TRANSPLANTED

BY MRS. ATHERTON

TRANSPLANTED

A NOVEL

By GERTRUDE ATHERTON
Author of “The Conqueror,”
“Tower of Ivory,” etc.

NEW YORK: DODD, MEAD
AND COMPANY 1919

Copyrighted, 1898
BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
As “American Wives and English Husbands”

New and revised edition
Copyrighted, 1919
By Gertrude Atherton

TO
THE LADIES OF RUE GIROT
BOIS GUILLAUME

TRANSPLANTED

TRANSPLANTED

PART ONE

CHAPTER I

MRS. HAYNE’S boarding-house stood on the corner of Market Street and one of those cross streets which seem to leap down from the heights of San Francisco and empty themselves into the great central thoroughfare that roars from the sandy desert at the base of Twin Peaks to the teeming wharves on the edge of the bay. On the right of Market Street, both on the hills and in the erratic branchings of the central plain, as far as the eye can reach, climbs and swarms modern prosperous San Francisco; of what lies beyond, the less said the better. On the left, at the far southeast, the halo of ancient glory still hovers about Rincon Hill,[A] growing dimmer with the years: few of the many who made the social laws of the Fifties cling to the old houses in the battered gardens; and their children marry and build on the gay hills across the plain. In the plain itself is a thick-set, low-browed, dust-coloured city; “South of Market Street” is a generic term for hundreds of streets in which dwell thousands of insignificant beings, some of whom promenade the democratic boundary line by gaslight, but rarely venture up the aristocratic slopes. By day or by night Market Street rarely has a moment of rest, of peace; it is a blaze of colour, a medley of sound, shrill, raucous, hollow, furious, a net-work of busy people and vehicles until midnight is over. Every phase of the city’s manifold life is suggested there, every aspect of its cosmopolitanism.

To a little girl of eleven, who dwelt on the third floor of Mrs. Hayne’s boarding-house, Market Street was a panorama of serious study and unvarying interest. She knew every shop window, in all the mutable details of the seasons, she had mingled with the throng unnumbered times, studying that strange patch-work of faces, and wondering if they had any life apart from the scene in which they seemed eternally moving. In those days Market Street typified the world to her; although her school was some eight blocks up the hill it scarcely counted. All the world, she felt convinced, came sooner or later to Market Street, and sauntered or hurried with restless eyes, up and down, up and down. The sun rose at one end and set at the other; it climbed straight across the sky and went to bed behind the Twin Peaks. And the trade winds roared through Market Street as through a mighty cañon, and the sand hills beyond the city seemed to rise bodily and whirl down the great way, making men curse and women jerk their knuckles to their eyes. On summer nights the fog came and banked there, and the lights shone through it like fallen stars, and the people looked like wraiths, lost souls condemned to wander unceasingly.

When Mrs. Tarleton was too ill to be left alone, Lee amused herself watching from above the crush and tangle of street cars, hacks, trucks, and drays for which the wide road should have been as wide again, holding her breath as the impatient or timid foot-passengers darted into the transient rifts with bird-like leaps of vision and wild deflections. Occasionally she assumed the part of chorus for her mother, who regarded the prospect beneath her windows with horror.

“Now! She’s started—at last! Oh! what a silly! Any one could have seen that truck with half an eye. She turned back—of course! Now! Now! she’s got to the middle and there’s a funeral just turned the corner! She can’t get back! She’s got to go on. Oh, she’s got behind a man. I wonder if she’ll catch hold of his coat-tails? There—she’s safe! I wonder if she’s afraid of people like she is of Market Street?”

“If I ever thought you crossed that street at the busy time of the day, honey, I should certainly faint or have hysterics,” Mrs. Tarleton was in the habit of remarking at the finish of these thrilling interpretations.

To which Lee invariably replied: “I could go right across without stopping, or getting a crick in my neck either; but I don’t, because I wouldn’t make you nervous for the world. I go way up when I want to cross and then turn back. It’s nothing like as bad.”

“It is shocking to think that you go out at all unattended; but what cannot be cannot, and you must have air and exercise, poor child!”

Lee, who retained a blurred, albeit rosy impression of her former grandeur, was well pleased with her liberty; and Mrs. Tarleton was not only satisfied that any one who could take such good care of her mother was quite able to take care of herself, but, so dependent was she on the capable child, that she was frequently oblivious to the generation they rounded. Mrs. Tarleton was an invalid, and, although patient, she met her acuter sufferings unresistingly. Lee was so accustomed to be roused in the middle of the night that she had learned to make a poultice or heat a kettle of water while the receding dreams were still lapping at her brain. She dressed her mother in the morning and undressed her at night. She frequently chafed her hands and feet by the hour; and cooked many a dainty Southern dish on the stove in the corner. Miss Hayne, who had a sharp red nose and the anxious air of protracted maidenhood, but whose heart was normal, made it her duty to fetch books for the invalid from the Mercantile Library, and to look in upon her while Lee was at school.

Lee brushed and mended her own clothes, “blacked” her boots with a vigorous arm, and studied her lessons when other little girls were in bed. Fortunately she raked them in with extreme rapidity, or Mrs. Tarleton would have made an effort and remonstrated; but Lee declared that she must have her afternoons out-of-doors when her mother was well and companioned by a novel; and Mrs. Tarleton scrupulously refrained from thwarting the girl whose narrow childhood was so unlike what her own had been, so unlike what the fairies had promised when Hayward Tarleton had been the proudest and most indulgent of fathers.

FOOTNOTE:

[A] This was written before the earthquake and fire of 1906.

CHAPTER II

MARGUERITE TARLETON’S impression of the hour in which she found herself widowed and penniless was very vague; she was down with brain fever in the hour that followed.

The Civil War had left her family with little but the great prestige of its name and the old house in New Orleans. Nevertheless, the house slaves having refused to accept their freedom, Marguerite had “never picked up her handkerchief,” when, in a gown fashioned by her mammy from one of her dead mother’s, she made her début in a society which retained all of its pride and little of its gaiety. Her mother had been a creole of great beauty and fascination. Marguerite inherited her impulsiveness and vivacity; and, for the rest, was ethereally pretty, as dainty and fastidious as a young princess, and had the soft manner and the romantic heart of the convent maiden. Hayward Tarleton captured twelve dances on this night of her triumphant début, and proposed a week later. They were married within the month; he had already planned to seek for fortune in California with what was left of his princely inheritance.

When Tarleton and his bride reached San Francisco the fortune he had come to woo fairly leapt into his arms; in three years he was a rich man, and his pretty and elegant young wife a social power. It was a very happy marriage. Marguerite idolised her handsome dashing husband, and he was the slave of her lightest whim. Their baby was petted and indulged until she ruled her adoring parents with a rod of iron, and tyrannised over the servants like a young slave-driver. But the parents saw no fault in her, and, in truth, she was an affectionate and amiable youngster, with a fund of good sense for which the servants were at a loss to account. She had twenty-six dolls at this period, a large roomful of toys, a pony, and a playhouse of three storeys in a corner of the garden.

