was the only one precisely "like that," Dot had
inquired if Mr. Stuart belonged to Georgiana, and, being answered in the
negative, shook her head and sighed: "One swallow _may_ make a summer,
Jan, but I doubt it!"

Theodora Crossman, the settlement worker, inquired particularly whether
Georgiana were doing anything worth while, using that pregnant modern
phrase which has been decidedly overworked, yet which hardly can be
spared from the present-day vocabulary.

"Worth while!" cried Georgiana, flashing into flame in an instant in the
way they knew so well. "Worth while--yes! You haven't seen my father,
have you, ever? It's a pity this happens to be one of his bad,
spine-achey days, for he'd be a good and sufficient answer to that
question. Father Davy is one of the Lord's own saints on earth, and he
possesses a magnificent sense of humour, which not all saints do, you
know. To love him is a liberal education, and to take care of him is
better 'worth while' than to have any number of fingers in other
people's pies."

"Of course, dear," Theo had answered soothingly. "We know there's
nothing in the world so well worth while as looking after one's father
and mother. Your mother died long ago, didn't she, dear? And your father
would be dreadfully lonely without you. At the same time, it doesn't
seem as if he could absorb all your energies. You remember the splendid
things Professor Nichols used to say about the duty of the college girl,
after college, particularly in a small town? I suppose you have no
foreigners here, but I thought perhaps you might find quite a wonderful
field for your endeavour in stimulating the women of the place into
clubs for study and work. It's----"

A curious exclamation from her hostess caused Miss Crossman to pause.
In fact, they all stared wonderingly at Georgiana. She stood upon the
hearthrug, her colour, usually ready to glow in her dusky face, now
receding suggestively, her dark eyes sparkling dangerously. "The only
trouble with that sort of thing," she answered with suspicious
quietness, "or rather the two troubles with it are these: In the first
place, the women have pretty nearly a club apiece already, which suits
them much better than anything I could 'stimulate' them to; and, in the
second place, I have 'quite a wonderful field for my endeavour,' as you
call it, Theo--did you crib that phrase?--in the upper regions of my own
home. I--in fact, I may be said to belong to the I. W. W.; I'm one of
the industrial workers of the world!"

"Jan, you haven't gone into anything crazy----" Dot was beginning, when
Georgiana, obeying an impulse, walked away from her hearthrug toward the
door, beckoning her guests to follow.

"Come on," she invited. "Since you have so poor an opinion of the
possibilities for serious labour in a world of woe offered by my
residence in a small country village, you may come and see for
yourselves."

They came after her, with a rustle and flutter of frocks and a patter of
smartly shod feet, up the old spindle-railed staircase, through a chilly
and unfurnished upper hall, and up a still chillier narrow second
staircase, into an attic region which could hardly be properly
characterized as chilly, for the reason that the atmosphere there was
frankly freezing.

As near as possible to the gable window stood a monster structure the
nature of which the beholders did not instantly recognize. Phyllis was
the first to cry out: "A loom! It must be a very old one, too. Oh, how
fascinating! What do you make, Jan--fabrics?"

"Rugs," explained Georgiana, pulling at a pile upon the floor. "Such
rugs as these. Good looking? Yes, dear classmates?"

"Stunning!" cried Madge Sylvester, with a smothered shiver at the
penetrating cold of the place.

"Simply wonderful!" "Too clever for anything!" and, "Oh, Jan, do you
make them to sell?" "Can I buy this one?" "I'm wild over this dull blue
and Indian red!" came tumbling from the mouths of the eager girls, as in
the fading light from the attic window they examined the hand-woven
rugs. There was sincerity in their voices; Georgiana had known there
would be; she was sure of the art and skill plainly to be found in her
product.

"I'm afraid not, Phyl. These are all orders, and I'm weeks behind. They
go to certain exclusive city shops, and I have all I can do."

"You must have struck a gold mine. I'm so glad!" congratulated
warm-hearted Phyllis.

"Well, not exactly. It's rather slow work, when you do housework, too,"
acknowledged Georgiana. "However, it does very well; it keeps us in
firewood--and oysters--for the winter."

She instantly regretted this speech, for it led, presently, as she might
have known it would, to delicately worded expressions of hope that she
would in the future give her friends the pleasure of purchasing her
wares.

Down by the fireplace again Georgiana turned upon them in her old
jesting way, which yet had in it, as they all felt, a quality which was
new. "Stop it, girls. No, I'll not sell one of you a rug of any size,
shape, or colour. I'm far behind, as I told you. But--I'll send Madge a
gorgeous one for a wedding present, if she'll tell me her preferences,
and I'll do the same for each of you, when you meet your fates. Now stop
talking about it. I only showed you to demonstrate that this is a busy
world for me as well as for you, and that I'm very content in it. Dot,
don't you want just one more of these fruitkins? By the way, since you
like them so much, I'll give you the recipe. I made it up--wasn't it
clever of me?"

"You're much the cleverest of us all, anyway," murmured Dot meekly,
nibbling at the delicious morsel, while her hostess rapidly wrote out a
little formula and gave it to her with a smile.

They were soon off after that, for the early winter twilight was upon
them, and the lights in the waiting car outside suddenly came on with a
suggestive completeness. Georgiana assisted her guests into luxurious
coats and capes made of or lined with chinchilla, with otter, with
sable; handed gloves and muffs; and listened to all manner of
affectionate parting speeches, every one of which contained pressing
invitations for visits, short or long. Each girl made promises of future
calls, and professed herself eager to come and stay with Georgiana at
any time. Then the whole group went away on a little warm breeze of
good-fellowship and human kindness.

"They are dears," admitted Georgiana, as she waved her arm at the
departing car; "but, oh!--_oh!_ I can't stand having them sorry for me!
The old manse _is_ shabby, and every girl of them knew how many times
this frock has been made over--I saw Celia recognize it even through its
dye. No wonder, when it's been at every college tea she ever gave. But I
won't--_I won't_--be pitied!"

The door opened, and a slender figure in an old-fashioned dressing-gown
came slowly into the firelit room.

Georgiana turned quickly. "Father Davy! Do you feel better? If I'd known
it, I'd have brought you in to meet the girls. They would have enjoyed
you so."

"I'm not quite up to meeting the girls perhaps, daughter, but decidedly
better and correspondingly cheerful. Have you had a good time?"

He placed himself as carefully as possible upon the couch by the fire,
and his daughter tucked him up in an old plaid shawl which had lain
folded upon it. She dropped upon the hearthrug and sat looking into the
fire, while her father regarded the picture she made in the dyed frock,
now a soft Indian red, a hue which pleased his eye and brought out all
her gypsy colouring.

The head upon the couch pillow was topped with a soft mass of curly gray
hair, the face below was thin and pale, but the eyes which rested upon
the girl were the clearest, youngest blue-gray eyes that ever spoke
mutely of the spirit's triumph over the body. One had but to glance at
David Warne to understand that here was a man who was no less a man
because he had to spend many hours of every day upon his tortured back.
It was three years since he had been forced to lay aside the care of the
village-and-country parish of which he had been minister, but he had
given up not a whit of his interest in his fellowmen, and now that he
could seldom go to them he had taught them to come to him, so that the
old manse was almost as much a centre of the village's interest and
affection as it had been when its master went freely in and out. A new
manse had been built nearer the church, for the new man, and the old
house left to Mr. Warne's undisputed possession--proof positive of his
place in the hearts of the community.

"A good time?" murmured Georgiana, in answer to the question. "No, a
hateful, envious, black-browed time, disguised as much as might be under
a frivolous manner. The girls were lovely--and I was a perfect fiend!"

Mr. Warne did not seem in the least disconcerted by this startling
statement. "The sounds I heard did not strike me as indicating the
presence of any fiend," he suggested.

"Probably not. I managed to avoid giving in to the temptation to snatch
Phyl's sumptuous chinchilla coat, Madge's perfectly adorable hat, Theo's
bronze shoes, Dot's embroidered silk handbag, and Bess's hand-wrought
collar and cuffs."

"It was a matter of clothes, then? How much heart-burning men escape!"
mused Mr. Warne. "Now, I can never recall hearing any man, young or old,
express a longing to denude other men of their apparel."

Georgiana shot him a look. "No, men merely envy other men their acres,
their horses, their motors--and their books. Own up, now, Father Davy,
have you never coveted any man's library?"

The blue-gray eyes sent her back a humorous glance. "Now you have me,"
he owned. "But tell me, daughter--it was not only their clothes which
stirred the fiend within you? Confess!"

She looked round at him. "I don't need to," she said. "You know the
whole of it--what I want for you and me--what they have--_life_! And
lots of it. You need it just as badly as I do--you, a suffering saint at
fifty-five when other men are playing golf! And I--simply bursting with
longing to take you and go somewhere--anywhere with you--and see
things--and do things--and _live_ things! And we as poor as poverty,
after all you've done for the Lord. Oh, I----"

She brought her strong young fist down on the nearly threadbare rug with
a thump that reddened the fine flesh, and thumped again and yet again,
while her father lay and silently watched her, with a look in his eyes
less of pain than of utter comprehension. He said not a word, while she
bit her lip and stared again into the fire, clenching the fist that had
spoken for her bitterly aching heart. After a time the tense fingers
relaxed, and she held up the hand and looked at it.

"I'm a brute!" she said presently. "An abominable little brute. How do
you stand me? How do you _endure_ me, Father Davy! I just bind the load
on your poor back and pull the knots tight, every time I let myself
break out like this. If you were any minister-father but yourself, you'd
either preach or pray at me. How can you keep from it?"

He smiled. "I never liked to be preached or prayed at myself, dear," he
said. "I have not forgotten. And the Lord Himself doesn't expect a young
caged lioness to act like a caged canary. He doesn't want it to. And
some day--He will let it out of the cage!"

She shook her head, and got up. She kissed the gray curls and patted the
thin cheek, said cheerfully: "I'm going to get your supper now," and
went away out of the room.

In the square old kitchen she flung open an outer door and stood staring
up at the starry winter sky.

"Oh, if anything, anything, _anything_ would happen!" she breathed,
stretching out both arms toward the snowy shrubbery-broken expanse
behind the house which in summer was her garden. "If something would
just keep this evening from being like all the other evenings! I can't
sit and read aloud--_to-night_. I can't--I _can't_! And the only
interesting thing on earth that can happen is that Jimps Stuart may come
over--and he probably won't, because he was over last evening and the
evening before that, and he knows he can't be allowed to come all the
time. He----"

It was at this point that the old brass knocker on the front door
sounded--and something happened.




CHAPTER II

SOMETHING REALLY HAPPENS


It might have been any of the village people, as Georgiana expected it
would be when she closed the kitchen door with a bang and went
reluctantly to answer the knock. Since it was almost suppertime it was
probably Mrs. Shear, who seldom made a call at any other hour, knowing
she would as surely be asked to stay as it was sure that David Warne's
heart would respond to the wanness and unhappiness always written on
Mrs. Shear's homely middle-aged face. As she went to the door, Georgiana
felt an intensely wicked desire to hit Mrs. Shear a blow with her own
capable fist, which should send her backward into the snow. Georgiana
did not believe that the lady was as unhappy as she looked. It seemed to
be a day for expression by the use of fists!

But when the door was opened and the light from the bracket lamp in the
manse hall shone out on the figure standing upon the porch, all desire
to hit anything more with her fist vanished from the girl's heart. For
with the first look into the face of the man outside her instant wish
was to have him come in--and stay. Somebody so evidently from the great
world which seemed so far away from the old village manse--somebody who
looked as if he could bring with him into this dull life of theirs all
manner of interest--it was small wonder that in her present mood the
girl should feel like this. And it must by no means be supposed that
Georgiana was in the habit of experiencing this sort of wish every time
she set eyes upon a personable man. Personable men had been many in her
acquaintance during the four years of her college life, and more than
one of them had followed her back to the old manse to urge his claim
upon her attention.

"Is the Reverend Mr. Warne at home?" asked the stranger in a low and
pleasant voice. "I have a letter of introduction to him."

"Please come in," answered Georgiana, and led him straight into the
living-room and her father's presence. Then, though consumed with
curiosity, she retired--as far as the door of the dining-room, where she
remained, ready to listen in a most reprehensible manner to the
conversation which should follow.

There was an exchange of greetings, then evidently Mr. Warne was reading
the letter of introduction. Presently he spoke:

"This is quite sufficient," he said, "to make you welcome under this
roof. My old friend Davidson has my affection and confidence always.
Please tell me what I can do for you, Mr. Jefferson."

"I should like," replied the stranger's voice, "to have a room with you,
and possibly board, if that might be. If not, perhaps I could find that
elsewhere; but if I might at least have the room I should be very glad.
I am hard at work upon a book, and I have come away from my home and
other work to find a place where I can live quietly, write steadily, and
be outdoors every day for long walks in the country. Doctor Davidson
suggested this place, and thought you might take me in--for an
indefinite period of time, possibly some months."

"That sounds very pleasant to me," Georgiana heard her father reply. "We
have never had a boarder, my daughter and I, but, if she has no
objection, I should enjoy having such a man as you look to be, in the
house. Your letter, you see, is not your only introduction. You carry
with you in your face a passport to other men's favour."

"That is good of you," answered Mr. Jefferson--and Georgiana liked the
frank tone of his voice. It was an educated voice, it spoke for itself
of the personality behind it.

"I will go and talk with my daughter," she heard her father say, after
the two men had had some little conversation concerning a book or two
lying on the table by Mr. Warne's couch.

Georgiana fled into the kitchen, where her father found her. When he
appeared, closing the door behind him, she was ready for him before he
spoke.

"If he were the angel Gabriel or old Pluto himself I'd welcome him," she
said under her breath, her eyes dancing. "To have somebody in the house
for you to talk with besides your everlasting old parishioners--why, it
would be worth a world of trouble! And it won't be any trouble at all.
Go tell him your daughter reluctantly consents."

"You heard, then?" queried Mr. Warne, a quizzical smile on his gentle
lips.

"Of course I heard! I was listening hard! I was all ears--regular donkey
ears. He's a godsend. His board will pay for sirloin instead of round.
We'll have roast duck on Sunday--twice a winter. He can have the big
front room; I'll have it ready by to-morrow night."

"Come in and arrange details," urged Mr. Warne.

Georgiana stayed behind a minute to compose her face and manner, then
went in, the demurest of young housewives. Not for nothing had been her
years of college life, which had made, when occasion demanded, a quietly
poised woman out of a girl who had been, according to village standards,
a somewhat hoydenish young person.

As she faced the stranger in the full light of the fire-and-lamp-lit
room, she saw in detail that of which she had had a swift earlier
impression. Mr. Jefferson was a man in, she thought, the early thirties,
with a strongly modelled, shaven face, keen brown eyes behind
eyeglasses, a mouth which could be grave one moment and humorous the
next, and the air of a man who was accustomed to think for himself and
expect others to do so. He was well built though not tall, well dressed
though not dapper, and he looked less like a writer of books than a
participant in action of some kind or other. His dark hair showed a
thread or two of gray at the temples, but this suggestion of age did not
seem at all to age him.

The stranger, on his part, saw a rather more than commonly charming
Georgiana, on account of the Indian-red silk frock.

"It's not fair to him," thought Georgiana, "to show him a landlady who
looks so festive and fine. I can't afford to wear this often, even for
his benefit." But to him she said: "I know it will give my father much
pleasure to have some one in the house besides his daughter. And I am
quite willing to have you at our table. I must warn you that we live
very simply, as you must guess."

"I live very simply myself," Mr. Jefferson assured her. "There are few
things I do not like. My one serious antipathy is Brussels sprouts," he
added, smiling. "With that confession the coast is clear. And--you
would not mind my smoking in my room?"

Georgiana glanced at her father with a suddenly mischievous expression.
He was studying the prospective boarder with interested eyes.

"I think," confessed Mr. Warne, "that merely to catch a whiff now and
then of a fragrance which is singularly pleasant to me, but which I am
denied producing for myself, would add to the things that give me
comfort. If you wouldn't mind smoking in the hall now and then, or,
better yet, by my fireside, I should be grateful."

Mr. Jefferson nodded. "Thank you, sir. And now--when may I come? I have
a room at the hotel, so don't let me in until you are quite ready."

"You may come to-morrow night for supper," promised Georgiana. "But you
haven't seen the room." She rose.

"It will be in the upper right front?" hazarded Mr. Jefferson. "And it
will have the customary furnishings and some means of heating?"

"I should prefer to have you see it," she insisted, and lighted a candle
in an ancient pewter candlestick with an extinguisher at the side.

So the stranger, following her upstairs, surveyed his room and professed
himself entirely satisfied. It looked bare enough to Georgiana as she
showed it to him, but she told herself that there were possibilities in
the matter of certain belongings of her own room which could be
transferred to give an air of homelikeness to this.

"It is large, and I can have plenty of light and air," commented the
prospective boarder. "If I might have some sort of good-sized table by
that south window, for my work, I should consider myself provided for."

"You will find one when you come," promised the girl.

"Thank you. Now, I will take myself off at once. Then you may have a
chance to discuss with your father the probabilities in favour of your
not regretting your quick decision," he said as he descended the stairs.

"Father and I always make quick decisions," Georgiana remarked.

"Good! So do I. Do you hold to them as well?"

"Always. That's part of father's creed."

"That's very good; that speaks for itself. Well, I promise you I shall
be busy enough not to bother this household overmuch. By the way"--he
turned suddenly--"that table you spoke of putting in my room--if it is
large, it must be heavy. Your father cannot help you lift it, and you
should not lift it alone. Don't put it in place until I come--please?"

She smiled. "That's very thoughtful of you. But I am quite equal to
moving it alone."

"Then let me help you now, won't you?" he offered.

She shook her head. "It's really not ready to be moved. Don't think of
it again, please."

He bade them good-night and went away, with no lingering speeches on the
road to the door. He had the air of a man accustomed to measure his time
and to waste none of it. When he had gone Georgiana went back to her
father. He looked up at her with a twinkle in his still boyish eyes.

"Well, daughter, it looks to me as if this had happened just in time to
prevent a bad explosion from too high pressure of accumulated energy.
You can now lower the position of the indicator on the steam gauge to
the safety point by spending the whole day to-morrow in sweeping and
dusting and baking. If there are any spare moments you can employ them
in making over your clothes."

"Father Davy! Where did you get such a perfectly uncanny understanding?"

"From observation--purely from observation. And I myself confess to
feeling considerably excited and elated. It is not every day that a
gentleman of this sort knocks at the door of a village manse and asks to
come in and write a book. If it had not been that my old friend Davidson
is always bringing people together who need each other, I should think
it the strangest thing in the world that this should happen. Davidson
is the minister of a great New York church where this Mr. Jefferson
attends; and Davidson has never forgotten me, though he took the high
road and I the low so soon after he left the seminary. Well, it will
give us a fresh interest, my dear, for as long as it lasts."

Georgiana thought it would. She was up betimes next morning, to begin
the sweeping and dusting and general turning upside down of the
long-unused upper front room. In the course of her window washing, her
shoulders enveloped in an old red shawl, she was vigorously hailed from
below.

"Ship ahoy! Your name, cargo, and destination?"

Without turning she called merrily back: "The Jefferson, with a cargo of
books, bound for the public!"

"What's that? I don't get you."

"Never mind. I'm too busy to be spoken by every passing ship."

"I'll be up," called the voice, and footsteps sounded upon the porch.
The front door banged, the same ringing male voice was heard shouting a
"Good-morning, sir!" and the owner of the voice came leaping up the
stairs and burst into the room without ceremony. He advanced till he was
close to the open window, and nodded through the glass at the
window-washer, who sat on the sill with her upper body outside.

He was a fine specimen of youth and brawn and energy, the young man whom
Georgiana had pointed out to her friends as one of her resources when it
came to the good times they were so anxious to know of. His name was
James Stuart, and he was a near neighbour of the manse. He was a college
graduate of three years' longer standing than Georgiana, and he, like
her, had returned to the country home and his father's farm because his
aging parents could not spare him, and he was the only son whose lack of
other ties left him free to care for them. He and this girl had been
schoolmates and long-time friends--with interesting intervals of enmity
during the earlier years--and were now sworn comrades, though they still
quarrelled at times. It looked, after a minute, as if this would be one
of those times.

"I didn't just get you," complained James Stuart through the window.

