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Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby

by Kathleen Thompson Norris · English · Gutenberg #4348 · 596,192 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby

Author: Kathleen Thompson Norris


        
Release date: August 1, 2003 [eBook #4348]
                Most recently updated: December 27, 2020

Language: English

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Produced by Steve Harris, Charles Franks and the Online
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THE WORKS OF KATHLEEN NORRIS



POOR, DEAR MARGARET KIRBY AND OTHER STORIES


VOLUME III



      This book is Jim's,--this page shall bear
        Its witness to my love for him.
      Best of small brothers anywhere,
        Who would not do as much for Jim?




CONTENTS

   POOR, DEAR MARGARET KIRBY
   BRIDGING THE YEARS
   THE TIDE-MARSH
   WHAT HAPPENED TO ALANNA
   THE FRIENDSHIP OF ALANNA
   "S IS FOR SHIFTLESS SUSANNA"
   THE LAST CAROLAN
   MAKING ALLOWANCES FOR MAMMA
   THE MEASURE OF MARGARET COPPERED
   MISS MIX, KIDNAPPER
   SHANDON WATERS
   GAYLEY THE TROUBADOUR
   DR. BATES AND MISS SALLY
   THE GAY DECEIVER
   THE RAINBOW'S END
   ROSEMARY'S STEPMOTHER
   AUSTIN'S GIRL
   RISING WATER





POOR, DEAR MARGARET KIRBY

I


"You and I have been married nearly seven years," Margaret Kirby
reflected bitterly, "and I suppose we are as near hating each other as
two civilized people ever were!"

She did not say it aloud. The Kirbys had long ago given up any
discussion of their attitude to each other. But as the thought came
into her mind she eyed her husband--lounging moodily in her motor-car,
as they swept home through the winter twilight--with hopeless, mutinous
irritation.

What was the matter, she wondered, with John and Margaret Kirby--young,
handsome, rich, and popular? What had been wrong with their marriage,
that brilliantly heralded and widely advertised event? Whose fault was
it that they two could not seem to understand each other, could not
seem to live out their lives together in honorable and dignified
companionship, as generations of their forebears had done?

"Perhaps everyone's marriage is more or less like ours," Margaret mused
miserably. "Perhaps there's no such thing as a happy marriage."

Almost all the women that she knew admitted unhappiness of one sort or
another, and discussed their domestic troubles freely. Margaret had
never sunk to that; it would not even have been a relief to a nature as
self-sufficient and as cold as hers. But for years she had felt that
her marriage tie was an irksome and distasteful bond, and only that
afternoon she had been stung by the bitter fact that the state of
affairs between her husband and herself was no secret from their world.
A certain audacious newspaper had boldly hinted that there would soon
be a sensational separation in the Kirby household, whose beautiful
mistress would undoubtedly follow her first unhappy marital experience
with another--and, it was to be hoped, a more fortunate--marriage.

Margaret had laughed when the article was shown her, with the easy
flippancy that is the stock in trade of her type of society woman; but
the arrow had reached her very soul, nevertheless.

So it had come to that, had it? She and John had failed! They were to
be dragged through the publicity, the humiliations, that precede the
sundering of what God has joined together. They had drifted, as so many
hundreds and thousands of men and women drift, from the warm, glorious
companionship of the honeymoon, to quarrels, to truces, to discussion,
to a recognition of their utter difference in point of view, and to
this final independent, cool adjustment, that left their lives as
utterly separated as if they had never met.

Yet she had done only what all the women she knew had done, Margaret
reminded herself in self-justification. She had done it a little more
brilliantly, perhaps; she had spent more money, worn handsomer jewels
and gowns; she had succeeded in idling away her life in that utter
leisure that was the ideal of them all, whether they were quite able to
achieve it or not. Some women had to order their dinners, had
occasionally to go about in hired vehicles, had to consider the cost of
hats and gowns; but Margaret, the envied, had her own carriage and
motor-car, her capable housekeeper, her yearly trip to Paris for
uncounted frocks and hats.

All the women she knew were useless, boasting rather of what they did
not have to do than of what they did, and Margaret was more
successfully useless than the others. But wasn't that the lot of a
woman who is rich, and marries a richer man? Wasn't it what married
life should be?

"I don't know what makes me nervous to-night," Margaret said to herself
finally, settling back comfortably in her furs. "Perhaps I only imagine
John is going to make one of his favorite scenes when we get home.
Probably he hasn't seen the article at all. I don't care, anyway! If it
SHOULD come to a divorce, why, we know plenty of people who are happier
that way. Thank Heaven, there isn't a child to complicate things!"

Five feet away from her, as the motor-car waited before crossing the
park entrance, a tall man and a laughing girl were standing, waiting to
cross the street.

"But aren't we too late for gallery seats?" Margaret heard the girl
say, evidently deep in an important choice.

"Oh, no!" the man assured her eagerly.

"Then I choose the fifty-cent dinner and 'Hoffman' by all means," she
decided joyously.

Margaret looked after them, a sudden pain at her heart. She did not
know what the pain was. She thought she was pitying that young husband
and wife; but her thoughts went back to them as she entered her own
warm, luxurious rooms a few moments later.

"Fifty-cent dinner!" she murmured. "It must be awful!"

To her surprise, her husband followed her into her room, without
knocking, and paid no attention to the very cold stare with which she
greeted him.

"Sit down a minute, Margaret, will you?" he said, "and let your woman
go. I want to speak to you."

Angry to feel herself a little at loss, Margaret nodded to the maid,
and said in a carefully controlled tone:

"I am dining at the Kelseys', John. Perhaps some other time--"

Her husband, a thin, tall man, prematurely gray, was pacing the floor
nervously, his hands plunged deep in his coat pockets. He cleared his
throat several times before he spoke. His voice was sharp, and his
words were delivered quickly:

"It's come to this, Margaret--I'm very sorry to have to tell you, but
things have finally reached the point where it's--it's got to come out!
Bannister and I have been nursing it along; we've done all that we
could. I went down to Washington and saw Peterson, but it's no use! We
turn it all over--the whole thing--to the creditors to-morrow!" His
voice rose suddenly; it was shocking to see the control suddenly fail.
"I tell you it's all up, Margaret! It's the end of me! I won't face it!"

He dropped into a chair, but suddenly sprang up again, and began to
walk about the room.

"Now, you can do just what you think wise," he resumed presently, in
the advisory, quiet tones he usually used to her. "You can always have
the income of your Park Avenue house; your Aunt Paul will be glad
enough to go abroad with you, and there are personal things--the house
silver and the books--that you can claim. I've lain awake nights
planning--" His voice shook again, but he gained his calm after a
moment. "I want to ask you not to work yourself up over it," he added.

There was a silence. Margaret regarded him in stony fury. She was
deadly white.

"Do you mean that Throckmorton, Kirby, & Son have--has failed?" she
asked. "Do you mean that my money--the money that my father left me--is
GONE? Does Mr. Bannister say so? Why--why has it never occurred to you
to warn me?"

"I did warn you. I did try to tell you, in July--why, all the world
knew how things were going!"

If, on the last word, there crept into his voice the plea that even a
strong man makes to his women for sympathy, for solace, Margaret's eyes
killed it. John, turning to go, gave her what consolation he could.

"Margaret, I can only say I'm sorry. I tried--Bannister knows how I
tried to hold my own. But I was pretty young when your father died, and
there was no one to help me learn. I'm glad it doesn't mean actual
suffering for you. Some day, perhaps, we'll get some of it back. God
knows I hope so. I've not meant much to you. Your marriage has cost you
pretty dear. But I'm going to do the only thing I can for you."

Silence followed. Margaret presently roused herself.

"I suppose this can be kept from the papers? We needn't be discussed
and pointed at in the streets?" she asked heavily, her face a mask of
distaste.

"That's impossible," said John, briefly.

"To some people nothing is impossible," Margaret said.

Her husband turned again without a word, and left her. Afterward she
remembered the sick misery in his eyes, the whiteness of his face.

What did she do then? She didn't know. Did she go at once to the
dressing-table? Did she ring for Louise, or was she alone as she slowly
got herself into a loose wrapper and unpinned her hair?

How long was it before she heard that horrible cry in the hall? What
was it--that, or the voices and the flying footsteps, that brought her,
shaken and gasping, to her feet?

She never knew. She only knew that she was in John's dressing-room, and
that the servants were clustered, a sobbing, terrified group, in the
doorway. John's head, heavy, with shut eyes, was on her shoulder;
John's limp body was in her arms. They were telling her that this was
the bottle he had emptied, and that he was dead.



II


It was a miracle that they had got her husband to the hospital alive,
the doctors told Margaret, late that night. His life could be only a
question of moments. It was extraordinary that he should live through
the night, they told her the next morning; but it could not last more
than a few hours now. It was impossible for John Kirby to live, they
said; but John Kirby lived.

He lived, to struggle through agonies undreamed of, back to days of new
pain. There were days and weeks and months when he lay, merely
breathing, now lightly, now just a shade more deeply.

There came a day when great doctors gathered about him to exult that he
undoubtedly, indisputably winced when the hypodermic needle hurt him.
There was a great day, in late summer, when he muttered something. Then
came relapses, discouragements, the bitter retracing of steps.

On Christmas Day he opened his eyes, and said to the grave, thin woman
who sat with her hand in his:

"Margaret!"

He slipped off again too quickly to know that she had broken into tears
and fallen on her knees beside him.

After a while he sat up, and was read to, and finally wept because the
nurses told him that some day he would want to get up and walk about
again. His wife came every day, and he clung to her like a child.
Sometimes, watching her, a troubled thought would darken his eyes; but
on a day when they first spoke of the terrible past, she smiled at him
the motherly smile that he was beginning so to love, and told him that
all business affairs could wait. And he believed her.

One glorious spring afternoon, when the park looked deliriously fresh
and green from the hospital windows, John received permission to extend
his little daily walk beyond the narrow garden. With an invalid's
impatience, he bemoaned the fact that his wife would not be there that
day to accompany him on his first trip into the world.

His nurse laughed at him.

"Don't you think you're well enough to go and make a little call on
Mrs. Kirby?" she suggested brightly. "She's only two blocks away, you
know. She's right here on Madison Avenue. Keep in the sunlight and walk
slowly, and be sure to come back before it's cold, or I'll send the
police after you."

Thus warned, John started off, delighted at the independence that he
was gaining day after day. He walked the two short blocks with the care
that only convalescents know; a little confused by the gay, jarring
street noises, the wide light and air about him.

He found the address, but somehow the big, gloomy double house didn't
look like Margaret. There was a Mrs. Kirby there, the maid assured him,
however, and John sat down in a hopelessly ugly drawing-room to wait
for her. Instead, there came in a cheerful little woman who introduced
herself as Mrs. Kippam. She was of the chattering, confidential type so
often found in her position.

"Now, you wanted Mrs. Kirby, didn't you?" she said regretfully. "She's
out. I'm the housekeeper here, and I thought if it was just a question
of rooms, maybe I'd do as well?"

"There's some mistake," said John; and he was still weak enough to feel
himself choke at the disappointment. "I want Mrs. John Kirby--a very
beautiful Mrs. Kirby, who is quite prominent in--"

"Oh, yes, indeed!" said Mrs. Kippam, lowering her voice and growing
confidential. "That's the same one. Her husband failed, and all but
killed himself, you know--you've read about it in the papers? She sold
everything she had, you know, to help out the firm, and then she came
here--"

"Bought out an interest in this?" said John, very quietly, in his
winning voice.

"Well, she just came here as a regular guest at first," said Mrs.
Kippam, with a cautious glance at the door. "I was running it then; but
I'd got into awful debt, and my little boy was sick, and I got to
telling her my worries. Well, she was looking for something to do--a
companion or private secretary position--but she didn't find it, and
she had so many good ideas about this house, and helped me out so, just
talking things over, that finally I asked her if she wouldn't be my
partner. And she was glad to; she was just about worried to death by
that time."

"I thought Mrs. Kirby had property--investments in her own name?" John
said.

"Oh, she did, but she put everything right back into the firm," said
Mrs. Kippam. "Lots of her old friends went back on her for doing it,"
the little woman went on, in a burst of loyal anger. "However," she
added, very much enjoying her listener's close attention, "I declare my
luck seemed to change the day she took hold! First thing was that her
friends, and a lot that weren't her friends, came here out of
curiosity, and that advertised the place. Then she slaves day and
night, goes right into the kitchen herself and watches things; and she
has such a way with the help--she knows how to manage them. And the
result is that we've got the house packed for next winter, and we'll
have as many as thirty people here all summer long. I feel like another
person," the tears suddenly brimmed her weak, kind eyes, and she
fumbled with her handkerchief. "You'll think I'm crazy running on this
way!" said little Mrs. Kippam, "but everything has gone so good. My
Lesty is much better, and as things are now I can get him into the
country next year; and I feel like I owed it all to Margaret Kirby!"

John tried to speak, but the room was wheeling about him. As he raised
his trembling hand to his eyes, a shadow fell across the doorway, and
Margaret came in. Tired, shabby, laden with bundles, she stood blinking
at him a moment; and then, with a sudden cry of tenderness and pity,
she was on her knees by his side.

"Margaret! Margaret!" he whispered. "What have you done?"

She did not answer, but gathered him close in her strong arms, and they
kissed each other with wet eyes.



III


A few weeks later John came to the boarding-house, nervous,
discouraged, still weak. Despite Margaret's bravery, they both felt the
position a strained and uncomfortable one. As day after day proved his
utter unfitness for a fresh business start in the cruel, jarring
competition of the big city, John's spirits nagged pitifully. He hated
the boarding-house.

"It's only the bridge that takes us over the river," his wife reminded
him.

But when a little factory in a little town, half a day's journey away,
offered John a manager's position, at a salary that made them both
smile, she let him accept it without a murmur.

Her courage lasted until he was on the train, travelling toward the new
town and the new position. But as she walked back to her own business,
a sort of nausea seized her. The big, heroic fight was over; John's
life was saved, and the debt reduced to a reasonable burden. But the
deadly monotony was ahead, the drudgery of days and days of hateful
labor, the struggle--for what? When could they ever take their place
again in the world that they knew? Who could ever work up again from
debts like these? Would John always be the weak, helpless convalescent,
or would he go back to the old type, the bored, silent man of clubs and
business?

Margaret turned a grimy corner, and was joined by one of her boarders,
a cheerful little army wife.

"Well, we'll miss Mr. Kirby, I'm sure," said little Mrs. Camp, as they
mounted the steps. "And by the way, Mrs. Kirby, you won't mind if I ask
if we mayn't just now and then have some of the new towels on our
floor--will you? We never get anything but the old, thin towels. Of
course, it's Alma's fault; but I think every one ought to take a turn
at the new towels as well as the old, don't you?"

"I'll speak to Alma," said Margaret, turning her key.

A lonely, busy autumn fellowed, and a winter of hard and thankless work.

"I feel like a plumber's wife," smiled Margaret to Mrs. Kippam, when in
November John wrote her of a "raise."

But when he came down for two days at Christmastime, she noticed that
he was brown, cheerful, and amazingly strong. They were as shy as
lovers on this little holiday, Margaret finding that her old maternal,
half-patronizing attitude toward her husband did not fit the case at
all, and John almost as much at a loss.

In April she went up to Applebridge, and they spent a whole day roaming
about in the fresh spring fields together.

"It's really a delicious little place," she confided to Mrs. Kippam
when she returned. "The sort of place where kiddies carry their lunches
to school, and their mothers put up preserves, and everybody has a
surrey and an old horse. John's quite a big man up there."

After the April visit came a long break, for John went to Chicago in
the July fortnight they had planned to spend together; and when he at
last came to New York for another Christmas, Margaret was in bed with a
bad throat, and could only whisper her questions. So another winter
struggled by, and another spring, and when summer came Margaret found
that it was almost impossible to break away from her increasing
responsibilities.

But on a fragrant, soft October day she found herself getting off the
early train in the little station; and as a big man waved his hat to
her, and they turned to walk down the road together, they smiled into
each other's eyes like two children.

"Were you surprised at the letter?" said John.

"Not so much surprised as glad," said Margaret, coloring like a girl.

They presently turned off the main road, and entered a certain gate.
Beyond the gate was an old, overgrown garden, and beyond that a
house--a broad, shabby house; and beyond that again an orchard, and
barns and outhouses.

John took a key from his pocket, and they opened the front door. Roses,
looking in the back door, across a bare, wide stretch of hall, smiled
at them. The sunlight fell everywhere in clear squares on the bare
floors. It brightened the big kitchen, and glinted in the pantry, still
faintly redolent of apples stored on shelves. It crept into the attic,
and touched the scored casement where years ago a dozen children had
recorded their heights and ages.

Margaret and John came out on the porch again, and she turned to him
with brimming eyes. It suddenly swept over her, with a thankfulness too
deep for realization, that this would be her world. She would sit on
this wide porch, waiting for him in the summer afternoons; she would go
about from room to room on the happy, commonplace journeys of
house-keeping; would keep the fire blazing against John's return. And
in the years to come perhaps there would be other voices about the old
house; there would be little shining heads to keep the sunlight always
there.

"Well, Margaret, do you like it?" said John, his arm about her, his
face radiant with pride and happiness.

"Like it!" said Margaret. "Why, it's home!"



IV


So the Kirbys disappeared from the world. Sometimes a newcomer at
Margaret's club would ask about the great portrait that hung over the
library fireplace--the portrait of a cold-eyed woman with beautiful
pearls about her beautiful throat. Then the history of poor, dear
Margaret Kirby would be reviewed--its triumphs, its glories, Margaret's
brilliant marriage, her beauty, her wit. These only led to the final
tragic scenes that had ended it all.

"And now she is grubbing away dear knows where!" her biographer would
say carelessly. "Absolutely, they might as well be buried!"

But about seven years after the Kirbys' disappearance, it happened that
four of Margaret's old intimates--the T. Illington Frarys and the
Josiah Dunnings--were taking a little motor trip in the Dunnings' big
car, through the northern part of the State. Just outside the little
village of Applebridge, something mysterious and annoying happened to
the car, which stopped short, and after some discussion it was decided
that the ladies should wait therein, while the men walked back in
search of help.

Mrs. Dunning and Mrs. Frary, settling themselves comfortably in the
tonneau for a long wait, puzzled themselves a little over the name of
Applebridge.

"I can just remember hearing of it," said Mrs. Dunning, sleepily, "but
when or where or how I don't know."

They opened their books. A brilliant May afternoon throbbed, hummed,
sparkled all about them. The big wheels of the motor were deep in grass
and blossoms. On either side of the road, fields were gay with bees and
butterflies. Larks looped the blackberry-vines with quick flights;
mustard-tops showed their pale gold under the apple-blossoms.

Here and there a white cloud drifted in the deep, clear blue of the
sky. There had been rains a day or two before, and in the fragrant air
still hung a little chill, a haunting suggestion of wet earth and
refreshed blossoms. Somewhere near, but out of sight, a flooded creek
was tumbling noisily over its shallows.

Suddenly the Sunday stillness was broken by voices. The two women in
the motor looked at each other, listening. They heard a woman's voice,
singing; then a small boyish voice, then a man's voice. The speakers,
whoever they were, apparently settled down in the meadow, not more than
a dozen yards away, for a breathing space. A tangle of vines and bushes
screened them from the motor-car.

"Mother, are me and Billy going to turn the freezer?" said a child's
voice, and a man asked:

"Tired, old lady?"

"No, not at all. It's been a delicious walk," said the woman. The two
sitting in the motor gasped. "Yes, yes, yes, lovey," the woman's voice
went on, "you and Bill may turn, if Mary doesn't mind. Be careful of my
fern, Jack!" And then, in German: "Aren't they lovely in all the grass
and flowers, John?"

"Margaret!" breathed Mrs. Frary. "Poor, dear Margaret Kirby!"

"I hope they don't go by this way," whispered Mrs. Dunning, after an
astounded second. "One's been so rude--don't you know--forgetting her!"

"She probably won't know us," Mrs. Frary whispered back, adjusting her
veil in a stealthy way.

Mrs. Frary was right. The Kirbys presently passed with only a cursory
glance at the swathed occupants of the motor-car. They were laughing
like a lot of children as they scrambled through the hedge. John--a
big, broad John, as strong and brisk as a boy--carried a tiny barefoot
girl on his shoulder. Margaret, her beauty more startling than ever
under the sweep of a gypsy hat; her splendid figure a little broader,
but still magnificent under the cotton gown; her arms full of flowers
and ferns, was escorted by two more children, sturdy little boys, who
doubled and redoubled on their tracks like puppies. The tiny barefoot
girl, in her father's arms, was only a tangle of blue gingham and
drifting strands of silky hair; but the boys were splendidly alert
little lads, and their high voices loitered in the air after the
radiant, chattering little caravan had quite disappeared.

"Well!" said Mrs. Dunning, then.

"Poor, dear Margaret Kirby!" was on Mrs. Frary's lips; but she didn't
say it.

She and Mrs. Dunning stared at each other a long minute, utterly at a
loss. Then they reopened their books.




BRIDGING THE YEARS

The rain had stopped; and after long days of downpour, there seemed at
last to be a definite change. Anne Warriner, standing at one of the
dining-room windows, with the tiny Virginia in her arms, could find a
decided brightening in the western sky. Roofs--the roofs that made a
steep sky-line above the hills of old San Francisco--glinted in the
light. The glimpse of the bay that had not yet been lost between the
walls of fast-encroaching new buildings, was no longer dull, and beaten
level by the rain, but showed cold, and ruffled, and steely-blue; there
was even a whitecap or two dancing on the crests out toward Alcatraz. A
rising wind made the ivy twinkle cheerfully against the old-fashioned
brick wall that bounded the Warriners' backyard.

"I believe the storm is really over!" Anne said, thankfully, half
aloud, "to-morrow will be fair!"

"Out to-morrow?" said Diego, hopefully. He was wedged in between his
mother and the window-sill, and studying earth and sky as absorbedly as
she.

"Out to-morrow, sweetheart," his mother promised. And she wondered if
it was too late to take the babies out to-day.

