← catalogue

The Awakening of Helena Richie

by Margaret Wade Campbell Deland · English · Gutenberg #6315 · 547,349 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Awakening of Helena Richie
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Awakening of Helena Richie

Author: Margaret Wade Campbell Deland


        
Release date: August 1, 2004 [eBook #6315]
                Most recently updated: June 1, 2013

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6315

Credits: Produced by Beth Constantine, Charles Aldarondo, Juliet Sutherland Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AWAKENING OF HELENA RICHIE ***




Produced by Beth Constantine, Charles Aldarondo, Juliet
Sutherland Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.










[Illustration: He put his face close to hers, and stared into her eyes.
_Frontispiece--Awakening of Helena Richie_]



THE AWAKENING OF HELENA RICHIE



By MARGARET DELAND

Author of "Dr Lavendar's People," "Old Cheater Tales," etc.




TO

LORIN DELAND

MAY 12, 1906




CHAPTER I


Dr. Lavendar and Goliath had toiled up the hill to call on old Mr.
Benjamin Wright; when they jogged back in the late afternoon it was
with the peculiar complacency which follows the doing of a disagreeable
duty. Goliath had not liked climbing the hill, for a heavy rain in the
morning had turned the clay to stiff mud, and Dr. Lavendar had not
liked calling on Benjamin Wright.

"But, Daniel," said Dr. Lavendar, addressing a small old dog who took
up a great deal more room on the seat of the buggy than he was entitled
to, "Daniel, my boy, you don't consult your likings in pastoral calls."
Then he looked out of the mud-spattered window of the buggy, at a house
by the roadside--"The Stuffed Animal House," Old Chester children
called it, because its previous owner had been a taxidermist of some
little local renown. "That's another visit I ought to make," he
reflected, "but it can wait until next week. G'long, Goliath!"

Goliath went along, and Mrs. Frederick Richie, who lived in the Stuffed
Animal House, looking listlessly from an upper window, saw the hood of
the buggy jogging by and smiled suddenly. "Thank Heaven!" she said.

Benjamin Wright had not thanked Heaven when Dr. Lavendar drove away. He
had been as disagreeable as usual to his visitor, but being a very
lonely old man he enjoyed having a visitor to whom to be disagreeable.
He lived on his hilltop a mile out of Old Chester, with his "nigger"
Simmons, his canary-birds, and his temper. More than thirty years
before he had quarrelled with his only son Samuel, and the two men had
not spoken to each other since. Old Chester never knew what this
quarrel had been about; Dr. Lavendar, speculating upon it as he and
Goliath went squashing through the mud that April afternoon, wondered
which was to blame. "Pot and kettle, probably," he decided. "Samuel's
goodness is very irritating sometimes, and Benjamin's badness is--well,
it's not as distressing as it should be. But what a forlorn old critter
he is! And this Mrs. Richie is lonely too--a widow, with no children,
poor woman! I must call next week. Goliath wouldn't like to turn round
now and climb the hill again. Danny, I fear Goliath is very selfish."

Goliath's selfishness carried them home and landed Dr. Lavendar at his
own fireside, rather tired and full of good intentions in regard to
calls. He confided these intentions to Dr. William King who looked in
after supper to inquire about his cold.

"Cold? I haven't any cold! You can't get a job here. Sit down and give
me some advice. Hand me a match first; this ragamuffin Danny has gone
to sleep with his head on my foot, and I can't budge."

The doctor produced the match; "I'll advise you not to go out in such
weather. Promise me you won't go out to-morrow."

"To-morrow? Right after breakfast, sir! To make calls on the people
I've neglected. Willy, how can I find a home for an orphan child? A
parson up in the mountains has asked me to see if I can place a little
seven-year-old boy. The child's sister who took care of him has just
died. Do you know anybody who might take him?"

"Well," said Willy King, "there's Mrs. Richie."

Dr. Lavendar looked at him over his spectacles. "Mrs. Frederick
Richie?--though I understand she calls herself Mrs. Helena Richie. I
don't like a young female to use her own name, William, even if she is
a widow! Still, she may be a nice woman I suppose. Do you think a
little boy would have a good home with her?"

"Well," the doctor demurred, "of course, we know very little about her.
She has only been here six months. But I should think she was just the
person to take him. She is mighty good-looking, isn't she?"

"Yes," Dr. Lavendar said, "she is. And other things being equal I
prefer a good-looking woman. But I don't know that her looks are a
guarantee that she can train up a child in the way he should go. Can't
you think of anybody else?"

"I don't see why you don't like Mrs. Richie?"

"I never said I didn't like her," protested Dr. Lavendar; "but she's
a widow."

"Unless she murdered the late Richie, that's not against her."

"Widows don't always stay widows, Willy."

"I don't believe she's the marrying kind," William said. "I have a sort
of feeling that the deceased Richie was not the kind of husband who
receives the compliment of a successor--"

"Hold on; you're mixing things up! It's the bad husband and the good
wife that get compliments of that kind."

William laughed as he was expected to, but he stuck to his opinion that
Mrs. Richie had had enough of husbands. "And anyway, she's devoted to
her brother--though he doesn't come to see her very often."

"There's another point," objected Dr. Lavendar; "what kind of a man is
this Mr. Pryor? Danny growled at him once, which prejudiced me against
him."

"I don't take to him much myself," William King confessed; "though I
must say he seems a decent man enough. He doesn't cultivate
acquaintances in Old Chester, but that only shows bad taste."

"She says he is not very well," Dr. Lavendar explained; "she says he
likes to keep quiet when he comes down here."

"I don't see anything wrong with him."

"Hasn't taken any of your pills? Maybe he doesn't believe in doctors. I
don't myself."

"Thank you," said William King.

"There's too much fuss anyway over our precious carcasses! And you
fellows encourage it," Dr. Lavendar grumbled. Then he said he wished he
knew more about Mrs. Richie. "I ask you for information and all you say
is that she's good-looking, and her brother doesn't take your pills."

William laughed.

"She doesn't come to church very regularly, and she never stops
afterwards to talk," Dr. Lavendar ruminated.

"Well, she lives 'way up there on the hill road--"

"Yes, she does live pretty far out of town," Dr. Lavendar admitted,
"but that's not a reason for not being neighborly after church."

"She's shy," said William King, "that's all. Shyness isn't anything
very wrong. And she's mighty pleasant when she does talk to you. I tell
you Dr. Lavendar, pleasantness goes a good way in this world. I'd say
it was better than goodness--only they are the same thing."

"No, they're not," said Dr. Lavendar.

"I grant she doesn't belong to the sewing society," William said
grinning. "Martha says that some of the ladies say she doesn't show
proper grief for her husband. She actually smiles sometimes! They say
that if the Lord were to remove _their_ beloved husbands, they would
never smile again."

"William," said Dr. Lavendar chuckling, "I begin to like your widow."

"She's not my widow, thank you! But she's a nice woman, and she must be
pretty lonely up there all by herself."

"Wish I had gone in to see her this afternoon," the old man said
thoughtfully. "As you say she may be a suitable person to take this
little boy. I wonder if she's going to stay in Old Chester?"

"Sam Wright says she has spoken to him of buying the house. That looks
as if she meant to settle down. Did you know that Sam's Sam is casting
sheep's eyes at her?"

"Why, she's old enough to be his mother!" said Dr. Lavendar.

"Oh, no. Sam's Sam is twenty-three, and one of my patients says that
Mrs. Richie will never see forty-five again. Which leads me to conclude
that she's about thirty."

"Of course she doesn't encourage him?" Dr. Lavendar said anxiously.

"She lets him come to see her, and she took him out once in that
wicker-work vehicle she has--looks like a clothes-basket on wheels. And
she provides the clothes to put into it. I'm told they're beautiful;
but that no truly pious female would be willing to decorate poor flesh
and blood with such finery. I'm told--"

"William! Is this the way I've brought you up? To pander to my
besetting sin? Hold your tongue!" Dr. Lavendar rose chuckling, and
stood in front of the fireplace, gathering the tails of his flowered
cashmere dressing-gown under his arms. "But Willy I hope Sam isn't
really smitten? You never can tell what that boy will do."

"Yes, he's a hair-trigger," the doctor agreed, "a hair-trigger! And his
father understands him about as well as--as Danny there understands
Hebrew! I think it's a case of Samuel and his father over again. Dr.
Lavendar, do you suppose anybody will ever know what those two
quarrelled about?"

"Probably not."

"I suppose," William King ruminated, "that you'd call Sam a genius?"

"No, I wouldn't; he has no patience. You can't have genius without
patience. Sam hasn't a particle."

"Well," the doctor explained, "he hasn't the slightest sense of
responsibility; and I notice that when people have no sense of
responsibility, you call them either criminals or geniuses."

"I don't," said Dr. Lavendar dryly, "I call 'em poor critters, either
way. But Willy, about this little boy; the great point is who needs
him? I expect he'll be here on Saturday."

"What! This week? But you haven't found anybody to take him."

"Oh, he'll stay with me for a while, Mary'll look after him. And I'll
play marbles with him. Got any white alleys? Gimme six, and I'll give
you an agate."

"But Dr. Lavendar, that will be a nuisance to you," William King
protested. "Let me take him. Or, at least--I'll ask Martha; she's
house-cleaning now, and she says she's very tired; so I'm not sure--"
William ended weakly.

"No, no; I want him myself," said the old minister.

"Well," Dr. King said with evident relief, "shall I speak to Mrs.
Richie about him? I'm going up there to-morrow; she's got a sick cook,
and she asked me to call. What's his name?"

"David Allison. You might sound her William, but don't be definite.
Don't give her any chance to say yes or no. I want to know her a little
better before I make up my mind. When the boy comes I'll happen along
in my buggy with him, and then we'll see. And meantime Willy, keep your
eye on Sam's Sam. He mustn't get too much interested up there. A little
falling in love with an older woman doesn't hurt most boys; in fact,
it's part of their growing up and likely as not it does 'em good. But
Sam's Sam isn't like most boys."

"That's so," said William King, "he may not be a genius and he
certainly isn't a criminal, but he has about as much stability as a
sky-rocket."




CHAPTER II


"You can't think of anybody who might like to take this little David
Allison, can you, my dear?" William King asked his wife at breakfast
the next morning.

"I certainly cannot," Martha said decidedly. "I think it's a very
dangerous thing to take unknown children into your family. I suppose
you think I ought to offer to do it? But in the first place, I'm very
tired, and in the second place, I don't like boys. If it was a girl it
might be different."

"No doubt we could find a girl," William began, but she interrupted him.

"Girls are a great expense. And then, as I said--unknown
children!--they might turn into anything. They might have evil
tendencies; they probably have. If the parents die early, it's a sign
of weakness of some sort. I've no doubt this boy's father drank. I
don't want to seem unkind, but I must say flatly and frankly that
considering how hard it is for us to make both ends meet--as you keep
up a sort of free practice--I don't think it's prudent to suggest any
new responsibilities and expenses."

"Oh, I wasn't making suggestions," William King said. "I guess we're
not the people to bring up a child. I'd spoil him, I've no doubt."

"I'm sure you would!" Martha said, greatly relieved. "It would be the
worst possible thing for him. But Willy, there's that Mrs. Richie?"

"You think his evil tendencies wouldn't hurt her?" the doctor said
dryly.

"I think she's a rich woman, so why shouldn't she do a thing like that?
I'll go and see her if you want me to--though she never makes you feel
welcome; and tell her about the boy?"

"You needn't bother; Dr. Lavendar will see her himself."

"I don't understand that woman," Mrs. King said. "She keeps herself to
herself too much. It almost looks as if she didn't think we were good
enough to associate with her!"

William made no reply.

"Willy, does she use perfumery?"

"How in the world should I know!"

"Well, there's a sort of fragrance about her. It isn't like cologne,
it's like--well, orris-root."

William made no comment.

"It's a kind of sachet, I guess; I'd like to know what it is. Willy,
Sam Wright's Sam went out walking with her yesterday. I met them on the
River Road. I believe the boy is in love with her!"

"He's got eyes," William agreed.

"_Tck!_" said Martha, "the idea of calling her good-looking! And I
don't think it speaks well for a woman of her age--she's forty if she's
a day--to let a boy trail round after her like that. And to fix herself
up with sachet-powders and things. And her Sarah told the Draytons'
Jean that she had her breakfast in bed every morning! I'd like to know
how my housekeeping would go on if _I_ had breakfast in bed, though
dear knows I'm very tired and it would be pleasant enough. But there's
one thing about me: I may not be perfect, but I don't do lazy things
just because they are pleasant."

The doctor made no defence of Mrs. Richie. Instead he asked for another
cup of coffee and when told that it would not be good for him, got up,
then paused patiently, his hand on the door-knob, to hear his Martha
out.

"William, what do you suppose is the last thing Sam Wright's Sam has
done?"

The doctor confessed his ignorance.

"Well, his father sent him to Mercer on Monday to buy supplies for the
bank. He gave him seventy-five dollars. Back comes my young gentleman
with--what do you suppose? A lot of pictures of actors and actresses!
And no supplies."

"What! you don't mean he spent the money on the pictures?"

"Every bit of it! His mother came in and told me about it last night.
She said his father was frantic. She was dreadfully upset herself. As
for Sam, he kept saying that the 'prints,' as he called them, were very
valuable. Though I'm sure I can't see why; they were only of actor
people, and they had all died sixty or seventy years ago."

"Actors!" the doctor said. "Poor Samuel! he hates the theatre. I do
believe he'd rather have pictures of the devil."

"Oh, but wait. You haven't heard the rest of it. It appears that when
the boy looked at 'em yesterday morning he found they weren't as
valuable as he thought--I don't understand that part of it," Martha
acknowledged--"so what does he do but march downstairs, and put 'em all
in the kitchen stove! What do you think of that?"

"I think," said William King, "that he has always gone off at half-cock
ever since he was born. But Martha, the serious thing is his spending
money that didn't belong to him."

"I should think it was serious! If he'd been some poor little clerk in
the bank, instead of Mr. Samuel Wright's only son, he would have found
it was serious! Willy, what do you make of him?"

"He is queer," William said; "queer as Dick's hatband; but that's all.
Sam wouldn't do a mean thing, or a dirty thing, any more than a girl
would."

"And now he thinks he's in love with this Richie woman," Martha went
on--but William made his escape. He had to go and hitch up, he said.

Before he took Jinny out of her stall he went into the harness-room and
hunted about on a shelf until, behind a rusty currycomb and two empty
oil-bottles, he found a small mirror. It was misty and flecked with
clear spots where the quicksilver had dropped away, but when he propped
it against the cobwebbed window he could see himself fairly well.
Staring into its dim depths he retied his necktie; then he backed the
buggy out of the carriage-house. But after he had put his mare between
the shafts he hesitated.... The buggy was very shabby; it sagged badly
on the right side and there was a rent in the faded cushion. The doctor
looked at his watch.... Then, hurriedly, led Jinny back to her stall,
got a bucket of water and a sponge, and washed off the dashboard and
wheels. After that he fumbled along a dusty beam to find a bottle of
oil with which he touched up the harness. But when all was done he
shook his head. The buggy was hopeless. Nevertheless, when he climbed
in and slapped Jinny's flank with the newly oiled rein he was careful
to sit in the middle of the seat to make the springs truer, and he
avoided the mud-puddles on the road up to the Stuffed Animal House.
There were a good many puddles, for it had rained the day before.
To-day the clouds had gathered up behind the hills into white domes,
but the sky was that faint April blue that dims easily into warm mists.
There was the smell of earth, the fainter scent of unopened buds, and
from the garden borders of the Stuffed Animal House came the pungent
odor of box.

Helena Richie, standing by a bed of crown-imperials, bareheaded, a
trowel in her gloved hand, her smooth cheek flushed with the unwonted
exertion of planting seeds, caught the exquisite breath of the box, and
sighed; then, listlessly, she turned to walk back towards the house.
Before she reached it the gate clicked and Dr. King came up the path.
She saw him and looked hurriedly about, as if seeking a way of escape,
but it was too late.

"Gardening?" he called to her.

"Yes," she said, and her smile like reluctant sunshine did not betray
to the doctor that he was not welcome.

"Don't work too hard," he cautioned her. It seemed to William King,
looking at her with wondering admiration, that she was too delicate a
creature to handle a trowel. There was a certain soft indolence in the
way she moved that was a delight to his eye. It occurred to him that he
would ask his Martha why she didn't wear gardening-gloves. Mrs. Richie
wore them, and as she pulled one off he saw how soft and white her hand
was....

"How's the patient?" he asked.

"Poor Maggie? Oh, she's pretty uncomfortable I'm afraid."

They had gone together to the front porch, and as she stood on the
lower step looking up at him, the sunshine suddenly filled her eyes
with limpid brown light. "Maggie is in her room in the ell--the first
door on the left. Shall I show you the way?"

"I know the way," he said.

Mrs. Richie sat down on the porch step to wait for him. She had nothing
else to do. She never had anything to do. She had tried to be
interested in the garden, and bought a trowel and some seeds and
wandered out into the borders; but a manufactured interest has no
staying quality--especially if it involves any hard work. She was glad
when William King came back and sat down beside her; sickness was not
an agreeable topic, but it was a topic.

"Maggie will be all right in two or three days, but don't let her go
into the kitchen before Monday. A bad throat pulls you down. And she's
had a good deal of pain."

"Oh, poor Maggie!" she said wincing.

"A sore throat is nothing so very dreadful," William assured her with
open amusement.

She drew a breath of relief. "Oh, I'm glad! I can't bear to think of
pain." Then she looked at him anxiously. "Don't you think she can cook
before Monday? I'm so tired of scrappy dinners.

"I'm afraid not," William King said. "I'm very sorry." But that his
sorrow was not for Maggie was evident.

"Oh, dear!" said Mrs. Richie; and then her eyes crinkled with gayety at
his concern. "I don't really mind, Dr. King."

"I shouldn't blame you if you did. Nobody likes scrappy dinners. I wish
you would come down and have dinner with us?"

"Oh, thank you, no," she said. And the sudden shy retreat into her
habitual reserve was followed by a silence that suggested departure to
the doctor. As he got up he remembered Dr. Lavendar and the little boy,
but he was at a loss how to introduce the subject. In his perplexity he
frowned, and Mrs. Richie said quickly:

"Of course she sha'n't do any work. I'm not so bad-tempered as you
think; I only meant that I don't like discomfort."

"_You_ bad-tempered?" he said. "No, indeed! You're just the opposite.
That's why I suggested you when I heard about this boy."

"What boy?"

"Why, a little fellow of seven--David his name is--that Dr. Lavendar is
trying to find a home for. And I thought perhaps you--"

"--would take him?" cried Mrs. Richie in astonishment, and then she
laughed. "_I!_"

"Why, it occurred to me that perhaps you might be lonely, and--"

Helena Richie stopped laughing; she pulled off her other glove and
looked down at her white hands. "Well, yes, I'm lonely. But--I don't
like children, Dr. King."

"You don't?" he said blankly, and in his surprise he sat down again.
"Oh, I'm sure that's only because you don't know them. If you had ever
known a child--"

"I have," Mrs. Richie said, "one." Her voice was bleak; the gayety had
dropped out of it; for an instant she looked old. William King
understood.

"It died?"

She nodded. She began to pull her gloves on again, smoothing down each
finger carefully and not looking at him.

"A little girl?"

"Boy." She turned her face away, but he saw her chin tremble. There was
a moment's silence; then the doctor said with curious harshness.

"Well, anyhow, you know what it means to have owned your own."

"Better not have known!"

"I can't feel that. But perhaps I don't understand."

"You don't understand." Her head, with its two soft braids wound around
it like a wreath, was bent so that he could not see her face. "Dr.
King, his father--hurt him. Yes; hurt a little baby, eight months and
twelve days old. He died seven weeks later."

William drew in his breath; he found no words.

"That was twelve years ago, but I can't seem to--to get over it," she
said with a sort of gasp.

"But how--" Dr. King began.

"Oh, he was not himself. He was--happy, I believe you call it 'happy'?"

"How did you bear it!"

"I didn't bear it I suppose. I never have borne it!"

"Did he repent before he died?" William King said passionately.

"Before he--?" Her voice suddenly shook; she made elaborate pretence of
calmness, fastening her gloves and looking at them critically; then she
said: "Yes, Dr. King; he repented. He repented!"

"If there ever was excuse for divorce, you had it!"

"You don't think there ever is?" she asked absently.

"No," William said. "I suppose you'll think I'm very old-fashioned, but
I don't, unless--" he stopped short; he could not have put his
qualifying thought into words to any woman, especially not to this
woman, so like a girl in spite of her thirty-odd years. "You see," he
said, awkwardly, "it's such an unusual thing. It never happened in Old
Chester; why, I don't believe I ever saw a--a divorced person in my
life!"

"Well," she said, "anyhow, I didn't get a divorce."

"Mrs. Richie!" he said, blushing to his temples, "you didn't think I
thought of such a thing?"

But it was plain that she regretted her confidence; she rose with the
evident purpose of changing the subject. "I must go and put in some
more seeds. Why doesn't Dr. Lavendar keep this little boy? After all,
he's lonely himself."

"Well, he's an old man you know, and--"

"Dr. King," she broke in, "I don't mind having the child here for a
week while Dr. Lavendar is looking for somebody to take him. Not
longer. It wouldn't do. Really it wouldn't. But for a week, perhaps, or
maybe two!"

"That would be a great help," William King said. "Then Dr. Lavendar can
have plenty of time to find a home for him. I would have been glad to
take him myself, but just at present it happens that it is not--I
should say, Mrs. King is very tired, and--"

"It is perfectly convenient for me," Mrs. Richie said, "if you'll only
cure Maggie! You must cure Maggie, so that she can make cookies for
him."

"I'll cure Maggie," the doctor assured her smiling, and went away much
pleased with himself. But when he got into his shabby old buggy he
sighed.

"Poor soul!" he said. "Poor soul!"




CHAPTER III


William King reported the result of his call to Dr. Lavendar, and when
he told the tragic story of the dead baby the old man blinked and shook
his head.

"Do you wonder she doesn't call herself Mrs. _Frederick_ Richie?"
William demanded. "I don't!"