"Wait till I come in. I can't tell all the neighbours."

Georgiana polished off her last pane, pushed up the window and slipped
into the room, quite unnecessarily assisted by Stuart.

"I can't understand," began the young man, eying with approval her
blooming face, frost-stung and smooth in texture as the petals of a
rose, "why you're washing the windows of a room that's always shut up."

"Jimps, if you were Mrs. Perkins next door I'd understand your consuming
curiosity. As it is----"

"Going to have company?"

She shook her head.

"Then--what in thunder----"

"We're going to have a boarder, if you must know." Georgiana began to
attack the inside of the window.

"A boarder! What sort?"

"A very good sort. He's a literary person with a book to write."

"Suffering cats! Not the man at the hotel?"

"I believe he was to exist at the hotel--if he could--for twenty-four
hours," admitted Georgiana.

"But that man," objected Mr. James Stuart, "is a--why, he's--he doesn't
look like that sort at all."

"What sort, if you please?"

"The literary. He looks like a--well, I took him for a professional man
of some kind."

Georgiana laughed derisively. "Jimps! Isn't authorship a profession?"

"Well, I mean, you know, he doesn't look like an ink-slinger; he looks
like some sort of a doer. He hasn't that dreamy expression. He sees with
both eyes at once. In other words, he seems to be all there."

"Your idea of literary men is a disgrace to your education, Jimps. Think
of the author-soldiers and author-engineers--and author-Presidents of
the United States," she ended triumphantly.

"It doesn't matter," admitted Stuart. "The thing that does is that he's
coming here. I can't say that appeals to me. How in time did he come to
apply?" Georgiana told him briefly. Stuart looked gloomy. "That's all
right," he said, "as long as he confines himself to being company for
your father. But if he takes to being company for you--lookout!"

"Absurd! He's years older than I, and he said he would be working very
hard. I shall see nothing of him except at the table. Heavens! don't
grudge us anything that promises to relieve the monotony of our lives
even a little bit."

Stuart whistled. "Monotony, eh? In spite of all my visits? All right.
But I'd be just as well pleased if he wore skirts. And mind you--your
Uncle Jimps is coming over evenings just as often as and a little
oftener than if you didn't have this literary light burning on your
hearthstone. See?"

He went away, his thick fair hair, uncapped, shining in the morning
sunlight, his arm waving a friendly farewell back at the window, where a
white cloth flapped in reply.

"Dear old boy!" thought the young woman affectionately; "what should I
do without him?"

That afternoon, just before the supper hour, the boarder's trunk
arrived. It was borne upstairs by the village baggageman, complaining
bitterly of its weight. It was an aristocratic-looking trunk, and it
bore labels which indicated that it was a traveled trunk. Shortly
afterward the boarder himself appeared and was allowed to betake himself
at once to his room, from which he emerged at the call of the bell, and
came promptly down. Meeting Mr. Warne limping slowly through the hall,
he offered his arm, and in the dining-room placed his host in his chair
with the gentle deference so welcome from a younger man to an older.

Georgiana, as she served one of the undeniably simple but toothsome
meals for the cooking of which she was equipped by many years'
apprenticeship, noted how bright grew Father Davy's face as the supper
progressed, and how delightfully the newcomer talked--and listened--for
if he was an interesting talker he proved to be a still more
accomplished listener. When the supper was over Mr. Jefferson lingered a
few minutes by the fire, then went up to his room, explaining that he
must unpack his books and make ready for an early attack in the morning
upon his work.

In her own room, that night, Georgiana lay awake for a long time. Just
before she went to sleep she addressed herself sternly:

"My child, I shouldn't wonder if you've jumped out of the frying pan of
monotony into the fire of unrest. It certainly means trouble for you
when you can't get a perfect stranger's face out of your mind for an
hour. Now, there's just one thing about it: you've always despised girls
who let themselves leap into liking any man and are so upset by it that
everybody sees it. This one is undoubtedly either married or engaged to
be, and even if he's the freest old bachelor alive you are to behave as
if he were the tightest tied. You are to go straight ahead with your
work and to remember every minute that you are a poor minister's
daughter with only a college training for an asset. He's very clearly a
man of importance somewhere; he couldn't look like that and be anything
else. He will never think twice of you. Whatever attention he gives you
will be purely because he is a gentleman and he can't ignore his host's
daughter--nonsense, his landlady--I might as well face it. He's a
boarder and I'm his landlady. Gentlemen don't take much interest in
landladies. So now, Georgiana Warne, landlady--keeper of a
boarding-house, be sensible and go to sleep."

But before she went to sleep her mind, in spite of her, had imaged for
her again the interesting, clever-looking face of the stranger under the
roof, with his clear, straightforward glance that seemed to see so much,
his smile which disclosed splendid teeth, his strongly moulded chin. And
she had owned, frankly, driven to the confession just to see if it
wouldn't relieve her:

"It's just such a face as I've seen and liked--in crowds sometimes--but
I never knew the owner of one. It's such a face as a woman would
remember to her grave, if its owner had just belonged to her one--hour!
Oh, dear God, I've prayed you to let something happen--anything! And now
I'm--afraid!"

But, in the morning, when pulses beat strongly and courage is bright,
Georgiana had another tone to take with herself. She faced her image in
the glass, which looked straight back at her with unflinching dark eyes.

"I'm ashamed of you! To moon and croon like that! Now, brace up, Miss
Warne, and be yourself. You've never lacked spirit; you're not going to
lack it now. You're going to be strong and sane about this thing. You're
going to be the sort of girl whose mind no man can guess at. You're
going to weave rugs for your life, and enjoy Jimps Stuart as you always
have, and there's not going to be a whimper out of you from this hour,
no matter what happens--or doesn't happen. Do you hear? Well,
then--attention! Head up, shoulders back, heart steady; forward,
_march_!"

Two hours later, when, in the absence of the new inmate, Georgiana went
into his room to put it in order for the day, she found it impossible
not to note the character of his belongings. They were few and simple
enough, but in every detail they betrayed a fastidious taste. And among
the articles in ebony and leather which lay upon the linen cover of the
old bureau stood one which held her fascinated attention. It was a
framed photograph of a young and very lovely woman in evening dress, and
the face which smiled over the perfect shoulder was looking straight out
at her.

Georgiana stared back. "Who are you?" she whispered. "I might have known
you would be here!"

"And who, please, are you?" the picture seemed to query lightly, smiling
in return for the other's frown. "As for me, don't you see plainly? I
belong to him. Else why should he have me here? You see I'm the only one
he cared to bring. Doesn't that speak for itself?"

"Of course it does," agreed Georgiana; then stoutly: "And why should I
care? Of course I don't care. To care would be--absurd!"




CHAPTER III

A SEMI-ANNUAL OCCURRENCE


"Father Davy, the 'Semi-Annual' has come!" Georgiana, tugging with both
strong young arms, hauled the big express package into the living-room
of the old manse, and shut the door with a bang. Breathing rapidly from
her exertions, her cheeks warmly flushed, her dark eyes glowing, she
stood over the package, looking at her father with a curious sort of
smile not wholly compounded of joy and satisfaction.

"That is very good," said Father Davy in his pleasant voice; "and very
opportune. It was but yesterday, it seems to me, that I heard daughter
declaring that she was 'Oh, so shabby!'"

"Yes, yes--but what do you wager there is there?" questioned Georgiana.
"I can tell you before I take the cover off. Three evening gowns,
frivolous and impossible for a little town like this; one draggled
lingerie frock, two evening coats, and possibly--just possibly--a last
year's tailored suit, with a tear in the front of the skirt and not a
scrap of goods to make a fold to cover it. Why, oh, why, do they never
have any pieces?"

"The reason seems obvious enough," Mr. Warne suggested, as the girl
stooped and began to wrestle with the cords which tied the big package.
His glance fell musingly on the down-bent head with its masses of
dark-brown hair, upon the white and shapely arms from which the sleeves
were rolled back,--Georgiana had been busy in the kitchen when the
expressman came,--upon the whole comely young figure in its blue-print
morning dress. "They never have need of the pieces, I should judge,"
said he.

"But I have. Jeannette might think of me when she orders her clothes,
not just when her maid is packing the box with a lot of castaways. Well,
here's hoping there's just one thing I can use," and she lifted the
cover of the box and looked within, it cannot be denied, with eager
curiosity.

"There are always many things you can use," her father gently reminded
her; "you, who are so ingenious."

"Here's the evening frock!" cried his daughter, lifting out the top
garment and holding it up before them both. "Oh, what a dress to send a
poor country cousin! Fluff and flimsy, trimmed with sparklers; cut
frightfully low, no sleeves, and a draggly train. Doesn't it look
suitable for me?" She flung it aside with a gesture of scorn. "Ah,
here's something a shade better! A little dancing frock of
rose-coloured chiffon--and her clumsy partner stepped on the hem of it.
The maid in the dressing-room sewed it up for her to have her last dance
in, and then she came home and threw it into the box for me. Well, I can
get a gorgeous motor veil out of it--I who have so many drives in the
cars of the rich!"

"The--the under part looks available to me," suggested Mr. Warne,
striving to be of comfort.

Georgiana shrugged her blue-clad shoulders. "Oh, yes, if I could dress
in slitted silk petticoats and you could wear them for dressing-gowns,
we'd have plenty. Well, look at _this_! Here's a velvet--cerise! What a
glorious, impossible colour! And here's the lingerie frock; that's not
so bad; I really think it will stand a couple of launderings before it
falls to pieces in my hands. And here's the evening coat--pale gray with
fox trimmings--and she's fallen foul of some ink or something, and the
cleaner couldn't get it all out. Father Davy, look!"

"It seems to me," said Mr. Warne in his gentle tones, which were yet not
without more firmness than one might expect from so frail a person,
"that I have heard somewhere a homely proverb to the effect that it is
not quite in good taste to----"

"'_Look a gift horse in the mouth,_'" finished Georgiana. Her eyes were
rebellious. "And there's another: '_Beggars mustn't be choosers._' Yes,
I know. Only, semi-annually I certainly do experience a burning wish
that my dear rich relations were persons with a trifle keener sense of
discernment as to which of their old clothes would be most appreciated
by their poor cousins. They must now and then, Father Davy, wear
something sensible. They must have morning clothes and street
clothes--adorable ones. Why do they send only the worldly clothes to the
manse? And why--_why_ do they never put in so much as one of Uncle
Thomas's discarded cravats for the Little Minister himself?"

"Your Uncle Thomas and I may possibly have different tastes in the
matter of neckwear," replied Mr. Warne with such gravity of manner but
such a sparkle of humour in his blue-gray eyes that his daughter laughed
in spite of herself. "Come, come, dear, is there nothing you can approve
among all those rich materials? You might make me innumerable cravats,
and I am such a fop I could wear a fresh one each day--to please you."

"Father Davy!" Georgiana sat back on her heels. She had slipped her
bared arms into the armholes of the sleeveless white "fluff-and-flimsy"
evening frock, and the "sparklers" of the low-cut bodice now framed her
blue-print clad shoulders with an astonishing effect of incongruity. "I
have a wonderful inspiration. Let's ask Jeannette out here for a
visit--an object-lesson as to the state of life whereunto the country
cousins have been called. She hasn't seen me in ten years, and all I
remember of her is a fluffy, yellow-haired girl with a sniffly cold in
her head. What do you say, Father Davy? Shall we ask her?"

Her father's gaze, quiet, comprehending, more than a little amused, met
Georgiana's, audacious, defiant, mischievous, yet reasonable. The two
looked at each other for a full minute.

"Do you think she would come?" Mr. Warne inquired doubtfully.

"Why shouldn't she come? She's had a gay winter so far, but not a happy
one. She's no debutante any more, you know; she's an 'old girl' in her
fifth season. That's what the society girls get by coming out at
eighteen. Now I, who am only a year out of college and who never 'came
out' in my life, am as keen at the game of being grown up as if I were
just putting up my hair for the first time. Well, Jeannette's been
keeping up the pace all winter, is thoroughly worn out and unhappy, and
doesn't know what to do with herself. It's March--and Lent--the time of
year when the society folks betake themselves to spring resorts to
recover their shattered nerves. Don't you think she'd jump at the chance
to come to the little country town and try what our air and our cookery
would do for her?"

"You seem to know all about her in spite of not having seen or known
her--except through these boxes of clothes--since she was a little
girl."

"Ah, that's just it--through her boxes--that's how I know her!"
Triumphantly Georgiana held up the cerise velvet gown. "Don't I know a
girl who would wear that? Wild for excitement--that's why she chose the
colour. But she didn't get the fun she expected; he didn't like it--or
somebody said she looked too pale in it--and she fired it at me before
she had done more than take the freshness off. _I_ can wear it--see
here!"

She got to her feet, untied the little black silk tie which held the
low-rolling collar of her working dress at the throat, unfastened a row
of hooks, and let the blue print slip to her feet. Over the glory of her
white shoulders and gleaming arms she flung the cerise velvet--gorgeous,
glowing, wonderful colour, as trying to the ordinary complexion as
colour can well be. But as the gown fell into place, and Georgiana,
backing up to her father, was fastened somewhat tentatively into it, it
would have been plain to any beholder that if the rich girl could not
wear the queenly, daring robe the poor girl could--as she had said.

She swept up and down the room, her head held high. She played the part
of a lady of fashion and held an imaginary reception, carrying on a
stream of "society" talk with a manner which made the pale man on the
couch laugh like a boy. Holding a dialogue with a hypothetical male
guest, she led him out into the hall, still within sight of Mr. Warne's
couch, and was in the midst of a scene as inspiredly clever as anything
she had ever done at college, where she had been the pride of a dramatic
club whose fame had waxed greater than that of any similar organization
for many years, when the front door of the house suddenly opened, and a
gust of chilly March air rushed in with the person entering.

Georgiana wheeled--to find herself confronting the amused gaze of her
boarder, Mr. E. C. Jefferson, as read the address upon his mail.

Mr. Jefferson was by this time, after a month under the roof of the old
manse, well established as a member of the household, though after the
somewhat remote fashion to be expected of a man whose absorbing work
filled most of his waking hours. He closed the door quickly as he caught
sight of Georgiana in her masquerade, removed his hat, and bent his head
before the cerise velvet.

Georgiana, blushing as vividly as if it were the first time mortal man
had ever beheld her pretty shoulders, threw him a laughing look,
murmured: "Dress parade in borrowed finery, Mr. Jefferson; don't let the
blaze of colour put your eyes out!" and retreated toward the living-room
where her father sat, much amused by the situation.

She was followed by her boarder's reply: "I find myself still happily
retaining the use of my eyes, Miss Warne. You need not be too much in
haste; it is very dull outside, I assure you."

He went on up the stairs, but she had caught his smile, momentarily
illumining a face which was ordinarily rather grave. Georgiana closed
the living-room door upon the sight of the lithe figure rapidly
ascending the staircase without a glance behind. As she faced her father
she assumed the expression of a merry child caught in mischief.

"Our new lodger has certainly come upon me in all sorts of situations,
not to mention disguises," she remarked, "but this is the first time he
has met me in the role of leading lady on the melodramatic stage. Please
unhook me, Father Davy; the play is over, and it's time to get the
pot-roast simmering. And what do you say to inviting lovely Jeannette
Crofton to visit us? Would it be too hard on you?"

"Not at all, my dear. I should be glad to see your Uncle Thomas's
daughter. Invite her, by all means. You have far too little young
companionship; it will do you good to have a girl of your own age in the
house."

"I wonder how we shall get on," mused Georgiana. "Anyhow she'll see what
a market this is for evening frocks cut on her lines!"




CHAPTER IV

A LITERARY LIGHT


Many hours afterward, the labours of the day over, Georgiana bent her
dark head above an old-fashioned writing-desk in a corner of the
living-room, and dashed off the contemplated letter to her almost
unknown cousin. How the invitation would be received she had little
idea, but since a letter of thanks was undeniably due in response to the
"Semi-Annual" box, it was certainly a simple and natural matter enough
to offer in return for it a possible pleasure and a certain benefit.

"I'll run straight down to the post-office and mail it," declared
Georgiana, sealing and stamping her letter after having read it aloud to
her father. "A run in this March wind will be good for me after baking
and brewing all day."

"Do, daughter; and take a tumbler or two of jelly to Mrs. Ames, by the
way. And pick a spray or two of the scarlet geranium to go with it." Mr.
Warne spoke from the depths of an old armchair by the living-room fire,
where, with a lamp at his elbow, he was not too deep in a speech of the
elder Pitt on "Quartering Soldiers in Boston," to take thought for an
invalid whom he considered far less fortunate than himself.

"I will--poor, disagreeable old lady. She doesn't admit that anything
tastes as it should, but I observe our jelly is never long in
disappearing."

Georgiana, now wearing in honour of the close of day a simple frock of
dark-blue wool with a dash of scarlet at throat and wrists, donned a big
military cape of blue, scarlet lined, and twisted about her neck a scarf
of scarlet silk (dyed from a Semi-Annual petticoat!), which served less
as a protection than as the finishing touch to her gay winter's night
costume. She was likely to meet few people on her way, but there were
always plenty of loungers in the small village post-office, and not even
a college graduate could be altogether disdainful of the masculine
admiration sure to be found there, though she might ignore it.

As she closed the house door, lifting her face to a cold, starlit sky
from which the clouds of the day had broken away at sundown, another
door a few rods down the quiet street banged loudly, and the sharp creak
of rapid footsteps was immediately to be heard upon the frozen gravel.
Georgiana smiled in the darkness at the coincidence of that banging
door.

"Well met!" called a ringing voice. "Curious that I should break out of
Mrs. Perkins's just as you came along!"

"Very curious, Jimps. How do you manage it? I stole out like a cat just
to avoid such a possibility. I knew you were there."

"Did you, indeed?" inquired the owner of the voice, coming up and
standing still to look at what he could see of the military-caped form.
His own strongly built figure took up its position beside hers as if by
right. His hand slipped lightly under her arm, and he turned her gently
to face the direction in which he himself had set out. "That's like your
impertinence. To pay you for it you shall come this way," he insisted.
"It's only a step farther, it's not quite so hackneyed, and it will
bring us out where we want to be. Look at the stars!"

"They're wonderful!"

"Carrying something under that cape? Give it to me, chum."

"It's only a bit of a basket, Jimps; never mind, you might spill it."

"You can't carry a bit of a basket when I'm around! Spill nothing! Hand
it over."

"Terribly dictatorial to-night, aren't you?"

"Possibly. I've been bossing a lot of new hands to-day, who didn't know
a pick from a gang-plough."

"But you've been outdoors every minute!" Her tone was envious.

"Every blessed minute. And you've been in, puttering over a lot of house
jobs? See here, you need a run. Let's take the time to go up Harmon
Hill and run down it--eh? There'll not be a soul to see."

She laughed doubtfully. "I'd love to, but--the jelly?"

"That's easy." He dropped her arm, turned aside to a clump of trees at
the corner of an overgrown old place which they were passing, and
deposited the little basket in the shadow. He came back and caught her
arm again.

"Easy, now, up the hill. I wish the snow wasn't all gone, we'd have a
farewell coast at the end of the season. But there'll undoubtedly be
more. Honestly, now, George, hasn't the coasting and tramping helped you
through this first winter?"

"Jimps, I don't know what I should have done without it--or you."

"Thanks; I think so myself. The first winter back in the little old
town, after the years away at school and college--well---- Anyhow, I
pride myself the partnership has worked pretty well. We've been about as
good chums as you could ask, haven't we now?"

"About as good."

"All right." His tone had a decided ring of satisfaction in it, but he
did not pursue the subject further. Instead he changed it abruptly: "How
does the new boarder come on?"

"Very well. We really don't mind having him at all, he's so quiet, and
Father enjoys his table talk."

"Father does, but daughter doesn't?"

"Oh, yes, I do--only he doesn't talk much to me. I sit and listen to
their discussions--and jump up to wait on them so often that I sometimes
lose the thread."

"The duffer! Why doesn't he get up and wait on you?"

Georgiana laughed. "Jimps, we're going to have another guest."

"Another man?" The question came quickly.

"Not at all. A girl--my cousin, Jeannette Crofton. At least I'm writing
to ask her for the fortnight before Easter."

"Those rich Crofton relations of yours who hold their heads so high for
no particular reason except that it helps them to forget their feet are
on the earth?"

