INVINCIBLE MINNIE
ELISABETH SANXAY HOLDING

INVINCIBLE
MINNIE

BY
ELISABETH SANXAY HOLDING

NEW

YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1920,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A LITTLE FOREWORD

This is not intended to be a romantic story, or a realistic story—not a tale of anything that ever did happen, only of something which might have happened. If you know a Minnie, as you very likely do, you will admit that, whether or not she is actually guilty of such deplorable exploits as herein narrated, she is certainly capable of them. Capable of everything!

CONTENTS

BOOK ONE: THE CAMPAIGN OPENS

INVINCIBLE MINNIE

CHAPTER ONE

I

Mr. Petersen rode along in the choking dust, considering the problem with perplexity but with good-humour. After all, it was absurd.... He wanted to be kind, but he didn’t want to be ridiculous.

In spite of himself, a grin came over his face. He was remembering his last visit to the old lady. He had ridden out to the miserable old farm and very politely introduced himself as her new landlord. He had bought the place for next to nothing, and, considering this, and the dilapidated state it was in, his sensitive conscience required that he should reduce the rent. But he never got so far as to propose this.

The old lady received him with lofty affability and invited him to sit down in her parlour, then left him there for a long time while she prepared refreshments. He had waited awkwardly enough, touched by the shabbiness of the place and its evident decline. Old mahogany furniture, ugly in style, but good—once very good—and now so battered, arms gone, legs gone, splinters torn off, cushions disgorging hair, springs sagging. His skilful fingers longed to be at it.

She came in again, with a plate of cookies and a jug of lemonade, and sat down at a little table to dispense them, with a regal air.

“Well!” she said, with a grim smile, “I suppose you’ve come about the rent, Mr. Petersen. I might as well be frank. I haven’t got it. I’ve had orders for some preserves, so perhaps I’ll have it next month. I hope so, I’m sure. But you can’t draw blood from a stone, Mr. Petersen.”

He had gone away that time utterly defeated, and he was returning now without much hope. What was one to do in such a case? Impossible to turn out the poor little old woman of seventy, alone on earth. He didn’t need the money from the house, he was quite able to permit her to live there free for the rest of her life, but that would be, he saw, a ridiculous thing to do. Unbusinesslike. Fantastic. She would laugh at him, and so would everyone else. People would be sure to find out, and his reputation as a shrewd and sensible man would suffer. And although he was a Socialist, and opposed to the paying of rents, his common-sense forbade exceptions. Either no one must pay rent, or everyone must.

He pulled up his horse and wiped his face, for the house was in sight and he was anxious to look well in the eyes of the queenly and provoking old lady. She was a Defoe, and married to a cousin Defoe, and this was, to her, a fact of immense significance. From it she derived her superiority to everyone else. She regarded Mr. Petersen as nobody at all, and a foreigner at that. He was aware of her attitude, and not at all pleased, for he had his own modest pride.

He even went so far as to take out a small pocket mirror and smooth his moustache—a long yellow moustache, standing out fiercely like a cat’s. His appearance was at no time satisfactory to him; it was rather too Socialistic. He was an enormous fellow of five and thirty, with huge hands and a blunt red face, handsome in a way, but certainly lacking in distinction, certainly not an exterior to commend itself to a Defoe.

He was quite correctly dressed in riding breeches and a linen jacket, all fitting very well, but all the more offensive to a Defoe because of their excellence. In Brownsville Landing people of Mr. Petersen’s class didn’t ride horseback under any circumstances; above all, not in clothes designed for such a purpose. It was presumptuous and it was foreign.

The old lady saw him from the window, cantering along the almost obliterated driveway, and by the time he had dismounted and tied his horse to an old apple tree, she was standing in the doorway, in the attitude of a tenant insolvent but unbowed.

“Good day!” she said. “Step in, Mr. Petersen!”

So once again he went into that parlour, dim and cool, aged and forlorn like herself, and once more sat down to wait for the cookies and the lemonade which he detested.

But this time it was not the old lady who brought them in. It was Minnie. Minnie, until that instant unknown to him, unimagined, but predestined to his ruin....

II

He was, innocently enough, pleased with her appearance, and saw nothing sinister, nothing extraordinary about her. A rather short, full-bosomed young woman of perhaps twenty, with a dark, freckled face and an expression very pleasant and friendly. She smiled at him as soon as she entered.

“Mrs. Defoe will be back in a minute,” she said, as she set down her tray. She was wearing a ruffled little apron tied about her neat waist, and her air was altogether housewifely and homely, as if she had been brought up from infancy in that very house. He couldn’t imagine who she was. He knew that the old lady lived alone, had lived alone since the death of her husband twelve years ago. This agreeable young person was certainly not a servant, and he was sure she didn’t belong in the neighbourhood. If he had seen her, he knew he would have remembered her.

She gave him a glass of lemonade and sat down opposite him, amiably prepared to entertain him.

“It’s growing warm, isn’t it?” she said, and he recognised in her voice and accent something far superior to the native language of Brownsville Landing.

“It’s what we want, for the fruit,” he answered, in his sing-song drawl. “It was a cold Spring here.”

“So I’ve heard.... What a nice horse! Is it yours, Mr. Petersen?”

He was very much pleased; he said it was, and went on to tell of the virtues and eccentricities of his beloved mare.

Minnie said she didn’t ride, but was very fond of driving.

Riding suited Mr. Petersen better; it made one feel more independent.

“Oh, well, you’re a man!” said she. “A girl can’t go riding about alone, very well.”

In some way this made him suddenly conscious of her smallness and feminineness and of all the handicaps imposed upon her by God and by man. Mr. Petersen’s views about women were definite. She was neither above nor below, neither hallowed nor accursed, but a quite ordinary human being, like himself, equally responsible, equally privileged. A woman—the right sort—was a friend, simply. And he saw in Minnie a friend, candid and good-tempered.... (Minnie a friend!)

“I was so pleased,” she went on, “to find a horse here. Of course, I don’t really know much about them. I’ve never lived in the country, really. But I love animals. All animals. And I think I have a sort of knack with them——”

He was acquainted with Mrs. Defoe’s horse, a ridiculously coy old skeleton that came into the village once a week harnessed to a buggy and driven by a Negro truck farmer who cultivated the old lady’s arid fields on shares. He could not imagine anyone’s having much affection for that caricature. It touched him. He could think of nothing to say, and the young woman had once more to start up a conversation.

“I hope I haven’t made your lemonade too sweet!” she began, anxiously, but was interrupted by Mrs. Defoe calling from upstairs.

“Minnie! Minnie!”

“Excuse me,” she murmured, and vanished. He heard her running up the stairs, then not another sound for a long time. He sat still, with his glass in his hand, and waited.

She didn’t run down; she came slowly, with obvious reluctance.

“I’m very sorry,” she said, “but—Mrs. Defoe wants to know—if you’d be good enough to—wait just a little longer——”

She was very much distressed; said something about preserves and next week and the expensiveness of jelly glasses. Mr. Petersen’s face turned still redder.

“Pshaw!” he said, awkwardly, “It doesn’t matter to me. I can wait any length of time. Don’t worry. Tell Mrs. Defoe not to worry. I—perhaps she will send a message when she’s ready——”

“Positively next Tuesday,” said Minnie, firmly. “And I’m dreadfully sorry, Mr. Petersen. I appreciate your kindness.”

She held out a small plump hand which he grasped earnestly.

“But just the same, who is she?” he asked himself as he rode away.

III

He went home to his house on a shady street of the village, and strolled into the kitchen where his housekeeper was cooking a rabbit.

“Mrs. Hansen,” he said, “who’s that up at Mrs. Defoe’s?”

Of course she knew.

“Her granddaughter, Mr. Petersen. Two of them,” she answered, eagerly, delighted at being questioned. “They came from New York a week ago. Two young orphans. Just lost their father. He was thought to be rich, but it seems he wasn’t. He didn’t leave them a penny. And they’ve been brought up to expect the best of everything, so I’ve heard. It’s sad, isn’t it, Mr. Petersen?”

He thought it was; the phrase “two young orphans” stuck in his mind, and while he walked about his garden, inspecting his trees and vegetables, he reflected on it. “Young orphans.” He remembered that she had been wearing a black dress, and that the ribbons in her little apron had been black. And there had been a sobriety in her bearing....

Mrs. Hansen wished to pursue the subject. She began when she had put his excellent dinner on the table.

“Excuse me, Mr. Petersen,” she said—he wouldn’t allow “sir”—“But which of the young ladies did you see? I hear that one of them is very handsome.”

He reflected. No, Minnie was not very handsome; nice looking, and with fine dark eyes, but not handsome.

He smiled a little.

“It’s hard to say. I’m not a judge, Mrs. Hansen. The one I saw was dark——”

“They’re both dark. But one’s——”

“This rabbit stew is very good, Mrs. Hansen,” he interposed, and she took the hint and left him to read the local paper in peace, as was his custom during dinner.

Afterwards he went out to sit on his little porch and smoke. And thought very kindly of the “young orphan,” who hadn’t a penny.

The least he could do, he decided, was not to trouble them about the rent—a decision which suited them, apparently, for he neither saw nor heard anything of the Defoe family for a long time. In fact, until he was needed by one of them.

CHAPTER TWO

I

Two years previously Mr. Petersen had arrived in Brownsville Landing and had rented an office in the most up-to-date building there was, putting up a modest sign, “Christian Petersen, Lawyer.” The other lawyers, who announced themselves LL.D’s, laughed at his sign, but all the same, in spite of it, or perhaps because of its old-fashioned simplicity, he attracted clients from the beginning. People liked him; he was careful, polite and he knew his business. Although a foreigner, he was not offensively eccentric or ridiculous. There were one or two little things, such as riding a saddle horse, and wearing breeches and leggins, which were not approved of, nor was his polite avoidance of any social relations. Still, he was always friendly and antagonised no one.

After six months of legal practice, he branched out unexpectedly. A new sign appeared under the old one: “Real Estate.” Now he began making money in earnest. The town was growing, new factories were building, and he knew how to take advantage of the growth.

It was a horrible, squalid little town, too near the city for any but the pettiest of retail trade to flourish, too far for any influence of urbanity. It was technically on the Hudson River, but as a matter of fact, the river bank was used exclusively for commercial purposes, freight yards and so on, and the town itself lay in a little hollow, which was stiflingly hot all summer long. There were the old people, whose families had lived there for generations, who had old Colonial houses and furniture; they looked with alarm and hostility upon the new element, the workers in the mills, the factories, the brick yards, this foreign-born, incomprehensible rabble, which was, nevertheless, the life blood of the town, which sustained three savings banks and fourteen saloons, which lay dead drunk by the roadsides, and crowded the public library. Then there were “new people,” factory managers, and their like, who were respectable and well-to-do, but not “quite”.... And with all these people Mr. Petersen was perfectly at home, buying, selling, renting, and arranging for them all.

Before long a third sign appeared: “Contractor.” And in this capacity he had perhaps his greatest success. He began with the building of some little cottages for the workers in a cotton mill, and he was so excellent and painstaking and experienced a supervisor that his fame spread rapidly. He explained with simplicity that as a boy in the “old country” he had been apprenticed to a builder. And although a lawyer, he was not at all ashamed of this; he was, on the contrary, quite proud of his thorough knowledge of the trade.

He was a Swede, son of a poor man, and self-educated, but there were few people in the town who spoke English as well as he did, in spite of a singing drawl and an indefinably exotic note.

II

He was sitting, this summer morning, at his desk, in his shirt-sleeves, reading a contract with twofold attention, once as a lawyer, once as a builder. His door was open, and when someone knocked, he called out, “Come in!” without turning his head. He expected to be spoken to, and when he wasn’t, he looked up to see who could be there, waiting in silence. And saw a most splendid young creature, tall, broad-shouldered, with a healthy sunburned face of vivid colouring and severely perfect features, eager, vigorous, yet full of a fine young dignity.

He rose at once and put on his coat.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, with his invariable politeness.

The girl’s brown face flushed, but she answered without hesitation.

“I’m Frances Defoe—Mrs. Defoe’s granddaughter, you know. My sister told me how nice you’d been about—Grandma and the rent, so I thought perhaps you’d be good enough to—oh, to give me a little advice.”

“Please sit down,” he said cheerfully. “Now!”

“I want something to do, work of some sort. I heard that you were the most progressive man in the village, so I thought you’d be the best one to consult.”

He was pleased and embarrassed by the compliment, which he knew to be merited.

“I don’t suppose,” she went on, in her clear, somewhat imperious voice, “that there’s much opportunity here, is there?”

He had found opportunities enough; still he answered, no, not many, but that perhaps——

“Have you had any sort of experience?” he asked.

She said no; but that she’d studied a lot and was good at mathematics and figures in general, and knew something of French and German.

“And I can type a little,” she added. “I used to do my essays and things on a typewriter at college.”

“Fine!” said Mr. Petersen. “Now, let’s see where that would fit in.”

He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, thinking in his slow and prudent fashion.

At last he brought his glance back to the girl.

“If you’d care for it,” he remarked, “there’s an opening here. I need a young lady to help me, to be in the office while I’m out, to answer the telephone and so forth. It’s not much of a place—not more than eight dollars a week to begin——”

He paused.

“If it would suit you——”

“Oh, yes!” she cried. “If you think I’d do!”

He smiled; he had sufficient imagination to comprehend the thrill of a first job.

“Suppose we try then,” he said. “Let’s see.... This is Friday. Next Monday at nine, Miss Defoe.”

She gave him a bright, a grateful smile, and got up, ready to go.

“I’m awfully glad to get such a chance,” she said. “I hope I’ll be satisfactory.”

Mr. Petersen also rose.

“Mrs. Defoe quite well?” he enquired.

“Yes; at least she says so. She never complains.”

“And—I believe it was your sister I spoke to——”

“Minnie? Oh, she’s always well,” she answered, carelessly, and with still another glowing smile, went off, elated.

Undoubtedly she was the handsome one—a striking figure. But somehow, for him, at any rate, lacking the peculiar charm of her plainer sister; that sober and matronly young creature in the little apron.

He felt a most Quixotic interest in both of the “young orphans.” He would have done a very great deal for them. In fact, he did....

III

He was surprised and disappointed when she didn’t appear on Monday morning. At half past ten he gave her up and went out about some business, reflecting upon the instability of women. He came back in half an hour, and had just sat down at his desk when she entered, terribly flushed and dusty. Her expression was defiant, but her voice suspiciously uncertain.

“I’m very sorry to be so late,” she said. “It won’t happen again. I had to walk, and I missed the way. But I’ll arrange better after this.”

To hide his own distress and hers, he promptly gave her something to type—he didn’t care what—and sat down at his own desk, where he pretended to work. But he knew, without venturing to turn his head, that she was stealthily wiping her eyes, and he was sure there had been some serious trouble at home. A five-mile walk along that dusty road, on an August day! Poor girl!

There had indeed been a classic and unforgettable encounter, ending in a drawn battle. She couldn’t get it out of her head, no matter how she tried to concentrate her attention on this new work.

In the first place, her sister and her grandmother had both protested passionately against her plan as soon as they heard of it. She had gone home triumphantly to tell them that she had a “job” at eight dollars a week, in Mr. Petersen’s office.

“Why, child!” cried the old lady, affronted. “What an idea!”

She was really shocked. A Defoe working for a Petersen!

Minnie, too, was shocked; they both argued, reasoned and expostulated, but to no avail. Then Minnie, to the point:

“How do you expect to get there, Frankie?”

Her sister was slightly crestfallen.

“I thought you’d drive me in,” she admitted, “I’d pay you for it.”

“Thank you!” said Minnie, coldly. “But I couldn’t possibly. At that time in the morning, with all the work to be done.”

“Very well,” said Frankie, “I’ll walk.”

She was confident that when the time came, Minnie would yield, Minnie who was so kind-hearted, so self-sacrificing. And she couldn’t believe it when Monday morning actually came, and she remained obdurate.

“I said I wouldn’t, and I won’t,” she repeated. “I don’t approve of your working for that man, and I certainly shan’t help you in any way.”

Frances had no idea how to harness the horse; she was at her sister’s mercy, absolutely.

“Minnie, don’t be such a beast! And a prig. You’re not my nurse, you know. I’m old enough to decide for myself.”

“Decide everything you like,” Minnie replied, “but I shan’t help you in such a nasty, undignified affair. I can’t stop you. Why don’t you walk? You said you would.”

Frances looked at her with blazing scorn.

“You darned little hypocrite!” she cried. “Very well, I will walk, if it takes me all day.”

She wasn’t even sure of the way. She strode doggedly along in the dust and the scorching sun, furious and defiant, for more than two hours.

“I’ll walk back and forth every day,” she said to herself, “if it kills me. I won’t give in to her. She always gets her own way. Not this time, though. I’ll wait till I get my first pay, and then I’ll hire someone. I won’t give up this job!”

Twelve o’clock came.

“You’re a stranger here,” said Mr. Petersen, “perhaps you don’t know where to go for lunch. If you’d do me the honour, this first day——”

She was not quite sure what was the proper course for a business woman, but she knew that Mr. Petersen was absolutely “all right,” and to be trusted, so she accepted, and went up the street to the Eagle House with him.

The Eagle House was a fly-blown and extraordinarily dingy hotel patronised by travelling salesmen; the food was horrible but the atmosphere impeccably respectable. Frances was delighted with it. Never before had she felt so adult, so independent. She was sure that Mr. Petersen took her seriously, judged her upon her merits as an individual and not as a Defoe or as a young girl—not as a female at all. She liked him! She remembered what Minnie had said about him and rejected it all. “Common,” “presumptuous,” “thick-skinned”; snobbish nonsense, all that!

They walked back to the office and spent a very agreeable afternoon there. He explained the work to her, and was pleased by the quickness with which she grasped his explanations. He saw that she would soon be really very useful. She was not only intelligent and ambitious, but she had that remarkable feminine loyalty, that willingness to use all her powers in behalf of some one else, that is the curse and the glory of her sex. She never viewed Mr. Petersen as an ambitious young man would have done, as a stepping stone in her own career; she was genuinely concerned with how she could help Mr. Petersen with Mr. Petersen’s business.

Five o’clock came very soon, she thought. Mr. Petersen looked at the clock and closed his desk.

“Closing time!” he said cheerfully, “I hope your first day in business hasn’t——”

He stopped short because her face had changed so suddenly. She turned pale as he was speaking.

“Oh!” she said, with a gasp.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, anxiously. “Are you ill?”

“No—only—I’d forgotten.... Is there a short cut?”

Even her fine courage faltered at the prospect of once more walking those five dusty miles; it really appalled her. Yet, with a quite empty pocketbook, what could she do?

“A short cut?” he repeated, puzzled. “But—you don’t mean to say you expect to walk home?”

