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STORIES THAT END WELL

BY OCTAVE THANET

AUTHOR OF "THE MAN OF THE HOUR," "THE LION'S SHARE,"
"BY INHERITANCE," ETC.

NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1911
The Bobbs-Merrill Company

The stories in this book were originally printed in Harper's Magazine, Harper's Bazaar, The Century Magazine, McClure's Magazine, Scribner's Magazine and The Woman's Home Companion, and to these periodicals acknowledgements are due for their courtesy in giving permission for republication.

CONTENTS

[AN ADVENTURE IN ALTRURIA]
[THROUGH THE TERRORS OF THE LAW]
[THE REAL THING]
[THE OLD PARTISAN]
[MAX—OR HIS PICTURE]
[THE STOUT MISS HOPKINS' BICYCLE]
[THE SPELLBINDER]
[THE OBJECT OF THE FEDERATION]
[THE LITTLE LONELY GIRL]
[THE HERO OF COMPANY G]
[A MIRACLE PLAY]

STORIES THAT END WELL

AN ADVENTURE IN ALTRURIA

The story came to me through my friend, Mrs. Katherine Biff. Mrs. Biff is a widow. Her profession—I will not slight her beautiful art by a lesser word—is that of cook. She cooks for my cousin, Elinor, and it was during one of Elinor's absences in Europe that Mrs. Biff had her experience in Altruria, as the supply for Miss Mercedes Van Arden. It was highly interesting, I think.

She gave me the episode herself; because, in the first place, I am Elinor's own cousin (like the rest of the world, she loves Elinor) and in the second place, she knows that I appreciate her conversation. Assuredly I do value Katy's freehand sketches of life. She is a shrewd observer. Often while she talks I recall Stevenson's description of another: "She is not to be deceived nor think a mystery solved when it is repeated."

Katy is an American by birth, but Celtic by race and by nature; a widow to whom children never were granted, but who out of her savings has helped educate and settle half a dozen of her nieces and nephews. Katy's married life was brief and not happy. The late Biff was a handsome man who never let other people's comforts or rights interfere with his own pleasure. Nevertheless, when he was killed in a saloon brawl she did not grudge him many carriages for his last journey (she who believes in simple funerals. "When I give free rides, I'll give 'em while I'm alive and can hear folks say 'Thank you!'" says she), and she has erected a neat stone to his memory.

It was three years after his death that Mrs. Biff came to Elinor, with whom she has lived since.

Elinor, one may say, bequeathed her to the Van Ardens. At least she suggested them importunately to Katy. To me she explained, "Katy is a maternal soul, and she can't help taking care of Mercy Van Arden, who is a stray angel in a wicked world and thinks she is a socialist."

We are conservative, peaceful, mid-Westerners in our town, and the only socialists belong to a class that we do not meet nor recognize save by their names in the papers published preliminary to fiery addresses delivered at not very reputable tavern halls. Therefore, to have a cultivated socialist, a young lady of wealth, who regarded her fortune as a "trust," come to live among us was exciting. Her aunt, from whom she had recently inherited her fortune, was well known to us, being a large property owner in the town. She, the late aunt, was not in the least a socialist; on the contrary, we esteemed her a particularly shrewd and merciless adept at a bargain. She had a will of her own; and considering that Miss Mercedes had borne the yoke for ten years, it was generally considered that she had earned her legacy.

Under all these conditions of interest, I admit I was glad enough to see Katy Biff's decent black hat approaching the side door the day after her entrance into the Van Arden family circle.

"Well, Miss Patsy," she began, "I guess you know she's queer; I thought I knew most of the brands of wine and women, as old Judge Howells used to say, but this one beats me! I came 'round to the yard—she's hired the Bateman place, furnished, you know, while the Batemans are towering in Canada, she and her sister, who's a doctor lady. I hope the doctor'll be a kinder balance wheel, but she's got a chore!

"As I was saying, I came 'round the yard, aiming for the kitchen door, when I heard somebody calling, and there she was opening the front door to Nellie Small. Don't you remember Nellie Small? She was the Batemans' waitress for three months—poor young things—and smashed a lot of their nice wedding presents, the other girl told me. She's the kind that always looks so fine and never dusts the hind legs of the table. I wasn't none too pleased at the sight of her, but Miss Van Arden, she was awful polite; took us both right into the parlor and made us set down. I got worried thinking she'd mistook, and I hesitate a minute and then I says:

"'Miss Van Arden, I was going 'round to the kitchen door; I've come to see about the cook's place.'