Then came the great Virginia City mining excitement of the late Seventies. Tarleton, satiated with easy success, and longing for excitement, gambled; at first from choice, finally from necessity. His nerves swarmed over his will and stung it to death, his reason burnt to ashes. He staggered home one day, this man who had been intrepid on the battle-field for four blood-soaked and exhausting years, told his wife that he had not a dollar in the world, then went into the next room and blew out his brains.

The creditors seized the house. Two hours before Mrs. Tarleton had been carried to Rincon Hill to the home of Mrs. Montgomery, a Southerner who had known her mother and who would have offered shelter to every stricken compatriot in San Francisco if her children had not restrained her. Lee, who had been present when her father spoke his last words to his wife, and had heard the report of the pistol, lost all interest in dolls and picture-books forever, and refused to leave the sick-room. She waited on her mother by day, and slept on a sofa at the foot of the bed. Mrs. Montgomery exclaimed that the child was positively uncanny, she was so old-fashioned, but that she certainly was lovable. Her own young children, Tiny and Randolph, although some years older than Lee, thought her profoundly interesting, and stole into the sick-room whenever the nurse’s back was turned. Lee barely saw them; she retained no impression of them afterward, although the children were famous for their beauty and fine manners.

When Mrs. Tarleton recovered, her lawyer reminded her that some years before her husband had given her a ranch for which she had expressed an impulsive wish and as quickly forgotten. The deeds were at his office. She gave her jewels to the creditors, but decided to keep the ranch, remarking that her child was of more importance than all the creditors put together. The income was small, but she was grateful for it. Her next of kin were dead, and charity would have been insufferable.

Mrs. Hayne, a reduced Southerner, whom Tarleton had started in business, offered his widow a large front room on the third floor of her boarding-house at the price of a back one. In spite of Mrs. Montgomery’s tears and remonstrances, Mrs. Tarleton accepted the offer, and persuaded herself that she was comfortable. She never went to the table, nor paid a call. Her friends, particularly the Southerners of her immediate circle, Mrs. Montgomery, Mrs. Geary, Mrs. Brannan, Mrs. Cartright, and Colonel Belmont were faithful; but as the years passed their visits became less frequent, and Mrs. Montgomery was much abroad with her children. Marguerite Tarleton cared little. Her interest in life had died with her husband; such energies as survived in her were centred in her child. When there was neither fog nor dust nor wind nor rain in the city, Lee dressed her peremptorily and took her for a ride in the cable-cars; but she spent measureless monotonous days in her reclining chair, reading or sewing. She did not complain except when in extreme pain, and was interested in every lineament of Lee’s busy little life. She never shed a tear before the child, and managed to maintain an even state of mild cheerfulness. And she was grateful for Lee’s skill and readiness in small matters as in great; her unaccustomed fingers would have made havoc with her hair and boots.

“Did you never, never button your own boots, memmy?” asked Lee one day, as she was performing that office.

“Never, honey. When Dinah was ill your father always buttoned them, and after she died he wouldn’t have thought of letting any one else touch them; most people pinch so. Of course he could not do my hair, but he often put me to bed, and he always cut up my meat.”

“Do all men do those things for their wives?” asked Lee in a voice of awe; “I think they must be very nice.”

“All men who are fit to marry, and all Southern men, you may be sure. I want to live long enough to see you married to a man as nearly like your father as possible. I wonder if there are any left; America gallops so. He used to beg me to think of something new I wanted, something it would be difficult to get; and he fairly adored to button my boots; he never failed to put a little kiss right there on my instep when he finished.”

“It must be lovely to be married!” said Lee.

Mrs. Tarleton closed her eyes.

“Was papa perfectly perfect?” asked Lee, as she finished her task and smoothed the kid over her mother’s beautiful instep.

“Perfectly!”

“I heard the butler say once that he was as drunk as a lord.”

“Possibly, but he was perfect all the same. He got drunk like a gentleman—a Southern gentleman, I mean, of course. I always put him to bed and never alluded to it.”

CHAPTER III

LEE had no friends of her own age. The large private school she attended was not patronised by the aristocracy of the city, and Mrs. Tarleton had so thoroughly imbued her daughter with a sense of the vast superiority of the gentle-born Southerner over the mere American, that Lee found in the youthful patrons of the Chambers Institute little likeness to her ideals. The children of her mother’s old friends were educated at home or at small and very expensive schools, preparatory to a grand finish in New York and Europe. Lee had continued to meet several of these fortunate youngsters during the first two of the five years which had followed her father’s death, but as she outgrew her fine clothes, and was put into ginghams for the summers and stout plaids for the winters, she was obliged to drop out of fashionable society. Occasionally she saw her former playmates sitting in their parents’ carriages before some shop in Kearney Street. They always nodded gaily to her with the loyalty of their caste; the magic halo of position survives poverty, scandal and exile.

“When you are grown I shall put my pride in my pocket, and ask Mrs. Montgomery to bring you out, and Jack Belmont to give you a party dress,” said Mrs. Tarleton one day. “I think you will be pretty, for your features are exactly like your father’s, and you have so much expression when you are right happy, poor child! You must remember never to frown, nor wrinkle up your forehead, nor eat hot cakes, nor too much candy, and always wear your camphor bag so you won’t catch anything; and do stand up straight, and you must wear a veil when these horrid trade winds blow. Beauty is the whole battle of life for a woman, honey, and if you only do grow up pretty and are properly lancée, you will be sure to marry well. That is all I am trying to live for.”

Lee donned the veil to please her mother, although she loved to feel the wind in her hair. But she was willing to be beautiful, as beauty meant servants and the reverse of boarding-house diet. She hoped to find a husband as handsome and devoted as her father, and was quite positive that the kidney flourished within the charmed circle of society. But she sometimes regarded her sallow little visage with deep distrust. Her black hair hung in lank strands; no amount of coaxing would make it curl, and her eyes, she decided, were altogether too light a blue for beauty; her mother had saved Tarleton’s small library of standard novels from the wreck, and Lee had dipped into them on rainy days; the heroine’s eyes when not black “were a dark rich blue.” Her eyes looked the lighter for the short thick lashes surrounding them, and the heavy brows above. She was also very thin, and stooped slightly; but the maternal eye was hopeful. Mrs. Tarleton’s delicate beauty had vanished with her happiness, but while her husband lived she had preserved and made the most of it with many little arts. These she expounded at great length to her daughter, who privately thought beauty a great bore, unless ready-made and warranted to wear, and frequently permitted her mind to wander.