“I’ve got to!”

“Wait a bit!... I’ve a nice little trap in my stable. I’ll be back in ten minutes to fetch you. No; I shan’t listen to you. It’s out of the question, walking back.”

She was so relieved. She climbed into his nice little trap, behind his brisk little mare and they set off smartly. Of course, Mr. Petersen did look undeniably like a coachman, with his back like a ramrod and his red neck and his huge hands holding the reins so very correctly.... But what does it matter? “He’s a gentleman, if there ever was one,” she told herself. “He’s a dear!”

They had not gone half the distance, when whom should they meet but Minnie, in the ramshackle buggy, with the silly old horse. Her eyes were red and her expression uncertain.

“Frankie!” she cried, “I’ve been so worried! Come right in here!”

She smiled a wan greeting at Mr. Petersen.

“I didn’t think she’d really do it,” she said. “I thought she’d turn back. And when I realised that she’d really gone, all that long way—— You poor old Frankie!”

With her sister established by her side, she turned again to Mr. Petersen.

“Well!” she said. “We’ll have to give in. And let her go. No matter how much we miss her.”

Which gave him the impression that the objection to Frankie’s enterprise was solely one of sentiment. An impression altogether false, but then, he didn’t really know any of the Defoes or their principles. It never occurred to him that it was disgraceful and shameful to work in his office.

He looked after the sisters with a kindliness which had now become almost affection, and he thought what a loving, unreasonable little soul Minnie was. Couldn’t bear her sister out of her sight! A thorough woman, she was!

CHAPTER THREE

I

It was Frances who was usually considered the snob of the family, for Frances was imperious and inclined to be haughty, and had a sense of her personal dignity. But, as a matter of fact, she was as little snobbish as one so brought up could well be. She respected herself but she respected others. She was devilishly proud, but she permitted pride in others. She was capable of admiring worth wherever found and was quite honest about it. She really did not stand upon her Defoeness. She had, it must be admitted, a fair share of young conceit; she believed herself to be handsome and intelligent and resolute, and these were her claims upon the world’s regard. Whereas Minnie, far more humble as an individual, demanded a slavish servility from the majority of mankind simply because she was what she called a “gentlewoman.” It entailed no obligations, required no effort. One was, or one wasn’t. Like being born a sacred white bull. It was an involuntary sanctity which all right-minded people of the lower orders could instantly recognise.

Her grandmother thought as she did. Between them they ordained that Mr. Petersen did not exist, and they had tried in vain to convince Frankie of it. She had been very, very trying!

The two sisters drove on in a rather constrained silence after the bone of contention had gone. Minnie was absorbed in the management of the capricious skeleton, but was still able to suggest a forgiveness that irritated Frances. And Frances couldn’t quite stifle her remorse. She remembered dreadful things she had said to Minnie that morning. Things which had evidently made her weep.

All on account of Mr. Petersen; because he was so utterly unworthy of being served by one of the Brahmin caste. How vain their prayers and tears. She had suffered too much from that life without hope or sympathy. She knew that they could not comprehend her pain, and she could not endure attempting to explain. She knew that Mr. Petersen had saved her from despair.

She looked at Minnie’s obstinate, tear-stained face, and was filled with a great regret and a sort of loneliness.

“Oh, Minnie!” she cried. “Do try to understand a little! Don’t you see that I couldn’t bear a life like this?”

“There’s no use talking about it. Only, Frankie, don’t imagine it hasn’t been hard for me,” she answered. “After all, I suppose I am a human being.”

“I know it, darling, I’m awfully sorry for you!” Frances assured her contritely.

Minnie had a not very admirable trait of always pressing an advantage.

“In a way,” she went on, “I feel it more. I was home so much more—with him.”

Her eyes filled with tears; her thoughts flew back to that day, six weeks ago....

II

She was sitting alone in the studio, copying a cast of a child’s foot with great care. She had expressed a ladylike desire to “learn drawing” and her father had willingly consented, and arranged for private lessons, which she took in the afternoon, when the other girls had gone home. She was a bitter cross to her teacher, for not only was she quite without aptitude, but she likewise had no taste and no spirit. She couldn’t be fired. She wished to “learn drawing” simply; art and beauty had nothing to do with it. An artist, to Minnie, was a person who could so present things that you recognised them on paper. She was often pleased with her own drawings.

According to her habit, the young teacher had gone out of the room. Minnie was perfectly contented to be alone, to potter away with those exasperating fine little lines. She couldn’t be taught, anyway; it was of no use even to criticise. She had accepted what was told her about tacking paper on a board, about the mechanical uses of charcoal and fixative and so forth, and after that wished to go ahead in her own way, simply drawing. Nothing more to it. She sat before her easel very straight and serious. She was really absorbed in her messy little drawing; she thought it was “sweet,” and contemplated giving it to her father, nicely framed, as a Christmas present. He was sure to admire anything she did.

The big room was absolutely silent, peopled with ghostly white casts, heads, limbs, entire figures, lighted coldly from a skylight, so that she seemed in a world quite different from the brilliant autumn outside. Calm, quiet, satisfied, in the midst of an extraordinary peace—a peace which had surrounded her all her short years.

And which ended forever that day. She heard the footsteps of the teacher coming back along the corridor, more quickly than usual.

“Minnie, dear,” she said, “Miss Leland wishes to see you.”

This surprised Minnie mildly. With her usual docility she got up, put her charcoal in its little box, and hurried down the corridor, past all the rooms familiar to her for nearly ten years, rooms all empty now, with rows and rows of chairs and desks, with their blackboards and charts and maps, well known to her and more or less dear. She had been graduated from the school a year ago, and was now, of course, beyond all that and superior to it, but she enjoyed coming back for these drawing lessons. She clung to familiar places.

Down the stairs, three flights, and to the comfortable little study of the principal. Minnie had no reproof to dread, she was and had always been beyond reproach in everything, a model girl. She tapped on the door and was bidden to enter.

As soon as she saw her cousin there, she knew something was wrong. A great dread came over her. She didn’t look at Miss Leland at all.

“What is it, Cousin Ella?” she asked, sharply.

The forlorn spinster, who had years ago technically replaced their mother, suddenly burst into tears.

“My poor child!” she cried, “My poor child!”

She had come, trembling with dread and grief, prepared to “break” it to Minnie in a merciful way. But couldn’t endure the sight of the unsuspecting orphan.

“Minnie!” she sobbed. “Your poor father——”

Minnie had turned very pale.

“Hurry up!” she cried. “Is he—dead?”

Cousin Ella told her in a confused and broken way. A cable had come to tell of his death from pneumonia in Liverpool, the very day he had landed.

“I came to you at once” she said. “The very instant I had read it.”

That was her duty, of course. News of death must be spread without delay. She had driven off immediately to intercept Minnie, so that she should learn of it at least an hour sooner than if she had come home in the usual way.

Minnie was stunned and incredulous. Cousin Ella always got things mixed, anyway.

“Let’s see the cable!” she demanded.

Cousin Ella answered, with a shade of resentment, that she hadn’t brought it.

In a horrible nightmare daze, Minnie followed her to the carriage. It was not sorrow she felt, but dread; as if the catastrophe instead of having taken place already, were about to happen, were imminent. They drove along the familiar suburban roads, lined with charming houses, smooth lawns without fence or hedge, great trees, a domain prosperous, lovely and serene. They reached home, a grey stone house on a hill, planted with dwarf evergreens; they went in. Nothing in any way changed, the same well-ordered, comfortable dignity. It couldn’t be true! Father never coming back?

She again demanded the cable, and obtained it.

“Mr. Defoe died this morning. Pneumonia.
Seven o’clock. Writing. Johnson.”

So it wasn’t a mistake. She looked round instinctively for support, for reassurance, in her terror.

“Oh, father!” she cried, in a sort of shriek. “Cousin Ella! Oh.... Do something! Don’t let it be!”

In that instant, the very essence of her father’s soul was comprehended by her; she could realise him, all his fondness, his immeasurable indulgence for her. She saw what she had lost, and was overwhelmed. It was the end of her childhood, the last wholly genuine, wholly disinterested emotion she was ever to feel.

III

He had been a “business man,” engaged in a very vague business—promoting schemes and so on. He had spent money lavishly on his adored daughters, and when he was at home, in the intervals between mysterious trips, he liked to talk to them about their future, and ask them what they wanted him to do for them. Poor devil! Evidently he expected to live forever, for he had made no provision at all for them, not even life insurance. There was not a penny.

Frances had been at college just a month when she was recalled. The lawyer had gone out to break the news to her of her father’s death and her own destitution, and it must be admitted that she had behaved very badly. At first she refused absolutely to come home. She said she would go on, no matter what happened; she’d work her way through college; lots of girls did. She had made up her mind to become a doctor, and she wasn’t going to be stopped now, at the very start. The lawyer pointed out that as this plan demanded quite eight years of study, she might well spare a day or two now to attend to her poor sister. So she consented, though she felt in her heart that it was the end. She went, but she was markedly sullen.

Sober little Minnie, tired out with crying, reproved her.

“Can’t you think of something else beside yourself, Frankie?” she asked.

Frankie was abashed. She had an unbounded admiration for Minnie’s moral worth; the very fact of her being smaller, plainer and stupider than she was, was somehow proof of it. She really made an effort to look upon her ambition as selfish and petty and to concentrate her eager and vigorous mind solely on her father’s death.

Minnie had no ambition to give up. She supposed that in the course of time she would marry, and that would suffice. She was not able to show much sympathy for her sister’s intolerable disappointment.

“I know it’s hard to leave college and all that,” she said. “But after all, Frankie, I don’t think you’d have stuck it out for eight years. You wouldn’t have liked being a doctor, when the time came. Such a queer thing for a girl.”

“Nonsense!” cried Frances, angrily, “you have the stupidest, most antiquated ideas!”

“I’ll work my way through,” she went on, “I’ll be a waitress or something. But I won’t give up!”

Minnie began to cry.

“Please, Frankie, stay with me a little while,” she entreated. “I’m so lonely!”

Who could refuse?

IV

Cousin Ella advised them to accept the offer of their grandmother, their father’s mother. She was the only living soul who wanted them, anyway.

Frankie protested.

“Brownsville Landing!” she cried. “Oh, Cousin Ella! It’s the worst place!”

She remembered visits there in the summer holidays, the boredom of it, the ugliness. But Minnie assured her that it would only be temporary, while they looked about and made their plans. She brought forward the sensibleness of it, made Frances feel how rash and headstrong it would be not to go.

She had her way, as she always did. The house was closed, the furniture sold, the servants dismissed. After a curious fortnight in a boarding house nearby, where their friends came to say good-by, they went off, with all their effects in two modest trunks.

Early in the afternoon they reached Brownsville Landing.

Even grief could not blind them to the fact that they were interesting figures—two young orphans. They were aware that every one of the idlers in the station knew who they were and where they were going. They followed Thomas Washington to the battered old surrey and sat down, perfectly decorous, without turning their heads, conscious nevertheless of being regarded with sympathy, with speculation.

They were tacitly agreed that it would not be correct to talk; in silence and concealing all trace of curiosity they went rattling off up Main Street and along the dusty five-mile road to the farm.

Their grandmother was waiting for them in terror. How to console them? Their loss seemed to her so terrible, so desolating. She could with truth say nothing better than—“You are utterly ruined and alone in the world, friendless and penniless.” She watched the carriage coming, with the girls side by side, images of decent grief, perfectly restrained; then, when the carriage stopped, the restraint vanished, and they rushed into her arms, sobbing.

She led them into the darkened parlour, and sat down on the sofa between them, trying in a trembling voice to comfort them with religion and proverbs, inextricably mixed. But Frankie was not in any way to be quieted. She wept so violently, so passionately that the old lady could think of nothing better to do than to lead her upstairs and urge her to lie down.

“There! There!” she murmured. “What can Grandma do for you?”

She answered, in a muffled voice, her head buried in the pillows:

“Please—let me alone ... a little while.”

“I think we’d better,” whispered Minnie, and they went out, carefully closing the door upon Frankie’s weeping.

The first glimpse of the farm had overwhelmed her completely. She remembered the college, august, beautiful, with the orderly and purposeful life that so appealed to her, she thought of her old home, as it would look now, in the late afternoon sunshine, of its dignity and freedom, the hope she had known there. And then this, this shabby, forlorn old house standing alone in a weed-grown straggling garden, surrounded by the neglected fields, which stretched away to the cold and unknown blue hills. All that she hated most, solitude, stagnation, neglect.

V

The old lady turned with relief to Minnie, who was so much more amenable. She led her down into the kitchen where she had been cooking her choicest dishes for the orphans, gave her milk to drink and fresh cake to eat, and watched her with melancholy in which there was considerable satisfaction. So absolutely what it should be was Minnie’s attitude. She was worn and tired, her eyes reddened with crying, all of which rendered so touching her pleasantness and politeness, her willingness to answer questions. A womanly little soul, altogether. The old lady fancied she saw in her the amiable and domestic creature desired by all old people, the consolation of her age; youth with none of youth’s disadvantages, the sedateness, the responsibility of maturity with the vigour and charm proper to her twenty years. She acclaimed Minnie a paragon, a Phœnix among maidens.

Minnie herself began to feel comforted. The quiet kitchen in the last brightness of the Spring day, with the dinner pots and pans hissing on the stove and a pleasant fragrance of freshly baked bread and cake in the air, all the homeliness and friendly peace about her assuaged her grief, strengthened her soul. Her thoughts began to turn to the future—she tried to imagine a possible life there.

“Do you still live here all alone, Grandma?” she asked.

The old lady sighed. Poor creature! When she allowed herself to think of it, she wondered how she succeeded in living at all.

Her husband had been one of those happy and lavish persons who obtain, Heaven knows how, a reputation for wealth. He had always had plenty of money to spend, and everything he or his family needed, but it was, unfortunately, a sort of Fortunatus’ purse, into which he could dip without limit, but which couldn’t be bequeathed, which for everyone else lay flat and empty.

At least he had insured his life, and his widow received a monthly income of twenty-five dollars from this—her sole income. An impossible situation. How she struggled along, no one knew, not even herself. Although struggle is not the word; she didn’t struggle; she simply went on existing, miraculously sustained by the forbearance of others. It was impossible to turn the poor creature out, rent or no rent, or to refuse her credit for food, in this town where she had lived for sixty years. She “managed.” When she couldn’t pay, she didn’t pay. Her quite simple rule was to give cash when compelled, and to commandeer the rest of her necessities. She didn’t worry very much over her debts. She had a phrase which satisfied her completely. “You can’t draw blood from a stone,” she would say.

Her son had sent her money now and then, but very little. He had not been a good son; ‘his father over again,’ she often reflected, ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ A present at Christmas time, or when the girls came to visit. He never asked her how she managed, because he didn’t want to know.

And here were the girls left as she had been left.... Her eyes filled with tears as she looked at Minnie.

“Yes, I’ve been a lonely old woman,” she said, “but I hope I shan’t be any more.”

Minnie kissed her soberly.

“No, Grandma, dear,” she said. “We won’t leave you again.”

“Where else could we go, anyway?” she added to herself, in her practical way.

CHAPTER FOUR

I

Frances had waked up early that first morning. She looked round the big, low-ceilinged room, at the pictures on the walls, sheep in a snowstorm, ships at sea, religious maidens, hung with a sole aim of covering up the most badly stained places in the faded paper, at the white iron wash stand, the lame chest of drawers on which stood a quite unrelated and unattached mirror, the dusty strips of old carpets serving as rugs, at all the dinginess and shabbiness and deserted old age, and in a sort of frenzy, she began to shake Minnie.

Minnie opened her black eyes.

“Well!” she said, sleepy but good-humoured.

“Minnie, isn’t this awful!”

“The same as it always was,” she replied, slowly, “and it seems to me we can be pretty useful here.”

Frances frowned.

“To Grandma? Of course.... Only, isn’t it senseless for two healthy young women to spend their time looking after one old lady?”

“I shouldn’t call it senseless.”

“I could help much more by earning money and sending it to her,” said Frances.

“You don’t have to decide all that now,” Minnie returned, rather severely. “You can give yourself a week or so to rest—after what’s happened.”

Frankie said no more, but remained unconvinced. She made up her mind she wouldn’t stay on that farm—not for a week.

Poor Frankie! Doomed to stay there for how many weeks!

She tried in vain to think of some means of getting away. At first there were a dozen radiant vistas, possibilities of all sorts. She contemplated becoming a secretary, a writer, a doctor’s assistant, a teacher, or, as a last resort, the wife of an extraordinary man. It was a long time before she could realise of how little value she was, how undesired. She hadn’t even money for her fare to New York, and her answers to advertisements found in the city papers were always late and never regarded. She was amazed to find herself in this blind alley: her eager hands groped for some sort of outlet; she couldn’t believe that she was actually obliged to stay in Brownsville Landing.

It cannot be denied that she was a trial to the other two. She shirked her share of the housework and remained obstinately shut up in her room with her old school books. And every time they drove into the village she insisted upon stopping at the Carnegie Library and exchanging piles of books, keeping Minnie waiting an outrageous length of time. Minnie and her grandmother had each to take out cards so that she could get as many books as she could carry.

She used to cry, too, at night, and tell Minnie she couldn’t stand it. Some days she was scornful and silent, scarcely saw them except at meal times; then remorse would seize her and the next day she wouldn’t touch her books, but would work to the point of exhaustion cleaning the house. When she did bend her mind to such humble tasks she far surpassed Minnie. She was quick, thoroughgoing, altogether competent, and, when she wasn’t cross, she was a delight to the others, gay, endearing, irresistible.

They couldn’t understand, couldn’t see how her ardent spirit suffered. Her ambition, still so vague that she was not able to express it, was unintelligible to them. Sometimes she would confess to Minnie that she wanted to marry an explorer.

“Or someone like that. Someone awfully famous and yet not stuffy. Not anyone who sits down and works.”

And perhaps that same day she would say vehemently that she didn’t care a bit about getting married, ever. She wanted to be something on her own account. There wasn’t much chance now that she could be a doctor, but there were plenty of other things, useful and interesting.

Minnie often asked to be informed of the object of all the studying her sister did.

“I don’t know, exactly,” Frances would tell her, “only it’s some comfort to think I’m not slipping back.”

II

Minnie fitted into that life as if she had been made for it. Serious, anxious, good-tempered, she followed her grandmother about, helping her, deeply interested in the daily work. She was not very clever or skilful, but she supplied the lack of these by a great willingness. She did not suffer from any passion for perfection; she was satisfied if she could “get through” what was essential.

She assumed responsibilities. She took it upon herself to get up first and get the breakfast. Frances used to watch her, springing out of bed in the half-darkness directly the alarm clock rang, and beginning to dress without wasting time even to stretch.

