Three Little Women’s Success

Gabrielle E. Jackson

CONTENTS

Charles Was Sitting Upright Talking Wildly.

THREE LITTLE WOMEN SERIES

Three Little Women’s Success

A STORY FOR GIRLS

By

GABRIELLE E. JACKSON

Author of “The Joy of Piney Hill,” “Wee Winkles,” “Sunlight and Shadow,” “By Love’s Sweet Rule,” Etc.

Illustrated

THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY Philadelphia

Copyright 1913,

by The John C. Winston Co.

Copyright 1910,

by The John C. Winston Co.

TO DOROTHY

_A loyal, lovable lassie,_
_A trusted and true little friend._
G. E. J.

[CHAPTER I—After Three Years.]

October had come to Riveredge. This fact meant more than the five words usually imply, for to few spots did October show such a gracious presence as she did to this pretty town. Beautiful at all seasons, even in its wintry dress of gleaming snow, in its autumn gorgeousness, Riveredge was entirely irresistible. In summer the town drowsed, for during July and August many of its inhabitants took a holiday and journeyed thither and yonder; in the autumn it wakened to the busy bustle of active life and its preparations for the drawing together of all who dwelt therein, and spring was the time when it did its renovating, its housecleaning, its decorating, but October’s crisp westerly winds blowing across the broad expanses of the river set blood stirring, made pulses throb many beats quicker, and caused even strangers to smile and nod to one another as they passed along the streets. Friends called gayly: “Isn’t the air delicious? Doesn’t it make you want to prance like a colt?”

There was one individual in Riveredge whom it so affected, anyway. The fact that nearly three years have slipped by since we last witnessed any of her prancings has not lessened her propensity to do so, for with nearly fourteen years numbered off upon her life’s calendar Jean Carruth is as much of a romp as ever, full of impulses as she was upon the day she rescued old Baltie; as she was when she so valiantly defended her property and her rights against the hoodlums of McKimm’s Hollow. The three years have brought about many changes, it is true, but Jean Carruth will remain Jean Carruth to the end of the story. She has grown like a weed, to be sure, and seems to be nearly all long arms and legs with a body like a hazel wand—pliable and vigorous, with powers of endurance far beyond its indications. A casual observer might think her less strong than she is, but in reality she is “soun’ as a dollar and de cause ob mo’ trebbilation dan a million ob ’em could be,” insisted old Mammy. And Mammy was pretty well qualified to judge, having had charge of that young person since she drew her first breath in the world. Mammy still lived and flourished as Mammy Blairsdale-Devon. Nothing could induce her to drop the Blairsdale. Hadyn Stuyvesant had quite conclusively, though unwittingly, settled that point when he presented the superb sign, with its gleaming gold letters, to the newly opened lunch counter in the Arcade. Mrs. Carruth tried to persuade Mammy to take the name of her lately restored spouse, and be known thenceforth as Mrs. Charles Devon; but Mammy had scornfully stammered: “D-d-drap de Blairsdale? Never! I was borned a Blairsdale, lived a Blairsdale eighteen year befo’ I hooked on de Devon, an’ den hatter onhook it inside of fo’ months; den I lived fo’ty-seben years wid de Blairsdale name befo’ I foun’ out dat I had claim ter any odder. So what fo’ I drap it now? Dey ain’t no name kin leave it behine as I knows on. Devon’s a good one, I knows, and down yonder where we-all was borned at it do stan’ high for a fac’, but it cyant rare up its head like de Blairsdale name kin. No, sir! Devon can hook on to de Blairsdale all right an’ straight if it got a min’ ter; but I ain’t never gwine let it lead it no mo’, an’ I’s a-gwine ter let Charles lead me.” As the possibility of Charles ever leading Mammy seemed more than visionary, Mrs. Carruth gave up the argument. Besides, she had many other things to occupy her thoughts. In the fall of 19— Eleanor had entered college, and within the present college year would graduate with well won honors. From the moment she entered she resolved to be independent so far as her personal needs were concerned. The tuition fees were paid by her great-aunt, Mrs. Eleanor Maxwell Carruth. Those she accepted because Mrs. Carruth, Sr., was amply able to meet them, but further than that she had resolved to be independent and she had been. The first year was the hardest; a freshman’s possibilities are circumscribed; Sophomore year brought with it broader opportunities; Junior year established her place in the college world beyond all argument, and now with senior year her triumph and success lay close at hand. Moreover, this last year was being made much easier for her by Constance’s success in her candy kitchen. The same autumn that Eleanor entered college Constance, in spite of Mammy’s protests and opposition, had branched out on a scale to outrage all the old colored woman’s instincts and traditions. But Mammy had stormed and scolded in vain, the addition to her little four-roomed cabin was built by Haydn Stuyvesant, all Constance’s practical ideas for the needs of such a kitchen being followed out to the minutest detail. He admired the girl’s pluck and enterprise too much to bar her progress in any way, in spite of the fact that Mammy had sought to dissuade him from encouraging her in venturing further into the commercial world. Mammy had actually gone to Haydn’s office to “ketch a word in private,” as she put it. Finding all argument with Constance futile, she played what she hoped would prove her trump card. Haydn had listened with all deference to her arguments against “dat chile a-goin’ on so scan’lous, an’ a-startin’ out fer ter make sweet stuff fer all creation, when dar’s mo’ sweet stuff in de shops dis minit dan folks kin swaller if dey stuff desefs de whole endurin’ time.”

“But, Mammy,” Haydn had replied, as he looked kindly at the troubled old face before him, “you know none can equal Miss Constance’s. It would be a downright piece of cruelty to deprive us all of our Saturday treat.”

“Den let her go ’long de way she’s been a-goin’; let her make it down yonder in her Ma’s kitchen, an’ sell it in de Arcyde, jus’ lak she been a-doin’ all dese months. She ain’t got no call fer to earn any mo’ money’n she’s a-earnin’ right now. Ain’t me an’ Charles a-comin’ ’long right spry wid our lunch counter in dar?” she insisted, with a nod of her turbaned head toward the section of the building in which she and Charles had carried on a flourishing trade ever since the immaculate counter had displayed its tempting viands to those who passed along the Arcade, and who were not slow to avail themselves of Mammy’s wonderful art of cookery, or to bring their friends to enjoy it also.

“Yes, Mammy, you and Charles are real wonders to all who know you; but can’t you understand why a girl of Miss Constance’s type would never be happy if dependent upon others? Why, with all her young and splendid health, strength and energy, she must have some outlet for her ambition.”

“Den let her go a-frolickin’ lak her Ma did when she was mos’ sixteen! Let her go a-horsebackin’ and a-dancin’ at parties, an’ a-picnicin’ and all dose t’ings what a girl lak her ought ter be a-doin’. Wha’ you s’pose ma ol’ Massa Blairsdale say an’ do if he could come back an’ see de doin’s in our house? Gawd-a-mighty, I wouldn’t crave ter be aroun’ if he come along unbeknownst an’ see Miss Jinny’s chillern grubbin’ ’long in candy kitchens and teachin’ oder folks’ chillern, and hikin’ all ober de kentryside peddlin’ candy. He ax me fust, ‘Mammy, yo’no count ol’ nigger, wha’ you been about?’ An den he bang ma haid clean off!”

“I hardly think so, Mammy. The head and the heart have given too much to those he loved. But don’t be troubled about Miss Constance. Remember this: no matter what she chooses to do, she will remain the sweetest of gentlewomen to the end of the story. You little guess the respect she already inspires in all who know her, if she is but sixteen. Let me help her by arranging her kitchen just as her practical little head has planned it all. It is the least I can do. Miss Willing will bear the brunt of the hard work this winter, leaving Miss Constance free to finish her high-school-course. It is a wise plan all around and a kinder one than you realize. The Arcade telephone switchboard was no place for a girl like Mary Willing, and to have been instrumental in removing her from the temptations she was sure to meet there is a more beautiful charity than those blazoned at large in the daily papers. Don’t thwart it, Mammy. Let the little girl down yonder go on with her good work; she doesn’t realize how far-reaching it is: perhaps she will never learn. Her mother does, however, and is using a very fine instrument to bring the work to perfection.”

Mammy had sat very silent all the time, her old face wearing a puzzled expression, her keen eyes fixed upon a paper cutter which lay upon Haydn’s desk, her lips pursed up doubtfully. Haydn did not break the silence; he only watched. After a few moments she looked up, gave a perplexed sigh, and said:

“Well, sah, p’raps yo’ is right. P’raps yo’ is. I ain’t nothin’ but a’ ole nigger woman, but, bress Gawd, I loves ma white folks, an’ I hates fer ter see de ole times so twisted up wid de new ideas, I sartain’ does. It goes against de grain p’intedly.”

“I can understand all that, dear old Mammy, but you mark my words, the results will justify the deeds.”

So Mammy gave up the argument, though she was far from resigned to the plans.

And thus had the enterprise grown. Constance finished her year at the high-school, Mary Willing was established in the model little candy kitchen, with all its practical little appointments, and before long was nearly as proficient as Constance herself, and quite as enthusiastic. One year slipped by and another followed it. Then a third was added to the number, until now, with the autumn of 19— Constance was nineteen years old and Eleanor twenty-one.

Neither has changed a great deal. Eleanor’s three years in the college world have given her greater poise and independence, a more matured outlook upon life, but the old Eleanor Carruth is still in evidence.

Constance had grown taller, the slight figure is more rounded, though still girlish. She still has the wonderfully sweet, frank expression, in spite of her two years out in the business world, for after her graduation she took firmer hold than ever of her business venture and branched out in many directions. New booths were opened in adjacent towns, private orders were filled for patrons in New York City, holiday consignments were made to more remote ones, to which her fame had spread through friends and friends’ friends. Of course some losses had been sustained, but in comparison with her output and returns they were trivial, and her success was an established fact. But the work continued, her aim being absolute independence for her mother, and for Jean the home and the atmosphere their mother had formerly known and loved.

And the silent partner of the firm, old Baltie, how had the three years dealt with him? A horse which has attained twenty-five years and is sightless is supposed to be out of the running, but Baltie lived apparently to prove the fallacy of such a supposition. At twenty-eight he was younger and more active than at twenty-four, his age when rescued by Jean. Nothing could restore his sight, but with each year his hearing seemed to have grown keener, and the ears were as sensitive as a wild animal’s. But Baltie needs a chapter to himself.

[CHAPTER II—The Silent Partner and Others.]

“Mother, have you seen Jean?” asked Constance, popping her head into her mother’s room shortly after breakfast one glorious October morning.

“She was here but a few moments ago, dear,” answered Mrs. Carruth, looking up from her desk at which she sat writing out the marketing list for Mammy.

“I want her to leave this parcel at Mrs. Morgan’s on her way to school, and, by the same token, she ought to be on her way there this very minute. I wonder where she has gone?”

“Not very far, I think. She knows she must start at once.”

Constance laughed as she replied: “I wonder if she ever will know? Time doesn’t exist for her, or perhaps I would better say that it exists only for her; she so calmly takes all she wishes. But she really must start now. I’ll go hunt her up and get her headed in the right direction.”

“Yes, do, Honey,” urged Mrs. Carruth, as Constance hurried away in quest of the youngest member of the household.