"'I know,' says she right quick, with a little lift of her pretty brown head. 'I know,' says she, 'you're Mrs. Biff, and you,' says she, smiling so pretty on that Nellie trash, 'you're Miss Small.'

"'I am,' says Nellie, tossing her head.

"So then she begins; and from that beginning, and calling us in that way, you can imagine how she went on. She explained that while she was a poor girl at her aunty's she read a lovely book about an imaginary country called Altruria; and that the gentleman who wrote it didn't think we could do that way in this country; she supposed we couldn't, but she was going to try, and she hoped we would like her and help her. She didn't know much about housekeeping; she had helped her aunty, but it was writing letters and doing errands and dusting brac-a-brac (and she laughed); the only things she knew how to do right well was to dust and to polish jewelry and make tea. But she hoped to learn; and she had got all the machinery she could think of; there was an electric washer and an ironing machine, and a dishwashing machine, and bread and cake machines, and we ought not to need to work more than eight hours a day. She didn't believe really in more than six hours a day, but at first maybe we wouldn't mind eight.

"I could see that Nellie drinking it all in, getting more topping every minute.

"'Miss Van Arden,' says she, 'how about evenings? I'm used to having all my evenings.'

"'I ain't, madam,' says I, 'not if there's dinner company. And I know well enough Nellie ain't, neither.'

"'I—I could have dinner in the middle of the day,' says Miss Van Arden real pitiful, 'if it weren't that my sister comes in tired at night and likes a hot meal; but I've got a fireless stove, and it might be cooked and left in the fireless stove and we could wait on ourselves.'

"'I guess that'll be satisfactory,' says Nellie, dipping her head and smiling a haughty smile, while I was quivering to git a word in Miss Van Arden's ear. But, of course, there was no chance. And Miss Van Arden, she went on to say that she didn't eat meat herself, but her sister liked to have it, so—'

"'I have to have meat myself,' hops in that Nellie.

"'Oh, of course,' Miss Van Arden said; she didn't dictate to others, but personally she didn't eat meat; but she didn't need any special vegetable dishes made for her.

"'You shall have 'em if you want 'em, ma'am,' says I; then, 'and I guess the cook will have something to say about the kitchen table; I ain't never much on meat myself.' I guess that was one for miss!

"'Oh, thank you,' says Miss Van Arden real grateful—she's jest as sweet's they make 'em, Miss Patsy. Then she looked very timidly at Nellie and the color came into her face.

"'I should like to have you take your meals with me if—if I were alone,' she stammers, 'but my sister—we have so little time together—we'll try not to make much waiting—' She got into a kind of mess of stammers, when I cut in and told her that we much preferred to eat in our own pantry, which was big enough for a dining-room.

"Well, you can guess, Miss Patsy, that about this time I was wishing myself well out of it all, for I've lived with notional folks before, and folks who wanted to make friends of their help, and what I like with strangers is to have them keep their side of the fence and I'll keep mine; I ain't seeking any patronage from nobody, and I got too much self-respect not to be respectful. But I'd promised Mrs. Caines; so I simply told what wages I wanted, and I made 'em reasonable, too. But Nellie—my! she named a sum two dollars a week more'n she ever'd got and four dollars more'n she was worth; and for hatred of meddling I sat still and let that poor little sweet Babe in the Woods agree to it. But I miss my guess if I have to put up with Nellie long!

"So we was engaged. Not a word about any day's work in the week or when she has sweeping done (she said she'd do the dusting herself—and she's wise, with Nellie 'round) or when she had bakings or anything; only that she'd have a laundress come in three days (eight hours a day) and do all our washing. We got a room apiece, but we haven't got a bathroom like at Mrs. Caines', so she told us we could have the guest bathroom. My! but I wish you'd heard her; and she's just the prettiest thing in the world and wears the prettiest clothes. Her clothes is all that gives me hope of her! She said she embroidered her shirt-waist herself; and I guess if she can sit up and take that amount of notice, she's got the makings of sense in her!

"She said could I come that day. I said, 'Yes, ma'am.'

"'You needn't call me that,' says she; 'I don't care for those little distinctions.'