“At least remember this,” exclaimed Mrs. Tarleton impatiently one day at the end of a homily, to which Lee had given scant heed, being absorbed in the adventurous throng below, “if you are beautiful you rule men; if you are plain, men rule you. If you are beautiful your husband is your slave, if you are plain you are his upper servant. All the brains the blue-stockings will ever pile up will not be worth one complexion. (I do hope you are not going to be a blue, honey.) Why are American women the most successful in the world? Because they know how to be beautiful. I have seen many beautiful American women who had no beauty at all. What they want they will have, and the will to be beautiful is like yeast to dough. If women are flap-jacks it is their own fault. Only cultivate a complexion, and learn how to dress and walk as if you were used to the homage of princes, and the world will call you beautiful. Above all, get a complexion.”

“I will! I will!” responded Lee fervently. She pinned her veil all round her hat, squared her shoulders like a young grenadier, and went forth for air.

Although debarred from the society of her equals, she had friends of another sort. It was her private ambition at this period to keep a little shop, one half of which should be gay and fragrant with candies, the other sober and imposing with books. This ambition she wisely secluded from her aristocratic parent, but she gratified it vicariously. Some distance up Market Street she had discovered a book shop, scarcely wider than its door and about eight feet deep. Its presiding deity was a blonde young man, out-at-elbows, consumptive and vague. Lee never knew his name; she always alluded to him as “Soft-head.” He never asked hers; but he welcomed her with a slight access of expression, and made a place for her on the counter. There she sat and swung her legs for hours together, confiding her ambitions and plans, and recapitulating her lessons for the intellectual benefit of her host. In return he told her the histories of the queer people who patronised him, and permitted her to “tend shop.” He thought her a prodigy, and made her little presents of paper and coloured pencils. Not to be under obligations, she crocheted him a huge woollen scarf, which he assured her greatly improved his health.

She also had a warm friend in a girl who presided over a candy store, but her bosom friend and confidante was a pale weary-looking young woman who suddenly appeared in a secondhand book shop in lowly Fourth Street, on the wrong side of Market. Lee was examining the dirty and disease-haunted volumes on the stand in front of the shop one day, when she glanced through the window and met the eager eyes and smile of a stranger. She entered the shop at once, and, planting her elbows on the counter, told the newcomer hospitably that she was delighted to welcome her to that part of the city, and would call every afternoon if she would be permitted to tend shop occasionally. If the stranger was amused she did not betray herself; she accepted the overture with every appearance of gratitude, and begged Lee to regard the premises as her own. For six months the friendship flourished. The young woman, whose name was Stainers, helped Lee with her sums, and had a keenly sympathetic ear for the troubles of little girls. Of herself she never spoke. Then she gave up her own battle, and was carried to the county hospital to die. Lee visited her twice, and one afternoon her mother told her that the notice of Miss Stainers’ death had been in the newspaper that morning.

Lee wept long and heavily for the gentle friend who had carried her secrets into a pauper’s grave.

“You are so young, and you have had so much trouble,” said Mrs. Tarleton with a sigh, that night. “But perhaps it will give you more character than I ever had. And nothing can break your spirits. They are your grandmother’s all over; you even gesticulate like her sometimes and then you look just like a little creole. She was a wonderful woman, honey, and had forty-nine offers of marriage.”

“I hope men are nicer than boys,” remarked Lee, not unwilling to be diverted. “The boys in this house are horrid. Bertie Reynolds pulls my hair every time I pass him, and calls me ‘Squaw;’ and Tom Wilson throws bread balls at me at the table and calls me ‘Broken-down-aristocracy.’ I’m sure they’ll never kiss a girl’s slipper.”

“A few years from now some girl will be leading them round by the nose. You never can tell how a boy will turn out; it all depends upon whether girls take an interest in him or not. These are probably scrubs.”

“There’s a new one and he’s rather shy. They say he’s English. He and his father came last night. The boy’s name is Cecil; I heard his father speak to him at the table to-night. The father has a funny name; I can’t remember it. Mrs. Hayne says he is very distingué, and she’s sure he’s a lord in disguise, but I think he’s very thin and ugly. He has the deepest lines on each side of his mouth, and a big thin nose, and a droop at the corner of his eyes. He’s the stuck-uppest looking thing I ever saw. The boy is about twelve, I reckon, and looks as if he wasn’t afraid of anything but girls. He has the curliest hair and the loveliest complexion, and his eyes laugh. They’re hazel, and his hair is brown. He looks much nicer than any boy I ever saw.”

“He is the son of a gentleman—and English gentlemen are the only ones that can compare with Southerners, honey. If you make friends with him you may bring him up here.”

“Goodness gracious!” exclaimed Lee. Her mother had encouraged her to ignore boys, and disliked visitors of any kind.

“I feel sure he is going to be your next friend, and you are so lonely, honey, now that poor Miss Stainers is gone. So ask him up if you like. It makes me very sad to think that you have no playmates.”

Lee climbed up on her mother’s lap. Once in a great while she laid aside the dignity of her superior position in the family, and demanded a petting. Mrs. Tarleton held her close and shut her eyes, and strove to imagine that the child in her arms was five years younger, and that both were listening for a step which so often smote her memory with agonising distinctness.

CHAPTER IV

LEE sat limply on the edge of her cot wishing she had a husband to button her boots. Mrs. Tarleton had been very ill during the night, and her daughter’s brain and eyes were heavy. Lee had no desire for school, for anything but bed; but it was eight o’clock, examinations were approaching, and to school she must go. She glared resentfully at the long row of buttons, half inclined to wear her slippers, and finally compromised by fastening every third button. The rest of her toilette was accomplished with a like disregard for fashion. She was not pleased with her appearance and was disposed to regard life as a failure. At breakfast she received a severe reprimand from Mrs. Hayne, who informed her and the table inclusively that her hair looked as if it had been combed by a rake, and rebuttoned her frock there and then with no regard for the pride of eleven. Altogether, Lee, between her recent affliction, her tired head, and her wounded dignity, started for school in a very depressed frame of mind.

As she descended the long stair leading from the first floor of the boarding-house to the street she saw the English lad standing in the door. They had exchanged glances of curiosity and interest across the table, and once he had offered her radishes, with a lively blush. That morning she had decided that he must be very nice indeed, for he had turned scarlet during Mrs. Hayne’s scolding and had scowled quite fiercely at the autocrat.

He did not look up nor move until she asked him to let her pass; he was apparently absorbed in the loud voluntary of Market Street, his cap on the back of his head, his hands in his pockets, his feet well apart. When Lee spoke, he turned swiftly and grabbed at her school-bag.

“You’re tired,” he said, with so desperate an assumption of ease that he was brutally abrupt, and Lee jumped backward a foot.

“I beg pardon,” he stammered, his eyes full of nervous tears. “But—but—you looked so tired at breakfast, and you didn’t eat; I thought I’d like to carry your books.”

Lee’s face beamed with delight, and its fatigue vanished, but she said primly: “You’re very good, I’m sure, and I like boys that do things for girls.”