Mrs. Carruth resumed her writing. The past three years had dealt kindly with her: Mammy and the daughters of the home had seen to that. Nothing could ever alter the gentle expression of her eyes, or change the tender curves of her lips. Each told its story of love for those nearest and dearest to her, as well as her sympathy and interest in her fellow-beings. Mrs. Carruth had passed her forty-seventh birthday, but did not look more than thirty-eight. The hardest years of her life were those following upon her husband’s death, and the serious financial losses she was then forced to meet. Since Constance’s venture and the success which had almost immediately attended it, the outlook for all had been more hopeful, and if now living less pretentiously than she had lived during her husband’s lifetime, she was none the less comfortable. Upon Hadyn Stuyvesant’s advice Mrs. Carruth had not rebuilt the old home, although by careful economy she could have done so. But Hadyn was looking farther into the future than Mrs. Carruth looked. Perhaps his wish had some bearing upon the thought, for from the moment Hadyn Stuyvesant had met Constance Carruth his future was settled so far as he was concerned. But he was too wise to let the sixteen-year-old girl guess his feelings. The gulf between sixteen and twenty-three is a wide one. As the years advance it mysteriously narrows. At nineteen Constance often wondered why Hadyn seemed younger to her in his twenty-sixth year than he had at twenty-three. Never by look or word had he betrayed any warmer feeling for her than the good-comradeship established at the beginning of their acquaintance. He was like a brother in that dear home. Mrs. Carruth consulted him freely upon all occasions. Eleanor accepted him as a matter-of-course; that was Eleanor’s way. Constance found in him the jolliest companion. Jean adored him openly, and he was her valiant champion whenever she needed one. From the day he had taken his first meal in her home she had been to him the “Little Sister,” and he never called her by any other name. Not long after that event she had coined a name for him—a funny enough one, too. Rushing into Constance’s room in her impetuous way one day, she demanded: “Connie, when knights used to fight for their ladies, ever ever so long ago, what did they call them?—the knights I mean.”

“Do you mean Knight Errant?” asked Constance, looking up to smile at the eager little girl.

“Knight Errant? Knight Errant?” repeated Jean, doubtfully. “No, somehow that doesn’t fit him. I couldn’t call him that, it’s too long.”

“Call whom, Jean?” Constance began to wonder what was simmering in this little sister’s head.

“Mr. Stuyvesant. He calls me ‘Little Sister,’ and I want a name for him.”

“Do you think mother would approve of your calling him by a nickname?”

“’Tisn’t going to be a nickname; it’s going to be a love name for him, just like his for me is,” was Jean’s curious distinction.

“Oh!” The tone did not imply deep conviction.

“Now, Connie, you don’t understand at all. You think I’m going to be—be—, well, you don’t think I’m respectful, but I am. I don’t know anyone that I feel more respectfuller to than Mr. Stuyvesant. He’s just lovely. Only just plain Mr. Stuyvesant keeps him such a long way off, and he mustn’t be. Mother has adopted him, you know, ’cause we all agreed to lend part of her to him. So I must have a homey name for him. What were the other names they gave those old knights?”

“They were often called ‘champions of their fair ladies,’” answered Constance, slipping her arm about Jean and drawing her close to her side.

“That’s it! That just suits him, doesn’t it? He was my champion the day Jabe Raulsbury turned old Baltie out to die in the road, and he has been a heap of times since when I’ve got into scrapes. So that’s what I’m going to call him. He is down on the piazza talking with mother about the new fence, and I’m going right straight down to ask him if I may call him Champion,” ended Jean, delighted with her new acquisition and bounding away.

“Don’t interrupt Mother,” warned Constance, always a little doubtful of the outbreaks of the fly-away.

Hadyn Stuyvesant had not only approved the name, but was delighted with the idea, and vowed from thenceforth to guard his “lady fair.” So “Champion” he was from that moment on, and, long as the name was, it had clung. The three years had not lessened Jean’s love for him or his devotion to her.

As Constance descended the stairs in quest of Jean she met Mammy at the foot.

“Is yo’ Ma up in her room, Baby?” she asked.

“Yes, Mammy, and just finishing the marketing list. Have you seen Jean? It is high time she started for school.”

“Dat’s de livin’ truf, an’ it’s what I done tol’ her a’reddy, but she boun’ ter go out yonder to see dat hawse.”

“Then I’m bound to go out yonder after her,” laughed Constance, as she ran briskly down the hall, passed through the door which led to the piazza and opened upon the lawn. There was no sign of Jean, but Constance crossed the velvety turf to the stable at the further side of the grounds, passing on her way the candy kitchen, and calling cheerily to Mary Willing, who was already busy within: “Polly’s got her kettle on for our candee,” to be promptly answered by: “Yes, and it’s a-boiling, if you will come and see.”

“Good! I will be there in just a minute. I’m hunting for Jean.” A moment later she turned the corner of the stable and came upon Jean and Old Baltie.

To say that Old Baltie had become almost human during the four years spent in this home conveys very little idea of the mutual understanding existing between him and his friends, Jean and Mammy were, of course, his joint owners; but since his marriage to Mammy, Charles also claimed ownership. No one would have recognized the old horse for the one rescued by Jean. His coat was now as sleek as satin, his old body round and plump, his manners those of a thoroughly spoiled thoroughbred horse. It had not required all the four years spent with the Carruths to blot out the effects of Jabe’s harsh treatment, or to revive in Baltie the memory of his earlier days as Grandfather Raulsbury’s pet. The interval in which he had fallen upon evil days had vanished as an ugly dream, and with nobility’s inherent qualities, whether manifested in man or beast, he had dismissed the memory, risen above it, and with all of his noblesse oblige was helping others to do likewise.

His wonderfully attuned ears were quick to catch the sound of Constance’s footfalls upon the soft turf, and he greeted her with a stifled nicker, for his position made a gentlemanly greeting well-nigh impossible: he was lying at full length upon a bed of sweet clover, his head in Jean’s lap. These two were never in the positions or situations of their kind if they could possibly achieve others.

“Hello!” called Jean, glancing up from pressing her cheek against one large satiny ear which she held against it.

“Thought I’d find you here, Honey; but I’ve got to hustle you off to school. Do you know what time it is?”

“Only half-past eight, and we’re having a beau-ti-ful time, aren’t we, Baltie, dear?”

“Hoo-hoo-hoo!” fluttered the delicate nostrils. Constance dropped down beside Jean and ran her hand along the warm, sleek neck. Another nicker acknowledged the caress, but the great horse did not stir. The clear morning sunshine flooded the paddock, Baltie’s little kingdom, and filtered through the gorgeous sugar maples overhead. The air was clear and crisp, the ground dry as though night dews were unknown. Off at the edge of the paddock a cricket shrilled his monotonous little song of the coming winter—a snug stable for the old horse and a warm fireside for his friends.

“You really must go now, dear,” urged Constance, rising to her feet after a final caress.

“Oh, dear, and he is so big and so warm and so soft and so good,” protested Jean. “But I s’pose I must. Come, Baltie, you’ve got to get up. Now! All together!” and placing her arms beneath the great neck Jean gave the preliminary heave-ho! necessary to start the old horse. Four years before it would have been impossible for him to get to his feet, but, as Mammy insisted:

“Charles Devon hadn’t been Massa Stark’s groom fer nothin’,” and she herself was a master hand at “mashargin” (Mammy’s pronunciation of massaging), a course of treatment to which Baltie had been most vigorously subjected, to the wonderful rejuvenation of his old bones and muscles.

A horse, even in his most nimble days of colthood, does not rise from a prone position with any great degree of grace; yet Baltie might have given points to some of his younger brethren. Up came his head, the slender forefeet were braced, there was a mighty heave and hoist, and Baltie stood upon all-fours, shaking clover leaves from his flanks.

“Now fly, Jean! Be sure to take the parcel for Mrs. Morgan. I’ll stop a moment with Baltie to make your peace for your abrupt departure,” said Constance, gayly, well knowing that Jean’s leave-taking from her pet was usually a prolonged ceremony.

Away hurried the little girl, leaving the older sister to spend the ensuing five minutes with the old horse, who nozzled and fussed over her, as only a petted horse knows how.

“Now, old silent partner, I must run away and look after my forewoman and get busy myself. Goodness, how the Carruth family is developing! Eleanor already offered a position at Sunnymeade for next fall, my humble self a full-fledged business woman with a flourishing trade; Jean junior partner with a private following of her own, and you, you dear, blind, faithful old creature, setting us all an example of faithfulness and devotion; Mammy and Charles the biggest hit of the whole establishment with their lunch counter, and yonder the little girl whom Mother has made over brand new! No wonder I’m proud; no wonder I’m sometimes afraid my head will be turned by all our good fortune and success. Keep me headed right, Baltie. If you, without sight, can steer a straight course, surely I, with both my eyes to the good, ought to be able to. Good-bye, dear,” and clasping her arms around the sleek, warm neck, Constance stood perfectly still for a moment or two, her head pillowed upon the silky mane, her thoughts traveling rapidly back across the intervening years—years so full of effort, anxiety, hope, disappointment, love and faith. The one which was beginning with this October—for it was in October that she had begun her work four years before—was bidding fair to prove a crisis in all their lives. Instinctively the girl felt this. Girl in years, yes, but a little woman in executive ability, foresight and execution, withal, still sweet and true, and retaining her faith in her fellow-beings. Never had she looked lovelier than at this moment standing there in the glorious October sunlight, her arms clasped about the big bay horse, her eyes shining with hope, health, courage, her cheeks glowing. She was dressed for her morning’s work, her gown a simple tan-colored linen with white collar, cuffs and belt, a soft tie of brown silk at her throat. She was good to look at this girl of nineteen, as she stood with such unstudied grace, the very personification of hope. Presently, with a little start, she came back to a realization of things around her, and with a parting caress for the blind horse ran lightly from the paddock across the lawn to the little candy kitchen, and entered with a cheery greeting.

[CHAPTER III—The Bee-hive.]

When three years before, Hadyn Stuyvesant, the owner of the property rented by the Carruths, had followed out Constance Carruth’s plans for a model kitchen in which she could make her candy, he was not a little surprised at the sixteen-year-old girl’s practical ideas. She asked him to build an extension to the little cottage at the end of the grounds occupied by Mammy and Charles, and had drawn the plans and specifications herself. The result was a marvel to him.

The extension consisted of three rooms on the first floor and two on the second. Upon entering the door one found one’s self in a good-sized room, with rubber-tiled floor all blue and white, the walls snowy in alabasterine. Here on numberless white enameled shelves were placed the boxes of candy ready for shipment. From this attractive room opened the packing room, floor, walls and ceiling scrupulous. Long zinc-covered tables ready for the pans of candy, little portable stands at hand to hold the boxes in which the candy was to be packed. Perhaps the most practical feature of this packing room was the height of the tables, or more correctly their lack of height. Constance had reason to know that one can be foot-weary after several hours spent in candy-making. Consequently these packing tables were made low enough to enable those working at them to sit upon the comfortable bent-wood chairs while doing the work, which often required several hours, for not only had the candy to be packed in its pretty boxes, but the boxes had to be wrapped and tied with dainty ribbons. Nothing must fall short of perfection.