"No; that's natural, that's natural," Dr. Lavendar admitted.

"I suppose it was a dreadful thing to say," said William, "but I just
burst out and said that if ever there was an excuse for divorce, she
had it!"

"What did she say?"

"Oh, of course, that she hadn't been divorced. I was ashamed of myself
the next minute for speaking of such a thing."

"Poor child," said Dr. Lavendar, "living up there alone, and with such
memories! I guess you're right; I guess she'd like to have little
David, if only for company. But I think I'll keep him for a week or two
myself, and let her get sort of acquainted with him under my eye. That
will give me a chance to get acquainted with her. But to think I
haven't known about that baby until now! It must be my fault that she
was not drawn to tell me. But I'm afraid I wasn't drawn to her just at
first."

Yet Dr. Lavendar was not altogether at fault. This newcomer in Old
Chester was still a stranger to everybody, except to Sam Wright's Sam
and to William King. To be sure, as soon as she was settled in her
house Old Chester had called and asked her to tea, and was confused and
annoyed because its invitations were not accepted. Furthermore, she did
not return the calls. She went to church, but not very regularly, and
she never stopped to gossip in the vestibule or the church-yard. Even
with Dr. Lavendar she was remote. The first time he went to see her he
asked, with his usual directness, one or two questions: Did Mr. Pryor
live in Mercer? No; he had business that brought him there
occasionally. Where did he live? In Philadelphia. Had she any relatives
in this part of the world--except her brother? No, none; none anywhere.
Was Mr. Pryor married? Yes. Had he any family? One daughter; his wife
was dead. "And you have lost your husband?" Dr. Lavendar said, gently.
"This is a lonely life for you here, I am afraid."

But she said oh, no; not at all; she liked the quiet. Then, with faint
impatience as if she did not care to talk about her own affairs, she
added that she had always lived in the East; "but I find it very
pleasant here," she ended vaguely.

Dr. Lavendar had gone away uneasy and puzzled. Why didn't she live with
her brother? Family differences no doubt. Curious how families fall
out! "You'd think they'd be glad to hang together," the solitary old
man thought; "and they are not necessarily bad folk who quarrel. Look
at Sam and his boy. Both of 'em good as gold. But it's in the blood
there," he said to himself sighing.

Sam and his son were not bad folk. The boy had nothing bad about him;
nothing worse than an unexpectedness that had provided Old Chester with
smiles for many years. "No; he is not bad; I have seen to _that_," his
father used to say. "He's hardly been out of my sight twenty-four hours
at a time. And I put my foot down on college with all its temptations.
He's good--if he's nothing else!" And certainly Samuel Wright was good
too. Everybody in Old Chester said so. He said so himself. "I, my dear
Eliza, have nothing with which to reproach myself," he used to tell his
wife ponderously in moments of conjugal unbending. "I have done my
duty. I always do my duty; under all circumstances. I am doing my duty
now by Sam."

This was when he and his son fell out on one point or another, as they
had begun to do as soon as young Sam learned to talk; and all because
the father insisted upon furnishing the boy with his own most excellent
principles and theories, instead of letting the lad manufacture such
things for himself. Now when Sam was twenty-three the falling-out had
become chronic. No doubt it was in the blood, as Dr. Lavendar said.
Some thirty years before, Sam senior, then a slim and dreamy youth,
light-hearted and given to writing verses, had fallen out with his
father, old Benjamin Wright; fallen out so finally that in all these
years since, the two men, father and son, had not spoken one word to
each other. If anybody might have been supposed to know the cause of
that thirty-year-old feud it was Dr. Lavendar. He certainly saw the
beginning of it....

One stormy March evening Samuel Wright, then twenty-four years old,
knocked at the Rectory door; Dr. Lavendar, shielding his lamp from the
wind with one hand, opened it himself.

"Why, Sam, my boy," he said and stopped abruptly. He led the way into
his study and put the lamp down on the table. "Something is the matter?"

"Yes."

"What is it, Samuel?"

"I can't tell you, sir."

"Does your father know?"

"My father knows.... I will tell you this, Dr. Lavendar--that so help
me God, I will never speak to my father again."

The young man lifted one hand; his face was dreadful to look upon. Then
trying to speak in a natural voice he asked if he might stay at the
Rectory for that night.

Dr. Lavendar took two turns about his study, then he said, "Of course
you may, Samuel, but I shall feel it my duty to acquaint your father
with the fact."

"Just as you please, sir."

"And Sam--I hope the night will bring wisdom."

Sam was silent.

"I shall see your father in the morning and try to clear this thing up."

"Just as you please, sir. I would like to go to my room now if you have
no objection."

And that was all Dr. Lavendar got out of the son.

He lighted a lamp and silently preceded his guest up-stairs; then he
went back to his study and wrote a line to the father. He sent it out
to the Wright house and sat up until midnight waiting for an answer.
None came. "Well," said Dr. Lavendar at last trudging up to bed, "the
boy comes by his obstinacy honestly." The next morning he went early to
see Mr. Benjamin Wright. But as far as any straightening out of the
trouble went or any enlightenment as to its cause, he might as well
have stayed at home.

"Sam send you?"

"No; I came to see what I could do for you both. I take it for granted
that Sam is at fault in some way? But he is a good boy, so I am sure he
can be made to see his error."

"Did he tell you what was the trouble?"

"No; will you?"

"Let him come back and behave himself!" the older man said.

Dr. Lavendar thrust out his lower lip with a thoughtful frown. "It
would expedite things, Wright, if you could tell me a little about the
affair?"

Mr. Wright hesitated. He thrust his hand down into a blue ginger-jar
for a piece of dried orange-skin and bit at it as if to steady his
lips. "Sam can tell you if he wants to. He has perhaps informed you
that he wishes to see the world? That he thinks life here very narrow?
No? Well, I sha'n't quote him. All I shall say, is that I am doing my
duty to him. I've always done my duty to him. If he sees fit to set up
his own Ebenezer, and say he won't speak to me--I suppose he conveyed
that filial sentiment to you?--he can do so. When he gets hungry he can
speak. That's what other puppies do when they are hungry."

And that was all Dr. Lavendar got out of the father....

This was thirty-two years ago. Sain Wright may have been hungry, but he
never spoke. Instead, he worked. Old Chester seethed with curiosity for
a while--to see Benjamin Wright pass his son with a contemptuous stare,
to see Sam pass his father without a glance was very exciting. But
excitement ebbs in thirty-two years. For one thing, old Mr. Wright came
less often into town--because he could not bear to meet his son, people
said; and Samuel never took the hill road out of Old Chester for a
corresponding reason. Furthermore, it was hard to connect Samuel with
anything so irrational as a quarrel, for every year he grew in solemn
common sense. Benjamin Wright's growth was all in the way of temper; at
least so his boy Simmons, a freckled mulatto of sixty years, informed
Old Chester.

"He 'ain't got no human feelin's, 'cept for them there canaries,"
Simmons used to say in an aggrieved voice; "he'll stand and look at 'em
and chirp to 'em by the hour--an' 'en he'll turn round and swear at you
'nough to take your leg off," Simmons said, bitterly. Simmons did his
best for the canaries which he detested, cleaning out the cages and
scraping the perches and seeing that the seed-trays and bath-tubs were
always full; he did his best conscientiously, and it was hard to be
"swore at when you 'ain't done nothin'." Perhaps Benjamin Wright had
some "human feelings" for his grandson, Sam; but certainly Simmons's
opinion was justified by his treatment of his granddaughters. When by
their father's orders the little girls came up to the lonely house on
the hill, the old man used to pitch small coins to them and tell them
to go and look at the canaries,--"and then clear out. Simmons, give 'em
some cake or something! Good-by. Good-by. Clear out." Long before he
had settled into such dreary living, the son with whom he had
quarrelled had made a life of his own. His slimness and gayety had
disappeared as well as his dreaminess and versifying instincts.
"Poetry?" he had been heard to say, "why, there isn't a poem that was
ever written that I'd take five minutes out of my business to read!" It
seemed as if the quarrel had wrenched him from the grooves, physical
and spiritual, in which Nature had meant him to run and started him on
lines of hard common sense. He was intensely positive; heavy and
pompous and painfully literal; inclined to lay down the law to
everybody; richer than most of us in Old Chester, and full of solemn
responsibilities as burgess and senior warden and banker. His air of
aggressive integrity used to make the honestest of us feel as if we had
been picking pockets! Yes; a good man, as Old Chester said.

Years ago Dr. Lavendar had given up trying to reconcile the two
Wrights; years ago Old Chester's speculations languished and died out.
Once in a while some one remembered the quarrel and said, "What in the
world could it have been about?" And once in a while Samuel's own
children asked awkward questions. "Mother, what was father's row with
grandfather?" And Mrs. Wright's answer was as direct as the question.
"I don't know. He never told me."

When this reply was made to young Sam he dropped the subject. He had
but faint interest in his father, and his grandfather with whom he took
tea every Sunday night was too important a person to connect with so
trivial an affair as a quarrel.

This matter of offspring is certainly very curious. Why should the
solid Samuel Wright and his foolish, obedient Eliza have brought into
the world a being of mist and fire? A beautiful youth, who laughed or
wept or sung aloud, indifferent to all about him! Sometimes Sam senior
used to look at his son and shake his head in bewildered astonishment;
but often he was angry, and oftener still--though this he never
admitted--hurt. The boy, always impersonally amiable, never thought it
worth while to explain himself; partly because he was not interested in
his father's opinion of his conduct, and partly because he knew he
could not make himself understood.

"But who, my dear Eliza," Samuel would say to his wife--"who could
understand such a boy? Look at this last performance of his! Purchasing
pictures of _actors_! Where does he get such low tastes?--unless some
of your family were interested in such things?"

"Oh no, Samuel; no, indeed," Mrs. Wright protested nervously.

"And to use money not his own! Do you know what that is called, my dear
Eliza? It is called--"

"Oh don't, Samuel." whimpered the poor mother.

"And to think how carefully I have trained him! And all I have done for
him. I let him buy that skiff he said he wanted. Absolute waste of
money! Our old rowboat is good enough for the girls, so why isn't it
good enough for him? And I never laid a hand on him in punishment
either; not many fathers can say that."

As for the bank supplies young Sam had explained to his mother that
they had been ordered and charged, so what _was_ the matter? And Mrs.
Wright kneading her tear-soaked handkerchief into a ball, cried some
more and said:

"Oh, Sam dear, why do you act so?"

Sam looked at her attentively, wondering why her little nose always
reddened when she cried. But he waited patiently, until she finished
her rambling reproaches. It occurred to him that he would tell Mrs.
Richie all about this matter of the prints. "She will understand," he
thought.

Sam's acquaintance with Mrs. Richie had begun when she was getting
settled in her new house. Sam senior, having no desire to climb the
hill road, sent his various communications to his tenant by his son,
and afterwards Sam junior had communications of his own to make. He
fell into the habit of stopping there on Sunday afternoons, quite
oblivious of the fact that Mrs. Richie did not display any pleasure at
seeing him. After one of these calls he was apt to be late in reaching
"The Top," as his grandfather's place was called, and old Benjamin
Wright, in his brown wig and moth-eaten beaver hat, would glare at him
with melancholy dark eyes.

"Gad-a-mercy, what do you mean,--getting here at six-five! I have my
tea at six, sir; at six sharp. Either get here on time or stay away. I
don't care which. Do you hear?"

"Yes, sir," young Sam would murmur.

"Where have you been? Mooning after that female at the Stuffed Animal
House?"

"I had to leave a message, sir, about the lease."

"How long does it take to leave a message about a lease?"

"She was not down-stairs and I had to wait--"

"_I_ had to wait! That's more to the point. There, don't talk about it.
You drive me crazy with your chatter."

Then they would sit down to supper in a black silence only broken by an
occasional twitter from one of the many cages that hung about the room.
But afterwards young Sam had his reward; the library, a toby, long
before he was old enough to smoke, and his grandfather reading aloud in
a wonderful voice, deep, sonorous, flexible--Shakespeare, Massinger,
Beaumont and Fletcher. To be sure, there was nothing personal in such
reading--it was not done to give pleasure to young Sam. Every night the
old man rumbled out the stately lines, sitting by himself in this
gloomy room walled to the ceiling with books, and warmed by a soft-coal
fire that snapped and bubbled behind the iron bars of the grate.
Sometimes he would burst into angry ecstasy at the beauty of what he
read "There! What do you think of that?"

"Oh, it's splendid!"

"Hah! Much you know about it! There is about as much poetry in your
family as there is in that coal scuttle."

It was when he was eighteen that once the old man let his grandson read
_The Tempest_ with him. It was a tremendous evening to Sam. In the
first place, his grandfather swore at him with a fury that really
attracted his attention. But that night the joy of the drama suddenly
possessed him. The deed was done; the dreaming youth awoke to the
passion of art. As Benjamin Wright gradually became aware of it delight
struggled with his customary anger at anything unexpected. He longed to
share his pleasure with somebody; once he mentioned to Dr. Lavendar
that "that cub, Sam, really has something to him!" After that he took
the boy's training seriously in hand, and his artless pride concealed
itself in a severity that knew no bounds of words. When Sam confessed
his wish to write a drama in blank verse, his grandfather swore at him
eagerly and demanded every detail of what he called the "fool plot of
the thing."

"What does that female at the Stuffed Animal House say to the idea of
your writing a drama?" he asked contemptuously.

"She says I may read it to her."

"Knows as much about dramatic poetry as you do I suppose? When you
finish the first act bring it to me. I'll tell you how bad it is."

His eager scoffing betrayed him, and every Sunday night, in spite of
slaughtering criticism the boy took courage to talk of his poem. He had
no criticism from Mrs. Richie.

When he first began to call at the Stuffed Animal House she had been
coldly impatient, then uneasy then snubbing. But nothing can be so
obtuse as a boy; it never occurs to him that he is not wanted. Sam
continued to call and to tell her of his play and to look at her with
beautiful, tragic eyes, that by and by openly adored. Inevitably the
coldness to which he was so calmly impervious wore off; a boy's
innocent devotion must touch any woman no matter how self-absorbed she
may be. Mrs. Richie began to be glad to see him. As for his drama, it
was beautiful, she said.

"No," Sam told her, "it isn't--yet. You don't know. But I like to read
it to you, even if you don't." His candor made her laugh, and before
she knew it in spite of the difference in their years they were friends
As William King said, she was lonely, and Sam's devotion was at least
an interest. Besides, she really liked the boy; he amused her, and her
empty days were so devoid of amusement! "I can't read novels _all_ the
time," she complained. In this very bread-and-butter sort of interest
she had no thought of possible consequences to Sam. A certain pleasant
indolence of mind made it easy not to think of consequences at all. But
he had begun to love her--with that first passion of youth so divinely
tender and ridiculous! After a while he talked less of his play and
more of himself. He told her of his difficulties at home, how he hated
the bank, and how stupid the girls were.

"Lydia is the nicest, but she has no more imagination than a turnip.
They are very uninteresting--my family," he said meditatively. "I don't
like any of them--except mother. Mother hasn't any sense, but she's
good," Sam ended earnestly.

"Oh, but you mustn't say things like that!"

"Why not? They're true," he said with a surprised look.

"Well, but we don't always tell the truth right out," she reminded him.

"I do," said Sam, and then explained that he didn't include his
grandfather in his generalization. "Grandfather's bully; you ought to
hear him swear!"

"Oh, I don't want to!" she said horrified.

"I told him that I burned the prints up," Sam went on. "And he said,
'good riddance to bad rubbish.' That was just like grandfather! Of
course he did say that I was a d--I mean, a fool, to buy them in the
first place; and I knew I was. But having bought them, the only thing
to do was to burn them. But father!--"

Mrs. Richie's eyes crinkled with mischievous gayety. "Poor Mr. Wright!"

Sam dropped his clasped hands between his knees. "It's queer how I
always do the wrong thing. Though it never seems wrong to me. You know
father would not let me go to college for fear I'd go to the devil?" he
laughed joyously. "But I might just as well, for he thinks everything I
do in Old Chester is wrong." Then he sighed. "Sometimes I get pretty
tired of being disapproved of;--especially as I never can understand
why it is. The fact is people are not reasonable," he complained. "I
can bear anything but unreasonableness."

She nodded. "I know, I never could please my grandmother--she brought
me up. My mother and father died when I was a baby. I think grandmother
hated me; she thought everything I did was wrong. Oh, I was so
miserable! And when I was eighteen I got married--and that was a
mistake."

Sam gazed up at her in silent sympathy,

"I mean my--husband was so much older than I," she said. Then with an
evident effort to change the subject she added that one would think it
would be simple enough to be happy; "all my life I only wanted to be
happy," she said.

"You're happy now, aren't you?" he asked,

She looked down at him--he was sitting on a stool before the fire near
her feet--and laughed with a catching of the breath. "Oh, yes, yes; I'm
happy."

And Sara caught his breath too, for there were tears in her eyes.

But instantly she veered away from personalities. "What is that scar on
your wrist?"

Sam looked down at his hands clasped about his knees, and blushed
faintly. "Oh, nothing; I was very young when that happened."

"How did it happen?" she asked absently. It was often possible to start
Sam talking and then think her own thoughts without interruption.

"Why, I was about twelve, I believe," Sam said, "and Miss Ellen
Bailey--she used to teach school here, then she got married and went
out West;--she gave me a little gold image of Pasht, at least I thought
it was gold. It was one of those things you ladies wear on your
watch-chains, you know."

"Yes?" she said indolently.

"Well, I took a tremendous fancy to it. But it seems it wasn't gold, it
was brass, and somebody told me so; I think it was Miss Ellen herself.
I was so disappointed, I didn't want to live--queer! I can remember now
just how I felt; a sort of sinking, here;" Sam laid his hand on his
breast, "So I decided to throw myself out of the window. I did; but
unfortunately--"

 "You threw yourself out of the window!" she is interrupted horrified.

Sam laughed. "Oh, well, I wasn't successful: I continued to live.
Unfortunately my trousers caught on the grape trellis under the window,
and there I hung! It must have been pretty funny--though I didn't think
so at the time. First place, I tore my wrist on a nail--that's the
scar; and then father caught me and sent me to bed for being a fool; so
I didn't gain anything." His lip drooped. His feeling for his father
was a candid mixture of amusement and contempt.

"But do you always act on the spur of the moment?" she said astonished.

Sam laughed and said he supposed so. "I am a good deal of a fool," he
added simply.

"Well," she said sighing, "it's dangerous to be like that. I know,
because I--I am a good deal of a fool myself." Then again, abruptly,
she changed the subject. "What do you think? I'm going to have some
company!"

Sam frowned. "Your brother?"

"No, oh no; not--Mr. Pryor." Then she told him that Dr. Lavendar had
asked her if she would look after a little boy for him for a few weeks.

Sam was not responsive. Little boys were a great deal of trouble, he
said.

"Come now; how long since--"

Sam's limpid deer's-eyes reproached her silently.

"How shall I amuse him?" she said.

And Sam eager to serve her promised to find a pair of rabbits for the
child. "I used to like rabbits when I was young," he explained.

At last, after his hostess had swallowed many yawns, Sam reluctantly
said good night. He went bounding down the hill in the darkness, across
the fields, through the woods. In the starlight, the great world lay
dim and lovely before him--it belonged to him! He felt the joyous
buffet of the night wind upon his face, the brush of boughs against his
shoulder, the scent of young ferns, and the give of the spongy earth
under his feet; he sprang in long leaps over the grass, the tears were
wet upon his fresh cheeks, he sang aloud. But he did not know what he
sang; in his young breast, Love, like some warm living thing, stirred,
and lifted glorious wings and drove his voice throbbing and exultant to
his lips! As he came down Main Street, the church clock struck eleven.
But it might have struck twelve and he would not have been disturbed.

Standing in the doorway of the Wright house in thunderous silence the
senior warden, lamp in hand awaited his son. As Sam entered, the
silence broke into a flash of crackling and scathing contempt.

"It does not occur to you, sir, I suppose, that a lady may find your
society tiresome? It is after eleven!"

Sam smiling to himself hung up his hat. He was reflecting that he must
see about those rabbits at once.

"You will understand, sir, if you please, that while you do me the
honor to live under my roof you will return to it at night at a
respectable hour. I will not sit up for you in this way. You will be in
at ten o'clock. Do you hear?"

"Yes, sir," said Sam; and added with sudden awakening of interest, "if
you would let me have a key, father, I--"

"I will not let you have a key! I will have no boy entering my house at
midnight with a key! Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," Sam murmured falling back into his own thoughts.

Mr. Wright, still talking, stood at the foot of the stairs so that his
son could not pass him. Sam yawned, then noticed how in oratorical
denunciation his father's long upper lip curved like the beak of a bird
of prey; behind his hand he tried to arch his own lip in the same
manner. He really did not hear what was said to him; he only sighed
with relief when it was over and he was allowed to go up-stairs and
tumble sleepily into bed.

As for his long-suffering hostess, when she was alone Helena Richie
rubbed her eyes and began to wake up. "That boy never knows when to
go!" she said to herself with amused impatience. Then her mind turned
to her own affairs. This little boy, David Allison, would be in Old
Chester on Saturday; he was to stay with Dr. Lavendar for a while, and
then come to her for a week or two. But she was beginning to regret the
invitation she had sent through Dr. King. It, would be pleasant to have
the little fellow, but "I can't keep him, so why should I take him even
for a week? I might get fond of him! I'm afraid it's a mistake. I
wonder what Lloyd would think? I don't believe he really loves
children. And yet--he cared when the baby died."

She pulled a low chair up to the hearth and sat down, her elbows on her
knees, her fingers ruffling the soft locks about her forehead. "Oh, my
baby! my little, little baby!" she said in a broken whisper. The old
passion of misery swept over her; she shrank lower in her chair,
rocking herself to and fro, her fingers pressed against her eyes. It
was thirteen years ago, and yet even now in these placid days in Old
Chester, to think of that time brought the breathless smother of agony
back again--the dying child, the foolish brute who had done him to
death.... If the baby had lived he would be nearly fourteen years old
now; a big boy! She wondered whether his hair would still have been
curly? She knew in her heart that she never could have had the courage
to cut those soft curls off--and yet, boys hated curls, she thought;
and smiled proudly. He would have been so manly! If he had lived, how
different everything would have been, how incredibly different! For of
course, if he had lived she would have been happy in spite of
Frederick. And happiness was all she wanted.