And not only was she invaluable within doors, but almost at once she had taken charge of the decrepit old mare lingering on in a filthy old barn. This had formerly been Thomas Washington’s duty, but Minnie assured her grandmother that this arrangement was extravagant and that Thomas was rough. In a very few days she had learned from him all the essentials in the care of Bess, and herself assumed the work.

She had a passionate, an exaggerated love for animals; compassion rather than love; for every dumb creature she saw she felt a distressing pity and, of course, being Minnie, an anxious sense of responsibility. She was forever worried by the thought that some beast was being ill-used. She even went so far as to follow carters to make sure they weren’t cruel. She had repeated disagreements with her grandmother because the old lady wouldn’t allow Michael to usurp her chair.

Michael and the other cats had at once become her special property. She put them into the cellar at night and first thing in the morning would unbolt the door and let them out, welcoming them with a smile maternal and solicitous. They were always waiting near the door, and would come jostling in at once, uttering impatient little cries, and looking up at her with luminous and plaintive eyes. She would bend over the worn and unlovely Spotty, mother of uncounted drowned kittens, with kindly sympathy; her young son Teddy, who was still silly and charming, she treated with indulgence; but for old Michael she had a manner at once motherly and propitiating. Michael, truculent old blackguard, his thick, short coat striped like a tiger, arrogant and complacent as an old pirate chief! He never showed any affection, but a sort of shameless allegiance, knowing that from her came all his benefits. She was really very happy in this life....

III

Providence was always on Minnie’s side, and Providence, it would seem, was set firmly against Frankie’s worldly ambition to leave Brownsville Landing.

The poor old lady fell ill; not at all suddenly, simply one day she asked Minnie to stop at the doctor’s on her way home from the village and, if possible, fetch him with her. He came, and remained shut up with the old lady a long time. When he came out of her room, he saw neither of the girls; he had to waste his valuable time seeking them. Minnie he discovered at last in the barn, preparing the old horse for her journey back with him, and she was so concerned about this, so insistent that the doctor should perfectly understand Bess’s delicacy and nervousness, that she forgot to ask about her grandmother.

“She won’t pass a milk waggon,” she explained. “You’ll have to get out and lead her by if you happen to meet one. She’s....”

“I’ll look after your horse,” said the doctor. “It’s only a matter of six miles. I’ll send my man back with her as soon as he’s back from the blacksmith’s with my own. And now that your mind’s easy on that score, perhaps you’ll be interested to hear that your grandmother’s in a bad state.”

“Oh, what’s the matter!” she cried.

“We’ll bring her round; don’t worry,” he replied evasively, “but it won’t be in a week, or in a month. She needs care and nursing. And you’ll have to see that she doesn’t go down the stairs,” he added. “She’s not to leave that floor for the present.”

Minnie stopped long enough to see how he handled Bess, over that awful rut near the gate; then she flew upstairs.

“Grandma!” she entreated, “do tell me what’s wrong!”

But the old lady refused to discuss it.

“Don’t fret, child,” she said. “I’ll do very well.”

“But it worries me so dreadfully not to know.”

The old lady remained firm. Some obscure sense of pride informed her that it was not fitting and proper to discuss the physical body with one’s grandchild. She would only admit that her heart was not as strong as it might be....

She didn’t seem particularly ill; she sat propped up in bed, knitting, quite cheerful. It did not occur to Minnie that the poor old thing was worn out, that the organism which had worked without ceasing for seventy-five years was in need of rest—eternal rest.

She knocked vigorously on the bedroom door, which Frances insisted upon keeping locked. Frances let her in with a very bad grace, which she ignored.

“Now!” she said. “Now, we’re in for it. Poor Grandma’s sick and the doctor won’t allow her to go downstairs for months.”

They discussed it soberly, Frankie lying flat on the bed, her hands under her head, Minnie sitting beside her.

“We’ll simply have to do the best we can,” said Minnie.

Frances agreed.

“It’s dreadful for her,” she said, “when she’s always been so active.”

IV

Minnie at once instituted a new régime, under which her grandmother received the best possible care. She waited on her devotedly, spent all her scant leisure with her; was, as usual, faultless.

At least, that was how she appeared to her sister. Frankie honestly could not see a fault in her. Except that she was sometimes a bit too diplomatic, too anxious to keep things pleasant. That is, she didn’t always tell the truth—exactly.... She was not at all abashed if she were found out; she had always the same reply.

“I thought it was for the best.”

The long, long days went by, all alike. At five o’clock the alarm clock rang. Minnie jumped up and closed the window, and lighted the lamp on the bureau while Frances, pretending to be asleep, lay watching her. The lamp-light made a little bright spot in the big shadowy room, showing Minnie like an actress in the spotlight, only quite without self-consciousness, dressing herself quickly, wishing only to be neat.

“I wish I weren’t a bit vain,” she would reflect. “Minnie’s so wonderful!”

Then Minnie would go groping her way along the black corridor, stopping always outside the old lady’s door to listen to her breathing, and, after that, there was always a long interval of silence, before she could be heard, coming up the stairs, slowly and carefully, with the tray.

She always opened the door of the darkened room quietly, so that she shouldn’t startle her grandmother, in spite of the fact that she invariably found the old lady wide awake. Then she went at once about the hated business of admitting a little light into the room with as little fresh air as possible. She had first to pull up the shade, which never would roll properly but had to be jerked up and down a number of times, then to unlock the window and prop it up with a stick while she struggled with the rusty catches and flung open the shutters. She set the tray by the bedside with the unvarying question:

“How are you this morning, Grandma?” with a sort of professional cheerfulness. “Did you have a good night?”

“Very poor, my dear,” the old lady would usually reply.

Minnie would say that she was very sorry, and after asking if there were anything else needed, would go on her way, not really at all sorry or disturbed. She had no idea what a “poor night” meant; she had never experienced one, never tried to imagine one. All her grandmother’s ailments were remote, vague and without interest for her. Her sole concern was to do her duty.

This done, she proceeded to wake Frances, and while she was dressing, got ready their own breakfast in the kitchen. Frances usually found her preparing an economical mixture of condensed milk and water for the cats, with old Michael standing at her side, looking up into her face, his pink mouth opening in a silent cry. The milk properly warmed, each animal bent its sleek little head over its familiar saucer, lapping steadily; now and then Michael looked up, licked his chops and seemed about to speak, then thought better of it and went on drinking.

Minnie was not good company at breakfast time; she was too much preoccupied with plans for the day. She had the obnoxious air of a very busy person trying to be polite. Immediately she had finished she hurried off to the stable, or to the cottage of Thomas Washington across the road, or about some other of her varied undertakings.

Thomas Washington was a highly respectable Negro who had begun life as “hired man” for their grandfather, but who had got on very well and was now a small farmer on his own account. He was always willing to assist Minnie with expert advice, but nothing further, unless it were to be suitably recompensed. Thrift had made him independent and comfortable; thrift he worshipped and practised, and it forbade him to do anything for nothing. The gratitude of a penniless Defoe was of no value to him, he didn’t care for it. Nevertheless he was of the greatest use to Minnie, because he knew how to do everything and she being so very “handy” was able to learn from his explanations. From the bedroom window Frances used to see her talking to him over his gate, or watching him as he illustrated some point of carpentry with grave gestures, and come tramping home again, in her shapeless old hat and a big apron, to work with noble cheerfulness.

Not for anything on earth would she have admitted that this cheerfulness was genuine, that it sprang from her satisfaction at finding work within her power, for the first time. At school, at home with Frances, she had, in spite of her naïve conceit, always been more or less conscious of inferiority, of being surpassed. Resolutely she covered this new satisfaction with a veil of martyrdom, made it a sort of reproach. She would never, never admit enjoying anything. Perhaps at the bottom of her queer little soul she was aware that the things she truly enjoyed were not altogether admirable—perhaps her spirit was appalled before her mind. Provided, of course, that she possessed a spirit.

Mysteries forever unsolvable, these greedy, hypocritical, obtuse little beings. Stupid, without sympathy, they none the less leave their impress on the whole world. They force us to believe that their blind and ruinous maternal passion—a perverted instinct—is a sacred and mystic thing; they hold up to us their animal jealousy of one man as “love”; complacently they reveal this little beast, which one loves with rage and disgust, and cannot resist, and they call it Woman. And perhaps it is. Perhaps those others, with hearts, with brains, with souls, are not true women, only the freaks of nature....

CHAPTER FIVE

I

Minnie turned in at the gate, or rather, the gate posts, for there had been no gates for years.

“I got a cold supper ready before I left,” she said. “Everything’s on the table. Don’t wait for me, Frankie; you must be terribly tired and hungry.”

Frances was touched.

“Minnie!” she said, “Really, you’re an angel!”

Minnie smiled indulgently.

“Silly old Frankie!” she said.

Indulgence was all that Frankie could obtain. In vain she talked of the good she could do them, of how she would be able to help them as she got on better, of the value of the experience to be gained in Mr. Petersen’s office. Minnie and her grandmother persisted in regarding this work of hers as a rather selfish frivolity; they humoured her, but they were grieved. Frankie was made to see that Minnie had chosen the better and the harder part, that she at least held inexorably to duty. They passed an evening not at all pleasant. The gulf between them was becoming more and more evident. Things were never quite the same again, after that first day at Mr. Petersen’s.

II

Unknown to the old lady, who would have been deeply shocked, Frankie and Minnie were in the parlour the next Sunday afternoon sewing, putting the final touches to a dress which Frankie was to wear in the office next day. When, suddenly, as she happened to look up, Minnie saw Mr. Petersen riding up the drive, on his splendid horse, and wearing his breeches and leggins and a quite new coat.

“Frankie!” she cried, in horror. “He’s coming in! Hide the sewing, quick!”

“He wouldn’t care,” Frankie objected, but nevertheless she obeyed, and every trace of their activity had vanished by the time Minnie admitted him.

“Might I see Mrs. Defoe?” he asked.

Minnie explained that she wasn’t able to come downstairs.

“So I’ve heard. But it’s a business matter. Perhaps she’d let me go up.”

She did; they watched him mounting the stairs, which creaked and shook under his heavy tread.

“What can he want?” asked Frances, nervously. “Oh, Minnie, I hope and pray it’s nothing about my not going on!”

“I don’t see what else it can be,” said Minnie, consolingly.

But she was soon enlightened. Mr. Petersen came tramping down again after twenty minutes’ talk and announced that Mrs. Defoe would like to see Miss Minnie.

The old lady was rather agitated.

“Dear! Dear!” she whispered. “The man’s arranged a second mortgage on the east field, so that I can pay off part of that first mortgage Mr. Bascom is so rude about. I don’t understand it very well, but I must say he’s very considerate—very considerate. Dear me! You’ll have to be civil to him, pet. Ask him to sit down and give him a piece of the fruit cake.”

She found him standing in the hall, talking to Frankie, and when she invited him into the parlour, he accepted cheerfully.

“Get Mr. Petersen a piece of cake, Frankie,” said Minnie. She couldn’t bring herself to wait on him.

He was polite, he was clean and well-dressed, he said nothing that could offend her, and yet she was grossly offended, merely by the sight of him, sitting there, in the Defoe parlour, holding his straw hat in his great red hands. Couldn’t he realise?

The fact of his being a Swede was enough. She had a very vague idea where and what Sweden was, knew nothing at all about its people, its history, its music, its literature. She considered all Scandinavians “low.” There was no appeal from that.

Unconscious of his lowness, Mr. Petersen talked on pleasantly, told them what was going on in the town, and all the bits of news he thought they might like to hear. He was actuated by a great good-will toward both of the girls, and a peculiar interest in Minnie. He had thought of her often since that first meeting.

He stopped a long time. When he had gone, Frankie began to laugh.

“Minnie!” she cried. “Did you notice? He really looks awfully like old Michael.”

Minnie refused to smile.

“I think he’s a horrid, presumptuous man,” she said. “I call it a shame that we have to put up with him.”

“Nonsense,” Frankie interrupted her, “it’s he who puts up with us. A darn good thing for us he does! I like him!”

Minnie was destined to see him often. As the old lady had requested, with great dignity, he called regularly every month and was conducted upstairs. She felt pretty sure that he didn’t get his rent, all of it, at any rate, but it didn’t affect him. He was as kind, as cheerful as ever, and always willing to make any repairs that were needed.

It didn’t occur to her for some time that she was the object of “attentions” on his part. She knew that he liked to chat with her, and now and then he brought her fruit from his garden. But she didn’t think, she couldn’t think, that he “meant anything.” With the gulf there was between a Defoe and a Petersen!

It was Frankie who first mentioned it.

“Do you know,” she said, “I think Mr. Petersen’s gone on you, Minnie.”

“Don’t be so vulgar!” Minnie reproved her.

“He’s always asking about you,” Frankie went on. “Oh, he is, Minnie, I know it!”

Quite true; he was. He saw Frankie every day, and was yet proof against her beauty and her happy courage; his heart never beat the quicker for her. He liked her very much, and respected her, and was courteous and kind and friendly toward her, but she had no appeal for him. In Minnie he saw every quality he most admired in a woman. He was happy to sit and look at her, always with an apron on, going about her business in her terribly serious way. He thought her kind, gentle and sympathetic, he thought her thrifty and capable, he admired her fine dark eyes and her matronly figure. He even fancied that she was peculiarly intelligent, because she always listened attentively to him, and was so silent, so mysterious herself. He noticed, too, how her grandmother doted on her, and how Frances looked up to her. He was, in his cautious way, always studying her, until he thought he understood her. While, as a matter of fact, he misunderstood her completely, in every way, like the others.

She was the quietest and the stupidest person in the house, and she ruled both the others; she was the least scrupulous, and they exalted her “goodness”; she did nothing well, and continually they praised her for her wonderful housekeeping. Enigma; extraordinary Minnie, quintessence of womanliness—in Heaven’s name, who is to sit in judgment on you?

III

In the autumn the old lady was permitted to go downstairs once a day, and on the first of these occasions, Mr. Petersen came with a gift of fruit which he had bought in New York. Frances had told him of the old lady’s improvement and he wanted, so he said, to congratulate her. He came as usual on his horse, and Mrs. Defoe, who was sitting by the parlour window, was the first to see him. She frowned.

“Silly nonsense!” she said, half aloud. “A carpenter, capering round the country like a fine gentleman!”

(A carpenter she had decided to consider him.)

He came in; his face and hands looked redder than ever, and he was frankly wiping his forehead with a huge handkerchief.

“Well!” he said cheerfully, “I’m very glad to see you so much better, Mrs. Defoe.”

“Thank you, Mr. Petersen,” she replied, demurely.

“We’re likely to have a mild winter, I believe,” he went on, “from all indications——”

He rose as Minnie came in, grave, like one interrupted in the midst of important work, but mindful of the duties of hospitality.

“I was saying,” he resumed, in his singing drawl, “I think we’ll have a fine, mild winter. I was working in my garden on Sunday——”

“On Sunday!” cried the old lady.

“That’s the only day I have time,” he explained.

“But—— Well, I have my little notions.... Very old-fashioned, I dare say.... You’re not a member of Our church, Mr. Petersen? I don’t remember ever having seen you there.”

He shook his head.

“A Lutheran?”

“No.”

“A—Catholic?”

“I am a Freethinker,” he said gravely.

This was the final straw; Minnie and the old lady stared at him in open disapproval.

“I think maybe on the other side we are not so—religious,” he said.

Mrs. Defoe had long been convinced of that, as she was of their immorality in general, but she was genuinely shocked that, under her roof, in the very room where the minister had sat not a week ago, in the very presence of her Bible and her prayer books, he should openly and without shame proclaim himself a Freethinker! Neither he nor Minnie had any idea what that word implied for her, with what horror and repulsion she had heard her husband speak of Tom Paine. She made some sort of excuse and, supported by Minnie, disappeared into the kitchen.

“I’ll sit here,” she whispered, “until that man’s gone.”

Mr. Petersen remained, happy and undisturbed, talking on and on, while Minnie listened with her usual polite attention, giving no hint of her burning anxiety to get on with her work. She scarcely heard a word; no matter what he was saying, she was thinking, “Oh, dear! Eleven o’clock and Grandma’s bed isn’t made yet!” That was of so much more importance and interest than anything he could say.

He went away, imagining that he had ingratiated himself with them both, by his present of fruit, and by his agreeable conversation; he didn’t suspect that there was now another and still blacker mark against him.

He had only one friend in that household, and that was Frances. Before she had been working a week in his office, she realised something of his quality and as time went on she grew enthusiastic.

“He’s a fine man,” she told her sister. “He’d make a wonderful husband. He has the disposition of an angel, really. He’s so honest, too. Everyone respects him.”

“I wouldn’t marry him if I were starving,” said Minnie, “that common, vulgar carpenter!”

“He’s not common and he’s not vulgar and he’s not a carpenter. I wish you could see his house.”

“I never shall,” said Minnie.

Frances often went there to fetch books for him when he was busy in his office. He lived in the town, in a solid old brick house which he had remodelled and greatly improved, with a respectable Swede and his wife to attend to his wants. Everything very orderly, very simple, very comfortable, a hundred times more civilised than the Defoe home. He had his garden, which gave him a great deal of pleasure, and an excellent little library of Scandinavian and English books, law books, novels, plays, a number of books on Socialism and economics. He read a great deal, in a laborious sort of way, slowly going through page after page and taking the ideas into his own head, to be examined there. His chief interest was Socialism; he could be—and often was—quite eloquent on that topic.

He was rather lonely in Brownsville Landing. He had found no one who was interested in his kind of Socialism, which was something more than discontent and jealousy; he found no one who had read what he had read on the subject; he was not able to interest himself in pool or poker, the popular recreations. Without being unduly vain, he believed himself to be considerably superior to the average inhabitant of the village. Even to the Defoes, as far as intellect and experience were concerned. He actually thought that he might be a good match for Minnie.

Frances thought so too. She read his books with more and more respect and liked to hear him talk. She insisted upon quoting him to Minnie. She liked his plain and fine manner of living, she honoured his virtues.

“Minnie, you’re an idiot,” she said, bluntly. “You couldn’t do better. If you’d come out of the middle ages and really look at him——”

“I don’t pretend to be a modern woman,” said Minnie, virtuously.

CHAPTER SIX

I

A year and a half went by, and nothing changed. Minnie was the same serious little drudge, Frankie went on with her work in Mr. Petersen’s office; he too was quite the same. The old lady was uncomplainingly busy. And the “affair,” also, between Minnie and Mr. Petersen had progressed not at all. Minnie had so willed it; she knew quite well how to check her very prudent suitor.