"James Stuart, what have I ever said of them to make you speak like
that?"

"Never mind; go on. Is it the girl whose picture gets into the Sunday
papers--entirely against her will, of course--as the daughter of Thomas
Crofton? She's reported engaged, from time to time, and then the report
is denied. She's----"

"I shall tell you no more about her," said Georgiana Warne, with her
head held quite as high as if she belonged to that branch of the family
to whom James Stuart had so irreverently alluded.

"All right. I'm not interested in her anyhow, and you'll want your
breath for the run down. Come on, George; one more spurt and we're
up.... All ready. Take hold of my hand. Come on!"

In the March starlight the two ran hand in hand down the long, steep
Harmon Hill which led from the east into the little town. Stuart's grip
was tight, or more than once Georgiana would have slipped on the rough
iciness of the descent. But she did not falter at the rush of it, and
she was not panting, only breathing quickly, when they came to a
standstill upon the level.

"Good lungs, those of yours, George," commented Stuart, in the frank
manner in which he might have said it to a younger brother. "You haven't
played basket ball and rowed in your 'Varsity boat for nothing. Sure
you're not letting up a bit on all that training, now that you're back,
baking beans for boarders?"

"And sweeping their rooms, and carrying up wood for their fires,
and----"

"What? Do you mean to say that literary light allows you to tote wood
for him?" They were walking on rapidly now. "I'll be over in the morning
and take up a pile that'll leave no room for him to put his feet. What's
he thinking of?"

"Jimps, boy, how absurd you are! How should he know who puts the wood in
his room? I don't go up with armfuls of it when he's there."

"If you did, he'd merely open the door for you and say: 'Thank you very
much, my good girl.' I don't like this boarder business, I can tell you
that. Do you let him smoke in his room?"

"Why not, you unreasonable mortal? He smokes a beautiful briarwood, and
such delicious tobacco that I find myself sniffing the air when I go
through the hall in the evening, hoping I may get a whiff."

"Does, eh? When I bring up the wood I'll smoke up your hall so you won't
have to sniff the air to know you're enjoying the fragrance of Araby."

In this light and airy mood the pair went on their way, enjoying each
other's company as might any boy and girl, though each had left the
irresponsible years behind and had settled down to the sober work of
manhood and womanhood. To Georgiana Warne, whose necessary presence at
home, instead of out in the great world of activity where she longed to
be, Stuart's society, as he had intimated, had been a strong support
during this first year and a half since her return. The singularly
similar circumstances which had shaped the plans of these two young
people had been the means of inspiring much comprehending sympathy
between them. An almost lifelong previous acquaintance had put them on a
footing of brotherly and sisterly intimacy, now powerfully enhanced by
the sense of need each felt for the other. It was small wonder that
their fellow-townsmen were accustomed to couple their names as they
would those of a pair long betrothed, and that, as the two came together
into the village post-office, where as usual a group of citizens lounged
and lingered on one pretext or another, the appearance of "Jim Stuart
and Georgie Warne" should cause no comment whatever. To-night more than
one idler noted, as often before, the fashion in which the two were
outwardly suited to each other. Both were the possessors of the superb
health which is such a desirable ally to true vigour of mind, and since
both were understood to be, in the village usage, "highly educated,"
their attraction for each other was considered a natural sequence--as it
undoubtedly was.

The mail procured, the letter posted, and the small basket delivered to
a querulously grateful old woman, the young people set out for home.
They had somehow fallen into a more serious mood, and, walking more
slowly than before, discussed soberly enough certain problems of
Stuart's connected with the commercial side of market gardening. He
spoke precisely as he would have spoken to a man, with the possible
difference that he made his explanations of business conditions a trifle
fuller than he might have done to any man. But his confidence in his
friend's ability to grasp the situation was shown by the way in which,
ending his statement of the case, he asked her advice.

"Now, given just this crisis, what would you do, George?" he said.

She considered in silence for some paces. Then she asked a question or
two more, put with a clearness which showed that she understood
precisely the points to be taken into consideration. He answered
concisely, and she then, after a minute's further communion with
herself, suggested what seemed to her a feasible course.

Stuart demurred, thought it over, argued the thing for a little with
her, and came round to her point of view. He threw back his head with a
relieved laugh. "I admit it--it's a mighty good suggestion; it may be
the way out. Anyhow, it's well worth trying. George, you're a peach!
There isn't one girl in a hundred who would have listened with
intelligence enough to make her opinion worth a picayune."

"I'm not a girl, Jimps. I don't want to be a girl--at twenty-four. I
can't; I haven't time."

"That's a safe enough statement," replied James Stuart, looking down at
the dark head beside him under the March starlight, "as long as you
continue to act enough like a normal girl to run down the hills with me
after dark. Well, here we are, worse luck! I suppose you're not going
to ask me in?" There was a touch of appeal in the lightly spoken
question.

"Not to-night, Jimps; I'm sorry. Father Davy overdid to-day, in spite of
all my efforts, and I must see him to bed early and read him to sleep."

"After he's gone the literary light won't come down and smoke his
spices-of-Araby mixture by your fire, instead of his own, while you
entertain him, will he?"

Her low laugh rang out. "You ridiculous person, what a vivid imagination
you have! Every evening at about this time the literary light goes off
for a long tramp by himself, and often doesn't come back till all our
lights are out, except the one we leave burning for him. He is
absolutely absorbed in his work. We really see nothing at all of him
except at the table."

"Just the same, the time will come," predicted James Stuart. "Some night
he'll take his regular place at your fireside, as he does at your table.
I know your father's soft heart. Yours may not be quite so vulnerable,
but if the boarder should happen to look low in his mind after a
telegram from anywhere, or should get his precious feet wet----"

"Jimps, go home and be sensible. When Jeannette comes--if she does come,
which I doubt more and more--you may be asked over quite a number of
times during her visit."

"I presume so. And that's the time you'll have Jefferson down, and
you'll pair off with him, while I do my prettiest not to look like an
awkward countryman before the lady who has her picture in the Sunday
papers."

"Good-night, James Stuart--good-night."

"Good-night, Georgiana--dear," Stuart responded cheerfully. But the last
word was under his breath.




CHAPTER V

SHABBINESS


"I positively didn't know how shabby the house was till I'd read
Jeannette's letter of acceptance!"

She did not say it to her father--not Georgiana Warne. She said it not
to James Stuart, nor to Mr. E. C. Jefferson. Being Georgiana, she said
it to no one but her slightly daunted self. She was standing in the hall
as she spoke, the wide, plain hall which ran straight through the middle
of the wide, plain house, with its square rooms on either side and its
winding, old-fashioned staircase at the back. Of the house itself,
Georgiana was not in the least ashamed. She knew that it possessed a
certain charm of aspect, from the fanlight over the entrance door to the
big quaint kitchen with its uneven floor dark with time. It was when one
came to details that the charm sordidly vanished--at least to the
critical vision of the young housewife. Like the worn white paint upon
its exterior, the walls and floors within called loudly for a restoring
hand. As for the furnishings, Georgiana looked about her with an
appraising eye which took in all their dinginess. The old rugs and
carpets were so nearly threadbare; the furniture was so worn; the very
muslin curtains at the windows, though white as hands could make them,
had been so many times repaired that even artful draping could not
wholly conceal their deficiencies.

In other ways the household's lack of means made itself plainly apparent
to the daughter of the house, as she went from room to room. The linen
press, for instance--how pitifully low its piles of sheets and towels
had grown! Hardly a sheet but had a patch upon it, hardly a towel but
had been cut down and rehemmed, that it might last as long as possible.
There was, to be sure, one small tier of towels, handed down from
Georgiana's grandmother and carefully preserved against much using, of
which any mistress of a linen press might be proud. There were also two
pairs of fine hand-made linen sheets with borders exquisitely drawn; two
pairs of pillow cases to match, and a quite wonderful old bedspread of
knitted lace.

"I can keep washing out the best towels for her," Georgiana reflected
resignedly as she counted her resources.

In the china cupboard there was left quite a stock of rare old plates
and dishes which could be used as occasion demanded. The blue-and-white
crockery which must serve a part of the time was pretty meagre, the
supply of antique silver good as far as it went; it did not go very far.

But--"After all," said Georgiana to herself determinedly, "we can give
her good things to eat, and served as attractively as need be--why
should I mind about the rest? Father in his armchair is a benediction to
any meal, and Mr. Jefferson can talk as few guests can who sit at the
Crofton table, I'll wager. I'll not be apologetic, even in my mind, no
matter how much I feel like it. I've asked her and she's coming. She
wouldn't be coming if she wasn't in a way willing to take what she
finds. We'll have a good time out of it."

Whereupon she betook herself to the room which was to be given to her
cousin, and fell to work with a will, for this was the last thing to be
done before the arrival of the guest.

When it was in order she looked about it, not ill content. It would be
an exacting guest, surely, who could not be comfortable here--and there
are many guest-rooms of elaborate appointments where guests are not
wholly comfortable. This room was large and square and airy, with its
four windows facing east and south, and the view from the eastern ones
was far-reaching, with a glimpse of blue mountain ranges in the
distance. If the matting upon the floor had been many times turned and
refitted, its worn places were now all cunningly hidden and it was as
fresh as the newly scrubbed paint on the woodwork. There was a
luxuriously cushioned, high-backed chair--would Jeannette, by any
possibility, recognize the blue silk of those cushion covers? Georgiana
wondered. Jeannette, who never wore a frock long enough really to become
familiar with its pattern, would only know that the cushions were soft
to her comfort-accustomed body. The woven rag rugs of blue and white
upon the floor were of Georgiana's own making. An ancient desk, which
had belonged to Mr. Warne's mother, was carefully fitted with all the
small articles one could desire in reason, taken from Georgiana's
cherished college equipment. The washstand in the corner, behind a
home-made screen of clever design, was furnished with two beautiful old
blue-and-white ewers--the pride of Georgiana's heart, for they had come
over from England with her great grandmother; and the rack was hung as
full with towels as fastidious bather could desire. There were two or
three interesting old prints upon the walls. Altogether, with its small
bedroom fireplace laid ready for a fire, and a blue denim-covered
woodbox filled to overflowing with more wood----

She had forgotten to fill the woodbox, as yet. It was nearly time to
dress for Jeannette's coming. Georgiana ran hurriedly downstairs and
through the kitchen, warm and fragrant with the baking of the day in
preparation for the coming supper, and in that pleasant order which the
kitchen of the good housewife shows at four in the afternoon. In the
woodshed beyond she gathered a great armful of wood, not to bother with
the basket, which would not hold so much--and hurried back again, making
toward the front stairs this time, because the back stairs were narrow
and steep, and one could not rush up them at great speed with one's arms
full of wood.

"Wait a minute, please, Miss Warne!"

The front door of the house shut with a bang, and hasty footsteps caught
up with Georgiana at the foot of the stairs, just as one big stick
tumbled loose from her hold and went crashing down behind her.

"Oh, never mind," she panted. The load was much heavier than she had
realized, but she had not meant to be caught upon the front stairs with
it--not even if it had been James Stuart who came to her rescue.

It was not Stuart, but evidently one quite of Stuart's mind, for
Georgiana now found her arms unburdened of their heavy incumbrance
without further parley, and herself put where she belonged by this cool
command:

"Never carry a load like this when you have a man in the house."

"But--but we haven't!" objected Georgiana, her voice a trifle
breathless. She followed Mr. Jefferson, as he strode up the stairs with
the wood. She opened the door of the guest-room and lifted the cover of
the woodbox.

"Haven't?" he questioned, dumping the wood into the box, and then
stooping to rearrange it. "Would you object to telling me what you
consider me, then?"

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that he was supposed to be a
literary light, but she restrained the too-familiar speech.

"You are, of course, a boarder--a 'paying guest,' as we should say, if
we were some people," she observed with gravity. "You are expected to
complain of whatever service you receive, not to offer any under any
circumstances."

"I see. Were you intending to fill this box?"

He stood upright, and his glance wandered from the box in question
around the pleasant room in its fresh and expectant order. But it came
discreetly back to Georgiana's face.

"Not at all," she denied. "There's quite enough there for to-night."

He nodded, and went toward the door. "The woodshed is, I suppose, beyond
the kitchen, after the fashion of woodsheds, and the kitchen is beyond
the dining-room?"

"Please don't bother!"

Of course it was useless to protest--and she followed him down the
stairs, through dining-room and kitchen to the woodshed. As he passed
through the kitchen he stopped and stood still in the middle of it.

"May I look for a minute?" he asked. "It takes me back to my boyhood. My
mother used just such a kitchen as this. I thought it the best room in
the house."

His lips took on a smile as he looked. Georgiana, with her own hands,
had scoured every inch of that kitchen, had made to shine brilliantly
every utensil which had in it possibilities of shining. It was
impossible not to feel a housewifely pride in the appearance of the
place, and to exult in the spicy odours which told of the morning's
bakings.

Mr. Jefferson, going on into the woodshed and returning with a
well-balanced load of wood which put Georgiana's late attempt to the
blush, assured her that he felt personally competent to attend to the
woodbox without further aid from her, and marched away as if he were
quite accustomed to such tasks.

It may be here stated that next day, when in his absence she looked into
his room to see if the woodbox there were quite empty, she found it
quite full, though she could not possibly remember when he had
discovered the opportunity to do the deed without her knowledge. And
from this time forth, during the remainder of his stay, she was obliged
to resign herself to the fact that the "man in the house," though he
might be a boarder, would permit no interference with this self-assumed
task.

Jeannette had written that she would arrive on a certain Thursday
afternoon between four and five, being conveyed by motor from the large
city, sixty miles away, which was her home. Georgiana, therefore, with
memories of college days again strong upon her, made ready to serve
afternoon tea beside the living-room fire.

"Be prepared to have this function every day while the guest is here,
Father Davy," said she. "Jeannette's undoubtedly accustomed to it and
would miss it more than she could miss any other one thing. But she's to
have only the plainest of thin bread and butter with it, since our
six-o'clock village supper comes so soon after. We mustn't pamper her,
must we?"

Mr. Warne, in his armchair by the fireside, ready to welcome the guest,
looked up at his daughter with bright eyes. "Pampering," said he, "is
the atmosphere of this house. Jeannette cannot escape it. I am pampered
beyond belief every day of my life. At this very moment my eyes are
feasting upon the sight of my child in what must be an absolutely new
old dress!"

A peculiar expression crossed Georgiana's face as she glanced down at
the soft gray-blue of the afternoon frock she had donned for the
occasion.

"I'm wondering if she will recognize it," she murmured. "It was one of
the white evening gowns in that last 'Semi-Annual.' I coloured it
myself--as usual. It really came out pretty well, but it gives me a
queer, conscious feeling to be wearing it when I meet her. Do you
suppose she'll know it, Father Davy?"

"And if she does?" The tone was that of a tender irony.

"I suppose I'm an idiot to care! I don't care--_but I do_!" Georgiana
flung a look at the slim man in the big chair, which said that she was
confident of his understanding her, no matter what she said.

"No false pride, daughter," he warned her. "You can tell the big man
from the little one by the character of the things he is willing to
accept. There was never any stigma attached to wearing the discarded
garments of another, provided they were come by honestly. And when one
has coloured them, into the bargain--and looks like the 'Portrait of a
Lady' in them----"

"Father Davy, you're the most comforting creature!" And Georgiana
dropped a kiss upon the top of the head which rested against the back of
the worn old armchair.

If she had not been watching from the window she would not have known
when the Crofton car drew up at the door, so quietly did the great,
shining motor roll down the macadamized road which ran through the main
street of the little town. She was out and down the manse path in
hospitable alacrity, yet not without the dignity of which she was
mistress.

So this was the guest whom she had ventured to ask down to the
hospitality of the shabby old village manse! If she had been a princess,
Miss Jeannette Crofton could not more thoroughly have looked the part.
Georgiana had known many rich men's daughters at college and had found
close friends among them, but no one of them had ever suggested such a
background of luxury as did this slim and graceful girl, as she set her
pretty foot upon the old box-bordered gravel path. She was rather small
of stature, her fair-haired beauty was of a strikingly attractive type,
and every detail of her attire and belongings breathed of wealth and
fashion. Georgiana felt herself instantly a buxom milkmaid beside her.




CHAPTER VI

WHEN ROYALTY COMES


"It was so good of you to ask me," said Jeannette in a voice of much
sweetness, as she put out her hand to her cousin. Then she turned to the
man in livery who stood at attention by the door of the car. "You may
take this coat back with you, Dennis," she said; and she let him remove
from her shoulders the long, fur-lined cloak she had worn for the March
drive. He gathered together her belongings, as she walked up the path
with Georgiana, and he afterward went back for a long motor trunk which
had been brought upon the back of the car. Besides this was a larger
receptacle of black leather which he brought and deposited in the hall.

"Dennis can take all these to my room for me," said Jeannette, with more
appreciation of the situation than Georgiana had expected. Dennis did
not look altogether pleased with this task, but he performed it and was
rewarded by a smile from his young mistress, which promised to soothe
his injured dignity at some future time.

Mr. Warne, rising slowly from the armchair as Jeannette was brought
into his presence, looked keenly into the face of his sister's daughter.
Her fine clothing was nothing to him; he could not have told what she
wore; but he was interested in learning what she might be, herself. It
was something of a test for any stranger, the meeting of that clear look
of his, kindly though it was sure to be. With all his appearance of
frailty and exhaustion, one felt instinctively that whatever had
happened to the body, the mind was intact and resolute with energy, the
judgment swift and accurate.

As they all took tea together Georgiana could feel their guest striving
to adjust herself to her entertainers. Her manner was very charming,
though a little languid, a little weary, as if she were tired with her
long drive--and with other things besides. But there was that about her
which proclaimed her unmistakably the gentlewoman, and this was good to
know. She got on well with her newly discovered uncle, and he with her.
Indeed, the simplicity and straight-forwardness of Father Davy's manner
with every one, his keen observation, his ready imagination, would have
put him instantly on an equal footing with the most exalted of his
fellow-creatures. It could do no less with his niece, no matter how new
to her his type of man might be, nor how new to him the fashion of her
speech and smile.

This was a pleasant beginning. But if Georgiana, before her guest
arrived, had thought the old house shabby, she felt it now to be
positively shambling. She struggled mightily against this attitude of
mind, knowing that it was unworthy of her, but, as she led this
wonderful, winsome creature, whom she knew to be accustomed only to the
softnesses of life, up over the worn stair carpeting to the room she had
prepared for her, she was wondering how she herself had ever conceived
the preposterous idea of inviting her cousin to visit her; the task of
making this daughter of luxury comfortable, even for a fortnight, seemed
suddenly so impossible.

"Oh, how very attractive!" exclaimed Jeannette, as she was taken into
the room over which Georgiana had spent so much thought. "I shall love
it here!"

That was to be her attitude, thought Georgiana. Being exceedingly
well-bred, the guest was prepared to like everything that was done for
her. Though this was precisely what was to be expected and desired,
Georgiana found herself already irritated by it--most unreasonably, it
must be admitted.

"I'm a jealous goose!" said she sternly to herself, and fell to helping
her cousin. There was something appealing about the girl's helplessness,
because she evidently tried hard not to show it. As the two lifted the
garments from the carefully packed trunk trays it was Georgiana who
found the right places for them in clothespress and bureau drawers. She
had seldom seen, never handled, such exquisite apparel, from the piles
of sheer, convent-embroidered linen to the frocks and wraps and négligés
which went into retirement on the padded hangers she had provided. She
realized, too, that elaborate as seemed to her the array of clothing
Jeannette had thought it necessary to bring for her visit, it was
probable that the girl herself had felt that she was having packed only
the simplest of her wardrobe and the least that a civilized being could
do with.

It was when Jeannette herself spread forth upon the little
dressing-table--cleverly contrived out of an old washstand, a long and
narrow mirror, and some odds and ends of muslin and lace--the articles
she was accustomed to use every day of her life, but which might have
been matched only in the homes of princes, that the young hostess found
it hardest to control the pang of envy which smote her. Such silver,
such crystal, such genuine ivory--and such sheer beauty of design and
finish! Yet Jeannette was almost awkward in her disposal of the imposing
array, saying with a laugh that she really couldn't remember how the
things went at home, but that it didn't matter in the least.

She set about removing her traveling clothes as if she never had been
waited upon in her life. It was only when she failed to discover how she
was put together that Georgiana had to come to the rescue.