She brushed the tears from her flushed cheeks, and propping her chin in
her hands stared into the fire, thinking--thinking.... Her childhood
had been passed with her father's mother, a silent woman who with
bitter expectation of success had set herself to discover in Helena
traits of the poor, dead, foolish wife who had broken her son's heart.
"Grandmamma hated me," Helena Richie reflected. "She begrudged me the
least little bit of pleasure." Yet her feeling towards the hard old
woman now was not resentment; it was only wonder. "_Why_ didn't she
like me to be happy?" she thought. It never occurred to her that her
grandmother who had guarded and distrusted her had also loved her. "Of
course I never loved her," she reminded herself, "but I wouldn't have
wanted her to be unhappy. She wanted me to be wretched. Curious!" Yet
she realized that at that time she had not desired love; she had only
desired happiness. Looking back, she pondered on her astounding
immaturity; what a child she had been to imagine that merely to get
away from that gray life with her grandmother would be happiness, and
so had married Frederick. Frederick.... She was eighteen, and so
pretty. She smiled remembering how pretty she was. And Frederick had
made such promises! She was to have every kind of happiness. Of course
she had married him. Thinking of it now, she did not in the least blame
herself. If the dungeon doors open and the prisoner catches a glimpse
of the green world of sunshine, what happens? Of course she had married
Frederick! As for love, she never thought of it; it did not enter into
the bargain--at least on her part. She married him because he wanted
her to, and because he would make her happy. And, oh, how glad her
grandmother had been! At the memory of that passionate satisfaction,
Helena clasped her hands over the two brown braids that folded like a
chaplet around her head and laughed aloud, the tears still glittering
on her lashes. Her prayers, her grandmother said, had been answered;
the girl was safe--an honest wife! "Now lettest Thou Thy servant--" the
old woman murmured, with dreadful gratitude in her voice.

Thinking of that gratitude, the tears dried upon Helena's cheeks, hot
with the firelight and with her thoughts. "Suppose she had lived just a
little longer?--just three years longer? Where would her gratitude have
been then?" Helena's face overflowed with sudden gay malice, but below
the malice was weariness. "You are happy now--aren't you?" Sam Wright
had said.... Why, yes, certainly. Frederick had "repented," as Dr. King
expressed it; she had seen to his "_repentance_"! That in itself was
something to have lived for--a searing flame of happiness. Enough one
might think to satisfy her--if she could only have forgotten the baby.
At first she had believed that she could forget him. Lloyd had told her
she would. How young she had been at twenty-one to think that any one
could forget! She smiled dryly at her childish hope and at Lloyd's
ignorance; but his tenderness had been so passionately convincing,--and
how good he had been about the baby! He had let her talk of him all she
wanted to. Of course, after a while he got a little tired of the
subject, and naturally. It was Frederick's baby! And Lloyd hated
Frederick as much as she did. How they used to talk about him in those
first days of his "repentance!"... "Have you heard anything?" "Yes;
running down-hill every day." "Is there any news?" "Yes, he'll drink
himself into his grave in six months." Ah, that was happiness
indeed!--"his _grave_, in six months!"... She flung herself back in her
chair, her hands dropping listlessly into her lap. "Oh--my little, dead
baby!"...

It was nearly midnight; the fire had burned quite out; the room had
fallen into shadows. Oh, yes, as she told Sam Wright, she was happy.
Her face fell into lines of dull indifference.

She got up, wearily, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles, as a child
does; then suddenly remembered that she had reached no conclusion about
this little boy Dr. Lavendar was interested in. Suppose she should get
fond of him and want to keep him--how would Lloyd feel about it? Would
he think the child might take her thoughts from him? But at that she
smiled; he could not be so foolish! "I'll write and ask him, anyhow. Of
course, if he objects, I wouldn't dream of it. I wonder what he will
think?"




CHAPTER IV


Mr. Lloyd Pryor thought very deeply after he read Mrs. Richie's letter.
He sat in his office and smoked and reflected. And as he reflected his
face brightened. It was a handsome face, with a mouth that smiled
easily. His heavy-lidded eyes behind astonishingly thick and curling
lashes were blue; when he lifted them the observer felt a slight shock,
for they were curiously motionless; generally, however, the heavy lids
drooped, lazily good-humored. He read Mrs. Richie's letter and tapped
the edge of his desk with strong, white fingers.

"Nothing could be better," he said.

Then suddenly he decided that he would go to Old Chester and say so in
person. "I suppose I ought to go, anyhow; I haven't been there for six
weeks. Yes; this child is just what she needs."

And that was how it came about that when he went home he pulled his
daughter Alice's pretty ear and said he was going away that night. "I
shall take the ten-o'clock train," he said.

His girl--a pleasant, flower-like young creature--scolded him
affectionately. "I wish you wouldn't take so many journeys. Promise to
be careful; I worry about you when I'm not with you to take care of
you," she said, in her sweet, anxious young voice. Her father, smiling,
promised prudence, and for the mere joy of watching her let her pack
his bag, lecturing him as she did so about his health. "Now that you
have undertaken all this extra business of the Pryor-Barr people, you
owe it to your stockholders to be careful of your health," she told
him, refusing to notice his smile when he solemnly agreed with her.

"What would happen to the Company if anything happened to you?" she
insisted, rubbing her soft cheek against his.

"Ruin, of course."

But she would not laugh. "And what would happen to _me_?"

"Ah, well, that's a different matter," he admitted, and kissed her and
bade _her_ be careful. "What would happen to me if anything happened to
you?" he teased.

She hung about him, brooding over him like a little mother dove with a
hundred questions. "Are you going anywhere except to Mercer?"

"Well, yes; possibly."

"Where?"

"Oh, to a place called Old Chester."

"Who are you going to see there?"

"Nobody you know, Gas-bag! I never heard of such curiosity!"

"Ah, but I like to think about you when you are away, and know just
where you are and what you are doing every minute of the time."

At which he laughed and kissed her, and was off to take the night train
for Mercer, which made it possible for him to catch the morning stage
for Old Chester.

There was one other passenger in the stage--a little boy with a soft
thatch of straight, yellow hair that had been chopped short around the
bowl of some domestic barber. He sat on the opposite seat and held a
bundle in his arms, peering out over the top of it with serious blue
eyes.

"Well, young man, where are you bound?" inquired Mr. Pryor. When the
child said "Old Chester," Lloyd Pryor tossed a quarter out of the
window to a hostler and bade him go into the stage-house and buy an
apple. "Here, youngster," he said, when the man handed it up to him,
"take that.--Keep the change, my man."

When it did not involve any personal inconvenience, Mr. Lloyd Pryor had
a quick and cordial kindliness which most people found very attractive.
The child, however, did not seem much impressed; he took the apple
gravely, and said, "Thank you, sir;" but he was not effusive. He looked
out of the window and hugged his bundle. Half-way to Old Chester he
began to nibble the apple, biting it very slowly, so that he might not
make a noise, and thrusting it back into his pocket after each bite
with an apprehensive glance at the gentleman in the corner. When he had
finished it and swallowed the core, he said, suddenly:

"Mister, have you any little boys and girls?"

His companion, who had quite forgotten him, looked over the top of his
newspaper with a start. "What? What did you say? Oh--boys and girls?
Yes; I have a girl." He smiled as he spoke.

"Is she as big as me?"

Lloyd Pryor put down his paper and twitched his glasses off. "About
twice as big I should think," he said kindly.

"Twice as big! And twice as old?"

"How old are you?"

"I'm seven, going on eight."

"Well, then, let's see. Alice is--she is twice and five years more as
old. What do you make of that?"

The child began to count on his fingers, and, after looking at him a
minute or two with some amusement, Mr. Pryor returned to his paper.
After a while the boy said, suddenly, "In the flood the ducks couldn't
be drowned, could they?"

But Lloyd Pryor had become interested in what he was reading. "You talk
too much, young man," he said coldly, and there was no further
conversation. The old stage jogged along in the uncertain sunshine;
sometimes Mr. Pryor smoked, once he took a nap. While he slept the
little boy looked at him furtively, but by and by he turned to the
window, absorbed in his own affairs.

As the stage pulled into Old Chester, Mr. Pryor roused himself. "Well,
my boy, here we are," he said.

The child quivered and his hands tightened on his bundle, but he said
nothing. When they drew up at the tavern, there was Danny and Goliath
and Dr. Lavendar.

"Mary gave me some gingerbread for him," Dr. Lavendar was saying to Van
Horn. "I've got it tied up in my handkerchief. Why," he interrupted
himself, screwing up his eyes and peering into the dusk of the old
coach--"why, I believe here's Mrs. Richie's brother too!"

As the horses came to a standstill, Dr. Lavendar was in quite a flutter
of eagerness. But when the very little boy clambered out, the old
minister only shook hands with him, man fashion, with no particular
display of interest.

"I'm glad to see you, David. I am Dr. Lavendar." Then he turned to say
"How do you do?" to Mr. Pryor. "Why, look here," he added in a cheerful
after-thought, "I'm going up your way; get out and come along in my
buggy. Hey! Danny! Stop your snarling. The scoundrel's temper is
getting bad in his old age. Those snails Jonas drives can't keep up
with my trotter."

"But you have one passenger already," Mr. Pryor protested. "I'll just
go on up in the stage, thank you."

"Oh," Dr. Lavendar said, "David's bundle is the biggest part of him,
isn't it, David? We'll leave it with Van Horn and get it as we come
back. Come along, Mr. Pryor. There, David, tuck yourself down in front;
Danny can tag behind." There was a moment's hesitation, and then Mr.
Pryor did as he was bid. Dr. Lavendar climbed in himself and off they
jogged, while Jonas remarked to Van Horn that the old gentleman wasn't
just the one to talk about snails, as he looked at it. But Mr. Pryor,
watching the April sunshine chased over the hills by warm cloud shadows
and bursting into joy again on the low meadows, reflected that he had
done well for himself in exchanging the dark cavern of the stage for
Dr. Lavendar's easy old buggy and the open air. They stopped a minute
on the bridge to look at the creek swollen by spring rains; it was
tugging and tearing at the branches that dipped into it, and heaping up
rocking lines of yellow froth along the banks.

"In summer that's a fine place to wade," Dr. Lavendar observed. David
glanced up at him and then down at the water in silence.

"Well, Goliath! at this rate Jonas could beat us," said Dr. Lavendar,
and smacked a rein down on the shaggy old back. David looked around at
Mr. Pryor with sudden interest.

"Is your name Goliath?" he asked.

Lloyd Pryor was greatly amused. "I hope you haven't such a thing as a
sling with you, David?" he said.

The little boy grew very red, but made no reply.

"It's my horse's name," Dr. Lavendar told him, so kindly that David did
not hear the chuckle in his voice. But the color was hot in the child's
face for many minutes. He had nothing to say for the rest of the pull
up the hill, except briefly, "'Bye," when Mr. Pryor alighted at the
green gate of a foot-path that led up to the Stuffed Animal House.

"I'm very much obliged for the lift, Dr. Lavendar," he said in his
coldly courteous voice, and turned quickly at an exclamation behind him.

"Lloyd!"

"I've brought your brother home, Mrs. Richie," said Dr. Lavendar.

Helena Richie was standing inside the hedge, her face radiant.

"Oh, Lloyd!" she said again breathlessly.

Mr. Pryor laughed and shook hands with her in somewhat formal greeting.

"Do you see my other passenger?" Dr. Lavendar called out. "He came with
your brother. David, suppose you shake hands with Mrs. Richie? I
generally take my hat off, David, when I shake hands with a lady."

"I don't, sir," said David, gently, putting a hand out across the
wheel. Mrs. Richie had not noticed the little boy; but when she took
his hand her eyes lingered on his face, and suddenly she drew him
forward and kissed him.

David bore it politely, but he looked over her head at Mr. Pryor.
"Mister, Alice is nineteen."

"_What?_" Mr. Pryor said, his heavy-lidded eyes opening with a blue
gleam; then he laughed. "Oh yes, I'd forgotten our sum in arithmetic;
yes, Alice is nineteen."

"Well," Dr. Lavendar said, "g'long, Goliath!" and the buggy went
tugging on up the hill. "David, if you'll look in my pocket you'll find
some gingerbread."

 David thrust a hand down into the capacious pocket and brought up the
gingerbread, wrapped in a red silk handkerchief. He offered it silently
to Dr. Lavendar.

"I don't believe I'll take any. Suppose you eat it, David?"

"No, thank you, sir."

Dr. Lavendar shook his head in a puzzled way.

David swallowed nervously. "Please, sir," he said, "was that lady that
gentleman's sister?"

"Yes," Dr. Lavendar told him cheerfully.

"But if she is his sister," the little boy reasoned, "why didn't she
kiss him? Janey, she--she always gave me forty kisses."

"Just forty?" Dr. Lavendar inquired, looking at the child over his
spectacles.

David was silent for a moment, then he said, earnestly: "I never
counted. But Janey, she always said 'forty kisses.'" His whole face
quivered. A very large tear gathered, trembled, then rolled over; he
held his hands together under the lap-robe and looked the other way;
then he raised one shoulder and rubbed his cheek against it.

"I guess Janey was a pretty nice sister," Dr. Lavendar said.

David's hands tightened; he looked up speechless, into the kind old
face.

"David," said Dr. Lavendar in a business-like way, "would you mind
driving for me? I want to look over my note-book."

"Driving?" said David. "Oh, _my!_" His cheeks were wet but his eyes
shone. "I don't mind, sir. I'd just as lieves as not!"




CHAPTER V


"So that's the youngster we're going to adopt, is it?" Mr. Pryor said;
then he looked at Helena through his curling brown lashes, with open
amusement. Her eyes were full of tears.

"It has been--so long," she said faintly.

"I've been very busy," he explained.

She nodded and smiled. "Anyhow, you are here now. But, oh, Maggie has a
sore throat. I don't know what we're going to have for dinner. Oh, how
glad I am you're here!" Her face was glowing, but her chin trembled.

"Why, this is very flattering, I'm sure; I thought you were so taken up
with your orphan that you wouldn't care whether I came or not."

"You know that isn't true," she said gayly, brushing her cheek against
his arm; "but isn't he a dear little fellow?--though I'm sorry his hair
isn't curly." Then her face changed. "What did he mean about Alice
being nineteen?"

"Oh, Alice? Why, he asked me in the stage if I had any children, and I
put Alice's age as a sum in mental arithmetic for him. And he asked me
if my name was Goliath."

But she had forgotten David. "Lloyd! To think you are here!"

"Yes, I'm here, and a hamper is here, too. I hope the stage will bring
it up pretty soon. I don't believe I could stand an Old Chester bill of
fare. It's queer about women; they don't care what they eat. I don't
believe you've got anything on hand but bread and jam and tea?"

"I care a great deal!" she assured him laughing, and then looked
worried. "Yes, I really have been living on bread and jam." She was
hanging on his arm, and once she kissed his hand. "Will you go
upstairs? And I'll see what we can do about food. That dreadful Maggie!
She's sick in bed."

Mr. Pryor looked annoyed. "Can't she get us something to eat? Ask her,
Nelly; I don't believe it will hurt her. Here; give her that," and he
took a crumpled bill out of his waistcoat pocket.

She did not take the money, but her eyes shone. "You are the most
generous being!" she said. Then, sobering, she thought of Maggie's
throat--hesitated--and Maggie was lost. For when she opened the woman's
door, and in her sweet, appealing voice declared that Mr. Pryor had
come unexpectedly, and was so hungry--what _should_ they do?--Maggie,
who adored her, insisted upon going down to the kitchen.

"Oh, Maggie, you oughtn't to! I oughtn't to let you. Maggie, look here:
you will be careful, won't you?"

"Now, you go right along back to your brother," the woman commanded
smiling. "I'm goin' to get into my clothes; t'won't do me a bit of
harm."

And Helena, protesting and joyous, fled to her room and to her mirror.
She flung off her cambric morning dress and ran to hunt in her wardrobe
for something pretty. With girlish hurry she pulled her hair down,
braided it afresh, and fastened the burnished plats around her head
like a wreath; then she brushed the soft locks in the nape of her neck
about her finger, and let them fall into loose curls. She dressed with
breathless haste, and when she finished, stood for a minute, her lip
between her teeth, staring at herself in the glass. And as she stared
her face fell; for as the color and sparkle faded a little, care
suddenly looked out of the leaf-brown eyes--care and something like
fright. But instantly drawing in her breath, she flung her head up as
one who prepares for battle. When she went down-stairs and found Mr.
Pryor waiting for her in the parlor, the sparkle had all come back. She
had put on a striped silk dress, faint rose and green, made very full
in the skirt; her flat lace collar was fastened by a little old pin--an
oval of pearls holding a strand of hair like floss-silk.

"Why, Nelly," her visitor said, "you look younger every time I see you."

She swept him a great courtesy, making her dress balloon out about her;
then she clasped her hands at her throat, her chin resting on the fluff
of her white undersleeves, and looked up at him with a delighted laugh.
"We are not very old, either of us; I am thirty-three and you are only
forty-six--I call that young. Oh, Lloyd, I was so low-spirited this
morning; and now--you are here!" She pirouetted about the room in a
burst of gayety.

As he watched her through half-shut eyes, the bored good humor in his
face sharpened into something keener; he caught her hand as she whirled
past, drawing her close to him with a murmured caress. She, pausing in
her joy, looked at him with sudden intentness.

"Have you heard anything of--_Frederick?_"

At which he let her go again and answered curtly: "No; nothing.
Perfectly well, the last I heard. In Paris, and enjoying himself in his
own peculiar fashion."

She drew in her breath and turned her face away; they were both silent.
Then she said, dully, that she never heard any news. "Mr. Raynor sends
me my accounts every three months, but he never says anything
about--Frederick."

"I suppose there isn't anything to say. Look here, Nelly, hasn't that
stage-driver brought the hamper yet? When are we going to have
something to eat?"

"Oh, pretty soon," she said impatiently.

They were standing at one of the long windows in the parlor; through
the tilted slats of the Venetian blinds the April sunshine fell in pale
bars across her hair and dress, across the old Turkey carpet on the
floor, across the high white wainscoting and half-way up the
landscape-papered walls. The room was full of cheerful dignity; the
heavy, old-fashioned furniture of the Stuffed Animal House was
unchanged, even the pictures, hanging rather near the ceiling, had not
been removed--steel-engravings of Landseer's dogs, and old and very
good colored prints of Audubon's birds. The mantel-piece of black
marble veined with yellow was supported by fluted columns; on it were
two blown-glass vases of decalcomania decoration, then two gilt lustres
with prisms, then two hand-screens of woolwork, and in the middle an
ormolu clock--"Iphigenia in Aulis"--under a glass shade. In the recess
at one side of the fireplace was a tall bookcase with closed doors, but
a claw-footed sofa stood out from the wall at an angle that prevented
any access to the books. "I can't read Stuffed Animal books," Helena
had long ago confided to Lloyd Pryor. "The British Classics, if you
please! and Baxter's _Saint's Rest_, and _The Lady of the Manor_." So
Mr. Pryor made a point of providing her with light literature. He
pulled a paper-covered volume out of his pocket now, and handed it to
her.

"Not improving, Nelly, I assure you; and there is a box of candy in the
hamper."

She thanked him, but put the book down. "Talk to me, Lloyd. Tell
me--everything! How are you? How is Alice? Are you very busy with
politics and things? Talk to me."

"Well," he said good naturedly, "where am I to begin? Yes: I'm very
well. And very busy. And unusually poor. Isn't that interesting?"

"Oh, Lloyd! Are you in earnest? Lloyd, you know I have a lot of money,
and of course, if you want it, it is yours."

He was lounging lazily on the sofa, and drew her down beside him,
smiling at her through his curling lashes. "It isn't as bad as that. It
is only that I have shouldered the debts of the old Pryor-Barr Co.,
Limited. You know my grandfather organized it, and my father was
president of it, and I served my 'prenticeship to business in it."

"But I thought," she said, puzzled, "you went out of it long ago,
before--before--"

"The flood? Yes, my dear, I did. I've only been a silent partner for
years--and that in a very small way. But I regret to say that the young
asses who have been running it have got into trouble. And they propose
going into bankruptcy, confound them! It is very annoying," Lloyd Pryor
ended calmly.

"But I don't understand," she said; "what have you to do with it?"

"Well, I've got to turn to and pay their damned debts."

"Pay their debts? But why? Does the law make you?"

"The law?" he said, looking at her with cold eyes. "I suppose you mean
statute law? No, my dear, it doesn't."

"Then I can't understand it," she declared laughing.

"It's nothing very abstruse. I can't have stockholders who trusted our
old firm cheated by a couple of cousins of mine. I've assumed the
liabilities--that's all."

"But you don't _have_ to, by law?" she persisted, still bewildered.

"My dear Nelly, I don't do things because of the _law_," he said dryly.
"But never mind; it is going to give me something to do. Tell me about
yourself. How are you?"

"I'm--pretty lonely, Lloyd," she said.

And he answered, sympathetically, that he had been afraid of that. "You
are too much by yourself. Of course, it's lonely for you. I am very
much pleased with this idea of the little boy."

She shook her head. "I can't take him."

"Why not?" he protested, and broke off. "Nelly, look! You are going to
have company."

He had caught sight of some one fumbling with the latch of the green
gate in the hedge. Helena opened her lips in consternation.

"Lloyd! It's old Mr. Benjamin Wright. He lives in that big house with
white columns on the top of the hill. Do you suppose he has come to
_call_?"

"Tell your woman to say you are out."

But she shook her head, annoyed and helpless. "Don't you see how tired
he is?--poor old man! Of course, he must come in. Go and help him,
Lloyd." She put her hands on his arm. "Please!" she said.

"No, thank you; I have no desire to help old gentlemen." And as she
left him and ran impetuously to open the door herself, he called after
her, "Nelly, don't have dinner held back!"