“I don’t usually,” he replied hastily, as if fearful that his dignity had been compromised. “But, let’s come along. You’re late.”

They walked in silence for a few moments. The lad’s courage appeared exhausted, and Lee was casting about for a brilliant remark; she was the cleverest girl in her class and careful of her reputation. But her brain would not work this morning, and fearing that her new friend would bolt, she said precipitately:

“I’m eleven. How old are you?”

“Fourteen and eleven months.”

“My name’s Lee Tarleton. What’s yours?”

“Cecil Edward Basil Maundrell. I’ve got two more than you have.”

“Well you’re a boy, anyhow, and bigger, aren’t you? I’m named after a famous man—second cousin, General Lee. Lee was my father’s mother’s family name.”

“Who was General Lee?”

“You’d better study United States history.”

“What for?”

The question puzzled Lee, her eagle being yet in the shell. She replied rather lamely, “Well, Southern history, because my mother says we are descended from the English, and some French. It’s the last makes us creoles.”

“Oh! I’ll ask father.”

“Is he a lord?” asked Lee, with deep curiosity.

“No.”

The boy answered so abruptly that Lee stood still and stared at him. He had set his lips tightly; it would almost seem he feared something might leap from them.

“Oh—h—h! Your father has forbidden you to tell.”

The clumsy male looked helplessly at the astute female. “He isn’t a lord,” he asserted doggedly.

“You aren’t telling me all, though.”

“Perhaps I’m not. But,” impulsively, “perhaps I will some day. I hate being locked up like a tin box with papers in it. We’ve been here two weeks—at the Palace Hotel before we came to Mrs. Hayne’s—and my head fairly aches thinking of everything I say before I say it. I hate this old California. Father won’t present any letters, and the boys I’ve met are cads. But I like you!”

“Oh, tell me!” cried Lee. Her eyes blazed and she hopped excitedly on one foot. “It’s like a real story. Tell me!”

“I’ll have to know you better. I must be sure I can trust you.” He had all at once assumed a darkly mysterious air. “I’ll walk every morning to school with you, and in the afternoons we’ll sit in the drawing-room and talk.”

“I never tell secrets. I know lots!”

“I’ll wait a week.”

“Well; but I think it’s horrid of you. And I can’t come down this afternoon; my mother is ill. But to-morrow I have a holiday, and if you like you can come up and see me at two o’clock; and you shall carry my bag every morning to school.”

“Indeed!” He threw up his head like a young racehorse.

“You must,”—firmly. “Else you can’t come. I’ll let some other boy carry it.” Lee fibbed with a qualm, but not upon barren soil had the maternal counsel fallen.

“Oh—well—I’ll do it; but I ought to have offered. Girls ought not to tell boys what to do.”

“My mother always told her husband and brothers and cousins to do everything she wanted, and they always did it.”

“Well, I’ve got a grandmother and seven old maid aunts, and they never asked me to do a thing in their lives. They wait on me. They’d do anything for me.”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Boys were made to wait on girls.”

“They were not. I never heard such rot.”

Lee considered a moment. He was quite as aristocratic as any Southerner; there was no doubt of that. But he had been badly brought up. Her duty was plain.

“You’d be just perfect if you thought girls were more important than yourself,” she said wheedlingly.

“I’ll never do that,” he replied stoutly.

“Then we can’t be friends!”

“Oh, I say! Don’t rot like that. I won’t give you something I’ve got in my pockets, if you do.”

Lee glanced swiftly at his pockets. They bulged. “Well, I won’t any more to-day,” she said sweetly. “What have you got for me? You are a nice boy.”

He produced an orange and a large red apple, and offered them diffidently.

Lee accepted them promptly. “Did you really buy these for me?” she demanded, her eyes flashing above the apple. “You are the best boy!”

“I didn’t buy them on purpose, but my father bought a box of fruit yesterday and I saved these for you. They were the biggest.”

“I’m ever so much obliged.”

“You’re welcome,” he replied, with equal concern for the formalities.

“This is my school.”

“Well, I’m sorry.”

“You’ll come up at two to-morrow? Number 142, third floor.”

“I will.”

They shook hands limply. He glanced back as he walked off, whistling. Lee was standing on the steps hastily disposing of her apple. She nodded gaily to him.

CHAPTER V

THE next afternoon Lee made an elaborate toilette. She buttoned her boots properly, sewed a stiff, white ruffle in her best gingham frock, and combed every snarl out of her hair. Mrs. Tarleton, who was sitting up, regarded her with some surprise.

“It’s nowhere near dinner time, honey,” she said, finally. “Why are you dressing up?”

Lee blushed, but replied with an air: “I expect that little boy I told you about, to come to see me—the English one. He carried my bag to school yesterday, and gave me an apple and an orange. I’ve kept the orange for you when you’re well. His name’s Cecil Maundrell.”

“Ah! Well, I hope he is a nice boy, and that you will be great friends.”

“He’s nice enough in his way. But he’d just walk over me if I’d let him. I can see that.”

Mrs. Tarleton looked alarmed. “Don’t let him bully you, darling. Englishmen are dreadfully high and mighty.”

There was a faint and timid rap upon the door.

“That’s him,” whispered Lee. “He’s afraid of me all the same.”

She opened the door. Young Maundrell stood there, his cheeks burning, his hands working nervously in his pockets. He looked younger than most lads of his age, and had all that simplicity of boyhood so lacking in the precocious American youth.

“Won’t you come in?” asked Lee politely.

“Oh—ah—won’t you come out?”

“Come in—do,” said Mrs. Tarleton. She had a very sweet voice and a heavenly smile. The boy walked forward rapidly, and took her hand, regarding her with curious intensity. Mrs. Tarleton patted his hand.

“You miss the women of your family, do you not?” she said. “I thought so. You must come and see us often. You will be always welcome.”

His face was brilliant. He stammered out that he’d come every day. Then he went over to the window with Lee, and with their heads together they agreed that Mrs. Tarleton was a real angel.

But Cecil quickly tired of the subdued atmosphere, and of the crowd below. He stood up abruptly and said:

“Let’s go out if your mother doesn’t mind. We’ll take a walk.”

Mrs. Tarleton looked up from her book and nodded. Lee fetched her hat and jacket, and they went forth.

“My father took me to the Cliff House one day. We’ll go there,” announced the Englishman.

“I was going to take you to a candy store—”

“Nasty stuff! It’s a beautiful walk to the Cliff House, and there are big waves and live seals.”

“Oh, I’d love to go, but I’ve heard it’s a queer kind of a place, or something.”

“I’ll take care of you. Can you walk a lot?”

“Of course!”