"It's dreadfully stupid of me," protested Jeannette, her delicate cheeks
flushing, "but I simply can't find that absurd hook."

It was then that Georgiana frankly took the situation by its horns and
did away with all embarrassment.

"You must let me help you, Jean," she said, finishing the unhooking with
ease, "whenever you need it. I shall love to do it, for you might have
rather a bad time trying to do everything for yourself. There you
are--and please call me when you are ready to be fastened into your
other frock. I'm just around the corner, and there's nobody else at home
now."

Before supper was served, Georgiana prepared her cousin to meet "the
boarder." Not on any account would she have let his presence be
accounted for on the score of his being a guest in the house; not even
would she call him a "paying guest."

"Mr. Jefferson came to us through a letter from a friend. He said he
wanted a quiet place to work in, away from all interruptions by friends
or claims of any sort. He is writing a book, and we see as little of him
as if he were not in the house--except at the table. I think you will
like him. It's so long since we have had a man in the house we're not
yet used to it, but on the whole it's rather comforting."

"How interesting--to have a book being written in the house! Is it fact
or fiction, do you know?"

"I don't imagine it's fiction. He has piles of reference books, and a
great deal of mail, and--somehow--he doesn't look as if he wrote
fiction."

Yet, as Mr. Jefferson came into the dining-room that night, Georgiana
found herself wondering why she should think he did not look as if he
would write fiction--not foolish fiction, certainly, but sensible
fiction, made possible by keen observation and set off by a capacity for
quiet--possibly even biting--humour. He looked at least as if he might
write essays, thoughtful, clever essays, full of searching analyses of
his fellow human creatures, of their oddities, their hopes, their
aspirations, their sins, and their virtues. Or--was he, after all,
writing on scientific matters--facts, pure and simple; inferences,
deductions, conclusions from facts? She wondered, more than she had yet
done, as to the nature of his work.

"I think Mr. Jefferson is delightful," said Jeannette cordially, beside
the living-room fire, when supper was over, and the boarder, after
lingering in the living-room doorway for a minute, but declining on the
score of work Mr. Warne's invitation to enter, had gone his way
upstairs. On this first night Georgiana had let the disordered dining
table wait, and had accompanied the others to the fireside as if she had
a dozen servants to attend to her household affairs. "After this, she
won't notice so much," she had argued with herself. "I don't want to
have her offering to help. I don't mean to do a thing differently on her
account, but I can't help--well, _shying_ at the dishes the very first
minute after supper!"

"A man of fine intellect," Father Davy responded to his niece's
observation, "and accustomed to think worthy thoughts. One can see that
at once. It is a real pleasure to have him here. It is good for us, too.
Georgiana and I were growing narrow before he came. He has broadened us;
we get his point of view on subjects that we thought had been disposed
of for all time--and find them not disposed of at all."

Before the moment arrived when, in Georgiana's mind, the waiting work in
the kitchen must be done without further postponement, the front door
was besieged by James Stuart. A basket of late winter apples in hand, he
came in, looking the image of vigorous youth, his well-set-up figure
showing its best in the irreproachable clothes he always wore when his
day's work was over, his manner, as usual, that of the friend of the
house. He had not received Georgiana's permission to come in upon this
first evening of Miss Crofton's visit, but he had taken his welcome for
granted and was not disappointed in receiving it. It was impossible not
to be glad to see his smiling face, for his good looks were backed by a
capacity for adapting himself to whatever company he might find himself
in, though it should be of the most distinguished.

Presenting Stuart to her cousin, it occurred to Georgiana to wonder as
to the impression each must make upon the other. Jeannette was wearing a
frock of a peculiar shade of blue which the firelight and lamplight,
instead of dulling, seemed to make almost to glow. It was the sort of
apparently simple attire which is the product of high art, and in it,
sitting just where all lights seemed to play together upon hair and
cheek and perfect throat, the visitor was, as Georgiana owned to
herself, certainly worth looking at.

She left them together presently and went off to the kitchen. Here she
covered from view with a big pinafore her own undeniably attractive
figure and fell upon her task, proceeding to dispatch it with all the
speed compatible with quiet. She had cleared the table, and, having
arranged her dishes in orderly piles, was just filling her dishpan with
the steaming water which made suds as it fell upon the soap, when a
familiar footstep was heard upon the bare kitchen floor.

Georgiana looked over her shoulder, words of reproof upon her lips:
"Well--having come without an invitation, the least you can do is to
stay where you belong and entertain the guest."

"There's a characteristic welcome for you!" The intruder seemed in no
wise daunted by his reception, but picked up a dish towel and stood at
ease, waiting the placing of the first tumbler in the rinsing pan. "And
where should I belong, if not standing by a chum in distress?"

"I'm not in distress, if you please."

"Don't mind washing dishes while the guest sits by the fire?"

"Not a bit--more than usual," Georgiana amended honestly.

"Why don't you pile 'em up and let 'em wait till morning?"

"I shouldn't sleep for thinking of them."

"My word, but you're a hustler! I don't know whether I can keep up."

"Don't try. Go back to the other room, please, Jimps. You can be of real
use there."

"Well, I like that!"

As he wiped away assiduously, Stuart surveyed his companion's face in
profile. It belied the dictatorial words, for Georgiana was smiling. Her
cheeks were of a splendid colour, her dark hair drooped over the
prettiest white forehead in the world, and the whole outline of her face
was distracting. Here was a lamplight effect which rivalled the one in
the living-room, though it was thrown from a common kitchen lamp,
unshaded, and fell upon a figure in a red-and-white checked apron.
Georgiana glanced at her self-appointed assistant and encountered the
flash of an eye which told her that, however Stuart objected to her
words, he liked the look of what he saw.

"Isn't Jeannette a beauty?" she inquired hastily, and plunged her hands
into her pan with such energy that she sent a splash of hot, soapy water
upon Stuart's cheek. He surreptitiously wiped it off with a corner of
his dish towel.

"She sure is," he assented cordially. "I wasn't prepared for quite such
a looker. She doesn't seem to have brought with her that proud and
haughty expression she had in the Sunday papers."

"She's a dear, and not in the least proud and haughty. I'm going to
enjoy her visit, I know. If I can only make her enjoy it!"

"I'll be glad to help," Stuart offered. "This isn't a very promising
time of year for the country, but if you think she'd like any of the
good times we can give her here, I'll get them up."

"Our sort of good times is just what I do want to give her. She's had
enough of her own kind and needs the diversion. What would you get up,
for instance?"

"I'll take overnight to think it out, but I can promise you it'll be an
outdoor affair. Would she be up to any kind of a tramp, do you think?"

"Oh, no, Jimps! Not yet, at any rate."

"All right. I'll harness up my best team and carry her most of the way.
We must have another man, I suppose. Shall we ask the literary light,
just for a lark? It would give tone to the company to have him along,
eh?"

"He probably wouldn't go."

"Don't you fool yourself. A fellow who covers as many miles a day as he
does will jump at it, no matter how important his next chapter is. Do
you know, I'll have to admit I rather like him since I tramped a couple
of miles in his company the other day. There are a lot of interesting
ideas in his head, and I got him to give me the benefit of a few of
them. Drew him out, you know. Though to be strictly honest"--with a
laugh--"when I thought it over afterward I wasn't exactly sure that he
hadn't drawn me out rather more than I drew him. Anyhow, the interest
seemed to be mutual, and that flattered me a bit. It's perfectly evident
that he's a great student of affairs."

They finished the work at a gallop. Georgiana slipped off her pinafore,
and Stuart, who had insisted on waiting for her, hung it upon its
accustomed nail.

"Do you suppose pretty cousin ever wore one?" he queried.




CHAPTER VII

SNOWBALLS


Mr. E. C. Jefferson laid down his pen, ran his hand through his heavy
brown hair, rumpling it still more than it had been rumpled
before--which is saying considerable--and stretched his legs under the
table upon which he had been writing steadily since half-past one
o'clock. He heaved a mighty breath, stretched his arms to match his
legs, looked round at his windows, which faced the west, and so had kept
him supplied with strong light longer than windows on any other side of
the house would have done, and took out his watch.

Nearly half-past four. Time, and more than time, for his late afternoon
tramp. He set the piles of sheets before him in order, sheathed his pen
and put it in his pocket, and rose from his place, the light of
achievement in his eye, but crampiness and fatigue in all his limbs.

As he approached his windows to ascertain what kind of weather was to be
found outside, he became aware of sounds which would indicate that some
event of activity and hilarity was going on below. He realized now that
he had been hearing these sounds--quite without hearing them, after the
fashion of the absorbed workman--for the last half-hour. Looking out, he
beheld an interesting affair in full swing.

At each end of the side yard the heavy snow which a late March storm had
brought overnight had been shovelled and manipulated into the semblance
of a fort such as lads are wont to make. Between these two entrenchments
a battle was raging. But it was no lads who held the places of the
combatants. Instead, as he looked, Mr. Jefferson saw rising warily from
behind the fort nearest him, a girlish figure in a scarlet blanket suit,
its dark head half shielded by a scarlet toboggan cap very much awry. A
mittened hand flung a snowball with strength and precision straight into
the opposite fort, and the assailant immediately dodged down behind the
embankment.

From the opposing stronghold then cautiously appeared a head snugly
bound in a blue scarf, from which locks of fair hair escaped at divers
points. A second snowball, accompanied by a loose flutter of snow,
wended its way uncertainly through the air, and fell a foot short of the
fort behind which crouched the scarlet figure. The figure immediately
rose and fired an answering volley. Peals of laughter and gay shouts
rang through the air.

At this very moment a third person ran into the yard from the street,
calling: "For shame, George! I'm going to take sides with the enemy,
and we'll have you out in no time!"

Jefferson saw this third figure, in sweater and cap, dash across the
open, narrowly escaping a vigorous shower of missiles from the near
fort, and disappear behind the farther one.

The battle was now on in earnest. Let Scarlet Toboggan fire as fast and
as furiously as she might, a merciless bombardment of her protecting
walls had begun. The girl in the blue scarf--and priceless furs--had
sunk laughing upon the floor of her refuge, while her new ally, bringing
to bear the full strength and skill of his sex, battered at the
entrenchments across the yard, and began to make havoc thereon.

Georgiana was a brave foe, but though she fought with surprising
endurance she was beginning to be seriously worsted, several feet of her
snow rampart having been shot away, when a voice behind her cried out a
command, and an arm, more sinewy than hers, sent a hard shot whizzing
past her head into the opposite fort with that directness of aim and
effectiveness of delivery which only the male arm can accomplish.

"Duck down and make snowballs while I fire!" the voice ordered, and
Georgiana, breathless but still undaunted, obeyed.

"Keep behind me, and pile the balls at the right," directed Jefferson.
His voice was eager as a boy's. He also had pulled on sweater and cap,
and as he and James Stuart faced each other across the twenty yards
which separated them, they might have been a couple of school-fellows
wrestling for supremacy.

"Keep 'em coming--faster--faster!" Stuart urged Jeannette, the lust of
battle upon him. "Stop laughing and work! George is a"--he stooped to
make a ball for himself--"fiend at making 'em; you've got to learn! Keep
'em coming."

The wet snow was precisely in the right state for quick packing, and
Georgiana was indeed an expert at the business. Jefferson found her
hard, round balls splendid missiles, and he used them with all the
energy of an arm which welcomed the change from the labours of the past
hours to those of the present.

"Ha! there goes that left corner!" he exulted with his comrade-at-arms,
as the last of a series of well-directed shots reduced a part of the
enemies' defences to a gratifying slump. "And here comes a bit of ours,"
he added, as a ball of Stuart's ploughed through a weakened upper
portion of their own rampart.

"He'll be game to the last," panted Georgiana, working furiously.

"So will we! We'll fight to a finish, if we go without our suppers."

The battle raged on. The combatants took no heed of passing time, until
Jeannette, growing reckless with excitement, lifted an incautious head
and received a spent ball full upon her chin. No harm was done, as she
protested, but Stuart raised a flag of truce and Mr. Jefferson ran
across the lines to apologize.

"It didn't hurt a bit," Jeannette reaffirmed, showing a very pink chin.

"It's lucky it didn't. I wasn't properly protecting you," Stuart
declared warmly.

"Both sides come in to supper!" commanded Georgiana. "Please stay,
Jimps; it's the only amends we can make you, and you must be as hungry
as a bear."

"Thanks; I'd like to, but I'm not properly dressed, I'm afraid."

"Jean and I won't make a change, and you can take us coasting this
evening, if you will. Do you suppose Mr. Jefferson would dream of
staving off his dignity a bit longer and going, too?"

They all looked at the person mentioned and their glances were all gayly
audacious.

"Is that an invitation or a challenge?" He put it to Georgiana.

"Whichever you choose to take it."

"I'll take it as I choose, then, and accept. The spirit of sport is upon
me; I couldn't work this evening if I tried."

"Good for you! 'All work and no play,' you know," quoted Stuart, as they
went in together, a moist and merry company.

Upstairs, while Jeannette dried her hair, she reflected that she didn't
know when she had had so gay a time. She ran in to say this to
Georgiana, but found that that young woman had already put her hair in
order without drying it, as its damply curling locks above her forehead
testified, and was rushing away downstairs to the kitchen.

"Won't you take cold?" suggested Jeannette, struggling with her own wet
braids, and very naturally wishing for her maid to dry and put them in
order.

"Mercy, no; not over the kitchen stove. They'll be dry soon enough," was
the reply; and Georgiana vanished, the supper on her mind.

When Jeannette came down, half an hour later, and appeared in the
kitchen doorway, she saw that the speed of her young hostess's labours
and the warmth of the kitchen were quite likely to prevent all chance of
undried locks.

There was system about Georgiana's work, fast as was its pace. Each trip
across the floor, from pantry to dining-room and back again,
demonstrated housewifely efficiency. Both hands were always full and she
seemed never to forget what she meant to do. If she passed the stove on
her way somewhere she stopped to stir something or to glance into the
oven, and when she went to the storeroom for cream she brought away
bread and butter as well.

Jeannette commented admiringly. "Don't you ever forget and have to run
back for something?" she inquired.

"Goodness, yes! But when you've been over certain ground several million
times, it's a pity if you can't make your head save your heels as a
rule. Excuse me, dear; but if you wouldn't mind standing just a foot or
two to the left----"

Jeannette turned. "I see; I'm in the way when I'd like so much to help.
Isn't there anything I could do?"

"All done, thank you--except--would you just arrange that boxful of
scarlet geraniums Jimps brought over, for the table? That would help
very much. Take any bowl or glass from the dining-room cupboard that
looks appropriate to you."

"I'd love to." And Jeannette fell to work--if it could be called work.
Never in her life had she arranged scarlet geraniums as a table
decoration, or, for that matter, seen them so used. But as she placed
the splendid, thrifty blooms, each with its accompanying rich green
leaves, in the plain brown bowl which she felt best matched their
undistinguished beauty, she discovered for the first time that other
blossoms besides roses and orchids, chrysanthemums, and the rest of the
ordinary florists' products, may charm the eye from the centre of a
snowy cloth.

"That's gorgeous! Thank you so much! Aren't they the jolliest flowers in
the world for a winter night? Jimps's greenhouses certainly are doing
well. Don't you want a bit of a blossom in your hair? Their grower would
feel tremendously complimented."

"Red's not my colour, but it is yours. Let me tuck this little sprig in
these braids, and I'll risk the grower's being better pleased than if I
wore them."

Georgiana submitted, and promptly forgot all about the scarlet
decoration. But the others did not--found forgetting it, indeed, quite
impossible. As they gathered about the table, it caught the eye of each
in turn. Georgiana's cheeks, from the vigorous exercise in the frosty
air, were glowing brilliantly; her eyes were wonderful to look at; her
dark cloth dress had upon it no relief of colour; so the scarlet
geranium in her hair was the touch of the artist which drew the eye and
held it. She had placed upon the table, instead of the customary lamp,
one of the few treasures of the house, a fine old candelabrum, with
pendent crystals, and the burning candles threw their mellow light
directly into her face.

She looked up suddenly, after having served each one from the dish
before her, and found them all looking at her. James Stuart's fork was
suspended above his plate, but the others had not yet taken theirs. She
gazed at them in amazement.

"Why, what is the matter?" she cried. "Do I--is something queer about
me? Have I missed a point somebody has made?"

They all turned then, laughing, to their plates, and nobody would tell
her what was wrong. Stuart seemed to think it a great joke--her
mystification. When she removed the plates for the second course--there
were but two in the simple, hearty little supper--she glanced into the
small kitchen mirror. Her eye caught the scarlet geranium.

"I suppose I look ridiculously sentimental with that flower just there,"
she thought. "But I won't take it out after Jean put it there. No wonder
they laughed."

An hour afterward they were all out upon the hill nearby. Stuart
possessed a splendid pair of "bobs," and they were soon dashing down the
hill at a pace which, while it made Jeannette hold her breath with
mingled fear and joy, made Georgiana cry out, "Oh! is there anything so
glorious?" and made Mr. Jefferson, just behind her, watching over her
shoulder, respond with heartiness: "The snow fight took five years off
my age, and now here goes another five. I must be almost as young as you
are now, Miss Warne."

"Oh, no; I'm only ten myself to-night," she answered. "Coasting was one
of my earliest joys. I was so proud when I could steer Jimps Stuart's
first pair of bobs--small and primitive ones compared with these."

She found Mr. Jefferson beside her when it came to the walk back up the
hill. A new side of him was visible to-night. He was not the quiet
student and writer, the man who discussed with her father and herself
the course of the world's events or the problems of social service, but
a light-hearted boy, much like Stuart, and ready to abet all the other
man's efforts for the amusement of the party.

The fun went on for an hour; then Jeannette, unaccustomed to so much
vigorous exercise, began quite against her will to show evidences of
fatigue, and after one particularly long, swift flight the party went
back to the house. There followed another gay hour before the fire,
while Stuart roasted chestnuts, and Georgiana, sitting on the floor
against her father's knee, told stones of madcap pranks at college,
illustrating them by such changes of facial expression and such
significant gestures that her hearers spent themselves with their
laughter.

Jeannette, lying back in a shabby but comfortable old armchair, looked
and listened with the absorbed interest of one to whom such simple
pleasures as these had the flavour of absolute novelty. Her eyes
wandered from Georgiana's vivid face to her father's delicate one; to
James Stuart's comely features glowing ruddily in the firelight as he
tended his chestnuts, showing splendid white teeth as he roared at
Georgiana's clever mimicry or turned to laugh into Jeannette's eyes as
he offered her a particularly plump and succulently bursting specimen of
his labours; to Mr. Jefferson's maturer personality, his brown eyes
keenly intent, his face lighted with enjoyment, his occasional comments
on Georgiana's adventures flashing with a dry humour which matched hers
and sometimes quite outdid it. To Jeannette they were all an engrossing
study. As for herself----

"She's the loveliest thing I ever saw," thought Georgiana from time to
time as she glanced up at her cousin, whose fair hair against the dark
cushion of the old chair caught and held the charm of the fire's own
warmth in its gleaming strands. Jeannette's eyes were matchless by
lamplight; her cheeks and lips were glowing from the outdoor life of the
day and evening; her smile was a thing to imprison hearts and hold them
fast. If she spoke little no one thought of her as silent, and the charm
of her low laughter at the sallies of the others was the sheerest
flattery, it was so evidently born of genuine delight in the cleverness
she did not attempt to emulate.

"I'm a clown beside her," said Georgiana to herself. "Who cares how a
woman talks when she looks like that? Every line of her is absolute
grace and beauty, every turn of her head is fascination itself. I never
saw such eyes. That little twist in the corner of her lip when she
smiles is the most delicious thing I ever saw. Jimps looks at it forty
times in every five minutes and I can't blame him. Mr. Jefferson keeps
his chair facing that way so he can have her all the time in focus,
though he doesn't eat her up as Jimps does. I can't blame either of
them. And I shall go on being a clown, because that's what I can do and
it amuses them. If I should lie back in a chair like that and just smile
without saying anything, Father Davy would say, 'Daughter, don't you
feel quite well?' and Jimps would propose getting me a cup of tea. Oh,
well--how absurd of me to mind because another girl looks like a picture
by a wonderful painter while I look like--a lurid lithograph by nobody
at all!"