Everything was going just as she wished. She was used now to Frankie’s being away all day; she rather liked it, it gave her a freer hand. She thought of nothing but the daily routine and never tired of it. She would sit with her grandmother and discuss for hours the advisability and the possibility of a new preserving kettle, or whether they should send the rags to be woven into a rug, or whether Thomas Washington had been unfair about the tomatoes. She liked to tell Frankie that she worried about the future, but she really never did. She was remarkably contented. No great effort was required of her; she wasn’t expected to read, or to keep up-to-date; even to trouble about clothes. She could work along in a sort of pleasant daze, just as she wished, praised by everyone for whatever she did, her numerous omissions and failures unknown. The animals were an unfailing happiness to her; she had her grandmother to talk to, and Frankie in the evening, and there was always the gratifying sense of Mr. Petersen’s admiration in the background. Everything going so smoothly, so beautifully, until once more Frankie spoiled it all.

She came home one evening in a fever of excitement. The librarian in the Carnegie Branch—a nice, jolly girl who extolled Mr. Petersen and liked Frankie—had told her of a position in New York.

“She was offered it, but it wouldn’t suit her, so she recommended me. She says she’s sure I could fill it. Wasn’t it nice of her?”

Minnie said nothing.

“It’s an authoress; she wants a secretary. She doesn’t care so much about experience or training, but she wants someone presentable—of good family.”

That was emphasised to appease Minnie.

“It’s thirty dollars a month, free and clear. I’d send you half.”

Minnie looked coldly at her.

“I suppose you’d be only too glad to go,” she said.

“Of course not,” said Frankie, and dropped the subject for the time. Only in her heart longed and longed for that wonderful job, that new, entrancing life in the city.

Of course she got it. That goes without saying. She was twenty-two, and passionately desirous. Of course she got it! But after what a struggle!

At first she renounced the plan utterly. It was selfish. She went to bed, lay by Minnie’s side, weeping quietly for a long time in the dark, longing and longing. Then she grew desperate. She must go! She couldn’t give up such an opportunity. The next day she wrote to the authoress and presently had a letter asking her to call. So she was obliged to tell them.

There was a dreadful scene. They even wept. She was amazed by her own ruthless firmness; she had never imagined she could so trample on these two beloved creatures. She tried, poor girl, to explain something of her own fiery restlessness and vigour, her need for more life. But to no purpose; they saw nothing but her wish and determination to leave them. She ended, as one usually does, by losing her temper, and shut herself in the bedroom, trembling with anger.

“Do they expect me to bury myself here?” she thought. “Just to stop here, forever and ever? It’s all very well for Grandma, she’s seventy-five, and it’s all right for Minnie. A little old maid like her! But me—— I won’t!”

She temporised, fully resolved to hurt them this once, and then to load them with benefits, when her wonderful future should begin.

Daylight faded; the old room grew quite dark, the pallid yellow in the west turned grey, then inky. Her lamp was downstairs, and not for anything would she have gone after it. She drew a rocking chair up to the window and sat there looking out over the melancholy wide fields stretching to the mountains. One of those immeasurably solemn and majestic moods came over her: the night breeze blew on her face, sighing through the pine trees; her spirit was not on earth. High resolves, divine unselfishness, fired her; she wanted to help everyone, not only Minnie and her grandmother, but every single human soul. She felt urged to a mighty destiny....

Then the mood ebbed, and left her chilled and lonely. She could hear Minnie in the kitchen directly beneath her; her pleasant voice talking to Michael; sometimes a cough from the old lady. Like a knife her love pierced her, love for everything safe, familiar and homely.

In another minute she would have rushed down the stairs to fling her arms round her sister, to tell her she would not, could not, ever leave her. But at that moment the door opened and Minnie entered, lamp in hand; her eyes were red, her plain face rather pale.

“Frankie,” she said, and setting down the lamp, caught her sister in a tight embrace.

“Frankie,” she went on, “I’ve been talking it over with Grandma.... And we’re both willing—for you to go——”

She could keep her tears back no longer; they wept together on each other’s shoulders.

Minnie was the first to look up and dry her eyes.

“Now come downstairs, dear,” she said, “I’ve made delicious cornmeal gems for your supper.”

II

It was a bitter loss to Minnie. She drove Frankie to the station that last day with her heart like lead. And though she had voluntarily let her go, and said good-by to her steadily and cheerfully, her very real affection for her sister was hurt beyond remedy. She never again felt quite the same toward her, never lost that faint resentment; always remembered that Frances had wanted to go off and leave her, alone and lonely.

The house was dreadful when she re-entered it. She cried all day as she did her work, and went to sleep in miserable solitude. Oh, but she missed Frankie, the brilliant, the lovely, the ardent! And the more she missed her, the more deeply did she feel the wrong Frankie had done her.

Life had become unsupportable. She thought all the time of some way in which she could change it, a way which should, of course, satisfy her conscience.

For Minnie’s was a conscience which imperiously required satisfaction. She had always to feel sure that she was “doing right.” However, as she was always certain that all her aims were beyond reproach, her conscience never refused to sanction whatever means she employed in arriving at them.

She was more than a Jesuit. She did not so much believe that bad means were justified by a worthy end; she was simply convinced that no means used by her were, or could possibly be, bad.

Remorse and regret were unknown to her. And defeat, too, she had not as yet encountered. From her earliest years she had known how to get her own way. Either a serious manner made any request seem reasonable, or, if this failed, thoughtful consideration had always showed her a way to victory.

And yet, for all her crookedness and her muddle-headedness, and her fierce and ridiculous ruthlessness, wasn’t there something about Minnie that was really sublime? When you look at her whole life, in all its preposterousness, can you really say whether or not she was good? Or bad? Or perhaps was not either good or bad, but elemental and innocent, even in harm, like a force of nature?

She bent her mind now upon her problem, surveyed her situation from every angle. Useless to deny that she considered Mr. Petersen. She turned him over and over in her mind, and, not without deep study, rejected him. He absolutely would not do. She couldn’t be Mrs. Petersen. Although he had never asked her, never mentioned the subject at all.

She was quite determined to marry someone, though, and to marry soon. She couldn’t see any other end to her miseries and her loneliness. She realised that under the present circumstances she was not at all likely to meet anyone marriageable; she could not, like Frankie, roam the world to find a man; she had to use more subtle and more difficult means. And, actually, alone and unaided, the indomitable little thing thought of a way——

III

It was difficult to find a pretext for getting into the village that day. It was not her regular day, nothing was really needed, and no mail expected. Her grandmother was a little annoyed at such obstinacy.

“I can’t see,” she protested, “why on earth you want to go gadding off again to-day, with so much to be done.”

“I’ve seen to everything,” Minnie answered, and it was true.

“You’ll have to go in on Saturday,” the old lady reminded her.

“I need the wire,” said Minnie, calmly. (Chicken wire being the pretext.)

The old lady argued that she could wait. Minnie wished to know what was to be gained by waiting: she had any number of excellent reasons for not waiting. In the end she went out to harness Bess, with secret triumph, knowing that she had disarmed all her grandmother’s suspicions, and wouldn’t need to make explanations when she returned home.

She drove off in the buggy, sitting very straight, with a full sense of her dignity as a young lady of fine old family. It never occurred to her that she was in the least ridiculous. She was not physically vain, but she did consider herself impressive, aristocratic, and it would have been a cruel shock to her to know that the cultured spinster, Miss Vanderhof, used to laugh when she saw her driving by, and say to her mother, “There goes Miss Quixote!”

Penniless and proud Minnie was, but farther than that the simile would not hold. No one less likely than she to tilt against windmills, no one less sympathetic toward a lost cause.

She was engrossed in the management of the silly old horse, scanning the road for anything that might disturb its absurd old nerves, sternly resolved that it shouldn’t over-exert itself. She was convinced that she had a most high-strung, mettlesome animal to handle.

At last she reached the village and drove regally along the Main Street, bowing right and left to the tradespeople, almost all of them her grandmother’s creditors.

She stopped in front of the up-to-date office building, leaving Bess in charge of a reliable little boy in spectacles, personally known to her, then she climbed the stairs and knocked on Mr. Petersen’s door.

He was delighted to see her, drew forward a chair and sat down opposite her with a pleasant smile.

“It’s something new to see you here,” he said. “The first time, isn’t it?”

Minnie said it was.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said appealingly, hesitatingly, “I know I shouldn’t take up your time, but—I don’t know anyone else I could possibly ask——”

“I’m only too happy,” he assured her. “What can I do?”

“Your advice,” she said. “I—things aren’t going—very well.... I wanted to put this in a New York paper. But I didn’t know which was the best, the most—respectable. If you think it’s.... Would you just please look at it?”

She had taken a piece of paper from her shabby little purse and now handed it to him. He read it, read it again, and his face grew scarlet.

“Young gentleman would receive board and practical instruction in farming in refined family. Beautiful location. Moderate terms. Apply X——”

“But——” he faltered, “I don’t ... do you mean ... you would teach farming, Miss Minnie?”

“Yes,” she said, calmly. “I could always ask Thomas Washington about things I didn’t know, when they came up. His truck farm is quite a model, you know.”

Mr. Petersen was suffering horribly; he felt that he could not keep a straight face much longer.

“But—you see ...” he said. “People don’t do that much—in these days. There are—you know—any number of agricultural colleges——”

“Yes,” said Minnie, scornfully. “That’s all very well. But practical experience is what anyone needs. You can’t learn farming out of books.”

Mr. Petersen tried to convince her that students at agricultural colleges didn’t occupy themselves exclusively with books, but he failed. She plainly considered all such institutions ridiculous and unpractical. He did convince her, however, that other people would very likely have the same silly notions as he had, and that it would be difficult, to say the least, for her to secure a pupil.

“Then suppose I simply advertise for a boarder?” she said.

Mr. Petersen was silent for some time, torn between a desire to placate Minnie, and a strong dislike for making a fool of himself. Suppose she were able to say afterward, “Well, you didn’t say anything against it. I consulted you!” No! He couldn’t; he had to be honest.

“The trouble is, nowadays people expect so much,” he said, with a distressed frown. “All sorts of conveniences. Bathroom, hot water, gas or electricity. I don’t believe—unless of course you were willing to make very low terms—and in that case you wouldn’t attract the sort of person you’d care to have in the house.”

“I’d have to take what I could get,” said Minnie.

Their points of view were so astonishingly different. Mr. Petersen wished to convey politely to her the idea that no sane person would dream of coming to board in a desolate old farm without even the classic advantages of fresh milk and “scenery.” And Minnie wondered that he couldn’t see the extraordinary and fascinating results which might follow the introduction of a strange man into their household. He might be an old man, who would naturally die and leave her all his money, or a young one who would marry her. She even thought, with irrational delight, of the possibility of an artist, or a poet.... Why wouldn’t the man understand that she didn’t care whether or not she made money from the venture? The essential thing was, that something should happen.

“And with the winter coming on,” said Mr. Petersen.

“I should think,” said Minnie, stiffly, “that there’d be plenty of people who would enjoy a nice, old-fashioned country winter.”

“An old person,” she added. “He might enjoy Grandpa’s library.”

This was absolutely too much for Mr. Petersen. He could no longer restrain himself; he burst into a tremendous laugh. He had a vision of a wretched old man, shivering in their frigid parlour, absorbed in that desolating accumulation of old hymn books, old volumes of sermons, bound volumes of long dead and forgotten magazines, and sickly old novels. By the time he had controlled his mirth, he had mortally and eternally offended Minnie. She rose.

“Thank you very much,” she said, with a polite smile. “It’s very good of you to advise me. I’ll think over all you’ve said.”

“Just a minute!” he cried in alarm. “Please!... Miss Minnie ... if it’s a question of—earning a—little pocket money—why don’t you consider a position in an office?”

A long silence.

“In my office, for instance? If you’d like your sister’s place——”

“No, thank you; I couldn’t leave Grandma,” she answered.

And went out, burning with resentment against him. He knew it; as she drove off he watched her from the window with a sigh of regret. Her pitiful ignorance, her enterprise, her obstinacy, touched him profoundly. His heart positively ached for her.

Alas, Mr. Petersen! By reason of his compassion, forever lost!

CHAPTER SEVEN

I

Behold Minnie, a week or so later, harnessing Bess, this time for a mission authorised and altogether blameless. She was going to the station to meet Frankie, who was coming home for a week-end.

For days she and her grandmother had been making preparations, partly from an affectionate wish to please Frankie, and partly from a desire to impress her with their own importance and progressiveness. They had both an unspoken but perfectly understood feeling that it would be intolerable for her to say or to think that everything was unchanged since she had left. The old lady was specially proud of a pile of copies of a weekly magazine which she had audaciously subscribed for, seduced by a nice young agent.

As for Minnie, she had something up her sleeve which she knew would astonish and amaze, and utterly kill any news Frankie might bring. She whistled as she worked in the stable with a slightly malicious delight in anticipating the shock. Although she was terribly nervous, too. She had not yet had occasion to try her strength, and she was afraid that they—the practical, experienced wage-earning Frankie, and the quite incomprehensible old lady, might crush her. She was bound and determined to win, but she wasn’t altogether sure....

She drove off in her usual majestic fashion, agreeably conscious of a new hat. In order that she might compete upon equal terms with Frankie, her grandmother had presented it to her, bought with money withheld from Heaven knows how many creditors. A triumphal progress through the town, and she came up the gravel drive to the station with something faintly resembling a trot. There, however, she was forced to descend, and hold the old mare by the bridle, patting her nose, trying with intense seriousness to soothe her. She couldn’t bear to see her start and tremble, with that distressing rolling of her brown eyes, at the first sound of the engine’s whistle. She had suggested that Frances should walk as far as the drug-store, so that Bess could wait there, out of sight of the trains that so disturbed her, but Frances wrote back with some spirit that she did not intend to lug a heavy bag four blocks for the sake of a silly old horse. She threatened to hire a hack, and rather than suffer that affront to the Defoe pride, Minnie was ready to make great concessions.

She was too much taken up with the horse to see her sister at first, and Frances had an oddly illuminating view of her, an impersonal view. It seemed to her that she had never before looked at Minnie without Minnie’s looking back at her; this was not the Minnie familiar to her as her own reflection in the glass, but a stranger, a solemn, swarthy little woman, very countrified, inclined to plumpness, looking older than her years. She felt terribly sorry for her, hurried to her in affectionate remorse for having so seen her.

Minnie greeted her with her very agreeable smile.

“Frankie, you look splendid!” she said warmly.

So she did. She had a new tweed suit and a quite plain hat, correct, well-chosen things that suited her tall strong figure and permitted attention to fly at once to her gay, brilliant face. Oh, there was some foundation for the Defoe pride! Minnie, in her mind, saluted her sister as a princess, the vindication of the family. She felt not the slightest envy; that was not one of her faults. Or was it that she was too well satisfied with her own quite different allure?

They drove through the Main Street again and past the up-to-date brick building, and, as she hoped, Frances asked her:

“How’s old Petersen these days?”

“All right,” Minnie answered, and was able to tell her several quite satisfactory things he had said on his last visit. He was a poor enough swain, but he was better than none, and the lovely Frankie had none! She listened with interest.

“I’m sure he means something!” she said.

Minnie admitted that she thought so too.

“But of course I don’t encourage him,” she said. “Imagine his even thinking of such a thing—a man of his class!”

“That’s all nonsense,” said Frances, bluntly. “I think he’s splendid. And he’s well read and intelligent—— If you like him——”

“Well, I don’t. Anyway, I’ve got other plans,” said Minnie. “I’ll tell you after supper.”

Frances didn’t ask what these plans were, didn’t show any special interest in them, never for an instant suspected their radical and disturbing character. She did not even notice that Minnie was unusually preoccupied.

She hastened into the house to embrace her grandmother and to make and answer all the traditional enquiries; then looked about her with a peculiar emotion that was almost pain. She loved the old place, in a way; looked toward it while absent as her home and sure refuge, dreamed of it often with longing, but with devout thankfulness that she was no longer imprisoned in it. The memory of the two years she had suffered there was ineradicable.

Minnie and her grandmother seemed to her pitiful, small and shabby. She wanted ardently to help them and to change and improve them. She tried to keep this benevolence out of her manner, but it was always there, and they felt it.

She told them that she hoped soon to be able to send money home regularly.

“I’m going to study shorthand,” she told them, “and then I’ll be able to earn much more.”

She saw their faces, unconvinced, not even much interested, and her enthusiasm waned. She would have to prove her good intentions to them.

II

Supper was over, and the dishes washed and put away. It was rather later than usual, on account of Frankie’s talkativeness, and the old lady announced that she was going “right straight to bed.” To her great surprise, Minnie stopped her.

“Please, Grandma,” she said, “I want to talk to you for a minute. Frankie too. Please come into the parlour.”

They followed her and waited while she lighted the blue china lamp on the centre table; then, at her request, they sat down. The occasion, as she intended it should, had taken on a solemn and important air; she faced them, flushed, serious, dogged.

“Grandma,” she began, “I’ve been thinking a great deal.... I don’t think we ought to go on like this.... Frankie and I aren’t children now, you know.... I think—we ought to know how things stand.”

The old lady looked at her but said nothing; she was waiting for a more definite challenge. She got it at once.

“I mean,” said Minnie, stoutly, “what have we got to live on?”

“What’s this!” cried the old lady tartly.

“I know we’re in debt. People are getting—horrid. They don’t want your—our trade. Really, Grandma, you ought to talk things over with Frankie and me.”

The old lady was almost unable to speak.

“I never!” she repeated, again and again, “I never! At my time of life ... talking things over with two girls of your age!”

“We only want to help,” said Minnie, ingeniously including her sister.

“I’ve got on pretty well for seventy-five years without your assistance,” said the old lady.

“Well,” observed Minnie, “it’s not what I call getting on. Grandma, we’ve got to have some sort of method. I ... do please let us know—what there is?”

“Really, Grandma, I do think it would be better,” Frankie interposed, “Minnie’s a wonderful manager, and I’m sure she could help you ever so much.”

“Two children! It’s outrageous! I’ve managed....”

“Grandma,” Minnie interrupted solemnly, “Mr. Simms spoke to me.”

This was a telling blow; the old lady winced under it.

“He was in a very bad temper,” Minnie went on, “and he said to me, in the rudest way, ‘How many years longer is this bill going to run, anyway?’”

Frances was distressed by the idea of debts.

“Oh, dear!” she cried, “That’s too bad! Do let’s talk it over, Grandma dear, and see what can be done.”

But Minnie met with an obstinacy inflexible as her own. Not one detail could they extract from the old lady. She took refuge in bitter reproach.

“I’ve worked for you both, day in and day out, for more than two years,” she said, “and whatever money I’ve spent was my own. I’m not accountable to anyone for it.” And she called them undutiful, ungrateful, unkind.