But the crowning point of Constance’s practicability was shown in the actual kitchen itself. This was also tiled, but the tiles were of shining porcelain, washable, scrubable, scourable to the very limit. A big gas range stood at one side, near it hung pans, pots and kettles of every size and possible need, all of white enamel ware. A big porcelain sink and draining tray stood next. Close at hand was a large table, its top of white marble warranted to withstand the hottest candy which could be poured upon it, to chill it quickly for handling or cutting, and to come forth from its boiling baptism immaculate under the alchemy of hot soapsuds.

On the walls were great hooks, upon which to pull long ropes of molasses or cream candy. Along another side of the kitchen were shelves to hold the hundred and one ingredients which were to be transformed into the most toothsome of dainties, and these were too numerous to name. A spacious closet held aprons, caps, towels, dish-cloths and what not, needed in the work.

On the floor overhead, and reached by a quaint little stairway from the shipping room, was the stock room, where boxes, labels, wrapping paper, twine, and a hundred other needfuls were kept. In one corner a business-like roll-top desk, with still more business-like ledgers, told of the ability of this little lady to keep track of her finances. And room number five? Ah, the eternal feminine! Who says she must waive all claim to her womanly instincts, merge them in the coarser, less refined ones of the hurrying, struggling world around her when she sets out to be a bread-winner among her masculine contemporaries? If some do this, Constance Carruth was not to be numbered among them, and no better proof of it could have been offered than the “fifth wheel to her business wagon,” as she laughingly called room number five. That little room is worthy of minute description.

To begin with, the walls were tinted a soft ivory white, with a delft blue frieze running around the top. The floor was of hard wood, with a pretty blue and white rug spread in the center. On this stood a white enameled table, with snowy linen cover, a reading lamp, the several books and magazines testifying to its primal use. Four or five comfortable wicker chairs, with cushions of pretty figured Japanese crepe, stood about. In one corner a couch with a delft blue and white cover and enough pillows to spell luxury, invited weary bodies to rest when labors were ended, and yet never once hinted that by removing the cover and pillows a bed stood ready for a guest if extra space were needed. Book shelves of white enameled wood filled half one side of the room, and held every sort of cook-book ever published, as well as many of Constance’s favorite authors. A white chiffonnier held many necessary articles, for after one has spent several hours over a boiling kettle one longs for a tub and fresh garments; and all these were at hand in the big closet. Opening from this restful room was a perfectly appointed bathroom. Could plans have been more perfect?

Certainly the girl, bending over the big saucepan, stirring its boiling contents, felt that her little paradise had been gained when she changed from the bustling, rushing Arcade to the peace, tranquillity and refinement of her present surroundings. The accident which short-circuited the switchboard wires in the telephone booth that eventful Labor Day had brought to Mary Willing, even at the cost of a good deal of physical suffering, present advantages and an outlook for the future such as she had never pictured. Indeed, her horizon had been much too circumscribed for her imagination to reach so far. It needed the influence and environment of the past three years to make her fully appreciate the vast difference between the acquisitions which mere dollars can command, and those which true refinement of heart, mind, soul and body hold as invaluable and indeprivable heritages. Possibly the best proof that she had taken the lesson to heart lay in the fact that “Pearl” Willing had completely dropped out of the world’s ken, and in her stead, quiet, dignified Mary Willing moved and had her being. Unconsciously Mrs. Carruth had undertaken to solve a knotty, sociological problem, but the results already obtained seemed to justify her belief that she was right in her estimate of this girl. At all events she had reason to be sanguine of ultimate success in bending a hitherto neglected twig. It needed courage, however, upon Mrs. Carruth’s part to undertake this reformation. From her childhood, to her nineteenth year Mary Willing’s environment had been, if not demoralizing, certainly detrimental to a higher development in any girl. Her associates were coarse, boisterous, heedless girls, without the faintest sense of the fitness of things, or the first rudiments of refinement. To earn enough money to clothe themselves in shoddy finery, to contribute as small a percentage of their earnings to the family purse as possible, and to have as much “fun,” never mind at whose expense, or at what sacrifice of their own dignity, bounded their aims and ambitions. And Mary Willing had seen no reason for not following in their footsteps. Handsomer than any of her companions, and holding a position where her personal charms were conspicuous for all who passed to comment upon them, she had used them to attract the attention of those whom she thought likely to contribute to her pleasure.

To make her more self-conscious, and senselessly pave the way to greater evil, her mother had continually urged her to make the most of her good looks while she had them, assuring her that unless she managed to “catch a rich husband with her handsome face she needn’t hope to get one at all.”

Was it any wonder the girl grew up vain, shallow, and with standards poorly calculated to withstand temptations if offered opportunely? Still, there was a certain something in her which, up to her nineteenth year, had saved her from anything worse than shallow flirtations; and then when everything seemed conspiring to lead her to more serious consequences of her folly, Fate had established close at her side a personality and atmosphere in such contrast to her own, and all she had ever known, that it acted as a dash of cold water acts upon a sleepwalker. At first she was startled, then roused, and finally thoroughly wakened to the perilous path she was following.

But the strangest part of it all lay in the fact that the individual which capricious Dame Fate had used as her instrument never for one moment suspected that she was being used at all, but continued on her sweet, cheery, sunny way entirely unconscious of her responsibilities. Perhaps therein lay her greatest strength. Then came the accident on the river, and Mrs. Carruth, quick to read and comprehend, found a field for the sweetest missionary work a woman can enter upon—that of shaping the life of a young girl for the noblest position to which she can attain—a refined young womanhood, a beautiful wifehood, and a motherhood as perfect as God will give her grace to make it. Mary Willing could hardly have found a more beautiful example, and the three years had wrought miracles.

Mrs. Carruth had made haste slowly. The first year Mary Willing entered upon her duties in the candy kitchen she went and came daily, learning and applying herself with all the enthusiasm her gratitude to those she so admired and strove to emulate inspired. The relations between the girl and Constance were those of valued employee and respected employer. It could not have been otherwise. Mary had a vast deal to _un_learn, the hardest of all things to accomplish, and when old impressions were effaced to begin an entirely new page. Gradually as time passed on the girl grew into her new environment. Old habits of manner and speech gave way to gentler ones, old viewpoints shifted to those of these good friends, who had risen up at such a crucial point in her life and were fitting her to be a little woman in the truest sense. In the course of the three years just passed she and Constance had grown closer to each other. The latter, quick to see the former’s sincere desire to improve, and take advantage of every opportunity to do so, felt the keenest sympathy for her less fortunate sister, and the strongest desire to aid her. Mary’s aim and ambition was to grow “just exactly like Constance Carruth! The dearest, best and loveliest girl that ever lived,” as she confided to her mother. The greatest obstacle to be overcome was the unhappy influence in Mary Willing’s own home life. It sometimes seemed to Mrs. Carruth that whatever good they accomplished in the five and a half working days of the week was entirely undone during the one day and a half which the girl spent in the hurly-burly, the untidiness and hopeless shallowness of her own home, to say nothing of the coarsening influence of a worthless, dissipated father’s presence. Mrs. Carruth believed that Mary Willing had naturally been endowed with instincts far above the average of her class, though from what source inherited she could not understand, and that all needed to develop them was a more wholesome atmosphere, wise guiding, and, of course, separation from former contaminating influences. But she bided her time and, when least expecting to do so, discovered the secret. At length, when she felt the moment to be ripe, she suggested most tactfully that Mary come to live with them, to occupy the little room which had once been Mammy’s, but, since her marriage to Charles, and her removal to the snug cottage adjoining the candy kitchen, had been newly decorated and furnished for what Jean, in her characteristic fashion, termed “the left-overs;” “left-overs” being any extra guest who might claim the hospitality of the family when the other guest room was occupied. It was a pretty little room, up in the third floor at the rear of the house, and overlooked the lawn, the candy kitchen, Mammy’s cottage, and the rolling country beyond owned by Jabe Raulsbury. It had been papered in the softest green paper, with garlands of pink roses as a border. The floor was carpeted with a deeper shade of ingrain filling, upon which lay two pretty rugs in pink and green. Dimity curtains, looped back with chintz bands, draped the windows. The furniture was of white enamel, with plain white iron bedstead. Cushions and coverings, as well as table and bureau scarfs, were of the chintz, edged with inexpensive lace—the bedspread of snowy white. Had the room been designed for Mary Willing’s rich coloring it could hardly have suited her more perfectly. But it had not; Fate was simply working out her scheme not only in color but in influence. How great the influence of that simple little room would prove not even Mrs. Carruth suspected, although she was a firm believer in the influence of one’s surroundings.

When Mrs. Carruth suggested that Mary remain with them in order to be at hand whenever needed in an emergency, and to avoid during the cold, stormy days of winter the long trip to and from her own home, the girl had responded with an eagerness which touched Mrs. Carruth very deeply. “And if I come here to live you must let me pay my board,” she cried, impulsively. Then, noticing the color which crept into the older woman’s face, she hastened to add, contritely: “Oh, dear me! Shall I ever learn how to say things? I’m—I’m so—I mean I know so little. Please forgive me, Mrs. Carruth. I didn’t stop to think how rude that was. I ought to have said you must not pay me such a large salary if you let me live here. I know that no amount of money that I could earn could pay my board. I’ve learned that much, you see, even if I don’t seem to have learned very much more during the last two years. But I’m truly, truly trying hard to learn.”

“I know it, dear. Perhaps I am over-sensitive. Old instincts are hard to overcome. No, I do not think we will change the salary. Constance had already thought of increasing the sum she is now paying you, for you earn it. Work has increased rapidly during these two years, and you are very proficient, and very valuable to her.”

“Oh, I am so glad! I want so much to be.”

“You are; so live here with us, and let the little room and the ‘bread and salt’ stand as a part of your salary.”

Mary Willing had never had occasion to enter this room, and when Constance led her to it upon the day she took up her residence with them, the girl stopped short upon the threshold, clasped her hands in a little ecstacy of rapture, and cried: “I’ll live up to every single thing in it, for only a gentlewoman could have arranged such a room, and only a gentlewoman has any right to live in it. It just speaks of that dear, blessed little mother of yours from every corner, and from every single rose on the paper and the chintz; and if I don’t live to make her proud of me I shall want to know why.”

[CHAPTER IV—The Busy Bees.]

“I’m afraid the head of the firm is very late this morning,” cried Constance, merrily, as she entered the candy kitchen. Mrs. Carruth had long since given it the name of the Bee-hive.

“I think the head of the firm has earned the right to arrive late if she wishes to,” answered Mary Willing, glancing backward over her shoulder as she stood before the gas range. Her arms were bared to the elbows, for the waist she wore was made with short sleeves, in order to give her perfect freedom in her work. They were beautiful arms, strong, well-rounded and smooth as ivory.

“No, indeed, the head of the firm is a far cry from such indulgences, let me tell you. She has just heaps and loads to accomplish before she can arrive at such luxuries. But how goes the candy, Mary? Are you ready for me yet?”

“Not quite; but I shall be in just a few minutes. See, it is beginning to rope,” was the reply as the candy-maker lifted a spoonful of the boiling syrup and let it run back into the kettle, the last drop falling from the spoon quickly forming into little threads, which wavered in the hot air rising from the range.