But it was nearly four o'clock now; even the briefest airing was out of
the question. By the time the baby was dressed, coated, and hooded, and
little Diego buttoned into gaiters and reefer, and Anne herself had
changed her house gown for street wear, and pinned on her hat and veil,
and Helma, summoned from her ironing, had bumped Virginia's coach down
the back porch steps, and around the wet garden path to the front
door,--by the time all this was accomplished, the short winter daylight
would be almost gone, she knew, and the crowded hour that began with
the children's baths, and that ended their little day with
bread-and-milky kisses to Daddy when he came in, and prayers, and
cribs, would have arrived.

Anne sighed. She would have been glad to get out into the cool winter
afternoon, herself, after a long, quiet day in the warm house. It was
just the day and hour for a brisk walk, with one's hands plunged deep
in the pockets of a heavy coat, and one's hat tied snugly against the
wind. Twenty minutes of such walking, she thought longingly, would have
shaken her out of the little indefinable mood of depression that had
been hanging over her all day. She could have climbed the steep street
on which the cottage faced, and caught the freshening ocean breeze full
in her face at the corner; she could have looked down on the busy
little thoroughfares of the Chinese quarter just below, and the
swarming streets of the Italian colony beyond, and beyond that again to
the bay, dotted now with the brown sails of returning fishing smacks,
and crossed and recrossed by the white wakes of ferry-boats. For the
Warriners' cottage clung to the hill just above the busy, picturesque
foreign colonies, and the cheerful unceasing traffic of the piers. It
was in a hopelessly unfashionable part of the city now; its old,
dignified neighbors--French and Spanish houses of plaster and brick,
with deep gardens where willow and pepper trees, and fuchsias, and
great clumps of calla lilies had once flourished--were all gone,
replaced by modern apartment houses. But it had been one of the city's
show places fifty years before, when its separate parts had been
brought whole "around the Horn" from some much older city, and when
homesick pioneer wives and mothers had climbed the board-walk that led
to its gate, just to see, and perhaps to cry over, the painted china
door-knobs, the colored glass fan-light in the hall, the iron-railed
balconies, and slender, carved balustrade that took their hungry hearts
back to the decorous, dear old world they had left so far behind them.

Jimmy and Anne Warriner had stumbled upon the Jackson Street cottage
five years ago, just before their marriage, and after an ecstatic,
swift inspection of it, had raced like children to the agent, to crowd
into his willing hand a deposit on the first month's rent. Anne had
never kept house before, she had no eyes for obsolete plumbing, uneven
floors, for the dark cellar sacred to cats and rubbish. She and Jim
chattered rapturously of French windows, of brick garden walks, of how
plain little net curtains and Anne's big brass bowl full of nasturtiums
would look on the landing of the absurd little stairway that led from
the square hall to two useless little chambers above.

"Jimski--this floor oiled, and the rug laid cross-wise! And old
tapestry papers from Fredericks! And the spindle-chair and Fanny's
clock in the hall!"

"And the davenport in the dining-room, Anne,--there's no room in here,
and your tea-table at the fireplace, with your copper blazer on it!"

"Oh, Jim, we'll have a place people will talk about!" Anne would sigh
happily, after one of these outbursts. And when they made their last
inspection before really coming to take possession of the cottage, she
came very close to him,--Anne was several inches shorter than her big
husband-to-be, and when she got as close as this to Jim she had to tip
her serious little face up quite far, which Jim found attractive,--and
said, in a little, breathless voice:

"It's going to be like a home from the very start, isn't it, Jim? And
aren't you glad, Jim, that we aren't doing EXACTLY what every one else
does, that you and I, who ARE a little different, Jim, are going to
KEEP a little different? I mean that you really did do unusual work at
college, and you really are of a fine family, and I am a Pendeering,
and have travelled a lot, and been through Vassar,--don't you know,
Jim? You don't think it's conceited for us to think we aren't quite the
usual type, just between ourselves? Do you?"

Jim implied wordlessly that he did not. And whatever Jim thought
himself, he was quite sincere in saying that he believed Anne to be
peerless among her kind.

So they came to Jackson Street, and Anne made it quite as quaint and
charming as her dreams. For a year they could not find a flaw in it.

Then little enchanting James Junior came, nick-named Diego for
convenience, who fitted so perfectly into the picture, with his checked
gingham, and his mop of yellow hair. Anne gallantly went on with her
little informal luncheons and dinners, but she had to apologize for an
untrained maid now, and interrupt these festivities with flying visits
to the crib in the big bedroom that opened out of the dining-room. And
then, very soon after Diego, Virginia was born--surely the most
radiant, laughing baby that ever brought her joyous little presence
into any home anywhere. But with Virginia's coming, life grew very
practical for Anne, very different from what it had been in her vague
hopes and plans of years ago.

The cottage was no longer quite comfortable, to begin with. The garden,
shadowed heavily by buildings on both sides, was undeniably damp, and
the fascinating railing of the little balconies was undeniably mouldy.
The bath-room, despite its delightful size, and the ivy that rapped
outside its window, was not a modern bath-room. The backyard, once
sacred to geraniums and grass, and odd pots of shrubs, was sunny for
the children's playing, to be sure, but no longer picturesque after
their sturdy little boots had trampled it down, and with lines of their
little clothes intersecting it. Anne began to think seriously of the
big apartments all about, hitherto regarded as enemies, but perhaps the
solution, after all. The modern flats were delightfully airy, high up
in the sun, their floors were hard-wood, their bath-rooms tiled, their
kitchens all tempting enamel, and nickel plate, and shining new wood.
One had gas to cook with, furnace heat, hall service, and the joy of
the lift.

"What if we do have to endure a dining-room with red paper and black
woodwork, Jim," she would say, "and have near-Tiffany shades and a hall
two feet square? It would be so COMFORTABLE!"

But if Jim agreed,--"we'll have a look at some of them on Sunday," Anne
would hesitate.

"They're so horribly commonplace; they're just what every one else
has!" she would mourn.

Commonplace,--Anne said the word over to herself sometimes, in the long
hours that she spent alone with the children. That was what her life
had become. The inescapable daily routine left her no time for
unnecessary prettiness. She met each day bravely, only to find herself
beaten and exhausted every night. It was puzzling, it was sometimes a
little depressing. Anne reflected that she had always been busy, she
was indeed a little dynamo of energy, her college years and the years
of travel had been crowded with interests and enterprises. But she had
never been tired before; she had never felt, as she felt now, that she
could fall asleep at the dinner table for sheer weariness, and that no
trial was more difficult to bear than Jim's cheerful announcement that
the Deanes might be in later for a call, or the Weavers wanted them to
come over for a game of bridge.

And what did she accomplish, after all? she thought sometimes. What
mark did her busy days leave upon her life? She dressed and undressed
the children, she bathed, rocked, amused them; indeed, she was so
adoring a mother that sometimes whole precious fractions of hours
slipped by while she was watching them, laughing at them, catching the
little unresponsive soft cheeks to hers for the kisses that interfered
so seriously with their important little goings and comings. She sewed
on buttons and made puddings for Jim, she went for aimless walks,
pushing Jinny before her in the go-cart, and guiding the chattering
Diego with her free hand. She paused long in the market, uncomfortably
undecided between the expensive steak Jim liked so much, and the
sausages that meant financial balm to her own harassed soul. She
commenced letters to her mother that drifted about half-written until
Jinny captured and destroyed them. She sewed up rents in cloth lions
and elephants, and turned page after page of the children's cloth
books. Same and eventless, the months went by,--it was March, and the
last of the rains,--it was July, and she and Jim were taking the
children off for long Sundays in Sausalito, or on the Piedmont
hills,--it was October, with the usual letter from Mother about
Thanksgiving,--it was Christmas-time again! The seasons raced through
their familiar surprises, and were gone. Anne had a desperate sense of
wanting to halt them; just to think, just to realize what life meant,
and what she could do to make it nearer her dreams.

So the first five years of their marriage slipped by, but toward the
end with a perceptible brightening of the prospect in every direction.
Not in one day, nor in one week, did the change come; it was just that
things went well for Jim at the office, that the children were daily
growing less helpless and more enchanting, that Anne was beginning to
take an interest in the theatre again, and was charming in a new suit
and a really extravagant hat. The Warriners began to spend their Sunday
afternoons with real estate agents in Berkeley--not this year, perhaps,
but certainly next, they told each other, they could CONSIDER that
lovely one, with the two baths, and such a view, or the smaller one,
nearer the station, don't you remember, Jim? where there was a
sleeping-porch, and the garden all laid out? They would bring the
children up in the open air and sunshine, and find neighbors, and
strike roots, in the lovely college town.

Then suddenly, there were hard times again. Anne's health became poor,
she was fitful and depressed, quite unlike her usual sunshiny self.
Sometimes Jim found her in tears,--"It's nothing, dearest! Only I'm so
MISERABLE all the time!" Sometimes she--Anne, the hopeful!--was filled
with forebodings for herself and the child that was to come. No
unnecessary expense could be incurred now, with this fresh, inevitable
expense approaching. Especial concessions must be made to Helma, should
Helma really stay; the whole little household was like a ship that
shortens sail, and makes all snug against a storm. As a further
complication, business matters began to go badly for Jim. Salaries were
cut, new rules made, and an unpopular manager installed at the office.
Anne struggled bravely to hide her mental and physical discomfort from
Jim. Jim, cut to the heart to have to add anything to her care just
now, touched her with a thousand little tendernesses; a joke over the
burned pudding, a little name she had not heard since honeymoon days, a
hundred barefoot expeditions about the bedroom in the dark, when Jinny
awoke crying in the night, or Diego could not sleep because he was so
"firsty." Tender and intimate days these, but the strain of them told
on both husband and wife.

Things were at this point on the particular dark afternoon that found
Anne with the two children at the window. All three were still staring
out into the early dusk when Helma came in from the kitchen with an
armful of damp little garments:

"Ef aye sprad dese hare, dey be dray en no tayme?" suggested Helma.

"Oh, yes! Spread them here by all means; then you can get a good start
with your ironing to-morrow!" Anne agreed, rousing herself from her
revery. "Put them all around the fire. And I MUST straighten this
room!" she said, half to herself; "it's getting on to five!"

Followed by the stumbling children, she went briskly about the room,
reducing it to order with a practised hand. Toys were piled in a large
basket, scraps tossed into the fire, sewing materials gathered together
and put out of sight, the rugs laid smoothly, the window-shades drawn.
Anne "brushed up" the floor, pushed chairs against the wall, put a
shovelful of coals on the fire, and finally took her rocker at the
hearth, and sat with Virginia in her arms, and Diego beside her, while
two silver bowls of bread and milk were finished to the last drop.

"There!" said she, pleasantly warmed by these exertions, "now for
nighties! And Daddy can come as soon as he likes."

But Virginia was fretful and sleepy now, and did not want to be put
down. So Diego manfully departed kitchenward with the empty bowls, and
Anne, baby, rocker, and all, hitched her way across the room to the old
chest of drawers by the hall door, and managed to secure the small
sleeping garments with the little daughter still in her arms. She had
hitched her way back to the fireplace again, and was very busy with
buttons and strings, when Helma, appearing in the doorway, announced a
visitor.

"Who?" said Anne, puzzled. "Did the bell ring? I didn't hear it. What
is it?"

"Jantl'man," said Helma.

"A gentleman?" Anne, very much at a loss, got up, and carrying Jinny,
and followed by the barefoot Diego, went to the door. She had a
reassuring and instant impression that it was a very fine--even a
magnificent--old man, who was standing in the twilight of the little
hall. Anne had never seen him before, but there was no question in her
heart as to his reception, even at this first glance.

"How do you do?" she said, a little fluttered, but cordial, too. "Will
you come in here by the fire? The sitting-room is so cold."

"Thank you," said her caller, easily, with a little inclination of his
head that seemed to acknowledge her hospitality. He put his hat, a
shining, silk hat, upon the hall table, and followed her into the
dining-room. Anne found, when she turned to give him the big chair,
that he had pulled off his big gloves, too, and that Diego had put a
confident, small hand into his.

He sat down comfortably, a big, square-built man, with rosy color, hair
that was already silvered, and a fast-silvering mustache, and keen,
kind eyes as blue as Virginia's. In the expression of these eyes, and
in the lines about his fine mouth, was that suggestion of simple
friendliness and sympathy that no man, woman, or child can long resist.
Anne found herself already deciding that she LIKED this man. She went
on with Jinny's small toilet, even while she wondered about her caller,
and while she decided that Jim should have an overcoat of exactly this
big, generous cut, and of exactly this delightful, warm-looking rough
cloth, some day.

"Perhaps this is a bad hour to disturb these little people?" said the
caller, smiling, but with something in his manner and in his rather
deliberate and well-chosen speech, of the dignity and courtesy of an
older generation.

"Oh, no, indeed!" Anne assured him. "I'm going right on with them, you
see!"

Jinny, deliciously drowsy, gave the stranger a slow yet approving
smile, from the safety of Anne's arms. Diego went to lay a small hand
upon the gentleman's knee.

"This is my shoe," said Diego, frankly exhibiting a worn specimen, "and
Baby has shoes, too, blue ones. And Baby cried in the night when the
mirror fell down, didn't she, mother? And she broke her bowl, and bited
on the pieces, and blood came down on her bib--"

"All our tragedies!" laughed Anne.

"Didn't that hurt her mouth?" said the caller, interestedly, lifting
Diego into the curve of his arm.

Diego rested his golden mop comfortably against the big shoulder.

"It hurt her teef," he said dreamily, and subsided.

As if it were quite natural that the child should be there, the
gentleman eyed Anne over the little head.

"I've not told you my name, madam," said he. "I am Charles Rideout. Not
that that conveys anything to you, I suppose--?"

"But it does, as it happens!" Anne said, surprised and pleased.
"Jim--my husband, is with the Rogers-Wiley Company, and I think they do
a good deal of cement work for Rideout & Company."

"Surely," assented the man, "and your husband's name is--?"

"Warriner,--James Warriner," Anne supplied.

"Ah--? I don't place him," Mr. Rideout said thoughtfully. "There are so
many. Well, Mrs. Warriner," he turned his smiling, bright eyes to her
again, from the fire, "I am intruding on you this afternoon for a
reason that I hope you will find easy to forgive in an old man. I must
tell you first that my wife and I used to live in this house, a good
many years ago. We moved away from it--let me see--we left this house
something like twenty-six or--eight years ago. But we've talked a
hundred times of coming back here some day, and having a little look
about 'little Ten-Twelve,' as we always used to call it. I see your
number's changed. But"--his gesture was almost apologetic--"we are busy
people. Mrs. Rideout likes to live in the country a great part of the
time; this neighborhood is inaccessible now--time goes by, and, in
short, we haven't ever come back. But this was home to us for a good
many years." He was speaking in a lower voice now, his eyes on the
fire. "Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am," he said gently, "I brought Rose here a
bride--thirty-three years ago."

"Well, but fancy!" said Anne, her face radiant, "just as we did! No
wonder we said the house looked as if people had been happy in it!"

"There was a Frenchwoman here then," said Mr. Rideout, thoughtfully, "a
queer woman! She played fast and loose until I didn't know whether we'd
ever really get the place or not. This neighborhood was full of just
such houses then, although I remember Rose used to make great capital
out of the fact that ours was the only brick one among them. This house
came around the Horn from Philadelphia, as a matter of fact, and"--his
eyes, twinkling with indulgent amusement, met Anne's,--"and you know
that before a lady has got a baby to boast of, she's going to do a
little boasting about her new house!"

Anne laughed. "Perhaps she boasted about her husband, too," she said,
"as I do, when Jimmy isn't anywhere around."

She liked the tender look, that had in it just a touch of pleased
embarrassment with which he shook his head.

"Well, well, perhaps she did. Perhaps she did. She was very merry;
pleased with everything; to this day my wife always sees the cheerful
side of things first. A great gift, that. She danced about this house
as if it were another toy, and she a little girl. We thought it a very,
very lovely little home." His eyes travelled about the low walls. "I
got to thinking of it to-day, wondered if it were still standing. I
stood at your gate a little while,--the path is the same, and the
steps, and some of the old trees,--a japonica, I remember, and the
lemon verbenas. Finally, I found myself ringing your bell."

"I'm so glad you did!" Anne said. "There are lots of old trees and
shrubs in the backyard, too, that you and your wife might remember. We
think it is the dearest little house in the world, except that now we
are rather anxious to get the children out of the city."

"Yes, yes," he agreed with interest, "much better for them somewhere
across the bay. I remember that finally we moved into the
country--Alameda. The boy was a baby, then, and the two little girls
very small. It was quite a move! Quite a move! We got one load started,
and then had to wait and wait here--it was raining, too!--for the men
to come for the other load. My wife's sister had gone ahead with the
girls, but I remember Rose and I and the baby waiting and
waiting,--with the baby's little coat and cap on top of a box, ready to
be put on. Finally, I got Rose a carriage, to go to the ferry,--quite a
luxury in those days!" he interrupted himself, with a smile.

"And did the children love it,--the country?" said Anne, wistfully.

"Made them over!" said he, nodding reflectively. "Yes. I remember that
the day after we moved was a Sunday, and we had quite a patch of lawn
over there that I thought needed cutting. I shall never forget those
little girls tumbling about in the cut grass, and Rose watching from
the steps, with the baby in her lap. It made us all over." His voice
fell again, and he stared smilingly into the fire.

"The children were born here, then?" said Anne.

"The little girls, yes. And the oldest boy. Afterward there was another
boy, and a little girl--" he paused. "A little girl whom we lost," he
finished gravely.

"Both these babies were born here," Anne said, after a moment. Her
caller looked from one child to the other with an expression of
interest and understanding that no childless man can ever wear.

"Our Rose was born here, our first girl," he said. "Sometimes a foggy
morning even now will bring that morning back to me. My wife was very
ill, and I remember creeping out of her room, when she had gone to
sleep, and hearing the fog-horns outside,--it was early morning. We had
an old woman taking care of her,--no trained nurses in those days!--and
she was sitting here by this fireplace, with the tiny girl in her lap.
Do you know--" his smile met Anne's--"do you know, I was so tired, and
we had been so frightened for Rose, and it seemed to me that I had been
up and moving about through unfamiliar things for so many, many hours,
that I had almost forgotten the baby! I remember that it came to me
with a shock that Rose was safe, and asleep, and that morning had come,
and breakfast was ready, and here was the baby, the same baby we had
been so placidly expecting and planning for, and that, in short, it was
all right, and all over!"

"Oh, I KNOW!" Anne laid an impulsive hand for a second on his, and the
eyes of the young wife, and of the man who had been a young father
thirty years before, met in wonderful understanding. "That's--that's
the way it is," said Anne, a little lamely, with a swift thought for
another foggy morning, when the familiar horn, the waking noises of the
city, had fallen strangely on her own senses, after the terror and
triumph of the night. Neither spoke for a moment. Diego's voice broke
cheerily into the pause.

"I can undress myself," he announced, with modest complacence.

"Can you?" said Charles Rideout. "How about buttons?"

"I can't do buttons," Diego qualified firmly.

"Well, I think--I can--remember--how to unbutton--a boy!" said the man,
with his pleasant deliberation, as he began on the button that was
always catching itself on Diego's hair. Diego cheerfully extended
little arms and legs in turn for the disrobing process. Presently a
small heap of garments lay on the floor, and the children were quite
delicious in baggy blue flannels. All the four were laughing and
absorbed, when James Senior came in a few minutes later, and found them.

"Jim," said his wife, eagerly, rising to greet him, and to bring him,
cold and ruddy, to the fireplace, "this is Mr. Rideout, dear!"

"How do you do, sir?" said Jim, stretching out his hand, and with a
smile on his tired, keen, young face. "Don't get up. I see that my boy
is making himself at home."

"Yes, sir; we've been having a great time getting undressed," said the
visitor.

"Jim," Anne went on radiantly, "Mr. Rideout and HIS wife lived here
years ago, when THEY were just married, and their children were born
here too!"

"No--is that so!" Jim was as much pleased and surprised as Anne, as he
settled himself with Virginia's web of silky hair against his shoulder.
"Built it, perhaps, Mr. Rideout?"

"No. No, it was eight or ten years old, then. I used to pass it,
walking to the office. We had a little office down on Meig's pier then.
As a matter of fact, my wife never saw it until I brought her home to
it. She was the only child of a widow, very formal Southern people, and
we weren't engaged very long. So my brother and I furnished the house;
used--" his eyes twinkled--"used to buy our pictures in a lump. We
decided we needed about four to each room, and we'd go to a dealer's,
and pick out a dozen of 'em, and ask him to make us a price!"

"Just like men!" said the woman.

"I suppose so. I know that some of those pictures disappeared after
Rose had been here a while! And we had linen curtains--"

"Not linen!" protested Anne.

"Very--pretty--little--ruffled--curtains they were," he affirmed
seriously. "Linen, with blue bands, in this bedroom, and red bands
upstairs. And things--things--" he made a vague gesture--"things on the
dressing-tables and bed to match 'em! I remember that on our wedding
day, when I brought Rose home, we had a little maid here, and dinner
was all ready, but no, Rose must run up and down stairs looking at
everything in her little wedding dress--" Suddenly came another pause.
The room was dark now, but for the firelight. Little Jinny was asleep
in her father's arms, Diego blinking manfully. Neither husband nor
wife, whose hands had found each other, cared to break the silence. But
after a while Anne said:

"What WAS her wedding dress?"

Instantly roused, the guest raised bright, pleased eyes.

"The ladies' question, Warriner," said he. "It was silk, my dear, her
first silk gown. Yellowish, or brownish, it was. And she had one of
those little ruffled capes the ladies used to wear. And a little
bonnet--"

"A BONNET!"

"A bonnet she had trimmed herself. I remember watching her, when we
were engaged, making that trimming. You don't see it any more, but that
year all the girls were making it. They made little bunches of grapes
out of dried peas covered with chamois skin--"

"Oh, not really!" ejaculated Anne.

"Indeed, they did. Then they covered their bonnets with them, and with
leaves cut out of the chamois skin. They were charming, too. My wife
wore that bonnet a long time. She trimmed it over and over." He sighed,
but there was a shade of longing as well as pity in his eyes. "We were
young," he said thoughtfully; "I was but twenty-five; we had our hard
times. The babies came pretty fast. Rose wasn't very strong. I worked
too hard, got broken down a little, and expenses went right on, you
know--"

"You bet I know!" Jim said, with his pleasant laugh, and a glance for
Anne.