But like all San Franciscans, she was a bad walker, and she felt very weary as they tramped along the Cliff House road. However, she was much interested in the many carriages flashing past, and too proud to confess herself unequal to the manly stride beside her. Cecil did not suit his pace to hers. He kept up a steady tramp—his back very erect, his head in the air. Lee forgot her theories, and thought him adorable. His shyness wore off by degrees, and he talked constantly, not of his family life, but of his beloved Eton, from which he appeared to have been ruthlessly torn, and of his feats at cricket. He was a champion “dry bob,” he assured her proudly. Lee was deeply interested, but would have liked to talk about herself a little. He did not ask her a question; he was charmed with her sympathy, and confided his school troubles, piling up the agony, as her eyes softened and flashed. When she capped an anecdote of martyrdom with one from her own experience, he listened politely, but when she finished, hastened on with his own reminiscences, not pausing to comment. Lee experienced a slight chill, and the spring day seemed less brilliant, the people in the carriages less fair. But she was a child, the impression quickly passed, and her interest surrendered once more.

“We’ll be there in two minutes,” said Cecil. “Then we’ll have a cup of tea.”

“My mother doesn’t let me drink tea or coffee. She hopes I’ll have a complexion some day and be pretty.”

She longed for the masculine assurance that her beauty was a foregone conclusion, but Cecil replied:

“Oh! the idea of bothering about complexion. I like you because you’re not silly like other girls. You’ve got a lot of sense—just like a boy. Of course you mustn’t disobey your mother, but you must have something after that walk. You’ve got a lot of pluck, but I can see you’re blown a bit. Would she mind if you had a glass of wine? I’ve got ten dollars. My stepmother sent them to me.”

“My!—I don’t think she’d mind about the wine, I’ve never tasted it. Oh, goodness!”

They had mounted one of the rocks, and faced the ocean. Lee had thought the bay, girt with its colourous hills very beautiful, as they had trudged along the cliffs, but she had had glimpses of it many times from the heights of San Francisco. She had never seen the ocean before. Its roar thrilled her nerves, and the great green waves, rolling in with magnificent precision from the grey plain beyond, to leap abruptly over the outlying rocks, their spray glittering in the sunlight like a crust of jewels, filled her brain with new and inexpressible sensations. She turned suddenly to Cecil. His eyes met hers with deep impersonal sympathy; their souls mingled on the common ground of nervous exaltation. He moved closer to her and took her hand.

“That’s the reason I wanted to come again,” he said. “I love it.”

The words shook his nerves down, and he added: “But let’s go and freshen up.”

She followed him up the rocks to the little shabby building set into the cliff and overhanging the waves. She knew nothing of its secrets; no suspicion crossed her innocent mind that if its walls could speak, San Francisco, highly seasoned as it was, would shake to its roots, and heap up its record of suicide and divorce; but she wondered why two women, who came out and passed her hurriedly, were so heavily veiled, and why others, sitting in the large restaurant, had such queer-looking cheeks and eyes. Some inherited instinct forbade her to comment to Cecil, who did not give the women a glance. He led her to a little table at the end of the piazza, and ordered claret and water, tea, and a heaping plate of bread and butter.

It was some time before they were served, and they gazed delightedly at a big ship going out, and wished they were on it; at the glory of colour on the hills opposite; and at the seals chattering on the rocks below.

“It’s heavenly, perfectly heavenly,” sighed Lee. “I never had such a good time in all my life.”

She forgot her complexion and took off her hat. The salt breeze stung the blood into her cheeks, and her eyes danced with joy.

The waiter brought the little repast. The children sipped and nibbled and chattered. Cecil scarcely took his eyes off the water. He and his father went off on sailing and fishing excursions every summer, he told Lee, and he was so keen on the water that it had taken him fully three months after he entered Eton to decide whether he would be a “wet bob,” or a “dry bob.” Cricket had triumphed, because he loved to feel his heels fly.

Lee gave him a divided attention: her brain was fairly dancing, and seemed ready to fly off in several different directions at once. “Oh!” she cried suddenly, “I’m not a bit tired any more. I feel as if I could walk miles and miles. Let’s have an adventure. Wouldn’t it be just glorious if we could have an adventure?”

The boy’s eyes flashed. “Oh, would you. I’ve been thinking about it—but you’re a girl. But you’re such a jolly sort! We’ll get one of those fishing-boats to take us out to sea, and climb up and down those big waves. Oh, fancy! I say!—will you?”

“Oh, won’t I? Youbetcherlife I will.”

Cecil paid his reckoning, and the children scrambled along the rocks to a cove where a fishing smack was making ready for sea. Lee wondered why her feet glanced off the rocks in such a peculiar fashion, but she was filled with the joy of exhilaration, of a reckless delight in doing something of which the entire Hayne boarding-house would disapprove.

Cecil made a rapid bargain with the man, an ugly Italian, who gave him scant attention. A few moments later they were skimming up and down the big waves and making for the open sea. At first Lee clung in terror to Cecil, who assured her patronisingly that it was an old story with him, and there was no danger. In a few moments the exhilaration returned five-fold, and she waved her arms with delight as they shot down the billows into the emerald valleys. Out at sea the boat skimmed along an almost level surface, and the children became absorbed in the big fish nets, and very dirty. Lee thought the flopping fish nasty and drew up her feet, but Cecil’s very nostrils quivered with the delight of the sport, although his surly hosts had snubbed his offer to lend a hand.

Suddenly Lee rubbed her eyes. The sun had gone. He had been well above the horizon the last time she had glanced across the waters. Had he slipped his moorings? She pointed out the phenomenon to Cecil. He stared a moment, then appealed to the Italians.

“Da fogga, by damn!” exclaimed the Captain to his mate. “What for he coming so soon? Com abouta.”

The little craft turned and raced with the breeze for land. The children faced about and watched that soft stealthy curtain swing after. It was as white as cloud, as chill as dawn, as eerie as sound in the night. It took on varying outlines, breaking into crags and mountain peaks and turrets. It opened once and caught a wedge of scarlet from the irate sun. For a moment a ribbon of flame ran up and down its length, then broke into drops of blood, then hurried whence it came. Through the fog mountain came a long dismal moan, the fog-horn of the Farallones, warning the ships at sea.

The children crept close together. Lee locked her arm in Cecil’s. Neither spoke. Suddenly the boat jolted heavily and they scrambled about, thinking they were on the rocks. But the Italians were tying the boat to a little wharf, and unreefing her. The dock was strangely unfamiliar. Cecil glanced hastily across the bay. San Francisco lay opposite.

“Oh, I say!” he exclaimed. “Aren’t you going across before that fog gets here?”

“Si you wanta crossa that bay you swimming,” remarked the Captain, stepping ashore.

Cecil jumped after him with blazing eyes and angry fists. “You know I thought you were going back there,” he cried. “Why, you’re a villain! And a girl too! I’ll have you arrested.”

The man laughed. Cecil, through tears of mortification, regarded that large bulk, and choked back his wrath.

“My father will pay you well if you take us back,” he managed to articulate.

“No crossa that bay to-night,” replied the man.