“Very well, then,” said Minnie at last, “if you’re going to take it that way ... if you refuse to—to co-operate, Grandma, then I’ll have to accept an offer I had of a position in an office.”

“What office?” Frankie asked, with interest.

“Mr. Petersen’s. He says I can have your place. I’ll go down to the village to-morrow and find a girl to stay with Grandma while I’m away.”

Now, both Frances and Minnie knew that, on account of her liability to those mysterious “attacks,” it wouldn’t do to leave the old lady alone, and they wouldn’t have done so under any circumstances, but she, poor old soul, terrified before their confident youth, not knowing what resources they had, felt them to be capable of everything. She pictured herself, solitary again, ill perhaps, with a strange servant prowling about, prying into everything, pilfering, undoubtedly setting the house on fire....

It was a most painful scene; she broke down, cried, surrendered. Minnie, although with tears in her eyes, saw her opportunity and pressed her point.

“Grandma dear,” she said, “tell us just what you have, and we’ll arrange some way to manage.”

The old lady confessed resentfully to a sole income of twenty-five dollars a month. They were incredulous.

“But in that case,” said Frances, “you must.... Why, there must be....”

“About how much do you suppose—we—owe?” asked Minnie.

This question the old lady couldn’t answer, because she actually did not know. She had never attempted to calculate; it was a topic she did not care to think about. She mentioned a number of tradespeople who had been “very nice”; in fact, she deluded herself into the belief they enjoyed serving a Defoe. They were, she assured the girls, perfectly willing to wait. Wait for Heaven knows what!

“Mr. Petersen, too, I suppose,” Minnie asked with a frown, “I suppose we owe him money?”

“Dear me, child, he’s only too pleased to have someone living here. He told me so himself. He couldn’t rent this place to anyone else; he’d simply have to pay a caretaker.”

“Why did he buy it then?” enquired Frankie.

The subject was not pursued, however, for Minnie had got up, a little pale as her great minute approached.

“Now then, Grandma and Frankie,” she said, “here’s my plan. I want to take charge of the housekeeping and—and the money.... I’ll keep things going and try to pay off the debts.”

“Nonsense, child! What are you going to pay them off with? How far do you imagine——”

“I’ve found a boarder,” she said.

“A boarder!” they both cried, simultaneously.

“A literary gentleman,” she explained, “from New York. He’ll only pay eight dollars a week, but he’s a start, anyway.”

“But, my dear,” Frances objected, “where could you put him?”

“Nowhere in my house!” cried the old lady. “I won’t hear of it! It’s disgraceful! It’s vulgar! I won’t have it!”

“I must!” said Minnie, “I’ve made up my mind. I can’t and won’t go on this way. Either you’ll let me have this boarder or I’ll have to go into Mr. Petersen’s office.”

They argued, wrangled, remonstrated. It was of vital importance to them both. To the old lady a boarder meant incalculable loss of dignity, it meant degradation. She defended her position vehemently, fought to the last ditch for her honour.

But Minnie won. Her grandmother’s resistance crumpled at last before her iron determination. She went up to bed that night in a sort of ecstasy of triumph, drunk with her first victory. Her career had begun. The tiger had tasted blood.

III

She met with some slight opposition from Frances, loyally concealed until they were alone, but this she easily ended by a great deal of talk about the necessity of earning a living.

That’s what she called it; never facing the truth. If someone else had confronted her with it, she very likely wouldn’t have recognised it. Even in her own soul she called it a chance to “earn a living,” when it was really nothing but a ferocious determination to seek another man before accepting Mr. Petersen. She was resolved upon getting married. Mr. Petersen she would take if no one else presented, but not without a struggle, a gallant struggle to find a better. No one, nothing should balk her of this literary man from New York.

It was another little triumph, too, to be the object of such deep interest to her sister. They sat in the gloomy, cold bedroom, Frances on the bed with a blanket round her shoulders, while Minnie, erect on a broken little chair near the lamp, combed her heavy black hair with conscientious vigour.

“How on earth did you ever find him?” Frances asked.

“I saw his advertisement in a New York paper; he wanted country board some place where he could be quiet, for his writing. So I answered it.”

Frances expressed admiration for her enterprise.

“It was wonderful for you to think of such a thing,” she said, “But, Minnie, what an awful lot of work and bother for you!”

“I don’t mind that,” Minnie answered scornfully, “I like to work hard.”

They sat up late, discussing the arrangement of the boarder’s room and everything connected with him. They forgot nothing, overlooked nothing, except the effect of all this upon their grandmother.

She lay awake in her room, vaguely bitter, very unhappy. She had died and been buried that evening. She was supplanted. She was no longer to be the guardian of Frankie and Minnie; in the future they were to take care of her. As far as they were concerned, she was unnecessary; she was—one might say—no longer anything but an urn of sacred ashes, to be reverenced as the receptacle of what had once been an important human being.

They heard her coughing feebly.

“No wonder she coughs!” said Minnie. “She will not have the window open the least crack.”

Frances spent all the next day, which was Sunday, in helping Minnie give the boarder’s room a “good cleaning.” They cherished a tradition that they detested such work, that it disgusted and exhausted them, but one had only to hear their voices to know that the vigorous work delighted them and that they were tremendously happy in doing it. Frankie was on her knees scrubbing the floor, while Minnie cleaned the windows. They talked incessantly; when it became necessary for Minnie to clean the outsides of the panes, Frankie always had to stop work and stand beside her, so that she could still hear.

As a sort of silent protest, their grandmother had dressed herself in her best dress and was sitting in the parlour, reading a book of sermons. The girls insisted that they were too busy to go to church.

“I’ll drive you, if you want,” Minnie told her, grudgingly, “but I can’t spare the time to stay through the service.”

The old lady then said that all this work on the Sabbath was godless and altogether wrong, and that she wouldn’t help in the least. Which Minnie smartly parried by giving her to understand that there was nothing she could do—at her age. Relations were very much strained....

They sat down to supper, weary but profoundly satisfied.

“Well!” said Frances, “I hope he’ll be all right. I hope he’ll be the right sort.”

Minnie shook her head gravely.

“Not likely,” she said, “at eight dollars a week.”

“It isn’t money that gives people distinction,” Frances protested.

“Generally it is,” said Minnie.

Frances departed the next morning with a comfortable feeling that now Minnie wouldn’t be so lonely. Perhaps she had a secret hope like the one Minnie so cunningly dissembled....

A fortnight later she had an enthusiastic letter from Minnie, enclosing a blurred and artistic photograph of herself and the old lady, sitting in the sunset. The polite, the well-informed Mr. Blair had taken it. Then for a long time she heard no more on the subject, and she was too much engrossed in her own affairs to make enquiries about those of anyone else.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I

That winter was for Minnie the bitterest and hardest one she was ever to know. She came to the very brink of discouragement; she had not as yet fully developed the supreme self-confidence which later sustained her through such extraordinary trials, and there were moments when she had faint doubts of her own wisdom and ability. When she almost regretted that she had embarked upon this course.

The boarder was practically the first man she had ever known, for Mr. Petersen she didn’t count, and on him and his gentlemanly letter she had built an elaborate and exciting future. She looked upon it as almost a certainty that she would marry him. Or if not him, then some one of his literary friends, whom he would be encouraged to invite frequently to the farm. She was anxious to marry. All her maiden dreams were of marriage, never of love, always of a husband, never of a lover. She required a man who was kind and able to support her; she didn’t indulge in romantic dreams of a handsome man, or a gallant one.

Still, Mr. Blair was almost too unromantic. She was shocked when she saw him. She had gone down to the station to meet him, expectant of Heaven knows what—anything but what he was; a pompous middle-aged man in spectacles and baggy, cheap clothes. She could have wept at the sight of him.

But before they had reached the house, she had begun to see compensations in him. He was affable, obliging, and courtly; so attentive that she was disposed to overlook his age, his bagginess and his dustiness.

His conversation was remarkable. He talked ceaselessly, in a bland, slow voice. He explained everything, because all things were known to him. They passed the rubber factory, and he explained the entire process of rubber manufacture, went back to the gathering of rubber, and finally to curious facts about rubber trees. He took pains to use terms she would understand. Also he explained to her why Bess refused to pass milk waggons, and told her a great deal about horses hitherto unknown to her.

Of the old lady he made an easy conquest. He obeyed the call to supper with alacrity, but although he had had quite an hour and a half to rest and make ready, although warm water and a clean towel and a new cake of scented soap had been provided for him, it was evident that he had spent no time in washing. His nails were grimy, like his cuffs. Still, he was so pleasant and so courtly, so full of interesting information, that the two women couldn’t withstand him. Especially the old lady.

“Minnie,” she whispered, when the girl rose to clear the table, “why don’t you make some of your fudge for Mr. Blair?”

Minnie was quite willing and Mr. Blair very much pleased; he rather archly admitted a “sweet tooth.” She made haste to clear the table, and while the kettle was heating for the dishes, she started her confectionery, bending seriously over a saucepan on the fire. Michael sat watching her with scornful eyes. He never looked at anyone else; all his faith was placed in Minnie; he expected nothing from any other source.

She was somewhat surprised at seeing Mr. Blair saunter in; the kitchen was not the place for any man, let alone a boarder. He was, however, oblivious of the proprieties. He offered to, and insisted upon, drying the dishes for her. Humorously he tied about his ample middle a gingham apron and set to work slowly but competently. He gave her many points, too, about how things might be done better, how she could save steps, and so forth. About the range, and the coal, about soaps, about how a kitchen should be arranged efficiently.

Then, when everything was neat and clean, the fire banked and Michael and his brethren locked in the cellar, he followed Minnie into the parlour, bringing a plate of the fudge.

They sat up unusually late, very cosy, about the blue china lamp, eating Minnie’s candy and hearing Mr. Blair’s stately voice telling of dairy farming in Holland. He admitted that he had never been there, but he knew. This was a curious feature about Mr. Blair; he always spoke as a witness, irrefutable and calmly positive; apparently his knowledge came through inspiration or clairvoyance, for he never mentioned having read or heard any of it.

“Well,” said the old lady to Minnie, as they were going up to bed, “I don’t know when I’ve spent a pleasanter evening!”

II

Mr. Blair had a remarkable opportunity to display his quality the next day, for the old lady had another of her “attacks.” He at once assumed a position of authority. He sat by her bedside making the most professional enquiries, and establishing boundless confidence by his graveness and his assurance. When the doctor arrived, he met him as a colleague, conferred secretly with him, gave his own opinion and listened with professional courtesy to that of the other. Then went out to the stable to comfort Minnie.

“It is not immediately serious,” he told her; “I studied medicine for some time, and I understand these things.”

He not only comforted Minnie, but he helped her in material ways. He was very “handy,” somewhat in her own manner. That is, he had a certain manual facility, and was very easily satisfied: he didn’t require his “jobs” either to look well or to wear well. He was of a most domestic disposition. He really enjoyed sitting in the kitchen and peeling potatoes while he talked; he even swept the parlour with wet tea leaves. He put up shelves and hooks, convenient although not quite trustworthy; he carried the old lady’s trays upstairs, made the coffee for breakfast after a scientific method which required a large amount of coffee and took quite half an hour; he looked after the fire night and morning; did everything except the literary work he had come there to do.

It appeared that he had not yet begun this literary career; he had been, he said, a business man, but his health had failed, and he had decided to earn his bread by his pen. In a series of special articles on America’s Industries. He had planned them all meticulously, the twelve articles, with their titles, sub-titles, number of words in each, and the space that was to be occupied by photographs. Only he had not as yet written a single sentence.

His health was deceptive; no one would have suspected him of being so broken-down, except for a lassitude that was almost incredible. He ate very well, and slept well, and was always cheerful; still it was necessary for him to take a tonic, a “heart medicine,” and a “digestive stimulant.” Every morning he read the newspaper thoroughly from end to end, then, after he had helped Minnie with the housework, he sat. Not reading, simply sitting, in the sun, if there were any, but always by a window, for he liked to see anything that passed.

The relations between him and Minnie were curious. She knew that he admired her; he often said so, and she exhibited a very discreet complacence toward his compliments. She was, as always, impersonal, detached, with an agreeableness difficult to misunderstand. She was considerate and pleasant toward him, just as she was toward her grandmother—or toward Thomas Washington. What she really thought of him no one knew, but Mr. Blair, with characteristic simplicity, was sure that she was well-disposed toward him, if not something more....

He was a Southerner, and a mighty consequential one. He believed that he understood women, that his gallantry, learning and courtliness combined could not fail to conquer. Even the hard fact that he made no headway did not disconcert him. He knew it was impossible for him to fail.

It was not long before his too affectionate disposition became evident. He wanted to take Minnie’s hand and pat it, or even put an arm about her waist in a fatherly way. Dalliance, however, had no part in Minnie’s life; it was not one of her weaknesses, and she discouraged him pretty brusquely. Or rather, tried to discourage him. After a rebuff he would stroll over to Thomas Washington’s cottage and bargain to be taken into the village in Thomas’s Ford. Thomas, in spite of his dignity, was not above a certain pride in being seen talking confidentially with a white man; he almost always accommodated him. And Mr. Blair would buy things for Minnie and the old lady and come cheerfully home again. They couldn’t help being pleased, they had so very few pleasures. They would all sit in the old lady’s room, eating the ice-cream he had brought and, of course, listening to him. Only when he recurred to the subject of Thomas Washington and his race did they become restive. They disagreed with him strongly. In the first place, they didn’t at all like the word “nigger.” Then, his opinions, boiled down, amounted simply to this: that “niggers” were created simply for the convenience of Southern whites, that it was impudent and radical and altogether harmful to Southern industry for Northerners to have them in their country at all; that no one but a Southerner knew anything about them, had any right to their services, or could possibly get on with them. He and he alone knew how to “handle” Thomas Washington—that is, to exploit him. He did not think it necessary to tell them that he had to pay well for any favour received from Thomas. He wanted them to think that he stood in place of the Lord to that family—that the Washingtons, young and old, couldn’t help adoring and respecting his Southernness. But Minnie and the old lady knew Thomas too well.

A great triumph for Minnie was the showing of this boarder to Mr. Petersen. He had said that she couldn’t get one! He came in one afternoon and she presented them to each other, carefully watching the Swedish countenance for some sort of chagrin. Useless; he smiled his slow smile and held out a huge paw, quite willing to sit down and talk—or listen.

III

She was glad, though, that Mr. Petersen didn’t know all about the boarder, for then her triumph wouldn’t have been quite so complete.... His affectionateness, for instance, and his absent-mindedness. He continually forgot to pay his board. Minnie would be forced to remind him, then he would immediately take out a pocketbook and pay a week’s board, apparently not realising that he owed for two weeks, or perhaps three. He never got up to date. It was a great worry. She had to buy things for him, food and the “root beer” he was so fond of, under the most dreadful difficulties. The tradespeople, knowing that she had a boarder, presupposed cash, and grew more and more grudging. She couldn’t offend and perhaps lose the precious boarder by too strict insistence upon the letter of the contract; he was supposed to pay in advance, of course, but if he didn’t!...

There were certain times when he really alarmed her, when there was something about him that she could not endure, something not fully understood but none the less comprehended. For, in spite of her soberness and her sedateness, Minnie was after all only a young girl, and a very ignorant one. She had nothing but her instincts and her cool temperament to protect her. She had, one might say, no sex at all, no trace of passion. She adored compliments and attentions, and very sensibly wanted a husband to work for her, but she recoiled with a quite morbid aversion from the idea of a kiss. Mr. Blair’s little attempts were repulsive to her.

He used to propose walks after supper, but after one trial, she never accepted again. It was a horrible experience. She was too innocent to know whether she had been insulted or whether it was all quite harmless, but she could not deny her own distress. She lay awake and wept—a very little—at the idea of marrying Mr. Blair. Of course, she could, and she would, but it wasn’t an agreeable prospect.

She believed that he must have a fair enough income, for he did no work and yet had all he wanted. Tobacco and magazines and new neckties were his sole indulgences, with an occasional bag of cheap candy. He was the most contented fellow alive. It was not possible that he suffered from the usual human “money worries.” His slowness in paying his board she attributed to his literariness.

IV

It was a fine morning, late in April; Minnie had finished her work in the kitchen and was on the point of going up to “do” the bedrooms when Mr. Blair came in with a camera in his hand.

“I’m going to try to get a picture of you,” he said.

She said she was busy but he waved that aside.

“Call your cats,” he said pompously, “I’ve got an idea.”

He ordered her to sit on the back steps, with Michael in her arms and the others one on each side.

“‘My Lady of the Cats,’ I’ll call it,” he said. And went on to tell her, not for the first time, of the artistic photographs he had had in various exhibitions. He told her that photography was quite as great an art as painting. She knew nothing to the contrary; she had not a drop of artist blood in her veins; who knows if perhaps she wouldn’t have admired extravagantly his shadowy ladies in kimonos with light gleaming on rippling hair. She had observed that his subjects were always women, and that he had a strong penchant for glowing glimpses of white breasts and arms, and a certain unrestraint of attitude which disturbed her. He went as far as he dared with her. He wanted to take her picture climbing a ladder with an apronful of peaches, but somehow she knew that the peaches were a subterfuge, and so discouraged his artistic fancy. Then he proposed “Day Dreams,” in which she was to be lying, very much stretched out, on the sofa. That too she rejected, uneasily.

This new idea, however, showed itself quite innocent from every side, and she willingly tried to help. It was an unruly group, though; it took a tremendous time to prepare it and even at that it didn’t entirely satisfy him. He looked at them through the lens, came over to Minnie and looked down at her critically.

“A little to this side,” he said, and, quite unnecessarily, put a hand under her chin and turned her head.

“You have a lovely neck,” he said, but though his tone was impersonal and professional, there was a repulsive look about his big, loose mouth.

He would have had a severe rebuke, boarder or no boarder, if Mr. Petersen had not saved him. But at the sight of his horse coming along the drive, she stifled her anger. She would not, in his presence, admit a failing in this boarder whom she had so brilliantly evoked. She was uneasy, though, very uneasy, wondering if Mr. Petersen had seen....

“I stopped at the post-office,” he said, “and fetched your mail.”

She thanked him and took the solitary letter from his hand. She had, of course, to ask him to dismount, which he did, and sat on the steps, chatting with Mr. Blair and stroking Michael, whose prototype he unknowingly was. Minnie apologised and opened the letter.

Fatal letter! Fatal news! Without a word she handed it to Mr. Blair and went into the house.

She reflected over it all that night, lying awake longer than she ever had before. She knew she was beaten, that she had failed.

But this very defeat, the first she had yet known, had a curious effect upon her. She was humiliated and shaken, but far from despair. She had never felt so calm, so sensible, so competent. She wasted little time in anger or regret; she turned her thoughts firmly toward the future, looking for a way out of her trouble.