"Well," said Charles Rideout, looking keenly from one to the other,
"thank God for it, you young people! It never comes back! The days when
you shoulder your troubles cheerfully together,--they come to their
end! And they are"--he shook his head--"they are very wonderful to look
back to! I remember a certain day," he went on reminiscently, "when we
had paid the last of the doctor's bills, and Rose met me down town for
a little celebration. We had had five or six years of pretty hard
sailing then. We bought her new gloves that day, I remember,
and--shoes, I think it was, and I got a hat, and a book I'd been
wanting. We went to a little French restaurant to dinner, with all our
bundles. And that, that, my dear,--" he said, smiling at Anne,--"seemed
to be the turning point. We got into the country next year, picked out
a little house. And then, the rest of it all followed; we had two
maids, a surrey, I was put into the superintendent's place--" a sweep
of the fine hand dismissed the details. "No man and wife, who do what
we did," said he, gravely, "who live modestly, and work hard, and love
each other and their children, can FAIL. That's one of the blessed
things of life."

Jim cleared his throat, but did not speak. Anne was frankly unable to
speak.

"And now I mustn't keep these children out of bed any longer," said the
older man. "This has been a--a lovely afternoon for me. I wish Mrs.
Rideout had been with me." He stood up. "Shall I give you this little
fellow, Mrs. Warriner?"

"We'll put the babies down," said Jim, rising, too, "and then, perhaps,
you'd like to look about the house, Mr. Rideout?"

"But I know how a lady feels about having her house inspected--"
hesitated the caller, with his bright, fatherly look for Anne.

"Oh, please do!" she urged them.

So the gas was lighted, and they all went into the bedroom, where Anne
tucked the children into their cribs. She stayed there while the others
went on their tour of inspection, patting her son's small, warm body in
the darkness, and listening with a smile to the visitor's cheerful
comments in kitchen and hallway, and Jim's answering laugh.

When she came blinking out into the lighted dining-room, the men were
upstairs, and Helma, to Anne's astonishment, was showing in another
caller,--and another Charles Rideout, as Anne's puzzled glance at the
card in her hand, assured her. This was a tall young man, a little
dishevelled, in a big storm coat, and with dark rings about his eyes.

"I beg your pardon, madam," said he, abruptly, "but was my father, Mr.
Charles Rideout, here this afternoon?"

"Why, he's upstairs with my husband now!" Anne said, strangely
disquieted by the young man's manner.

"Thank God!" said the newcomer, briefly. And he wiped his forehead with
his handkerchief, and drew a deep short breath.

"He--I must apologize to you for breaking in upon you this way," said
young Rideout, "but he came out in the car this afternoon, and we
didn't know where he had gone. He made the chauffeur wait at the corner
at the bottom of the hill, and the fool man waited an hour before it
occurred to him to telephone me at the house. I came at once."

"He's been here all that time," Anne said. "He's all right. Your mother
and father used to live here, you know, years ago. In this same house."

"Yes, I know we did. I think I was born here," said Charles Rideout,
Junior. "I had a sort of feeling that he had come here, as soon as
Bates telephoned. Dear old dad! He and mother have told us about this
place a hundred times! They were talking about it for a couple of hours
a few nights ago." He looked about the room as his father had done.
"They were very happy here. There--" he smiled a little bashfully at
Anne--"there never was a pair of lovers like mother and dad!" he said.
Then he cleared his throat. "Did my father tell you--?" he began, and
stopped.

"No," Anne said, troubled. He had told them a great deal, but not--she
felt sure--not this, whatever it was.

"That's why we worried about him," said his son, his honest, distressed
eyes meeting hers. "You see--you see--we're in trouble at the house--my
mother--my mother left us, last night--"

"Dead?" whispered Anne.

"She's been ill a good while," said the young man, "but we
thought--She's been so ill before! A day or two ago the rest of us knew
it, and we wired for my married sister, but we couldn't get dad to
realize it. He never left her, and he's not been eating, and he'd tell
all the doctors what serious sicknesses she'd gotten over before--" And
with a suddenly shaking lip and filling eyes, he turned his back on
Anne, and went to the window.

"Ah!" said Anne, pitifully. And for a full moment there was silence.

Then Charles Rideout, the younger, came back to her, pushing his
handkerchief into his coat pocket; and with a restored self-control.

"Too bad to bother you with our troubles," he said, with a little smile
like his father's. "To us, of course, it seems like the end of the
world, but I am sorry to distress YOU! Dad just doesn't seem to grasp
it, he hasn't been excited, you know, but he doesn't seem to
understand. I don't know that any of us do!" he finished simply.

"Here they are!" Anne said warningly, as the two other men came down
the stairs.

"Hello, Dad!" said young Rideout, easily and cheerfully, "I came to
bring you home!"

"This is MY boy, Mrs. Warriner," said his father; "you see he's turned
the tables, and is looking after me! I'm glad you came, Charley. I've
been telling your good husband, Mrs. Warriner," he said, in a lower
tone, "that we--that I--"

"Yes, I know!" Anne said, with her ready tenderness, and a little gasp
like a child's.

"So you will realize what impulse brought me here to-day," the older
man went on; "I was talking to my wife of this house only a day or two
ago." His voice had become almost inaudible, and the three young people
knew he had forgotten them. "Only a day or two ago," he repeated
musingly. And then, to his son, he added wistfully, "I don't seem to
get it through my head, my boy. For a while to-day, I forgot--I forgot.
The heart--" he said, with his little old-world touch of dignity--"the
heart does not learn things as quickly as the mind, Mrs. Warriner."

Anne had found something wistful and appealing in his smile before, now
it seemed to her heartbreaking. She nodded, without speaking.

"Dear old Dad," said Charles Rideout, affectionately. "You are tired
out. You've been doing too much, sir, you want sleep and rest."

"Surely--surely," said his father, a little heavily. Father and son
shook hands with Jim and Anne, and the older man said gravely, "God
bless you both!" as he and his son went down the wet path, in the shaft
of light from the hall door. At the gate the boy put his arm tenderly
about his father's shoulders.

"Oh, Anne, Anne," said her husband as she clung to him when the door
was shut, "I couldn't live one day without YOU, my dearest! But
don't--don't cry. Don't let it make you blue,--he HAD his happiness,
you know,--he has his children left!"

Anne tightened her arms about his neck.

"I am crying a little for sorrow, Jim, dearest!" she sobbed, burying
her face in his shoulder. "But I believe it is mostly--mostly for joy
and gratitude, Jim!"




THE TIDE-MARSH


"What are you going to wear to-night in case you CAN go, Mary Bell?"
said Ellen Brewster in her lowest tones.

"Come upstairs and I'll show you," said Mary Bell Barber, glancing, as
they tiptoed out of the room, toward the kitchen's sunny big west
window, where the invalid mother lay in uneasy slumber.

"My new white looks grand," said Ellen on the stairs. "I made it
empire."

Mary Bell said nothing. She opened the door of her spacious bare
bedroom, where tree shadows lay like a pattern on the faded carpet, and
the sinking sun found worn places in the clean white curtains. On the
bed lay a little ruffled pink gown, a petticoat foamy with lace, white
stockings, and white slippers. Mary Bell caught up the gown and held
the shoulders against her own, regarding the older girl meanwhile with
innocent, exultant eyes. Ellen was impressed.

"Well, for pity's sake--if you haven't done wonders with that dress!"
she ejaculated admiringly. "What on earth did you do to it?"

"Well--first I thought it was too far gone," confessed Mary Bell,
laying it down tenderly, "and I wished I hadn't been in such a hurry to
get my new hat. But I ripped it all up and washed it, and I took these
little roses off my year-before-last hat, and got a new pattern,--and I
tell you I WORKED! Wait until you see it on! I just finished pressing
it this afternoon."

"Oh, say--I hope you can go now, after all this!" said Ellen, earnestly.

The other girl's face clouded.

"I'll never get over it if I don't!" she said. "It seems to me I never
wanted to go anywhere so much in all my life! But some one's got to
stay with mama."

"I'd go crazy,--not KNOWING!" said Ellen. "Who are you going to ask?"

"There it is!" said Mary Bell. "Until yesterday I thought, of course,
Gran'ma Scott would come. Then Mary died, and she went up to Dayne. So
I went over and asked Bernie; her baby isn't but three weeks old, you
know, and I thought she might bring it over here. Mama would love to
have it! But late last night Tom came over, and he said Bernie was so
crazy to go, they were going to take the baby along!"

"You poor thing!" said the sympathetic listener.

"I was nearly crazy!" said Mary Bell, crimping a pink ruffle with
careful finger-tips. "I was working on this when he came, and after
he'd gone I crumpled it all up and cried all over it! Well, I guess I
didn't sleep much, and finally, I got up early, and wrote a letter to
Aunt Matty, in Sacramento, and I ran over to Dinwoodie's with it this
morning, and asked Lew if he was going up there to-day. He said he was,
and he took the note for Aunt Mat. I told her about the dance, and that
every one was going, and asked her to come back with Lew. He said he'd
see her first thing!"

"Oh, she will!" said Ellen, confidently. "But, say, Mary Bell, why
don't you walk over to the hotel with me now and ask Johnnie if she'll
stay if your aunt doesn't come? I don't believe she and Walt are going."

"They mightn't want to leave the hotel on account of drummers on the
night train," said Mary Bell, dubiously. "And that's the very time mama
gets most scared. She's always afraid there are boes on the train."

"Boes!" said Ellen, scornfully, "what could a bo do!"

"Well, I WILL go over and talk to Johnnie," said Mary Bell, with sudden
hope. "I'm going to get all ready except my dress, in case Aunt Mat
comes," she confided eagerly, when she had kissed the drowsy mother,
and they were on their way.

"Say, did you know that Jim Carr is going to-night with Carrie
Parmalee?" said Ellen, significantly, as the girls crossed the clean,
bare dooryard, under the blossoming locust trees.

Mary Bell's heart grew cold,--sank. She had hoped, if she DID go, that
some chance might make her escort no other than Jim Carr.

"It'll make me sick if she gets him," said Ellen, frankly. Although
engaged herself, she felt an unabated interest in the love-affairs
about her.

"Is he going to drive her over?" asked Mary Bell, clearing her throat.

"No, thank the Lord for that!" said Ellen, piously. "No. It's all Mrs.
Parmalee's doing, anyway! His horse is lame, and I guess she thought it
was a good chance! He'll drive over there with Gus and mama and papa
and Sadie and Mar'gret; and I guess he'll get enough of 'em, too!"

Mary Bell breathed again. He hadn't asked Carrie, anyway. And if she,
Mary Bell, really went to the dance, and the pink frock looked well,
and Jim Carr saw all the other boys crowding about her for dances--

The rosy dream brought them to the steps of the American Palace Hotel,
for Deaneville was only a village, and a brisk walker might have
circled it in twenty minutes. The hideous brown hotel, with its long
porches, was the largest building in the place, except for hay barns,
and fruit storehouses. Three or four saloons, a "social hall," the
"general store," and the smithy, formed the main street, and diverging
from it scattered the wide shady lanes that led to old homesteads and
orchards.

"Johnnie," Walt Larabee's little black-eyed manager and wife, and the
most beloved of Deaneville matrons, was in the bare, odorous hallway.
She was clad in faded blue denim overalls, and a floating transparent
kimono of some cheap stuff. Her coal-black hair was rigidly puffed and
pinned, and ornamented with two coquettish red roses, and her thin
cheeks were rouged.

"Well, say--don't you girls think you're the whole thing!" said the
lady, blithely. "Not for a minute! Walt and me are going to this dance,
too!"

She waved toward them one of the slippers she was cleaning.

"Walt said somethin' about it yes'day," continued Mrs. Larabee, with
relish, "but I said no; no twelve-mile drive for me, with a young baby!
But some folks we know came down on the morning train--you girls have
heard me speak of Ed and Lizzie Purdy?"

"Oh, yes!" said Mary Bell, sick with one more disappointment.

"Well," pursued Johnnie, "they had dinner here, and come t' talk it
over, Lizzie was wild to go, and Ed got Walt all worked up, and nothing
would do but we must get out our old carryall, and take their Thelma
and my Maxine along! Well, LAUGH--we were like a lot of kids! I'm crazy
to dance just once in Pitcher's barn. We're going up early, and have
our supper up there."

"We're going to do that, too," said Ellen, with pleasant anticipation.
"Ma and I always help set tables, and so on! It's lots of fun!"

Mary Bell's face grew sober as she listened. It WOULD be fun to be one
of the gay party in the big barn, in the twilight, and to have her
share of the unpacking and arranging, and the excitement of arriving
wagons and groups. The great supper of cold chicken and boiled eggs and
fruit and pickles, the fifty varieties of cake, would be spread
downstairs; and upstairs the musicians would be tuning their
instruments as early as seven o'clock, and the eager boys and girls
trying their steps, and changing cards. And then there would be
feasting and laughing and talking, and, above all, dancing until dawn!

"Beg pardon, Johnnie?" she stammered.

"Well, looks like some one round here is in love, or something!" said
Johnnie, freshly. "I never had it that bad, did you, Ellen? Ellen's
been telling me how you're fixed, Mary Bell," she went on with deep
concern, "and I was suggestin' that you run over to the general store,
and ask Mis' Rowe--or I should say, Mis' Bates," she corrected herself
with a grin, and the girls laughed--"if she won't sleep at your house
tonight. Chess'll tend store. It'll be something fierce if you don't
go, Mary Bell, so you run along and ask the bride!" laughed Johnnie.

"I believe I would," approved Ellen, and the girls accordingly crossed
the grassy, uneven street to the store.

An immense gray-haired woman was in the doorway.

"Well, is it ribbon or stockings, or what?" said she, smiling. "The
place has gone crazy! There ain't going to be a soul here but me
to-night."

Mary Bell was silent. Ellen spoke.

"Chess ain't going, is he?" she asked.

The old woman shook with laughter.

"Chess ain't nothing but a regular kid," she said. "He was dying to go,
but he knew I couldn't, and he never said a word. Finally, my boy Tom
and his wife, and Len and Josie and the children, they all drove by on
their way to Pitcher's; and Len--he's a good deal older'n Chess, you
know--he says to me, 'You'd oughter leave Chess come along with the
rest of us, ma; jest because he's married ain't no reason he's forgot
how to dance!' Well, I burst right out laughing, and I says, 'Why
didn't he say he wanted to go?' and Chess run upstairs for his other
suit, and off they all went!"

There was nothing for it, then, but to wait for Lew Dinwoodie and the
news from Aunt Mat.

Mary Bell walked slowly back through the fragrant lanes, passed now and
then by a surrey loaded with joyous passengers already bound for
Pitcher's barn. She was at her own gate, when a voice calling her
whisked her about as if by magic.

"Hello, Mary Bell!" said Jim Carr, joining her. But she looked so
pretty in her blue cotton dress, with the yellow level of a field of
mustard-tops behind her, and beyond that the windbreak of gold-tipped
eucalyptus trees, that he went on almost confusedly, "You--you look
terribly pretty in that dress! Is that what you're going to wear?"

"This!" laughed Mary Bell. And she raised her dancing eyes, to grow a
little confused in her turn. Nature, obedient to whose law blossoms
were whitening the fruit trees, wheat pricking through the damp earth,
robins mating in the orchards, had laid the first thread of her great
bond upon these two. They smiled silently at each other.

"I'm not even sure I'm going!" said Mary Bell, ruefully.

The sudden look of concern in his face went straight to her heart. Jim
Carr really cared, then, that she couldn't go! Big, clever, kindly Jim
Carr, who was superintendent at the power-house, and a comparative
newcomer in Deaneville, was an important personage.

"Not going!" said Jim, blankly. "Oh, say--why not!"

Mary Bell explained. But Jim was encouraging.

"Why, of course your aunt will come!" he assured her sturdily. "She'll
know what it means to you. You'll go up with the Dickeys, won't you?
I'm going up early, with the Parmalees, but I'll look out for you! I've
got to hunt up my kid brother now; he's got to sleep at Montgomery's
to-night. I don't want him alone at the hotel, if Johnnie isn't there.
If you happen to see him, will you tell him?"

"All right," said Mary Bell. And her spirits were sufficiently braced
by his encouragement to enable her to call cheerfully after him, "See
you later, Jim!"

"See you later!" he shouted back, and Mary Bell went back to the
kitchen with a lightened heart. Aunt Mat wouldn't--COULDN'T--fail her!

She carried a carefully prepared tray in to her mother at five o'clock,
and sat beside her while the invalid slowly finished her milk-toast and
tea, and the cookies and jelly Mary Bell was famous for. The girl
chatted cheerfully.

"You don't feel very badly about the dance, do you, deary?" said Mrs.
Barber, as the gentle young hands settled her comfortably for the night.

"Not a speck!" answered Mary Bell, bravely, as she kissed her.

"Bernie and Johnnie going--married women!" said the old lady, sleepily.
"I never heard such nonsense! Don't you go out of call, will you, dear?"

Mary Bell was eating her own supper, ten minutes later, when the train
whistled, and she ran, breathless, to the road, to meet Lew Dinwoodie.

"What did Aunt Matty say, Lew?" called Mary Bell, peering behind him
into the closed surrey, for a glimpse of the old lady.

The man stared at her with a falling jaw.

"Well, I guess I owe you one for this, Mary Bell!" he stammered. "I'll
eat my shirt if I thought of your note again!"

It was too much. Mary Bell began to dislodge little particles of dried
mud carefully from the wheel, her eyes swimming, her breast rising.

"Right in her part of town, too!" pursued the contrite messenger; "but,
as I say--"

Mary Bell did not hear him. After a while he was gone, and she was
sitting on the steps, hopeless, dispirited, tired. She sombrely watched
the departing surreys and phaetons. "I could have gone with them--or
with them!" she would think, when there was an empty seat.

The Parmalees went by; two carriage loads. Jim Carr was in the phaeton
with Carrie at his side. All the others were in the surrey.

"I'm keeping 'em where I can have an eye on 'em!" Mrs. Parmalee called
out, pointing to the phaeton.

Everybody waved, and Mary Bell waved back. But when they were gone, she
dropped her head on her arms.

Dusk came; the village was very still. A train thundered by, and
Potter's windmill creaked and splashed,--creaked and splashed. A
cow-bell clanked in the lane, and Mary Bell looked up to see the
Dickeys' cow dawdle by, her nose sniffing idly at the clover, her downy
great bag leaving a trail of foam on the fresh grass. From up the road
came the faint approaching rattle of wheels.

Wheels?

The girl looked toward the sound curiously. Who drove so recklessly?
She noticed a bank of low clouds in the east, and felt a puff of cool
air on her cheek.

"It feels like rain!" she said, watching the wagon as it came near.
"That's Henderson's mare, and that's their wooden-legged hired man!
Why, what is it?"

The last words were cried aloud, for the galloping old horse and driver
were at the gate now, and eyes less sharp than Mary Bell's would have
detected something wrong.

"What IS it?" she cried again, at the gate. The man pulled up sharply.

"Say, ain't there a man here, nowhere?" he demanded abruptly. "I've
been banging at every house along the way; ain't there a soul in the
place?"

"Dance!" explained Mary Bell. "The Ladies' Improvement Society in
Pitcher's new barn. Why! what is it? Mrs. Henderson sick?"

"No, ma'am!" said the old fellow, "but things is pretty serious down
there!" He jerked his hand over his shoulder. "There's some little
fellers,--four or five of 'em!--seems they took a boat to-day, to go
ducking, and they're lost in the tide-marsh! My God--an' I never
thought of the dance!" He gave a despairing glance at the quiet street.
"I come here to get twenty men--or thirty--for the search!" he said
heavily. "I don't know what to do, now!"

Mary Bell had turned very white.

"There isn't a soul here, Stumpy!" she said, terrified eyes on his
face. "There isn't a man in town! What CAN we do!--Say!" she cried
suddenly, springing to the seat, "drive me over to Mrs. Rowe's; she's
married to Chess Bates, you know, at the store. Go on, Stumpy! What
boys are they?"

"I know the Turner boys and the Dickey boy is three of 'em," said the
old man, "and Henderson's own boy, Davy--poor leetle feller!--and Buddy
Hopper, and the Adams boy. They had a couple of guns, and they was all
in this boat of Hopper's, poking round the marsh, and it began to look
like rain, and got dark. Well, she was shipping a little water, and
Hopper and Adams wanted to tie her to the edge and walk up over the
marsh, but the other fellers wanted to go on round the point. So Adams
and Hopper left 'em, and come over the marsh, and walked to the point,
but she wasn't there. Well, they waited and hallooed, but bimeby they
got scared, and come flying up to Henderson's, and Henderson and
me--there ain't another man there to-night!--we run down to the marsh,
and yelled, but us two couldn't do nothing! Tide's due at eleven, and
it's going to rain, so I left him, and come in for some men.
Henderson's just about crazy! They lost a boy in that tide-marsh a
while back."

"It's too awful,--it's just murder to let 'em go there!" said Mary
Bell, heart-sick. For no dragon of old ever claimed his prey more
regularly than did the terrible pools and quicksands of the great marsh.

Mrs. Bates was practical. Her old face blanched, but she began to plan
instantly.

"Don't cry, Mary Bell!" said she; "this thing is in God's hands. He can
save the poor little fellers jest as easy with a one-legged man as he
could with a hundred hands. You drive over to the depot, Stumpy, and
tell the operator to plug away at Barville until he gets some one to
take a message to Pitcher's barn. It'll be a good three hours before
they even git this far," she continued doubtfully, as the old man
eagerly rattled away, "and then they've got to get down to Henderson's;
but it may be an all-night search! Now, lemme see who else we can git.
Deefy, over to the saloon, wouldn't be no good. But there's Adams's
Chinee boy, he's a good strong feller; you stop for him, and git
Gran'pa Barry, too; he's home to-night!"

"Look here, Mrs. Bates," said Mary Bell, "shall I go?"