Whereupon she set her strong, white teeth into a hot, roasted chestnut,
cracked it, and, regarding the halves, said: "This reminds me of the
night Prexy lost his head"--and brought down the house with the merriest
tale of all. It was so irresistibly absurd that Jeannette, helpless with
her mirth, buried her face in her cobweb handkerchief, Stuart rocked
upon his knees and made the welkin ring, and Mr. Jefferson laughed in a
growling bass that gathered volume as the preposterousness of the
situation grew upon him with consideration of it. Even Mr. Warne, whose
expressions of amusement were usually noiseless, gave way to soft little
chuckles of appreciation, and wiped his tear-filled eyes.

Georgiana, finishing her chestnut, looked upon them all and told them
they were the most gratifying audience she had ever addressed, but that
she feared it was not good for them to give way to their emotions so
unrestrainedly, and that she should therefore not open her lips again
that night. As they found it impossible to break down this resolution,
even with entreaties backed by offerings of worldly goods, the party
broke up. Georgiana carried off her guest to put her to bed with her own
hands, while Mr. Jefferson and James Stuart smoked a bedtime pipe
together in the boarder's room; after which Stuart let himself quietly
out of a door that was never locked, to reflect, as he tramped homeward
over the snow, on what an inordinately jolly evening it had been.




CHAPTER VIII

SOAPSUDS


"Will you think I'm dreadful, Georgiana dear," asked Jeannette, lying
luxuriously back upon her pillow while her cousin sat braiding her own
thick locks by the little bedroom fireplace in which the last remnants
of the fire were smouldering, "if I say I shouldn't have believed I
could possibly have such a good time in such a way? I never did anything
the least bit like it."

"Never coasted?"

"Never."

"Never threw snowballs?"

"Not that I can remember."

"Nor roasted chestnuts?"

"I never tasted one before--except perhaps in the stuffing of a fowl."

"Poor child! But at least you've sat by the fire with other girls and
men and told stories, little Jean?"

The guest considered. "Of course--at house parties. Yet I can't seem to
recall any such scene as the one we just left, down by your fire. I
certainly never sat on the floor with my arm on my father's knee, with
a group of people around, while somebody told stories--sure not such
stories as you told. Oh, you're the cleverest girl I ever knew, to tell
such things in such a way! It was perfectly splendid! How those two men
did enjoy it! I don't know when I've heard men laugh in just that way."

"Just what way? Please tell me how they laughed differently from other
men. To be sure, Jimps just lets go when he's amused and raises the
rafters with his howls of glee; but so do other young men of his age.
And certainly Mr. Jefferson laughed decorously enough."

"Yes, but it was so whole-souled with both of them; and yet there wasn't
a thing in your stories but--oh, I can't tell you just what I mean, if
you don't know. But somehow it all struck me so differently from the way
any girl-and-man evening ever struck me before. There--there seems a
different air to breathe here--if that expresses it--from any I've ever
been in."

The two regarded each other, Jeannette from between half-closed, deeply
fringed eyelids as she lay back upon her pillows, one arm, half veiled
with the finest of linen and lace, outstretched upon the treasured
old-time counterpane, the other beneath her neck; Georgiana sitting up
straight, with two long, dark braids hanging over her shoulders, her
dusky eyes wide open, her cheeks still bright with colour balanced by
the scarlet hue of the loose garment she had put on.

"I've no doubt there is," agreed Georgiana thoughtfully. "Still, though
you live a very different life from any I've ever known, I didn't
suppose your education in the matter of roast chestnuts--and the things
that go with them--had been quite so badly neglected. To think of never
having had them except so disguised by the manipulations of a French
_chef_ that you couldn't recognize them! And to have gone to balls and
horse shows and polo games--and never to have built a snow fort! Dear,
dear, what we have to teach you! Life hasn't been really fair to you,
has it, my dear?"

This was sheer audacity, from a poor girl to a rich one, but it was
charming audacity none the less and by no means wholly ironic. To
Jeannette, studying her cousin with eyes which were envious of the
physical superiority for lack of which no training in the social arts or
mere ability to purchase the aid of dressmaker and milliner could
possibly atone, conscious that Georgiana possessed a mind far keener and
better trained than her own, the question called for a serious answer.
She half sat up and pushed her pillow into a soft mountain behind her as
she spoke:

"No, it hasn't! I thought so before I came here and now I'm sure of it.
I feel a weak and helpless creature beside you--helpless in every way. I
can't do anything you can. If my father should lose his money and I
should be thrown upon my own resources, I shouldn't be able to make so
much as a--snowball for myself!"

Both laughed in spite of Jeannette's earnestness, for the words brought
back vivid memories of the wild sport of the afternoon. Then Georgiana's
ready brain leaped to the inevitable corollary:

"Ah, but there'd be sure to be a man ready to dash into your fort and
make your snowballs for you!"

"I'm not so sure."

"I am."

"Of course the men I know don't seem to mind whether a girl is helpless
or not, if she can look and act the way they want her to. But--I'm
discovering that there are other kinds of men, and somehow I like this
new kind. And I imagine this kind wouldn't care for helpless girls. You
made snowballs for your man to throw, and they were good hard ones, as
my chin can still testify."

"You can learn to make hard snowballs," said Georgiana, smiling.

Jeannette held up one beautifully modelled but undeniably slender arm
and clasped it with her hand. "Soft as----" She paused for a simile.

"Sponge cake," supplied Georgiana, coming over to feel critically of the
extended arm. "It _is_ pretty spongy. It needs exercise with a punchball
or"--she flashed a mischievous glance at the languid form beside
her--"a batch of bread dough."

"Bread dough! Would that help it?"

"Rather! So would sweeping, and scrubbing, and moving furniture about.
But you're born to a life of ease, my dear, so those things are out of
the question for you. But fencing lessons would be good for you--and
fashionable, too, which would double their value, of course."

"Georgiana!" Jeannette sat straight up and laid two coaxing arms about
her cousin's firmly moulded neck. "Teach me to make bread, will you,
while I'm here?"

"Oh, good gracious!" Georgiana threw back her head to laugh. "Hear the
child! What good would that do, if you learned? You wouldn't do it when
you went back."

"I would!--Well, of course, I might have difficulty in--but mother wants
me to be strong; she's always fussing about it because I can't endure
the round of society things she says any girl ought to--and enjoy. If
you thought bread-making would really help----"

"It would be a drop in the bucket of exercise you ought to take."

"Nevertheless, I want to learn," persisted Jeannette as Georgiana moved
away, evidently with the intention of leaving her for the night. "I'd
like to feel I knew how. And your bread is the most delicious I ever
tasted. Please!"

"Oh, very well; I'll teach you with pleasure. I shall be setting bread
sponge at six to-morrow morning. Will you be down?" Georgiana's smile
was distinctly wicked.

"Six o'clock!" There was a look of mingled incredulity and horror in the
lovely face on the pillow. "But--does bread--does bread have to be made
so early?"

"Absolutely. After the morning dew is off the grass, bread becomes
heavy."

Jeannette stared into the mocking eyes of her cousin; then she laughed.
"Oh, I see. You're testing me. Well,"--with a stifled sigh--"I'll get up
if you'll call me. I'm afraid I should never wake myself--especially
after all that snowballing----"

"Exactly. And I'll not call you. So lie still in your nest, ladybird,
and don't bother your pretty head about bread sponges. What's the use?
You'll never need to know, and you'll soon forget having had even a
faint desire toward knowledge. Good-night--and sleep sweetly."

"Oh, but wait! I'm really serious. Please call me!"

"Never!"

With one laughing backward look and with a kiss waved toward the slender
figure now sitting up in bed, Georgiana opened the door and fled. That
she did not want to teach her cousin an earthly thing, even if she could
have believed Jeannette serious in her request, was momentarily growing
more evident to her own consciousness. Just why, she might have been
unwilling to explain.

Next morning, however, she found herself destined to carry out the plan
Jeannette had so impulsively proposed. She crept downstairs as quietly
as the creaking boards under the worn stair carpet would permit, and
began her work in a whirl of haste. But she had not more than assembled
her ingredients on the scrupulously scoured top of the old pine table
when she heard the kitchen door softly open. Wheeling, she beheld a
vision which brought a boyish whistle to her lips.

Jeannette, enveloped in a long silken garment evidently thrown on over
her night attire, a little cap of lace and ribbon confining her hair,
the most impractical of slippers on her feet, stood smiling at her
cousin, sleep still clinging to her eyelids.

"I'm down," she announced in triumph.

"So I see. But you're not up," replied Georgiana, regarding the vision
with critical eyes.

Jeannette's gaze left the trim morning garb of the young cook, her
perfectly arranged hair, her whole aspect of efficiency, and dropped to
her own highly inappropriate attire, and she flushed a little. But she
held her ground.

"You didn't call me, and when I woke it was so near six I didn't dare
wait to dress. Can't I learn unless I'm dressed like you?"

"If a French doll had come to life and offered to help me in the kitchen
I couldn't feel more stunned. What will happen to all those floating
ends of lace and ribbon, when they get mixed with flour and yeast? Be
sensible, child, and go back to bed."

"I'll pin everything out of the way, and perhaps you'll lend me an
apron. I really don't want to bother you, Georgiana, but I do want to
learn."

Georgiana relented. "Very well. Come here, and I'll cover you up as best
I can. Or I'll wait while you run up and dress--if you've anything to
put on that's fit for bread-making."

"Nothing much fitter than this, I'm afraid," admitted Jeannette
reluctantly.

"Poor little girl!" Georgiana's momentary irritation was gone, as it
usually was, in no time at all. "Well, here go the frills under a nice
big gingham all-over; and now you look like a combination of Sleeping
Beauty and Mother Bunch! All right; here we go into business. Do you
know how to scald that cupful of milk you see before you?"

"Scald it?" repeated Jeannette doubtfully--and so the lesson began.

Absolute ignorance on the part of the pupil, assured knowledge on that
of the teacher--the lesson was a very kindergarten in methods. There
were times when Georgiana had much difficulty in restraining her inward
mirth, but she soon saw that this must be done, though Jeannette herself
laughed at her own clumsiness, and evidently was determined to let
nothing escape her.

"Kneading looks so easy when you do it," she lamented; "but I can't seem
to help getting stuck."

"That will come with practice--if you ever try another batch, which I
doubt. And it's the kneading that is so good for your arms."

"Yours are beautiful--and so strong, it must be fun to own them."

"There are times when a bit of muscle is of use in a hustling world,"
admitted her cousin. "There, I think that dough will do very well. Turn
it over and lay it smoothly in the bowl--so. Cover it with its white
blanket--so; and leave it right here, where it will have a good warm
temperature to rise in. Now, run up and snatch another nap; you'll have
plenty of time."

"You're not going back to bed?"

"Rather not!" Georgiana's smile strove to be tolerant. "There are just a
few things to be done about the house, and they are best done before
breakfast. Off with you, lady cousin!"

"Do you always get up so early?" Jeannette persisted.

"I have an extraordinary fondness for early rising," Georgiana
explained. "It's foolish, of course, but it's an old habit. Good-bye, my
dear; my next errand is down cellar," and she vanished from the sight of
her guest, quite unable to keep herself longer in hand before the
amazing point of view of this daughter of luxury.

The "next errand" was the washing of the handful of fine towels with
which the painstaking hostess was keeping the guest-room supplied,
unwilling to furnish the aristocratic young person upstairs with the
coarser articles used by herself and the others. Jeannette, all unaware
that the snowy linen with which her room was kept plentifully supplied
was constantly relaundered in secret by Georgiana's own hands, was as
lavish in her use of it as she was accustomed to be at home, and the
result was a quite unbelievable amount of extra work for her cousin.

Mr. Warne, coming upon his daughter by chance in this very early morning
flurry of laundering, expressed himself upon the subject in the gentle
but positive way which was his.

"Why do it, my dear?" he questioned. "Are the sheets and towels we use
not quite good enough for others?"

"Not half good enough for Lady Jean," responded the laundress, rubbing
energetically away--yet carefully, too, for the old linen was not so
stout as it once had been.

"You are intentionally deceiving her, aren't you, daughter? Why do
that?--since it is not necessary for her comfort."

"But it is. She would shudder at the touch of a cotton sheet. As for a
common huck towel----"

Mr. Warne shook his head. "I can't agree with you. So that the sheets
and towels are spotless--as your sheets and towels are--the mere degree
of fineness is not essential. And if she knew how much labour it costs
you, I am very certain she would infinitely prefer to be less of a
spendthrift in the matter of quantity."

"I've no doubt she would. But I'd rather wash my fingers off than not
give her the fresh towel for her perfect face each time she uses one.
I'd like it myself. I'd like a million towels, all fine as silk. I'd
like----" She stopped abruptly, seeing the look upon her father's face.
"Oh, I'm sorry!" she flashed at him repentantly. "I truly don't mind
being poor in most ways. It's the lack of certain things that go with
nicety of living that grinds me most. I shouldn't mind wearing gingham
outside, if I could have all the fine linen I want underneath.
It's--it's--oh, well, you know! And I'm an idiot to talk about it when
the thing we really need is books--books for your starving mind. If I
could get you all you want of those----" Her voice broke upon the wish,
always strong with her.

"My dear, my mind will never starve while it has the old books to feed
upon. Listen, on what a pertinent thought did I come this morning. I was
delving in good old Thomas Fuller, of those fine seventeenth-century
writers whose works still glow with fire: '_Though my guest was never so
high, yet, by the laws of hospitality, I was above him whilst under my
roof_.'"

The girl laughed, dashing away a hot tear with the back of a soapy hand.
"Trust you to find a classic to turn a tragedy into a comedy," she said.
"Go away now, Father Davy, and I'll soon be through. It's a poor
washerwoman I am to be thinning my suds with brine!"




CHAPTER IX

A REASONABLE PROPOSITION


"You'll come, too, Georgiana dear?" Jeannette, furrily clad for a walk
with James Stuart, stood in the doorway looking back. "Please do."

"Come, George;--you need a good tramp," Stuart urged at Jeannette's
elbow.

He looked the picture of anticipation. He had undertaken getting the
visitor into training by increasingly long daily walks, and the result
was proving eminently satisfactory. At the end of the first half of the
visit Jeannette was looking wonderfully well and happy--hardly the same
girl who had come to the little village to try if she could endure such
life as was likely to be offered her there.

"Thank you, my dears, nothing could persuade me. Run along and leave me
to diversions of my own," answered Georgiana gayly.

So they had gone, Jeannette wafting back a kiss, Stuart waving an
enthusiastic arm. Georgiana had smiled at them, had closed the door
softly behind them--and had immediately banged to another conveniently
near at hand, one opening into a small clothespress under the stair
landing.

"Diversions of my own!" she repeated with emphasis. "Happy phrase! I
wonder what they think my diversions are--with this family to look
after. Well, you got yourself into it, George Warne. You can stick it
out if it kills you."

She deliberately thumped one door after another all the way along her
progress through the empty rooms and up the stairs to the second floor.
Her father was away for the afternoon on a rare visit to a neighbour who
had sent for him, an old parishioner, who, falling ill, longed for the
gentle offices of his friend and long-time minister. As for Mr.
Jefferson, this was the time of day when he was always away on his usual
long walk. It was a comfort to be alone in the quiet house--and to
bang and thump.

In her room Georgiana arrayed herself in a heavy red sweater, then
ascended to the attic and stood eying the great hand loom of antique
pattern, a relic of an earlier century. It was equipped with a black
warp, upon which a few rows of parti-coloured woof had been woven.

"Diversions!" she repeated, and shook her round fist at the lumbering
object.

Then she sat down on the old weaver's bench and began to weave with
heavy, jarring thuds which shook the floor, as with strong arms she
pulled and pushed and sent her clumsy shuttle flying back and forth.
The attic was very cold; but she was soon warm with the violent exercise
and presently had discarded the sweater and was working away with might
and main.

"Go at it--go at it!" she was saying to herself. "Jealous idiot that you
are! Jealous of Jeannette, of her clothes, her money, her beauty, her power
to attract--jealous because Jimps likes her so well--because Father Davy
looks at her with the eyes of an appreciative uncle--because Mr. E. C.
Jefferson talks to her as if he enjoyed it. Pound--pound--pound away at
the old loom till your arms ache, and see if you can get the nonsense
out of you!"

"I beg your pardon," said a deep voice at the top of the narrow stairs
not far away.

The loom stopped with a jerk as the weaver flashed round upon the head
and shoulders protruding above the rafters. "Oh! I'm sorry! Did I
disturb you?" cried Georgiana, fire in her voice. She did not look in
the least sorry. "I thought you were out, too. And I'm just over your
head. Of course you came up to----"

"No, I didn't," replied Mr. Jefferson. He ascended two steps more,
looking curiously at the loom "I came up because I thought something
extraordinary had happened up here and I ought to find out about it."

"Nothing extraordinary, merely something very ordinary. I do this
whenever I have time and the coast is clear. You usually go out at this
hour," she said accusingly.

"So I do. I came back just now, when I saw Miss Crofton and Mr. Stuart
starting off alone, in hopes that you might consent to go with me. It's
a great day. Won't you?"

"Thank you, no," the girl replied. "I'm behind with my work. These rugs
are orders very much overdue. I've been rather delayed lately, since my
machine is so noisy I can't work when anybody is on the second floor."

"Please never mind me," urged her visitor. "I can time my work to fit in
with yours, if you need to make haste. But that must be a rather
strenuous business. It's a very old affair, isn't it? Do you mind if I
look at it? I never saw one of just that pattern."

"I mind very much," replied Georgiana crisply, moving off the bench and
standing on the floor. "But that's no reason why you shouldn't examine
the Monster if you like. That's what I call it. I'll run down and be
back when you are through."

And this she would have done, but that he barred her way.

"But I won't," he said gravely, "if you prefer that I should not. Come
back, please! I'm intruding, and I'll apologize and go."

The light from a dusty attic window fell full on her face as she stood,
and he saw that in it which made him look again.

"Miss Warne," he said gently, "something is wrong, I'm afraid. Can't I
be of use to you in some way? The reason I wanted to look at this loom
was that I saw your last two strokes with the bar as I came up, and I
recognized what a tremendous push you had to give. I'm something of a
mechanic and I wondered if I couldn't do a bit of oiling, perhaps, to
make it easier. I'm afraid it's tiring you unduly."

"I need to be tired," she said, low but vehemently. "I'm in a black
mood, and the more I tire myself the quicker I shall get the better of
it. Now you know. I suppose you never have black moods."

"Do I not? So black that I could grind myself under my own heel. Do you
have them, too? I might have known by the look of you."

"You don't look as if you ever had them," she said rather curiously, her
eyes on his quiet face.

"Ah, you can't always tell--luckily. It's pretty cold up here. Are you
sure you wouldn't do better to take a run in the wind with me? You know
somehow heavy tasks look lighter after a breath of outdoor air."

"So you know what heavy tasks are?" For the life of her she could not
resist the question.

He looked steadily back at her, smiling a little. His eyes were very
clear in their quiet scrutiny. She felt as if he saw much that she would
prefer to conceal. "I have known a few that seemed to me fairly heavy at
the time," he said. "Afterward, I was thankful to have had them--to
prepare me for heavier ones."

"Oh--but they weren't the same dismal round----"

"Weren't they? Most tasks are. But I never had one quite like this. I am
concerned for you, lest this prove too heavy. Now that I am here--do you
really mind so very much if I look the machine over?"

She permitted it, and she did not run away as she had meant to do.
Presently he asked for a screw-driver and a can of oil, and when she had
procured them he did a number of things to the cumbersome loom, the
result of which, when she attacked it once more, proved that he had
relieved to a certain extent the hardest of her efforts.

"But it is still much too severe for any woman," he said seriously,
standing, oil can in hand, a little lock of hair, shaken down by his
labours, straying across his forehead. "Please tell me, and don't think
me merely curious--is there no way in which you can add to your
resources except this? You have a college training----"

"And no way whatever to make use of it," she exclaimed with some
bitterness. "But I can weave, and I have a feeling for colour and form
and can work out effects which find a market. Hand-woven rugs bring
their price these days. Really, Mr. Jefferson, I am no subject for pity
and----"

"You don't want it. Let me assure you that I don't feel a particle. To
be young and strong and fit for hard work is no cause for pity. But--I
have reason for persisting in my inquiry. You see, I happen to know of
some one in need of such training as you undoubtedly have. Would you
consider giving a few hours daily to one who needs a copyist and
critic?"