“Better begin beating it now, and let me pop in the nuts; then we’ll pour it off,” answered Constance, her practiced eye quick to see that another moment’s boiling might undo a morning’s work.

“Well, you’re the boss! Oh, I beg your pardon, Miss Constance, I didn’t mean that! I mean you’re—” and the girl paused in confusion, her face coloring a deeper red than the heat and her work had brought there.

“I’ll make believe I didn’t hear,” answered Constance, a softer light filling her eyes in place of the pained one which for a little instant had crept into them, as a cloud can cast a momentary shadow upon a wind-swept, shining October sea.

“You have to make believe so many times,” answered the girl, contritely, as she lifted the kettle from the range, and placing it upon the marble table, began to beat vigorously.

“Not nearly so often as I used to,” answered Constance, emptying into the kettle a great dish of walnuts. Mary again beat vigorously with her big spoon, shaking her head doubtfully the while. Constance did not look at her, but, arming herself with a large knife, guided the candy into the little grooves which would shape it as it was poured upon the table from the tilted kettle. One end of the table had been blocked out like a checkerboard, each inch square lined for cutting the candy accurately.

“Now watch me do my stunt,” she cried, standing with knife suspended over the fast chilling candy, and smiling up at the tall girl at her side.

“Do you forgive my—my—oh, the things I’m forever saying that must feel just like a file drawn over your teeth? If you only knew how hard it is to forget old ways and words and learn the better ones!”

“Do you see that little motto over there?” asked Constance, pointing with her poised knife to a card, one of several hanging upon the wall of the kitchen. The one toward which she pointed was in dark blue letters upon a white ground. It read: “Forget It!”

“Yes, that is just exactly what I am forever doing,” was Mary’s petulant reply. “If I didn’t forget all the time I’d never have to forget at all, and if that isn’t the finest bit of Irish you’ve ever heard, please improve on it if you can.”

The laughter which floated out through the open door greeted Mrs. Carruth as she entered the packing room.

“May I share the joke?” she asked. “I’m sure it must be a good one, and rich as the odors floating out to tempt nose and palate. Cut it quickly, Honey; I know it must be chilled enough and it does smell so good. Mary, you are a master hand. M—mm—m! A veritable lump of delight, though still slightly warm,” she ended as Constance dropped into her mouth a square of the nut fudge she had just cut from the great mass covering the table.

“Sit down, Mumsey, dear, and be good, consequently happy, while we work like beavers. How does it chill so rapidly? Quick! Mary, you cut at that end while I work at this. We’ve pounds and pounds to get done this morning if we are to fill all the orders.”

For a few moments only the swift swish of the great knives as they cut the candy could be heard, now and again one girl or the other catching up a square upon the end of her knife and pausing just long enough to offer it to Mrs. Carruth. Presently all was cut, and as it lay cooling they set to work upon the next batch to be made, Mary cleaning the fudge kettle while Constance got out another for the walnut creams. Each kind of candy had its special cooking utensils, and no others were ever used for it. In a few minutes Constance had a second batch of candy bubbling upon her range, ready to turn over to Mary when she should have finished washing the kettles and other articles used in making the fudge.

“I came out to be useful; may I prove it?” asked Mrs. Carruth.

“Just sit and watch us work. That helps,” answered Mary, as she relieved Constance.

“Will you be just a heap happier if I let you help wrap the fudge in paraffin paper?” asked Constance as she nestled her head for a moment in her mother’s neck. “Eh? Will you? You busy body. Why can’t you let us do all the work and so win all the glory? I suspect you’re a terribly selfish mother; yes, I do. You needn’t protest. You won’t even let your girls, real own ones or adopted ones, make their sticky marks in this world in peace. You must come poking out here to buzz around in the hive and beg honey.”

“I don’t have to beg, for it is voluntarily given,” laughed Mrs. Carruth, kissing the soft cheek so close to her lips. “This kind I mean, and I know of none sweeter.”

“Gross flattery! Now I know you are scheming, so ’fess right off,” cried Constance, whirling around to peer into her mother’s face, and break into a merry laugh.

Mrs. Carruth pursed up her lips into a derisive pucker, and looked into the merry eyes of this sunshiny daughter.

“And if I am, what then?” she asked.

“I knew it!” was the triumphant retort. “But I dare not waste time bringing you to order now. Yes, you may help wrap. If anything will wheedle you into being good, letting you get busy will,” ended Constance, turning to the table and deftly lifting the squares to the flat pans upon which they were to be carried to the packing room.

“Shoo along in there and get busy if you must, and while you are getting sticky enough to satisfy even yourself, you will tell me what is simmering. And mind, Mary can hear, too; so if it is too anarchistic she will come to the rescue. Oh, you can’t do as you used to. Whyfor do I make candy by the pounds innumerable? Whyfor do I send it to tickle many palates? Whyfor do I take in dollars galore? All, all to keep you from running off on some wild project whereby you shall earn as many more dollars to my utter undoing, lost glory and disgrace appalling to contemplate in a girl who has a tendency to grow fat—yes, fat!”

As she rattled on with her nonsense Constance worked busily getting out her paraffin paper, the necessary boxes and the dainty ribbons with which to tie them. Then seating herself beside her mother, who was already busy wrapping the fudge in its little squares of paraffin, she began packing the candy in its boxes.

“Now, what is it?” she asked, looking quizzically into the sweet, lovable face. Mrs. Carruth laughed a low, little laugh as she asked: “Why are you so sure that it is anything?”

“I know the signs. They have periodical simmerings, sort of seismic rumblings, so to speak,” nodded Constance, working swiftly.

“I feel such a drone in a busy hive—” began Mrs. Carruth, then hesitated.

“I knew it! Mary, it has bubbled to the surface again,” Constance called into the kitchen, where brisk footsteps testified to the occupant’s industry.

“Shall I come to your rescue?” was the laughing question.

“Not yet; I’m still able to handle her, though there is no telling how soon she will get beyond me. I’ll call you if I see signs,” was called back. “Now go on, you incorrigible woman, and tell your long-suffering child what bee you have buzzing in your bonnet now. A brand new fall bonnet, too! It’s outrageous to so misuse it after all the trouble I’ve been put to to induce you to indulge in it at all, and not sneak off to Madame Elsie with a lot of old finery to be made over into a creation warranted (by her) to deceive the keenest eye. Oh, I know your sly ways, and have to lie awake nights to think how to thwart them. You sly, wicked woman, to deprive me of my sorely needed rest and beauty sleep. Why, I’m growing thin—”

“Alas for consistency!” interrupted Mrs. Carruth, derisively. “A moment ago you assured me you were growing fat. That scores me one, and entitles me to have my little say-so and hold my own against this conspiracy of—how many shall I say? Six. Yes, think of the outrageous odds brought against one weak woman.”

“Weak! Weak! Why, it requires all the energy and shrewdness the combined force can bring to bear upon her to keep her within bounds, doesn’t it, Mary?”

“And we don’t always do it then,” was the bantering reply.

“No, we do not,” was the emphatic agreement. “Neither Mammy, Charles, Eleanor, Jean, Hadyn, you, nor I can feel sure that we have settled her vaulting ambitions at once and for all time. Is your candy ready for me yet?—Don’t need me? Very well, I’ll keep at this job, then; it’s a co-operative job, and the hardest part of it is to hold down my rival. There, those boxes are all packed, and now, Madame busy-body, I’m ready to listen. No, you are not going to tie bows while you talk, it gives you too great an advantage. Look right straight into my eyes, and while you confess your desires to transgress you shall keep up a sub-conscious train of thought along this line: ‘This is my second daughter, Constance Blairsdale Carruth. She is past nineteen years of age. She weighs one hundred and eighteen pounds. She still possesses all her faculties unimpaired. Is endowed (I hope!) with the average degree of intelligence and common sense. She has never been ill a day in her life (whistle and knock wood when you think that), and she is taking mighty good care of the health she enjoys. She has been at work four years transmuting syrups and sugars into dollars and cents, in which undertaking she has met with rather amazing success, and is going to meet with even greater. Her plan is to make one dear, blessed little mother quite independent, and—please God—(these words were spoken in a mere whisper)—she will compass it. Now, are you going to let her do all this quite untrammeled, or are you going to worry her by suggesting all manner of wild plans for doing things for yourself?”

Constance had risen from her chair while speaking, and dropped upon her knees before her mother to clasp her arms about her waist and look into the face she loved best on earth. The girl’s expression was half grave, half merry, though wholly sweet and winning.

Mrs. Carruth took the upraised face in both her hands, bent toward it, rested her lips upon the soft, silky hair, and said gently:

“Dear heart, dear heart; my dauntless little daughter. Yes, you are doing all and far more than you have said, and that is exactly the reason I wish to contribute my share. Can’t you see, dear, that I feel such a dull, dull drone in this busy hive?”

“Dull?—when you keep the hive in such running order that we never even suspect where the machinery which runs it is located. Dull?—when you keep our home as charming in every detail as it was when you had ample means at your command to conduct it. Dull?—when you are here every moment as its sweet and gracious head to make it such a home as few know in this northern world, where homes for the most part mean simply a roof to cover one, and under which food is served three times daily. Mother, can’t you see and feel what you are doing for us girls? How you are surrounding us with an atmosphere so beautiful, so exceptional in these days of hurry and bustle that its influence must bide with us all our days and remain a dear memory all our lives? We may leave it sooner or later, other duties may call us away, but nothing, nothing can ever deprive us of all this—” Constance raised one arm to sweep it comprehensively over the room in which they sat and all-embracingly beyond. “So please let all rest as it is. Let Nonnie work away at college, and later—” here a merry twinkle filled the girl’s eyes—“let her, well, let her take up the co-ed plan, if she likes. Things seem shaping that way if the signs can be trusted. Let me boil a way to fame and fortune. Let Jean—if Fate so decrees—though by the same token I’ve a notion she won’t, follow in Nonnie’s footsteps. Alack! Jean’s energies do not point toward the campus of —— college. I misdoubt,” and Constance smiled. Then, turning serious again, she resumed: “Will you promise me something?”

“Will you first listen to my little plan?” was her mother’s counter question.

“Yes, I’ll listen.”

“You know how I delight in fancy work, dear, and there is such a field for embroidery and other kinds I do so well. The Woman’s Exchange, you know.”

“You may do all you want to—yards, pounds, dozens, heaps—however it is described—but you must do it for our home, not other people’s. I’ll tell you what you may do, all against the coming climax, for it is coming, you mark my words: You begin right now and make dozens of the daintiest pieces of underwear imaginable—”

“Oh, Constance!” cried Mrs. Carruth, reproachfully, the softest rose creeping into her cheeks.

“Can’t help it!” protested Constance. “I know that co-ed plan will develop. My heart! Do you think I’m blind as a bat? When a man bids a girl good-bye at a railway station and helps her on board the smoking-car instead of the Pullman, and neither of them knows the difference—well. You just wait till spring, my lady. It is a case of ‘I smell a mouse, I feel him in the air,’ etc., get busy, Mumsey, get busy. The entire winter won’t be too long, I tell you; for when that explosion takes place it will be with a bang, you mark my words.”

“Connie, Connie, this is dreadful!”