Mr. Benjamin Wright stood, panting, at the foot of the porch steps; he
could hardly lift his head to look up at the figure in the doorway.
"You--Mrs. Richie?" he gasped.

"Yes, sir," she said. "May I help you? These steps are so steep."

"No," he snarled. "Do you think I'm so decrepit that I have to have a
female help me up-stairs?" Then he began toiling up the steps. "My name
is Wright. You know my grandson? Sam? Great fool! I've come to call on
you." On the porch he drew a long breath, pulled off his mangy old
beaver hat, and, with a very courtly bow, held out his hand. "Madam,
permit me to pay my respects to you. I am your neighbor. In fact, your
only neighbor; without me,

  'Montium domina ut fores silvarumque virentium saltuumque reconditorum
  amniumque sonantum.'

Understand that? No? Good. I don't like learned females."

She took his hand in a bewildered way, glancing back over her shoulder
at Mr. Pryor, uncertain what she ought to do. Mr. Wright decided for
her.

"I know this house," he said, pushing past her into the dusky hall;
"friend of mine used to live here. Ho! This is the parlor. Well; who's
this?" He stood chewing orange-skin and blinking up at Lloyd Pryor, who
came forward reluctantly.

"My name is Pryor, sir, I--"

"Oh! Yes. _I_ know. _I_ know. The lady's brother. Here! Push that chair
out for me."

And Mr. Lloyd Pryor found himself bringing a chair forward and taking
the hat and stick from the trembling old hand. Helena had gone quickly
into the dining-room, and came back with a decanter and glass on a
little tray. She gave a distressed glance at her other guest as though
to say, "I can't help it!"

Benjamin Wright's old head in its brown wig was still shaking with
fatigue, but under the prickle of white on his shaven jowl the purplish
color came back in mottled streaks. He sipped the sherry breathlessly,
the glass trembling in his veined and shrunken hand. "Well," he
demanded, "how do you two like this God-forsaken place?"

Mr. Pryor, looking over their visitor's head at Helena, shrugged his
shoulders.

"It is very nice," she said vaguely,

"It's a narrowing place," he demurred, "very narrowing; sit down, sit
down, good people! I'll take some more sherry. My grandson," he went
on, as Helena filled his glass, "is always talking about you, madam.
He's a great jackass. I'm afraid he bothers you with his calls?"

"Oh, not at all," Helena said nervously. She sat down on the other side
of the big rosewood centre-table, glancing with worried eyes at Lloyd
Pryor.

"Move that lamp contraption," commanded Mr. Wright. "I like to see my
hostess!"

And Helena pushed the astral lamp from the centre of the table so that
his view was unobstructed.

"Is he a nuisance with his talk about his drama?"

Mr. Wright said, looking across at her with open eagerness in his
melancholy eyes.

"Why, no indeed."

"Do you think it's so very bad, considering?"

"It is not bad at all," said Mrs. Richie.

His face lighted like a child's. "Young fool! As if he could write a
drama! Well, madam, I came to ask you to do me the honor of taking
supper with me to-morrow night, and then of listening to this wonderful
production. Of course, sir, I include you. My nigger will provide you
with a fairly good bottle. Then this grandson of mine will read his
truck aloud. But we will fortify ourselves with supper first."

His artless pride in planning this distressing festivity was so
ludicrous that Lloyd Pryor's disgust changed into involuntary mirth.
But Helena was plainly nervous. "Thank you; you are very kind; but I am
afraid I must say no."

Mr. Pryor was silently retreating towards the dining-room. As for the
visitor, he only had eyes for the mistress of the house.

"Why should you say no?"

She tried to answer lightly. "Oh, I like to be quiet."

"Quiet?" cried Benjamin Wright, rapping the table with his wine-glass.
"At your age? Nonsense!" He paused, cleared his throat, and then
sonorously:

"'Can you endure the livery of a nun, For aye to be in shady cloister
mew'd, To live a barren sister all your life, Chanting faint hymns to
the cold, fruitless moon?' Give me some more sherry. Of course you must
come. No use being shy--a pretty creatur' like you! And you said you
liked the play," he added with childlike reproach.

Helena, glad to change the subject, made haste to reassure him. "I do,
I do!" she said, and for a few minutes she kept the old face beaming
with her praise of Sam and his work. Unlike his grandson, Mr. Wright
was not critical of her criticism. Nothing she could say seemed to him
excessive. He contradicted every statement, but he believed it
implicitly. Then with a sigh of satisfaction, he returned to his
invitation. Helena shook her head decidedly.

"No; thank you very much. Mr. Pryor couldn't possibly come. He is only
here over Sunday, and--" She looked towards the dining-room for
protection, but the door had been gently closed.

"Hey?" Benjamin Wright said blankly. "Well, I won't insist; I won't
insist. We'll wait till he goes. Come Monday night."

"Oh," she said, her voice fluttering, "I am sorry but I really can't."

"Why can't you?" he insisted. "Come, tell the truth! The advantage of
telling the truth, young lady, is that neither God nor the devil can
contradict you!" He laughed, eying her with high good humor.

"Oh, it's merely--" she hesitated, and he looked affronted.

"What! Some female airs about coming to an unmarried man's house?" Her
involuntary mirth disarmed him. "No? Well, I'm glad you've got some
sense. Then you'll come?"

"If I went to your house, it would seem unfriendly not to go to other
houses."

"Why shouldn't you go to other houses? Done anything you're ashamed
of?" He laughed uproariously at his own wit. "Come now; don't be
finikin and ladylike!"

"I don't make visits," she explained, the color rising angrily in her
cheeks.

"Gad-a-mercy! Why not?" he interrupted. "Do you think you're too good
for us here in Old Chester?"

"Oh, Mr. Wright!"

"Or perhaps Old Chester is too good for you?"

His face had softened wonderfully; he was looking at her with the same
quizzical delight with which he would look at one of his canaries when
he caught it, and held it struggling in his hand. "Are we too good for
you?" he jeered, "too--"

He stopped abruptly, his laugh breaking off in the middle. Then his
mouth fell slowly open in blank amazement; he leaned forward in his
chair and stared at her without a word.

"I don't care for society," she said, in a frightened way, and rose as
if to bring the visit to an end.

But Benjamin Wright sat still, slowly nodding his head. "You don't care
for society? I wonder why."

"Oh, because I am--a very quiet person," she stammered.

The dining-room door opened and Sarah came in, looked about, found the
decanter, and withdrew.

"Where is--that gentleman?" the old man demanded.

"Mr. Pryor went in to dinner," she said faintly. "Please excuse him; he
was tired."

The silence that fell between them was like a blow. ... Mr. Wright
pulled himself to his feet, and with one shaking hand on the table felt
his way around until he stood directly in front of her; he put his face
close to hers and stared into her eyes, his lower lip opening and
closing in silence. Then, without speaking, he began to grope about on
the table for his hat and stick.

"I will bid you good day," he said.

Without another word he went shuffling out into the dark hall. At the
front door he turned and looked back at her; then, slowly, shook his
head.




CHAPTER VI


Poor Maggie paid for her good nature. On Sunday morning she was so
decidedly worse that William King, to the disgust of his Martha, was
summoned from his breakfast-table.

"Women who can't look after a simple sore throat without bothering
their doctors are pretty inefficient creatures," she said coldly.

William thought of women who were so efficient that they did not
hesitate to advise their doctors; but he only agreed with proper
seriousness to Martha's declaration that it was too bad, for he would
be late for church--"unless you hurry, William!" she called after him.

Perhaps he hurried when he was with Maggie, but certainly he displayed
no haste when giving his directions to Mrs. Richie, nor even later when
just as he was about to drive off, Mr. Pryor hailed him from the garden.

"How's your patient, doctor?"

"Pretty sick. She didn't obey your sister's orders and keep in bed
yesterday. So, of course, she's worse to-day."

Mr. Pryor leaned a comfortable elbow on the green gate. "That's a nice
prospect! What am I going to have to eat?" he said, good-humoredly.

Yet behind the good humor there was annoyance. It came into William
King's mind that this fellow would not spare his sister his irritation,
and with a sudden impulse of concern for her, he said, "Well now, look
here, why don't you and Mrs. Richie come in this evening and take tea
with us? I don't know what you'll get, but come and take pot-luck."

"Thank you," Lloyd Pryor said, "but--"

"Oh, come now," interrupted the doctor, gathering up his reins; "you
good people are not neighborly enough. We'll expect you both at six."

"You are very kind, but I think--" But William would not listen. He was
in great spirits. "It will be pot-luck, and my wife will be
delighted--" then, his voice dragged--"I hope you'll come," he said
uncertainly.

Mr. Pryor began to protest, but ended with a laugh. "Well, we'll come!
Thank you very much."

"That's good," the doctor said a little less cordially, indeed, as he
drove away he looked distinctly less cordial, and once he sighed....
Now, how should he put it? "Oh, Martha, by the way, Mr. Pryor and his
sister will drop in to tea to-night. I suggested it, and--" No, that
would not do.... "Martha, it occurred to me it would be neighborly--"
No. "Confound it," William King muttered to himself, "what did I do it
for, anyhow? 'Martha, my dear, I know you like to do a kindness, so I
asked Mrs. Richie and her brother'"--that was better. "But I hate a
circumbendibus!" William said, irritably, to himself. Then he drew a
long breath, and set his lips as a man may who is about to face the
domestic cannon's mouth.

After he had driven on, screwing up his courage, it appeared that Mr.
Pryor also had a cannon to face. Helena Richie came out into the
garden, and found him sitting on a bench built round a great silver
poplar. Her face was worried. "I ought not to have made poor Maggie get
up yesterday," she said, "but I was so distressed not to have a good
dinner for you."

"Well, at least you need have no anxieties about supper; we've had an
invitation."

"An invitation! From Dr. King? Well, that's very nice in him. But, of
course--"

"I told him we would come"

"You told him we would come!"

"I couldn't help it, Nelly. People who invite you face to face are
perfect nuisances. But, really, it's no great matter--for once, And I
knew it would be a convenience for you. Besides, I wanted a good
supper."

"Well, we must make some excuse."

"There isn't any excuse to make," he explained, good-naturedly: "I
tried to find one and couldn't. We've got to go."

"_I_ sha'n't go."

He looked at her from under his heavy eyelids; then blew two smoke
wreaths slowly. "You're a queer creature."

She turned on him hotly. "Queer? Because I won't go out to supper with
you? I'd be queer if I did! I'm entirely satisfied with myself, Lloyd;
I consider that I have a perfect right to be happy in my own way. You
know I don't care a copper for what you call 'morality'! it's nothing
but cowardly conventionality. But I won't go out to supper with you."

"Please don't let us have a tirade," he said "I thought it would be
more convenient for you. That's always the way with your sex, Helena,
you do a thing to help them out, and they burst into tears."

"I haven't burst into tears," she said sullenly, "but I won't go."

"Come, now! don't be a goose. I wouldn't make a practice of accepting
their invitations; but for once, what does it matter?"

"Can't you understand?" she said passionately; "_they are kind to me!_"

She turned quickly and ran into the garden, leaving him to call after
her: "Well, you've got to go to-night, because I've accepted."

"I won't go to-night!" she flung back, her voice breaking.

Lloyd Pryor shook his head. "And she wonders I don't come oftener," he
said to himself.

So the sleepy Sunday morning passed. Mr. Pryor roamed about the garden,
looking furtively over his shoulder now and then--but Helena had
disappeared. "Sulking in her room, I suppose," he thought.

He had come at some inconvenience, to spend Sunday and talk over this
project of the child, "for I'd like to see her happier," he told
himself; and now, instead of sitting down, sensibly, to discuss things,
she flared out over this invitation to supper. Her intensity fatigued
him. "I must be getting old," he ruminated, "and Helena will always be
the age she was ten years ago. Ten? It's thirteen! How time flies; she
was twenty. How interested I was in Frederick's health in those days!"

He stretched himself out on the bench under the poplar, and lit another
cigar. "If _I'm_ willing to go, why is she so exercised? Women are all
alike--except Alice." He smiled as he thought of his girl, and
instantly the hardness in his face lifted, as a cloud shadow lifts and
leaves sunshine behind it. Then some obscure sense of fitness made him
pull himself together, and put his mind on affairs that had nothing in
common with Helena; affairs in which he could include his girl without
offending his taste.

After a while he got up and wandered about between the borders, where
the clean, bitter scent of daffodils mingled with the box. Once he
stood still, looking down over the orchard on the hill-side below him,
at the bright sheen of the river edged with leafless maples; on its
farther side were the meadows, and then the hills, smoky in their warm
haze. Over all was the pale April sky with skeins of gray cloud in the
west. He wondered what Alice was doing at this moment, and looked at
his watch. She must be just coming back from church. When he was at
home Mr. Pryor went to church himself, and watched her saying her
little prayers. This assumption of the Pryor-Barr liabilities would be
a serious check to the fortune he was building up for her; he set his
jaw angrily at the thought, but of course it couldn't be helped.
Furthermore, Alice took great pride in the almost quixotic sense of
honor that had prompted the step; a pride which gave him a secret
satisfaction, quite fatuous and childlike and entirely out of keeping
with certain other characteristics, also secret.

There was a gleam of humor in his eyes, as he said to himself that he
hoped Alice would not ask him how he had spent his Sunday morning.
Alice had such a feeling about truth, that he did not like to tell her
even little lies, little ones that she could not possibly find out. It
was the sentiment of fibbing to his girl that offended him, not the
fib; for Mr. Lloyd Pryor had no doubt that, in certain matters, Truth
must be governed by the law of benefit.

Thinking of his daughter, and smiling to himself, he lounged aimlessly
about the garden; then it occurred to him to go into the stable and
look at Helena's pony. After that he strolled over to the
carriage-house where were stored a number of cases containing stuffed
creatures--birds and chipmunks and small furry things. Some larger
animals were slung up under the beams of the loft to get them out of
the way; there was a bear in one corner, and a great crocodile, and a
shark; possessions of the previous owner of the Stuffed Animal House,
stored here by her executor, pending the final settlement of the estate.

Lloyd Pryor stood at the doorway looking in. Through a grimed and
cobwebbed window at the farther end of the room the light filtered down
among the still figures; there was the smell of dead fur and feathers,
and of some acrid preservative. One box had been broken in moving it
from the house, and a beaver had slipped from his carefully bitten
branch, and lay on the dusty boards, a burst of cotton pushing through
the splitting belly-seam. Lloyd Pryor thrust it into its case with his
stick, and started as he did so. Something moved, back in the dusk.

"It's I, Lloyd," Helena Richie said.

"You? My dear Nelly! Why are you sitting in this gloomy place?"

She smiled faintly, but her face was weary with tears. "Oh, I
just--came in here," she said vaguely.

She had said to herself when, angry and wounded, she left him in the
garden, that if she went back to the house he would find her. So she
had come here to the dust and silence of the carriage-house, and
sitting down on one of the cases had hidden her face in her hands.
Little by little anger ebbed. Just misery remained. But still she sat
there, looking absently at these dead creatures about her, or at a thin
line of sunshine falling through a heart-shaped opening in a shutter,
and moving noiselessly across the floor. A mote dipped into this stream
of light, zigzagged through it, then sank into the darkness. She
followed it with dull eyes, thinking, if she thought at all, that she
wished she did not have to sit opposite Lloyd at dinner. But, of
course, she would have to, the servants would think it strange if she
did not come to table with him. Suddenly the finger of sunshine
vanished, and all the motes were gone. Raising her head with a long
sigh she saw him in the doorway, his tall figure black against the
smiling spring landscape outside. Her heart came up into her throat
with a rush of delight. He was looking for her! Ah, this was the way it
had been in those first days, when he could not bear to let her out of
his sight!

He put his arm around her with careless friendliness and helped her to
her feet. "What a place this will be for your boy to play. He can be
cast away on a desert island and surrounded by wild animals every day
in the week." His voice was so kind that her anger of two hours ago
seemed impossible--a mistake, a misunderstanding! She tried in a
bewildered way to get back to it in her own mind, but he was so matter
of fact about the stuffed animals and the little boy and the desert
island, that she could only say vaguely, "Yes, it would be nice, but of
course I'm not going to take him."

"Well now, that's just what I want to talk to you about," he said,
watching her through his long, curling eyelashes. "That's why I came
down to Old Chester--"

"Oh, is it?"

He checked an impatient exclamation, and then went on: "When I got your
letter about this boy, I was really delighted.--Let's go out into the
sunshine; the smell of this place is very disagreeable.--I think you
would find the child company; I really hope you will take him." His
voice was sincere and she softened.

"It's kind of you, Lloyd, to urge it. But no, it won't do."

"My dear, of course it will do. You'll give him a good home, and--"

"No, no, I can't; you know I can't."

"My dear Nelly! What possible harm could you do the child?"

She drew away from him sharply. "_I_ do him any harm! I! Oh--you
wouldn't have said such a thing, once!" She pressed the back of her
hand against her lips, and Lloyd Pryor studiously looked in another
direction.

"What have I said? That you wouldn't do him any harm? Is there anything
unkind in that? Look here, Nell, you really mustn't be so unreasonable.
There is nothing a man hates so much as a fool. I am merely urging
something for your pleasure. He would be company for you; I thought him
quite an attractive youngster."

"And you wouldn't have me so much on your mind? You wouldn't feel you
had to come and see me so often!"

"Well, if you want to put it that way," he said coldly. "I'm a very
busy man. I can't get off whenever I feel like it."

"And you can't leave your beloved Alice."

He shot a blue gleam at her from under his heavy eyelids. "No; I can't."

She quivered. But he went on quietly: "I know you're lonely, Helena,
and as I can't come and see you quite so often as I used to, I want you
to take this little fellow, simply to amuse you."

She walked beside him silently. When they reached the bench under the
poplar, she sat looking into the April distance without speaking. She
was saying to herself, miserably, that she didn't want the child; she
didn't want to lessen any sense of obligation that brought him to
her;--and yet, she did not want him to come from a sense of obligation!

"You would get great fun out of him, Nelly," he insisted.

And looking up, she saw the kindness of his face and yielded. "Well,
perhaps I will; that is, if Dr. Lavendar will let me have him. I'm
afraid of Dr. Lavendar somehow."

"Good!" he said heartily; "that's a real weight off my mind." Her lip
curled again, but she said nothing. Lloyd Pryor yawned; then he asked
her whether she meant to buy the house.

"I don't know; sometimes I think there is less seclusion in the country
than there is in town." She drew down a twig, and began to pull at the
buds with aimless fingers. "I might like to come to Philadelphia and
live near you, you know," she said. The sudden malice in her eyes was
answered by the shock in his; his voice was disturbed when he spoke,
though his words were commonplace:

"It's a pleasant enough house."

Then he looked at his watch, opening the case under the shelter of his
hand--but she saw the photograph in the lid.

"Is that a good picture of Alice?" she said with an effort.

"Yes," he answered, hastily snapping the lid shut. "Helena, what are we
going to have for dinner?"

"Oh, nothing very much, I'm afraid," she told him ruefully. Then
rising, she held out her hand. "Come! We mustn't quarrel again. I don't
know why we always squabble!"

"I'm sure I don't want to," he said. "Nelly, you are prettier every
time I see you." He put a finger into one of the loose curls in the
nape of her neck, and she looked up at him, her lip trembling.

"And do you love me?"

"Of course I do!" he declared, slipping his arm around her waist. And
they walked thus between the box borders, back to the house.




CHAPTER VII


But she would not go to the Kings' to tea. "No," she said, her eyes
crinkling with fun, "I'm not going; but you've got to; you promised!
And remember, I have 'a very severe headache.'"

He laughed, with a droll look, and then explained that at home he was
never allowed to tell tarradiddles. "Alice has a perfect mania about
truth," he said ruefully; "it is sometimes very inconvenient. Yes; I'll
enlarge upon your headache, my dear. But why in thunder did I say yes
to that confounded doctor? I'd like to wring your cook's neck, Nelly!"

"You'll have a good supper," she consoled him, "and that's what you
want. They say Mrs. King is a great housekeeper. And besides, if you
stayed at home you would probably have to entertain Mr. Sam Wright."

"I'll be darned if I would," he assured her, amiably, and started off.

He had the good supper, although when the doctor broke to his wife that
company was coming, Mrs. King had protested that there was nothing in
the house to eat. "And there's one thing about me, I may not be
perfect, but I am hospitable, and--"

"Just give them what we were going to have ourselves."

"Now, William! I must say, flatly and frankly--"

"There's the office bell," murmured the doctor, sidling away and
hearing the reproachful voice lessening in the distance--"how hard I
try--nothing fit--"

The office door closed; the worst was over. There would be a good
supper--William had no misgivings on that point. Mrs. Richie would talk
to him, and he would tease her and make her laugh, and laugh himself.
The doctor did not laugh very much in his own house; domestic virtue
does not necessarily add to the gayety of life. During the afternoon
Willy tried on three different neckties, and twice put cologne on his
handkerchief. Then appeared Mr. Pryor to say that Mrs. Richie had one
of her headaches! He was so sorry, but Mrs. King knew what a bad
headache was?

"Indeed I do," Martha said, "only too well. But _I_ can't give way to
them. That's what it is to be a doctor's wife; the patients get all the
prescriptions," Martha said; and William, out of the corner of his eye,
saw that she was smiling! Well, well; evidently Mrs. Richie's defection
did not trouble her; the doctor was glad of that. "But I didn't bargain
on entertaining the brother," he said to himself crossly; and after the
manner of husbands, he left the entertaining to Martha.

Martha, however, did her duty. She thought Mr. Pryor a very agreeable
gentleman; "far more agreeable than his sister," she told William
afterwards. "I don't know why," said Martha, "but I sort of distrust
that woman. But the brother is all right; you can see that--and a very
intelligent man, too. We discussed a good many points, and I found we
agreed perfectly."

Mr. Pryor also had an opinion on that supper-table talk. He said to
himself grimly, that Nelly's bread and jam would have been better. But
probably bread and jam, followed by young Sam Wright, would have seemed
less desirable than Mrs. King's excellent supper.