Georgiana scanned his face with intent, incredulous eyes. Then, "Do you
mean yourself?" she questioned.

"I mean myself. I hesitate to mention that I am the candidate, knowing
that that admission must instantly create a prejudice against me." He
was smiling a little. "But I state an actual fact. I have reached a
point in my labours where I need a copyist. Do you think it possible
that I may secure one without sending away for her?"

"I must suspect you," she said slowly and with rising colour, "of
manufacturing a need. It is very, very kind of you, Mr. Jefferson--but I
think I must continue to weave my rugs."

"But I am not manufacturing a need," he insisted. "I declare to you that
I have been on the point of consulting you for some time. If it had not
been that your days seemed very full with your guest and your
housewifery, I should have put it to you before now. I am in earnest,
Miss Warne. Won't you, as a matter of everyday business, lend me your
eyes and your hand--and your critical judgment? If you can't do it while
Miss Crofton is here, may I engage your spare time after she goes?
Please don't deny me." He began to descend the stairs. "I won't stay for
an answer," he said. "Think it over, will you? And please don't refuse
until you have consulted your father."

"Why do you ask that?"

"Because I know he will look at it as any man would, without
unreasonable prejudice against accepting a business proposition simply
because it happens to come from a temporary member of the household. It
takes a woman to bother about that."

With this straight shot he left her, laughing back at her as he
descended in a way that went far toward disarming her, though she would
not at once admit it. Instead, she went back to her loom, putting into
the next section of weaving a quite unnecessary amount of force purely
from tension of mind over the possibilities opened up by this most
unexpected offer. There was no denying that it was precisely the sort of
thing which she had often longed to do, and for which, she knew, as he
had suggested, she was more than ordinarily well fitted. It was
impossible, as she had said, not to suspect the lodger of creating a
want to fit her need of earning money, yet there could be no doubt of
the fact that any writer of books who draws upon all manner of collected
notes and reference books for his material must be able to make valuable
use of an assistant in a variety of ways.

Why should she not take him at his word? Well, she would think of it.
And meanwhile--suddenly--the black mood was gone!




CHAPTER X

STUART OBJECTS


That night, after Mr. Jefferson's unexpected proposal that she should
assist him in his literary work, Georgiana, running out upon an errand
in the business part of the village, encountered James Stuart. This had
been a not infrequent happening in days past, but since Jeannette's
arrival it had not once occurred. Stuart was much at the house, but not
for a fortnight had Georgiana had ten minutes alone with him.

That he welcomed the chance as well as she was evident from his first
word: "Great luck! At last I get you to myself for half a wink without a
soul around. Where are you going? Wherever it is, you don't go back to
the house till you've given me what I want."

"And what's that?" queried Georgiana.

Her tone was cool in spite of herself. She had missed the almost daily
walks and talks with Stuart, glad as she had been to have him do his
effectual part in helping her entertain her guests. And there had been,
as she was obliged to confess to herself, a sense that if he had been
very anxious not to lose altogether her society he would have managed,
in spite of lack of ordinary opportunity, to bring about such meetings.
How much she could feel the absence of his companionship she had not
dreamed until she had been tried.

After the friendly village fashion of intimate acquaintance he lightly
grasped her arm in its covering of the scarlet-lined military cape she
always wore on such walks, and turned her from her course toward a side
street leading away, instead of toward, the centre she had been
approaching. She protested, but he was laughingly determined and she
yielded. It was good, undeniably good, to have Jimps by her side again,
and hear his voice in his old eagerly devoted tones in her ear. That he
was really overjoyed at coming upon her in a free hour it was impossible
to doubt.

"My word! George, but you've kept me on short rations lately," he began
accusingly. "One would think you had suddenly put me on a diet list.
Nothing but sweets, contrary to the usual prohibitions of the medical
men for the husky male! Do you think I have no appetite for the good
substantial food? Parties and drives and candy-pulls, always with the
lovely guest, and never an old-time hobnob with my chum! What's the
matter with you, George? What have I done?"

"But such sweets! And so soon they will be gone, and nothing for the
hungry youth but plain bread and butter. How absurd of you to complain!"

"Bread and butter! Beefsteak and mushrooms, you mean; roast turkey and
cranberry sauce! A fellow can live on them. But not on eternal honey and
fudge--with my apologies to the lady."

"I should say so, Jimps. You're outrageous, and you don't mean it. I
wouldn't walk another step with you if you did."

"She's undoubtedly the sweetest thing on earth," admitted Stuart. "There
are times when I think I'd like to ask her to marry me on the spot--if
she'd have me, which she wouldn't--me, a farmer! She dazzles me,
bewitches me, makes me all but lose my head. And then I look at my chum,
the girl I've known all my life, and I think--well, sugar is all right,
but you can't get on without salt--and pepper--and ginger--and----"

"Jimps!" In spite of herself Georgiana was laughing infectiously, and
Stuart joined her. "How absolutely ridiculous! I sound like a whole
spice box, and nothing but the 'bitey' spices at that."

"That's what you are," declared James Stuart contentedly. "And when I'm
with you I have no hankering after sugar. Mustard plasters for me;
they're warming."

They walked on, the spirit of good fellowship keeping step with them. If
Georgiana had allowed herself to believe that Stuart was completely
absorbed with the enchantments of the beautiful guest, she now
discovered that, quite as he had said, the enchantment was by no means
complete and he had not lost appreciation of the old friendship and what
it meant to him. This was good to feel. It was all she wanted. If she
had been guilty of a creeping sense of jealousy as she watched Stuart
and Jeannette together, so evidently enjoying each other's society to
the full, it was because it made her suddenly and unpleasantly
understand what it would be to her to live her days in this commonplace
little village without Stuart at her right hand. But here he was,
literally at her right hand, and he was making her walk with him, not a
beggarly square or two out of her way, but a good three miles around a
certain course which once entered upon could not be cut short by any
crossroads. And all the way he was telling her, as he had always done,
all manner of intimate things about his affairs, and asking her of hers.

Before the circuit had been made Georgiana had done that which an hour
before she would have thought far from her intention, natural as such a
procedure would have been a month ago, before Jeannette came--she had
told Stuart of Mr. Jefferson's offer. If the truth must be confessed,
after suffering the mood which had only lately been dissipated, she
could not resist producing the effect she knew, if Jimps were still
Jimps, was bound to be produced. Such is woman!

Quite as she had foreseen, he was aroused on the instant. The generous
sharing of Georgiana Warne with other aspirants for her favour had never
been one of James Stuart's characteristics, open-hearted though he was
in every other way. He stopped short in the snowy path, regarding her
sternly while she smiled in the darkness. This was balm for a heavy
heart, indeed, this recognition she had of his disapproval even before
he jerked out the quick words:

"Great Scott! You don't mean to tell me you'd do it! Spend hours every
day working with E. C. Jefferson? Not a bit of it. Not so you'd notice
it! Tell him to go to thunder!"

"James McKenzie Stuart! What a tone to take! Why on earth should you
object?" Georgiana's tone was rich and sweet and astonished--it
certainly sounded astonished.

"Because you're my chum, my partner; and I won't have you going into
partnership with any other man--not much!"

"Partnership! Secretaries and stenographers aren't partners----"

"Aren't they, though! The most intimate sort. And a fellow like
Jefferson, full of books and literary lore--he'd be breaking off work
half his time to talk Montaigne and Samuel Johnson and--and Bernard
Shaw with you. And you'd drink it all in with those eyes of yours and
make him think----" Georgiana's uncontrollable laughter halted but did
not stop him. "What's his work, anyhow? Writing a History of Art?"
growled Stuart, marching on, with Georgiana beside him bursting into
fresh mirth with every step. Her heart was quite light enough now; no
danger that she had lost her friend!

"I've no idea what it is, but it's certainly not that. He seldom speaks
of art in any form--except literary art, of course. I've an idea it's
scientific research of some sort."

"Then why isn't he in a laboratory somewhere, boiling acids? Why isn't
he digging in city libraries or hunting scientific stuff over in Vienna?
Vienna's the place for him. I wish him there fast enough," irritably
continued this asperser of other men's vocations.

"His research work has undoubtedly been done; he has pile upon pile of
notebooks and papers on file. His handwriting is a fright; that's
probably what he wants me for--to make it legible to the printer."

"Let him send for a typist then; that's what he needs if he writes an
illegible fist. You can't typewrite."

"I could learn, if necessary. I've often wished I could."

"You could learn! Yes, you could learn to come when E. C. Jefferson
whistled, I've no doubt! Oh, I beg your pardon, George--you needn't turn
away. Nobody could ever fancy you coming at any man's whistle. I'm just
seeing red, that's all, at the thought of your going into a thing like
this, that's bound to throw you two into the closest sort of relations."

"That's all nonsense, Jimps. You're behaving like a little boy. And you
know I can't afford to lose a chance like this. You know how slow the
rug-weaving is----"

"You don't mean you're still at that?"

"Of course I am. The prices are very good now, and I'm----"

"Then you certainly can't lose them to go into copying manuscript by
hand. Stick to the weaving; that's my advice."

"Mr. Jefferson saw the loom to-day. He thinks it too hard work for me,"
suggested Georgiana slyly.

This was a telling shot, for Stuart had often expressed himself in
similar fashion in the past. As was to have been expected, her companion
became instantly more nettled than ever.

"Oh, he does, does he?" he said hotly. "I'd like to know what affair it
is of his. You know well enough I've protested scores of times against
that weaving----"

"And now you tell me to stick to it!"

He wheeled upon her. His tone changed: "George, I know I'm absolutely
unreasonable. Of course I don't want you pulling that back-breaking
thing. I don't want you to have to hustle for money any sort of way;
that's the truth. What I do want is--to keep you away from every other
earthly beggar but myself!"

"O James Stuart, how absurd! That's not a brotherly attitude at all."

"The role of brother isn't always entirely satisfying," retorted Stuart
under his breath. "You know well enough you've only to say the word and
I----"

"Jimps dear"--Georgiana's voice was very gentle now--"remember we've
left all that boy-and-girl sentimentalizing behind. It was quite settled
long ago that you and I were to be brother and sister, 'world without
end.' And I know you mean it as brotherly, all this fuss about my taking
a bit of perfectly reasonable employment for just a little while."

"Little while? Do you know how long he expects to be at work on that
confounded book?"

"No; do you?"

"He told me one night when we were smoking together that he had given
himself a year to do this work in. He came in January; this is April.
Do you wonder I'm a bit upset at the notion of my best friend's going
into harness with him for a year?" Stuart's tone was grim.

Georgiana, now in wild spirits with the relief from her fears, and the
suddenly opening prospect of a long period of such work as she dearly
loved, had some ado to keep her state of mind from showing. "It doesn't
follow," she said, outwardly sober, "that he intends to spend that whole
year here."

"He will--if he gets you for a side partner. A man would be a fool not
to."

"That's a great tribute--from a brother," admitted Georgiana, smiling to
herself. "But as far as our lodger is concerned, you need have no fear
of any but the most businesslike relations, even though I worked beside
him--as is quite improbable--for a year. He's not that sort."

"Not what sort? Don't you fool yourself. He's human, if his mind is bent
on writing a book. And you are--Georgiana!"

"Jimps, there's a path in your brain that's getting worn too deep
to-night. Come--let's hurry home. Jeannette will wonder what's become of
me."

"Let her wonder. George, are you going to do this thing?"

"Of course I am."

"No matter how I feel about it?"

"Why, Jimps--really, do you think you have any right----"

"Georgiana, I--love you!"

"No, Jimps, you don't. Not so much as all that. You have a brotherly
affection----"

"Brotherly affection doesn't hurt; this does," was Stuart's declaration.

"No, it doesn't, my dear boy. You're just made with a queer sort of
jealous element in your composition, and when something happens to call
it out you think it's--something quite different," explained Georgiana
rather lamely. "You know perfectly that you and I fit best as good
friends; we should be awfully unhappy tied up together in any way. Why,
we settled that long ago, as I reminded you just now."

"It seems to have come unsettled," Stuart muttered.

"Then we must settle it again. Truly--you mean everything to me as a
brother, friend, chum--whichever you like, and I--well, I should feel
pretty badly to lose you. But----"

"I wish you'd leave it there. I don't fancy what you're going on to
say."

"Then I'll not say it. Come, Jimps, give me your hand on the old
compact."

"I will--on exactly one condition." Stuart stood still and faced her in
a certain secluded spot just where the snowy path was on the point of
turning into a wider, well-used thoroughfare.

"What is it? Make it a fair one."

"It is fair--the fairest between a man and a woman. It's this: leave the
'never-never' clause out. I'll agree to any terms of friendship you
insist on if--well, just leave me a chance, will you--dear?"

There was a brief silence while Georgiana considered. She had not
expected this, certainly not just now, when her long-time friend frankly
admitted the drawing power of the winsome visitor. As she had implied,
there had been between them, in the days of dawning maturity while they
were yet in school together, certain youthfully tender vows which they
had later exchanged for the more carefully considered terms of the warm
but less sentimental friendship which had now existed for some years.
That Stuart was really dearer to her, more a necessary part of her life
than she had realized, had been made disconcertingly clear to her by the
totally unexpected pangs she had suffered during the last fortnight,
when it had seemed to her that she was likely to lose the fine fervor of
his devotion. Now, however, that she was assured of his intense loyalty,
she was the old Georgiana again, ready to stand beside her friend to the
last ditch, if need be, but wholly unwilling to bind herself to his
chariot wheels while no ditches threatened.

"'Never' is a big word," she said finally. "It isn't best to say 'never'
about anything in this life."

"Then you won't ask me to say it?" His voice was eager.

"Not if you don't want to, Jimps."

"I don't. There was never anything surer than that. Give me your
hand--chum."

She gave it. "All right--chum."

He had pulled off his own glove; he now gently drew off hers, and the
two warm hands clasped. "Here's our everlasting friendship," he said,
with a little thrill in his low voice. "Nothing shall come between us
except--love."

"Jimps! That's not the old compact at all."

"It's the new one then. Isn't it sufficiently ambiguous to suit you?"

"It's much too ambiguous."

"I can make it plainer----"

"Perhaps you'd better leave it as it is," she admitted, recognizing
danger.

"As you say."

He held her hand for a minute in such a close grasp that it hurt her,
but she did not wince. Ah! if she might just have this pleasantly
satisfying relation with the man whose presence in her life meant warmth
and light and even happiness on the hard road of everyday routine, and
then have somehow besides the contentment which comes of accomplishment
along a line of chosen activity--and still remain free for whatever God
in heaven might send her of real joy, she could ask no better.

"Jimps, I'm perfectly contented," she said radiantly, as they walked on.

"That's good. I wish I were."

"What would make you?"

"Your promise to earn your money making rugs--with me to help you."

"But you couldn't!"

"I could learn."

"Oh, how absurd! You haven't time, if there were no other reason."

He did not answer, and, since they were now back in the village and
nearing the object of Georgiana's errand, no more was said until they
were once again on their way homeward. They walked in silence until they
reached the very doorstep of the manse. Then Stuart made one more
protest.

"Not even to please me, George?" he asked, as she stood on the step
above him, leading the way in to Jeannette and the warm fireside.

"Jimps, I'm sorry you feel that way about it. But I've talked with
Father Davy and he agrees that it's a godsend. There's no reason in the
world I could give Mr. Jefferson for refusing to help him when he needs
it, and when I need it, too. Therefore--I'm sorry, Jimps, since you are
so strange as to care--but I've made up my mind."

"You'll excuse me if I don't come in to-night," he said, and turned
away.

She stood looking comprehendingly after him as he left her, then ran in
and closed the door. The mood which held her now was so far from being
black that it was rosy red.




CHAPTER XI

BORROWED PLUMES


"Uncle David, I was never so sorry to come to the end of any visit as I
am this one," said Jeannette Crofton. She was holding Mr. Warne's frail
hand in both her own, and looking straight into the young gray-blue eyes
which looked affectionately back at her. She was dressed for her
departure, and the great closed town car which had brought her was
waiting at the door.

Near her stood Georgiana and James McKenzie Stuart. Mr. E.C. Jefferson
had just appeared in the background, come to bid the guest farewell.

"You have given us much pleasure, my dear," responded Mr. Warne, "and if
you have received it as well, the balance is pretty evenly struck."

"I might have stayed two days longer," declared Jeannette with evident
longing, "if it hadn't been for that sister of mine. I'm sure she could
have had a birthday dance without me--but no! How I wish I were taking
you all with me--even you, Mr. Jefferson," she added with one of her
adorable smiles, as she turned to him; "you, whom I can't possibly
imagine caring to dance a step, not even with the prettiest girl I could
find for you."

"You almost make me wish I knew how to dance a step," said Mr.
Jefferson, advancing to take her hand. "As it is, I can at least wish
that prettiest girl a partner worthy of her grace."

"While I am wishing," exclaimed Jeannette with characteristic
impulsiveness, "why in the world don't I bring about my own wishes? Oh,
where have my wits been! Georgiana, darling, run and dress and go with
me! I'll send you back to-morrow in the car. And you, too, Mr. Stuart!
Oh, come, both of you, and dance at Rosalie's birthday fête to-night!
Please--please do!" She turned to Mr. Warne. "Mayn't she, Uncle David?
Couldn't you manage to spare her just for twenty-four hours?"

They looked at one another, smiling, hardly believing that the gay
suggestion was a serious one.

But by Jeannette, accustomed to having her own way once a way had
occurred to her, all objections were thrust aside. "Oh, but you must
come!" she cried. "I'll not take no!"

"Come and talk it over a minute with me, crazy child," bade Georgiana;
and she drew her cousin out of the room, where she could state the great
difficulty which, being a woman, had instantly assailed her. "Jean, I
hate to quash such a glorious idea, but--I shall have to be
frank--clothes!"

"With loads of frocks hanging in my wardrobe at home? And half of them
too trying for me to wear at all, while they would suit you perfectly.
Nonsense! Oh, hurry and make ready. James Stuart will go if you will; I
saw it in his eyes."

It could not be refused, this tempting invitation, with such a lovely
tyrant to enforce her will. One word, however, did James Stuart and
Georgiana Warne exchange in a corner before they capitulated.

"George, my evening togs--they've been put away for the four years since
I left college. They must be about the most hopelessly ancient cut
conceivable to eyes like hers. Shall I risk looking like a rustic in
such a house as that?" But Stuart's eyes were eager as a boy's.

"I'll not go if you won't, Jimps. As for rusticity, I can keep you
company. Can you bear to lose such a frolic? I can't."

"Neither can I, hang it! All right, I'll be a sport if you will," agreed
Stuart with a laugh, and rushed away to pack a bag in short order, all
the zest of irrepressible youth, in one who had been forced by
circumstance to foreswear most of the joys of youth for stern labour,
coming uppermost to bid him make merry once more at any cost of after
fall of spirits.

"Thank goodness I've had the sense always to keep the latest of
Jeannette's 'Semi-Annual' tailored suits pressed and trim," thought
Georgiana as she dressed. "This is a year behind the extreme style, but
I know perfectly well I look absolutely all right in it, and my hat,
having once been hers, is mighty becoming and smart, if it is a
make-over. It's lucky I can do those things; that's one benefit of going
to college, anyhow."

A few other "make-overs" in the way of dress accessories, all of
exquisite material, on account of their source, and daintily preserved
because of their frailty after having served two owners, went into her
traveling bag. For the dance itself, since there was no other way, she
was not loath to accept Jeannette's generous offer, and, being a very
human creature, could not help looking forward with delight to the
prospect of finding herself arrayed in such apparel as would
successfully sustain any scrutiny which might be brought to bear upon
the country cousin. As for Stuart, she had no fears for him, for his
years of college life had made him an acceptable figure upon any
occasion, and she was confident his broad shoulders and fine carriage
could atone for any slightly antique cut of lapel or coat-tail.

Altogether, it was a very happy young person who embraced Mr. David
Warne, shook hands with Mr. Jefferson, and ran down the path to the
great car in the wake of Jeannette, and followed by James Stuart looking
extremely personable. Well-cut clothes were the one extravagance Stuart
allowed himself now that he was immured for at least the early half of
his life, as he expected, upon the farm of his inheritance.