The old woman speculatively measured the girl's superb figure, her
glowing strength, her eager, resolute face. Mary Bell was like a
spirited horse, wild to be given her head.

"You're worth three men," said the storekeeper.

"Got light boots?"

"Yes," said the girl, thrilled and quivering.

"You run git 'em!" said Mrs. Bates, "and git your good lantern. I'll be
gitting another lantern, and some whiskey. Poor little fellers! I hope
to God they're all sneakin' home--afraid of a lickin'!--this very
minute. And Mary Bell, you tell your mother I'll close up, and come and
sit with her!"

It was a sorry search-party, after all, that presently rattled out of
town in the old wagon. On the back seat sat the impassive and
good-natured Chinese boy, and a Swedish cook discovered at the last
moment in the railroad camp and pressed into service. On the front seat
Mary Bell was wedged in between the driver and Grandpa Barry, a thin,
sinewy old man, stupid from sleep. Mary Bell never forgot the silent
drive. The evening was turning chilly, low clouds scudded across the
sky, little gusts of wind, heavy with rain, blew about them. The fall
of the horse's feet on the road and the rattle of harness and wheels
were the only sounds to break the brooding stillness that preceded the
storm. After a while the road ran level with the marshes, and they got
the rank salt breeze full in their faces; and in the last light they
could see the glitter of dark water creeping under the rushes. The
first flying drops of rain fell.

"And right over the ridge," said Mary Bell to herself, "they are
dancing!"

A fire had been built at the edge of the marsh, and three figures ran
out from it as they came up: two boys and a heavy middle-aged man. It
was for Mary Bell to tell Henderson that it would be hours before he
could look for other help than this oddly assorted wagonful. The man's
disappointment was pitiful.

"My God--my God!" he said heavily, as the situation dawned on him, "an'
I counted on fifty! Well, 'tain't your fault, Mary Bell!"

They all climbed out, and faced the trackless darkening stretch of
pools and hummocks, the treacherous, uncertain ground beneath a tangle
of coarse grass. Even with fifty men it would have been an ugly search.

The marsh, like all the marshes thereabout, was intersected at
irregular intervals by decrepit lines of fence-railing, running down
from solid ground to the water's edge, half a mile away. These
divisions were necessary for various reasons. In duck season the
hunters who came up from San Francisco used them both as guides and as
property lines, each club shooting over only a given number of
sections. Between seasons the farmers kept them in repair, as a control
for the cattle that strayed into the marsh in dry weather. The distance
between these shaky barriers was some two or three hundred feet. At
their far extremity, the posts were submerged in the restless black
water of the bay.

Mary Bell caught Henderson's arm as he stood baffled and silent.

"Mr. Henderson!" she said eagerly, "don't you give in! While we're
waiting for the others we can try for the boys along the fences!
There's no danger, that way! We can go way down into the marsh, holding
on,--and keep calling!"

"That's what I say!" shrilled old Barry, fired by her tone.

The Chinese boy had already taken hold of a rail, and was warily
following it across the uneven ground.

"They've BEEN there three hours, now!" groaned Henderson; but even as
he spoke he beckoned to the two little boys. Mary Bell recognized the
two survivors.

"You keep those flames so high, rain or no rain," Henderson charged
them, "that we can see 'em from anywheres!"

A moment later the searchers plunged into the marsh, facing bravely
away from lights and voices and solid earth.

Stumbling and slipping, Mary Bell followed the fence. The rain slapped
her face, and her rubber boots dragged in the shallow water. But she
thought only of five little boys losing hope and courage somewhere in
this confusing waste, and her constant shouting was full of reassurance.

"Nobody would be scared with this fence to hang on to!" she assured
herself, "no matter how fast the tide came in!" She rested a moment on
the rail, glancing back at the distant fire, now only a dull glow, low
against the sky.

Frequently the rail was broken, and dipped treacherously for a few
feet; once it was lacking entirely, and for an awful ten feet she must
bridge the darkness without its help. She stood still, turning her
guttering lantern on waving grasses and sinister pools. "They are all
dancing now!" she said aloud, wonderingly, when she had reached the
opposite rail, with a fast-beating heart. After an endless period of
plunging and shouting, she was at the water's very edge.

There was light enough to see the ruffled, cruel surface of the river,
where its sluggish forces swept into the bay. Idly bumping the grasses
was something that brought Mary Bell's heart into her throat. Then she
cried out in relief, for it was not the thing she feared, but the
little deserted boat, right side up.

"That means they left her!" said Mary Bell, trembling with nervous
terror. She shouted again in the darkness, before turning for the
homeward trip. It seemed very long. Once she thought she must be going
aimlessly back and forth on the same bit of rail, but a moment more
brought her to the missing rail again, and she knew she had been right.
Blown by the wind, struck by the now flying rain, deafened by the
gurgling water and the rising storm, she fought her way back to the
fire again. The others were all there, and with them three cramped and
chilled little boys, crying fright and relief, and clinging to the
nearest adult shoulder. The Chinese boy and Grandpa Barry had found
them, standing on a hummock that was still clear of the rising tide,
and shouting with all their weary strength.

"Oh, thank God!" said Mary Bell, her heart rising with sudden hope.

"We'll get the others, now, please God!" said Henderson, quietly. "We
were working too far over. You said they were all right when you left
them, Lesty?" he said to one of the shivering little lads.

"Ye-es, sir!" chattered Lesty, eagerly, shaking with nervousness. "They
was both all right! Davy wanted to git Billy over to the fence, so if
the tide come up!"--terror swept him again. "Oh, Mr. Henderson, git
'em--git 'em! Don't leave 'em drowned out there!" he sobbed
frantically, clutching the big man with bony, wet little hands.

"I'm going to try, Lesty!"

Henderson turned back to the marsh, and Mary Bell went too.

"Billy who?" said Mary Bell; but her heart told her, before Henderson
said it, that the answer would be, "Jim Carr's kid brother!"

"Are you good for this?" said Henderson, when the four fittest had
reached that part of the marsh where the boys had been found.

She met his look courageously, his lantern showing her wet, brave young
face, crossed by dripping strands of hair.

"Sure!" she said.

"Well, God bless you!" he said; "God--bless--you! You take this fence,
I'll go over to that 'n."

The rushing, noisy darkness again. The horrible wind, the slipping, the
plunging again. Again the slow, slow progress; driven and whipped now
by the thought that at this very instant--or this one--the boys might
be giving out, relaxing hold, abandoning hope, and slipping numb and
unconscious into the rising, chuckling water.

Mary Bell did not think of the dance now. But she thought of rest; of
rest in the warm safety of her own home. She thought of the sunny
dooryard, the delicious security of the big kitchen; of her mother, so
placid and so infinitely dear, on her couch; of the serene comings and
goings of neighbors and friends. How wonderful it all seemed! Lights,
laughter, peace,--just to be back among them again, and to rest!

And she was going away from it all, into the blackness. Her lantern
glimmered,--went out. Mary Bell's cramped fingers let it fall. Her
heart pounded with fear of the inky dark.

She clung to the fence with both arms, panting, resting. And while she
hung there, through rain and wind, across darkness and space, she heard
a voice, a gallant, sturdy little voice, desperately calling,--

"Jim! Ji-i-m!"

Like an electric current, strength surged through Mary Bell.

"O God! You've saved 'em, you've got 'em safe!" she sobbed, plunging
frantically forward. And she shouted, "All right--all right, darling!
Hang on, boys! Just HANG ON! Hal-lo, there! Billy! Davy! Here I am!"

Down in pools, up again, laughing, crying, shouting, Mary Bell reached
them at last, felt the heavenly grasp of hard little hands reaching for
hers in the dark, brushed her face against Billy Carr's wet little
cheek, and flung her arm about Davy Henderson's square shoulders. They
had been shouting and calling for two long hours, not ten feet from the
fence.

Incoherent, laughing and crying, they clung together. Davy was alert
and brave, but the smaller boy was heavy with sleep.

"Gee, it's good you came!" said Davy, simply, over and over.

"You've got your boots on!" she shouted, close to his ear; "they're too
heavy! We've got a long pull back, Davy,--I think we ought to go
stocking feet!"

"Shall we take off our coats, too?" he said sensibly.

They did so, little Billy stumbling as Mary Bell loosened his hands
from the fence. They braced the little fellow as well as they could,
and by shouted encouragement roused him to something like wakefulness.

"Is Jim coming?" he shouted.

Mary Bell assented wildly. "Start, Davy!" she urged. "We'll keep him
between us. Right along the fence! What is it?" For he had stopped.

"The other fellers?" he said pitifully.

She told him that they were safe, safe at the fire, and she could hear
him break down and begin to cry with the first real hope that the worst
was over.

"We're going to get out of this, ain't we?" he said over and over. And
over and over Mary Bell encouraged him.

"Just one more good spurt, Davy! We'll see the fire any minute now!"

In wind and darkness and roaring water, they struggled along. The tide
was coming in fast. It was up to Mary Bell's knees; she was almost
carrying Billy.

"What is it, Davy?" she shouted, as he stopped again.

"Miss Mary Bell, aren't we going toward the river!" he shouted back.

The sickness of utter despair weakened the girl's knees. But for a
moment only. Then she drew the elder boy back, and made him pass her.
Neither one spoke.

"Remember, they may come to meet us!" she would say, when Davy rested
spent and breathless on the rail. The water was pushing about her
waist, and was about his armpits now; to step carelessly into a pool
would be fatal. Billy she was managing to keep above water by letting
him step along the middle rail, when there was a middle rail. They made
long rests, clinging close together.

"They ain't ever coming!" sobbed Davy, hopelessly. "I can't go no
farther!"

Mary Bell managed, by leaning forward, to give him a wet slap, full in
the face. The blow roused the little fellow, and he bravely stumbled
ahead again.

"That's a darling, Davy!" she shouted. A second later something
floating struck her elbow; a boy's rubber boot. It was perhaps the most
dreadful moment of the long fight, when she realized that they were
only where they had started from.

Later she heard herself urging Davy to take just ten steps more,--just
another ten. "Just think, five minutes more and we're safe, Davy!" some
one said. Later, she heard her own voice saying, "Well, if you can't,
then hang on the fence! DON'T let go the fence!" Then there was
silence. Long after, Mary Bell began to cry, and said softly, "God,
God, you know I could do this if I weren't carrying Billy." After that
it was all a troubled dream.

She dreamed that Davy suddenly said, "I can see the fire!" and that, as
she did not stir, he cried it again, this time not so near. She dreamed
that the sound of splashing boots and shouting came down across the
dark water, and that lights smote her eyelids with sharp pain. An
overwhelming dread of effort swept over her. She did not want to move
her aching body, to raise her heavy head. Somebody's arm braced her
shoulders; she toppled against it.

She dreamed that Jim Carr's voice said, "Take the kid, Sing! He's all
right!" and that Jim Carr lifted her up, and shouted out, "She's almost
gone!"

Then some one was carrying her across rough ground, across smooth
ground, to where there was a fire, and blankets, and
voices--voices--voices.

"It makes me choke!" That was Mary Bell Barber, whispering to Jim Carr.
But she could not open her eyes.

"But drink it, dearest! Swallow it!" he pleaded.

"You were too late, Jim, we couldn't hold on!" she whispered pitifully.
And then, as the warmth and the stimulant had their effect, she did
open her eyes; and the fire, the ring of faces, the black sky, and the
moon breaking through, all slipped into place.

"Did you come for us, Jim?" she murmured, too tired to wonder why the
big fellow should cry as he put his face against hers.

"I came for you, dear! I came back to sit with you on the steps. I
didn't want to dance without my girl, and that's why I'm here. My brave
little girl!"

Mary Bell leaned against his shoulder contentedly.

"That's right; you rest!" said Jim. "We're all going home now, and
we'll have you tucked away in bed in no time. Mrs. Bates is all ready
for you!"

"Jim," whispered Mary Bell.

"Darling?"--he put his mouth close to the white lips.

"Jim, will you remind Aunty Bates to hang up my party dress real
carefully? In all the fuss some one's sure to muss it!" said Mary Bell.




WHAT HAPPENED TO ALANNA


A capped and aproned maid, with a martyred expression, had twice
sounded the dinner-bell in the stately halls of Costello, before any
member of the family saw fit to respond to it.

Then they all came at once, with a sudden pounding of young feet on the
stairs, an uproar of young voices, and much banging of doors. Jim and
Danny, twins of fourteen, to whom their mother was wont proudly to
allude as "the top o' the line," violently left their own sanctum on
the fourth floor, and coasted down such banisters as lay between that
and the dining-room. Teresa, an angel-faced twelve-year-old in a blue
frock, shut 'The Wide, Wide World' with a sigh, and climbed down from
the window-seat in the hall.

Teresa's pious mother, in moments of exultation, loved to compare and
commend her offspring to such of the saints and martyrs as their
youthful virtues suggested. And Teresa at twelve had, as it were,
graduated from the little saints, Agnes and Rose and Cecilia, and was
now compared, in her mother's secret heart, to the gracious Queen of
all the Saints. "As she was when a little girl," Mrs. Costello would
add, to herself, to excuse any undue boldness in the thought.

And indeed, Teresa, as she was to-night, her blue eyes still clouded
with Ellen Montgomery's sorrows, her curls tumbled about her hot
cheeks, would have made a pretty foil in a picture of old Saint Anne.

But this story is about Alanna of the black eyes, the eight years, the
large irregular mouth, the large irregular freckles.

Alanna was outrunning lazy little Leo--her senior, but not her match at
anything--on their way to the dining-room. She was rendering desperate
the two smaller boys, Frank X., Jr., and John Henry Newman Costello,
who staggered hopelessly in her wake. They were all hungry, clean, and
good-natured, and Alanna's voice led the other voices, even as her
feet, in twinkling patent leather, led their feet.

Following the children came their mother, fastening the rich silk and
lace at her wrists as she came. Her handsome kindly face and her big
shapely hands were still moist and glowing from soap and warm water,
and the shining rings of black hair at her temples were moist, too.

"This is all my doin', Dad," said she, comfortably, as she and her
flock entered the dining-room. "Put the soup on, Alma. I'm the one that
was goin' to be prompt at dinner, too!" she added, with a
superintending glance for all the children, as she tied on little
John's napkin.

F.X. Costello, Senior, undertaker by profession, and mayor by an
immense majority, was already at the head of the table.

"Late, eh, Mommie?" said he, good-naturedly. He threw his newspaper on
the floor, cast a householder's critical glance at the lights and the
fire, and pushed his neatly placed knives and forks to right and left
carelessly with both his fat hands.

The room was brilliantly lighted and warm. A great fire roared in the
old-fashioned black marble grate, and electric lights blazed
everywhere. Everything in the room, and in the house, was costly,
comfortable, incongruous, and hideous. The Costellos were very rich,
and had been very poor; and certain people were fond of telling of the
queer, ridiculous things they did, in trying to spend their money. But
they were very happy, and thought their immense, ugly house was the
finest in the city, or in the world.

"Well, an' what's the news on the Rialter?" said the head of the house
now, busy with his soup.

"You'll have the laugh on me, Dad," his wife assured him, placidly.
"After all my sayin' that nothing'd take me to Father Crowley's
meetin'!"

"Oh, that was it?" said the mayor. "What's he goin' to have,--a
concert?"

"--AND a fair too!" supplemented Mrs. Costello. There was an interval
devoted on her part to various bibs and trays, and a low aside to the
waitress. Then she went on: "As you know, I went, meanin' to beg off.
On account of baby bein' so little, and Leo's cough, and the paperers
bein' upstairs,--and all! I thought I'd just make a donation, and let
it go at that. But the ladies all kind of hung back--there was very few
there--and I got talkin'--"

"Well,'tis but our dooty, after all," said the mayor, nodding approval.

"That's all, Frank. Well! So finally Mrs. Kiljohn took the coffee, and
the Lemmon girls took the grab-bag. The Guild will look out for the
concert, and I took one fancy-work booth, and of course the Children of
Mary'll have the other, just like they always do."

"Oh, was Grace there?" Teresa was eager to know.

"Grace was, darlin'."

"And we're to have the fancy-work! You'll help us, won't you, mother?
Goody--I'm in that!" exulted Teresa.

"I'm in that, too!" echoed Alanna, quickly.

"A lot you are, you baby!" said Leo, unkindly.

"You're not a Child of Mary, Alanna," Teresa said promptly and uneasily.

"Well--WELL--I can help!" protested Alanna, putting up her lip. Can't
I, mother? "CAN'T _I_, mother?"

"You can help ME, dovey," said her mother, absently. "I'm not goin' to
work as I did for Saint Patrick's Bazaar, Dad, and I said so! Mrs.
O'Connell and Mrs. King said they'd do all the work, if I'd just be the
nominal head. Mary Murray will do us some pillers--leather--with
Gibsons and Indians on them. And I'll have Lizzie Bayne up here for a
month, makin' me aprons and little Jappy wrappers, and so on."

She paused over the cutlets and the chicken pie, which she had been
helping with an amazing attention to personal preference. The young
Costellos chafed at the delay, but their mother's fine eyes saw them
not.

"Kelley & Moffat ought to let me have materials at half price," she
reflected aloud. "My bill's two or three hundred a month!"

"You always say that you're not going to do a thing, and then get in
and make more than any other booth!" said Dan, proudly.

"Oh, not this year, I won't," his mother assured him. But in her heart
she knew she would.

"Aren't you glad it's fancy-work?" said Teresa. "It doesn't get all
sloppy and mussy like ice-cream, does it, mother?"

"Gee, don't you love fairs!" burst out Leo, rapturously.

"Sliding up and down the floor before the dance begins, Dan, to work in
the wax?" suggested Jimmy, in pleasant anticipation. "We go every day
and every night, don't we, mother?"

"Ask your father," said Mrs. Costello, discreetly.

But the Mayor's attention just then was taken by Alanna, who had left
her chair to go and whisper in his ear.

"Why, here's Alanna's heart broken!" said he, cheerfully, encircling
her little figure with a big arm.

Alanna shrank back suddenly against him, and put her wet cheek on his
shoulder.

"Now, whatever is it, darlin'?" wondered her mother, sympathetically,
but without concern. "You've not got a pain, have you, dear?"

"She wants to help the Children of Mary!" said her father, tenderly.
"She wants to do as much as Tessie does!"

"Oh, but, Dad, she CAN'T!" fretted Teresa. "She's not a Child of Mary!
She oughtn't to want to tag that way. Now all the other girls' sisters
will tag!"

"They haven't got sisters!" said Alanna, red-cheeked of a sudden.

"Why, Mary Alanna Costello, they have too! Jean has, and Stella has,
and Grace has her little cousins!" protested Teresa, triumphantly.

"Never mind, baby," said Mrs. Costello, hurriedly. "Mother'll find you
something to do. There now! How'd you like to have a raffle book on
something,--a chair or a piller? And you could get all the names
yourself, and keep the money in a little bag--"

"Oh, my! I wish I could!" said Jim, artfully. "Think of the last night,
when the drawing comes! You'll have the fun of looking up the winning
number in your book, and calling it out, in the hall."

"Would I, Dad?" said Alanna, softly, but with dawning interest.

"And then, from the pulpit, when the returns are all in," contributed
Dan, warmly, "Father Crowley will read out your name,--With Mrs. Frank
Costello's booth--raffle of sofa cushion, by Miss Alanna Costello,
twenty-six dollars and thirty-five cents!"

"Oo--would he, Dad?" said Alanna, won to smiles and dimples by this
charming prospect.

"Of course he would!" said her father. "Now go back to your seat,
Machree, and eat your dinner. When Mommer takes you and Tess to the
matinee to-morrow, ask her to bring you in to me first, and you and
I'll step over to Paul's, and pick out a table or a couch, or
something. Eh, Mommie?"

"And what do you say?" said that lady to Alanna, as the radiant little
girl went back to her chair.

Whereupon Alanna breathed a bashful "Thank you, Dad," into the ruffled
yoke of her frock, and the matter was settled.

The next day she trotted beside her father to Paul's big furniture
store, and after long hesitation selected a little desk of shining
brass and dull oak.

"Now," said her father, when they were back in his office, and Teresa
and Mrs. Costello were eager for the matinee, "here's your book of
numbers, Alanna. And here, I'll tie a pencil and a string to it. Don't
lose it. I've given you two hundred numbers at a quarter each, and mind
the minute any one pays for one, you put their name down on the same
line!"

"Oo,--oo!" said Alanna in pride. "Two hundred! That's lots of money,
isn't it, Dad? That's eleven or fourteen dollars, isn't it, Dad?"

"That's fifty dollars, goose!" said her father making a dot with the
pencil on the tip of her upturned little nose.

"Oo!" said Teresa, awed. Hatted, furred, and muffed, she leaned on her
father's shoulder.

"Oo--Dad!" whispered Alanna, with scarlet cheeks.

"So NOW!" said her mother, with a little nod of encouragement and
warning. "Put it right in your muff, lovey. Don't lose it. Dan or Jim
will help you count your money, and keep things straight."

"And to begin with, we'll all take a chance!" said the mayor, bringing
his fat palm, full of silver, up from his pocket. "How old are you,
Mommie?"

"I'm thirty-seven,--all but, as well you know, Frank!" said his wife,
promptly.

"Thirty-six AND thirty-seven for you, then!" He wrote her name opposite
both numbers. "And here's the mayor on the same page,--forty-four! And
twelve for Tessie, and eight for this highbinder on my knee, here! And
now we'll have one for little Gertie!"

Gertrude Costello was not yet three months old, her mother said.

"Well, she can have number one, anyway!" said the mayor. "You make a
rejooced rate for one family, I understand, Miss Costello?"

"I DON'T!" chuckled Alanna, locking her thin little arms about his
neck, and digging her chin into his eye. So he gave her full price, and
she went off with her mother in a state of great content, between rows
and rows of coffins, and cases of plumes, and handles and rosettes, and
designs for monuments.

"Mrs. Church will want some chances, won't she, mother?" she said
suddenly.

"Let Mrs. Church alone, darlin'," advised Mrs. Costello. "She's not a
Catholic, and there's plenty to take chances without her!"

Alanna reluctantly assented; but she need not have worried. Mrs. Church
voluntarily took many chances, and became very enthusiastic about the
desk.