“But how are we to get back?”

“Si you walka three, four, five miles—no can remember—you finda one ferra-boat.” And he sauntered away.

Cecil returned to the boat and helped Lee to land. “I’m awfully sorry,” he said. “What a beastly mess I’ve got you into!”

“Oh, never mind,” said Lee cheerfully. “I reckon I can walk.”

“You are a jolly sort. Come on then.” But his brow was set in gloom.

Lee took his hand. “You looked just splendid when you talked to that horrid man,” she said. “I am sure he was afraid of you!”

Cecil’s brow shot forth the nimbus of the conqueror.

“Lee,” he said in a tone of profound conviction, “you have more sense than all the rest of the girls in the world put together. Come on and I’ll help you along.”

They climbed the bluff. When they reached the top the world was white and impalpable about them.

Cecil drew Lee’s hand through his arm. “Never mind,” he said, “I think I have a good bump of locality, and one can see a little way ahead.”

Lee leaned heavily on his arm. “I can’t think why I feel so sleepy,” she murmured. “I never am at this time of day.”

“Oh, for mercy’s sake don’t go to sleep. Let’s run.”

They ran headlong until they were out of breath. Then they stopped and gazed into the fog ahead of them. Tall dark objects loomed there. They seemed to touch the unseen stars, and they were black even in that gracious mist.

“They’re trees. They’re redwoods,” said Cecil. “I know where we are now—at least I think I do. Father and I came over to this side one day and drove about. It’s a regular forest. I do hope——” He glanced uneasily about. “It’s too bad we can’t walk along the edge of the cliffs. But if we keep straight ahead I suppose it’ll be all right.”

They trudged on. The forest closed about them. Those dark rigid shafts that no storm ever bends, no earthquake ever sways, whom the fog feeds and the trade winds love, looked like the phantasm of themselves in the pale hereafter. The scented underbush and infant redwoods grew high above the heads of the children, and there were a hundred paths. The roar of the sea grew faint.

Lee gave a gasping yawn and staggered. “Oh, Cecil,” she whispered, “I’m asleep. I can’t go another step.”

Cecil was also weary, and very much discouraged. He sat down against a tree and took Lee in his arms. She was asleep in a moment, her head comfortably nestled into his shoulder.

He was a brave boy, but during the two hours that Lee slept his nerves were sorely tried. High up, in the unseen arbours of the redwoods, there was a faint incessant whisper: the sibilant tongues of moisture among the brittle leaves. From an immeasurable distance came the long, low, incessant moan of the Farallones’ “syren.” There was no other sound. If there were four-footed creatures in the forest they slept. Just as Cecil’s teeth began to chatter, whether from cold or fear he did not care to scan, Lee moved.

“Are you awake?” he asked eagerly.

Lee sprang to her feet. “I didn’t know where I was for a minute. Let’s hurry as fast as we can. Memmy will be wild—she might be dreadfully ill with fright——”

“And father’s got all the policemen in town out after me,” said Cecil gloomily. “We can’t hurry or we’ll run into trees; but we can go on.” In a few minutes he exclaimed: “I say! We’re going up hill, and it’s jolly steep too.”

“Well?”

“That Italian didn’t say anything about hills.”

“Then I suppose we’re lost again,” said Lee, with that resignation so exasperating to man.

“Well, if we are I don’t see who’s to help it in the fog at night in a forest. Perhaps the ferry is over the hill, and as this is the only path we’ll have to go on.”

“I wouldn’t mind the hill being perpendicular if memmy was at the top.”

Cecil softened at once. “Don’t you worry; we’ll get there soon. I’ll get behind and push you.”

They toiled and panted up the hill, which grew into a mountain. The forest dropped behind and a low dense shrubbery surrounded them. They were obliged to rest many times, and once they ate a half-dozen crackers Lee found in her pocket and were hungrier thereafter. But they forebore to discourse upon their various afflictions; in fact, they barely spoke at all. Their clothes were torn, their hats lost, their hands and faces scratched. When they paused to rest and the vague disturbances of night smote their ears, they clung together and were glad to hasten on. Lee longed to cry, but panted to be a heroine in Cecil’s eyes, and win the sweets of masculine approval; and Cecil, whose depression was even more profound, never forgot that the glory of the male is to be invincible in the eyes of the female. So did the vanity of sex mitigate the terrors of night and desolation and the things that devour.

The fog was far below them, an ocean of froth, pierced by the black tips of the redwoods. On either side the children could see nothing but the great shoulders of the mountain. They seemed climbing to the vast cold glitter above.

Gradually they left the brush, and their way fell among stones, rocks, and huge boulders. Not a shrub grew here, not a blade of grass. They climbed on for a time, they reached level ground, then the point of descent. They could see nothing but rocks, brush, and an ocean of fog. Their courage took note of its limitations.

“I’m not going to cry,” said Lee sharply. “But I think we’d better talk till the sun gets up and that fog melts. Besides, if we talk we won’t feel so hungry. Tell me that thing about yourself—your father—I suppose you can trust me now?”

“We’re friends for life, and I like you better than my chum. You’re a brick. Hold up your right hand and swear that you’ll never tell.”

Lee took the required oath, and the two battered travellers made themselves as comfortable as they could in the hollow of an upright rock.

“There ain’t so much to tell. My father and my stepmother don’t hit it off—quarrel all the time. But my stepmother has the money and is awfully keen on me, so they live together usually. Besides, until two years ago my stepmother thought she’d be a bigger somebody, and my father thought he’d have money of his own one day because his uncle was old and had never married. But Uncle Basil—I’m named for him—married two years ago and his wife got a little chap right off. So that knocked my father out, and my stepmother was just like a hornet. I love her, and she’s seldom been nasty to me, but I have seen her so that when you spoke to her she’d scream at you; and when she’s in a real nasty temper I always go out. Once I got mad because she was abusing Uncle Basil—I always spent my vacations at Maundrell Abbey, and he was good to me and gave me a gun and lots of tips—and I told her she was nasty to abuse him and I shouldn’t like her unless she stopped. Then she cried and kissed me—she’s great on kissing—and said she loved me better than any one in the world, and would do anything I wanted. Did I tell you she is an American? My father says the Americans are very excitable, and my stepmother is, and no mistake. But she dotes on me—I suppose because she hasn’t any children of her own, and no one else to dote on, for that matter; so I like her, whatever she does.