"Well, well, I'm glad to have my little girl run away for a few hours,"
said Father Davy, from the window where, with Mr. Jefferson at his
shoulder, he stood watching for the final wave of Georgiana's hand. "She
has enjoyed her cousin's visit, but it has meant considerable extra
labour for her. This seems a fitting return for Jeannette to make."

"One can hardly blame Miss Crofton for wanting to prolong her enjoyment
of your daughter's society," observed Mr. Jefferson, his eyes watching
closely the laughing faces behind the glass as the travelers settled
themselves. "I can imagine one's feeling a very decided emptiness in a
place which she had left."

"There, they're off!" announced Mr. Warne, waving his slender arm with
eagerness, his delicate features alight with pleasure in this unexpected
happening. "Emptiness, you say, Jefferson?" he added as the two turned
away, with the car out of sight down the snowy road. "That quite
expresses it. Even for a few hours I am conscious of a distinct sense of
loneliness without Georgiana. Her personality is one which makes itself
felt; it has individuality, audacity; even--I think--that curious
quality which for want of a better name we call 'charm.' Am I too
prejudiced?"

He placed himself upon his couch, plainly very weary with the flurry of
the last hour. He lay looking up at Mr. Jefferson, who had lingered a
little before going back to the work which loudly called to him. It was
quite possible for the younger man to comprehend how desolate was the
gentle invalid's feeling at being left, if only for a day and a night,
in the care of the friendly neighbour who was to minister to his needs
and who was already to be heard bustling about the dining-room, laying
the table for the coming meal.

"You may be prejudiced," admitted his companion, "but it is a prejudice
which can be readily forgiven--and even shared," he added, smiling.

"Her cousin," pursued Mr. Warne slowly, "would outshine her in beauty
and in sweetness of disposition, perhaps, though I doubt if Jeannette
has ever had a fraction of the tests of character and endurance my girl
has had."

"She surely never has," agreed the other. "And as for mere sweetness of
disposition, there are other qualities which make their own appeal."

A whimsical smile appeared upon the pale face resting against one of
Georgiana's crimson couch pillows. "How she would make me signals of
distress and warning," he mused, "if she could hear me carrying on an
antiphonal service in her praise with our lodger, who, she would
consider, knows her not at all. Well, well----

    "'Man, she is mine own,
  And I as rich in having such a jewel,
  As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,
  The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.'

You'll forgive an old man's romanticism, Mr. Jefferson, I hope?"

"You are one of the youngest men I know. And if you may quote
Shakespeare to your purpose, I may quote good old Doctor Holmes," said
Mr. Jefferson, drawing the pillow into an easier position as he spoke:

  "'He doth not lack an almanac
  Whose youth is in his soul.'"

To Georgiana Warne, a year out of college, and during that year having
sorely missed the many gayeties of the life she had known for four happy
years, the present experience was delightful. She enjoyed every minute
of the swift drive over the sixty miles to her cousin's home, enjoyed
the arrival there, the meeting with the family and their house guests
assembled for afternoon tea, the installment in a luxuriously furnished
room where Jeannette presently brought her an armful of gowns to choose
from for the evening. A small dinner was to precede the dance, and all
sorts of scheming for Georgiana's pleasure had been fermenting in
Jeannette's brain on the way home.

"I've arranged with Rosalie to put you next her special prize--the most
wonderful man she knows. All her set are crazy over him, though he
belongs in ours fast enough. It's Miles Channing, just home after a
year's travel, and as good looking as any illustrator ever drew. You see
you simply must be your most brilliant self. And here's the way to do
it--wear this!"

She held up before Georgiana's disconcerted gaze such a marvel of colour
and cunning as brought a gasp of astonishment and a quick denial: "Oh,
my dear! Not that--for me. It's bad enough to wear your things at all,
but don't give me something that will make everybody look at me, like
that!"

"That's precisely what I want," laughed Jeannette. "And this is a thing
I haven't ventured to wear and never shall, though I'm wild to do it.
But I couldn't carry it off; you can. Those orange shades will be
glorious with your eyes and hair. Besides, as for making you conspicuous
above the rest, on account of any gorgeousness of colour or eccentricity
of style, it simply can't be done these days. So put this on and see for
yourself. You needn't wear it, of course, if you don't like it; but you
will."

Reluctantly Georgiana allowed a slim French maid to slip the marvel of
her country's art over the bared shoulders, and the next minute she was
staring at herself in a long mirror, while Susette clasped her hands,
and gay young Rosalie, passing the door at the moment and summoned to
the private view, cried joyously:

"Oh, Georgiana, you're perfectly stunning! Of course you must wear it,
and you'll be the star of the evening."

Rosalie rushed on, having settled the questions out of hand, after the
manner of the youthful. Jeannette was laughing as she called her mother
in to confirm the decision.

Mrs. Crofton, languidly interested, surveyed her niece with approval.
She was an impressive lady, was Aunt Olivia, and was accustomed to have
her opinion carry weight. "It suits you, my dear," was her verdict.
"Those who can wear such daring effects should do it, for every scene
needs points of light and intensity."

"And these other frocks," Jeannette declared, pointing to them where
Susette had spread them out upon the bed, "are just colourless baby
things that anybody can wear."

"They look exquisite to me," regretted Georgiana, eying them wistfully.

Somehow, now that she was here, she did not so much enjoy the thought of
appearing in borrowed finery, and, since it must be done, would have
preferred the simplest white frock in Jeannette's wardrobe. But this was
not to be without displeasing her hostesses, and she reluctantly
submitted. Susette begged leave to arrange her hair, Jeannette hunted
out silk stockings and slippers to match the frock, and Rosalie
contributed the long white gloves which completed the costuming.

When Georgiana was ready to descend she took one last look at the girl
in the long mirror, and turned to Jeannette, herself a picture in the
delicate colourings which she affected and which set off her golden
beauty. "I feel like the old woman in the nursery song," she said,
"doubtful of my identity."

"But you must admit you're simply glorious," cried Jeannette. "I knew
you were a beauty, but I didn't know you were such a raving one as
this."

"I'm no beauty," denied Georgiana with spirit. "It's just the clothes.
But you--I never saw anything so enchanting as you to-night."

"Delightful! I'm so glad, for--there's somebody I want to enchant. Come
on," and Jeannette led the way.

At the foot of the great staircase, about a wide fireplace, Georgiana
saw James Stuart with a group of other young men, and noted swiftly that
there was no too-striking contrast to be noted between her friend and
his faultlessly attired companions, except that his face and hands wore
a deeper coat of winter tan than theirs, and he looked stronger and more
virile than any of them. And even in his outdoor colouring, there was
among them one who rivalled him, the one who, as Georgiana instantly
guessed, was the lately arrived traveler. A moment later she met
Stuart's eyes and saw his look of astonishment as he gazed at her.

Presently, when those whom she had not already met had been made known
to her, she found Stuart at her elbow. "Am I dreaming?" said his voice
in her ear, "or is this my chum? I'm almost afraid to speak to you!"

"You look awfully nice, Jimps," she returned under her breath. "Yes,
isn't it absurd for me to be peacocking like this? But they made me do
it."

"You take my breath away."

"Look at Jean," she whispered. "Isn't she the loveliest thing you ever
saw in your life?"

He looked. "You and she are a pair," he admitted.

Jeannette came up to them with the tall traveler, and Georgiana found
herself looking up into a pair of dark eyes whose glance told her that
their owner found her worth studying intently. Miles Channing was of the
sort who waste no time in preliminaries. By the time she had sat out
half the dinner by his side she felt as if she had been under fire for
hours. All her youth and wit responded to his sallies, and she enjoyed
the encounter as keenly as a girl might be expected to do, who for a
year had seen no men but the slow village swains--always excepting James
Stuart, who was her one reliance in time of famine.

Channing made no attempt to disguise his preoccupation with the most
attractive of the few strangers in the set of young people whom he had
known for years. Between the dinner and the dance, Jeannette, who had
been observing without seeming to observe, dropped a word in Georgiana's
ear:

"You've done it, dear. I never saw him lose his head so completely.
You'll have to be careful or you'll have all the girls down on you.
They're crazy over him, you know--including Rosalie."

"Absurd! I shall never see him again, so what does it matter?" retorted
Georgiana.

"Don't be too sure of that. Nothing can stop him when he's interested.
And you know you are a witch to-night; anybody would be caught in your
snare. I didn't know you were such a clever thing at the game, though I
might have guessed it."

"If I weren't, I might take lessons of you," Georgiana gave back. "You
have Jimps slightly delirious, I can see. Is he the one you wanted to
enchant? I'm sure you've done it."

"Isn't he splendid? He looks so much stronger and more interesting than
half these boys I've known all my life. I do want him to have a good
time."

"He's having it."

Georgiana was sure of this, but she was having so good a time herself
she didn't mind. More than once she had caught Stuart's eyes across the
table, and had noted how they were sparkling. The glance the two
exchanged might have been interpreted to mean: "Fun, isn't it? You play
up to your opportunities and so will I. This won't happen again in our
lives, perhaps."

Presently the dancing began, in great rooms cleared for the purpose and
decorated with every art of the florist. The music was all of a quality
more perfect than any Georgiana had ever heard, and the strains which
assailed her ears made her wild to dance to every note. She was besieged
by invitations.

"But I haven't danced for more than a year, and I don't know one of the
latest steps," she said regretfully.

"We'll soon remedy that," promised Chester Crofton, her cousin, who
carried her off into an unoccupied room, where the music could yet be
heard, and proceeded to teach her. She was easily taught, having all the
foundations after four years of practice among college girls, and she
was soon able to go upon the floor with young Crofton and the rest.

Miles Channing did not dance, but after watching for a time--while
Georgiana was acutely conscious that his eyes constantly followed
her--he claimed and bore her off before others could prevent. In a
palm-shadowed corner well removed from observation he drew a long breath
of content and settled down beside her.

"I hope you will not be too much bored at missing a round or two," he
began in the slightly drawling speech which was somehow one of his
charms, it was so curiously accompanied by his intent observation. "I
haven't danced for so long I can't venture to attempt it, especially
with you."

"I should be the most patient of partners, I'm so unaccomplished
myself," declared Georgiana.

"Nevertheless I shouldn't want to try you. You dance like a sylph, I
like an elephant."

"I don't believe it."

"You do grudge sitting out, then, do you?" he asked.

"Not a bit."

"It wouldn't really matter if you did, for I intend to hold my advantage
now I have it. I care more to talk with you than for all the dances on
the program. And the time is so short I must make the most of it. You go
back to-morrow, I understand?"

"Yes, indeed."

"And you'll not be here soon again?"

"I don't expect to. I'm a very busy person at home and can seldom be
spared."

"That means that whoever wants to know you must come to your home?"

Georgiana felt her pulse beats quickening. This was certainly losing no
time. She assented to the interrogation, explaining that her father was
an invalid and she was his housekeeper. She felt no temptation to
represent things to Mr. Channing as other than they were. It was somehow
an atonement for appearing in her borrowed attire that she should not
allow appearances to deceive this new acquaintance into thinking her
home the counterpart of her cousin's. The news did not appear in the
least to disconcert him.

"I should like very much to meet your father," Channing said; and
Georgiana liked him for taking the trouble to put it in that way. He
instantly added: "And I should like still more to see you in your own
home. May I have that pleasure?"

"We shall be very glad to see you," she promised, careful of her manner.

"No matter how soon I come?"

"I suppose you will allow me to reach home first?" she questioned gayly.

"Barely. This is Wednesday night. You go home to-morrow--Thursday. May I
come Saturday?"

"You have been living on railway schedules so long you have acquired the
habit," she gave back with slightly heightened colour. In the course of
her experience she had seen more than one young man change his plans
after encountering her, but she had never known one to form new ones as
quickly as this.

"I have discovered that when one wants to reach a place very much, he
can't start too soon," he said very low, with such obvious meaning that
she had some difficulty in keeping her cool composure. It was not only
his words, but his looks and manner which spoke. She had never dreamed
that outside of stories men ever really did begin to fire on sight, like
this.

The matter settled, Channing began to talk of other things, but through
all his speech and acts ran the visible thread of his instant and
powerful attraction to her, so that she was conscious of the colour of
it. By the time two dances had gone by and she was sought and found by
an eager claimant, the girl was quite ready to get away from this new
and decidedly disturbing experience. And when, a little later, she
allowed James Stuart to try one of the new steps with her, she had a
comfortable sense of having got back upon known and solid ground, after
having been swimming in a too-swift current.




CHAPTER XII

EARLY MORNING


"You've no idea, Jimpsy," Georgiana said, when she and James Stuart had
assured themselves that they were able to suit their steps to each other
and were moving smoothly down the floor, "how glad I am to be with some
one I know, for a bit."

"Only some one? Not particularly me?"

"Yes, particularly you. My brain needs a little rest."

"There's a compliment for an old friend! But I didn't suppose dancing
tired the brain. It's my feet that have bothered me. I've walked all
over Jeannette's little toes, but she's perfectly game and won't admit
it."

"I thought you and she were getting on beautifully together."

"So we were. I couldn't see how you and Channing got on together,
because you went off and hid somewhere. That's not fair with a perfectly
new acquaintance."

"Didn't you and Jeannette go off and hide somewhere?"

"We're not new acquaintances."

"Oh, indeed! How old ones are you?"

"A month is a long time compared with one short evening. I never knew,
George, you were such a terrific charmer. You've had them all nailed
to-night; and as for Channing--well---- Only I suppose he's a shark at
the game himself. He shows it. Better look out."

"What an excellent opportunity a dance is for old friends to give each
other good advice." Georgiana smiled up into his eyes.

He closed his own for an instant. "Don't do that; it dazzles me."

"Nonsense. You're learning the game yourself. Jeannette's been teaching
you. We're all finding each other out to-night. I had no idea she could
sparkle so."

"You're the sparkler. She simply glows with a steady light."

"Well, I like that!"

"You like everything to-night. You remind me of a peach--on fire."

"Jimps!" Georgiana's soft laughter assailed his ear. "I believe we're
both a bit crazy with this sudden leap into dissipation--such
dissipation! Just remember where we'll be to-morrow night."

"I don't want to--except that I'll be with you. We'll talk it all over
by your fire, eh?"

"Of course. There'll be that much left, anyhow. Is this over? Thank you,
Jimps, for the best dance I've had to-night."

"No use trying it on me," he murmured as he released her. "What's the
use of capturing what you've already got?"

By and by it was all over and Georgiana was mounting the stairs with
Jeannette, smiling back at certain faces in the disordered spaces below,
where flowers lay about the floors and a group of young fellows,
belonging to Rosalie's house party, were making merry before they broke
ranks.

In Jeannette's room by a blazing fire the girls held brief session,
sitting with unbound hair and swinging slippered feet, and cheeks still
flushed with the night's gayety.

"Jimps and I were imagining ourselves sitting by the fire in our old
living-room to-morrow night," said Georgiana softly, staring into the
flame with eyes which reflected little points of light. "It will seem
like a dream then, but we shall talk it all over, and remember what fun
we had, and how lovely everybody was to us--and how beautiful you were
in that blue-and-silver frock."

"You dear thing, you ought to have such times often and often!" cried
Jeannette. "But--O Georgiana, you have times I envy you! While you are
dreaming of our flowers and music I shall be dreaming of the dear old
house, and the jolly evenings you gave me there, and envying you--oh,
envying you----"

"Envying me! Are you crazy, child, or are you just----"

"Just speaking the truth. You can't think how many times I shall think
of you sitting there with your three splendid men----"

"Jean! What are you talking about?"

"About Uncle David, and Jimps, and Mr. Jefferson----"

"But they're not mine," protested Georgiana, laughing. "Except Father
Davy."

"Not--Jimps?"

"Oh, of course he's my friend, my very good friend. And Mr. Jefferson's
only a 'boarder,'"--she made a little grimace at the word. "You speak as
if I had them all about me all the time."

"But you do evenings, don't you?"

"They were there much more while you were visiting me than they will be
now. Jimps has heaps of arrears to make up; he let lots of work go while
you were there, you must know, my dear. As for Mr. Jefferson--he may
never come down any more, now that Jimps won't be going up to beg him to
make a fourth for your entertainment. So don't imagine me holding court
with those three retainers. It will mostly be just Father Davy and I
with a volume of Dumas or Kipling. Isn't it odd how my pale little
father loves the red blood of literature?"

"Just the same----" but Jeannette did not finish that. She began afresh:
"And oh! how I shall miss you, George--as Jimps calls you. Somehow I
must have you before long for a real visit here, or wherever I may be
for the summer."

"Thank you, Jean; but I can never get away."

"I'll arrange it somehow. That makes me think--Miles Channing was
dreadfully disappointed that you were going in the morning. I've no
doubt he will manage to see you off somehow. I think it's too bad of you
to insist on going before luncheon. Think how little sleep you'll have."

She gave Georgiana a penetrating look as she said it, but saw only a
pair of beautiful bare arms thrown up over a mass of dark locks, as her
cousin, with a clever imitation of a half-smothered yawn, answered
merrily: "Then we must go to bed this minute or I shall never have
strength of mind to get up. And I can't leave Father Davy to the tender
mercies of Mrs. Perkins longer than I can help. She'll give him
everything that is bad for him, in spite of the best intentions."

It was a wide-awake Georgiana, nevertheless, who, fully dressed for the
drive, leaned over Jeannette's bed at ten o'clock that morning and
kissed a warm velvet cheek, murmuring: "Don't wake up, Jean. We're just
off after breakfast. I'll write soon. You've been a perfect darling, and
I'm more grateful than I can tell you."

"Oh, I'm dead to the world, I'm so tired!" moaned the girl in the bed.
"I always have to pay up so for dancing all night. But you,"--she lifted
languid eyelids to see her cousin's smiling freshness of face and air of
vigour--"why, you look as though you had had twelve hours' sleep--and a
cold plunge!"

"I've had the cold plunge," admitted Georgiana, laughing. "And I'm 'fit
as a fiddle,' as Jimps says. He sent his good-bye to you and told me to
tell you he'll never forget you--never!"

"Tell him I'll not let him forget me--or you, either. Oh, how I hate to
have you go, both of you!"

Through a silent, sleeping house Georgiana and Stuart stole, the only
member of the family up to see them off being Mr. Thomas Crofton
himself, the oldest person under the great rooftree.

"My dear, you must come again, you must come often," he urged, holding
Georgiana's hand and patting it with a paternal air. He was a handsome
man in the early sixties, with graying hair and tired eyes. "You have
done a great deal for our Jean; she looks much stronger than when she
went to your home. But neither she nor Rosalie can enter the race with
you for splendid health. That comes from your country life, I suppose.
I envy you, I envy you, my dear."

"Come and see us, Uncle Thomas--do. Father Davy would be so happy; you
know he's such an invalid. But his mind and heart are as young as ever."

"I will come; I will drive down some day, thank you, Georgiana. I should
like to see David again. Mr. Stuart, come again, come again. Good-bye;
sorry your aunt was too much done up to see you off this morning, my
dear. Good-bye."

As the two emerged from the door a tall figure sprang up the steps.
"What luck! I was passing and I suspected you were just getting off.
Good morning! Can you possibly be the girl I saw dancing seven hours
ago?"

"I don't wonder you ask, Mr. Channing," laughed Georgiana. "Evening
frocks and traveling clothes are quite different affairs."

"Ah, but the traveling clothes are even the nicer of the two, when their
wearer looks----" Channing glanced at Stuart standing by. "Confound you,
sir!" said he, with a genial grin, shaking hands. "Since you're going to
drive all the way home with Miss Warne can't you give me the chance to
say something pleasant to her?"

"You can't make it too strong to suit me," observed Stuart--and remained
within hearing.

"Saturday, then, if I may," said Channing, looking as far into
Georgiana's eyes as he could see, which was not very far. She wore a
close little veil, which interfered with her eyelashes, and clearly she
could not lift her glance very high.

Then they were off, with Channing waving farewell, his hat high in air.
A hand at another window also waved, and Georgiana knew Jeannette had
seen this last encounter.

"Well, for sixteen hours' work," remarked James Stuart grimly, as the
car gathered headway and the house was left behind, "I should say you
had done some fairly deadly execution. Saturday, eh? Why does he delay
so long? Isn't to-morrow Friday--and a day sooner?"