She was a pretty, clever young woman, of whom all the Costellos were
very fond. She lived with a very young husband, and a very new baby, in
a tiny cottage near the big Irish family, and pleased Mrs. Costello by
asking her advice on all domestic matters and taking it. She made the
Costello children welcome at all hours in her tiny, shining kitchen, or
sunny little dining-room. She made them candy and told them stories.
She was a minister's daughter, and wise in many delightful, girlish,
friendly ways.

And in return Mrs. Costello did her many a kindly act, and sent her
almost daily presents in the most natural manner imaginable.

But Mrs. Church made Alanna very unhappy about the raffled desk. It so
chanced that it matched exactly the other furniture in Mrs. Church's
rather bare little drawing-room, and this made her eager to win it.
Alanna, at eight, long familiar with raffles and their ways, realized
what a very small chance Mrs. Church stood of getting the desk. It
distressed her very much to notice that lady's growing certainty of
success.

She took chance after chance. And with every chance she warned Alanna
of the dreadful results of her not winning, and Alanna, with a worried
line between her eyes, protested her helplessness afresh.

"She WILL do it, Dad!" the little girl confided to him one evening,
when she and her book and her pencil were on his knee. "And it WORRIES
me so."

"Oh, I hope she wins it," said Teresa, ardently. "She's not a Catholic,
but we're praying for her. And you know people who aren't Catholics,
Dad, are apt to think that our fairs are pretty--pretty MONEY-MAKING,
you know!"

"And if only she could point to that desk," said Alanna, "and say that
she won it at a Catholic fair."

"But she won't," said Teresa, suddenly cold.

"I'm PRAYING she will," said Alanna, suddenly.

"Oh, I don't think you ought, do you, Dad?" said Teresa, gravely. "Do
you think she ought, Mommie? That's just like her pouring her holy
water over the kitten. You oughtn't to do those things."

"I ought to," said Alanna, in a whisper that reached only her father's
ear.

"You suit me, whatever you do," said Mayor Costello; "and Mrs. Church
can take her chances with the rest of us."

Mrs. Church seemed to be quite willing to do so. When at last the great
day of the fair came, she was one of the first to reach the hall, in
the morning, to ask Mrs. Costello how she might be of use.

"Now wait a minute, then!" said Mrs. Costello, cordially. She
straightened up, as she spoke, from an inspection of a box of
fancy-work. "We could only get into the hall this hour gone, my dear,
and 'twas a sight, after the Native Sons' Banquet last night. It'll be
a miracle if we get things in order for to-night. Father Crowley said
he'd have three carpenters here this morning at nine, without fail; but
not one's come yet. That's the way!"

"Oh, we'll fix things," said Mrs. Church, shaking out a dainty little
apron.

Alanna came briskly up, and beamed at her. The little girl was driving
about on all sorts of errands for her mother, and had come in to report.

"Mother, I went home," she said, in a breathless rush, "and told Alma
four extra were coming to lunch, and here are your big scissors, and I
told the boys you wanted them to go out to Uncle Dan's for greens, they
took the buckboard, and I went to Keyser's for the cheese-cloth, and he
had only eighteen yards of pink, but he thinks Kelley's have more, and
there are the tacks, and they don't keep spool-wire, and the
electrician will be here in ten minutes."

"Alanna, you're the pride of me life," said her mother, kissing her.
"That's all now, dearie. Sit down and rest."

"Oh, but I'd rather go round and see things," said Alanna, and off she
went.

The immense hall was filled with the noise of voices, hammers, and
laughter. Groups of distracted women were forming and dissolving
everywhere around chaotic masses of boards and bunting. Whenever a
carpenter started for the door, or entered it, he was waylaid, bribed,
and bullied by the frantic superintendents of the various booths.
Messengers came and went, staggering under masses of evergreen,
carrying screens, rope, suit-cases, baskets, boxes, Japanese lanterns,
freezers, rugs, ladders, and tables.

Alanna found the stage fascinating. Lunch and dinner were to be served
there, for the five days of the fair, and it had been set with many
chairs and tables, fenced with ferns and bamboo. Alanna was charmed to
arrange knives and forks, to unpack oily hams and sticky cakes, and
great bowls of salad, and to store them neatly away in a green room.

The grand piano had been moved down to the floor. Now and then an
audacious boy or two banged on it for the few moments that it took his
mother's voice or hands to reach him. Little girls gently played The
Carnival of Venice or Echoes of the Ball, with their scared eyes alert
for reproof. And once two of the "big" Sodality girls came up, assured
and laughing and dusty, and boldly performed one of their convent
duets. Some of the tired women in the booths straightened up and
clapped, and called "encore!"

Teresa was not one of these girls. Her instrument was the violin;
moreover, she was busy and absorbed at the Children of Mary's booth,
which by four o'clock began to blossom all over its white-draped
pillars and tables with ribbons and embroidery and tissue paper, and
cushions and aprons and collars, and all sorts of perfumed prettiness.

The two priests were constantly in evidence, their cassocks and hands
showing unaccustomed dust.

And over all the confusion, Mrs. Costello shone supreme. Her brisk, big
figure, with skirts turned back, and a blue apron still further
protecting them, was everywhere at once; laughter and encouragement
marked her path. She wore a paper of pins on the breast of her silk
dress, she had a tack hammer thrust in her belt. In her apron pockets
were string, and wire, and tacks. A big pair of scissors hung at her
side, and a pencil was thrust through her smooth black hair. She
advised and consulted and directed; even with the priests it was to be
observed that her mild, "Well, Father, it seems to me," always won the
day. She led the electricians a life of it; she became the terror of
the carpenters' lives.

Where was the young lady that played the violin going to stay? Send her
up to Mrs. Costello's.--Heavens! We were short a tablecloth! Oh, but
Mrs. Costello had just sent Dan home for one.--How on earth could the
Male Quartette from Tower Town find its way to the hall? Mrs. Costello
had promised to tell Mr. C. to send a carriage for them.

She came up to the Children of Mary's booth about five o'clock.

"Well, if you girls ain't the wonders!" she said to the tired little
Sodalists, in a tone of unbounded admiration and surprise. "You make me
ashamed of me own booth. This is beautiful."

"Oh, do you think so, mother?" said Teresa, wistfully, clinging to her
mother's arm.

"I think it's grand!" said Mrs. Costello, with conviction. There was a
delighted laugh. "I'm going to bring all the ladies up to see it."

"Oh, I'm so glad!" said all the girls together, reviving visibly.

"An' the pretty things you got!" went on the cheering matron. "You'll
clear eight hundred if you'll clear a cent. And now put me down for a
chance or two; don't be scared, Mary Riordan; four or five! I'm goin'
to bring Mr. Costeller over here to-night, and don't you let him off
too easy."

Every one laughed joyously.

"Did you hear of Alanna's luck?" said Mrs. Costello. "When the Bishop
got here he took her all around the hall with him, and between this one
and that, every last one of her chances is gone. She couldn't keep her
feet on the floor for joy. The lucky girl! They're waitin' for you,
Tess, darlin', with the buckboard. Go home and lay down awhile before
dinner."

"Aren't you lucky!" said Teresa, as she climbed a few minutes later
into the back seat with Jim, and Dan pulled out the whip.

Alanna, swinging her legs, gave a joyful assent. She was too happy to
talk, but the other three had much to say.

"Mother thinks we'll make eight hundred dollars," said Teresa.

"GEE!" said the twins together, and Dan added, "If only Mrs. Church
wins that desk now."

"Who's going to do the drawing of numbers?" Jimmy wondered.

"Bishop," said Dan, "and he'll call down from the platform, 'Number
twenty-six wins the desk.' And then Alanna'll look in her book, and
pipe up and say, 'Daniel Ignatius Costello, the handsomest fellow in
the parish, wins the desk.'"

"Twenty-six is Harry Plummer," said Alanna, seriously, looking up from
her chance book, at which they all laughed.

"But take care of that book," warned Teresa, as she climbed down. "Oh,
I will!" responded Alanna, fervently.

And through the next four happy days she did, and took the precaution
of tying it by a stout cord to her arm.

Then on Saturday, the last afternoon, quite late, when her mother had
suggested that she go home with Leo and Jack and Frank and Gertrude and
the nurses, Alanna felt the cord hanging loose against her hand, and
looking down, saw that the book was gone.

She was holding out her arms for her coat when this took place, and she
went cold all over. But she did not move, and Minnie buttoned her in
snugly, and tied the ribbons of her hat with cold, hard knuckles,
without suspecting anything.

Then Alanna disappeared and Mrs. Costello sent the maids and babies on
without her. It was getting dark and cold for the small Costellos.

But the hour was darker and colder for Alanna. She searched and she
hoped and she prayed in vain. She stood up, after a long
hands-and-knees expedition under the tables where she had been earlier,
and pressed her right hand over her eyes, and said aloud in her misery,
"Oh, I CAN'T have lost it! I CAN'T have. Oh, don't let me have lost it!"

She went here and there as if propelled by some mechanical force, a
wretched, restless little figure. And when the dreadful moment came
when she must give up searching, she crept in beside her mother in the
carriage, and longed only for some honorable death.

When they all went back at eight o'clock, she recommenced her search
feverishly, with that cruel alternation of hope and despair and
weariness that every one knows. The crowds, the lights, the music, the
laughter, and the noise, and the pervading odor of pop-corn were not
real, when a shabby, brown little book was her whole world, and she
could not find it.

"The drawing will begin," said Alanna, "and the Bishop will call out
the number! And what'll I say? Every one will look at me; and HOW can I
say I've lost it! Oh, what a baby they'll call me!"

"Father'll pay the money back," she said, in sudden relief. But the
impossibility of that swiftly occurred to her, and she began hunting
again with fresh terror.

"But he can't! How can he? Two hundred names; and I don't know them, or
half of them."

Then she felt the tears coming, and she crept in under some benches,
and cried.

She lay there a long time, listening to the curious hum and buzz above
her. And at last it occurred to her to go to the Bishop, and tell this
old, kind friend the truth.

But she was too late. As she got to her feet, she heard her own name
called from the platform, in the Bishop's voice.

"Where's Alanna Costello? Ask her who has number eighty-three on the
desk. Eighty-three wins the desk! Find little Alanna Costello!"

Alanna had no time for thought. Only one course of action occurred to
her. She cleared her throat.

"Mrs. Will Church has that number, Bishop," she said.

The crowd about her gave way, and the Bishop saw her, rosy,
embarrassed, and breathless.

"Ah, there you are!" said the Bishop. "Who has it?"

"Mrs. Church, your Grace," said Alanna, calmly this time.

"Well, did you EVER," said Mrs. Costello to the Bishop. She had gone up
to claim a mirror she had won, a mirror with a gold frame, and lilacs
and roses painted lavishly on its surface.

"Gee, I bet Alanna was pleased about the desk!" said Dan in the
carriage.

"Mrs. Church nearly cried," Teresa said. "But where'd Alanna go to? I
couldn't find her until just a few minutes ago, and then she was so
queer!"

"It's my opinion she was dead tired," said her mother. "Look how sound
she's asleep! Carry her up, Frank. I'll keep her in bed in the morning."

They kept Alanna in bed for many mornings, for her secret weighed on
her soul, and she failed suddenly in color, strength, and appetite. She
grew weak and nervous, and one afternoon, when the Bishop came to see
her, worked herself into such a frenzy that Mrs. Costello wonderingly
consented to her entreaty that he should not come up.

She would not see Mrs. Church, nor go to see the desk in its new house,
nor speak of the fair in any way. But she did ask her mother who swept
out the hall after the fair.

"I did a good deal meself," said Mrs. Costello, dashing one hope to the
ground. Alanna leaned back in her chair, sick with disappointment.

One afternoon, about a week after the fair, she was brooding over the
fire. The other children were at the matinee, Mrs. Costello was out,
and a violent storm was whirling about the nursery windows.

Presently, Annie, the laundress, put her frowsy head in at the door.
She was a queer, warm-hearted Irish girl; her big arms were still
streaming from the tub, and her apron was wet.

"Ahl alone?" said Annie, with a broad smile.

"Yes; come in, won't you, Annie?" said little Alanna.

"I cahn't. I'm at the toobs," said Annie, coming in, nevertheless. "I
was doin' all the tableclot's and napkins, an' out drops your little
buke!"

"My--what did you say?" said Alanna, very white.

"Your little buke," said Annie. She laid the chance book on the table,
and proceeded to mend the fire.

Alanna sank back in her chair. She twisted her fingers together, and
tried to think of an appropriate prayer.

"Thank you, Annie," she said weakly, when the laundress went out. Then
she sprang for the book. It slipped twice from her cold little fingers
before she could open it.

"Eighty-three!" she said hoarsely. "Sixty--seventy--eighty-three!"

She looked and looked and looked. She shut the book and opened it
again, and looked. She laid it on the table, and walked away from it,
and then came back suddenly, and looked. She laughed over it, and cried
over it, and thought how natural it was, and how wonderful it was, all
in the space of ten blissful minutes.

And then, with returning appetite and color and peace of mind, her eyes
filled with pity for the wretched little girl who had watched this same
sparkling, delightful fire so drearily a few minutes ago.

Her small soul was steeped in gratitude. She crooked her arm and put
her face down on it, and sank to her knees.




THE FRIENDSHIP OF ALANNA


"NEW white dress, is it?" said Mrs. Costello in bland surprise. "Well,
my, my, my! You'll have Dad and me in the poorhouse!"

She had been knitting a pink and white jacket for somebody's baby, but
now she put it into the silk bag on her knee, dropped it on the floor,
and with one generous sweep of her big arms gathered Alanna into her
lap instead. Alanna was delighted to have at last attracted her
mother's whole attention, after some ten minutes of unregarded
whispering in her ear. She settled her thin little person with the
conscious pleasure of a petted cat.

"What do you know about that, Dad?" said Mrs. Costello, absently, as
she stiffened the big bow over Alanna's temple into a more erect
position. "You and Tess could wear your Christmas procession dresses,"
she suggested to the little girl.

Teresa, apparently absorbed until this instant in what the young
Costellos never called anything but the "library book," although that
volume changed character and title week after week, now shut it
abruptly, came around the reading-table to her mother's side, and said
in a voice full of pained reminder:

"Mother! EVERY ONE will have new white dresses and blue sashes for
Superior's feast!"

"I bet you Superior won't!" said Jim, frivolously, from the
picture-puzzle he and Dan were reconstructing. Alanna laughed joyously,
but Teresa looked shocked.

"Mother, ought he say that about Superior?" she asked.

"Jimmy, don't you be pert about the Sisters," said his mother, mildly.
And suddenly the Mayor's paper was lowered, and he was looking keenly
at his son over his glasses.

"What did you say, Jim?" said he. Jim was instantly smitten scarlet and
dumb, but Mrs. Costello hastily explained that it was but a bit of
boy's nonsense, and dismissed it by introducing the subject of the new
white dresses.

"Well, well, well! There's nothing like having two girls in society!"
said the Mayor, genially, winding one of Teresa's curls about his fat
finger. "What's this for, now? Somebody graduating?"

"It's Mother Superior's Golden Jubilee," explained Teresa, "and there
will be a reunion of 'lumnae, and plays by the girls, you know, and
duets by the big girls, and needlework by the Spanish girls. And our
room and Sister Claudia's is giving a new chapel window, a dollar a
girl, and Sister Ligouri's room is giving the organ bench."

"And our room is giving a spear," said Alanna, uncertainly.

"A spear, darlin'?" wondered her mother. "What would you give that to
Superior for?" Jim and Dan looked up expectantly, the Mayor's mouth
twitched. Alanna buried her face in her mother's neck, where she
whispered an explanation.

"Well, of course!" said Mrs. Costello, presently, to the company at
large. Her eye held a warning that her oldest sons did not miss. "As
she says, 'tis a ball all covered with islands and maps, Dad. A globe,
that's the other name for it!"

"Ah, yes, a spear, to be sure!" assented the Mayor, mildly, and Alanna
returned to view.

"But the best of the whole programme is the grandchildren's part,"
volunteered Teresa. "You know, Mother, the girls whose mothers went to
Notre Dame are called the 'grandchildren.' Alanna and I are, there are
twenty-two of us in all. And we are going to have a special march and a
special song, and present Superior with a bouquet!"

"And maybe Teresa's going to present it and say the salutation!"
exulted Alanna.

"No, Marg'ret Hammond will," Teresa corrected her quickly. "Marg'ret's
three months older than me. First they were going to have me, but
Marg'ret's the oldest. And she does it awfully nicely, doesn't she,
Alanna? Sister Celia says it's really the most important thing of the
day. And we all stand round Marg'ret while she does it. And the best of
it all is, it's a surprise for Superior!"

"Not a surprise like Christmas surprises," amended Alanna,
conscientiously. "Superior sort of knows we are doing something,
because she hears the girls practising, and she sees us going upstairs
to rehearse. But she will p'tend to be surprised."

"And it's new dresses all 'round, eh?" said her father.

"Oh, yes, we must!" said Teresa, anxiously.

"Well, I'll see about it," promised Mrs. Costello.

"Don't you want to afford the expense, mother?" Alanna whispered in her
ear. Mrs. Costello was much touched.

"Don't you worry about that, lovey!" said she. The Mayor had presumably
returned to his paper, but his absent eyes were fixed far beyond the
printed sheet he still held tilted carefully to the light.

"Marg'ret Hammond--whose girl is that, then?" he asked presently.

"She's a girl whose mother died," supplied Alanna, cheerfully. "She's
awfully smart. Sister Helen teaches her piano for nothing,--she's a
great friend of mine. She likes me, doesn't she, Tess?"

"She's three years older'n you are, Alanna," said Teresa, briskly, "and
she's in our room! I don't see how you can say she's a friend of YOURS!
Do you, mother?"

"Well," said Alanna, getting red, "she is. She gave me a rag when I cut
me knee, and one day she lifted the cup down for me when Mary Deane
stuck it up on a high nail, so that none of us could get drinks, and
when Sister Rose said, 'Who is talking?' she said Alanna Costello
wasn't 'cause she's sitting here as quiet as a mouse!'"

"All that sounds very kind and friendly to me," said Mrs. Costello,
soothingly.

"I expect that's Doctor Hammond's girl?" said the Mayor.

"No, sir," said Dan. "These are the Hammonds who live over by the
bridge. There's just two kids, Marg'ret and Joe, and their father. Joe
served the eight o'clock Mass with me one week,--you know, Jim, the
week you were sick."

"Sure," said Jim. "Hammond's a nice feller."

Their father scraped his chin with a fat hand.

"I know them," he said ruminatively. Mrs. Costello looked up.

"That's not the Hammond you had trouble with at the shop, Frank?" she
said.

"Well, I'm thinking maybe it is," her husband admitted. "He's had a
good deal of bad luck one way or another, since he lost his wife." He
turned to Teresa. "You be as nice as you can to little Marg'ret
Hammond, Tess," said he.

"I wonder who the wife was?" said Mrs. Costello. "If this little girl
is a 'grandchild,' I ought to know the mother. Ask her, Tess."

Teresa hesitated.

"I don't play with her much, mother. And she's sort of shy," she began.

"I'll ask her," said Alanna, boldly. "I don't care if she IS going on
twelve. She goes up to the chapel every day, and I'll stop her
to-morrow, and ask her! She's always friendly to me."

Mayor Costello had returned to his paper. But a few hours later, when
all the children except Gertrude were settled for the night, and
Gertrude, in a state of milky beatitude, was looking straight into her
mother's face above her with blue eyes heavy with sleep, he enlightened
his wife further concerning the Hammonds.

"He was with me at the shop," said the Mayor, "and I never was sorrier
to let any man go. But it seemed like his wife's death drove him quite
wild. First it was fighting with the other boys, and then drink, and
then complaints here and there and everywhere, and Kelly wouldn't stand
for it. I wish I'd kept him on a bit longer, myself, what with his
having the two children and all. He's got a fine head on him, and a
very good way with people in trouble. Kelly himself was always sending
him to arrange about flowers and carriages and all. Poor lad! And then
came the night he was tipsy, and got locked in the warehouse--"

"I know," said Mrs. Costello, with a pitying shake of the head, as she
gently adjusted the sleeping Gertrude. "Has he had a job since, Frank?"

"He was with a piano house," said her husband, uneasily, as he went
slowly on with his preparations for the night. "Two children, has he?
And a boy on the altar. 'Tis hard that the children have to pay for it."

"Alanna'll find out who the wife was. She never fails me," said Mrs.
Costello, turning from Gertrude's crib with sudden decision in her
voice. "And I'll do something, never fear!"

Alanna did not fail. She came home the next day brimming with the
importance of her fulfilled mission.

"Her mother's name was Harmonica Moore!" announced Alanna, who could be
depended upon for unfailing inaccuracy in the matter of names. Teresa
and the boys burst into joyous laughter, but the information was close
enough for Mrs. Costello.

"Monica Moore!" she exclaimed. "Well, for pity's sake! Of course I knew
her, and a sweet, dear girl she was, too. Stop laughing at Alanna, all
of you, or I'll send you upstairs until Dad gets after you. Very quiet
and shy she was, but the lovely singing voice! There wasn't a tune in
the world she wouldn't lilt to you if you asked her. Well, the poor
child, I wish I'd never lost sight of her." She pondered a moment. "Is
the boy still serving Mass at St. Mary's, Dan?" she said then.

"Sure," said Jim. For Dan was absorbed in the task of restoring
Alanna's ruffled feelings by inserting a lighted match into his mouth.

"Well, that's good," pursued their mother. "You bring him home to
breakfast after Mass any day this week, Jim. And, Tess, you must bring
the little girl in after school. Tell her I knew her dear mother." Mrs.
Costello's eyes, as she returned placidly to the task of labelling jars
upon shining jars of marmalade, shone with their most radiant
expression.