It was about seven when the boy appeared at the Stuffed Animal House.
Had Mr. Pryor been at home, Helena would, no doubt, have found some way
of dismissing him; as it was, she let him stay. He was bareheaded; he
had seen a bird flapping painfully about in the road, and catching it
in gentle hands had discovered that its wing was broken, so put it
tenderly in his cap and brought it to Mrs. Richie's door.

"Poor little thing!" she cried, when he showed it to her. "I wish Mr.
Pryor would come back; he would tell us what to do for it."

"Oh, is he here?" Sam asked blankly.

"Well, not at this moment. He has gone to take tea at Dr. King's."
Sam's face lightened with relief.

"You mustn't tell anybody you saw me this evening," she charged him
gayly. "I didn't go to Mrs. King's because--I had such a very bad
headache!"

"Is it better?" he asked, so anxiously that she blushed.

"Oh, yes, yes. But before tea I--didn't want to go."

"I'm glad you didn't," he said, and forgot her in caring for the bird.
He ordered a box and some cotton batting--"and give me your
handkerchief." As he spoke, he took it from her surprised hand and tore
it into strips; then, lifting the broken wing with exquisite
gentleness, he bound it into place. She looked at the bandages
ruefully, but Sam was perfectly matter-of-course. "It would have been
better without lace," he said; "but it will do. Will you look at him
sometimes? Just your touch will cure him, I think."

Mrs. Richie laughed.

"Well, you can laugh, but it's true. When I am near you I have no pain
and no worry; nothing but happiness." He sat down beside her on the old
claw-footed sofa near the fire, for it was cool enough these spring
evenings to have a little fire. He leaned forward, resting his chin on
his fist, and staring into the blaze. Once he put his hand out and
touched her dress softly, and smiled to himself. Then abruptly, he came
out of his reverie, and spoke with joyous excitement:

"Why! I forgot what I came to tell you about--something extraordinary
has happened!"

"Oh, what?" she demanded, with a sweet eagerness that was as young as
his own.

"You could never guess," he assured her. "Tonight, at supper,
grandfather suddenly told me that he wanted me to travel for a
while--he wanted me to go away from Old Chester. I was perfectly
amazed. 'Go hunt up a publisher for your truck,' he said. He always
calls the drama my 'truck,'" Sam said snickering; "but the main thing,
evidently, was to have me get away from home. To improve my mind, I
suppose. He said all gentlemen ought to travel. To live in one place
all the time was very narrowing, he said. I told him I hadn't any
money, and he said he'd give me some. He said, 'anything to get you
away.' It wasn't very flattering, was it?"

Helena's face flashed into suspicion. "Why did he want to get you
away?" she asked coldly. There was an alarmed alertness in her voice
that made the boy look at her.

"He said he wanted me to 'be able to know cakes and ale when I saw
them,'" Sam quoted. "Isn't that just like grandfather?"

"Know cakes and ale!" she stammered, and then looked at him furtively.
She took one of the little hand-screens from the mantel, and held it so
that he could not see her face. For a minute the pleasant firelit
silence fell between them.

"Oh, listen," Sam said in a whisper; "do you hear the sap singing in
the log?" He bent forward with parted lips, intent upon the exquisite
sound--a dream of summer leaves rustling and blowing in the wind. He
turned his limpid stag's eyes to hers to feel her pleasure.

"I think," Mrs. Richie said with an effort that made her voice hard,
"that it would be an excellent thing for you to go away."

"And leave you?"

"Please don't talk that way. Your grandfather is quite right."

The boy smiled. "I suppose you really can't understand? It's part of
your loveliness that you can't. If you could, you would know that I
can't go away. I told him I was much obliged, but I couldn't leave Old
Chester."

"Oh, please! you mustn't be foolish. I don't like you when you are
foolish. Will you please remember how much older I am than you? Let's
talk of something else. Let's talk about the little boy who is coming
to visit me--his name is David."

"I would rather talk about you, and what you mean to me--beauty and
poetry and good--"

"Don't!" she said sharply,

"Beauty and poetry and goodness."

"I'm not beautiful, and I'm not--poetical."

"And so I worship you," the young man went on in a low happy voice.

"Do please be quiet! I won't be worshipped."

"I don't see how you are going to help it," he said calmly. "Mrs.
Richie, I've got my skiff; it came yesterday. Will you go out on the
river with me some afternoon?"

"Oh, I don't think I care about boating," she said.

"You don't!" he exclaimed blankly; "why, I only got it because I
thought you would go out with me!"

"I don't like the water," she said firmly.

Sam was silent; then he sighed. "I wish I'd asked you before I bought
it. Father is so unreasonable."

She looked puzzled, for the connection was not obvious.

"Father always wants things used," Sam explained. "Do you really
dislike boating?"

"You absurd boy!" she said laughing; "of course you will use it; don't
talk nonsense!"

Sam looked into the fire. "Do you ever have the feeling," he said in an
empty voice, "that nothing is worth while? I mean, if you are
disappointed in anything? A feeling as if you didn't care, at all,
about anything? I have it often. A sort of loss of appetite in my mind.
Do you know it?"

"Do I know it?" she said, and laughed so harshly that the boy drew
back. "Yes, Sam; I know it."

Sam sighed; "I hate that skiff."

And at that she laughed again, but this time with pure gayety. "Oh, you
foolish boy!" she said. Then she glanced at the clock. "Sam, I have
some letters to write to-night--will you think I am very ungracious if
I ask you to excuse me?" Sam was instantly apologetic. "I've stayed too
long! Grandfather told me I ought never to come and see you--"

"_What!_"

"He said I bothered you."

"You don't bother me," she protested; "I mean, when you talk about your
play you don't bother me. But to-night--"

"Of course," said Sam simply, and took himself off after one or two
directions about the bird.

When the front door closed behind him she went back to her seat by the
lamp, and took up her novel; but her eyes did not see the printed page.
Suddenly she threw the book down on the table. It was impossible to
read; Sam's talk had disturbed her to the point of sharp discomfort.
What did old Mr. Wright mean by "knowing cakes and ale"? And his leer
yesterday had been an offence! Why had he looked at her like that? Did
he--? Was it possible--! She wished she had spoken to Lloyd about it.
But no; it couldn't be; it was only his queer way; he was half crazy,
she believed. And it would do no good to speak to Lloyd. The one thing
she must not do, was to let any annoyance of hers annoy him. Yet below
her discomfort at Sam's sentimentality and his grandfather's strange
manner lay a deeper discomfort--a disturbance at the very centres of
her life.... _She was afraid._

She had been afraid for a long time. Even before she came to Old
Chester she was a little afraid, but in Old Chester the fear was
intensified by the consciousness of having made a mistake in coming.
Old Chester was so far away. It had seemed desirable when she first
thought of it; it was so near Mercer where business very often called
him. Besides, New York, with its throngs of people, where she had lived
for several years, had grown intolerable; in Old Chester she and Lloyd
had agreed she would have so much more privacy. But how differently
things had turned out! He did not have to come to Mercer nearly so
often as he had expected. Those visions of hers--which he had not
discouraged--of weekly or certainly fortnightly visits, had faded into
lengthening periods of three weeks, four weeks--the last one was more
than six weeks ago. "He can't leave his Alice!" she said angrily to
herself; "_I_ remember the time when he did not mind leaving her." As
for privacy, the great city, with its hurrying indifferent crowds, was
more private than this village of insistent friendliness.

She leaned back in her chair and pressed her hands over her eyes; then
sat up quickly--she must not cry! Lloyd hated red eyes. But oh, she was
afraid!--afraid of what? She had no answer; as yet her fear was without
a name. She picked up her book, hurriedly; "I'll read," she said to
herself; "I won't think!" But for a long time she did not turn a page.

However, by the time Mr. Pryor came back from the tea-party she was
outwardly tranquil, and looked up from her novel to welcome him and
laugh at his stories of his hostess. But he was instant to detect the
troubled background of her thoughts.

"You are lonely," he said, lounging on the sofa beside her; "when that
little boy comes you'll have something to amuse you;" he put a
caressing finger under her soft chin.

"I didn't have that little boy, but I had another," she said ruefully.

"Did your admirer call?"

She nodded.

"What!" he exclaimed, for her manner told him.

"He tried to be silly," she said. "Of course I snubbed him. But it
makes me horribly uncomfortable somehow."

Lloyd Pryor got up and slowly scratched a match under the mantel-piece;
he took a long time to light his cigar. Then he put his hands in his
pockets, and standing with his back to the fire regarded his boots.
Helena was staring straight ahead of her with melancholy eyes.--("Do
you ever have the feeling," the boy had said, "that nothing is worth
while?")

Lloyd Pryor looked at her furtively and coughed. "I suppose," he
said--and knocked the ashes from his cigar with elaborate care--"I
suppose your adorer is a good deal younger than you?"

She lifted her head sharply, "Well, yes;--what of it?"

"Oh, nothing; nothing at all. In the first place, the health of our
friend, Frederick, is excellent. But if this fellow were not younger;
and if apoplexy or judgment should--well; why, perhaps--"

"Perhaps what?"

"Of course, Helena, my great desire is for your happiness; but in my
position I--I am not as free as I once was to follow my own
inclinations. And if--"

"Oh, my _God!_" she said violently.

She fled out of the room with flying feet. As he followed her up the
stairs he heard her door slam viciously and the bolt slip. He came
down, his face flushed and angry. He stood a long while with his back
to the fire, staring at the lamp or the darkness of the uncurtained
window. By and by he shook his head and set his jaw in sullen
determination; then he went up-stairs and knocked softly at her door.
There was no answer. Again, a little louder; silence.

"Nelly," he said; "Nelly, let me speak to you--just a minute?"

Silence.

"Nelly!"

Silence.

"Damn!" said Lloyd Pryor, and went stealthily back to the parlor where
the fire was out and the lamp flickering into smoky darkness.

A quarter of an hour later he went up-stairs again.

"How _could_ you say it!" "I didn't mean it, Nelly; it was only a
joke." "A joke! Oh, a cruel joke, a cruel joke!" "You know I didn't
mean it. Nelly dearest, I didn't mean it!" "You do love me?" "I love
you.... Kiss me...."




CHAPTER VIII


"Well, now," said Dr. Lavendar that Sunday evening when he and David
came into the study after tea; "I suppose you'd like me to tell you a
story before you go to bed?"

"A Bible story?"

"Why, yes," Dr. Lavendar admitted, a little taken aback.

"No, sir," said David.

"You don't want a Bible story!"

The little boy shook his head.

"David," said Dr. Lavendar chuckling, "I think I like you."

David made no response; his face was as blank as an Indian's. He sat
down on a stool by the fire, and once he sighed. Danny had sniffed him,
slowly, and turned away with a bored look; it was then that he sighed.
After a while he got up and wandered about the room, his hands gripped
in front of him, his lips shut tight. Dr. Lavendar watched him out of
the tail of his eye, but neither of them spoke. Suddenly David climbed
up on a chair and looked fixedly at a picture that hung between the
windows.

"That is a Bible picture," Dr. Lavendar observed.

"Who," said David, "is the gentleman in the water?"

Dr. Lavendar blew his nose before answering. Then he said that that was
meant to be our Saviour when He was being baptized. "Up in the sky,"
Dr. Lavendar added, "is His Heavenly Father."

There was silence until David asked gently, "Is it a good photograph of
God?"

Dr. Lavendar puffed three times at his pipe; then he said, "If you
think the picture looks like a kind Father, then it is. And David, I
know some stories that are not Bible stories. Shall I tell you one?"

"If you want to, sir," David said. Dr. Lavendar began his tale rather
doubtfully; but David fixed such interested eyes upon his face that he
was flattered into enlarging upon his theme. The child listened
breathlessly, his fascinated eyes travelling once or twice to the
clock, then back to the kind old face.

"You were afraid bedtime would interrupt us?" said Dr. Lavendar, when
the tale was done. "Well, well; you are a great boy for stories, aren't
you?"

"You've talked seven minutes," said David, thoughtfully, "and you've
not moved your upper jaw once."

Dr. Lavendar gasped; then he said, meekly, "Did you like the story?"

David made no reply,

"I think," said Dr Lavendar, "I'll have another pipe."

He gave up trying to make conversation; instead, he watched the clock.
Mary had said that David must go to bed at eight, and as the clock
began to strike, Dr. Lavendar, with some eagerness, opened his lips to
say good night--and closed them. "Guess he'd rather run his own rig,"
he thought. But to his relief, at the last stroke David got up.

"It's my bedtime, sir."

"So it is! Well, it will be mine after a while. Good night, my boy!"
Dr. Lavendar blinked nervously. Young persons were generally kissed. "I
should not wish to be kissed," he said to himself, and the two shook
hands gravely.

Left alone, he felt so fatigued he had to have that other pipe. Before
he had finished it his senior warden looked in at the study door.

"Come in, Samuel," said Dr. Lavendar. "Samuel, I feel as if I had
driven ten miles on a corduroy road!"

Mr. Wright looked blank; sometimes he found it hard to follow Dr.
Lavendar.

"Sam, young persons are very exciting."

"Some of them are, I can vouch for that," his caller assured him grimly.

"Come, come! They are good for us," said Dr. Lavendar. "I wish you'd
take a pipe, Sam; it would cheer you up."

"I never smoke, sir," said Samuel reprovingly, "Well, you miss a lot of
comfort in life. I've seen a good many troubles go up in smoke."

Mr. Wright sat down heavily and sighed.

"Sam been giving you something to think about?" Dr. Lavendar asked
cheerfully.

"He always gives me something to think about. He is beyond my
comprehension! I may say candidly, that I cannot understand him. What
do you think he has done now?"

"Nothing wicked."

"I don't know how you look at it," Samuel said, "but from my point of
view, buying prints with other people's money is dangerously near
wickedness. This present matter, however, is just imbecility. I told
him one day last week to write to a man in Troy, New York, about a bill
of exchange. Well, he wrote. Oh, yes--he wrote. Back comes a letter
from the man, enclosing my young gentleman's epistle, with a line
added"--Mr. Wright fumbled in his breast pocket to find the
document--"here it is: _'Above remarks about ships not understood by
our House.'_ Will you look at that, sir, for the 'remarks about ships'?"

Dr. Lavendar took the sheet stamped "Bank of Pennsylvania," and hunted
for his spectacles. When he settled them on his nose he turned the
letter over and read in young Sam's sprawling hand:

"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, And burnt the
topless towers of Ilium?"

"What's this? I don't understand."

"Certainly you do not; no sensible person would. I showed it to my
young gentleman, and requested an explanation. 'Oh,' he said, 'when you
told me to write to Troy, it made me think of those lines.' He added
that not wishing to forget them, he wrote them down on a sheet of
paper, and that probably he used the other side of the sheet for the
Troy letter--'by mistake.' 'Mistake, sir!' I said, 'a sufficient number
of _mistakes_ will send me out of business.'"

"Samuel," said Dr. Lavendar thoughtfully, "do you recall whose face it
was that 'launched the thousand ships' on Troy?"

Samuel shook his head,

"Helen's" said Dr. Lavendar.

The senior warden frowned, then suddenly understood. "Oh, yes, I know
all about that. Another evidence of his folly!"

"I've no doubt you feel like spanking him," Dr. Lavendar said
sympathetically, "but--" he stopped short. Sam Wright was crimson.

"I! _Spank_ him? I?" He got up, opening and shutting his hands, his
face very red. The old minister looked at him in consternation.

"Sam! what on earth is the matter with you? Can't a man have his joke?"

Mr. Wright sat down. He put his hand to his mouth as though to hide
some trembling betrayal; his very ears were purple.

Dr. Lavendar apologized profusely. "I was only in fun. I'm sure you
know that I meant no disrespect to the boy. I only wanted to cheer you
up."

"I understand, sir; it is of no consequence. I--I had something else on
my mind. It is of no consequence." The color faded, and his face fell
into its usual bleak lines, but his mouth twitched. A minute afterwards
he began to speak with ponderous dignity. "This love-making business
is, of course, most mortifying to me; and also, no doubt, annoying to
Mrs. Richie. To begin with, she is eleven years older than he--he told
his mother so. He added, if you please! that he hoped to marry her."

"Well! Well!" said Dr. Lavendar.

"I told him," Mr. Wright continued, "that in my very humble opinion it
was contemptible for a man to marry and allow another man to support
his wife."

Dr. Lavendar sat up in shocked dismay. "Samuel!"

"I, sir," the banker explained, "am his father, and I support him. If
he marries, I shall have to support his wife. According to my poor
theories of propriety, a man who lets another man support his wife had
better not have one."

"But you ought not to have put it that way," Dr. Lavendar protested,

"I merely put the fact," said Samuel Wright "Furthermore, unless he
stops dangling at her apron-strings, I shall stop his allowance, I
shall so inform him."

"You surely won't do such a foolish thing!"

"Would you have me sit still? Not put up a single barrier to keep him
in bounds?"

"Samuel, do you know what barriers mean to a colt?"

Mr. Wright made no response.

"They mean something to jump over."

"Possibly," said Mr. Wright with dignity, "you are, to some extent,
correct. But a man cannot permit his only son to run wild and founder."

"Sam won't founder. But he may get a bad strain. You'd better look out.
He is his father's son."

"I do not know, sir, to what you refer."

"Oh, yes, you do," Dr. Lavendar assured him easily; "and you know that
no man can experience unforgiving anger, and not be crippled. You
didn't founder, Sam, but you gave yourself a mighty ugly wrench. Hey?
Isn't that so?"

The senior warden looked perfectly deaf; then he took up the tale again.

"If he goes on in his folly he will only be unhappy, and deservedly so.
She will have nothing to do with him. In stopping him, I shall only be
keeping him from future unhappiness."

"Samuel," said Dr. Lavendar, "I never begrudge unhappiness to the
young."

But Mr., Wright was too absorbed in his own troubles to get any comfort
out of that.

"By the way," said Dr. Lavendar, "speaking of Mrs. Richie--do you think
she'd be a good person to take this little David Allison?"

"I don't know why she shouldn't be, sir," Samuel said. "I have no fault
to find with _her_. She pays her rent and goes to church. Yes; a very
good person to take the boy off your hands."

"The rent is important," Dr. Lavendar agreed nodding; "but going to
church doesn't prove anything."

"All good people go to church," the senior warden reproved him.

"But all people who go to church are not good," Dr. Lavendar said dryly,

"I am afraid she lets Sam talk poetry to her," Sam's father broke out.
"Stuff! absolute stuff! His mother sometimes tells me of it. Why," he
ended piteously, "half the time I can't understand what it's about;
it's just bosh!"

"What you don't understand generally _is_ bosh, isn't it, Sam?" said
Dr. Lavendar thoughtfully.

"I am a man of plain common sense, sir; I don't pretend to anything but
common sense."

"I know you don't, Samuel, I know you don't," Dr. Lavendar said sadly;
and the banker, mollified, accepted the apology.

"On top of everything else, he's been writing a drama. He told his
mother so. Writing a drama, instead of writing up his ledgers!"

"Of course, he ought not to neglect his work," Dr. Lavendar agreed;
"but play-writing isn't one of the seven deadly sins."

"It is distasteful to me!" Sam senior said hotly; "most distasteful. I
told his mother to tell him so, but he goes on writing--so she says."
He sighed, and got up to put on his coat. "Well; I must go home. I
suppose he has been inflicting himself upon Mrs. Richie this evening.
If he stays late, I shall feel it my duty to speak plainly to him."

Dr. Lavendar gave him a hand with his coat. "Gently does it, Samuel,
gently does it!"

His senior warden shook his head. The sense of paternal helplessness,
felt more or less by all fathers of sons, was heavy upon him. He knew
in a bewildered way, that he did not speak the boy's language. And yet
he could not give up trying to communicate with him,--shouting at him,
so to speak, as one shouts at a foreigner when trying to make oneself
understood; for surely there must be some one word that would reach
Sam's mind, some one touch that would stir his heart! Yet when he
brought his perplexity to Dr. Lavendar, he was only told to hold his
tongue and keep his hands off. The senior warden said to himself,
miserably, that he was afraid Dr. Lavendar was getting old, "Well, I
mustn't bother you," he said; "as for Sam, I suppose he will go his own
gait! I don't know where he gets his stubbornness from. I myself am the
most reasonable man in the world. All I ever ask is to be allowed to
follow my own judgment. I asked his mother if obstinacy was a
characteristic of her family, and she assured me it was not. Certainly
Eliza herself has no will of her own. I don't think a good woman ever
has. And, as I say, I never insisted upon my own way in my
life--except, of course, in matters where I knew I was right."

"Of course," said Dr. Lavendar.




CHAPTER IX


The parting at the Stuffed Animal House the next morning was dreary
enough. The day broke heavy with threatening rain. The man, after that
brief flaming up of the embers of burned-out passion, had fallen into a
weariness which he did not attempt to conceal. But the woman--being a
woman--still tried to warm herself at the poor ashes, wasting her
breath in a sobbing endeavor to blow them into some fitful ardor. There
was a hurried breakfast, and while waiting for the stage the desultory
talk that skims over dangerous topics for fear of getting into
discussions for which there is no time. And with it the consciousness
of things that burn to be said--at least on one side.

"I'm sorry I was cross last night," she murmured once, under her breath.

And he responded courteously, "Oh, not at all."

But she pressed him. "You know it was only because I--love you so? And
to make a joke of--"

"Of course! Helena, when is that stage due? You don't suppose the
driver misunderstood, and expects to take me on at the Tavern?"

"No, he was told to call here.... Lloyd, it's just the same? You
haven't--changed?"

"Certainly not! I do hope he hasn't forgotten me? It would be extremely
inconvenient."

She turned away and stood looking out of the window into the
rain-sodden garden. Mr. Pryor lighted a cigar. After a while she spoke
again. "You'll come soon? I hope you will come soon! I'll try not to
worry you."

"Of course," he assured her; "but I trust your cook will be well next
time, my dear."

"Give me a day's notice, and I will have another cook if Maggie should
be under the weather," she answered eagerly.

"Oh, that reminds me," he said, and thrusting his hand into his pocket
he went out to the kitchen. When he came back he went at once to the
window, "I'm afraid that stage-driver has forgotten me," he said,
frowning. But she reassured him--it really wasn't time yet; then she
leaned her cheek on his shoulder.