CHAPTER XIII

A COPYIST


The old study of David Warne was a square, austerely furnished room on
the second floor of the manse, opposite the sleeping-room now occupied
by Mr. Jefferson. It contained several plain bookcases, filled mostly
with worn old volumes in dingy yellow calf or faded cloth. An ancient
table served for a desk, with a splint-bottomed chair before it. On the
walls hung several portrait engravings, that of Abraham Lincoln
occupying the post of honour among them. The floor was covered with a
rag carpet of pleasantly dimmed colours, and an old Franklin stove, with
widely opening doors and a hearth with a brass rail, completed the
furnishing of the room.

This was the place now swept and dusted and warmed for the joint labours
of the writer of books and his new assistant. Mr. Jefferson had moved
the materials of his craft to the new working quarters: he had brought
up wood for the fire and had made that fire himself, according to the
custom he had inaugurated soon after his arrival. The day and hour for
the beginning of that which James Stuart insisted on designating as a
partnership had arrived. At ten o'clock that April morning, when
Georgiana's housework should have reached a stage when she could safely
leave it for a more or less extended period, the study door was to close
upon the two and shut them away undisturbed for the first details of
their affair in common.

Georgiana had been up since before daybreak, planning and executing a
system which should make all this possible. Now, at a quarter before
ten, with all well in hand, she flew to her room for certain personal
touches which should transform her from housewife to secretary. Two
minutes before the clock struck she surveyed herself hurriedly in her
small mirror.

"You really look very trim and demure," she remarked to her image. "Your
colour is a bit high, but that's exercise, not excitement. Still, you
are a little excited, you know, my dear, and you must be very careful
not to show it. It's a calm, cool, business person the gentleman wants,
George, not a blushing schoolgirl. It would spoil it at once if you
should look conscious or coquettish. So now--remember. And forget--for
the love of your new occupation--forget that Miles Channing is coming
again to-night--again, after one short week! What does it matter if he
is? Run along and be good!"

Half a minute left in which to run downstairs, kiss Father Davy on his
white forehead, and receive his warm "Bless you, dear, and bless the new
work. May you be very happy in it!" and to walk quietly upstairs again
and knock at the door of the study. It opened under Mr. Jefferson's
hand, and to the cheerful sound of snapping wood on the open hearth of
the old Franklin stove he bade her enter.

His smile was very pleasant, his steady eyes seemed to take note of
everything about her in one quick glance, as he said with a wave of his
hand: "Welcome to my workshop! You see I've swept up all the chips, but
we'll soon make more."

"You manage to keep your workshop remarkably free from chips," she
commented. "You must have a great system of order."

"Pretty fair. I should be hopelessly lost if I let this mass of material
become disordered. Will you take this chair? Must we begin at once or
may we talk a little first?"

"I think we had better begin. You know there are just two free hours
before I must be back downstairs, if you are to eat, this noon."

He laughed and she noted, as she had noted many times before, how young
he looked at such moments, grave as his face could be when in repose.

"Very well," he agreed. "I have no doubt you will work at this task as
you do at the loom, with all your might, and I shall have to lengthen
my stride to keep up with you. But that promises well. One is likely to
fall into habits of soldiering when one works alone. You have no idea
how carefully I have to keep certain favourite books out of sight when I
want to accomplish big stretches of work. And in this room--hard
luck!--I see so many old treasures that I'm going to have a bit of
trouble in resisting temptation."

His eyes led hers to the old bookcases. She nodded. "It's a shabby old
collection, but it's very dear to father's heart."

"It well may be. Gibbon, Hume, Froude, Parton--Lamb, Johnson,
Carlyle--Hugo, Thackeray, Reade, and Trollope--Keats, Shelley, and the
rest. What matters the binding? Some time I must read you a passage in
good old Christopher North that appeals to me tremendously. No, not now,
Miss Warne; I see I must fall upon my task without delay or you will be
slipping away on the plea of bad faith on my part. Well----"

He turned his chair toward the table and took up a notebook. His face
settled instantly into an expression of serious interest.

"I am going to ask you first," said he, "to copy in order upon a fresh
sheet each reference which you find marked with a red cross, so that the
references may be all together. Be very exact, please, and very
legible. German and French words are easily misread by the typist who
will put this work finally into copy for the printer."

Georgiana, glancing at the first marked reference, found cause to credit
this statement, for it read:

  Cagnetto: Zur Frage der Anat. Beziehung zwischen Akromegalie u.
  Hypophysistumor, Virchow's Archiv., 1904, clxxvi., 115. Neuer
  Beitrag. f. Studium der Akromegalie mit besonderer Berücksichtigung
  der Frage nach dem zusammenhang der Akromegalie mit
  Hypophysenganggeschwulste, Virchow's Archiv., 1907, lxxxvi., 197.

"It would be best to print the words as clearly as I can, wouldn't it?"
she suggested, suppressing her desire to laugh.

"That depends on your handwriting. Try a line and let me see, please."

When she had shown him a specimen of the peculiarly readable script
which she had cultivated in college, he signified his approval with a
hearty "Good! That's a splendid hand for work, the hand of a workman, in
fact. I congratulate myself. Go ahead with the jaw-breakers, only
verifying each reference before you leave it."

Thus the new task began, and thus it continued day after day--not always
quite the same, for Georgiana soon recognized that her employer was
diversifying her labours as much as he consistently could by changing
the nature of the copying. Now and then he refreshed her endurance and
rested her tired hand by asking her to read aloud to him several just
finished pages of his own writing, walking the floor meanwhile or
sitting tipped back in his chair with closed eyes while he listened with
ears alert for error of statement or infelicity of phrase, and she
wondered at the character of the words she read.

Of course she discovered at once what was the general subject of the
book. No essay was this, no work of fiction, no "history of art," as
Stuart had scornfully suggested. It could be only the sternest of
research and experience which dictated such sentences as these:

  The especial dangers to be contended with are that the ethmoid
  cells may be mistaken for the sphenoids; that we may go too low and
  enter the pons and medulla; that, laterally, we may enter the
  cavernous sinus, and above, that we may injure the optic nerve.

It was all more or less of a puzzle to her, but it was one which her
taskmaster never explained further than the revelations of each day
explained it. She understood that he was a scientist, that he
undoubtedly had been an operator in some surgical field or was putting
into shape the work of another in that field, but what he now was
besides a writer of technical books she had no manner of idea.

"But I really enjoy it, Father Davy," she insisted, when she came down
to him one day with hotly flushed cheeks and shaking hand after a
particularly protracted siege of copying involved and incomprehensible
material. "It's monotonous in a way, but it's intensely interesting,
too. Mr. Jefferson is so absorbed in it, it's fun to watch him. To-day
he was as happy as a boy over a letter he had just received from a
Professor Somebody, a great authority in Vienna. It seemed it absolutely
confirmed some statement he had made in a monograph he wrote last year
which had been challenged by several scientists. The way he fell to
writing his next paragraph after he had read that letter made one
imagine he was writing it in his own heart's blood. He read it aloud to
me." She laughed appreciatively at the recollection.

"Could you make anything of it?" inquired Mr. Warne with interest.

"Not very much. It was about the pituitary body;--oh, I've come to have
a great awe of the pituitary body, it seems to be responsible for so
many things. He chuckled over it like a boy, and said to me, 'Forgive
these transports, Miss Warne, but this is food and drink to me. I wish I
could explain it to you so that you might rejoice over it with me. Some
day I will, when we are not so busy.' I hope he will. There's enough
that I do understand to make me interested."

"I see you are--and rejoice, my Georgiana. Do you remember what Max
Müller says, echoed by many another, '_Work is life to me; and when I am
no longer able to work, life will be a heavy burden?_'"

He smiled as he said it, but his daughter read the seldom-expressed
longing in the cheerful voice and laid her cheek for an instant against
his. "He's quite right. And you have your work, Father Davy, and you're
doing it all the time. I think you preach much more effectively now than
you did in the pulpit, even when you don't open your mouth. And when you
do open it angels couldn't compete with you!"

They laughed softly together, though Mr. Warne shook his head. "It's a
curious thing," he mused, "that the weaker the body gets the harder does
the mind have to strive to master it. But, thank God--'_so fight I, not
as one that beateth the air_.'"

"'Not as one that beateth the air,'" murmured the girl. "I should say
not, Father Davy. As one that delivereth hard blows on his own body, his
poor, tired body. Oh, if I had one tenth the self-control----"

At which she ran away, as was quite like her, when emotion suddenly got
the better of her. The darkest cloud on this girl's life was the frail
tenure of her father's existence. The rest could be endured.

The work in the upstairs study went steadily on, in spite of the fact
that James Stuart railed and that Miles Channing came at least once in
seven days, driving the sixty miles in a long, swiftly speeding car
which brought him to the door of the manse before the early May sunset,
and which took him back when the shadows lay black upon the silent road.
Two hours in the morning, three in the afternoon, Georgiana gave to the
rigid performance of the tasks Mr. Jefferson set her, while outside
below the windows at which she worked lay her garden, beloved of her
affection, beseeching her not to neglect it.

It was hard sometimes not to betray how she longed to be outside, as she
wrote on and on, copying the often difficult and uninteresting language
of the more technical part of her employer's construction. And one
afternoon, lifting her eyes to let them dwell on a great budding purple
lilac tree, with the warm breath of the breeze which had drifted across
the apple orchard fanning her cheek, and all the notes of rioting spring
in her ears, she did draw in spite of herself one deep sigh of longing
which she instantly suppressed--too late.

Her companion looked up quickly, noted the flush in the cheek and the
hint of a weary shadow under the dark eyes, and suddenly pushed aside
his paper. Then he drew it back, blotted it carefully, laid it with a
pile of others, and capped his pen. He wheeled about in his chair to
face his assistant.

"Put down your work, please," he commanded gently; "precisely where you
are. Don't finish that sentence."

Georgiana looked up, astonished. "Not finish the sentence?"

"No. Did you never stop in the middle of a sentence?"

"I'm afraid I have. But I didn't suppose you ever did."

"I don't. But I want you to. Please. That's right. You will know where
to start it again to-morrow."

"To-morrow?" In spite of herself her eyes had lighted as a child's
might.

"Even so. To-day we are going for a drive in all this beauty--if I can
find a horse and some kind of a vehicle, and you will go with me. It's
only three o'clock. We can have a long drive between now and the hour
when you invariably disappear to make magic for our appetites. How about
it?"

"I can keep on perfectly well, you know," she said, with pen still
poised above her paper.

"But I can't." He was smiling. "Now that the other plan has occurred to
me, I can't keep on."

"Did you see inside my mind?" queried Georgiana, putting away her
copying with rapid motions.

"Suddenly I did. I've been rather blind, a hard taskmaster. I've been
conscious of what was going on outside when I went for my walks, but the
work is absorbing to me and I have kept you too steadily at it. We both
need a rest," he added as she shook her head.




CHAPTER XIV

OUT OF THE BLUE


Twenty minutes afterward he drove up to the door with the best that the
village liveryman had to give for the highest price his customer could
offer--a tall black horse of fair proportions, and a hurriedly washed
buggy of the type in vogue in country districts. But as Georgiana went
down the path she was conscious that the figure which stood hat and
reins in hand awaiting her would lend dignity to any vehicle, short of a
wheelbarrow, in which he might be seen to ride.

Then presently the pair were driving along country lanes in the very
midst of all the burgeoning beauty of the season, and Georgiana was like
a captive bird let loose. Her companion as well responded to the call of
Nature at her loveliest, and the tireless worker of the study seemed
changed at a word to a bright-eyed idler of the most carefree sort. The
two gave themselves up without restraint to the enjoyment of the hour.

"I wonder how long it is," said Mr. Jefferson, letting the reins lie
loose at a leafy curve of the road while the black horse willingly
walked, "since I have had a drive like this. Not for ten years at
least."

"You've lived always in a great city?"

"Since boyhood--in the heart of it."

"And have driven motors, not horses, for those ten years."

"Yes, like everybody else. But I spent all my summers as a boy on my
grandfather's farm, and there I drove horses and rode them and did
acrobatic feats on their bare backs. I was a wild Indian, a cowboy, and
a captain of cavalry by turns. Those were happy days, and on a day like
this they don't seem long ago."

"They can't be so dreadfully long ago," she dared, with a glance at the
interesting profile beside her.

"Can't they? Don't I look pretty aged compared with your youth?"

"I'm not so remarkably young," she retorted.

"Aren't you? You are about ten years younger than I. That's a big leap
and must make me seem a grandfather indeed."

"But you don't know how old I am."

"I could come pretty close to it," said he with a quick look.

"How could you know?"

"When you see a spray of apple blossoms like those"--he pointed toward a
mass of pink and white at the stage of perfection beyond an old rail
fence--"can't you tell at a glance whether they've been out a day or a
week?"

"I should say that if things had happened to them to make them feel as
if they'd been out a week when they had been out only two days----"

"A heavy rain, for instance? In that case we should be
deceived--perhaps. But in the case of a human being those heavy rains
sometimes only mature without fading---- Hello,----what's this?"

A small and very ragged boy had emerged suddenly from a meadow gateway,
his face convulsed with pain and fright. He nursed one hand in the other
and the colour had deserted his round cheek, leaving it pallid under its
freckles. The only house nearby was an abandoned one and there were no
others for some distance in either direction.

Mr. Jefferson stopped his horse. "Does it hurt badly, lad?" he asked in
the friendliest of tones, which yet had a bracing quality. "Don't you
want to let me see if I can help it?"

The boy stood still, tears silently making their way down his face.
Giving the reins to Georgiana, Mr. Jefferson jumped out and gently
examined the small hand, the middle finger of which, as the onlooker
could plainly see, was badly distorted and somewhat swollen. The skin,
however, did not seem to be broken.

"We can make that more comfortable right away," the man promised the
little boy. "Sit down on the grass for a minute or two, laddie, while I
find something I want."

He pulled out a handkerchief, as yet folded and fresh from its ironing,
and handed it to Georgiana. "Will you tear that into strips an inch
wide, please, while I take a look back here for a bit of wood?" and he
disappeared down the road, while Georgiana with the aid of her strong
white teeth tore the fine linen as he had bidden, and spoke comfortingly
to the little fellow, who seemed glad enough to have fallen into
friendly hands.

When he shortly returned Mr. Jefferson was rapidly cutting and whittling
a stick into a little splint, which he then wound carefully with a strip
of the handkerchief until it was covered from view. Then he took the
injured hand in his own capable ones--his assistant had often noted
those hands--and said quietly, "I'm going to hurt you just a minute,
little man, but you'll be all right, so be game," and in two deft
motions he had pulled and twisted the broken finger, and had set it
straight as the others, with but one sharp outcry from the owner. In
less time than it can be told in, the set finger was bound securely with
its neighbouring finger to the padded splint, and the whole neatly
bandaged with the torn linen, the entire procedure accomplished with
the rapidity and skill of the practised hand. No amateur surgery this,
as Georgiana understood well enough.

"There," said Mr. Jefferson, drawing forth another handkerchief as
spotless as the first--she wondered if he went always thus provided
against emergency--and improvising a little sling in which the bandaged
hand swung comfortably, "I think you'll do. Rest a bit and then go home,
and tell your mother not to touch that finger for three weeks. By that
time it will be as good as new, only be careful with it when you first
use it. Good-bye, laddie, and better luck next time."

Georgiana saw the uninjured hand of the boy close over something bright
as the man's hand left it, and heard a low sound which might have been
almost anything indicative of surprise and joy. Then the black horse was
moving on, and Mr. Jefferson was saying: "Weren't we talking about apple
blossoms?"

"We had finished with them, I think," Georgiana replied, wondering if he
really were going to offer no explanation of the hint of mystery which
had been about him ever since her work with him had begun.

But he did not offer any, only went on with the pleasant talk with which
he had all along beguiled the way. Georgiana was recognizing this
afternoon, more than she had yet done, what a well-stored mind was
possessed by this unassuming man, whose manner and speech yet did not
lack that quality of quiet assurance which is the product only of
genuine knowledge and experience.

The black horse was within a mile of home, passing through the last
stretch of woodland which would justify the walking pace, in which,
greatly to his astonishment, he was being allowed to indulge at all such
points, when a motor car, slowing down beside him, caused him to lay
back his ears in displeasure.

Georgiana, turning, beheld the handsome, eager face of Miles Channing as
he leaned toward her, his hand hushing his engine as he spoke.

"Miss Warne--Mr. Jefferson--forgive me for stopping you! I should have
gone on and waited for you if I had been sure you were on your way home.
But I'm a messenger from the Croftons; they beg you to let me bring you
back with me to-night." His eyes rested on Georgiana.

"To-night? Is anybody ill?"

"Oh, no, no; nothing like that. It's for quite a different reason they
want you; only I'm to ask you not to question me. You're to come on
faith, if you will. And they'll agree to have you back in the morning by
breakfast-time, if you insist."

Georgiana looked puzzled, but, being human, she was naturally interested
and attracted by this mysterious plan. "It's very odd," she mused, "but
if father can spare me----"

"I will undertake to see that your father is not lonely this evening,"
said Mr. Jefferson's quiet voice at her side. "And please don't bother
about to-morrow morning or to-morrow at all, if you would like to be
away."

"If Mr. Jefferson wouldn't object----" began Channing; but Mr. Jefferson
anticipated him.

"Please don't hesitate to go on with Mr. Channing, if you would like to
gain a little time," he suggested to his companion. "He will have you at
home before I can reach the bend in the road."

Georgiana looked round at him. "I prefer to finish one ride before I
begin another," she declared, smiling. "It's only a mile, Mr. Channing;
we shall be there nearly as soon as you. Please go on."

It thus came about ten minutes later that James Stuart, walking up to
his home from a field where he had been superintending an interesting
new departure in cultivation, caught sight first of a now-familiar
roadster of aristocratic lines whose appearance thereabouts had become
most unwelcome, and shortly thereafter of a less pretentious vehicle,
being rapidly drawn by a still more familiar black horse, and occupied
by two people whom it gave Stuart no acute pleasure to see together.

"Well, I should say George was displaying her admirers in great shape
this afternoon," he said gloomily to himself. "It's a wonder I'm not
trailing on behind with a wheelbarrow. But I vow I'd like to know since
when her contract with Jefferson has taken them out into the
country--and in working hours, too!"

Afterward it was all rather a strange memory to Georgiana when she
recalled it. She had flown about to prepare the appetizing early supper
with which she was accustomed to serve her small family, and to which
she now added a delicacy or two on account of its seeming the natural
thing to ask Mr. Miles Channing to remain rather than to allow him to go
to the small village hotel. Then she had cleared her table and left the
after-work to the neighbour who was to come to the rescue as before. She
had dressed with hurried fingers for the trip, and had driven away with
a devoted escort who spared no pains to make her feel that he was
exceedingly pleased at the success of his mission.

There was no place in her memory for something she did not see nor would
have thought of imagining significant if she had seen it. When she left
the house Mr. Jefferson was in his room, searching for a book from which
to read aloud to his self-assumed charge of the evening. When he heard
Georgiana's blithe cry of farewell to her father in the doorway below,
he left the bookcase and went with a quick step to the window. He
watched the car driven by Mr. Channing out of sight down the road; then
he descended to the garden, pipe in hand. Before he returned to the
house to take his place by the evening lamp and begin the reading to the
gentle invalid stretched on the couch, he had covered many furlongs up
and down the straggling pathways and had consumed much more than his
usual quota of choice tobacco. And though all about him had been the May
environment at its loveliest, through all his marching up and down he
had never once looked up.

Miles away, and ever more miles away, Georgiana had flown like the wind
in the swift car under its skilfully guiding hand. The drive was a
blurred impression of slowly gathering rosy twilight, of the odour of
the apple blossoms--somehow a different and more seductive fragrance
than it had been in the sunlit afternoon--and always there was the sense
of there being beside her a presence which disturbed. Channing's low
laugh, his vibrant voice in her ear, the things he said, half serious,
half earnest, always full of an only slightly veiled intent--the girl
who had spent so many days of her life in hard study or harder
housewifery could do no less than yield herself for the hour to the
pulse-quickening charm of it and forget everything else.

Just as twilight settled into dusk and for the first time the headlights
of the car came on with a long reach like a golden ribbon along the
road, Channing, suddenly slowing down, a few miles out of the city,
began a rapid speech on a subject so unexpected that it fairly took his
hearer's breath away.

"It's not fair of me to tell you, but I've simply got to

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