Marg'ret and Joe Hammond were constant visitors in the big Costello
house after that. Their father was away, looking for work, Mrs.
Costello imagined and feared, and they were living with some vague
"lady across the hall." So the Mayor's wife had free rein, and she used
it. When Marg'ret got one of her shapeless, leaky shoes cut in the
Costello barn, she was promptly presented with shining new ones, "the
way I couldn't let you get a cold and die on your father, Marg'ret,
dear!" said Mrs. Costello. The twins' outgrown suits were found to fit
Joe Hammond to perfection, "and a lucky thing I thought of it, Joe,
before I sent them off to my sister's children in Chicago!" observed
the Mayor's wife. The Mayor himself heaped his little guests' plates
with the choicest of everything on the table, when the Hammonds stayed
to dinner. Marg'ret frequently came home between Teresa and Alanna to
lunch, and when Joe breakfasted after Mass with Danny and Jim, Mrs.
Costello packed his lunch with theirs, exulting in the chance. The
children became fast friends, and indeed it would have been hard to
find better playfellows for the young Costellos, their mother often
thought, than the clever, appreciative little Hammonds.

Meantime, the rehearsals for Mother Superior's Golden Jubilee proceeded
steadily, and Marg'ret, Teresa, and Alanna could talk of nothing else.
The delightful irregularity of lessons, the enchanting confusion of
rehearsals, the costumes, programme, and decorations were food for
endless chatter. Alanna, because Marg'ret was so genuinely fond of her,
lived in the seventh heaven of bliss, trotting about with the bigger
girls, joining in their plans, and running their errands. The
"grandchildren" were to have a play, entitled "By Nero's Command," in
which both Teresa and Marg'ret sustained prominent parts, and even
Alanna was allotted one line to speak. It became an ordinary thing, in
the Costello house, to hear the little girl earnestly repeating this
line to herself at quiet moments, "The lions,--oh, the lions!" Teresa
and Marg'ret, in their turn, frequently rehearsed a heroic dialogue
which began with the stately line, uttered by Marg'ret in the person of
a Roman princess: "My slave, why art thou always so happy at thy menial
work?"

One day Mrs. Costello called the three girls to her sewing-room, where
a brisk young woman was smoothing lengths of snowy lawn on the long
table.

"These are your dresses, girls," said the matron. "Let Miss Curry get
the len'ths and neck measures. And look, here's the embroidery I got.
Won't that make up pretty? The waists will be all insertion, pretty
near."

"Me, too?" said Marg'ret Hammond, catching a rapturous breath.

"You, too," answered Mrs. Costello in her most matter-of-fact tone.
"You see, you three will be the very centre of the group, and it'll
look very nice, your all being dressed the same--why, Marg'ret, dear!"
she broke off suddenly. For Marg'ret, standing beside her chair, had
dropped her head on Mrs. Costello's shoulder and was crying.

"I worried so about my dress," said she, shakily, wiping her eyes on
the soft sleeve of Mrs. Costello's shirt-waist; when a great deal of
patting, and much smothering from the arms of Teresa and Alanna had
almost restored her equilibrium, "and Joe worried too! I couldn't write
and bother my father. And only this morning I was thinking that I might
have to write and tell Sister Rose that I couldn't be in the
exhibition, after all!"

"Well, there, now, you silly girl! You see how much good worrying
does," said Mrs. Costello, but her own eyes were wet.

"The worst of it was," said Marg'ret, red-cheeked, but brave, "that I
didn't want any one to think my father wouldn't give it to me. For you
know"--the generous little explanation tugged at Mrs. Costello's
heart--"you know he would if he COULD!"

"Well, of course he would!" assented that lady, giving the loyal little
daughter a kiss before the delightful business of fitting and measuring
began. The new dresses promised to be the prettiest of their kind, and
harmony and happiness reigned in the sewing-room.

But it was only a day later that Teresa and Alanna returned from school
with faces filled with expressions of utter woe. Indignant, protesting,
tearful, they burst forth the instant they reached their mother's
sympathetic presence with the bitter tale of the day's happenings.
Marg'ret Hammond's father had come home again, it appeared, and he was
awfully, awfully cross with Marg'ret and Joe. They weren't to come to
the Costellos' any more, or he'd whip them. And Marg'ret had been
crying, and THEY had been crying, and Sister didn't know what was the
matter, and they couldn't tell her, and the rehearsal was no FUN!

While their feeling was still at its height, Dan and Jimmy came in,
equally roused by their enforced estrangement from Joe Hammond. Mrs.
Costello was almost as much distressed as the children, and excited and
mutinous argument held the Costello dinner-table that night. The Mayor,
his wife noticed, paid very close attention to the conversation, but he
did not allude to it until they were alone.

"So Hammond'll take no favors from me, Mollie?"

"I suppose that's it, Frank. Perhaps he's been nursing a grudge all
these weeks. But it's cruel hard on the children. From his comin' back
this way, I don't doubt he's out of work, and where Marg'ret'll get her
white dress from now, I don't know!"

"Well, if he don't provide it, Tess'll recite the salutation," said the
Mayor, with a great air of philosophy. But a second later he added,
"You couldn't have it finished up, now, and send it to the child on the
chance?"

His wife shook her head despondently, and for several days went about
with a little worried look in her bright eyes, and a constant dread of
the news that Marg'ret Hammond had dropped out of the exhibition.
Marg'ret was sad, the little girls said, and evidently missing them as
they missed her, but up to the very night of the dress rehearsal she
gave no sign of worry on the subject of a white dress.

Mrs. Costello had offered her immense parlors for the last rehearsal of
the chief performers in the plays and tableaux, realizing that even the
most obligingly blind of Mother Superiors could not appear to ignore
the gathering of some fifty girls in their gala dresses in the convent
hall, for this purpose. Alanna and Teresa were gloriously excited over
the prospect, and flitted about the empty rooms on the evening
appointed, buzzing like eager bees.

Presently a few of the nuns arrived, escorting a score of little girls,
and briskly ready for an evening of serious work. Then some of the
older girls, carrying their musical instruments, came in laughing.
Laughter and talk began to make the big house hum, the nuns ruling the
confusion, gathering girls into groups, suppressing the hilarity that
would break out over and over again, and anxious to clear a corner and
begin the actual work. A tall girl, leaning on the piano, scribbled a
crude programme, murmuring to the alert-faced nun beside her as she
wrote:

"Yes, Sister, and then the mandolins and guitars; yes, Sister, and then
Mary Cudahy's recitation; yes, Sister. Is that too near Loretta's song?
All right, Sister, the French play can go in between, and then Loretta.
Yes, Sister."

"Of course Marg'ret'll come, Tess,--or has she come?" said Mrs.
Costello, who was hastily clearing a table in the family sitting-room
upstairs, because it was needed for the stage setting. Teresa, who had
just joined her mother, was breathless.

"Mother! Something awful has happened!"

Mrs. Costello carefully transferred to the book-case the lamp she had
just lifted, dusted her hands together, and turned eyes full of
sympathetic interest upon her oldest daughter,--Teresa's tragedies were
very apt to be of the spirit, and had not the sensational urgency that
alarms from the boys or Alanna commanded.

"What is it then, darlin'?" said she.

"Oh, it's Marg'ret, mother!" Teresa clasped her hands in an ecstasy of
apprehension. "Oh, mother, can't you MAKE her take that white dress?"

Mrs. Costello sat down heavily, her kind eyes full of regret.

"What more can I do, Tess?" Then, with a grave headshake, "She's told
Sister Rose she has to drop out?"

"Oh, no, mother!" Teresa said distressfully. "It's worse than that!
She's here, and she's rehearsing, and what DO you think she's wearing
for an exhibition dress?"

"Well, how would I know, Tess, with you doing nothing but bemoaning and
bewildering me?" asked her mother, with a sort of resigned despair.
"Don't go round and round it, dovey; what is it at all?"

"It's a white dress," said Teresa, desperately, "and of course it's
pretty, and at first I couldn't think where I'd seen it before, and I
don't believe any of the other girls did. But they will! And I don't
know what Sister will say! She's wearing Joe Hammond's surplice, yes,
but she IS, mother!--it's as long as a dress, you know, and with a blue
sash, and all! It's one of the lace ones, that Mrs. Deane gave all the
altar-boys a year ago, don't you remember? Don't you remember she made
almost all of them too small?"

Mrs. Costello sat in stunned silence.

"I never heard the like!" said she, presently. Teresa's fears awakened
anew.

"Oh, will Sister let her wear it, do you think, mother?"

"Well, I don't know, Tess." Mrs. Costello was plainly at a loss.
"Whatever could have made her think of it,--the poor child! I'm afraid
it'll make talk," she added after a moment's troubled silence, "and I
don't know what to do! I wish," finished she, half to herself, "that I
could get hold of her father for about one minute. I'd--"

"What would you do?" demanded Teresa, eagerly, in utter faith.

"Well, I couldn't do anything!" said her mother, with her wholesome
laugh. "Come, Tess," she added briskly, "we'll go down. Don't worry,
dear; we'll find some way out of it for Marg'ret."

She entered the parlors with her usual genial smile a few minutes
later, and the flow of conversation that never failed her.

"Mary, you'd ought always to wear that Greek-lookin' dress," said Mrs.
Costello, en passant. "Sister, if you don't want me in any of the
dances, I'll take meself out of your way! No, indeed, the Mayor won't
be annoyed by anything, girls, so go ahead with your duets, for he's
taken the boys off to the Orpheum an hour ago, the way they couldn't be
at their tricks upsettin' everything!" And presently she laid her hand
on Marg'ret Hammond's shoulder. "Are they workin' you too hard,
Marg'ret?"

Marg'ret's answer was smiling and ready, but Mrs. Costello read more
truthfully the color on the little face, and the distress in the bright
eyes raised to hers, and sighed as she found a big chair and settled
herself contentedly to watch and listen.

Marg'ret was wearing Joe's surplice, there was no doubt of that. But,
Mrs. Costello wondered, how many of the nuns and girls had noticed it?
She looked shrewdly from one group to another, studying the different
faces, and worried herself with the fancy that certain undertones and
quick glances WERE commenting upon the dress. It was a relief when
Marg'ret slipped out of it, and, with the other girls, assumed the
Greek costume she was to wear in the play. The Mayor's wife,
automatically replacing the drawing string in a cream-colored toga
lavishly trimmed with gold paper-braid, welcomed the little respite
from her close watching.

"By Nero's Command" was presently in full swing, and the room echoed to
stately phrases and glorious sentiments, in the high-pitched clear
voices of the small performers. Several minutes of these made all the
more startling a normal tone, Marg'ret Hammond's everyday voice, saying
sharply in a silence:

"Well, then, why don't you SAY it?"

There was an instant hush. And then another voice, that of a girl named
Beatrice Garvey, answered sullenly and loudly:

"I WILL say it, if you want me to!"

The words were followed by a shocked silence. Every one turned to see
the two small girls in the centre of the improvised stage, the other
performers drawing back instinctively. Mrs. Costello caught her breath,
and half rose from her chair. She had heard, as all the girls knew,
that Beatrice did not like Marg'ret, and resented the prominence that
Marg'ret had been given in the play. She guessed, with a quickening
pulse, what Beatrice had said.

"What is the trouble, girls?" said Sister Rose's clear voice severely.

Marg'ret, crimson-cheeked, breathing hard, faced the room defiantly.
She was a gallant and pathetic little figure in her blue draperies. The
other child was plainly frightened at the result of the quarrel.

"Beatrice--?" said the nun, unyieldingly.

"She said I was a thief!" said Marg'ret, chokingly, as Beatrice did not
answer.

There was a general horrified gasp, the nun's own voice when she spoke
again was angry and quick.

"Beatrice, did you say that to Marg'ret?"

"I said--I said--" Beatrice was frightened, but aggrieved too. "I said
I thought it was wrong to wear a surplice, that was made to wear on the
altar, as an exhibition dress, and Marg'ret said, 'Why?' and I said
because I thought it was--something I wouldn't say, and Marg'ret said,
did I mean stealing, and I said, well, yes, I did, and then Marg'ret
said right out, 'Well, if you think I'm a thief, why don't you say so?'"

Nobody stirred. The case had reached the open court, and no little girl
present could have given a verdict to save her little soul.

"But--but--" the nun was bewildered, "but whoever did wear a surplice
for an exhibition dress? I never heard of such a thing!" Something in
the silence was suddenly significant. She turned her gaze from the
room, where it had been seeking intelligence from the other nuns and
the older girls, and looked back at the stage.

Marg'ret Hammond had dropped her proud little head, and her eyes were
hidden by the tangle of soft dark hair. Had Sister Rose needed further
evidence, the shocked faces all about would have supplied it.

"Marg'ret," she said, "were you going to wear Joe's surplice?"

Marg'ret did not answer.

"I'm sure, Sister, I didn't mean--" stammered Beatrice. Her voice died
out uncomfortably.

"Why were you going to do that, Marg'ret?" pursued the nun, quite at a
loss.

Again Marg'ret did not answer.

But Alanna Costello, who had worked her way from a scandalized crowd of
little girls to Marg'ret's side, and who stood now with her small face
one blaze of indignation, and her small person fairly vibrating with
the violence of her breathing, spoke out suddenly. Her brave little
voice rang through the room.

"Well--well--" stammered Alanna, eagerly, "that's not a bad thing to
do! Me and Marg'ret were both going to do it, weren't we, Marg'ret? We
didn't think it would be bad to wear our own brothers' surplices, did
we, Marg'ret? I was going to ask my mother if we couldn't. Joe's is too
little for him, and Leo's would be just right for me, and they're white
and pretty--" She hesitated a second, her loyal little hand clasping
Marg'ret's tight, her eyes ranging the room bravely. She met her
mother's look, and gained fresh impetus from what she saw there. "And
MOTHER wouldn't have minded, would you, mother?" she finished
triumphantly.

Every one wheeled to face Mrs. Costello, whose look, as she rose, was
all indulgent.

"Well, Sister, I don't see why they shouldn't," began her comfortable
voice. The tension over the room snapped at the sound of it like a cut
string. "After all," she pursued, now joining the heart of the group,
"a surplice is a thing you make in the house like any other dress, and
you know how girls feel about the things their brothers wear,
especially if they love them! Why," said Mrs. Costello, with a
delightful smile that embraced the room, "there never were sisters more
devoted than Marg'ret and my Alanna! However"--and now a business-like
tone crept in--"however, Sister, dear, if you or Mother Superior has
the slightest objection in the world, why, that's enough for us all,
isn't it, girls? We'll leave it to you, Sister. You're the one to
judge." In the look the two women exchanged, they reached a perfect
understanding.

"I think it's very lovely," said Sister Rose, calmly, "to think of a
little girl so devoted to her brother as Margaret is. I could ask
Superior, of course, Mary," she added to Mrs. Costello, "but I know she
would feel that whatever you decide is quite right. So that's settled,
isn't it, girls?"

"Yes, Sister," said a dozen relieved voices, the speakers glad to
chorus assent whether the situation in the least concerned them or not.
Teresa and some of the other girls had gathered about Marg'ret, and a
soothing pur of conversation surrounded them. Mrs. Costello lingered
for a few satisfied moments, and then returned to her chair.

"Come now, girls, hurry!" said Sister Rose. "Take your places, and let
this be a lesson to us not to judge too hastily and uncharitably. Where
were we? Oh, yes, we'll go back to where Grace comes in and says to
Teresa, 'Here, even in the Emperor's very palace, dost dare....' Come,
Grace!"

"I knew, if we all prayed about it, your father'd let you!" exulted
Teresa, the following afternoon, when Marg'ret Hammond was about to run
down the wide steps of the Costello house, in the gathering dusk. The
Mayor came into the entrance hall, his coat pocket bulging with papers,
and his silk hat on the back of his head, to find his wife and
daughters bidding the guest good-by. He was enthusiastically imformed
of the happy change of event.

"Father," said Teresa, before fairly freed from his arms and his kiss,
"Marg'ret's father said she could have her white dress, and Marg'ret
came home with us after rehearsal, and we've been having such fun!"

"And Marg'ret's father sent you a nice message, Frank," said his wife,
significantly.

"Well, that's fine. Your father and I had a good talk to-day,
Marg'ret," said the Mayor, cordially. "I had to be down by the bridge,
and I hunted him up. He'll tell you about it. He's going to lend me a
hand at the shop, the way I won't be so busy. 'Tis an awful thing when
a man loses his wife," he added soberly a moment later, as they watched
the little figure run down the darkening street.

"But now we're all good friends again, aren't we, mother?" said
Alanna's buoyant little voice. Her mother tipped her face up and kissed
her.

"You're a good friend,--that I know, Alanna!" said she.




"S IS FOR SHIFTLESS SUSANNA"


"You look glorious. What's the special programme you've laid out for
this morning, Sue?" said Susanna's husband, coming upon her in her rose
garden early on a certain perfect October morning.

"I FEEL glorious too" young Mrs. Fairfax said, returning his kiss and
dropping basket and scissors to bestow all her attention upon his
buttonhole rose. "There is no special occasion for all this
extravagance," she added, giving a complacent downward glance at the
filmy embroideries of her gown, and her small whiteshod feet. "In fact,
to-day breaks before me a long and delicious blank. I don't know when I
have had such a Saturday. I shall write letters this morning--or
perhaps wash my hair--I don't know. And then I'll take Mrs. Elliot for
a drive this afternoon, or take some fruit to the Burkes, maybe, and
stop for tea at the club. And if you decide to dine in town, I'll have
Emma set my dinner out on the porch and commence my new Locke. And if
you can beat that programme for sheer idle bliss," said Susanna, "let
me hear you do it!"

She finished fastening his rose, stepped back to survey it, and raised
to his eyes her own joyous, honest blue eyes, which still were as
candid as a nice child's. Jim Fairfax, keenly alive to the delight of
it, even after six months of marriage, kissed her again.

"You know, Jim," said Susanna, when they were presently sauntering with
their load of roses toward the house and breakfast, "apropos of this
new dress, I believe I put it on just BECAUSE there was no real reason
for it. It is so delightful sometimes to get into dainty petties, and
silk stockings, and a darling new gown, just as a matter of course! All
my life, you know, I've had just one good outfit at a time, and
sometimes less than that, and all the things I wore every day were so
awfully plain--!"

"I know, my darling," Jim said, a little gravely. For he was always
sorry to remember that there had been long years of poverty and
struggle in Susanna's life before the day when he had found her, an
underpaid librarian in a dark old law library, in a dark old street.
Susanna, buoyant, ambitious, and overworked, had never stopped in her
hard daily round long enough to consider herself pitiful, but she could
look back from her rose garden now to the days before she knew Jim, and
join him in a little shudder of reminiscence.

"I don't believe a long, idle day will ever seem anything but a joyous
holiday to me," she said now. "It seems so curious still, not to be
expected anywhere every morning!"

"Well, you may as well get used to it," Jim told her smilingly. But a
few minutes later, when Susanna was busy with the coffee-pot, he looked
up from a letter to say: "Here's a job for you, after all, to-day, Sue!
This--" and he flattened the crackling sheets beside his plate, "this
is from old Thayer."

"Thayer himself?" Susanna echoed appreciatively. For old Whitman
Thayer, in whose hands lay the giving of contracts far larger than any
that had as yet been handled by Jim or his senior partners in the young
firm of Reid, Polk & Fairfax, Architects, was naturally an enormously
important figure in his and Susanna's world. They spoke of Thayer
nearly every night, Jim reporting to his interested wife that Thayer
had "come in," or "hadn't come in," that Thayer had "seemed pleased,"
that Thayer had "jumped" on this, or had "been tickled to death" with
that; and the Fairfax domestic barometer varied accordingly.

"Go ON, Jim," said Susanna, in suspense.

"Why, it seems that his wife--she's awfully sweet and nice," Jim
proceeded, "is coming into town this afternoon, and she wonders if it
would be too much trouble for Mrs. Fairfax to come in and lunch with
her and help her with some shopping."

"Jim, it doesn't say that!" But Susanna's eyes were kindling with joy
at the thought. "Oh, Jim, what a chance! Doesn't that look as if he
really liked you!"

"Liked YOU, you mean," Jim said, giving her the letter. "Now I call
that a very friendly, decent thing for them to do," young Mr. Fairfax
went on musingly. "If you and she like each other, Sue--"

"Oh, don't worry, we will!" Mrs. Fairfax was always sure of her touch
upon a feminine heart.

"Wonder why he didn't think of Mrs. Reid or Mrs. Polk?" said Jim.

"Oh, Jim, they are sort of--stiff, don't you know?" Susanna returned to
her coffee, seasoning Jim's cup carefully before she added, with a look
of naive pleasure that Jim thought very charming: "You know I rather
THOUGHT that Mr. Thayer liked me just that one day I saw him!"

"Well, you'll like her," Jim prophesied. "She's very sweet and gentle,
not very strong. They live right up the line there somewhere. She
rarely comes into town. Old Thayer is devoted to her, and he always
seems--" Jim hesitated. "I don't know," he went on, "I may be all wrong
about this, Sue, but Thayer always seems to be protecting her, don't
you know? I don't imagine he'd want to run her up against society women
like Jane Reid and Mrs. Polk. You're younger and less affected; you're
approachable. I don't know, but it seems to me that way. Anyway," he
finished with supreme satisfaction, "I wouldn't take anything in the
world for this chance! It shows the old man is really in earnest."

"He says she'll be at the office at eleven," said Susanna. "That means
I must get the ten twenty-two."

"Sure. And take a taxi when you get to town. Got money? Got the right
clothes?"

"Hydrangea hat," Susanna decided aloud. "New pongee, and pongee coat
hung in careless elegance over my arm. As the last chime of eleven
rings I will step into your office--"

"I hope to goodness you will!" said Jim, with an anxious look. "You'll
really get there, won't you, Sue? No slips?"

This might have seemed overemphatic to an unprejudiced outsider. But no
one who really knew Susanna would have blamed her young husband for an
utter disbelief in the likelihood of her getting anywhere at any given
time. Susanna's one glaring fault was a cheerful indifference to the
fixed plans of others. Engagements she forgot, ignored, or cancelled at
the last minute; dinner guests, arriving at her lovely home, never
dreamed how often the consternation of utter surprise was hidden under
the hilarious greetings of hostess and host. Dressmakers and dentists
charged Susanna mercilessly for forgotten appointments; but an adoring
circle of friends had formed a sort of silent conspiracy to save her
from herself, and socially she suffered much less than she deserved.

"But some day you'll get an awful jolt; you'll get the lesson of your
life, Sue," Jim used to say, and Susanna always answered meekly:

"Oh, Jim, I know it!"