“May be,” answered Constance, wagging her head dubiously; “but I’m afraid we must resign ourselves to it. Mercy only knows how she will come home at Thanksgiving. I believe he is to meet her. I’m prepared for a box car or even a flat car. Yes, it is dreadful, you are quite right. Wonder how it will affect me if I ever succumb? But take my advice, get busy, Mumsey, and, dear, remember this—” Swiftly the tone changed from the jesting one to the tenderest as the girl rested her head upon her mother’s shoulder: “You represent home to us girls. Without you it would be the harp without its strings, the organ without its pipes. It would disintegrate. Keep it for us. Try to feel that you are doing far more in our busy hive by just being our Queen Bee than you ever could by going abroad in the land to gather the honey. Let us do that, and remember this—I read it not long ago and I’ll never forget it:—

“‘The beautiful gracious mother,
Wherever she places her chair,
In the kitchen (this one) or the parlor,
The center of home is there.’

“Ready for me in there, Mary? Mother is perishing for occupation, and I’ve scolded her as much as I dare,” and, with a tender kiss upon her mother’s cheek, the girl ran swiftly into the next room.

[CHAPTER V—Mammy Makes Investigations.]

“Bress de Lord, we ain’t got ter run no counter on Thanksgiving Day!” was Mammy’s fervent exclamation, as she rose from her bed on the Monday preceding Thanksgiving Day. Hurrying across the room she opened the draughts in the little stove, for Charles’ rheumatic twinges must not be aggravated by the sudden chill of rising from a warm bed to dress in a cold room. The fire had been carefully covered the night before, and now, replenished by a few shovelfuls of coal, and a vigorous shake of the revolving grate, was soon snapping and roaring right comfortably. The rattling had served more than one end, as had the clatter made by putting on the fresh fuel. Although Mammy had no idea of permitting her spouse to contract a cold from dressing in a cold room, she, on the other hand, saw no reason why he should indulge in over-many morning winks after she, herself, had risen and begun the duties of the day.

“Eh? Um, yas, Honey,” came in somnolent tones from the billows of feathers in which Charles’ shiny bald pate, with its fringe of snowy wool, was nearly buried. Mammy could not abide the new-fangled hair mattresses, but clung tenaciously to her bygone ideas of “real downright comfort fer a body dat’s clar beat out when de day’s done. No, sir-ee! Don’t talk ter me ob dese hyar ha’r mattresses. I ain’t got a mite er use fer ’em needer has Charles, if I ses-so. Give me de suah ’nough fedders wid de down on ’em; none ob yo’ hawse ha’r stuffed bags. De fedders fits wherever dey teches, ’an snugs up mighty soft on de achy spots, but dose highfalutin’ h’ar mattresses,—well, dey jest lak dese hyar Norf folks we meet up wid: ef yo’ kin fit dem, well an’ good, yo’s all right, but does yo’ t’ink dey’s gwine ter try fer ter fit yo’? Go ’long, chile.”

Consequently the bed, which stood in the bedroom of the little cottage in which Mammy and Charles lived, boasted a feather bed, the like of which for downiness and size was rarely seen. It had been made by Mammy herself of the downiest of feathers, plucked by her own hand from the downiest of her own geese, hatched under her own critical eyes when she was a young woman on her old master’s plantation. It had taken many geese, many days, much drying and curing to achieve such a triumph; and the “baid” was Mammy’s most cherished possession. The airings, sunnings, beatings and renovatings to which it had been subjected during the years she had owned it would have totally wrecked any less perfect article of household economy; but it had survived all, and each morning, after its prescribed hours of airing, was “spread up” into a most imposing mound, covered with a “croshey” spread, made by the sanctified hands of “ol’ Miss” (Mrs. Carruth’s mother), and still further adorned by “piller shams,” made by “Miss Jinny” herself.

More than one of Mrs. Carruth’s guests had been conducted through Mammy’s cottage by its proud inmate, and the “baid” and its coverings displayed with justifiable pride.

“Yas, wake up!” commanded Mammy, making her own toilet with despatch. “We’s got a pile o’ wo’k ter do terday, an’ I’se gotter see dat dose no count nigger gals what’s a-pertendin’ ter do Miss Jinny’s wo’k now-a-days gits a move on ’em. Dey pesters me mightily, dough I ain’t let ’em ’spect it, I tells yo’. Ef I did dey’d jes nachelly climb right ober de house an’ ebery las’ pusson in it. But I knows how ter han’le ’em ef Miss Jinny don’t. She t’ink she gwine do it jes lak she useter back yonder on her Pa’s plantation, but it don’ do up hyar. Trouble is wid dese hyar Norf niggers dey ain’ know dey is niggers, and dey gits mighty mix in dey minds twell somebody come along and tells ’em jest ’zackly what dey is, an’ whar dey b’longs at. I done tol’ dem two in yonder, an’ I reckon dey’s learnt a heap since I done took ’em in han’. Yas, I does. Dey don’ come a-splurgin’ an’ a-splutterin’ roun’ me no mo’ wid dey, ‘Dis hyar ain’ ma juty. I ain’ ’gaged fer ter do dat wuk.’ My Lawd! I come pretty nigh bustin’ dat Lilly May’s haid las’ week when I tell her ter do sumpin’ an’ she say dat ter me. She foun’ out what her juty was, an’ she ain’t fergit it again, I tell yo’. Now come ’long down, Charles, I gwine have brekfus ready befo’ yo’ get yo’ wool breshed,” and off hurried the old woman to begin the routine of her more than busy day.

The clock was striking five when Charles came slowly down the stairs and entered the immaculate kitchen. The past three years have dealt kindly with the old couple in spite of their incessant labors. Mammy has not changed in the least. Charles is a trifle more bent, perhaps, but the three years have certainly not detracted from the old man’s appearance, nor have they robbed him of any strength. Indeed, he seems in better health and physical condition than upon the day he celebrated his golden wedding. Mammy has made up for the lost years by caring for him as she would have cared for a child.

The business which they started in the Arcade has flourished and prospered beyond their wildest hopes. Charles still holds the honorary position of “Janitor-in-Chief” at the Arcade, a sinecure in every sense of the word excepting one; he keeps the acting janitor up to the high mark in the performance of his duties, greatly to Mr. Porter’s amusement. He also keeps the dapper mulatto youth, who now serves at the lunch counter headed due north. To that young man Charles is “Mr. Devon,” of the firm of “Blairsdale & Devon.”

At the cottage Mammy still cooks, bakes, preserves and concocts with all her wonderful skill, assisted by a little colored girl, the eldest of those whom Jean impressed upon Mammy’s wedding day.

Oh, Mammy is a most important personage these days.

Breakfast over in the little cottage, and it was a breakfast fit for a king, Mammy began issuing her orders like a general, and Charles lived only to obey.

“Now hike in dar an’ git de furnace a-goin’ good, an’ den go ’long ter de gre’t house an’ have it good an’ warm befo’ dem chillern wakes up. I cyant have em’ ketchin’ cold, an’ de mawnin’s right snappy,” she said, as dish-towel in hand she looked out of her kitchen door at the glistening world, for a heavy hoar frost covered lawn and foliage, prophesying a storm before many days.

“Here, put on yo’ coat! What’s de use ob my rubbin’ yo’ shoulder wid linnimint ef yo’ gwine right spang out dis here warm kitchen inter de chill ob de mawnin’ widout wroppin’ up? Laws-a-massy, it tek mos’ de whole endurin’ time ter keep you from doin’ foolishnesses, I clar it do.”

Charles chuckled delightedly. It was, on the whole, rather flattering to be so cherished and looked after as he had been during the last three years. Poor old soul, those he had spent alone had been barren enough of care or comforts.

“You needn’t ter snort dat-a-way,” protested his dominating wife. “I’s only jes’ a-watchin’ out fer my own sake. I’se got a sight ter do ’sides nussin’ rheumatics an’ tekin’ keer sick folks wid a misery in dey backs.”

“Honey, yo’s a wonder. Yas, yo’ is,” was Charles’ parting rejoinder, as he toddled off to the duties, which to him, as well as to Mammy, were labors of love. Before many minutes had passed the little candy kitchen was snug and warm for its mistress, and then the old man made his way to the “gre’t house,” as he and Mammy, true to earlier customs, always called the home which sheltered their white folks. Mammy had already finished her own household tasks and met him at the door. Together they entered the silent house, their key making not the slightest sound, lest they disturb the sleeping inmates. The maids now in Mrs. Carruth’s service did not sleep in the house, but came at seven each morning, and woe betide the tardy one! Mammy was always on hand, and her greeting was governed by the moment of the said damsel’s arrival. There were a few duties, however, which Mammy would permit no other than herself to perform. She must see that the breakfast table was properly laid, the breakfast under way and the rooms dusted, aired and warmed before she stole softly upstairs to call her “chillern.” Then she turned all over to her dusky satellites, and at once became grand high potentate and autocrat.

It was a few minutes past seven when she entered Mrs. Carruth’s room with a cheery “Mawnin’, honey. ’Spose ef I lets yo’ sleep any longer yo’ gwine give me sumpin’ I ain’t cravin’ fer ter git. Cyant fer de life er me see why yo’ boun’ ter git up dese mawnin’s. Why won’ yo’ let me bring up yo’ tray, honey?” said the good old soul, moving softly about the room, raising the window shades and turning on the valve of the radiator.

“Because I have all I can do as it is to keep you and the girls from spoiling me completely,” returned Mrs. Carruth, as she rose from her bed and stepped into the adjoining bathroom, where Mammy already had her bath prepared.

“Well, it’s de biggest job we-all ever is tackled,” insisted the old woman, as she placed a chair before the dressing table and took from the closet the garments Mrs. Carruth would need for the day. Since sunnier times had come to this home Mammy had fallen back into old habits. The “chillern,” as she called Eleanor, Constance and Jean, were called before their mother was awakened, but “Miss Jinny” claimed her undivided attention, and it would have nearly broken Mammy’s loving old heart had Mrs. Carruth denied her this privilege, so long made impossible by the strenuous days and manifold duties following upon the misfortunes which succeeded Mr. Carruth’s death.

The delight of Mammy’s life was to assist at her “Miss Jinny’s” toilet, as she had done in her mistress’ girlhood days—to brush and arrange the still abundant hair, and to hand her a fresh handkerchief and say, as she had said to the young girl years ago:

“Gawd bless yo’, honey! Yo’ is as sweet as de roses dis mawnin’.”

When all was completed to her satisfaction, and Mrs. Carruth was about to leave the room, Mammy remarked, with well-assumed indifference:

“I ’spose dat Lilly done got Miss Nonnie’s room all fix jes right, but I reckons I better cas’ ma eyes ober it; cyant trus’ dese girls wid no ’sponserbility, nohow.”

“I think everything is in perfect order, Mammy, but I dare say you will feel happier if you give those little touches which you alone can give. Eleanor will recognize them and be happier because you gave them. It will be a joy to us all to have her back again, won’t it, although she has not been away so very long after all.”

“No’m, she ain’t. How long she gwine be wid us dis time?”

“Not quite a week, Mammy. She will reach here this afternoon and must leave us early Saturday; Thanksgiving holidays are short ones. We shall have her longer at Christmas, then we will count the days till Easter, and after that to June, when we will have her for a long, long holiday, and college days will be ended.”