And found one, an amazing one, the first of her remarkable ventures. She planned it out in every detail that night, envisaged the obstacles and arranged her campaign against them. She certainly did not intend to stop where she was, for Mr. Petersen to laugh at, for the brilliant Frankie to pity. Wounded vanity, mixed with envy, pricked her.

Her life really began that night. Until then she had been dormant, untried; now came her first opportunity to prove her spirit, and she rose to it magnificently, gallantly, ruthlessly.

V

The day before Christmas Frankie came home.

A new Frankie, who blushed as she caught sight of Minnie at the end of the platform, engaged with Bess. Impossible that her Minnie should not notice the change in her, not read the happiness in her trembling smile.

She hugged her passionately, and climbed into the buggy beside her. She was disappointed that Minnie noticed nothing unusual, hadn’t a single question to ask. And Minnie, doggedly silent, was resentful because Frankie couldn’t see that something was wrong. They did not speak for a long time; then Frankie, too happy not to be affectionate, turned a bright face to her sister.

“What’s the news at home?” she asked. “How’s Grandma? And Mr. Blair?”

“Mr. Blair’s gone,” said Minnie, curtly.

“Gone! Not really!”

She was shocked to see tears in Minnie’s eyes.

“But, my dear, what happened?”

Minnie turned away her head.

“A letter from his wife....”

“So he was married!...”

“Yes.... He never mentioned it.... She wrote that he’d written her again for his board money. She’d already given it to him twice, and couldn’t afford to give it again. She said she hoped he’d pay me, but that she couldn’t be responsible for his debts. That she was a business woman and found it hard enough to get along anyway. And advised me not to ‘place too much confidence in his statements.’ She said she was sure that by this time his health was much improved——”

“Was he ill, then?”

“Ill! He was as strong as an ox. He ate and ate.... And he just calmly went off.... He said he was going into the city to get some money from the bank, and would come back on the last train, and never did. And he owed for five weeks.”

She wiped her eyes sternly and went on.

“Grandma’s so mean and petty about it. Keeps saying ‘I told you so, Miss.’ You know she never did. She liked him more than anyone did. I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Frances did her best to console the frustrated Minnie.

“Maybe he’ll come back,” she suggested, inanely.

“He’d better not!” said Minnie, “Nasty, lazy cheat! Oh, Frankie, I will admit that I was deceived in that man!”

Obviously this was no moment in which to tell her news. With patience and good temper Frankie waited, listened to the long and harrowing story of Mr. Blair and said what she could to heal her sister’s wound. She was really distressed about Minnie, she was so unlike her usual self; she was severe and cold. It would be nothing less than cruel to tell the poor soul of her own good-fortune.

So she kept it to herself all the afternoon. With the superstition so natural to the happy, she fancied she was making her happiness more secure, earning it, in a way, by repressing and disciplining herself, pretending to take an interest in the affairs of the household, effacing herself and her important news.

No one questioned her; they were absorbed in their own calamity. The old lady showed her a sort of diary of the expenses incurred by Mr. Blair, “to say nothing of the extra work.” She did crow over Minnie without mercy; she was vindicated, once more the infallible adult, competent to guide and rebuke youth. Minnie said very little; she had, however, a sinister air of having something up her sleeve.

VI

At last they were alone in the bedroom. Minnie had just locked the door when Frances sprang at her, caught her in a tight embrace, and whispered:

“Minnie!”

“What?” asked Minnie sharply.

“Minnie!... I’m engaged!”

Minnie gasped.

“Why, Frankie!” she cried. “How on earth!...”

“Oh, darling, I’ve been longing to tell you!... I’m so happy! If you only knew him, Minnie! You couldn’t help liking him. There’s something about him.... He’s so dear and boyish——”

“Who is he?” Minnie asked.

“He’s an Englishman. Very nice family, and all that. The nicest manners. And I consider him really handsome. Just the type we’ve always liked, Minnie.”

It occurred to Frances that Minnie was not so enthusiastic as the occasion warranted. She felt a sudden fear that Minnie was jealous, felt herself neglected.

“We’ve talked so much about you,” she hurried on. “You’re going to live with us after we’re married, and we’re going to do everything to make you happy. I told Lionel what a little brick you were, slaving away here, and he said he knew he’d love you. And, oh, Minnie, you’re sure to love him!”

Instead of answering Minnie got up and went to the window, stood there, staring out at the fields.

“Minnie!” cried her sister, “Please, Minnie, darling, say you’re glad!”

“I am,” said Minnie, keeping her back turned, “I’m very glad you’re so happy.”

“Please you be happy too! I’m going to make Lionel write to you the instant I get back.”

“Frankie,” said Minnie, “you’re not going back.”

There was something unmistakably sinister in her voice now; Frances looked at her nervously.

“What on earth do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean just what I say. You’re not going back to New York. I’m going and you’ll have to stay here.”

“But what ... Minnie, what nonsense! I have my job and Lionel....”

“They’ll have to get on without you,” said Minnie.

“You’re crazy!” said her sister. “What would you do in New York? And who’ll take care of Grandma?”

“You.”

“I shouldn’t dream of giving up my job.”

“You’ll have to. I tell you, Frankie, I’m going to have my turn. I’ve stopped here a whole year while you’ve been in the city and I’m sick and tired of it. I’m through. I’m going!”

“You can’t be such a beast. After I’ve just told you about Lionel.”

“He can come out here to see you.”

“He can’t. He’s too poor. He couldn’t pay the fare.”

“Then you’d better not bother about him. You certainly couldn’t marry him if he’s as poor as that.”

“Minnie, please be reasonable. I’ll just go back for a few weeks——”

“You shan’t go back at all.”

“I will! I won’t give in to your nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense; it’s justice. You’ve had a year and now I’m going to have a year. You didn’t care whether or not I wanted you to go, and now I don’t care whether you want me to go or not. I’m going.”

Frances smiled scornfully.

“I’ll go back as usual,” she said.

“Oh, will you! I’ve got a nice place myself.”

“I don’t believe it! What sort of place?”

“I’m going to be Aunt Irene’s companion,” she said calmly, “And I’m going to get just as much as you’re getting.”

They fought it out passionately, forgot their dignity, forgot their love, raised their voices until the poor old lady at the end of the corridor heard them. They cried, too, tears of anger and hysteria; at last, from sheer exhaustion they fell asleep side by side in the bed they had slept in together for so many nights in harmony and affection, fell asleep hating each other, each utterly resolved upon her own way.

VII

But Minnie conquered. When Frances woke up, she found herself alone. Minnie had left a note on the pillow.

“Gone on the early train. Grandma knows all about it, and agrees with me that I am doing perfectly right.”

BOOK TWO: FRANKIE’S BRIEF DAY

CHAPTER NINE

I

Frankie was quite desperate with grief and anxiety. She rushed into the old lady’s room, bare-footed, in her nightdress, and denounced her in a storm of sobs.

“How could you!” she cried. “How could you! How did you and Minnie dare to arrange my life for me that way?... You didn’t know.... You couldn’t know—what plans I had.... How could you! You don’t know what you’ve done!”

The old lady said that no great harm had been done.

“It has! It has!” Frankie cried. “You don’t know! You’ve spoiled everything!”

This the old lady didn’t believe; she asked for an explanation, and Frances would give none.

“But Grandma!” she implored, “Grandma, trust me! Believe me when I say I’ve got to go back! It’s terribly important. It means my whole life. Oh, Grandma, please, please write to Minnie and make her come home!”

“My dear child, I can’t. She wouldn’t come. And I must say I think she’s entitled to a little—— Don’t you think you’re rather selfish, Frances?”

“Oh, stop!” Frances interrupted, rudely. “You don’t understand. It’s something ... I have to see about, something important.”

“What can it be?”

The old lady was indulgent; she fancied she scented a sentimental interest.

“I can’t tell you—just now, anyway.”

Frances dried her eyes and looked at her grandmother with a new look, hard and clear.

“You’ll have to make out alone for a few hours,” she said, “I’ve got to go in on that four-eight train. I’ll be back some time to-night.”

She went into her room and, closing the door, flung herself down on the creaking bed, not to cry, but to think, to plan for him. All morning the breakfast dishes were unwashed, the beds unmade, nothing touched in the house. It was noon when a curious sound startled Frankie. She fancied she heard a step in the passage.

She flung open the door, to see a poor, trembling little figure come out of her grandmother’s room.

“Grandma!” she shrieked, and flew to catch her and half carry her back to her bed, reproaching her bitterly, tenderly, while she got her clothes off. She noticed with intolerable remorse how clumsily the things were put on and the scanty hair twisted up.

“Grandma,” she cried. “You know you shouldn’t! Suppose you had slipped! It was dreadful of you!”

She saw to her horror that there were tears in the poor thing’s eyes and her feeble voice quavered.

“Frances,” she said, “I couldn’t stand it. Both of you going off ... neither of you wanting to stay with me.... I felt I didn’t care what happened to me.... And——” she broke into a weak little sob as she came to her last and worst grief, “one o’clock and the house not touched! I just couldn’t lie abed any longer!”

“No, Granny dear, I know! I’ll do everything right away. Only lie down and rest, won’t you? I’ll do everything before I go.”

The old lady patted her hand.

“Won’t you ask Sally Washington to sit in the kitchen while you’re gone?” she asked. “I’m so nervous about fire.”

Frankie hurried across to the cottage, but Sally couldn’t come; she was sick in bed and there was no one available but young Norman Washington, aged nine, who was guaranteed by his mother to be trustworthy.

The old lady, however, rejected him.

“Worse than no one!” she cried. “A boy! He’ll eat up all my preserves. And goodness knows what he’ll break.”

It also occurred to her that he was quite likely, in his quality as boy, to set fire to the house; in fact, as she considered it longer, she declared it certain that he would do so.

She was in a pitifully nervous state. She entreated Frances to dress her again and help her downstairs, so that she could wait there, where, in case of fire, she could manage somehow to get out. She couldn’t eat anything for lunch. She sat propped up in bed, her trembling fingers moving ceaselessly, her watery eyes staring vacantly, in dim anxiety, consumed with dread, with the horror of her own helplessness. As she passed by the door, Frances could see her there, each time more intolerably pitiful. Until, one time, she saw her press her poor, clawlike hand against her mouth.... Somehow that decided Frances; she couldn’t leave her; couldn’t endure the idea of her alone there until two in the morning, when the last train would have brought her back. No; she couldn’t go. She went into the room, hard and brusque again.

“I won’t go to the city,” she said. “I’ll just harness up Bess somehow and go to the village and send a telegram.”

All over—all finished. She knew it. She had no hope, no illusion about the matter, only the certainty that her terribly brief time of happiness was done.

II

Happiness which existed now only in her memory, in time to grow incredible even there....

One year!

She remembered very well when she had made that first visit to Miss Eppendorfer. She had never before been alone in New York, didn’t know how to find the address, had to ask one policeman after another, and try in a sort of agony to comprehend the directions they gave. And when she had arrived, her terror of the unknown city was supplanted by a worse one; suppose she didn’t get the job, that the authoress didn’t like her, and she had to return home, shamefully defeated.

She had plenty of time to contemplate this, waiting in the sitting-room of Miss Eppendorfer’s flat. An insolent coloured girl showed her in and left her there without a word. She was almost ill from nervousness; she watched the door without stirring for fifteen minutes or so, then, when no one came, grew bold enough to look about her. It was a small and rather dark room, furnished in a style new to her—the ubiquitous Mission style. Little square chairs of imitation weathered oak, with imitation leather seats, studded with gilt nails, fit for an authoress from the Middle West to sit in while she laughed indulgently at Victorian mahogany. Mock austerity, mock simplicity, a crowd of cheap and monotonous stuff, all square and squat; plain curtains, bookcases with sets of books selected always by authorities, and never by the owner. Replica of a thousand rooms, mirror of a thousand souls, a room which signified and expressed nothing. It was the first cheaply-furnished room Frances had ever entered, and she was innocently impressed with it. The good taste she possessed was not innate, it was traditional; she wasn’t able to judge the unknown.

The mistress of all this came in an hour late. She was a thin, blonde woman with hollow cheeks and a sweet, sweet smile; she hurried forward, holding out both hands with a profuse cordiality that surprised Frances.

“Is this the little country girl who’s going to do so much for me?”

Blushing but courageous, Frances made some sort of answer, her candid eyes fixed on the face before her. If she hadn’t known, she might have thought that this haggard woman with bleached hair was “not quite nice.” But she knew that her rural standards couldn’t be applied everywhere. She wasn’t a bumpkin....

“Sit down,” Miss Eppendorfer invited, “and we’ll have tea while we chat.”

It was the first time Frances had ever had tea; it was an institution as yet unknown in the suburbs during her girlhood, and utterly undeveloped in Brownsville Landing; there, when one had guests in the afternoon, they were splendidly served with lemonade and good cake. Tea and toast would have been almost an insult.

The authoress had to fetch everything herself from the kitchen.

“I don’t dare to disturb that black wretch,” she whispered to Frances. “She’s only looking for an excuse to go, and then where shall I be? I couldn’t boil an egg, could you?”

Frances said that she could.

“Well, my dear,” said the authoress, when she had got her samovar started, “tell me about yourself.”

But she didn’t need much telling; aside from the letter she had had from the librarian in Brownsville Landing, she could see in one shrewd glance that Frances would “do”; was able to realise, as only an imitation could, how honest, how genuine was this girl.

She engaged her then and there, said she was “strangely attracted” by her. And urged her to take up her duties at once.

“Send home for your things,” she advised, “and settle right down to-night in your comfy little room. That’s the way I always like to do things—on the spur of the moment.”

“I’d like to, but I couldn’t. They’d worry at home.”

“Send a telegram, honey,” Miss Eppendorfer suggested.

It was her first telegram, too, and it gave her a delightful sense of adventure, and of defiance, for she knew that Minnie would disapprove.

Miss Eppendorfer opened the door of a tiny room, which, she said, was to be Frankie’s “very own.”

“Isn’t it dear?” she asked. “I think I must have known when I furnished it, that someone just like you was coming to me some day. It expresses you, don’t you think so?”

At first Frances thought it a delightful room, furnished all in wicker even to the bed and decorated in gay chintz; there were candles on the dressing table with rose-covered shades which at once took her eye, and a brocade glove box. She felt that she would be tremendously happy in such a nest.

And then, as she laid her hat on the bed, she was startled, dismayed, at the sight of the pillow-cases. Suspicions aroused, her glance travelled from corner to corner, and she apprehended the appalling griminess of the place. Griminess not confined to this room of “her very own,” as she was soon to discover.

She had turned back the lace-trimmed chintz bedspread and was suspiciously examining the sheets when Miss Eppendorfer came in again with a filmy nightdress decorated with pale green ribbons, a boudoir cap and an elaborate negligee.

“Put these on now and be comfy,” she urged, “and we’ll have a nice little supper, all alone together.”

She herself had got into a lace tea-gown over a torn lace petticoat and quilted satin slippers which weren’t high enough to hide the holes in her stockings....

“Thank you,” said Frances, “but I’m quite comfortable as I am.”

She felt that her neat linen blouse and dark skirt gave her a sort of advantage; anyway she couldn’t have gone trailing about in a wrapper, she wasn’t that sort.

Disillusionment progressed rapidly. She sat down at the supper table, hungry and curious, and disposed to be charitable; but the dirtiness of the tablecloth was flagrant and her napkin had obviously been used before. And her glass had a milky ring inside it.... She was not over-fastidious, or inclined to give great importance to domestic matters, but she had a genuine passion for cleanliness. She couldn’t help being disgusted. Still, she reflected, it was no doubt all due to the scornful coloured girl, and she consoled herself by thinking that perhaps, when not engaged in literary work, she could look after things a bit.

She put on the ribbon-trimmed nightdress and went to sleep between the dubious sheets, a little homesick for the big, airy bedroom where Minnie was lying, and the darkness and the quiet. Her window opened on to a court; she could hear voices talking and phonographs playing, and the light from Miss Eppendorfer’s room shone under her door and disturbed her. She couldn’t compose herself, she was excited and confused, and imagined that she lay awake for hours.

Miss Eppendorfer came in to wake her up the next morning, in a state of great excitement, still wearing the trailing tea-gown. She told Frankie that the coloured girl had gone; and she related a long story of wrongs and grievances; the girl drank, lied, pilfered, was even engaged in complicated plots against one of the best and kindest mistresses extant. Miss Eppendorfer gave a list of her benefactions: a pink hat, a dotted veil, blouses, shoes, and still——!

“She used to say all sorts of things about me over the telephone, if anyone rang up when I was out. And, my dear, the things she told that hall-boy!”

Frankie pitied her distress and was eager to soothe her excitement.

“Never mind!” she said, “We’ll find another. And now wouldn’t you like me to make a cup of coffee for you?”

“Oh, I would, my dear! I’m no good till I’ve had my coffee, and I can’t make it decently myself.”

She sat down on the bed, and though Frances waited impatiently for a chance to get up, she showed no signs of moving. Nothing could have induced Frankie to dress in her presence. A faint annoyance crept over her. She got out of bed on the other side, gathered up her clothes and went into the bathroom, with a brusque excuse.

She came out, stiffer and straighter than ever, and went into the tiny kitchen to make the coffee. It was the filthiest place; roaches running over everything, grease, dust, crumbs.

“That girl was a very poor servant,” she said severely.

Miss Eppendorfer was sitting on a corner of the table, swinging her slippered feet.

“I spoil them,” she said. “I’m too good to them. And then I don’t keep after them. You have to, if you want anything done.... But with my writing, of course I can’t keep my mind on that sort of thing very well.”

She praised the coffee extravagantly, and, as she drank it, explained to Frankie that she was very, very nervous, and that a scene such as she had had with that dreadful girl upset her beyond measure. Frances noticed her trembling hands, her quick breath, and accepted this nervousness, and, in her competent way, went about making her comfortable.

They had a rather pleasant day together. The hall-boy was sent to fetch “Jennie” who had often before come to fill in gaps, and while she was creaking and wheezing, scrubbing and mopping her faithful way round the flat, the authoress lay on a sofa and talked to Frankie. She told her about her work, which so far consisted of three short stories and two very successful novels.

“But I’m really only beginning,” she said.

(Frances thought privately that she was rather old for any sort of beginning.)

Her latest book was called “The Lonely Woman.” She gave a copy to Frances and begged for a candid opinion after she had read it.

“But I’m not a judge,” Frances told her earnestly, “I don’t know anything about literature. Only that I love books and reading.”

“My dear,” said Miss Eppendorfer, “I saw at once how sensible and level-headed you were. I want your opinion!”

Noon came. Miss Eppendorfer sighed as the clock struck.