"Do you think you can come in a fortnight, Lloyd? Come the first of
May, and everything shall be perfect. Will you?"

Laughing, he put a careless arm around her, then catching sight of the
stage pulling up at the gate, turned away so quickly that she staggered
a little.

"Ah!" he said in a relieved voice;--"beg your pardon, Nelly;--There's
the stage!"

At the door he kissed her hurriedly; but she followed him, bareheaded,
out into the mist, catching his hand as they went down the path.

"Good-by!" he called back from the hinged step of the stage. "Get
along, driver, get along! I don't want to miss my train in Mercer.
Good-by, my dear. Take care of yourself."

Helena standing at the gate, followed the stage with her eyes until the
road turned at the foot of the hill. Then she went back to the bench
under the silver poplar and sat down. She said to herself that she was
glad he was gone. His easy indifference to the annoyance to her of all
these furtive years, seemed just for a moment unbearable. He had not
showed a glimmer of sympathy for her position; he had not betrayed the
slightest impatience at Frederick's astonishing health, so contrary to
every law of probability and justice; he had not even understood how
she felt at taking the friendship of the Old Chester people on false
pretences--oh, these stupid people! That dull, self-satisfied,
commonplace doctor's wife, so secure, so comfortable, in her right to
Old Chester friendships! Of course, it was a great thing to be free
from the narrowness and prejudice in which Old Chester was absolutely
hidebound. But Lloyd might at least have understood that in spite of
her freedom the years of delay had sometimes been a little hard for
her; that it was cruel that Frederick should live, and live, and live,
putting off the moment when she should be like--other people; like that
complacent Mrs. King, even; (oh, how she detested the woman!) But Lloyd
had shown no spark of sympathy or understanding; instead he had made a
horrid joke.... Suddenly her eyes, sweet and kind and shallow as an
animal's, clouded with pain, and she burst out crying--but only for one
convulsive moment. She could not cry out here in the garden. She wished
she could get into the house, but she was sure that her eyes were red,
and the servants might notice them. She would have to wait a while.
Then she shivered, for a sharp wind blew from across the hills where in
the hollows the snow still lingered in grimy drifts, icy on the edges,
and crumbling and settling and sinking away with every day of pale
sunshine. The faint fragrance of wind-beaten daffodils reached her, and
she saw two crocuses, long gold bubbles, over in the grass. She put the
back of her hand against her cheek--it was hot still; she must wait a
little longer. Her chilly discomfort made her angry at Lloyd, as well
as hurt.... It was nearly half an hour before she felt sure that her
eyes would not betray her and she could go into the house.

Somehow or other the empty day passed; she had Lloyd's novel and the
candy. It was cold enough for a fire in the parlor, and she lay on the
sofa in front of it, and read and nibbled her candy and drowsed. Once,
lazily, she roused herself to throw some grains of incense on the hot
coals. Gradually the silence and perfume and warm sloth pushed the pain
of the last twenty-four hours into the background of her mind, where it
lay a dull ache of discontent. By and by even that ceased in physical
well-being. Her body had her in its grip, and her spirit sunk softly
into the warm and satisfied flesh. She bade Sarah bring her dinner into
the parlor; after she had eaten it she slept. When she awoke in the
late afternoon, she wished she could sleep again. All her thoughts ran
together in a lazy blur. Somewhere, back of the blur, she knew there
was unhappiness, so this was best--to lie warm and quiet by the fire,
eating candy and yawning over her book.

The next few days were given up to indolence and apathy. But at the end
of the week the soul of her stirred. A letter from Lloyd came saying
that he hoped she had the little boy with her, and this reminded her of
her forgotten promise to Dr. Lavendar.

But it was not until the next Monday afternoon that she roused herself
sufficiently to give much thought to the matter. Then she decided to go
down to the Rectory and see the child. It was another dark day of
clouds hanging low, bulging big and black with wind and ravelling into
rain along the edges. She hesitated at the discomfort of going out, but
she said to herself, dully, that she supposed she needed the walk. As
she went down the hill her cheeks began to glow with the buffet of the
wind, and her leaf-brown eyes shone crystal clear from under her soft
hair, crinkling in the mist and blowing all about her smooth forehead.
The mist had thickened to rain before she reached the Rectory, and her
cloak was soaked, which made Dr. Lavendar reproach her for her
imprudence.

"And where are your gums?" he demanded. When she confessed that she had
forgotten them, he scolded her roundly.

"I'll see that the little boy wears them when he comes to visit me,"
she said, a comforted look coming into her face.

"David? David will look after himself like a man, and keep you in
order, too. As for visiting you, my dear, you'd better visit him a
little first. I tell you--stay and have supper with us to-night?"

But she protested that she had only come for a few minutes to ask about
David. "I must go right home," she said nervously.

"No, no. You can't get away,--oh!" he broke off excitedly--"here he
is!" Dr. Lavendar's eagerness at the sight of the little boy who came
running up the garden path, his hurry to open the front door and bring
him into the study to present him to Mrs. Richie, fussing and proud and
a little tremulous, would have touched her, if she had noticed him. But
she did not notice him,--the child absorbed her. She could not leave
him. Before she knew it she found herself taking off her bonnet and
saying she would stay to tea.

"David," said Dr. Lavendar, "I've got a bone in my leg; so you run and
get me a clean pocket-handkerchief."

"Can I go up-stairs like a crocodile?" said David.

"Certainly, if it affords you the slightest personal satisfaction," Dr.
Lavendar told him; and while the little boy crawled laboriously on his
stomach all the way up-stairs, Dr. Lavendar talked about him. He said
he thought the child had been homesick just at first; he had missed his
sister Janey. "He told me 'Janey' gave him 'forty kisses' every night,"
said Dr. Lavendar; "I thought that told a story--" At that moment the
crocodile, holding a handkerchief between his teeth, came rapidly, head
foremost, down-stairs. Dr. Lavendar raised a cautioning hand;--"Mustn't
talk about him, now!"

There was a quality in that evening that was new to Helena; it was
dull, of course;--how very dull Lloyd would have found it! A childlike
old man asking questions with serious simplicity of a little boy who
was full of his own important interests and anxieties;--the feeding of
Danny, and the regretful wonder that in heaven, the little dog would
not be "let in."

"Who said he wouldn't?" Dr. Lavendar demanded, fiercely, while Danny
yawned with embarrassment at hearing his own name.

"You read about heaven in the Bible," David said, suddenly shy; "an' it
said outside were dogs;--an' some other animals I can't remember the
names of."

Dr. Lavendar explained with a twinkle that shared with his visitor the
humor of those "other animals" itemized in the Revelations. It was a
very mild humor; everything was mild at the Rectory; the very air
seemed gentle! There was no apprehension, no excitement, no antagonism;
only the placid commonplace of goodness and affection. Helena could not
remember such an evening in all her life. And the friendship between
youth and age was something she had never dreamed of. She saw David
slip from his chair at table, and run around to Dr. Lavendar's side to
reach up and whisper in his ear,--oh, if he would but put his cheek
against hers, and whisper in her ear!

The result of that secret colloquy was that David knelt down in front
of the dining-room fire, and made a slice of smoky toast for Dr.
Lavendar.

"After supper you might roast an apple for Mrs. Richie," the old
minister suggested. And David's eyes shone with silent joy. With
anxious deliberation he picked out an apple from the silver wire basket
on the sideboard; and when they went into the study, he presented a
thread to Mrs. Richie.

"Tie it to the stem," he commanded. "You're pretty slow," he added
gently, and indeed her white fingers blundered with the unaccustomed
task. When she had accomplished it, David wound the other end of the
thread round a pin stuck in the high black mantel-shelf. The apple
dropped slowly into place before the bars of the grate, and began--as
everybody who has been a child knows--to spin slowly round, and then,
slowly back again. David, squatting on the rug, watched it in silence.
But Mrs. Richie would not let him be silent. She leaned forward, eager
to touch him--his shoulders, his hair, his cheek, hot with the fire.

"Won't you come and sit in my lap?"

David glanced at Dr. Lavendar as though for advice; then got up and
climbed on to Mrs. Richie's knee, keeping an eye on the apple that
bobbed against the grate and sizzled.

"Will you make me a little visit, dear?"

David sighed. "I seem to visit a good deal; I'd like to belong
somewhere."

"Oh, you will, one of these days," Dr. Lavendar assured him.

"I'd like to belong to you," David said thoughtfully.

Dr. Lavendar beamed, and looked proudly at Mrs. Richie.

"Because," David explained, "I love Goliath."

"Oh," said Dr. Lavendar blankly.

"It's blackening on one side," David announced, and slid down from Mrs.
Richie's knee to set the apple spinning again.

"The red cheek is beginning to crack," said Dr. Lavendar, deeply
interested; "smells good, doesn't it, Mrs. Richie?"

"Have you any little boys and girls?" David asked, watching the apple.

"Come and climb on my knee and I'll tell you," she bribed him.

He came reluctantly; the apple was spinning briskly now under the
impulse of a woolly burst of pulp through the red skin.

"Have you?" he demanded.

"No, David."

Here his interest in Mrs. Richie's affairs flagged, for the apple began
to steam deliciously. Dr. Lavendar, watching her with his shrewd old
eyes, asked her one or two questions; but, absorbed in the child, she
answered quite at random. She put her cheek against his hair, and
whispered, softly: "Turn round, and I'll give you forty kisses."
Instantly David moved his head away. The snub was so complete that she
looked over at Dr. Lavendar, hoping he had not seen it. "I once knew a
little baby," she said, trying to hide her embarrassment, "that had
curly hair the color of yours."

"It has begun to drip," said David briefly. "Does Alice live at your
house?"

"_Alice!_"

"The gentleman--your brother--said Alice was nineteen. I thought maybe
she lived at your house."

"No, dear. Look at the apple!"

David looked. "Why not?"

"Why, she lives at her own house, dear little boy."

"Does she pay you a visit?"

"No. David, I think the apple is done. Why didn't you roast one for Dr.
Lavendar?"

"I had to do it for you because you're company. Why doesn't she pay you
a visit?"

"Because--oh, for a good many reasons. I'm afraid must go home now."

The child slipped from her knee with unflattering haste. "You've got to
eat your apple first," he said, and ran to get a saucer and spoon. With
great care the thread was broken and the apple secured. Then David sat
calmly down in front of her to watch her eat it; but after the first
two or three mouthfuls, Dr. Lavendar had pity on her, and the smoky
skin and the hard core were banished to the dining-room. While the
little boy was carrying them off, she said eagerly, that she wanted him.

"You'll let me have him?"

"I'm going to keep him for a while."

"Oh, do give him to me!" she urged.

"Not yet. You come here and see him. I won't make ye eat a roast apple
every time." He smiled at her as he spoke, for she was clasping her
hands, and her eyes were eager and shining.

"I must have him! I _must_!"

"No use teasing--here comes Dr. King. He'll tell you I'm an obstinate
old man. Hey, Willy, my boy! Ain't I an obstinate old man?"

"You are," said William. He had walked in unannounced, in good Old
Chester fashion, and stood smiling in the doorway.

"Oh, plead my cause!" she said, turning to him.

"Of course I will. But it isn't much use; we are all under his heel."

They were standing, for Mrs. Richie had said she must go, when Dr.
Lavendar had an idea: "Would you mind seeing her home, Willy?" he said,
in an aside. "I was going to send Mary, but this is a chance to get
better acquainted with her--if you're not too tired."

"Of course I'm not too tired," the doctor said eagerly, and went back
to the fireside where Mrs. Richie had dropped on her knees before
David. "I'm going to walk home with you," he announced. She looked up
with a quick protest, but he only laughed. "If we let you go alone,
your brother will think we have no manners in Old Chester. Besides I
need the walk." And when she had fastened her cloak, and kissed David
good night, and thrown Dr. Lavendar an appealing look, William gave her
his hand down the two steps from the front door, and then made her take
his arm. Dr. Lavendar had provided a lantern, and as its shifting beam
ran back and forth across the path the doctor bade her be careful where
she stepped. "These flag-stones are abominably rough," he said; "I
never noticed it before. And one can't see in the dark."

But what with the lantern and the stars, there was light enough for
William King to see the stray curl that blew across her
forehead--brown, was it? And yet, William remembered that in daylight
her hair was too bright to be called brown. He was solicitous lest he
was making her walk too fast. "I don't want your brother to think we
don't take care of you in Old Chester," he said; and in the starlight
he could see that her face flushed a little. Then he repeated some Old
Chester gossip, which amused her very much--and held his breath to
listen to the delicious gayety of her laugh.

"There ought to be a better path for you up the hill," he said; "I must
speak to Sam Wright about it." And carefully he flung the noiseless
zigzag of light back and forth in front of her, and told some more
stories that he might hear that laugh again.

When he left her at her own door she said with a sudden impetuous
timidity, "Dr. King, _please_ make Dr. Lavendar give me the little boy!"

"I will!" he said, and laughed at her radiant face.

It seemed to the doctor as he went down the hill, that he had had a
most delightful evening. He could not recollect what they had talked
about, but he knew that they had agreed on every point. "A very
intelligent lady," he said to himself.

"William," said Martha, looking up from her mending as he entered the
sitting-room, "did you remember to tell Davis that the kitchen sink
leaks?"

"Oh!" said the doctor blankly; "well--I'll tell him in the morning."
Then, smiling vaguely, he dropped down into his shabby old easy-chair,
and watched Martha's darning-needle plod in and out. "Martha," he said
after a while, "what shade would you call your hair if it was--well,
kind of brighter?"

"_What?_" said Martha, looking at him over her spectacles; she put up
her hard capable hand and touched her hair softly, as if she had
forgotten it. "My hair used to be a real chestnut. Do you mean
chestnut?"

"I guess I do. It's a pretty color."

Martha looked at him with a queer shyness in her married eyes, then
tossed her head a little and thrust her darning-needle into the gray
stocking with a jaunty air. "That's what you used to say," she said.
After a while, noticing his tired lounge in the old chair, she said
kindly, "Why did you stay so long at Dr. Lavendar's, Willy? You look
tired. Do go to bed."

"Oh," William explained, "I didn't stay very long; he asked me to see
Mrs. Richie home. She had taken tea with him."

Martha's face suddenly hardened. "Oh," she said coldly. Then, after a
short silence: "Mrs. Richie's hair is too untidy for my taste."

When Dr. Lavendar went back into the study he found David curled up in
an arm-chair in profound meditation.

"What are you thinking about so hard?" Dr. Lavendar said.

"Yesterday. After church."

"Thinking about yesterday?" Dr. Lavendar repeated puzzled. David
offered no explanation, and the old minister searched his memory for
any happening of interest after church ... but found none. He had come
out of the vestry and in the church David had joined him, following him
down the aisle to the door and waiting close behind him through the
usual Sunday greetings: "Morning, Sam!" "Good morning, Dr. Lavendar."
"How are you, Ezra? How many drops of water make the mighty ocean,
Ezra?" "The amount of water might be estimated in tons, Dr. Lavendar,
but I doubt whether the number of minims could be compu--" "Hullo!
there's Horace; how d'ye do, Horace? How's Jim this morning?"--and so
on; the old friendly greetings of all the friendly years.... Surely
nothing in them to make the child thoughtful?

Suddenly David got up and came and stood beside him.

"What is your name?"

"N. or M.," Dr. Lavendar replied.

"What, sir?" said David, in a troubled voice; and Dr. Lavendar was
abashed.

"My name is Edward Lavendar, sir. Why do you want to know?"

"Because, yesterday everybody said 'Dr. Lavendar.' I didn't think
Doctor could be your front name. All the other people had front names."

"Well, I have a front name, David, but you see, there's nobody in Old
Chester to call me by it." He sighed slightly, and then he smiled. "The
last one who called me by my front name is dead, David. John was his
name. I called him Johnny."

David looked at him with wide eyes, silent. Dr. Lavendar took his pipe
out of his mouth, and stared for a minute at the fire.

"I should think," David said sadly, "God would be discouraged to have
_everybody_ He makes, die."

At that Dr. Lavendar came quickly out of his reverie. "Oh, it's better
that way," he said, cheerfully. "One of these days I'll tell you why.
What do you say to a game of dominoes?"

David squeaked with pleasure. Then he paused to say: "Is that lady,
Alice's aunt?" and Dr. Lavendar had to recall who "Alice" was before he
could say "yes." Then a little table was pulled up, and the dominoes
were poured out upon it, with a joyful clatter. For the next half hour
they were both very happy. In the midst of it David remarked,
thoughtfully: "There are two kinds of aunts. One is bugs. She is the
other kind." And after Dr. Lavendar had stopped chuckling they
discussed the relative merits of standing the dominoes upright, or
putting them on their sides, and Dr. Lavendar built his fence in
alternate positions, which was very effective. It was so exciting that
bedtime was a real trial to them both. At the last stroke of eight
David clenched both hands.

"Perhaps the clock is fast?"

Dr. Lavendar compared it with his watch, and shook his head
sympathetically. "No; just right. Tumble 'em back into the box. Good
night."

"Good night, sir," David said, and stood hesitating. The color came and
went in his face, and he twisted the top button of his jacket with
little nervous fingers.

"Good night," Dr. Lavendar repeated, significantly.

But still David hesitated. Then he came and stood close beside Dr.
Lavendar. "Lookee here," he said tremulously, "_I'll_ call you Edward.
I'd just as lieves as not."

There was a full minute's silence. Then Dr. Lavendar said, "I thank
you, David. That is a kind thought. But no; I like Dr. Lavendar as a
name. So many boys and girls have called me that, that I'm fond of it.
And I like to have you use it. But I'm much obliged to you, David. Now
I guess we'll say good night. Hey?"

The child's face cleared; he drew a deep breath as if he had
accomplished something. Then he said good night, and trudged off to
bed. Dr. Lavendar looked after him tenderly.




CHAPTER X


April brightened into May before David came to live at the Stuffed
Animal House. Dr. Lavendar had his own reasons for the delay, which he
did not share with anybody, but they resulted in a sort of intimacy,
which Helena, eager for the child, could not refuse.

"He needs clothes," Dr. Lavendar put her off; "I can't let him visit
you till Mary gets his wardrobe to rights."

"Oh, let me get his little things."

--Now, who would have supposed that Dr. Lavendar was so deep! To begin
with, he was a man, and an old man, at that; and with never a chick or
a child of his own. How did he know what a child's little clothes are
to a woman?--"Well," he said, "suppose you make him a set of
night-drawers."

Helena's face fell. "I don't know how to sew. I thought I could buy
what he needed."

"No; he has enough bought things, but if you will be so kind, my dear,
as to make--"

"I will!" she promised, eagerly, and Dr. Lavendar said he would bring
David up to be measured.

Her sewing was a pathetic blunder of haste and happiness; it brought
Dr. Lavendar and David up to the Stuffed Animal House very often, "to
try on." David's coming was always a delight, but the old man fretted
her, somehow;--he was so good. She said so to William King, who laughed
at the humor of a good woman's objection to goodness. The incongruity
of such a remark from her lips was as amusing as a child's innocently
base comment.

[Illustration: Her sewing was a pathetic blunder of haste and
happiness. _Awakening of Helena Richie_]

William had fallen into the habit of drawing up and calling out "good
morning" whenever he and his mare passed her gate. Mrs. Richie's lack
of common sense seemed to delight the sensible William. When he was
with her, he was in the frame of mind that finds everything a joke. It
was a demand for the eternal child in her, to which, involuntarily, she
responded. She laughed at him, and even teased him about his shabby
buggy with a gayety that made him tingle with pleasure. She used to
wonder at herself as she did it--conscious and uneasy, and resolving
every time that she would not do it again. She had none of this
lightness with any one else. With Dr. Lavendar she was reserved to the
point of coldness, and with young Sam Wright, matter-of-fact to a
discouraging degree.

But she did not see Sam often in the next month. It had occurred to Sam
senior that Adam Smith might cure the boy's taste for 'bosh'; so, by
his father's orders, his Sunday afternoons were devoted to _The Wealth
of Nations_. As for his evenings, his grandfather took possession of
them. Benjamin Wright's proposal that the young man should go away for
a while, had fallen flat; Sam replying, frankly, that he did not care
to leave Old Chester. As Mr. Wright was not prepared to give any
reasons for urging his plan, he dropped it; and instead on Sunday
nights detained his grandson to listen to this or that drama or poem
until the boy could hardly hide his impatience. When he was free and
could hurry down the hill road, as often as not the lights were out in
the Stuffed Animal House, and he could only linger at the gate and
wonder which was her window. But when he did find her, he had an
evening of passionate delight, even though occasionally she snubbed
him, lazily.

"Do you go out in your skiff much?" she asked once; and when he
answered, "No; I filled it with stones and sunk it, because you didn't
like rowing," she spoke to him with a sharpness that surprised herself,
though it produced no effect whatever on Sam.

"You are a very foolish boy! What difference does it make whether I
like rowing or not?"

Sam smiled placidly, and said he had had hard work to get stones enough
to fill the skiff. "I put them in," he explained, "and then I sculled
out in mid-stream, and scuttled her. I had to swim ashore. It was
night, and the water was like flowing ink, and there was a star in
every ripple," he ended dreamily.

"Sam," she said, "if you don't stop being so foolish, I won't let you
come and see me."

"Am I a nuisance about my drama?" he asked with alarm.

"Not about your drama," she said significantly; but Sam was too happy
to draw any unflattering deductions.

When old Mr. Wright discovered that his stratagem of keeping his
grandson late Sunday evenings had not checked the boy's acquaintance
with Mrs. Richie, he tried a more direct method. "You young ass! Can't
you keep away from that house? She thinks you are a nuisance!"

"No, grandfather," Sam assured him earnestly, "she doesn't. I asked
her, and she said--"

"Asked her?" roared the old man, "Do you expect a female to tell the
truth?" And then he swore steadily for a minute. "I'll have to see
Lavendar," he said despairingly.

But Mr. Wright's cause was aided by some one stronger than Dr.
Lavendar. Helena's attention was so fixed on the visitor who was coming
to the Stuffed Animal House that Sam's conversation ceased to amuse
her. Those little night-drawers on which she pricked her fingers
interested her a thousand times more than did his dramatic visions.
They interested her so much that sometimes she could almost forget that
Lloyd Pryor's visit was delayed. For though it was the first of May, he
had not come again. "I am so busy," he wrote; "it is impossible for me
to get away. I suppose David will have his sling all ready for me when
I do arrive?"