“M’m-u’m,” nodded Mammy, drawing the coverings from the bed and laying them carefully over chairs to air. “Spec she’ll find dat trip down from up yonder mighty tiresome. Trabblin’ all alone is sort of frazzlin’.”

“She is hardly likely to travel alone. Mammy. So many of her college mates will be journeying the same way, and even if they were not, she will be pretty sure to meet Mr. Forbes; he was obliged to run up to Springfield on Saturday and expects to return to-day. They may meet on the same train.”

Mammy was looking out of the window. It would have made very little difference had she been facing Mrs. Carruth. Her face was absolutely inscrutable, as she answered:

“’Spec dat would save Miss Nonnie a heap ob trouble. Yas’m, mebbe dey will meet up wid one anoder.”

Mrs. Carruth went upon her way to the breakfast room. Mammy had learned all she wished to know.

At four o’clock that afternoon Miss Jean Carruth was perched upon her point of vantage, from which every object approaching her home could be descried. It was not a particularly easy point to reach, but that only added to its attraction; nobody else was likely to choose it. Nearly everyone sought the terrace, the piazza, or the upper windows in preference to the stable roof, even though the stable roof boasted a delightful assortment of gables and dormer windows, to say nothing of a broad gutter, around which one could prance at the imminent risk of a header to the ground, at least twelve feet below. In the golden haze of that mellow November afternoon, for autumn lingered late this year, Jean sat curled up in her corner, her chin resting in her palms, and her wonderful eyes fixed upon the road leading up the hill to her home. It was in reality more street than road, but was nearly always mentioned as the “hill road,” owing to its contrast to the broader highway from which it branched and zig-zagged up the hill to the more sparsely settled section of Riveredge. The watcher commanded all its length. Presently the shining eyes lighted up with a queer, half-delighted, half-defiant expression. Far down the road a vehicle was approaching; it was one of the railroad station surreys, and in it were seated two people, besides the driver: two people quite oblivious to all the rest of the world, if one could judge by their absorbing interest in each other, for the keen eyes watching them could discern this, even from their owner’s distance from the surrey.

“Um.” The utterance might be interpreted almost any way. Then, “Now, I dare say, we’ve got to have him here all this evening, and all to-morrow, and all the next day, and all every day; and I don’t want him around every single minute. My goodness, it was bad enough before Nonnie left for —— College; we never could get a single word in edgeways. I wonder if he’s going to board here? I used to like him when he just came to see us all, but now he’s tickled to death if everybody’s engaged when he shows up; everybody but Nonnie. I reckon I’ve got to take things in hand. Nonnie’s only twenty-one, and he’s, he’s? I do believe he’s about forty-one, though I never could get him to tell. But it doesn’t make any difference! He’s too old for Nonnie, and I’m not going to let him have her,” was the emphatic conclusion to this monologue, as Jean scrambled to her feet and gave a defiant nod toward the vehicle, which had just drawn up in front of the carriage block. At that moment Mrs. Carruth and Constance hurried down the steps to greet the new arrivals. Evidently the welcome accorded the masculine member of the party aroused a keen sense of resentment in Jean, and some manner of outlet for her feelings became imperative. Physical exercise was her usual safety-valve, and in this instance she chose one which had on former occasions proved effective, and more than once brought Mammy to the verge of nervous prostration, and the dire prophecy that “sooner or later dat chile gwine brek her neck.” As before stated, the gutter was wide, it was also a stoutly constructed one of galvanized iron, but it had not been designed for a promenade, much less a running track for athletic training. Nevertheless, it had to serve as one this time, for Jean started running around it as though bent upon its destruction, or her own. It came near proving her own, for just as Homer Forbes was placing a couple of suit cases upon the piazza he chanced to catch sight of the prancing demoiselle, and with a shout of: “Great Josephus! Are you courting sudden death?” made a wild dash for the stable.

With a defiant skip, Jean made for the other side at top speed, lost her balance, slipped, and the next second was hanging suspended by her arms between earth and sky. Had she not been lithe as a cat she never could have saved herself. Forbes was nearly petrified.

“Hang on! Confound it, what took you up there, anyway?” he cried, with no little asperity, as the others hurried across the lawn to the trapeze performer’s rescue.

“My feet took me up and my hands are keeping me here. Stand from under! I’m going to drop.”

“Drop nothing!” was the very un-savant like retort. “You’ll break both your legs. Hold on till I can get up there,” and the would-be rescuer darted within the stable.

How she managed it no one could quite grasp, but there was a flutter of skirts, a swing, and Jean was in a little heap upon the soft turf. Springing lightly to her feet and dusting the grass from her palms, she said:

“Hello, Nonnie! I got him out of the way long enough to hug you without having him watch how it’s done. Reckon he’ll learn soon enough without me to teach him. Come on into the house, quick. He’ll find out that I’m not killed when he looks out of the window.”

If Mrs. Carruth seemed resigned, Constance quite convulsed and Eleanor unduly rosy, Jean seemed oblivious of those facts.

[CHAPTER VI—Thanksgiving.]

With the happier outlook resulting from Constance’s success in her candy-making, it had been deemed advisable to send Jean to the private school from which Eleanor had graduated. Consequently, that autumn Jean had been enrolled among its pupils, and her place in the public school at which she and Constance had been pupils knew her no more, and Jean was much divided in her mind as to whether she was made happier or otherwise by the change. In the old school were many friends whom she loved dearly, and whom she missed out of her daily life. In the new one was her boon companion, Amy Fletcher, and also a number of the girls whom she constantly met in the homes of her mother’s friends. But Jean was a loyal little soul, and her interest in her fellow-beings a lively one. She could hardly have been her mother’s daughter otherwise. Naturally in the public school were many children from the less well-to-do families of Riveredge, and not a few from those in very straitened circumstances. Among the latter were three girls very near Jean’s own age. They were sisters, and were ambitious to complete the grammar school course, in order to fit themselves for some employment. There were other children older and other children younger; in fact, there seemed to be no end to the children in the Hodgeson family, a new one arriving upon the scene with the punctuality of clockwork. This fact had always disturbed Jean greatly.

“If there only would come an end to the Hodgesons,” she lamented to her mother. “The trouble is, we no sooner get settled down and think we’ve reached the end than we have to begin all over again. Those babies keep things terribly stirred up. Don’t you think you could make Mrs. Hodgeson understand that she could get on with fewer of them, Mother? You see, the clothes never do hold out, and as for that last baby carriage you managed to get for her, why, it’s just a wreck already. The other day, when I went by there on my way to the Irving School, I saw Billy Hodgeson riding the newest and the next newest, and the third newest in it, and the third newest had a puppy in his arms. No carriage could stand all that, could it?”

“I’m afraid not, dear. Perhaps we had better ask some other friends if they have a carriage they no longer need.”

“Oh, no, don’t! Please, don’t! If you do, Mrs. Hodgeson will think she’s got to get a brand new baby to put into it, for the old babies wouldn’t match, you know. No, please, don’t.”

“Very well; we must let them get on with the old ones, both babies and carriage, I see,” Mrs. Carruth answered, much amused.

“Yes, I really would; but here is something that’s bothering me,” and Jean snuggled close into the encircling arms of the big chair in which she and her mother sat for this twilight hour conference.

“What are they going to do when Thanksgiving Day comes? No turkey on earth would be big enough to go ’round, even if they could buy one, which I don’t believe they can. I was talking to Mrs. Hodgeson about it just the other day, and she said she was afeered her man couldna buy one nohow this year; they was so terrible intortionate in the prices,” concluded Jean, lapsing unconsciously into the slipshod Mrs. Hodgeson’s vernacular.

“I think she must have meant extortionate,” corrected Mrs. Carruth.

“Perhaps she did; I don’t know. But I’ll bet five cents they won’t have a thing when the day comes around, and I think that’s awful.”

“We are sending out a number of baskets from the church, and I have asked that one be sent to the Hodgesons,” was Mrs. Carruth’s hopeful reply. It was not welcomed as she anticipated.

“That won’t do a bit of good,” answered Jean, with a dubious shake of her copper-tinted head. “Not a single bit, for when Mrs. Hodgeson said she reckoned they’d have to get along without a turkey I said right off that I thought I could manage one all right, ’cause you could get one sent to her. My, but she got mad! And she told me she guessed she could get along without no charity turkey; that Hodgeson always had managed to fill up the young ones somehow, and if he couldn’t do it on turkey this year he could do it on salt pork. Ugh! Wouldn’t that be awful? Why, Mammy won’t have salt pork near her except for seasoning use, as she calls it. No, we’ve got to do something else for those everlasting Hodgesons.”

Mrs. Carruth thought the term well applied, even though she did not say so; they were everlasting. But she was hardly prepared for Jean’s solution of the problem with which she had seen fit to burden her youthful shoulders.

Mrs. Carruth’s Thanksgiving guests were Hadyn Stuyvesant and Homer Forbes. Her table was laid for six, and a pretty table it was, suggestive in its decorations of the day. According to her Southern traditions, the meal was ordered for two o’clock instead of the more fashionable hour favored by her Northern friends. Her guests had arrived, and Charles, the very personification of the old family servitor, had just announced with all the elegance and mannerism of which he was capable:

“De Madam is sarved.”

Upon this day Mammy had taken affairs strictly into her own hands. No one except herself should prepare her Miss Jinny’s Thanksgiving dinner. The other servants might assist Charles in serving it, but the actual preparation and cooking must be done by her own faithful hands. Consequently all the marketing for this occasion had been personally looked to by Mammy and Charles. In their chariot of state, drawn by Baltie, they had driven to South Riveredge, selected every article, and carried it home in their own baskets. Once that lordly turkey had been scientifically poked and pinched by her and met with approval, she was not going to let it out of her sight “an’ have no secon’-rater sont up to de house instid.” Mammy had small faith in Northern tradesmen. So to her cabin all had been sent, there to be prepared and cooked by her on “de fines’ range in de worl’!” as she confidently believed her own to be, and truly it was a wondrous feast which now stood ready for Charles’ serving, the two maids to dart like shuttles between Mammy’s cabin and the great house.

It was Hadyn Stuyvesant who with graceful bow offered his arm to Mrs. Carruth, while Homer Forbes turned to the two girls. As she rose to accept Hadyn’s arm Mrs. Carruth paused a moment, doubt and indecision in her eyes, and asked:

“Where is Jean?”

“She left the room just a short time ago, mother. Shall I call her?” asked Constance.

“Yes, do, dear. We will wait just a moment for you.”

Constance left the room, to return in two minutes with consternation written upon her face.

“Where is she and what—?” asked Mrs. Carruth, resignation to any possibility descending upon her.

“She has just come in, mother, and—and—” the words ended in a laugh as Constance collapsed upon a chair.

“What is it, Connie?” demanded Eleanor. “What has Jean done now?”

“Where’s my little sister?” asked Hadyn. “You can’t make me believe she has broken all the laws of the Medes and Persians.”

“No, not those old fogies, but, oh, dear, what do you suppose she has done?—invited, sans ceremony, Victoria Regina, Mary Stuart, and Adelaide Elizabeth Hodgeson to dine with her!”

“Constance! Never!” cried Mrs. Carruth.

“She has. They are up in her room this very minute putting the finishing touches to their very unique toilets.”