“I do not feel equal to going out,” she said, “I’d rather do without lunch. Of course, there’s plenty in the house, but Jennie can’t cook a thing.”

Frances was quite willing to get a lunch ready, and to bring it on a tray to the nervous authoress. Also tea and supper. Otherwise there was nothing to do but sit and talk.

III

Frances would have found it difficult to explain what her secretarial duties were during that year. Principally to go with Miss Eppendorfer everywhere that she went—to the shops, the bank, the dentist. She was too nervous to go out alone; she wouldn’t stir without her “little pal”; and, as far as Frances could see, she had no other friends. There were a few people who telephoned, and who very rarely dropped in to see her, but she never got invitations of any sort. It puzzled Frances; she could see no reason why Miss Eppendorfer shouldn’t be popular; in the first place, she was a quite successful writer, which should have brought some sort of fame, and in the second place, she had an excellent disposition. They lived together, all day and every day, month after month, those two women, without a sharp or a violent word, with the exception of the two famous Scenes, to be described later. And these didn’t exactly count, for the authoress was not altogether responsible, altogether herself then.... Of course, there were times when relations were a bit strained, but not often. And the remarkable, the admirable thing was, that they were not congenial, not in any way suited to each other; it was simply their common kindliness and good temper that so preserved harmony.

Lack of friends was not the only point to puzzle Frankie; there were other mysteries. It was a long time before she could understand Miss Eppendorfer, or appraise her with any justice. At first she saw much to disgust her. The slatternliness, above all, the shameless lack of pride. She used to look across the supper table at the pallid, faded blonde creature, with uncombed hair, still dressed in a wrapper over her nightdress, and wonder how, how ...! Even this, though, she learned to condone when she saw that it sprang not so much from neglect as from awful weariness. The poor soul was either hectic with excitement, flying from shop to shop, restaurant to restaurant, taking every meal away from home for perhaps a week, or else she couldn’t make up her mind even to walk round the corner for a breath of air, would stay shut up in the flat for days. She dressed well enough when she went out; she spent money lavishly on her clothes and wore them with a conspicuous and rather vulgar sort of style, but she didn’t really care; had no sort of decent pride in her body. Didn’t trouble much about cleanliness, for instance.

Her book, too, was a shock to Frances. It was the story of a woman living on the prairies—the Lonely Woman—alone with a stolid husband; then a young clergyman stopped there on his way somewhere, and chapter after chapter recounted the wiles, the lures of the lonely woman to rouse his passion, to destroy his honour. In the end she got him, triumphed for a few lurid days, and then tried to run away with him. But they were overtaken by a blizzard and died, frozen to death. The pursuing husband saw them, sitting clasped in each other’s arms, and shot them, not knowing that they were already dead, and then gave himself up to the police and was hanged. It was what her publishers called “palpitating”—very. Nothing was left to the imagination.

Frances thought it awful; she hadn’t been trained to see the poetry in lust. All she could say in praise was that the prairie scenes seemed very true to life, and Miss Eppendorfer assured her that they were.

“I’ve lived out there,” she said. She often told scraps of her past life, but they wouldn’t piece together; sometimes one story directly contradicted another. She had been married, sometimes she said once, sometimes twice, and her husband—or first husband—had been “unspeakable.” She had divorced him, or he her. Sometimes she described her childhood as ideally happy, her parents as wealthy and indulgent; then, once, she told Frances she was the daughter of a wretched woman who had lived with a worker in the Chicago stockyards. Yet all this didn’t impress Frances as lying; it was too vague, too aimless; she couldn’t help a stupid feeling that Miss Eppendorfer didn’t know exactly what had happened to her. Which was of course absurd.... And she was sure that the stories which told of want, pain, and struggle were the true ones, that the poor woman had suffered.

Talent she undoubtedly possessed. Although Frances detested the persistent fleshliness of her stories, she had a generous admiration for the gift itself. She would watch her writing, almost with awe, wondering where the ideas came from, from what unfathomable reservoir she drew so easily. She had no style, little art, couldn’t even use the language properly; simply she put on paper the visions of her curious mind. She sometimes used to cry as she wrote. And, although her books were oversensual, her talk wasn’t. She avoided those topics which distressed the austere Frances.

IV

It was not for six months that Frances got her first clue to this baffling creature. She tried to study her, to understand her, why she had no friends, no “circle” such as she had imagined literary people always had, why she was sometimes so slovenly, sometimes so extravagantly dressed, why sometimes she couldn’t bear to go out, and sometimes couldn’t endure staying at home.

It was after one of her infrequent visits home. Miss Eppendorfer hated to let her go, and would never go out during her absence, which naturally used to distress Frankie and cause her to cut her time at home unduly short. She did everything possible before leaving, and always saw to it that Jennie was there, under a solemn promise not to leave for a minute until she got back; then with soothing assurances, as if Miss Eppendorfer were a very nervous child, she would pack her bag and hurry off, oppressed and serious, worrying over the household she had left.

This time, when she came back, Jennie didn’t answer the bell. She rang again and again, but couldn’t hear a sound. Then she questioned the hall-boy and he told her Jennie had left that morning, but that Miss Eppendorfer was at home.

“Maybe she’s asleep,” he said, with a grin.

Frances turned white, remembering all the stories she had read of suicides and murders.

“Isn’t there any way I can get in?” she cried.

The boy leisurely suggested going to the flat below and asking leave to go up through the fire escape. He didn’t offer to do it for her; he was, on the contrary, as indifferent, as contemptuous as he could well be.

Fortunately the window on the fire escape was open and Frances got in without difficulty. And rushed into Miss Eppendorfer’s room.

She was asleep, her mouth open, her hair in her eyes, lying on the outside of the bed with no covering but a gauzy nightdress. The room was full of a smell unfamiliar to Frances, but she surmised, even before she saw the empty bottle.

Whiskey.

Somehow she got the poor thing warmly and decently covered up and the horrible littered room tidied. Then she went into her own room and sank into a chair, for her knees would support her no longer. She couldn’t think about it, her intelligence seemed to have fled, to be suspended, waiting. She was conscious of nothing but horror and a reluctant and painful compassion. She felt that now, after this, she could never, never leave Miss Eppendorfer.

CHAPTER TEN

I

Frances did not mention this shortcoming of Miss Eppendorfer’s at home, and it was never openly referred to between the authoress and herself. But Miss Eppendorfer ceased to be so careful, she was even relieved that Frances knew her vice and that she didn’t have to live in fear of her discovering it. The whiskey came openly with the grocery orders, then vanished into her own room. She was never to be seen drinking it, but there were many mornings when she couldn’t be awakened till noon, and when she did get up, she would be in a state that wrung Frankie’s kindly heart. The poor shaky, weeping thing, moaning about her aching head, swallowing her dreadful “headache cures,” and waiting in agony till relief came.... Frances had to sit by her, holding her hand and trying to quiet and cheer her. She struggled against disgust, but in vain; she would reach the point where the whole affair seemed intolerable, and she was determined to go home, and then Miss Eppendorfer would suddenly change, get up in the morning, dress elaborately and take her “little pal” out for a day of amusement. She was at such times so ingratiatingly kind that Frances put aside all thought of leaving her. No doubt these intervals of hectic excitement were her periods of reform; in fact, she almost admitted it.

“I have to keep on going,” she said, “to take my mind off things.”

Curious that Frances should find herself so placed, Frances who had been brought up to regard drunkenness in a man as a bestial crime, and in a woman, a thing almost impossibly awful. She sometimes wondered at herself, how was it that she didn’t blame Miss Eppendorfer, but looked upon her failing as if it were a disease? She felt herself very old, very experienced. In spite of her pity and real unhappiness over the thing, there was in it a deep, secret satisfaction; it was, she felt, Knowledge, Life; she was learning, developing. She had so far, far outgrown Minnie and her grandmother and their standards! She was tolerant, worldly-wise; there wasn’t, she believed, much more for her to learn....

The future rather worried her. This couldn’t last forever, and after this, what? She was not gaining experience that would be of any practical value to her in any other position. She was not able to save money; at the end of six months she found herself no better off than when her career had begun. And she was so ambitious, so passionately anxious to succeed, to be important and famous. She gave her problem much serious thought. One thing was certain; she couldn’t and wouldn’t leave Miss Eppendorfer under the present circumstances; the only thing was for her to prepare herself, to be ready for something better when there was a change of some sort. She presented her scheme to Miss Eppendorfer as tactfully as possible.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said, “if I knew how to type better and faster, and something of shorthand, I’d be ever so much more useful ... to you, and—and in general ... I wrote to a business school near here, and I think, if you don’t mind, I’ll take a course there in shorthand and typing. Three evenings a week, from seven to nine.”

But Miss Eppendorfer protested, begged her to put it off and not to leave her so much alone. She was afraid of this plan, afraid that she would, by it, lose this girl she so much needed.

“Just wait a month, dear, won’t you? Till the days are longer?”

It seemed an idiotic reason to Frances, and she looked obstinate.

“Perhaps I could take the course with you,” Miss Eppendorfer suggested, “I think I’d enjoy it.”

That idea didn’t please Frankie at all; the thought of going to school with anyone of Miss Eppendorfer’s age, appearance and temperament was appalling. She imagined what people would say—how they would be ridiculed. She was obliged to postpone the plan for a time, until she could think of a different way of presenting it....

Chance gave her an opportunity very soon. One morning the telephone rang, in itself a rare happening, and she hurried to answer it, as the authoress was asleep.

“Is this Miss Eppendorfer?” enquired a high, loud voice with an exaggerated London accent. “Oh, her secretary! Very well! You will please to tell Miss Eppendorfer that her cousin Kurt Hassler from Hamburg is here, and would like to call.”

“She’s not awake yet,” Frances explained, “but if you’ll leave your number——”

“The Ritz,” he replied haughtily. “Find it in the telephone directory. I am here until one.”

She had scarcely replaced the receiver when Miss Eppendorfer opened the door of her room and stood smiling absent-mindedly at her.

“I thought I heard the telephone,” she said.

“You did. It was your cousin from Hamburg. He wants to see you.”

Miss Eppendorfer became immensely excited, and insisted upon Frankie’s calling him up at once.

“I’m too nervous,” she said. “Tell him to come to-night for dinner at seven.”

He accepted the invitation, and the authoress was delighted.

“I haven’t seen him since he was a child,” she told Frankie, “but I’ve heard lots about him. He went to Heidelberg, and then he went into his father’s business and he’s done wonderfully well, they say. He speaks English, French and Spanish perfectly.”

“Are you a German then?” Frankie asked.

“No; my father was, but I’m not. I’m American through and through. I can’t even speak German. If Kurt didn’t speak English, I don’t know what I’d do.”

While she drank her coffee, Miss Eppendorfer ingenuously confided to Frances her great desire to impress Mr. Hassler.

“You see, his family—- my father’s cousins, over in Germany, always looked down on us. They were as rude as they could be. You know how proud those old commercial families are. Why, my dear, Kurt Hassler would never have dreamed of putting his foot inside my door if I hadn’t got a name for myself with this writing. So I’m going to show him that I’m somebody, after all. That I know how to do things right!”

Jennie was fetched to wait on the table, and supper was ordered from a restaurant nearby, with an extravagant variety of wines. Miss Eppendorfer dressed herself in her very best, and implored Frances to do the same, but Frances, although expecting a bearded and majestic man in evening dress, refused to put on any of the authoress’s finery.

“He’s not coming to see me,” she cried, “and, anyway, I’d rather look like what I am.”

Proud humility! And wasn’t she aware all the time that in her fresh blouse and blue serge skirt she utterly eclipsed Miss Eppendorfer, she with her clear brown skin and her beautifully honest eyes, with her youth and strength and dignity?

She had resented Mr. Hassler’s manner over the telephone and she had only to take one look at him in person to hate and detest him forever. He was unexpectedly young, not so old as herself, she imagined, but with a self-assurance seldom attained by other races this side of forty. He was handsome enough, but detestably arrogant, a smooth-shaven, blonde-crested boy with up-turned nose and wide, impudent mouth. He was stupid and pompous, couldn’t talk about anything but himself and his “world-export business” as he called it, yet Frances saw that he had wit enough to take the measure of his cousin. His gallantry was so obviously mocking that she burned with shame for the poor haggard, painted woman who gulped it down. It was really torment for her to look on.

Alas, poor Frankie! She had yet to learn of Miss Eppendorfer’s second great weakness!

II

After that evening everything was changed, Miss Eppendorfer herself a quite different person. She was as good-tempered, as kindly as ever, but so silly that Frankie’s own amiability began to wear thin. She wrote no more, all her talk was of clothes, of hair dressers, of manicures. She would spend all morning sitting at her dressing table, polishing her nails and “jabbering,” as her secretary mentally called her talking. She was full of the affectations of a happy young girl, was impulsive, whimsical, even pouted. And for whom but that obnoxious little Hamburger, young enough to be her son!

He called every evening, and made it plain to Frankie that he wanted to be alone with his cousin. So she withdrew to her bedroom and tried to read, to ignore that light, hysterically gay voice answering his impudent compliments.

“Can’t she see?” Frankie used to ask herself, almost in tears. “Doesn’t she know he’s laughing at her? Oh, what an idiot she’s making of herself, poor old thing!”

He and Frances hated each other. She stared at him with cold contempt, he looked her up and down insolently; they never spoke unless it couldn’t be avoided. Unfortunately Frances had to listen to a great deal about him from Miss Eppendorfer, how successful and brilliant he was in business, how supremely well-educated, how fastidious and aristocratic, how irresistible to the fair sex. He told her about his “affairs” and she insisted upon telling Frankie, although the latter said bluntly enough that she wasn’t interested. It was necessary that she should be shown what a remarkable conquest Miss Eppendorfer had made. She was forced to hear about the Russian princess, the awfully exclusive Parisienne, and above all about the eminent and very chic Damen in Wien. The colossal success he had had! Frances had either to consider him a liar, or the ladies on the continent of Europe as pitifully lacking in taste.

He very soon began coming to dinner every night, and Miss Eppendorfer went to great trouble to secure a cook who was not only a German, but a German from the only correct part of Germany for cooks to inhabit. She extorted big wages and made life wretched with her shrewishness, but her delicacies were supposed to atone for all this. Expenses mounted steadily; Frances had not imagined that Miss Eppendorfer had so much money. She bought new clothes continually, and flowers, and very expensive wines. Mr. Hassler was not absent for a single night for two months after the coming of the German cook, but not once did he invite his cousin to go anywhere with him, or did he bring her flowers or sweets.

Frances could not comprehend this thing; she thought she did, but she didn’t, in the least. It was the sort of affair not related in romantic novels; there was nothing romantic about it. It might be classified as a “love affair,” although it would have been confoundedly hard to find any love in it.... Frankie simply thought that Miss Eppendorfer was “silly” about the young man, and anxious to impress him, and that he was attracted by the good dinners.

Her first real suspicions awoke when she was checking up the stubs in the authoress’s cheque book, which she did every month when the vouchers came back from the bank. And she saw, no less than five times, cheques made out to “Kurt Hassler” for fifty dollars, sixty dollars, up to a hundred. It gave her a vague feeling of uneasiness, which she couldn’t shake off, although she assured herself that it was all “business.”

Then she and Miss Eppendorfer had the first of their quarrels. The cook wanted a day off, and Miss Eppendorfer gaily asked Frankie if she wouldn’t cook one of her dear little suppers for “Kurtie.” Frances flushed.

“Why don’t you go to a restaurant?” she suggested.

“Kurtie’s so sick of restaurants. I told him what heavenly things you used to fix up for me, and he said he’d like to see what you could do. He’s——”

“I’m sorry,” said Frances, “but I’d rather not.”

“My dear! Please! I’ve practically promised.”

“I can’t help it. I couldn’t.”

“But why?”

Frances looked at her indignantly.

“I wouldn’t cook for that man!” she said, severely.

“What is your objection to him, may I ask?” enquired Miss Eppendorfer, with sudden frigidity.

“I’d rather not say.”

“I insist.”

“I’m not going to say. It has nothing to do with the case, anyway. I don’t mind—I never mind doing things for you. But ... I should think you’d know better than to ask me to cook for your guests. I’m supposed to be your secretary, Miss Eppendorfer, not your servant.”

She was startled by the expression on Miss Eppendorfer’s face.

“A hell of a secretary you are!” she screamed. “You don’t know a damned thing. You’re no more use to me than a parrot. You take my money and never do a stroke of work. You’re as lazy as a nigger.” And much, much more, of abuse that grew fouler and fouler, most of it unintelligible to the girl. She stood motionless, white as a sheet, dumb with horror, her own little anger swept away on this violent torrent. She never forgot the scene, or the words.

“Oh!” she whispered. “Oh!... How terrible!... Oh, God, how terrible!”

For she had a dreadful feeling of helplessness, of being in a world where her dignity was of no avail. She cried forlornly for Minnie and her grandmother, even for her mother, dead a score of years.

She had packed her trunk and was absolutely determined to go home that night when Miss Eppendorfer came to the door, imploring to be let in. She, too, was in tears, streaming with tears, and she went down on her knees to Frances.

“Forgive me!” she cried. “Forgive me! Frances, darling, you know how terribly nervous I am! Don’t be too hard on me. I can’t live without you!”

She was so dreadfully upset that Frances had to get her to bed and give her a dose of some powerful sedative she used for her “nerve attacks,” and telephoned to Hassler not to come. And in the end she agreed not to go home.

But she remained very grave and thoughtful. She went out to supper at a little French table d’hôte nearby, came back and went to bed, without seeing Miss Eppendorfer again.

She was waked up late that night, though, by her. The poor creature was crying again, standing by Frankie’s bed.

“Oh, Frances!” she moaned, “I’m so wretched! I wish I were dead!”

Frances asked what was the matter.

“Kurt was so nasty to me,” she sobbed. “I rang him up after you’d gone out, and he came. But he wouldn’t stay a minute. He just looked at the supper and went away. I tried! I had sardines and caviare and fruit, all fixed in a dainty way.... Oh, Frances!”

Her voice rose to a shriek that alarmed Frances.

“Don’t get excited!” she entreated. “Just tell me, quietly, all about it. First let me close the window.”

It was an incoherent tale; he had told her that she didn’t know how to dress, that he wouldn’t be seen in a public place with her, that at her age she shouldn’t try to wear pink. Told her she looked vulgar. That he couldn’t see a trace in her conversation of the brains he imagined were required in novel writing.

Frances was exasperated.

“Why in the world do you bother with him!” she cried. “He’s—I’m sure you’re deceived in him. Why don’t you let him go?”

Miss Eppendorfer began to weep anew.

“I love him!” she declared. And seeing Frankie’s shocked face, she added, with humane motive, “We’re going to be married!”

Frances believed it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I

After this, Miss Eppendorfer was not able to make any further objection to Frankie’s study.