Helena was sitting on the porch with her clumsy needlework when Sarah
brought her the letter, and after she had read it, she tore it up
angrily. "He was in Mercer a week ago; I know he was, because there is
always that directors' meeting on the last Thursday in April, so he
must have been there. And he wouldn't come!" Down in the orchard the
apple-trees were in blossom, and when the wind stirred, the petals fell
in sudden warm white showers; across the sky, from west to east, was a
path of mackerel clouds. It was a pastel of spring--a dappled sky,
apple blossoms, clover, and the river's sheen of gray-blue. All about
her were the beginnings of summer--the first exquisite green of young
leaves; oaks, still white and crumpled from their furry sheaths;
horse-chestnuts, each leaf drooping from its stem like a hand bending
at the wrist; a thin flicker of elm buds, still distrustful of the sun.
Later, this delicate dance of foliage would thicken so that the house
would be in shadow, and the grass under the locusts on either side of
the front door fade into thin, mossy growth. But just now it was
overflowing with May sunshine. "Oh, he _would_ enjoy it if he would
only come," she thought. Well, anyhow, David would like it; and she
began to fell her seam with painstaking unaccustomed fingers.

The child was to come that day. Half a dozen times she dropped her work
to run to the gate, and shielding her eyes with her hand looked down
the road to Old Chester, but there was no sign of the jogging hood of
the buggy. Had anything happened? Was he sick? _Had Dr. Lavendar
changed his mind?_ Her heart stood still at that. She debated whether
or not she should go down to the Rectory and find out what the delay
meant? Then she called to one of the servants who was crossing the
hall, that she wondered why the little boy who was to visit her, did
not come. Her face cleared at the reminder that the child went to
school in the morning.

"Why, of course! I suppose he will have to go every morning?" she added
ruefully.

"My," Maggie said smiling, "you're wan that ought to have six!"

Mrs. Richie smiled, too. Then she said to herself that she wouldn't let
him go to school every day; she was sure he was not strong enough. She
ventured something like this to Dr. Lavendar when, about four o'clock,
Goliath and the buggy finally appeared.

"Strong enough?" said Dr. Lavendar. "He's strong enough to study a
great deal harder than he does, the little rascal! I'm afraid Rose
Knight will spoil him; she's almost as bad as Ellen Bailey. You didn't
know our Ellen, did ye? No; she'd married Spangler and gone out West
before you came to us. Ah, a dear woman, but wickedly unselfish. Rose
Knight took the school when Spangler took Ellen." Then he added one or
two straight directions: Every school-day David was to come to the
Rectory for his dinner, and to Collect Class on Saturdays. "You will
have to keep him at his catechism," said Dr. Lavendar; "he is weak on
the long answers."

"Oh!" Helena said, rather startled; "you don't want me to teach
him--things like that, do you?"

"Things like what?"

"The catechism, and--to pray, and--"

Dr. Lavendar smiled. "You can teach folks to say their prayers, my
dear, but nobody can teach them to pray. Only life does that. But
David's been taught his prayers; you just let him say 'em at your knee,
that's all."

David, dismissed to the garden while his elders talked, had discovered
the rabbit-hutch, and could hardly tear himself away from it to say
good-by. But when Dr. Lavendar called out that he was going, the little
boy's heart misgave him. He came and stood by the step of the buggy,
and picked with nervous fingers at the dry mud on the wheel--for Dr.
Lavendar's buggy was not as clean as it should have been.

"Well, David?" Dr. Lavendar said cheerfully. The child with his chin
sunk on his breast said something. "What?" said Dr. Lavendar.

David mumbled a word or two in a voice that seemed to come from his
stomach; it sounded like, "Like you best." But Dr. Lavendar did not
hear it, and David ran swiftly back to the rabbits. There Helena found
him, gazing through two large tears at the opal-eyed pair behind the
wooden bars. Their white shell-like ears wavered at her step, and they
paused in their nibbling; then went on again with timid, jewel-like
glances in her direction.

Helena, at the sight of those two tears, knelt down beside the little
boy, eager to be sympathetic. But he did not notice her, and by and by
the tears dried up. After she had tried to make him talk;--of Dr.
Lavendar, of school, of his old home;--without drawing anything more
from him than "yes ma'am," or "no ma'am," she gave it up and waited
until he should be tired of the rabbits. The sun was warm, the smell of
the crushed dock leaves heavy in the sheltered corner behind the barn;
it was so silent that they could hear the nibbling of the two
prisoners, who kept glancing at them with apprehensive eyes that
gleamed with pale red fires. David sighed with joy.

"What are their names?" he said at last in a low voice.

"They haven't any names; you can name them if you like."

"I shall call them Mr. and Mrs. Smith," he said with decision. And then
fell silent again.

"You came to Old Chester in the stage with Mr. Pryor," she said after a
while; "he told me you were a very nice little boy."

"How did he know?" demanded David.

"He is very nice himself," Helena said smiling.

David meditated. "Is that gentleman my enemy?"

"Of course not! he isn't anybody's enemy," she told him reprovingly.

David turned silently to his rabbits.

"Why did you think he was your enemy?" she persisted.

"I only just hoped he wasn't; I don't want to love him."

"What!"

"If he was my enemy, I'd have to love him, you know," David explained
patiently.

Helena in her confused astonishment knew not what to reply. She
stammered something about that being wrong; of course David must love
Mr. Pryor!

"They ought to have fresh water," David interrupted thoughtfully; and
Helena had to reach into the hutch for a battered tin pan.

She watched him run to the stable and come back, holding the pan in
both hands and walking very slowly under the mottled branches of the
button-woods; at every step the water splashed over the rusty brim, and
the sunshine, catching and flickering in it, was reflected in a
rippling gleam across his serious face.

All that afternoon he permitted her to follow him about. He was gently
polite when she spoke to him but he hardly noticed her until, as they
went down through the orchard, his little hand tightened suddenly on
hers, and he pressed against her skirts.

"Are there snakes in this grass?" he asked timorously. "A snake," he
added, looking up at her confidingly, "is the only insect I am afraid
of."

She stooped down and cuddled him reassuringly, and he rewarded her by
snuggling up against her like a friendly puppy. She was very happy. As
it grew dusk and cool, and all the sky was yellow behind the black line
of the hills, she lured him into the house and watched him eat his
supper, forgetting to eat her own.

When she took him up-stairs to bed, Dr. Lavendar's directions came back
to her with a slight shock--she must hear him say his prayers. How was
she to introduce the subject? The embarrassed color burned in her
cheeks as she helped him undress and tried to decide on the proper
moment to speak of--prayers. But David took the matter into his own
hands. As he stepped into his little night-clothes, buttoning them
around his waist with slow precision, he said:

"Now I'll say my prayers. Sit by the window; then I can see that star
when I open my eyes. It's hard to keep your eyes shut so long, ain't
it?" he added confidentially.

Helena sat down, her heart fluttering in her throat. David knelt beside
her, shutting first one eye and then the other. "'Now I lay me--"' he
began in a businesslike voice. At the Amen he opened his eyes and drew
a long breath. Helena moved slightly and he shut his eyes again; "I've
not done yet.

"'Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me, Bless Thy little lamb to-night--'"

He paused and looked up at Mrs. Richie. "Can I say colt?" Before she
could reply he decided for himself. "No; colts don't have shepherds; it
has to be lamb."

Her silent laughter did not disturb him. He finished with another
satisfied Amen. Helena put her arms about him to raise him from the
floor, but he looked up, aggrieved.

"Why, I've not done yet," he reproached her "You've forgot the
blessings."

"The blessings?" she asked timidly.

"Why, of course," said David, trying to be patient; "but I'm most
done," he encouraged her. "God bless everybody--Dr. Lavendar taught me
the new blessings," he interrupted himself, his eyes snapping open,
"because my old blessings were all gone to heaven. God bless everybody;
Dr. Lavendar, an' Mary, an' Goliath--" Helena laughed. "He said I
could," David defended himself doggedly--"an' Danny, an' Dr. King, an'
Mrs. Richie. And make me a good boy. For Jesus' sake Amen. Now I'm
done!" cried David, scrambling happily to his feet.

"And--Mr. Pryor, too? Won't you ask God to bless Mr. Pryor?"

"But," said David, frowning, "I'm done."

"After this, though, it would be nice--"

"Well," David answered coldly, "God can bless him if He wants to. But
He needn't do it just to please me."




CHAPTER XI


When Dr. Lavendar left David at the Stuffed Animal House, he didn't
feel, somehow, like going home; the Rectory would be so quiet. It
occurred to him that, as he was on the hill, he might as well look in
on Benjamin Wright.

He found the old gentleman in his beaver hat and green serge
dressing-gown, tottering up and down the weedy driveway in front of his
veranda, and repeating poetry.

"O great corrector of enormous times, Shaker of o'er rank states, thou
grand decider Of dusty and old titles, that healest with blood--Hello!
'Bout time you came to see me. I suppose you want to get some money out
of me for something?"

"Of course; I always want money out of somebody for something. There's
a leak in the vestry roof. How are you?"

"How do you suppose I am? At eighty-one, with one foot in the grave!
Ready to jump over a five-barred gate?"

"I'm seventy-two," said Dr. Lavendar, "and I played marbles yesterday."

"Come in and have a smoke," the older man said, hobbling on to the
veranda, where four great white columns, blistered and flaked by time,
supported a roof that darkened the shuttered windows of the second
story.

He led the way indoors to the dining-room, growling that his nigger,
Simmons, was a fool. "He _says_ he closes the shutters to keep the
flies out; makes the room as dark as a pocket, and there ain't any
flies this time of year, anyhow. He does it to stop my birds from
singing; he can't fool me! To stop my birds!" He went over to one of
the windows and pushed the shutters open with a clatter; instantly a
twitter ran from cage to cage, and the fierce melancholy of his old
face softened. "Hear that?" he said proudly.

"I ought to come oftener," Dr. Lavendar reproached himself; "he's
lonely."

And, indeed, the room with its mammoth sideboard black with age and its
solitary chair at one end of the long table, was lonely enough. On the
walls, papered a generation ago with a drab paper sprinkled over with
occasional pale gilt medallions, were some time-stained engravings:
"The Destruction of Nineveh"; "The Trial of Effie Deans"; "The
Death-bed of Washington." A gloomy room at best; now, with the shutters
of one window still bowed, and the faint twitter of the canaries, and
that one chair at the head of the table, it was very melancholy.

"Sit down!" said Benjamin Wright. Still in his moth-eaten high hat, he
shuffled about to fetch from the sideboard a fat decanter with a silver
chain and label around its neck, and two tumblers.

"No," said Dr. Lavendar; "I'm obliged to you."

"What, temperance?" snarled the other.

"Well, I hope so," Dr. Lavendar said, "but not a teetotaler, if that's
what you mean. Only I don't happen to want any whiskey at five o'clock
in the afternoon."

At which his host swore softly, and lifting the decanter poured out two
good fingers.

"Mr. Wright," said Dr. Lavendar, "I will be obliged if you will not
swear in my presence."

"You needn't talk to me," cried Benjamin Wright, "I despise this damned
profanity there is about; besides, I am always scrupulously particular
in my language before females and parsons. Well;--I wanted to see you,
because that jack-donkey, Sam, my grandson, is causing me some anxiety."

"Why, Sam is a good boy," Dr. Lavendar protested.

"Too good. I like a boy to be human at twenty-three. He doesn't know
the wickedness of the world."

"Thank God," said Dr. Lavendar.

"Dominie, ignorance ain't virtue."

"No; but it's a fair substitute. I wouldn't want one of my boys to be
able to pass an examination on wrong-doing."

"But you want him to recognize it when he sees it, don't you?"

"If he knows goodness, you can trust him to recognize the other thing.
Teach 'em goodness. Badness will label itself."

"Doesn't follow," Benjamin Wright said. "But you're a parson; parsons
know about as much as females--good females. Look here! I have reasons
for saying that the boy ought to get out of Old Chester. I want your
assistance."

"Get out of Old Chester!--to see how wicked the world is?"

Mr. Wright shook his head. "No; he could see that here--only the puppy
hasn't got his eyes open yet. A little knocking about the world, such
as any boy ought to have, will open 'em. Living in Old Chester is
narrowing; very narrowing. Besides, he's got--well, he's got some truck
he's written. It isn't entirely bad, Lavendar, and he might as well try
to get it published, or, maybe, produced in some theatre. So let him go
and hunt up a publisher or a manager. Now, very likely, his--his
_mother_ won't approve. I want you to urge--her, to let him go."

"Travelling might be good for Sam," said Dr. Lavendar; "I admit
that--though not to learn the wickedness of the world. But I don't know
that it would be worth while to take a journey just on account of his
writing. He could put it in an envelope and mail it to a publisher;
he'd get it back just as soon," Dr. Lavendar said chuckling. "Look
here, what's the matter? I can see you're concerned about the boy."

"Concerned?" cried Benjamin Wright, pounding the table with his tumbler
and chewing orange-skin rapidly. "I'm damned concerned."

"I will ask, sir, that you will not swear in my presence."

Mr. Wright coughed. "I will endeavor to respect the cloth," he said
stiffly.

"If you will respect yourself, it will be sufficient. As for Sam, if
there's anything wrong, his father ought to know it."

"Well then, tell his--_mother_, that there is something wrong."

"What?"

Mr. Wright got up, and clasping his hands behind him, shuffled about
the room. Instantly one of the canaries began to sing. "Stop that!" he
said. The bird quivered with shrill music. "Stop! You! ... There's no
such thing as conversation, with these creatures about," he added in a
proud aside. "Did you ever hear such singing?"

Dr. Lavendar, unable to make himself heard, shook his head.

"If you don't stop," said Mr. Wright, "I'll wring your neck!" and as
the bird continued, he opened the door. "Simmons! You freckled nigger!
Bring me the apron." Then he stamped, and cursed the slowness of
niggers. Simmons, however, came as fast as his old legs could carry
him, bearing a blue gingham apron. This, thrown over the cage, produced
silence.

"There! Now, perhaps, you'll hold your tongue? ... Lavendar, I prefer
not to say what is wrong. Merely tell Sam's--_mother_, that he had
better go. If she is too mean to provide the money, I will."

"Sam's father is not too mean to do anything for Sam's welfare; but of
course, a general accusation is not convincing; should not be
convincing--Why!" said Dr. Lavendar, interrupting himself, "bless my
heart! I believe you mean that the boy is making sheep's-eyes at your
neighbor here on the hill? Is that it? Why, Benjamin, the best way to
cure that is to pay no attention to it."

"Sir," said Mr. Wright, sinking into his chair breathlessly, and
tapping the table with one veined old finger; "when I was a young man,
it was not thought proper to introduce the name of a female into a
discussion between gentlemen."

"Well," Dr. Lavendar admitted, "maybe not--when you were young. But all
of us young folks in Old Chester know perfectly well that Sam is
smitten, and we are ignoring it."

"What! His--_mother_ knows it?"

"His father knows it perfectly well," said Dr. Lavendar smiling.

Mr. Wright got up again, his fingers twitching with impatience.
"Lavendar," he began--another bird trilled, and snarling with
annoyance, he pulled the blue apron from the first cage and threw it
over the second. "These creatures drive me distracted! ... Lavendar, to
get Sam out of Old Chester, I might almost consent to see
his--_mother_, if there was no other way to accomplish it."

At that Dr. Lavendar stopped smiling. "Benjamin," he said solemnly, "if
any foolishness on the part of the boy brings you to such wisdom, the
hand of the Lord will be in it!"

"I don't want to see--his relations!" cried Benjamin Wright; "but Sam's
got to get away from this place for a while, and if you won't persuade
his--_mother_ to allow it, why I might be driven to seeing--her. But
why shouldn't he try to get his truck published?"

Dr. Lavendar was very much moved. "If you'll only see your son," he
said, "this other business will straighten itself out somehow. But--"
he paused; "getting Sam's play published isn't a very good excuse for
seeing him. I'd rather have him think you were worried because the boy
had an attack of calf-love. No; I wouldn't want you to talk about
theatrical things," Dr. Lavendar ended thoughtfully.

"Why not?"

"Well, the fact is, Samuel has no sympathy with dramas or playhouses. I
do not myself approve of the theatre, but I am told respectable persons
have adopted the profession. Samuel, however, can't find any good in
it."

"He can't, can't he? Well, well; it was efficacious--it was
efficacious!"

"What was efficacious?"

Benjamin Wright laughed loudly. "You--don't know? He never told you?"

"You mean what you and he quarrelled about? No; he never told me."

"He was a fool."

"Benjamin, if you were not a fool at twenty-four; you missed a good
deal."

"And now he objects to theatrical things?"

"He objects so intensely," said Dr. Lavendar, "that, anxious as I am to
have you meet and bring this foolish and wicked quarrel to an end, I
should really hesitate to have you do so, if you insisted on discussing
that subject."

Benjamin Wright lifted one trembling fist. "It was efficacious!"

"And you would give your right hand to undo it," said Dr. Lavendar.

The very old man lowered his shaking right hand and looked at it; then
he said sullenly, "I only wanted his own good. You ought to see that--a
parson!"

"But you forget; I don't know what it was about."

Mr. Wright's face twitched. "Well," he said spasmodically, "I'll-tell
you. I--"

"Yes?"

"I--" his voice broke, then he coughed, then he tried to laugh. "Simple
enough; simple enough. I had occasion to send him to Mercer. He was to
come back that night." Mr. Wright stopped; poured some whiskey into his
glass, and forgetting to add any water, drank it at a gulp, "He didn't
come back until the next afternoon."

"Yes. Well?"

"In those days I was of--of somewhat hasty temper."

"So I have heard," said Dr. Lavendar,

Benjamin Wright glared. "When I was young, listening to gossip was not
thought becoming in the cloth. When he came, I learned that he had
stayed over in Mercer--without my consent, mark you--_to go to the
theatre!_"

"Well?" said Dr. Lavendar. "He was twenty-four. Why should he have your
consent?"

Mr. Wright waved this question aside. "When he came home, I spoke with
some severity."

"This quarrel," said Dr. Lavendar, "is not built on such folly as that."

Benjamin Wright shook his head, and made a careless gesture with his
trembling hand. "Not--entirely. I reproved him, as I say. And he was
impertinent. Impertinent, mind you, to his father! And I--in those days
my temper was somewhat quick--I--"

"Yes?"

But Mr. Wright seemed unable to proceed, except to say again,
"I--reproved him."

"But," Dr. Lavendar protested, "you don't mean to tell me that Samuel,
just for a reproof, an unkind and unjust reproof, would--why, I cannot
believe it!"

"It was not unjust!" Benjamin Wright's melancholy eyes flamed angrily.

"I know, Samuel," said Dr. Lavendar. "He is obstinate; I've told him so
a hundred times. And he's conceited--so's everybody, more or less; if
in nothing else, we're conceited because we're not conceited. But he's
not a fool. So, whether he is right or not, I am sure he thinks he had
something more to complain of than a good blowing-up?"

"In a way," said the old man, examining his ridgy finger-nails and
speaking with a gasp, "he had. Slightly."

Dr. Lavendar's stern lip trembled with anxiety. "What?"

"I--chastised him; a little."

"You--_what_?"

Benjamin Wright nodded; the wrinkled pouches under his eyes grew dully
red. "My God!" he said plaintively; "think of that--a hasty moment!
Thirty-two years; my God! I--spanked him."

Dr. Lavendar opened his lips to speak, but found no words.

"And he was offended! Offended? What right had he to be offended? _I_
was the offended party. He went to a low theatre. Apparently you see
nothing wrong in that? Well, I've always said that every parson had the
making of an actor in him. It's a toss-up--the stage or the pulpit.
Same thing at bottom. But perhaps even you won't approve of his staying
away all night? Smoking! Drinking! He'd been drunk. He confessed it.
And there was a woman in it. He confessed that. Said they'd all 'gone
to supper together.' Said that he was 'seeing the world'--which a man
('_man_,' if you please!) of his years had a right to do. Well; I
suppose you'd have had me smile at him, and tuck him up in bed to sleep
off his headache, and give him a stick of candy? That wasn't my way. I
reproved him. I--chastised him. Perfectly proper. Perhaps--unusual. He
was twenty-four, and I laid him across my knee, and--well; I got over
it in fifteen minutes. I was, perhaps, hasty My temper in those days
was not what it is now. But I forgave him in fifteen minutes; and he
had gone! He's been gone--for thirty-two years. My God!"

He poured out another finger of whiskey, but forgot to drink it. A
canary-bird chirped loudly, then lapsed into a sleepy twitter.

"I was well rid of him! To make a quarrel out of a thing like that--a
joke, as you might say. I laughed, myself, afterwards, at the thought
of it. A fellow of twenty-four--spanked! Why didn't he swear and be
done with it? I would have reproved him for his profanity, of course.
Profanity in young persons is a thing I will not tolerate; Simmons will
tell you so. But it would have cleared the air. If he had done that,
we'd have been laughing about it, now;--he and I, together." The old
man suddenly put both hands over his face, and a broken sound came from
behind them.

Dr. Lavendar shook his head, speechlessly.

"What's the matter with you?" cried Benjamin Wright, pulling off his
hat and banging it down on the table so fiercely that the crown
collapsed on one side like an accordion. "Good God! Can't you see the
tomfoolery of this business of thirty-two years of hurt feelings?"

Dr. Lavendar was silent.

"What! You excuse him? When I was young, parsons believed in the Ten
Commandments; 'Honor thy father and thy mother--'"

"There is another scripture which saith, 'Fathers, provoke not your
children to wrath.' And when it comes to the Commandments, I would
commend the third to your attention. As for Samuel, you robbed him."

"Robbed him?"