“One day, she and my father got into a terrible rage. I was in the room, but they didn’t pay any attention to me. Father wanted a lot of money, and she wouldn’t give it to him. She said he could ask his mother to pay his gambling debts. (Granny has money and is going to leave me some of it.) He said he’d asked her and she wouldn’t. Granny and father don’t hit it off, either, only granny never quarrels with anybody. Then my stepmother—her first name’s Emily and I call her Emmy—called him dreadful names, and said she’d leave him that minute if it wasn’t for me. And my father said she was the greatest snob in London and had gone off her head because she’d lost her hopes of a title. Then he said he’d get even with her; he couldn’t stay in London any longer, so he’d go as far away from her as he could get and then she’d see what her position amounted to without him. ‘You’re an outsider—you’re on sufferance,’ he said, and he went out and banged the door. She went off into hysterics, but she didn’t think he’d do it. He did though. He bolted the next day, and took me with him to spite her and granny. He’s always been decent to me, so I wouldn’t mind, only I’d rather be at Eton. He came here because it wouldn’t cost him much to live, and he’s keen on sport and knows some Englishmen that have ranches. He hopes Emmy’ll repent, but she hasn’t written him a line. She wrote to me, and sent me two pounds, but she never mentioned his name.”

“Goodness, gracious!” exclaimed Lee. She was deeply disappointed at this unromantic chronicle. And it gave all her preconceived ideas of matrimony an ugly jar. “My papa and mamma were just devoted to each other,” she said. “It must be terrible not to be.”

“Oh, I expect people get used to it. And there are a lot of other things to think about. My stepmother has a very jolly time, and father doesn’t come home very much when we are in London; and in the autumn we have a lot of people in the house—Emmy rents a place in Hampshire.”

“Then your father isn’t a lord?”

“No; Uncle Basil is.”

The lord in the family was the only redeeming feature of this sordid story; he gave it one fiery touch of the picturesque. Suddenly she forgot her disappointment, and patted Cecil’s scratched and grimy fingers.

“You haven’t been a bit happy, like other little boys, have you?” she said, “and you are so kind and good. I’m sorry, and I wish you could live with memmy and me.”

That Cecil loved sympathy there could be no manner of doubt. He expanded at once upon the painful subject, consigning the devotion of his granny, his seven aunts, his stepmother, the kindness of his uncle, and his unfettered summers, to oblivion. He could not see Lee’s face in the shadow of the rock, but he felt the tensity of her mind, concentrated on himself. They forgot their anxious parents, the dark clinging night, the awful silence, hunger and fatigue. Lee forgot all but Cecil; Cecil forgot all but himself. When he had exhausted his resources, Lee cried:

“I’ll always like you better than any one else in the whole world except memmy! I know I will! I swear I will!”

“Couldn’t you like me better than your mother?” he asked jealously.

Lee hesitated. Her youthful bosom was agitated by conflicting emotions. Feminine subtlety dictated her answer.

“I can’t tell yet. When I’m a big grown-up person I’ll decide.”

“What’s the use of doing anything by halves? I don’t. I like you better than anybody.”

“I’ll have to wait,” firmly.

“Oh, very well,” he said crossly. “Of course, if I knew some boys here, it wouldn’t matter so much.”

“Then if you had boys to play with you wouldn’t love me? Oh, you unkind cruel boy!”

“No—you know what I mean; I’d like you just the same, but I shouldn’t need you so much. There’s nothing to get angry about— Now?— What?— Oh!”

For Lee was weeping bitterly.

Cecil suddenly remembered that he was cold, and hungry, and tired, and lost. And he was confronted with a scene. What Lee was crying about he had but a vague idea. For a moment he contemplated a hug,—on general principles,—but remembered in time that when his father attempted cajolement his stepmother always wept the louder. So he remarked with the nervous haste of man when he knows that he is not rising to the occasion:

“We’ll stay here till morning and then I’ll take your apron off and put it on the top of a long stick and somebody’ll be sure to see. It’s exactly like being shipwrecked.”

“I never was shipwrecked,” sobbed Lee; “I’m sure I shouldn’t like it.”

“We’ve had adventures, anyhow, and that’s what you wanted.”

“I don’t like adventures. They’re not very interesting, and I’m all scratched up, and hungry, and tired.”

“We’ve not been attacked by a bear. You ought to be thankful for that.”

Lee, who would have been comforted at once by the hug, arose with dignity, found a soft spot and composed herself to sleep, forlorn and dejected. Cecil haughtily extended himself where he was. But he, too, was sensible of a weight on his spirits, which hunger, nor fatigue, nor cold, nor straits, had rolled there. In a few moments he took off his jacket and went over to Lee and slipped it under her head. She whisked about and caught his head in her arms, and they were fast asleep in an instant.

CHAPTER VI

LEE awoke first. She remembered at once where she was, and sat up with a sense of terror she had not experienced in the darkness of the night. The fog was gone, the sun was well above the horizon. She and Cecil were alone on a mountain peak so high above the world that the blue depths of space seemed nigher than the planet below. The redwood forest at the foot of the mountain looked like brush; on a glassy pond were hundreds of toy boats; beyond was a toy city on toy hills. Far to the South another solitary peak lifted itself into the heavens, dwarfing the mountain ranges about it. Lee glanced to the left. Nothing there but peak after peak bristling away into the north, black and rigid with redwoods.

But it was not the stupendous isolation that terrified Lee. It was a vague menace in the atmosphere about her, an accentuated stillness. Over the scene was a grey web, so delicate, so transparent, that it concealed nothing. Lee rubbed her eyes to make sure it was really there. It might have been the malignant breath of the evil genius of California. As she gazed, the mist slowly cohered. It became an almost tangible veil through which San Francisco looked the phantom of a city long since sunken to the bed of the Pacific. The sun glared through it like the suspended crater of an angry volcano. The forests on the mountain all at once seemed dead. The very air was petrified. The silence was awful, appalling.

Lee caught Cecil by the shoulder and pulled him upright.

“Something terrible is going to happen,” she gasped. “Oh, I wish we were home! I wish we were home.”

Cecil rubbed his eyes. He barely grasped the meaning of her words. There was a dull muffled roar, which seemed to spring from the depths of the planet, a terrible straining and rocking, and the very heart of the mountain leaped under them.

Cecil saw Lee make a wild dart to the left. Then he was conscious of nothing but a rapid descent amidst a hideous clatter of rock, and the sensation that he was sliding from the surface of the earth into space. Down he went, down, down, with the rumble below and the roar of loosened earth and rock about him. Inside of him he fancied he could hear the icicles of his blood rattle against each other. In his skull was a horrible vacuum.

The slide stopped abruptly. Cecil looked dully about him, wondering why the still trembling rocks had not ground him to pulp. He stumbled to his feet mechanically, worked his way beyond the slide, then climbed toward the cone from which he had been so abruptly evicted. His knowledge of what he sought was very vague, a primal instinct. Presently he saw Lee running toward him. Behind her was a man in the rough garb of a mountaineer.

“It was an earthquake,” cried Lee, as she flung herself into Cecil’s arms, “and he’s going to take us home.”

CHAPTER VII

BETWEEN a night of maternal agonies and an earthquake which wrenched the city to its foundations, Mrs. Tarleton’s spirit was very nearly shaken out of her frail body.