"My mother used to have a nursery rhyme about me," she told Jim on one
occasion. "It was one of those 'A is for Amiable Annie' things, you
know; 'K is for Kind little Katie, whose weight is one hundred and
eighty'--you've heard them, of course? Well, 'S was for Shiftless
Susanna.' I know the next line was, 'But such was the charm of her
manner'--but I've forgotten the rest. Whether mother made that up for
my especial benefit or not, I don't know."

"Well, you have the charm all right," Jim was obliged to confess, for
Susanna had an undeniable genius for adjustment and placation. Nobody
was angry long at Susanna, perhaps because so many other people were
always ready to step in gladly and fill any gaps in her programme. She
was too popular to be snubbed. And her excuses were always so
reasonable!

"You know I simply lose my mind at the telephone," she would plead. "I
accept anything then--it never occurs to me that we may have
engagements!" Or, "Well, the Jacksons said Thursday," she would
brilliantly elucidate, "and Mrs. Oliver said the twentieth, and it
never OCCURRED to me that it was the same day!"

And she was always willing--this was the maddening part of Susanna!--to
own herself entirely in the wrong, and always ended any conversation on
the subject with a cheerful: "But anyway, I'm improving, you admit
that, don't you, Jim? I'm not nearly as bad as I used to be!"

She said now very seriously: "Jim, darling, you may depend upon me. I
realize what this means, and I am perfectly delighted to have the
chance. At eleven to-day, 'one if by land, and two if by sea,' I'll be
at your office. Trust me!"

"I do, dearest," Jim said. And he went down the drive a little later,
under the blazing glory of the maples with great content in his heart.
Susanna, going about her pretty house briskly, felt so sure of herself
that the day's good work seemed half accomplished already.

She had adjusted the skirt of the pongee suit, and pinned the hydrangea
hat at a fascinating angle when the telephone rang.

Susanna slipped her bare arms into the stiff sleeves of a Mandarin coat
and crossed the hall to the instrument.

"Hello, Susanna!" said the cheerful voice of young Mrs. Harrington, a
neighbor and friend, at the other end of the telephone. "I just rang up
to know if I could come over early and help you out with anything and
whether--"

"Help me out with anything?" Mrs. Fairfax's voice ranged through
delicate shades of surprise to dawning consternation. "Help me out with
what?"

"Why, you told me yourself that this was the day of the bridge-club
lunch at your house!" Mrs. Harrington said, almost indignantly. But
immediately she became mirthful. "Oh, Susanna, Susanna! You haven't
forgotten--oh, you HAVE! Oh, you poor girl, what will you do! Listen, I
could bring a--"

"Oh, my goodness, Ethel--and I've got to go to town!" Susanna's tone
was hushed with a sort of horror. "And those seven women will be here
at half-past twelve! And not ONE thing in the house--"

"Oh, you could get Ludovici as far as the lunch goes, Sue. But the
girls will think it's odd, perhaps. Couldn't you wait and take the one
o'clock?"

"Yes, I'll get Ludovici," Susanna decided hastily. "No, I couldn't do
that. But I'll tell you what I COULD do. If you'll be an angel, Ethel,
and do the honors until I get here, I could lunch early, get through my
business in town, and get the one-fifty train for home--"

"Well, that'll be all right. I'll explain," said the amiable Mrs.
Harrington.

A few minutes later Mrs. Fairfax left the telephone and went down to
the kitchen to explain to Emma and Veronica, the maids, that there
would be a luncheon for eight ladies served by a caterer, in her home,
that day, and that they must simply assist him. She herself must be in
town unfortunately, but Mrs. Harrington had very kindly offered to come
over and be hostess and play the eighth hand of bridge afterward. Emma
and Veronica, perhaps more hardened to these emergencies than are
ordinary maids, rose to the occasion, and Susanna hurried off to her
train satisfied that as far as the actual luncheon was concerned, all
would go well. But what the seven women would think was another story!

"I don't suppose Mrs. Thayer wants to do so very much shopping," said
Susanna to herself, hurrying along. "If I meet her at eleven and we
lunch at one, say, I don't see why I shouldn't get the one-fifty train
home. I'd get here before the girls had fairly started playing bridge,
and explain--somehow one can always explain things so much better in
person--"

"Or suppose we lunched at half-past twelve," her uneasy thoughts ran
on. "That gives us an hour and a half to shop--that ought to be plenty.
But we mustn't lose a minute getting started! Mrs. Thayer will come up
in her motor--that will save us time. We can start right off the
instant I get to Jim's office."

She stopped at the caterer's for a brief but satisfactory interview.
The caterer was an artist, but his enthusiasms this morning were wasted
upon Susanna.

"Yes, yes--cucumber sandwiches by all means," she assented hastily,
"and the ices--just as you like! Plain, I think--or did you say in
cases? I don't care. Only don't fail me, Mr. Ludovici."

Fail her? Mr. Ludovici's lexicon did not know the word. Susanna
breathed more freely as she crossed the sunny village street to the
train.

The station platform was deserted and bare. Susanna, accustomed to a
breathless late arrival, could saunter with delightful leisure to the
ticket-seller's window.

"You've not forgotten the new time-table?" said the agent, pleasantly,
when they had exchanged greetings.

"Oh, does the change begin to-day?" Susanna looked blank.

"October sixteenth, winter schedule," he reminded her buoyantly. "Going
to be lots of engagements missed to-day!"

"But mine is very important and I cannot miss it," said Susanna,
displeased at his levity. "I MUST be in Mr. Fairfax's office at eleven."

"You won't be more than ten or twelve minutes late," said young Mr.
Green, consolingly. "You tell Mr. Fairfax it's up to the N.Y. and E.W."

Susanna smiled perfunctorily, but took her place in the train with a
sinking heart. She would be late, of course, and Jim would be angry, of
course. Late to-day, when every minute counted and the programme
allowed for not an instant's delay! Her eyes on the flying countryside,
she rehearsed her part, found herself eloquently explaining to a
pacified Jim, capturing a gracious Mrs. Thayer, successfully reaching
home again, and explaining to an entirely amiable bridge club.

It could be done, of course, but it meant a pretty full day! Susanna's
mind reverted uneasily to the consideration that she had already
bungled matters. Oh, well, if she was late, she was late, that was all;
and if Jim was furious, why, Jim would simply have to be furious! And
she began her explanations again--

After all, it was but fifteen minutes past eleven when she walked into
her husband's office. But neither Jim nor Mrs. Thayer was there.

"Mr. Fairfax went out not three minutes ago," said the pretty
stenographer in the outer office. Susanna, brought to a full stop,
stared at her blankly.

"Went out!"

"Yes, with Mrs. Thayer to the dentist. He said to say he was afraid you
had missed your train. There's a note."

The note was forthwith produced. Susanna read it frowningly. It was
rather conspicuously headed "Eleven-twelve!"

DEAREST GIRL: Can't wait any longer. Mrs. T. must see her dentist
(Archibald). I'm taking her up. Thayers and we lunch at the Palace at
one-thirty. Wait for me in my office. J. F.

"Oh, what is the matter with everything to-day!" Susanna burst out in
exasperation. "He's wild, of course. When does he ever sign himself 'J.
F.' to me! When did they go?" she asked Miss Perry, briefly, with an
unreasonable wish that she might somehow hold that irreproachable young
woman responsible.

"Just about three minutes ago," said Miss Perry. "He said that if you
had missed your train, you wouldn't be here for more than an hour, and
it was no use waiting."

"You see, it was a changed time-table, and he forgot it just as I did,"
explained Susanna, pleased to find him fallible, even to that extent.

"But HE was on time," fenced Miss Perry, innocently.

"They don't change the business trains," Susanna said coldly. And she
decided that she disliked this girl. She opened a magazine and sat down
by the open window.

The minutes ticked slowly by. The telephone rang, doors opened and
shut, and men came and went through the office. Susanna, opposed in
every fibre of her being to passive waiting, suddenly rose.

"Dr. Archibald is in the First National Bank Building, isn't he?" she
inquired. "I think I'll join Mrs. Thayer up there. There's no use in my
waiting here."

Miss Perry silently verified Dr. Archibald's address in the telephone
book, and to the First National Bank Building Susanna immediately made
her way. It was growing warmer now and the streets seemed noisy and
crowded, but no matter--"If I can only get to them and SEE Jim!"
thought Susanna.

In the pleasant shadiness of Dr. Archibald's office, rising from a
delightful mahogany arm-chair, Susanna presently asked if Mrs. Thayer
could be told that Mrs. Fairfax was there.

"I think Mrs. Thayer is gone," said the attendant pleasantly. "I'm not
sure, but I'll see."

In a few minutes she returned to inform Mrs. Fairfax that Mrs. Thayer
had just come in to have a bridge replaced, and was gone.

"You don't know where?" Susanna's voice was a trifle husky with
repressed emotion. She realized that she was getting a headache.

No, the attendant didn't know where.

So there was nothing for it but to go back to Jim's office, and back
Susanna accordingly went. She walked as fast as she could, conscious of
every separate hot step, and was nervous and headachy when she entered
Miss Perry's presence again.

Mr. Fairfax and Mrs. Thayer had not come in; no, but Miss Perry
reported that Mr. Fairfax had telephoned not ten minutes ago, and
seemed very anxious to get hold of his wife.

"Oh, dear, dear!" lamented Susanna. "And where is he now?"

Miss Perry couldn't say. "I wrote his message down," she said, with
sympathetic amusement at Susanna's crushed dismay. And, referring to
her notes, she repeated it:

"Mr. Fairfax said that Mrs. Thayer had had an appointment to see a sick
friend in a hospital this afternoon. But she has gone right out there
now instead, so that you and she can go shopping after lunch. You are,
please, to meet Mr. Fairfax and the Thayers at the Palace for luncheon
at half-past one; there'll be a table reserved. Mr. Fairfax has a
little business to attend to just now, but if you don't mind waiting in
the office, he thinks it's the coolest place you could be. He wanted to
know if you had the whole afternoon free--"

"Oh, absolutely!" Susanna assented eagerly. This was not the time to
speak or think of the bridge club.

"And that was all," finished Miss Perry, "except he said perhaps you
would like to look at the plans of the orphanage. Mr. Fairfax got them
out to show to Mr. Thayer this afternoon. I can get them for you."

"Oh, thank you! I do want to see them!" said Susanna, gratefully. And
she established herself comfortably by the open window, the orphanage
plans, a stiff roll of blue paper, in her lap, her idle eyes following
the noonday traffic in the street below.

What a shame to have to sit here doing nothing, to-day of all days, for
nearly two hours! Susanna thought. Why, she could have met her luncheon
guests, seen that the meal was at least under way, apologized in
person, and then started for town. As it was, they might be angry, and
no wonder! And these were her neighbors and very good friends, after
all, the women upon whose good feeling half the joy of her country home
and garden depended. It was too bad!

She glanced at the blue-prints, but one of her sudden inspirations
turned the page blank. What time was it? Ten minutes of twelve. She
referred to her new timetable. Ten minutes of--why, she could just
catch the noon train, rush home, meet her guests, explain, and come
back easily on the one o'clock. But would it be wise? Why not?

Her thoughts in a jumble, Susanna hastily gathered her small
possessions together, moved to a decision by the always imperative
argument that in a few minutes it would be too late to decide.

"Heavens! I'm glad I thought of that!" she ejaculated, seating herself
in the train as the noon whistles shrilled all over the city. A moment
later she was a trifle disconcerted to find the orphanage plans still
in her hand.

"Well, this is surely one of my crazy days!" Susanna strapped the stiff
sheets firmly to her handbag. "I must not forget to take those back,"
she told herself. "Jim will ask for them the very first thing."

Her house; when she reached it, seemed quiet, seemed empty. Susanna
crossed the porch, wondering, and encountered the maid.

"Emma! Nobody come?"

"Sure you had the wrong day of it," said Emma, beaming. "Mrs.
Harrington fomed about an hour ago, and she says 'tis NEXT Saturday
thin!"

"What do you mean?" said Susanna, sharply.

"'Tis not to-day they're comin', Mrs. Fairfax--"

"Nonsense!" Susanna said under her breath. She flew to her desk and
snatched up the scribbled card of engagements. "Why, it's no such
thing!" she said indignantly. "Of course it's to-day! October
sixteenth, as plain as print." And with her eyes still on the card she
reached for her desk telephone.

"Ethel," said Susanna, a moment later. "Listen, Ethel, this is Susanna.
Ethel, what made you say the club luncheon wasn't to-day? This is my
day to have the girls.... Certainly.... Why, I don't care what she
said, I have it written down!... Why, I think that's very funny.... I
have it written.... No, you can laugh all you want to, but I know I'm
right.... No, that's nothing. Jim will eat it all up to-morrow; he says
he never gets enough to eat on Sundays.... But I can't understand, and
I don't believe YET that I... Yes, it's written right here; I've got my
eyes on it now! It's the most extraordinary...."

A little vexed at Mrs. Harrington's unbounded amusement, Susanna
terminated the conversation as soon as was decently possible, and went
kitchenward. In her anxiety not to miss her train back to the city, she
refused Teresa's offer of dainty sandwiches, pastries, and tea, and
merely stopped long enough to brush up her hair and to ascertain by
carefully enumerating them out loud that she had her purse, her gloves,
the orphanage plans, and the new time-table.

"This will seem very funny," said poor Susanna, gallantly to herself,
as she took her seat in the train and tried to ignore a really sharp
headache, "when once I see them! If I can only get hold of Jim, and if
the afternoon goes smoothly, I shan't mind anything!"

Only ten minutes late for her luncheon engagement, Susanna entered the
cool depths of the restaurant and, piloted by an impressed head waiter,
looked confidently for her own party. It was very pleasant here, and
the trays of salads and iced things that were borne continually past
her were very inviting.

But still there was no Mrs. Thayer and no Jim. Susanna waited a few
nervous minutes, sat down, got up again, and finally, at two o'clock,
went out into the blazing, unfriendly streets, and walked the five
short squares that lay between the restaurant and her husband's office.
A hot, dusty wind blew steadily against her; the streets were full of
happy girls and men with suit-cases, bound for the country and a day or
two of fresh air and idleness. Miss Perry was putting the cover on her
typewriter as Susanna entered the office, her own suit-case waiting in
a corner. She looked astonished as Susanna came in.

"My goodness, Mrs. Fairfax!" she ejaculated. "We've been trying and
trying to get you by telephone! Mr. Fairfax was so anxious to get hold
of those orphanage plans. Mr. Thayer wanted--"

"I've been following him about all day," said Susanna, with an
undignified, but uncontrollable gulp. She sat down limply. "WHAT
happened to the luncheon plan?" she asked forlornly. "Where is Mr.
Fairfax?"

Miss Perry, perhaps softened by the sight of Susanna's filling eyes and
tired face, became very sympathetic. "Isn't it TOO bad--I know you
have! But you see Mrs. Thayer couldn't see her friend in the hospital
this morning, so she came right down here and got here not ten minutes
after you left. She said she couldn't wait for you, as she had to be
back at the hospital at two, so she would do a little shopping herself
and let the rest wait."

"Well," said Susanna, after a pause in which her very soul rebelled,
"it can't be helped, I suppose! Did Mr. Fairfax go out with her?"

"He was to take her somewhere for a cup of tea and then he was going
home."

"Going home! But I've just come from there!"

"He thought he'd probably catch you there, I think. He was anxious to
get hold of those plans."

"Oh, I could CRY--" Susanna began despairingly. But indeed Miss Perry
needed no assurance of that. "I could cry!" said Susanna again.
"To-day," she expanded, "has been simply one miserable accident after
another! I hope it'll be a lesson to me! Well--" She broke off short,
for Miss Perry, while kind, was human, and was visibly conscious that
she had promised her brother and sister-in-law to be at their house in
East Auburndale, a populous suburb, long before it was time to put the
baby to bed. "I suppose there's nothing for me to do but go home,"
finished Susanna, discontentedly.

"Accidents will happen!" trilled Miss Perry, blithely, hurrying for her
car.

Susanna went thoughtfully home, reflecting soberly upon the events of
the day. If she could but live this episode down, she told herself; but
meet and win Mrs. Thayer somehow in the near future; but bring Jim to
the point of entirely forgetting and forgiving the whole disgraceful
day, she would really reform. She would "keep lists," she would "make
notes," and she would "think twice." In short, she would do all the
things that those who had her good at heart had been advising for the
past ten years.

Of course, if the Thayers were resentful--refused to be
placated--Susanna made a little wry mouth. But they wouldn't be!

Still deep in stimulating thoughts of a complete reformation, Susanna
reached home again, crossed the deep-tiled porch with its potted olives
and gay awnings, entered the big hall now dim with afternoon shadows.
Now for Jim--!

But where was Jim?

"Mr. Fairfax is home, Emma?"

"Oh, there you are, Mrs. Fairfax! And us trying and trying to telefome
you! No ma'am, he's not home. He left on the three-twenty. He'd only
come out in a rush for some papers, and he had to get back to town to
see some one at once. There's a note--"

Susanna sat down. Her head was splitting, she was hungry and exhausted,
and, at the effort she made to keep the tears out of her eyes, a wave
of acute pain swept across her forehead. She opened the note.

If you can find a reliable messenger [said the note, without preamble],
I wish you would get those orphanage plans to me at Thornton's office
before six. I have to meet him there at four. The matter is really
important, or I would not trouble you. I'll dine with Thayer at the
club. J.F.  The pretty hallway and the glaring strip of light beyond
the open garden door swam suddenly before Susanna's eyes. The hand that
held the note trembled.

"I could not be so mean to him!" said Susanna to herself. "But perhaps
he was tired and hot--poor Jim!" And aloud she said with dignity: "I
shall have to take this paper--these plans--in to Mr. Fairfax, Emma.
I'll catch the four-twenty."

"You'll be dead!" said Emma, sympathetically.

"My head aches," Mrs. Fairfax admitted briefly. But when she was
upstairs and alone she found herself suddenly giving way to the long
deferred burst of tears.

After a while she bathed her eyes, brushed her hair, and substituted a
more substantial gown for the pongee. Then she started out once more,
refreshed and more cheerful in spite of herself, and soothed
unconsciously by the quiet close of the lovely autumn afternoon.

Her own gateway was separated by a flight of shallow stone steps from
the road, and Susanna paused there on her way to the train to gather
her skirts safely for the dusty walk. And while she was standing there
she found her gaze suddenly riveted upon a motor-car that, still a
quarter of a mile away, was rapidly descend the slope of the hill, its
two occupants fairly shaken by its violent and rapid approach. The road
here was not wide, and curved on a sharp grade, and Susanna always
found the descent of a large car, like this one, a matter of
half-terrified fascination. But surely with this car there was more
than the ordinary danger, she thought, with a sudden sick thumping at
her heart. Surely here was something all wrong! Surely no sane driver--

"That man is drunk," she said, quite aloud. "He cannot make it! He
can't possibly--ah-h-h!"

Her voice broke on a gasp, and she pressed one hand tight over her
eyes. For with swift and terrible precision the accident had indeed
come to pass. The car skidded, turned, hung for a sickening second on
one wheel, struck the stone of the roadside fence with a horrible
grinding jar and toppled heavily over against the bank.

When Susanna uncovered her eyes again, and before she could move or cry
out in the dumb horror that had taken possession of her, she saw a man
in golfing wear run from the Porters' gate opposite; and another motor,
in which Susanna recognized the figure of a friend and neighbor, Dr.
Whitney, swept up beside the overturned one. When she ran, as she
presently found herself running, to the spot, other men and women had
gathered there, drawn from lawns and porches by this sudden projection
of tragedy into the gayety of their Saturday afternoon.

"Hurt?" gasped Susanna, joining the group.

"The man is--dead, Billy says," said young Mrs. Porter, in lowered
tones, with an agitated clutch of Susanna's arm. "And, poor thing! she
doesn't realize it, and she keeps asking where her chauffeur is and why
he doesn't come to her!"

"Wouldn't you think people would have better sense than to keep a man
like that!" added another neighbor, Dexter Ellis, with a bitterness
born entirely of nervousness. "He was drunk as a lord! Young and I were
just coming out of my side gate--"

Every one talked at once--there was a confusion of excited comment.
Somebody had flung a carriage robe over the silent form of the man as
it lay tumbled in the dust and weeds; Susanna glanced toward it with a
shudder. Somehow she found herself supporting the car's other occupant,
the woman, who was half sitting and half lying on the bank where she
had fallen. The woman had opened her eyes and was looking slowly about
the group; she had pushed away the whiskey the doctor held to her lips,
but she looked sick and seemed in pain.

"I had just put the baby down when I heard Dex shout--" Susanna could
hear Mrs. Ellis saying behind her in low tones. "Oh, it is, it's an
outrage--they should have regarded it years ago," said another voice.
"Merest chance in the world that we took the side gate," Dexter Ellis
was saying, and some man's voice Susanna did not know reiterated over
and over: "Well, I guess he's run his last car, poor fellow; I guess
he's run his last car--"

"You feel better, don't you?" the doctor asked his patient,
encouragingly. "Just open your mouth and swallow this." And Susanna
said gently: "Just try it; you'll feel so much stronger!"

The woman turned upon her a pair of eyes as heavy as a sick animal's,
and moistened her lips. "Arm," she said with difficulty.

"Her arm's broken," said the doctor, in a low tone, "and I think her
leg, too. Kane has gone to wire for the ambulance. We'll get her right
into town."

"You can't take her to town!" Susanna ejaculated, turning so that she
might not be heard by the sufferer. "Take her in to my house."

"The hospital is really the most comfortable place for her, Mrs.
Fairfax," the doctor said guardedly. "I am afraid there is internal
injury. Her mind seems somewhat confused. You can't undertake the
responsibility--"

"Ah, but you can't jolt the poor thing all the way into town--" Susanna
began again. Mrs. Porter, at her shoulder, interrupted her in an
earnest whisper:

"Sue, dear, it's always done. It won't take very long, and nobody
expects you--"

"I know just how Susanna feels," interrupted Mrs. Ellis, "but after
all, you never can tell--we don't know one thing about her--"

"She'll be taken good care of," finished the doctor, soothingly.