“Go get ’em. Fetch ’em on. We’ll entertain ’em right royally! I know that National bird is a bouncer, and big enough to feed a dozen Hodgesons as well as all present,” was Hadyn’s laughing command.

“Oh, Hadyn, we can’t,” protested Eleanor, whose dignity and sense of propriety were continually receiving slight jars from this friend of the household.

“Why not? It will be the experience of their lives—an education by practical illustration of manners polite. How can you hesitate, Eleanor? I thought you were a strong advocate of settlement work, and here you are overlooking an opportunity sent to your very door. Who was it I heard talking about ‘neglected opportunities’ not long since? A most edifying dissertation, if I recollect aright, too.”

“I second the motion. Such a zest to a meal may never again be offered. Yes, Mrs. Carruth, you’ve got it to do. It is clearly a duty brought to your door,” added Homer Forbes. “Moreover, it will give me a wonderful opportunity to pursue my psychological studies. Didn’t know I was knee-deep in them, did you, Eleanor? Fact, however. Human emotions as the direct result of unsuspected mental suggestion, etc. Bring on your subjects, Constance.”

“I give in. Do as you’ve a mind to, you incorrigible children, only bear this in mind—you are not to tease those girls and make them miserable. Jean has made one wild break, but there shall be no more if I can prevent it. Since she has brought them here, and you will dine with them, so be it; but you are not to tease them, you madcap men,” was Mrs. Carruth’s final dictum.

“Not a tease, not a smile out of order,” agreed Hadyn, though his twinkling eyes half belied his words.

“You just watch us entertain ’em,” insisted Homer.

“I’ll watch, you may be sure of that,” laughed Mrs. Carruth. “Now fly, Connie, and summon our unexpected guests.”

We will pass over the oysters, which were disposed of as never before oysters had been, and the soup, which disappeared audibly. That dinner was a genuine Southern one, and no item was lacking. At length arrived the critical moment when the bird of national fame should have appeared, but—didn’t. There was a long, ominous delay. Charles bustled and fussed about, one eye upon his mistress, the other upon the pantry. No one noticed that Jean’s conversational powers, never mediocre, were now phenomenal. She talked incessantly and as rapidly as a talking machine, albeit her listeners seemed to offer small encouragement for such a ceaseless flow of language. They sat with their eyes fastened to their plates—plates which would require very little scraping before washing. To and from pantry and dining room vibrated Charles. The vegetables, relishes, jellies—in short, everything to be served with the turkey—was placed in tempting array upon the sideboard; but still no sign of the festive bird itself, and Charles’ perturbation was increasing by the second. As on many another occasion it was Mammy who supplied the climax. At this crucial moment she appeared in the doorway of the pantry, her eyes blazing, her face a thundercloud, as she stammered:

“Miss Jin-n-n-ninny! M-m-iss Jinny! Please, ma’am, fergive me fer ’trudin’ in ’pon yo’ when yo’ is entertainin’; but ’tain’t lak dey was strangers, dey’s all ob de family, so to speak, ma’am” (Mammy was too excited to notice that the cheeks of two individuals seated at that board had turned a rosy, rosy pink), “an’ I jes’ natchelly got to speak ma min’ or bus’—”

“Why, Mammy, what has happened?” interrupted Mrs. Carruth, quite aware that Mammy managed to find mares’ nests when others were unable to do so, but surprised by this one, nevertheless. Mammy did not often overstep the lines set by convention; but on this occasion she certainly seemed tottery.

“De bird! De tuckey! It’s gone! It’s done been stole right out ob ma wamin oven yonder. I done had it all cook to a tu’n, an’ set up in ma oven fer ter keep it jes’ ter de true livin’ p’int ob sarvin’, an den I run inter Miss Connie’s kitchen fer ter git some ob dem little frilly papers I need fer its laigs, an—an’ it mus’ ’a’ been stole whilst I was in dar, er else de very debbil hisself done fly away wid it right from unner ma nose, kase I ain’t been outer dat kitchen one single minnit since—not one!” emphasized Mammy, with a wag of her turbaned head, her talking machine running down simply because her breath had given out.

If poor Mammy had needed anything to further outrage her feelings and put a climax to her very real distress, the roar which at that instant arose from two masculine throats would have been more than enough; but when Homer Forbes turned a reproachful face toward her and asked, “Mammy Blairsdale, do you mean to tell me that our goose—”

“No, sah! No, sah! de tuckey!” corrected Mammy instantly.

“Well, then, our turkey is cooked—”

“Cooked! Cooked! Ef it was only de cookin’ dat pestered me I wouldn’t be pestered,” was Mammy’s Hibernian reply. “It’s done been stole, sah! Clean, cl’ar stole out ob ma kitchen.”

“Let’s go find the thief, Forbes!” cried Hadyn, casting his napkin upon the table and springing to his feet. “Come on. Mammy, whom do you suspect? Which way shall we run? What must we do with him when we overhaul him?”

“Oh, yo’ jes’ a-projeckin, I knows dat all right, but I tells you dat bird ain’ got no ekal in dis town. I done supervise his p’ints masef, an’ he’s de best to be had. If yo’ wants to know who I thinks is got him, I thinks it’s a man what done stop at ma door when I was a-stuffin’ dat tucky early dis mawnin’. He was a tromp, an’ he ax me fer somethin’ ter eat. I ain’t ginnerly got no use fer tromps, but dis hyer was de Thanksgivin’ mawnin’, an’ seem lak I couldn’t turn him away hungry.”

“We’ll find him! Come on, Forbes! Where’s that stout walking-stick, Mrs. Carruth? Bring along the wheelbarrow for the remains, Charles—of the turkey, I mean.”

Haydn was making for the door, Forbes hard upon his heels, when Jean darted to her mother’s side to draw her head toward her and whisper something into the listening ear. Jean’s guests sat like graven images. Constance and Eleanor were ready to shriek at the absurdity of the situation.

“Hadyn, Homer, come back! Mammy, send in the quail pie and all the other good things you’ve prepared; we shall not starve. Ladies and gentlemen, circumstances render explanations somewhat embarrassing at this moment. Don’t be distressed, Mammy. On with the feast, Charles.

“Why? what? where? who?” were the words which rattled about Mrs. Carruth’s ears.

Mammy gave one glance at Jean, who had returned to her seat. She had not been in this family sixty-eight years without arrogating a few prerogatives. Then, but for Mrs. Carruth’s upraised hand, Etna would have broken forth. But Jean knew her hour of reckoning would come later. Her conversational powers seemed to have suffered a reaction. Her chair was next Hadyn’s. As he returned to his place he bent low, slipped his arm about the subdued little figure, and asked in a tone which it would have been hard to resist:

“Little Sister, what did you do with that turkey?”

“Rolled it in a big towel, put it in a basket, and carried it to the Hodgesons’ with mother’s Thanksgiving compliments, when I went after the girls. They wouldn’t eat a charity turkey, but a compliment turkey was different,” was whispered back in a voice suspiciously charged with tears.

“I call you a trump!” Then in a lower tone he turned to Constance, who sat at the other side, and said: “Who gives himself with his gift, serves three.”

[CHAPTER VII—Expansion.]

The short Thanksgiving holiday ended, Eleanor returned to college and Jean to school, found Constance busier than ever in her kitchen, for the holiday season was her hardest time, and this year promised to be an exceptional one. An extra supply of candy must be made for the booth in the Arcade, as well as for those who sold her candies on commission in other towns. Then, too, an unusual number of private orders had already come in. These all meant incessant work for Constance and Mary Willing.

The first week in December she entered the kitchen where Mary was just cutting into squares great masses of chocolate caramels. She had been hard at work all the morning, and her face was flushed from her exertions.

“Oh, I’m afraid you are nearly done up,” cried Constance, contritely. “You have been working so hard ever since eight o’clock, and it is now past eleven. I am so sorry to leave all this work to you while I do the easy part.”

“Do you call it easy work to write about two dozen letters, keep track of all the orders which are pouring in now, and run accounts straight?—to say nothing of ordering our supplies. I don’t, and I’m thanking my lucky stars that I can do my share of the work with a big spoon instead of a pen,” was Mary’s cheerful reply, as she raised her arm to push back from her forehead an unruly lock of hair which fell across her eyes.

“Let me,” said Constance quickly, lifting the soft strand into place. “You are all sticky, and when one’s hands are sticky that is the time for hair to grow rampant and one’s nose to itch! I’ve been there too many times myself not to know all about it, I tell you. But that isn’t what I came downstairs to say! Do you know that this pile of letters has set me thinking, Mary? If things go on at this rate you and I can never in the world handle the business. Why, it has taken me the whole morning to look after the letters and acknowledge the orders which came by the early mail. I haven’t been able to do one single stroke in here, and now I have got to go down to South Riveredge. Charles told Mammy that we ought to have more space there for our goods, and he wished I would see Mr. Porter about it at once. He thinks we ought to rent one of the other spaces for the Christmas season, anyway, and have someone there to attend to it. What do you think? And do you know of someone we could get? You see Christmas is only three weeks off, and whatever we do we’ve got to do at once.”

As Constance talked she wielded a big knife and helped briskly. Mary did not answer at once; her pretty forehead wore a perplexed pucker. At length she said:

“I know a girl who could take charge of it I think, although I don’t know whether you’d like her or not.”

Constance smiled as she answered: “Suppose you tell me who she is, then maybe I can tell you whether I like her or not.”

“It’s Kitty Sniffins. We used to go to school together.”

“I don’t know her at all, so I’m a poor judge of her qualifications, am I not? But if you think she is the sort of girl we would like to have there, I am sure she needs no other recommendation, Mary. What is her address?”

“Her brother is an insurance agent down on State Street. You might see him. They moved not long ago, and I don’t know where they live now.”

“Oh——,” exclaimed Constance, light beginning to dawn upon her. She had not heard the name Sniffins since the year in which she began her candy-making, as the result of the burning of their home, and the name had not figured very pleasantly in the experience of that October, or the months which followed. Still, the sister might prove very unlike the brother, and just now time was precious. If she was to act upon Charles’ suggestion she must act immediately.

“I think I’ll drop her a note in care of her brother; I don’t like to go to his office. She can call here,” said Constance.

Mary glanced up quickly to ask:

“Is there any reason, Miss Constance, why you would prefer someone else?” for something in Constance’s tone made her surmise that for some reason which she failed to comprehend Kitty Sniffins did not meet with her young employer’s approval.

“If I have one it is too silly to put into words,” laughed Constance, “so I will not let it influence me. I dare say Kitty Sniffins is a right nice girl and will sell enough candy to make me open my eyes. At all events, I’ll have a pow-wow with her. But before she can sell candy or anything else she must have a place to sell it in, and it’s up to me to scuttle off to the Arcade as fast as I can go. And, by the way, you’ve got to have more help here, Mary. Yes, you have. You need not shake your head. As matters are shaping I shall have to give every moment of my time to the business of this great and glorious enterprise. Now whom shall I get? What is Fanny doing this fall? She left school in the spring, didn’t she?”