"You took his self-respect. A young man's dignity, at twenty-four, is
as precious to him as a woman's modesty. You stole it. Yes; you robbed
him. Our Heavenly Father doesn't do that, when He punishes us. We lose
our dignity ourselves; but He never robs us of it. Did ye ever notice
that? Well; you robbed Samuel. My--my--_my!_" Dr. Lavendar sighed
wearily. For, indeed, the matter looked very dark. Here was the moment
he had prayed for--the readiness of one or the other of the two men to
take the first step towards reconciliation. Such readiness, he had
thought, would mean the healing of the dreadful wound, whatever it was;
forgiveness on the father's part of some terrible wrong-doing,
forgiveness on the son's part of equally terrible hardness of heart.
Instead he found a cruel and ridiculous mortification, made permanent
by thirty-two unpardoning years. Here was no sin to command the
dreadful dignity of repentance, with its divine response of
forgiveness. The very lack of seriousness in the cause made the effect
more serious. He looked over at the older man, and shook his head....
How could they pay their debts to each other, this father and son?
Could Benjamin Wright return the self-respect he had stolen away? Could
Samuel offer that filial affection which should have blessed all these
empty years? A wickedly ludicrous memory forbade the solemnity of a
reconciliation: below any attempt the father might make, there would be
a grin, somewhere; below any attempt the son might make, there would be
a cringe, somewhere. The only possible hope was in absolute, flat
commonplace. Play-writing, as a subject of conversation, was out of the
question!

"Benjamin," he said with agitation, "I thank God that you are willing
to see Samuel; but you must promise me not to refer to Sam's play. You
must promise me this, or the last end of the quarrel will be worse than
the first."

"I haven't said I was willing to see him," Mr. Wright broke out; "I'm
_not_ willing! Is it likely that I would hanker after an interview? All
I want is to get the boy away from Old Chester; to 'see the world.'
His--father ought to sympathize with that! Yes; to get him away, I
would even--But if you will tell his--relatives, that in my judgment,
he ought to go away, that is all that is necessary."

"No! You must urge it yourself," Dr. Lavendar said eagerly. "Put it on
the ground of calf-love, if you want to. I'll tell Samuel you want to
get Sam out of town because you're afraid he's falling in love with
Mrs. Richie; and you'd like to consult him about it."

But the old man began a scrabbling retreat. "No! No!" he said, putting
on his hat with shaking hands. "No, don't tell anybody anything. I'll
find some other way out of it. Let it go. Seeing his--relatives is a
last resource. If they are so virtuous as to object to plays, I'll try
something else. Object?" he repeated, "Gad-a-mercy! My discipline was
successful!" He grinned wickedly.

Dr. Lavendar made no reply. The interview had been a strain, and he got
up a little feebly. Benjamin Wright, as he saw him to the door, swore
again at some misdemeanor on the part of Simmons, but was not rebuked.

The old minister climbed into his buggy, and told Goliath to "g'long."
As he passed the Stuffed Animal House, he peered through the little
dusty window of the hood; but David was not in sight.




CHAPTER XII


"I think," said Dr. Lavendar, as he and Goliath came plodding into Old
Chester in the May dusk, "I think I'll go and see Willy. He'll tell me
how much Sam's love-making amounts to."

His mind was on the matter to such an extent that he hardly heard
Mary's anxious scolding because he looked tired, but his preoccupation
lifted at supper, in the consciousness of how lonely he was without
David. He really wanted to get out of the house and leave the
loneliness behind him. So after tea he put on his broad-brimmed felt
hat and tied a blue muffler around his throat--Dr. Lavendar felt the
cold a good deal; he said it was because the seasons were changing--and
walked wearily over to Dr. King's house. That talk with Benjamin Wright
had told on him.

"Well," he said, as the doctor's wife opened the door, "how are you,
Martha?"

"Very tired," said Mrs. King. "And dear me, Dr. Lavendar, you look
tired yourself. You're too old to do so much, sir. Come in and sit
down."

"I'll sit down," said Dr. Lavendar, dropping into a chair in the
parlor; "but don't flatter yourself, Martha, that you'll ever be as
young as I am!" ("He _is_ failing," Mrs. King told her husband
afterwards. "He gets his words all mixed up. He says 'young' when he
means 'old.' Isn't that a sign of something, William?" "It's a sign of
grace," said the doctor shortly.)

  "I want Willy to come over and give my Mary a pill," Dr. Lavendar
explained. "She is as cross as a bear, and cross people are generally
sick people--although I suppose that's Mary's temperament," he added
sighing.

Martha shook her head. "In my judgment _temperament_ is just another
word for temper: I don't believe in making excuses for it. That's a
great trick of William's, I'm sorry to say."

"I should have thought you'd have cured him of it by this time?" Dr.
Lavendar murmured; and then he asked if the doctor was out.

"Oh, yes," said Mrs. King, dryly; "Willy always manages to get out in
the evening on one excuse or another. You'd think he'd be glad of a
restful evening at home with me, sometimes. But no. William's patients
need a surprising amount of attention, though his bills don't show it
When Mrs. Richie's cook was sick--just as an instance--he went six
times to see her. I counted."

"Well; she got well?"' said Dr. Lavendar.

"Got well? She'd have got well if he hadn't gone near her." Martha
began to stroke the gathers on a bit of cambric with a precise needle
that suddenly trembled. "The woman herself was not to blame it's only
just to say that--And there's one thing about me, Dr. Lavendar; I may
not be perfect, but I am always just. No, she was not to blame; it was
Mrs. Richie who sent for William. She is the most helpless woman I ever
saw, for her years;--she is at least forty, though she uses
sachet-powders, and wears undersleeves all trimmed with lace, as if she
were six teen! I don't want to find fault, Dr. Lavendar, but I must say
that _I_ wouldn't have trusted that little boy to her."

"Oh," said Dr. Lavendar, "I trusted _her_ to the little boy! She'll be
so busy looking after his sleeves, she'll forget her own."

Mrs. King sniffed, doubtfully. "I'm sure I hope you are right; but in
my opinion, she's a very helpless and foolish woman;--if nothing worse.
Though according to my ideas, the way she lets Sam Wright's Sam behave
is worse!"

Dr. Lavendar was suddenly attentive, "How does she let him behave?"

"Well, he is so daft over--her that he neglects his work at the bank to
write verses. Why doesn't she stop it?"

"Because," said William King, appearing in the doorway, smelling
honestly of the barn and picking off a straw here and there from his
sleeve; "she knows nothing about it."

Dr. Lavendar and Martha both looked up, startled at his tone.

"Women," said the doctor, "would gossip about a--a clam!"

"I am not gossiping?" Martha defended herself; but Dr. Lavendar
interrupted her, cheerfully,

"Well, I am, I came over to gossip with William on this very
subject.--Martha, will you let him put a match to that grate? I
declare, the seasons are changing. When I was your age it wasn't cold
enough to have a fire in May.--Look here, Willy, what do you mean by
saying Mrs. Richie doesn't know Sam's sentiments?"

"I mean that women like Mrs. Richie are so unconscious, they don't see
things like that. She's as unconscious as a girl."

"Tck!" said Martha.

"A girl!" said Dr. Lavendar.--"Say a tree, or a boy but don't say a
girl. Why, William, everybody sees it. Even Benjamin Wright. Of course
she knows it."

"She doesn't; she isn't the kind that thinks of things like that. Of
course, some women would have discovered it months ago; one of your
strong-minded ladies, perhaps--only Sam wouldn't have been spoony on
that kind."

"Well!" said Martha, "I must say, flat--"

But William interrupted her--"To prove what I say: she lets him come in
and bore her to death, just out of kindness. Do you suppose she would
do that if she knew he was such an idiot as to presume to--to--"

"Well," said Dr. Lavendar, "as there is so much ignorance about,
perhaps Sam doesn't know he's lost his heart?"

But at that William laughed, "_He_ knows; Trust a young fellow! That's
just the difference between a man and a woman, sir; the man always
knows; the woman, if she's the right kind, doesn't--until she's told."

"Tck!" said Martha,

Dr. Lavendar looked down at the bowl of his pipe then he said meekly,
"I was under the impression that Eve ate her apple before Adam had so
much as a bite. Still, whether Mrs. Richie knows the state of Sam's
affections or not, I do wish she would urge him to put his mind on his
work. That's what I came in to speak to you about. His father is all on
edge about it, and now his grandfather has taken it into his head to be
worried over it, too But you know her better than the rest of us do,
and I thought perhaps you'd drop a hint that she would be doing
missionary work if she'd influence the boy to be more industrious."

"I'll go and talk it over with her," Martha volunteered. "I am always
ready to advise any one."

William King got up and kicked at a lump of coal in the grate. "I am
sure you are," he said dryly; "but no talking over is necessary., I
shall probably be going up the hill in a few days, and I'll say a word
if Dr. Lavendar wants me to. Nothing definite; just enlist her sympathy
for his father--and get her to protect herself, too. He must be an
awful nuisance."

"That's it!" said Dr. Lavendar. "I'd do it myself, but you know her
better than I do. I'm getting acquainted with her through David. David
is really a remarkable child! I can't tell you how I miss him." And
then he began to relate David's sayings, while Martha sewed fiercely,
and William stared at the hearth-rug "The little rascal is no Peter
Grievous," Dr Lavendar declared, proudly; and told a story of a badly
barked knee, and a very stiff upper-lip; "and the questions he asks!"
said the old man, holding up both hands; "theological questions; the
House of Bishops couldn't answer 'em!" He repeated some of the
questions, watching the husband and wife with swift glances over his
spectacles; when he had wrung a reluctant laugh from the doctor, and
Mrs., King was not sewing so fast, he went home, not much rested by his
call.

But the result of the call was that at the end of the week Dr. King
went up to the Stuffed Animal House.

"We are shipwrecked!" cried Mrs. Richie, as she saw him coming down the
garden path towards the barn. Her face was flushed and gay, and her
hair, shaken from its shining wreath around her head, hung in two
braids down her back. She had had a swing put up under the big
buttonwood beside the stable, and David, climbing into it, had clung to
the rigging to be dashed, side wise, on to the rocks of the
carriageway, where Mrs. Richie stood ready to catch him when the vessel
should drive near enough to the shore. In an endeavor to save himself
from some engulfing sea which his playmate had pointed out to him,
David had clutched at her, breaking the top hook of her gown and
tearing her collar apart, leaving throat, white and round, open to the
hot sun. Before the doctor reached her, she caught her dress together,
and twisted her hair into a knot. "You can't keep things smooth in a
shipwreck," she excused herself, laughing.

David sighed, and looked into the carriage-house. In that jungle--Mrs.
Richie had called it a jungle--were wild beasts; there were also
crackers and apples--or to be exact, breadfruit and citrons--hanging
from what George called "harness-racks," though of course, as
thoughtful persons know, they were trees; David was to gather these
tropical spoils, and then escape from the leopard, the shark, the
crocodile! And now there was Dr. King, spoiling everything.

The doctor sat down on a keg and looked at the two, smiling. "Which is
the younger of you?" he said. It came over him, in a gust of amusement,
what Martha would say to such a scene, and he laughed aloud.

"Dr. King," said David, in a small distinct voice, "won't Jinny run
away, if you leave her so long at gate?"

"Oh, David!" cried Mrs. Richie, horrified. But the visitor threw back
his head with a shout.

"That's what my wife would call speaking 'flatly and frankly'! Well,
Mrs. Richie, I never wrote a better prescription in my life. You look
like a different woman, already."

And, indeed, the youth in her face was as careless as David's own. But
it flagged when he added that he hoped her brother would not think the
care of David would be too much for her.

"Oh, no," she said, briefly.

"I feel like saying 'I told you so'! I knew you would like to have a
child about."

"I do, but he is a tyrant. Aren't you, David? I have to get up for
breakfast!"

"Terrible," said William delightedly.

"Why, but it _is_. I don't know when I've done such a thing! At first I
thought I really couldn't. But I couldn't leave him all by himself,
down-stairs--could I, David?"

"I'd just as lieves," said David, gently.

"Oh, how like your sex!" Helena cried.

"What do you suppose I've come for?" Dr. King began in the bantering
tone one uses to a child. "I've come to get you to exert your influence
to improve business. _Business!_" he repeated, delighted at his own
absurdity; "a lady who finds it hard to get up in the mornings."

She looked at him ruefully; "I'm lazy, I am afraid." "No, you're
not--it's a very sensible thing to do, if you are not strong. Well, I
must tell you what we want; Sam Wright is anxious, because young Sam
neglects his work at the bank, and--"

"But he doesn't like business," she explained with a surprised look;
and William laughed with pleasure.

"So that's a reason for not attending to it? Unfortunately, that's the
young man's own point of view. He's a queer youngster," William added
in his kind voice.

"I don't think it's queer not to like disagreeable things," Helena said.

"Well, no; but all the same, we've got to stand them. Sam has no
patience with anything disagreeable. Why, when he was a little
fellow--let me see, he was younger than David; about four, I think--he
scratched his finger one day pretty severely; it smarted, I guess,
badly. Anyway, he roared! Then he picked up a pair of scissors and ran
bawling to his mother; 'Mamma, cut finger off! It hurts Sam--cut finger
off!' That's been his principle ever since: 'it hurts--get rid of it.'"

"I don't blame him in the least," Helena protested gayly; "I'm sure
I've wanted to 'cut finger off.' And I have done it, too!"

"Well," said the doctor with great pretence of gravity, "I suppose,
then, we'll have to tell old Mr. Wright that nobody must ever do
anything he doesn't want to do? It appears that he's worried, too,
because the young gentleman isn't industrious. The fact is, he thinks
Sam would rather come up here than work over his ledgers," he teased.

Helena sprung to her feet, nervously. "But I wish he wouldn't come! I
don't want him to come. I can't help it; indeed I--I can't help it!"
She spoke with a sort of gasp. Instantly David, who had been lounging
in the swing, slipped down and planted himself directly in front of
her, his arms stretched out at each side. "I'll take care of you," he
said protectingly.

William King caught his breath. No one could have heard the frightened
note in her voice without understanding David's impulse. The doctor
shared it. Evidently Sam had been making love to her, and her very
innocence made her quick to feel herself rebuked! William felt an
ardent desire to kick Sam Wright's Sam.

But Mrs. Richie was herself again; she laughed, though not quite
naturally, and sat down in the swing, swaying slightly back and forth
with an indolent push of her pretty foot. David lounged against her
knee, eying the doctor with frank displeasure. "I am sure," she said,
"I wish Sam would attend to his ledgers; it would be much better than
making visits."

"Dr. King," David said, gently, "I'll shake hands now, and say good-by."

The laugh that followed changed the subject, although warm in William's
consciousness the thought remained that she had let him know what the
subject meant to her: he shared a secret with her! She had told him,
indirectly perhaps, but still told him, of her troubles with young Sam.
It was as if she had put out her hand and said, "Help me!"
Inarticulately he felt what David had said, "I'll take care of you!"
And his first care must be to make her forget what had distressed her.
He said with the air of one imparting interesting information, that
some time in the next fortnight he would probably go to Philadelphia on
business. "Can I do any errands for you? Don't you ladies always want
ribbons, or something."

"Does Mrs. King let you buy ribbons for her?" Helena asked.

"Ribbons! I am to buy yarn, and some particular brand of lye for soap."

"Lye! How do you make soap out of lye?"

"You save all the "--William hesitated for a sufficiently delicate
word--"the--fat, you know, in the kitchen, and then you make soft soap."

"Why! I didn't know that was how soap was made."

"I'm glad you didn't," said William King. "I mean--it's disagreeable,"
he ended weakly. And then, to David's open joy, he said good-by and
jogged off down the hill, leaving Mrs. Richie to her new
responsibilities of discipline.

"Now, David, come here. I've got to scold you."

David promptly climbed up into the swing and settled himself in her
lap. Then he snuggled his little nose down into her neck. "I'm a bear,"
he announced. "I'm eating you. Now, you scream and I'll roar."

"Oh, David, you little monkey! Listen to me: you weren't very polite to
Dr. King."

"O-o-o-o-o-o!" roared the bear.

"You should make him feel you were glad to see him."

"I wasn't," mumbled David.

"But you must have manners, dear little boy."

"I have," David defended himself, sitting up straight. "I have them in
my head; but I only use them sometimes."

Upon which the disciplinarian collapsed; "You rogue!" she said; "come
here, and I'll give you 'forty kisses'!"

David was instantly silent; he shrank away, lifting his shoulder
against his cheek and looking at her shyly. "I won't, dear!" she
reassured him, impetuously: "truly I won't."

But she said to herself she must remember to repeat the speech about
manners to the doctor; it would make him laugh.

William laughed easily when he came to the Stuffed Animal House.
Indeed, he had laughed when he went away from it, and stopped for a
minute at Dr. Lavendar's to tell him that Mrs. Richie was just as
anxious as anybody that Sam Wright should attend to his business.
"_Business_!" said the doctor, "much she knows about it!" And then he
added that he was sure she would do her part to influence the boy to be
more industrious. "And you may depend on it, she won't allow any
love-making," said William.

He laughed again suddenly, out loud, as he ate his supper that night,
because some memory of the after-noon came into his head. When Martha,
starting at the unusual sound, asked what he was laughing at, he told
her he had found Mrs. Richie playing with David Allison. "They were
like two children; I said I didn't know which was the younger. They
were pretending they were shipwrecked; the swing was the vessel, if you
please!"

"I suppose she was trying to amuse him," Mrs. King said. "That's a
great mistake with children. Give a child a book, or put him down to
some useful task; that's my idea."

"Oh, she was amusing herself," William explained. Mrs. King was silent.

"She gets up for breakfast now, on account of David; it's evidently a
great undertaking!" the doctor said humorously.

Martha held her lips hard together.

"You ought to hear her housekeeping ideas," William rambled on. "I
happened to say you wanted some lye for soap. She didn't know soap was
made with lye! You would have laughed to hear her--"

But at that the leash broke: "_Laughed_? I hope not! I hope I wouldn't
laugh because a woman of her age has no more sense than a child. And
she gets up for breakfast, does she? Well, why shouldn't she get up for
breakfast? I am very tired, but I get up for breakfast. I don't mean to
be severe, William, and I never am; I'm only just. But I must say,
flatly and frankly, that ignorance and laziness do not seem _funny_ to
me. Laugh? Would you laugh if I stayed in bed in the mornings, and
didn't know how to make soap, and save your money for you? I guess not!"

The doctor's face reddened and he closed his lips with a snap. But
Martha found no more fault with Mrs. Richie. After a while she said in
that virtuous voice familiar to husbands, "William, I know you don't
like to do it, so I cleaned all the medicine-shelves in your office
this morning."

"Thank you," William said, curtly; and finished his supper in absolute
silence.




CHAPTER XIII


Dr. Lavendar was not sleeping very well that spring. He fell into the
habit of waking at about three, just when the birds begin the scattered
twittering that swells into full clamor and then dies suddenly into
silence. In that gray stillness, broken by bird-calls, he used to
occupy himself by thinking of his people.

"The name of the large upper chamber, facing the east, was Peace." And
so this old pilgrim found it, lying in his four-poster, listening to
the cries and calls in the jargonelle pear-tree in the corner of the
garden, and watching the ghostly oblong of the window that faced the
east, glimmer and brighten into the effulgence of day. It was then,
with his old hands folded on his breast, that he thought about the
Wrights--all three of them....

It was a relief to know that Mrs. Richie would influence Sam to put his
mind on his work; if the boy would do that, his father would be less
irritated with him. And William's assurance that she would not allow
any love-making ought to end his grandfather's worry. But while that
worry lasted it must be utilized....

The room was slipping out of the shadows. Dr. Lavendar could see the
outline of the window distinctly. The bureau loomed up in the grayness
like a rock; opposite the bed, under a high wooden mantel was the
cavernous blackness of the chimney, Dr. Lavendar reflected that it must
be nearly four....

The question was, when should he use this weapon of Benjamin Wright's
worry, on the two hard hearts? He had made several attempts to use it,
only to feel the blade turn in his hand: He had asked Mr. Wright when
he was going to talk things over with Samuel, and the old man had
instantly declared that he had changed his mind. He had mentioned to
his senior warden that Benjamin was troubled about his grandson's
sheep's-eyes, and Samuel's studied deafness had put an end to
conversation. So Dr. Lavendar had made up his mind that a matter of
this kind cannot be forced. A thirty-two-year-old wound is not to be
healed in a day. He took any chance that offered to drop a suggestive
word; but he did not try to hurry his Heavenly Father. For it was Dr.
Lavendar's belief that God was more anxious about that reconciliation
than he was....

A line of light threaded its way under the window-curtain, and fell in
a spot of fluid gold upon the mirror. He watched it move silently
across the powdery surface: suddenly another dimpling pool appeared on
the soot of the chimney-back, and his eye followed the tremulous beam
to its entrance over the top of the shutter. The birds were shouting
now in full voice. How fond Benjamin was of his poor caged creatures.
Well, he had so little else to be fond of; "and I have so much,"
thought Dr. Lavendar, shamefacedly;--"all my people. And David, the
rascal!" Then he chuckled; Dr. Lavendar was under the delusion that he
was unprejudiced in regard to David: "a very unusual child!" he assured
himself, gravely. No wonder Mrs. Richie liked to have him.--And he
would be the making of her! he would shake her out of her selfishness.
"Poor girl, I guess, by the way she talks, she has never known anything
but self. David will wake her up. But I've got to look out that she
doesn't spoil him." It was this belief of what David might do for Mrs.
Richie that had reconciled him to parting with the little boy.

His eyes wandered to the window; a glittering strip of green light
between the bowed shutters meant that the sun was in the trees. Yes; to
be sure, for the birds had suddenly stopped singing.

Dr. Lavendar yawned and looked at his watch; five o'clock. He would
have liked to get up, but Mary would be worried if she knew he was
awake so long before breakfast. Well; he must try to have a nap, no,
the room was too light for that. He could see all the furniture; he
could count the pleats in the sun-burst of the tester; he could,
perhaps, see to read? He put his hand out for _Robinson Crusoe_, and
after that he possessed his soul in patience until he knew that Mary
would allow him to come down-stairs.

It was in one of those peaceful dawns early in June that he decided
that the moment had come to strike a decisive blow: he would go and
talk to Benjamin of Sam's Sam, and though truth demanded that he should
report Mrs. Richie's good sense he did not mean to insi

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/6315