Mr. Maundrell, after despatching two detectives in search of the truants, spent the greater part of the night pacing up and down the upper hall. He called upon Mrs. Tarleton late in the evening, and assured her that his son was a manly little chap, and would take good care of Lee. As the night waxed he called again. Miss Hayne was holding salts to the invalid’s nostrils, and fanning her. Mrs. Tarleton implored him to remain near her; he was so cool he gave her a little courage. He consented hastily and retreated. When the earthquake came he entered Mrs. Tarleton’s room unceremoniously and stood by her bed, throwing a shawl over her head to protect it from falling plaster. The chandelier leapt from side to side like a circus girl at the end of a rope, then came down with a crash which drew an exhausted shriek from the bed. The wardrobe walked out into the middle of the room, the pictures sprang from the walls. Mrs. Tarleton, stifled, flung the shawl from her head. Mr. Maundrell stood, imperturbable, beside her, a monocle in his eye, critically regarding the evidences of California’s iniquity. She began to laugh hysterically, and he fled from the room and begged Miss Hayne—who had rushed out shrieking—to return.

He went down to his own rooms. It was eight o’clock in the morning. People in various stages of undress were grouped in the halls volubly giving their experiences. Not a woman but Mrs. Hayne had a dress on, not a woman had her hair out of curl-papers. The men had paused long enough to fling on dressing-gowns and blankets. They were visibly embarrassed.

Three hours later Mr. Maundrell was in his sitting-room reading an earthquake “extra.” The door opened and a small boy, with a cold in his head, dirty, ragged, scratched, and apologetic, entered and awaited his doom. Mr. Maundrell glanced up. Cecil shivered.

“Go and take a bath,” said his father curtly. “You are positively sickening. And kindly do not bore me with your adventures. I have really had as much as I can stand.”

CHAPTER VIII

LEE went neither to school nor to her meals for a week. She nursed her mother with the ardour of maternal affection and remorse. For the first two days Cecil dared not approach that door; it seemed written large with his misdoings. On the third he knocked timidly, then put his hands behind him.

Lee opened the door, threw back her head, and half closed her eyes—to conceal the delight in them.

“Well,” she said freezingly. “I am glad to see you haven’t forgotten all about me—I am sure I am!”

Cecil attempted no apology. He produced a bag of candy, and an apple nearly as big as his head.

“I thought you’d like these as you couldn’t go out to get any,” he said with tact.

Lee almost closed her eyes. She drew back. “You are so kind!” she said sarcastically.

Cecil must have had great ancestors. He replied never a word. He stood with both arms outstretched, the tempting offerings well within the door, and under Lee’s very nose.

Her eyes slowly opened. The corners of her mouth invaded her cheeks. Her hands rose slowly, fluttered a moment, then closed firmly over the tributes to her sex.

“Won’t you come in?” she asked graciously.

Cecil promptly closed the door behind him.

“I’m coming every afternoon to take care of your mother,” he announced.

“The idea of a boy being a nurse,” said Lee disdainfully; but she brought her lashes together again.

“You go and take a nap. Which medicine does she take next?”

Lee allowed herself to be overborne, and fell asleep. Mrs. Tarleton opened her eyes suddenly to meet a hypnotic stare. Cecil did nothing by halves.

Mrs. Tarleton smiled faintly, then put out her hand and patted his.

“You are a good boy, Cecil,” she said.

The good boy reddened haughtily. “I’m not trying to be thought a milksop,” he remarked.

“Oh, I know, I know! I mean most boys are selfish. I knew you would bring Lee safely back.”

“I wouldn’t mind if you said you forgave me.”

“I do. I do. Only please don’t do it again.”

He gave her the medicine. She closed her eyes, but he saw that she did not sleep. Occasionally she frowned and sighed heavily. Finally she opened her eyes again.

“I wish you were a little older,” she said abruptly.

He sat up very straight. “I’m quite old,” he said thickly. “I’m much older than Lee.”

“I mean I wish you were really grown and your own master, and as fond of Lee as you are now. I must die soon; I had hoped to live until Lee was grown and married, but my will won’t last me much longer. It is of that I think constantly as I lie here, not of my pain.”

“I’ll marry Lee if you like,” said Cecil obligingly. “I like her very much; it would suit me jolly well to have her in England.”

Mrs. Tarleton raised herself on her arm. Her thin cheeks fairly expanded with the colour that flew to them. The boy could see the fluttering of her exhausted heart.

“Cecil,” she said solemnly, “promise me that you will marry Lee. I am a good judge of human nature. I know that you would be kind to her. I know of no one else to leave her to. Promise me.”

“I promise,” said Cecil promptly. But he had an odd sensation that the room had grown suddenly smaller.

“If I die before you go, take her with you if your father will consent. She has a little money and will not be a burden. If your father won’t take her come back for her when you are of age. Remember that you have given your solemn promise to a dying woman.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Cecil faintly. He was young and masculine and unanalytical; but instinct told him that Mrs. Tarleton was unfair, and he cooled to her, and to the sex through her, for the time being. He slipped out as Lee awoke.

The next day when he returned, the unpleasant sensations induced by Mrs. Tarleton had almost vanished. On the fourth day, as he and Lee were sitting before the fire popping corn—Mrs. Tarleton’s nerves being under the influence of morphine—Lee remarked with some asperity:

“I wish you wouldn’t stare at me so.”

“I was just thinking,” he said. “I am going to be your husband, you know.”

“What?” Lee dropped the popper into the fire. Her head went back, her nostrils out. “Who said you were, I’d like to know? I didn’t.”

“Your mother asked me to marry you, and I said I would. So I’m going to.”

The American girl arose in her wrath, and stamped her foot.

“The very idea! Try it, will you? The idea, the idea of saying you’re going to marry a girl just ’cause you want to!—without asking her! I just won’t marry you—so there!”

Young Maundrell rose to his feet, plunged his hands into his pockets and regarded her with angry perplexity. He knew what he would have done had she been a boy; he would have thrashed her. But a girl was a deeper problem than earthquakes. He descended to diplomacy.

“Of course I’ll ask you if you prefer it that way.”

“You just bet your life I do.”

“Well—” He got very red and trembled all over. He threw his weight first on one foot and then on the other. His nails clawed at his trousers pockets.

“Well?”

“Oh—ah—that is—you can marry me, if you like— Oh, hang it, Lee! I don’t know how to propose. I feel like a rotter.”

“That isn’t the way,” said Lee icily. She hastily reviewed her glimpses of standard works.

“You must go down on your knees,” she added.

“I’d see myself dead sooner,” cried Cecil.

“You must.”

“I won’t.”

“Then I won’t marry you.”

“I don’t care whether you do or not.”

“But you promised!”

“I’m not going to be an ass if I did.”

Said Lee sweetly: “I don’t much care about the going down on the knees part. I’m afraid I’d laugh. Just say, ‘Will you marry me?’”