“Yes. She is helping mother sew, but——” and an eager light sprang into Mary’s eyes. Fanny Willing was a younger sister, a rather delicate girl, who was growing more delicate from the hours spent at work in the close rooms of her home, and running a heavy, old-fashioned sewing machine. She was a plain, quiet little thing, very unlike her striking-looking older sister, and as such had not found favor in her mother’s eyes. In her younger days Mrs. Willing had boasted a certain style of beauty, and with it had contrived to win a husband whom she felt would elevate her to a higher social plane, but her hopes had never been realized. Probably every family has a black sheep; Jim Willing had figured as that unenviable figure in his. It was the old story of the son born after his parents had been married a number of years, and several older sisters were waiting to spoil him; plenty of money to fling about, a wild college career of two years, marriage with a pretty housemaid and—disinheritance. It had required only twenty-three years to bring it all to pass, and the next twenty-three completed the evil. At forty-six Jim Willing looked like a man of fifty-six—so can dissipation and moral degeneration set their seal upon their victims. Gentle blood? What had it done for him? Very little, because he had permitted it to become hopelessly contaminated. And his children?—they were working out the problem of heredity; paying the penalties of an earlier generation; demonstrating the commandment which says, “unto the third and fourth generation.” A cruel, relentless one, but not to be lightly broken.

In Mary was one illustration of it; Fanny another. Each was to “drie her weird,” as the Scotch say.

“Do you think your mother can spare her?”

“I’m sure she can. The fact is, Fanny has been trying to get some work in one of the shops in South Riveredge. Sewing doesn’t agree with her, somehow; she seems to grow thinner every day; she ain’t—isn’t, I mean—very strong, you see.”

“Will you send word to her, Mary? I think this sort of work will be better for her than the sewing, and we’ll talk about the salary when she comes over.”

“She’ll be a mighty lucky girl just to get here, salary or no salary!” was Mary’s positive reply. “If you don’t mind I’ll run down home this afternoon and tell her to come early to-morrow morning. I’ll have all this batch made, and the rest can wait until the morning; we’ve got a good lot ahead already.” Mary’s eagerness manifested itself in her every action, and Constance nodded a cheerful approval as she laid down her big knife and turned to leave the kitchen.

“Go ahead, partner, but I must be off now.”

“So the business is expanding?” exclaimed Mr. Porter, heartily, when Constance had explained to him her wish to rent an arch for her Christmas trade. “Good! I knew it would. Couldn’t possibly help it with such candy as that to back it up. But mind, you are not to forget my Christmas order in all your bustle and hurry for other people. Twenty pounds——”

“What!” cried Constance, aghast at the recklessness of her oldest customer.

“Now, that will do, young lady. Will you please answer me this! Why must I always be looked upon as a mild sort of lunatic when I give you an order? ’Twas ever thus! Why, you hooted my first order, and you have kept on hooting every single one since. I wonder I haven’t transferred my patronage long since. Trouble is you realize where you have me cornered. You know I can’t duplicate those candies anywhere. Now come along with me and let us arrange for the new quarters which are to replace the outgrown ones, and—mark my word—this business will never again contract to the old space. This is where my business acumen shows itself. Once I’ve got you into the bigger stand, and the rent into my coffers, I mean to keep you there, even if I have to get out and drum up the extra trade to meet the extra outlay. Co-operation.”

Constance was too accustomed to this good friend’s nonsense to see anything but the deepest interest for her welfare underlying it. She knew that, with all his seeming badinage, he was looking further ahead than she, with her still limited experience, even after four years in her little business world, could look, for her’s, while exceptional for her years and sex, could never match that of this man of the great, active business world. But if Mr. Porter was far-seeing in some directions, in others he was short-sighted, and his range of vision was to be broadened by one who dwelt in a far humbler walk of life—Mammy Blairsdale.

Upon this particular morning Mammy had elected to drive in state to South Riveredge, ostensibly to cast a critical eye over the Blairsdale-Devon Lunch Counter, but in reality to convey to it a very special dainty for her pet customer—Hadyn Stuyvesant.

In addition to a few hundred other side issues to her business, Mammy had raised poultry during the previous summer, and, curiously enough, to every chick hatched out, there had pecked themselves into the world about four roosters, until poor Mammy began to believe her setting eggs must have had a spell cast upon them. As the summer advanced such an array of lordly, strutting, squawking young cocks never dominated a poultry yard, and the sequel was inevitable. When they arrived at the crowing age the neighbors arose in revolt! Such a vociferous, discordant collection of birds had never fought and crowed themselves into public notice. Mammy became almost distracted, and was at her wits’ end until a diplomatic move struck her: those roosters should win not only fame for themselves, but for their owner also; and not long afterward first one neighbor then another was mollified and highly flattered to receive a fine daintily broiled, fried, or roasted young bird, cooked as only Mammy knew how to cook a fowl, garnished as only Mammy knew how to garnish, and accompanied by a respectful note, not written by Mammy, but by Jean, somewhat in this strain:

“Will Mrs. —— please accept this dish with the most respectful compliments of Mammy Blairsdale, who hopes this noisy rooster will never disturb her any more?”

Oh, “sop to Cerberus!” Could diplomacy go further?

It was one of the most vociferous of her flock which now lay upon his lordly back, his legs pathetically turned to the skies, his fighting and his squaking days ended forever, that reposed in Mammy’s warming can, to be transferred to Charles’ warming oven, there to await Hadyn’s arrival.

As Constance and Mr. Porter drew near the lunch counter, Mammy was giving very explicit directions to Charles. Constance and Mr. Porter were too occupied to be aware of her presence; not she of theirs, however.

Mr. Porter conducted Constance to the arch next but one to that in which the lunch counter stood, only separated from it by the cigar stand.

“Now here is a space which you can have as well as not, and it is close enough to Charles for him to cast an eye over it from time to time.”

“And may I rent it for one month?” asked Constance.

“Better rent it for one year,” urged Mr. Porter. “It’s in a mighty good location.”

“And I call it a mighty po’ location,” broke in an emphatic voice. “A mighty po’ one, and no kynd ob a place fo’ one ob ma chillen fer to be at. Gobblin men-folks hyar at de lunch stan’; smokin’ men-folks at de nex’ one; an’ we kin bress Gawd ef we don’t fin’ oursefs wid guzzlin men-folks on yonder at de tother side befo’ long.”

“Now, now! Hold on, Mammy! Go slow,” broke in Mr. Porter, laughingly. “You know the Arcade doesn’t stand for that sort of thing. Don’t hit us so hard.”

“How I gwine know what it boun’ ter stan’ fer if it lak ter stan’ fer lettin’ dat chile rint a counter nex’ door to a segar stan’?” snapped Mammy, her eyes fixed upon the luckless superintendent, personifying the strongly emphasized it.

“Well, it’s lucky we found you here. Now, we never took that side of the question into consideration, did we, little girl? Yes, I guess Mammy’s judgment beats ours. Great head! So come on, Mammy, and let us have your sound advice in this choice of bigger quarters for Miss Constance. You see, I predict that she will never return to the smaller ones again.”

“Don’t need no gre’t secon’-sight fer ter make dat out, I reckon,” was the superior retort.

Mr. Porter looked crushed and then dropped behind Mammy, who went sailing majestically down the Arcade, to stop at the very first and most pretentious of all the Arches—one which had been rented until very recently by a stationer, who had profited so handsomely that he had built a large shop not far from the Arcade, and now wished to sub-let this arch until his lease expired. Next to it was a florist’s stand, and opposite a stationer’s, each of a very high order. Constance stood aghast at Mammy’s audacity.

“Why, Mammy, this is the highest-priced arch in the Arcade,” she exclaimed.

“Well, what dat got ter do wid it, Baby? Ain’t your candy de highest-priced candy? An’ ain’ you de very high-water mark quality? Who gwine ter ’spute dat? Go ’long an’ rint yo’ place; yo’ all matches p’intedly,” and with this speech Mammy stalked back to her own quarters.

Constance gave one look at Mr. Porter, then sank upon one of the little benches within the arch.

“By George, she’s right and I’m a blockhead! Think I’d better turn over my job to her and go down into the engine-room until I learn to read human nature as she can. Yes, it is the finest, highest-priced arch in the building, but it didn’t take that old black woman five seconds to discover the match for it.”

“But, Mr. Porter,” protested Constance, “of all the extravagant steps, and for Mammy, above all others, to urge it. That conservative creature! And the way she expressed it! Why was I born a Blairsdale? It will shorten my years, I know, to have to live up to the name,” and Constance broke into a merry laugh.

“Perhaps the burden will be lifted before long, and such a calamity to your friends averted,” answered Mr. Porter, soberly, but with twinkling eyes. The one o’clock whistle had just blown in a building hard by, and the Arcade’s elevator was beginning to bring down the people from the floors above. Among them was Hadyn Stuyvesant, who went at once to the luncheon counter, quite unaware of the presence of a certain little lady near the entrance of the Arcade; but her back was toward the elevator. For one second she glanced at Mr. Porter entirely innocent of the purport of his words. Then, catching sight of the mischievous eyes twinkling at her, she rose suddenly to her feet, saying: “Come at once and let me learn what this rash step will cost me.”

With a low laugh Mr. Porter strode toward his office beside a very rosy-cheeked young girl.

[CHAPTER VIII—Vaulting Ambitions.]

In the course of a few days Constance’s new quarters in the Arcade were in operation, for Mr. Porter lost no time in fitting up Arch Number One. The little booth beneath the stairs was dismantled to furnish forth the new one. Down at the kitchen Mary and her sister Fanny, who had come to assist in the work, were doing their best to keep abreast of the orders pouring in with each mail, while Mrs. Carruth, her ambitions at length achieved, was attending to the correspondence, since Constance’s time must for a little while be given to the new booth. She had not received a reply to her letter to Kitty Sniffins, and for the time being was too occupied with the demands of the new booth to take further steps in the matter. Indeed, she had about made up her mind to look for someone else, once order was brought out of the confusion of moving and settling, for some indefinable instinct caused her to feel an aversion to engaging Kitty Sniffins. Had she been asked to state why, she would have found it difficult to put her objection into actual words, and more than once she reproached herself for entertaining it at all. Nevertheless, she could not free herself from it, but was too busy just then to dwell upon it. In the course of a few days everything would be settled and in running order; and meanwhile she, herself, would go to the Arcade each day where, with Charles as her Majordomo, body-guard and faithful friend, she was a veritable queen of her little realm, and woe betide the individual so reckless as to forget that he or she was in the presence of a Blairsdale.

The pretty Arch had been in perfect running order for one week when Constance began to cast about for someone to take her place, since neither she herself, nor her family felt content to have her make the journey to and from South Riveredge each day, or to spend her time at the Arch. On the previous Saturday she had put a carefully-worded advertisement in the Riveredge Times, the answers to be sent to Arch No. 1, Arcade Building; and upon her arrival at her Arch on this Monday morning she found dozens of letters from girls, and even men, asking employment. She was reading one of the letters when a shadow fell across the page, and raising her eyes she saw a young man standing at the counter. Thinking he had come to purchase a box of candy, she rose from her chair and stood waiting for him to make his wants known to her. Instead of doing so, he raised his hat, and with a most impressive bend of his long, loosely-hung figure, and a smile which irritated her by its self-complacency, said:

“How are you, Miss Carruth? You’re sure putting up a big show here, ain’t you?”

“What can I do for you?” asked Constance, with quiet dignity.