“I may as well tell you now,” said Frankie, “that I shan’t—I couldn’t stay with you after you’re married to that man.”

“But it won’t be for a long time,” Miss Eppendorfer protested.

A very long time indeed! Dimly, in her muddled head, she realised how much she wanted and needed Frankie, even foresaw the day when Mr. Kurt Hassler would go the way of other men to whom she had been so generous, and she would be quite alone. She tried to bribe her not to learn shorthand, she didn’t want her to be able to find another place; she said it would tire her, hurt her eyes, everything she could imagine.

Frances was firm.

“You’re not alone in the evenings now,” she said, “and I’ve got to think of my own future.”

“I’ll always look after you——”

“I don’t want to be looked after, thank you. Please don’t be unreasonable!”

Miss Eppendorfer cried a little and consented.

II

Frances found it a curious experience. She wrote home to Minnie, after the first week:

“I’m a sort of grandmother here in the business school. All the rest are little girls with pigtails and hair ribbons, and little boys in short trousers. You can imagine how I feel, so old and sedate. And even in size! They’re all so stunted. I tower above my tiny desk. I’m taller even than any of the teachers, and quite a different colour, at least five degrees redder.

“I thought I knew something about typing, but I’ve had to start all over again, and learn the ‘touch system.’ And shorthand! Oh, Minnie! I’m so stupid, you can’t think. The others learn like eager little trained animals. They can’t speak decently, or spell, of course, but what does that matter? They can put down on paper what they hear someone say, and copy it off, without the trouble of understanding. I foresee that I shall be here for years while all the little boys and girls pass on and out, and become bank presidents.”

It was quite true that she wasn’t quick at learning her new trade. She was studious by nature, and painstaking, but her hand was not ready. She was more discouraged than she cared to tell.

Life seemed, just then, a rather miserable affair. Her ambition was balked by her slowness in learning, and she began to think that she would never be able to do better than she was doing with Miss Eppendorfer. A filler of odd jobs, employed principally because she was personally agreeable.... And, somehow, Miss Eppendorfer’s talk of love made her lonely and sad. She thought of her twenty-three years, and was terrified by the fear that she would never be loved. She longed so to be loved! What chance, though? She went from Miss Eppendorfer’s flat, which no man entered but “Kurtie,” to the night school, where the oldest male was perhaps nineteen.

A situation ripe for the coming of the hero. As usual he came. Or perhaps, the one who came had to be he....

It was the end of June, and after two months of effort, Frankie still sat among the beginners. She had developed a new trouble. She was able now to scratch desperately while the teacher dictated, almost keeping pace with her, but she could never afterward read what she had written. She was trying in vain to type a letter she had taken down, in which all she could distinguish was “Dear Sir:” and the “14th inst.” when she heard someone sit down in the seat next her, which had till then been vacant. Naturally she glanced up. It was, as she later wrote to Minnie, a “real grown-up human being,” a tall, thin fellow with a haughty, stupid face, a man who couldn’t be under thirty and who was dressed in well-fitting and expensive clothes. She couldn’t help staring at him, all the more because he took no notice of her at all. “He was so out of place there,” she wrote. “He was so well-bred, with the nicest thin brown hands. And, my dear Minnie, he was even stupider than me. Much stupider.”

She watched him a great deal, as he tried to write on his machine. The keyboard was hidden with a tin cover, so that he was obliged to learn the letters by memory; this puzzled and annoyed him, and he frowned severely over his chart.

“I say!” he said, suddenly, to Frances, with a marked English accent, “Isn’t there something wrong about this thing? B ought to come next to A.”

She explained that the keyboard wasn’t arranged alphabetically. He asked why not, and she said she didn’t know.

“Some American idea, I suppose,” he observed, with displeasure, and turned away to resume his struggle.

He was not polite, he was certainly not clever, and, in spite of limpid and innocent grey eyes, not handsome; his nose was too large, his expression too contemptuous. Why then should Frances think him so terribly appealing and attractive? She felt an exaggerated good-will toward him, an ardent wish to help him, even to comfort him. There was no obvious reason for this painful compassion; he was well-dressed, showed not the least trace of poverty, quite the contrary. He looked healthy too, although very thin. And he had very much the air of being satisfied with himself. Ridiculous girl!

He had come to the end of a line and not understanding the bell’s signal, was trying to keep on writing. He saw that something was wrong, and he turned to Frances again. She had been watching him, and was ready to explain at once.

“I’ve never tried one of these infernal things before,” he remarked, quite unnecessarily.

“I’ve been at it for two months,” said Frances, with a sigh, “but I don’t seem to get on. Not like the others.”

He looked at her thoroughly for the first time.

“You’re not like the others,” he said, “that’s probably why.”

And added:

“You look like an English girl.”

That meant that he was pleased, she knew.

“I’m not. I’m American—as far back as the Revolution.”

“What revolution?” he asked.

With the characteristic innocence of her country-people, whose Genesis it is, she was astounded.

“Why, our Revolution! In 1776!” she explained.

He said “Really!” and went on with his writing.

The next night he saluted her with a stiff “Good evening!” directly she entered the room, so formal and frigid that her heart sank. They weren’t friendly, then! But, after half an hour’s desperate effort, he grew bored and discouraged, and once more turned his attention to the pretty girl.

“You’re doing well,” he observed.

Frances gave a sigh and smiled at him.

“I hate it!” she said.

“Rather! But why do you do it?”

“I want to get on—get a better job.”

“What are you doing now?”

He was, she thought, very personal, but he didn’t seem aware of it.

“I’m a secretary, for an authoress.”

That seemed to interest him.

“I’d thought of something of that sort for myself,” he said. “What do they expect of a secretary over here?”

“My position’s rather peculiar,” Frances told him. “I do all sorts of things that aren’t really part of my duties.”

“What, for instance? Can’t you give me some sort of idea?” he persisted, and, half-laughing, she tried to tell him.

“Oh, I go shopping with her,” she said, “and I listen while she reads, and I get up little chafing-dish suppers, and answer the telephone, and check up her bank book, and talk to her publishers, and—oh, well—lots of things like that!”

“I shouldn’t call that a secretary,” said the young man. “At home we’d call you a sort of companion.”

Frances turned red, and began typing again. He was rude, and no mistake about it. Detestable! She worked violently for a time, then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of him, pecking away at his typewriter so slowly and stupidly that her heart smote her.

“Good night!” she said cheerfully when the gong sounded, and she went off to the dictation class and he to the beginner’s room, where she could see him through the open door, writing on the arm of his chair, surrounded by eager children.

III

Frances was a little late the next night, and from her locker in the corridor, she looked anxiously into the classroom for the young Englishman’s nice brown head bent over his machine. But he wasn’t there. She went to her place and began to work half-heartedly, with one eye on the door, watching for him. The clock ticked on and on, half an hour gone, still she couldn’t believe he wasn’t coming. The whole long hour passed, the typing lesson was finished, and he hadn’t come.

Disappointment out of all proportion assailed her. Her heart was like lead, the whole world blank.

“What a fool I am!” she told herself. “Why on earth should I care? I don’t really; it’s only that he’s the only other possible person in the place—— Why should he come? Of course he’s given up the whole thing in disgust. Of course he’s not coming back, at all. Ever. Of course I shan’t see him again. What difference does it make?”

And yet, in spite of all this excellent common-sense, that feeling of desolation persisted. She hated and loathed the silly school, made up her mind to stop coming. She sat in the shorthand class, scratching down her unintelligible little symbols——

Suddenly an awful thought swept over her. It grew rapidly to a conviction. He had certainly stayed away solely because of her, because she had been so preposterously over-friendly that he was disgusted and alarmed. She did wish that she might see him once more, just to tell him that she didn’t like him, not him, personally; simply, like all nice Americans, she had wanted to be kind to a stranger....

She rushed out the minute the class was over. She was very anxious to get home. And there he was, waiting for her, standing under a street lamp where the light streamed on his arrogant face, a slim, foppish figure, with a walking stick. She felt suddenly angry at him; replied with coldness to his greeting.

“It was such a nice evening,” he said, “I couldn’t stand that filthy place.”

It was; sweet, calm, fresh, with a bright little moon overhead.

“I thought perhaps you’d like to walk a bit,” he said, “if you’re not tired.”

She hesitated imperceptibly, then accepted.

“A few blocks,” she said. “I shouldn’t like to be late.”

“Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked presently.

Frances said she didn’t, and they began strolling, quite aimlessly, uptown.

“I say!” he exclaimed, “It’s very decent of you to come. You Americans are unconventional, aren’t you?”

“Not all of us,” said Frances drily.

“We’re different. We won’t have anything to do with a stranger till we’ve got his credentials. I dare say we’re over-particular. No English girl I’ve ever met would take up a man this way——”

“I’m not in the habit of it,” said Frances. She was affronted and angry. “But I’m not a child. I’m accustomed to—to forming my own judgments. I—as far as I could judge, you were a gentleman. I thought you’d quite understand——”

“I do!” he protested, “I do, absolutely. I only wanted to tell you that I like it—all this freedom, you know. An English girl of your class would be so—so much more prudent——”

“I’m not imprudent!” cried Frances, passionately.

“Ah, but you are, though. My dear young lady, you don’t even know my name.”

“Well, what is it, then?” she asked, half-laughing, half-furious. “You’d better tell me, if that will make this shocking walk more ‘prudent.’”

“Lionel Naylor,” he said.

“Haven’t you any letters, any papers, to identify yourself? How can I tell if that’s really your name?”

He replied with perfect seriousness:

“I’ve one or two things—a letter——”

“Oh, nonsense! Couldn’t you see that I was joking? Why on earth should I care who you are? I’m old enough and sufficiently intelligent to find out very soon what you are. I’m not afraid of strange men. I can take care of myself.”

“It does no harm for a girl to be careful,” he answered, stubbornly.

And that was, apparently, his final word. They went on in silence. Frances counted fifteen blocks without a word. At the first crossing he had rather ceremoniously taken her arm, and he didn’t release it. He seemed quite contented to go on forever in this way. But it provoked Frances beyond measure. She longed to say to him:

“Why did you ask me to take a walk, if you didn’t want to speak to me?”

She made up her mind that she wouldn’t speak first, no matter how long it was. She had to, though. She looked at her watch.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to turn back now,” she said. “It’s time I was home.”

“I say!” he cried. “That’s too bad! I wanted to have a talk with you.”

“Why didn’t you talk then?” she asked, sharply, and he answered with equal irritability:

“My dear young lady, I can’t plunge into things the way you people do. I have to collect my thoughts a bit——”

“Strange as it may seem to you,” said Frances, “all the people in this country are not exactly alike.”

It began to dawn upon him that she was really annoyed, that these people were possibly as sensitive to offence as himself. Instantly he was very sorry.

“I dare say I’m not very tactful,” he said, “I didn’t mean to be offensive, though, I assure you. I admire you people very much.”

“All of us?”

He laughed.

“There are some, of course.... My sister-in-law—She!...”

“She’s an American?”

“Yes. My brother lives over here, you know. Been here some time. We thought he was a confirmed bachelor. Practically certain not to marry. Then, the very day after I got here, he did it. And such a girl! Of course it made trouble at once.”

Frances was interested, and moreover, she could see that he wanted to talk about it.

“How?” she asked.

“Set my brother against me. Put all sorts of beastly—Am—beastly ideas into his head. She has no use for a man unless he’s eternally stewing over a row of figures, grubbing after money. So now he’s got this idiotic idea of my learning this typing and shorthand rot. And why? So I can get a job in his office. I never heard such silly rot. What earthly use is that stuff going to be? I shan’t be one of his clerks. It’s her idea. She wants to humiliate me.”

Frances murmured something sympathetic.

“What business were you in before?” she asked.

“Not in any business,” he replied, surprised. “Didn’t you understand? I suppose, according to your ideas, I’m no good. I’ve never done anything much. Just stopped at home while my mother was alive.... Until two years ago ... when she died. She—liked to have me at home. We got on together very well.”

He was rather pathetically anxious to be friendly and communicative now, to show her that he wasn’t aloof and condescending. He tried to tell her about himself, indirectly to present his credentials. And did so, far more fully than he imagined. With every word, spoken and unspoken, she was more certain that she had not been mistaken—that he was “nice,” that he was to be trusted, that he was mysteriously likable.

“We travelled, and so on,” he continued. “She liked that.... Do you know, when I look at this girl Horace has married, I’m glad—really glad, the poor old mater—isn’t here.”

Then, unfortunately, he got started on a very favourite topic; he told her what he had endured from “that girl”; how she sneered at him, persecuted him, was continually poisoning his brother’s mind against him. Frances listened with a heavy heart. She couldn’t approve of this! It wasn’t manly; it wasn’t fine. She pitied him, yearned over him, and at the same time felt a passionate Defoe desire to lecture him, to tell him he was wrong, didn’t see things in a proper light. She wanted to tell him what to do and offer to help him to do it.

Conversation about his sister-in-law lasted until they had reached Frankie’s door. Then he was once more surprised and regretful that he hadn’t made better use of his time. He took Frankie’s proffered hand warmly.

“You see,” he said, “I didn’t ask your name. It wasn’t necessary.”

“Do you know it?” she asked, a little puzzled.

“No, not that. Simply, I don’t need any credentials to know that you’re—absolutely—all right. Absolutely.”

She smiled at him maternally. She liked that clumsy compliment; she liked his naïveness, his simplicity, even his rudeness. She saw him no longer as a young man, but as a boy, who had been badly trained, a rather spoilt boy. She felt very peaceful, very kindly, toward him and toward everyone else. She had never known life to be so satisfying as it was that evening, for no reason at all.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I

He was there, the next evening, and welcomed her as an old friend; in fact, he talked so much that she grew uneasy.

“We’d better work a little,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be awful if a teacher should come and scold us—at our age!”

“What I particularly want to ask,” he said, “is, if you’d come down to Brighton Beach to-morrow? I’ll run you down in Horace’s motor. We’ll have lunch and a swim and get back early. Will that be all right?”

“I’d love it,” she answered, “but I don’t know whether Miss E. could spare me. I’ll ask her.”

“Perhaps if I came home with you this evening, it would look better. So that she can see what sort of chap I am. I could stop in for a moment, couldn’t I?”

“Yes,” Frances answered, doubtfully, “but—I suppose so ... but I’ll have to explain a little in advance. There’s a young German who comes every evening to see her, and you’re sure to find him there.”

“Every evening, eh?”

“Yes; he’s her cousin.”

He frowned over this; asked a number of questions.

“Are you sure she’s all right?” he demanded. “You can’t be too careful, you know.”

“Oh, yes!” Frances asserted, positively, although she was far from sure that he would think so.

“I’ll certainly stop in this evening,” he said. “I want to see for myself.”

“I don’t think you’d better,” she said, reluctantly, “Miss E.’s awfully queer, eccentric, you know. She mightn’t like it.”

“But I want to see her,” he insisted. “She surely can’t object to my stopping in for half a minute. You’re not a servant.”

“It’s not that——”

“I want to see for myself,” he repeated. “It may not be a suitable place for you at all. I’d know at once.”

His attitude, his air of protection, delighted Frankie while it annoyed her. She was so firmly convinced that she could take care of herself, so jealous of her freedom, that she didn’t want even advice. And still couldn’t help being very much pleased by this wholly masculine gesture.

In the end she agreed. And was at once sorry and wretched, going through her classes in a nightmare of worry. How would Miss Eppendorfer take it? What would she think of Frankie’s walking in, uninvited, unpermitted, with a strange man? And how to explain him? Now she was ready to confess herself imprudent. She would have given anything she owned if something would have prevented Mr. Naylor from coming.

He, of course, was perfectly unruffled, as anyone conscious of such superiority would be. He followed Frances into the little Mission sitting-room where Miss Eppendorfer and Mr. Hassler were smoking side by side on the sofa. Frances was bitterly embarrassed; for a minute she couldn’t speak at all. She saw them both staring at her in amazement.

“I’ve brought my friend, Mr. Naylor, in for a few minutes,” she said, in a strained, artificial sort of voice. “We——”

Nothing more came; the girl who could always take care of herself couldn’t account for her visitor.

“We met at the business school,” said Naylor, “and as we were more or less the only human beings there, we naturally had to be friends.”

At the sound of his careless voice, Miss Eppendorfer’s look of amazement died away. She got up and shook hands with him, presented him to Kurt, and asked him to sit down. She was like a good servant; she knew class when she saw it.

Never before had Frances realised how distinguished her Mr. Naylor was until she saw him in Miss Eppendorfer’s sitting-room. She saw the authoress inspecting him in her detailed and unabashed way, staring at him, computing the cost of his clothes, comprehending the high degree he possessed of what she called “style,” and so greatly admired. She was deeply impressed.

He was very gallant to the poor thing, which delighted her beyond measure. No denying that she made a fool of herself. She was coy, imperious, more youthful than she had ever dared to be with Kurt, and, no matter how preposterous her behaviour, Mr. Naylor didn’t once attempt to catch Frankie’s eye, never encouraged her to be more preposterous.

Poor Miss Eppendorfer! Frankie, watching her, reflected on her ingratiating servility toward Mr. Hassler and her present conduct with Mr. Naylor, and found it impossible to reconcile all this with the Miss Eppendorfer she knew. Could it be the same woman who often talked to her with sense, with cynical shrewdness, with sharp knowledge of the world? The same woman who wrote books and sold them, knew how to make money and how to invest it? At the sound of a man’s voice she was horribly bewitched, even her face lost its look of worn good nature and took on a false and stupid simper. It hurt Frances, she was genuinely grateful to Mr. Naylor for not sneering.

But the baleful eye of the young German was fixed upon him. He was forced to sit in silence and listen to their badinage, and it infuriated him. He broke in suddenly, in a harsh, high voice:

“You are in business here?”

Mr. Naylor turned toward him, looked at him, and hated him.

“No,” he said.

“Perhaps you are looking for an opening?”

“No; there’s an ‘opening’ for me when I’m ready for it,” he answered haughtily.

“It should not be at all difficult to find an opening in this country. The requirements are so small,” Mr. Hassler announced, with tact. “Here they will willingly employ a man who knows nothing. Even hard work they don’t expect. With us in Germany all is very different. It is necessary to work very hard. We are all trained to work very hard. A young fellow starting in business with us would never ask, ‘What are the hours?’ Certainly not. We realise that you have got to work very hard, in order to get somewhere.”

“We don’t need to work so hard in England,” said Mr. Naylor. “We are somewhere.”

“Yes, where!” cried the other, raising his voice.

“Where you’d like to be,” Mr. Naylor replied with a smile.

“Bah! You’re getting left behind. We’re beating you everywhere, in every line. Your British trade—where will it be in ten years’ time?”