"Please--don't let them frighten--my husband--" said the woman herself,
slowly, her distressed eyes moving from one face to another. "If I
could--be moved somewhere before he hears--"

"We won't frighten him," Susanna assured her tenderly. "But will you
tell us your name so we may let him know?"

The injured woman frowned. "I did tell you--didn't I?" she asked
painfully.

"No"--Susanna would use this tone in her nursery some day--"No, dear,
not yet."

"Tell us again," said the doctor, with too obvious an intention to
soothe.

The woman gave him a look full of dignified reproach.

"If I could rest on your porch a little while," she said to Susanna,
ignoring the others rather purposely, "I should be quite myself again.
That will be best. Then I can think--I can't think now. These
people--and my head--"

And she tried to rise, supporting herself with a hand on Susanna's arm.
But with the effort the last vestige of color left her face, and she
slipped, unconscious, back to the grass.

"Dead?" asked Susanna, very white.

"No--no! Only fainted," Dr. Whitney said. "But I don't like it," he
added, his finger at the limp wrist.

"Bring her in, won't you?" Susanna urged with sudden decision. "I
simply can't let her be taken 'way up to town! This way--"

And, relieved to have it settled, she led them swiftly across the
garden and into the house, flung down the snowy covers of the
guest-room bed, and with Emma's sympathetic help established the
stranger therein.

"Trouble," whispered the injured woman apologetically, when she opened
her eyes upon walls and curtains rioting with pink roses, and felt the
delicious softness and freshness of the linen and pillows about her.

"Oh, don't think of that--I love to do it!" Susanna said honestly,
patting her head. "A nurse is coming up from the village to look out
for you, and she and the doctor are going to make you more comfortable."

The woman, fixing her with a dazed yet curiously intent look, formed
with her lips the words, "God bless you," and wearily shut her eyes.
Susanna, slipping out of the room a few minutes later, said over and
over again to herself, "I don't care--I'm glad I did it!"

Still, it was not very reassuring to hear the big hall clock strike
six, and suddenly to notice the orphanage plans lying where they had
been flung on the hall table.

"I wish it was the middle of next year," said Susanna, thoughtfully,
going out to sink wearily into a porch chair, "or even next week! I'd
pretend to be asleep when Jim came home to-night," she went on
gloomily, "if it wasn't my duty to sit up and explain that there are a
perfect stranger and a trained nurse in the house. Of course, being
there as I was, any humane person would have to do what I did, but it
does seem strange, this day of all days, that I had to be there! And I
wish I had thought to send those plans in by messenger--that would have
been one thing the less to worry about, at least!--What is it, Emma?"

For Emma, mildly repeating some question, had come out to the porch.
"Would you like tea, Mrs. Fairfax? I could bring it out here like you
had it last week with your book."

Susanna brightened. After all, she had not eaten for a long while; tea
would be very welcome. And the porch was delightful, and there was the
new Locke.

"Well, that was my original idea, Emma," said she, "and although the
day has not gone quite as I had planned, still there's no reason why
the idea should be changed. Bring a supper-tea, Emma, lots of
sandwiches--I'm combining three meals in one, Miss Smith," she broke
off to explain smilingly, as the nurse, trimly clad in white, came to
the doorway. "I've not eaten since breakfast. You must have some tea
with me. And how is she? Is her mind clearer?"

"Oh, dear me, yes! She's quite comfortable," Miss Smith said
cheerfully. "Doctor thinks there's no question of internal trouble. Her
arm is broken and her ankle badly wrenched, but that's all. And she's
so grateful to you, Mrs. Fairfax. It seems she has a perfect horror of
hospitals, and she feels that you've done such a remarkably kind
thing--taking her in. She asked to see you, and then we're going to try
to make her sleep. Oh, and may I telephone her husband?"

"Oh, she could give you his name then!" cried Susanna, in relief. "Oh,
I am glad! Indeed, you may telephone. Who is she?"

Miss Smith repeated the name and address.

Susanna, stared at her blankly. Then the most radiant of all her ready
smiles lighted her face.

"Well, this is really the most extraordinary day!" she said softly,
after a pause. "I'll come right up, Miss Smith, but perhaps you might
let me telephone for you first. I can get her husband easily. I know
just where he is. He and my own husband are dining together this
evening, as it happens--"




THE LAST CAROLAN


A blazing afternoon of mid-July lay warmly over the old Carolan house,
and over the dusty, neglected gardens that enclosed it. The heavy
wooden railing of the porch, half smothered in dry vines, was hot to
the touch, as were the brick walks that wound between parched lawns and
the ruins of old flowerbeds. The house, despite the charm of its
simple, unpretentious lines, looked shabby and desolate. Only the great
surrounding trees kept, after long years of neglect, their beauty and
dignity.

At the end of one of the winding paths was an old fountain. Its wide
stone basin was chipped, and the marble figure above it was discolored
by storm and sun. Weeds--such weeds as could catch a foothold in the
shallow layer of earth--had grown rank and high where once water had
brimmed clear and cool, and great lazy bees boomed among them. Cut in
the granite brim, had any one cared to push back the dry leaves and
sifted earth that obscured them, might have been found the words:

     Over land and water blown,
     Come back to find your own.

A stone bench, sunk unevenly in the loose soil, stood near the fountain
in the shade of the great elms, and here two women were sitting. One of
them was Mary Moore, the doctor's wife, from the village, a charming
little figure in her gingham gown and wide hat. The other was Jean
Carolan, wife of the estate's owner, and mother of Peter, the last
Carolan.

Jean was a beautiful woman, glowing with the bloom of her early
thirties. Her eyes were moving contentedly over house and garden. She
gave Mrs. Moore's hand a sudden impulsive pressure. "Well, here we are,
Mary!" she said, smiling, "just as we always used to plan at St.
Mary's--keeping house in the country near each other, and bringing up
our children together!"

"I never forgot those plans of ours," said the doctor's wife, her eyes
full of pleasant reminiscence. "But here I've been, nearly eleven
years, duly keeping house and raising four small babies in a row. And
what about YOU? You've been gadding all over Europe--never a word about
coming home to Carolan Hall until this year!"

"I know," said Mrs. Carolan, with a charming air of apology. "Oh, I
know! But Sid had to hunt up his references abroad, you know, and then
there was that hideous legal delay. I really have been frantic to
settle down somewhere, for years. And as for poor Peter! The
unfortunate baby has been farmed out in Italy, and boarded in Rome, and
flung into English sanitariums, just as need arose! The marvel is he's
not utterly ruined. But Peter's unique--you'll love him!"

"Who's he like, Jean?"

"Oh, Sidney! He's Carolan all through." With the careless words a thin
veil of shadow fell across her bright face, and there came a long
silence.

Carolan Hall! Jean had never seen it before to-day. Looking at the
garden, and the trees, and the roof that showed beyond, she felt as if
she had not truly seen it until this minute. All its gloomy history,
half forgotten, lightly brushed aside, came back to her slowly now.
This was the home of her husband's shadowed childhood; it was here that
those terrible events had taken place of which he had so seriously told
her before their wedding day.

Here old Peter Carolan, her little Peter's great-grandfather, had come
with his two dark boys and his silent wife, eighty years before. A
cruel, passionate man he must have been, for stories presently crept
about the county of the whippings that kept his boys obedient to him.
Rumor presently had an explanation of the wife's shadowed life. There
had been a third boy, the first-born, whom no whippings could make
obedient. That boy was dead.

The day came when old Peter's blooded mare refused him obedience, too,
and stood trembling and mutinous before the bars he would have had her
take. He presently had his way, and the lovely, frightened creature
went bravely over. But after that he rode her at that fence day after
day, and sometimes the wood rang for an hour with his shouting and
urging before she would essay the leap. While he forced her, Madam
Carolan sat at the one library window that gave on the road, and
knotted her hands together and waited. She waited, one gusty March
evening, until the shouting stopped, and the bewildered mare came
trotting riderless into view. Then she and the maids ran to the wood.
But even after that she still sat at that window at the end of every
day, a familiar figure to all who came and went upon the road.

The sons, Sidney and Laurence, grew up together, passionate, devoted,
and widely loved. Sidney married and went away for a few years; but
presently he came back to his mother and brother, bringing with him the
motherless little Sidney who was Jean's sunny big husband now. This
younger Sidney well remembered the day--and had once told his wife of
it--when his father and his uncle fell to sudden quarrelling in their
boat, during a morning's fishing on the placid river. He remembered, a
small watcher on the bank, that the boat upset, and that, when his
uncle reached the shore, it was to work unavailingly for hours over his
father's silent form, which never moved again. The boy was sent away
for a while, but came back to find his uncle a silent, morose shadow,
pacing the lonely garden in unassailable solitude, or riding his horse
for hours in the great woods. Sometimes the little fellow would sit
with his grandmother in the library window, where she watched and
waited. Always, as he went about the garden and yards, he would look
for her there, and wave his cap to her. He missed her, in his
unexpressed little-boy fashion, when she sat there no longer, although
she had always been silent and reserved with him. Then came his years
of school and travel, and in one of them he learned that the Hall was
quite empty now. Sidney meant to go back, just to turn over the old
books, and open the old doors, and walk the garden paths again; but,
somehow, he had never come until to-day. And now that he had come, he,
and Jean, and Peter, too, wanted to stay.

Jean sighed.

"You knew Madam Carolan, didn't you, Mary?"

"No--no, I didn't," said Mrs. Moore, coloring uneasily. "I've seen her,
though, as a small girl, at the window. I used to visit Billy's--my
husband's--people when we were both small, you know, and we often came
to these woods."

"I've been thinking of the house and its cheerful history," said Jean,
with a little shudder. "Sweet heritage for Peterkin!"

"Heritage--nonsense!" said the other woman, hardily. "Every one tells
me that your husband is the gentlest and finest of them all--and his
father was before him. I don't believe such things come down, anyway."

"Well," smiled Sidney's wife, a little proudly, "I've never seen the
Carolan temper in the nine years we've been married!"

"Exactly. Besides, it's not a temper--just strong will."

"Sidney has WILL enough," mused Jean.

"Oh, all men have," said the doctor's wife contentedly. "Billy, now! He
won't STAND a locked door. One night--I never shall forget!--the
children locked themselves in the nursery, and Will simply burst the
door in. Nobody makes a fuss or worries over THAT!"

If the illustration was beside the point, neither woman perceived it.

"There, you see!" said Jean, glad to be quite sure of conviction. "It
never really worries me," she added, after a moment, "for Peter adores
his father, and is only too eager to obey him. If Peter--and it's
impossible!--ever DID really work himself up to disobedience, why, I
suppose he'd get a thrashing,"--she made a wry face,--"and they'd love
each other all the more for it."

"Of course they would," agreed the other cheerfully.

"There must have been some way in which Madam Carolan could have
managed them," pursued Jean, thoughtfully. "The women of that
generation were a poor-spirited lot, I imagine. One isn't quite a
child!" There was another little pause in the hot murmuring silence of
the garden, and then, with a sudden change of manner, she rose to her
feet. "Mary! come and meet Sidney and the kiddy!" she commanded.

"Well, I rather hoped you were going to present them," said Mrs. Moore,
rising too, and gathering up sunshade and gloves.

They threaded the silent garden paths again, passed the house, and
crossed a neglected stable yard, where a great red motor-car had
crushed a path for itself across dry grass and weeds. In the stable
itself they found Sidney Carolan, the little Peter, and a couple of
servants--the chauffeur with oily hands, and the wrinkled old Italian
maid, very gay in scarlet gown and headdress.

Jean's husband had all the Carolan beauty and charm, and was his most
gracious and radiant self to-day. His sunny cordiality gave Mary no
chance to remember that she had a little feared the writer and critic.
But, after the first moment, her eye was irresistibly drawn to the
child.

Tawny-haired, erect, and astonishing in the perfection of his childish
beauty, Peter Carolan advanced her a bronzed, firm little hand, and
gave her with it a smile that seemed all brilliant color--white teeth,
ocean-blue eyes, and poppied cheeks. His square little figure was very
boyish in the thin silk shirt and baggy knickerbockers, and a wide hat,
slipping from his yellow mane, added a last debonair touch to his
picturesque little person. He was flushed, but gracious and at ease.

"You're one of the reasons we came!" he said in a rich little
voice--when his mother's "You've heard me speak of Mrs. Moore, Peter?"
had introduced them. "You have boys, too, haven't you?"

"I have three," said Mrs. Moore, in the rational, unhurried tone that
only very clever people use to children. "Billy is nine, George seven,
Jack is three; and then there's a girl--my Mary."

"I come next to Billy," calculated little Peter, his eyes very eager.

"You and he will like each other, I hope," said Billy's mother.

"I hope we will--I hope so!" he assented vivaciously. "I've been
thinking so!"

Mrs. Carolan presently suggested that he go off with Betta to pack the
luncheon things in the car, and the three watched his sturdy, erect
little figure out of sight. Mrs. Moore heard his gay voice break into
ready Italian as they went.

A horde of workmen took possession of Carolan Hall a few days later,
and for happy weeks Jean and Mary followed and directed them. The Moore
children and Peter Carolan explored every fascinating inch of house and
garden. Linen and china were unpacked, old furniture polished, and old
paintings restored.

Mrs. Moore, with her two oldest sons frolicking about her like excited
puppies, came up to Carolan Hall one exquisite morning a month later.
Brush fires were burning in the thinning woods, and the blue, fragrant
smoke drifted in thin veils across the sunlight.

A visit to the circus was afoot, and Peter Carolan, seated on the porch
steps in the full glory of starched blue linen and tan sandals, leaped
up to join his friends in a war-dance of wild anticipation.

Jean came out, also starched and radiant, kissed her guests, piled some
wraps into the waiting motor, and engineered the group into the shaded
dining-room, where the excited children were somehow to be coaxed into
eating their luncheon. Sidney came in late, to smile at them all from
the top of the table.

It was rapidly dawning on the adult consciousness that, above every
other sound, the voices of the children were really reaching
inexcusable heights, when a burst of laughter and a brief struggle
between Peter and Billy Moore resulted in an overturned mug, the usual
rapidly spreading pool of milk, and the usual reckless mopping. Peter's
silver mug fell to the floor, and rolled to the sideboard, where it lay
against the carved mahogany base, winking in the sun.

"Peter!" said Jean, severely. "No, don't ring, Sidney! He did that by
his own carelessness, and mother can't ask poor, busy Julia to pick up
things for boys who are noisy and rude at the table. Go pick up your
mug, dear!"

"Yes. Quite right!" approved Sidney, under his breath.

Peter, who had been laughing violently a moment before seemed rather
inclined to regard the incident as a tribute to his own brilliancy. He
caught his heels in a rung of his chair, raised himself to a standing
position, and turned a bright little face to his mother.

"But--but--but what if I don't WANT to pick it up, mother?" he said
gayly.

The little Moore boys, still bubbling, giggled outright, and Peter's
cheeks grew pink. He was innocently elated with this new role of clown.

"What do you mean?" said Sidney's big voice, very quietly. There was a
pause. Peter slowly turned his eyes toward his father.

"Oh, please, Sidney!" said Jean, a shade impatiently. "He thinks he has
some reason." She turned to Peter. "What do you mean, dear?" she asked
pleasantly.

Peter looked about the group. He was confused and excited at finding
himself so suddenly the centre of attention.

"Well--well--why are you all looking at me?" he asked in his confident
little treble, with his baffling smile.

"Dearie, did you hear mother tell you to get quietly down and pick up
your mug?" demanded Jean, authoritatively.

"Well--well, you know, I don't want to, mother, because Billy and I
were both reaching for that mug," drawled Peter, "and maybe it was
Billy who--"

"Now, look here, son!" said his father, controlling his impatience with
difficulty, "we've had enough of this! You do it because your mother
told you to, and you do it right NOW!"

"And don't let anything spoil this happy day," pleaded Jean's tender
voice.

"Can't I let it stay there, mother?" suggested Peter, brilliantly, "and
have my milk in a glass? I don't want my mug! It can just lie there--"

His mother unsmilingly interrupted this pleasantly offered solution.

"Peter! Father and mother are waiting."

"Gee--I'll pick it up!" said Billy Moore, good-naturedly, slipping to
the floor.

Sidney reached for the little boy, and brought him to anchor in the
curve of his big arm, without once glancing at him.

"Thank you, Billy," he said, "but Peter will pick it up himself. Now,
Peter! We don't care who knocked it down, or whose fault it was. Your
mother told you to pick up your mug, and we are waiting to have you do
it. Don't talk about it any more. Nobody thinks it is at all smart or
funny for boys to disobey their mothers!"

"It will take you JUST one second, dear," interpolated Jean softly,
"and then we will all go upstairs and get ready, and forget all about
it."

"Just a little too much c-i-r-c-u-s!" spelled Mrs. Moore, in the pause.

"Pick it up, son!" said Sidney, very calm.

Peter stopped smiling. He breathed hard and took a firm hold of his
chair.

"Go on. Go ahead!" said his father, briskly, encouragingly.

The child moved his eyes from the mug to his father's face, but did not
stir.

"Peter?" said Sidney. A white line had come about his mouth.

For a long moment there was not a sound in the rooms. Julia stood
transfixed at the door. Mrs. Moore's eyes were on her plate. Jean's
lips were shut tight; she was breathing as if she had been running.

"I won't!" said Peter, simply, with a quick breath.

"Sid!" said Jean, hurriedly. "Sidney!"

"Just a moment, Jean," said her husband, without glancing at her. "You
will do it now, or have father punish you to make you do it," he said
to the boy. "Father can't have boys here who don't obey, you know.
Every one obeys. Soldiers have to, engineers have to, even animals have
to. Are you going to do what mother told you to?"

"No," said little Peter. "I said I wouldn't, and now I won't!"

"He is hot and excited now," said Jean, quickly, in French, "but I'll
take him upstairs and quiet him down. He'll come to his senses. Leave
him to me, dear!"

"Much the wisest thing to do, Sidney," supplemented Mrs. Moore, in the
same tongue.

"Certainly!" said his father, coldly. "Give him time. Let him
understand that if he doesn't obey, it means no circus. That's
reasonable, I think, Jean?"

"Oh, perfectly! Perfectly!" Mrs. Carolan assented nervously. Nothing
more was said as she took the boy's hand and led him away. The others
heard Peter chatting cheerfully as he mounted the stairway a moment
later.

"The boys and I will go down and look at Nellie's puppies," said Mrs.
Moore, acutely uncomfortable.

Her host muttered something about closing his mail.

"But are we going to the circus?" fretted little George Moore. His
mother hardly heard him.

A moment later, Julia, the maid, appealed to her submissively.

"Shall you pick up the cup?" repeated the doctor's wife. "No. No,
indeed, I wouldn't, Julia. Yes, you can clear the table, I think; we've
all finished."

She led her sons down to the fascinating realm of dogs and horses,
vaguely uneasy, yet unwilling to admit her fears. An endless warm half
hour crept by. Then, glancing toward the house, she saw Sidney and Jean
deep in conversation on the porch, and a moment later Sidney came to
find her.

The boy was obstinate, he told her briefly--adding, with a look in his
kind eyes that was quite new to her, that Peter had met his match, and
would realize it sooner or later. Mary protested against there being
any further talk of the circus that day, but Sidney would not refuse
the disappointed eyes of the small Moores. In the end, the doctor's
family went off alone in the motor-car.

"Don't worry, Mary," said Sidney, kindly, as he tucked her in
comfortably. "Peter's had nothing but women and servants so far. Now
he's got to learn to obey!"

"But such a baby, Sidney!" she reminded him.

"He's older than I was, Mary, when my poor father and Uncle Larry--"

"Yes--yes, I know!" she assented hurriedly. "Good-by!"

"Good-by!" repeated a hardy little voice from an upper window. Mary
looked up to see Peter, composed and smiling, looking down from the
nursery sill.

All the next day, and the next, Mary Moore's thoughts were at the Hall.
She told her husband all about it on the afternoon of the second day,
for no word or sign had come from Jean, and real anxiety began to haunt
her. She and the doctor were roaming about their pretty, shabby garden,
Mrs. Moore's little hand, where she loved to have it, in the crook of
his big arm. The doctor, stopping occasionally to shake a rose post
with his free hand, or to break a dead blossom from its stalk, scowled
through the recital, even while contentedly enjoying his wife, his
garden, and his pipe.

Before he could make a definite comment, they were interrupted by
Sidney himself, who brought his big riding horse up close to the fence
and waved his whip with a shout of greeting. The doctor went to meet
him, Mary, a little pale, following.

"Good day to you!" said Sidney Carolan, baring his head without a
smile. "I'm bound to Barville; my editor is there for a few days, and I
may have to dine with him. I stopped to ask if Mary would run in and
see Jean this afternoon. She's feeling a little down."

"Of course I will!" said Mary, heartily.

There was a pause.

"Mary's told you that we're having an ugly time with the boy?" said
Sidney, then, combing his horse's mane with big gloved fingers.

"Too bad!" said the doctor, shaking his head and pursing his lips.

"No change, Sidney?" Mary asked gravely.

"No. No, I think the little fellow is rather gratified by the stir he's
making. He--oh, Lord knows what he thinks!"

"Give him a good licking," suggested the doctor.

"Oh, I'd lick him fast enough, Bill, if that would bring him round!"
his father said, scowling. "But suppose I do, and it leaves things just
where they are now? That's all I CAN do, and he knows it. His mother
has talked to him; I've talked to him." He looked frowningly at the
seam of his glove. "Well, I mustn't bother you. He's a Carolan, I
suppose--that's all!"

"And you're a Carolan," said the doctor.

"And I'm a Carolan," assented the other, briefly.

Mary found Jean, serious and composed over her sewing, on the cool
north veranda. When they had talked awhile, they went up to see Peter,
who was sprawled on the floor, busy with hundreds of leaden soldiers.
He was no longer gay; there was rather a strained look about his
beautiful babyish eyes. But at Jean's one allusion to the unhappy
affair, he flushed and said with nervous decision:

"Please don't, mother! You know I am sorry; you know I just CAN'T!"

"He has all his books and toys?" said Mary when they went downstairs
again.

"Oh, yes! Sidney doesn't want him to 

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