"'If you please, ma'am,' I says, kind but firm, 'they're fitting and proper and I prefer it, ma'am.'

"Well, Miss Patsy, I got my first dinner yesterday. I even made the salad, which belongs to the waitress, but I couldn't risk Nellie Small's ideas of French dressing yet! Miss Patsy, she set her own plate at table.

"'Now,' says I, 'let's talk plain United States a minute. Whether that poor, innercent, looney lady craves our company or not, she ain't going to git it. When I'm cooking a dinner I ain't dressed up for company. I want my meals in peace, and you ought to want yours; they got their own gossip, same's us; and whatever Miss Van Arden might be willing to do, the doctor'll want to have her sister and her friends to herself without you and me butting in; just as I want my meals to myself without them!'

"Nellie told me she was just as good as them; and I said I wasn't the one that had to decide that; goodness was something only the Lord Almighty got the scales for weighing exact, but I'd bet money, if it came to sheer, imbecile cleanness of heart and willingness to sacrifice herself for any old thing, that Miss Van Arden could give us both a long start and then beat us! But I guessed we'd leave that part out. Sich things was just business. We got to take the world's we found it. So she said she wouldn't take the plate off. I said I wasn't proud; wherefore I took it off myself, and she didn't put no more on, and the sisters had their meal in peace. She come when the buzzer called her and waited fairly well—she's bright enough when she wants to be.

"Doctor? Oh, she's a horse of another color. She's ten years older'n her sister and ain't seen much of her since their parents died and Miss Mercy went to live with her aunty, and she seems to set a good deal by her and be puzzled by her, too. She's got a good appetite and knows good food. I can git along with her all right. But I mistrust that Nellie, being so half baked, we'll get our trouble soon! We've a colored man looks out for the furnace and beats the rugs and tends to the yard and does chores; he seems a decent sort of man. I got a rise out of Nellie 'bout him, though. She was just boiling and sissing when I remarked, 'You think everybody's as good as everybody else, so I expect you won't mind having Amos set down with us.' Why, she flew into fifty pieces. 'Eat with a nigger!' she screamed.

"Of course, I was only fooling, and he was glad enough to get a good meal in the laundry; he's a real nice, sensible man. But my lady was off, not so much as putting the dishes in the washing machine. Marched off with her young man, who's on strike; so he's underfoot most of the time. That kind makes me tired!"

Naturally, after this conversation with Katy I agreed with my sister that it would be interesting to call; and we planned an early day. It was, however, even earlier than our plans.

My chamber (at my sister's house, where I was visiting) is on the side near the Bateman house; and it happened to be I who first discovered the smoke volleying out of the Bateman furnace chimney, followed by a roaring spout of flame. I knew Katy had gone to our little up-town grocery, for I had seen her on the way; and I made all haste across the lawn, with all our ice-cream salt. The fire really was easily dealt with. By the time the firemen arrived (summoned by Nellie), all was over save the shouting, as they say in the political reports. Amos and Nellie were still calling "Fire!" Katy arrived a good second to the hose cart, breathless with running, but all her wits in good order.

"Long's you've put out the fire, Miss Patsey, I'll put out the fire department," said she; "they're the only danger. Miss Mercy, you open all the windows; let's git rid of the smoke. Nellie, what you carrying your clothes out for?"

Mercedes quite won our hearts by her docility and the quiet way she obeyed. Perhaps it was in recognition that Katy became her tower of refuge when the cause of the fire appeared. It was no less than Amos. He had been hired without any heartless prying into recommendations, on the ideal Altrurian ground of Need. He was asked, to be sure, could he run a furnace, and with the optimism of the African replied that he reckoned he could. He did not add that he had never tried to run one before. Doubtless it was natural that he should not discover the meaning of the cunning chains going through the floors; and when dampers increase the draft if shut and diminish it if open, who can wonder that Amos should artlessly shut everything in sight—including the registers? Natural laws did the rest.

Amos was very patient, almost tearful. He said he didn't know whatever Sally would do when he come home outen a job; Sally be'n so satisfied befo' but he didn't cast no blame on nobody. Sally, it came out later, was ill.

"Is it anything infectious?" demanded Mercedes' sister, the doctor, who by this time was on the scene.

"I dunno, ma'am; I reckon 'tis," deprecated Amos. "Hit's a right new baby, come a week ago, an' she ain't got up yit."

Then it was while Nellie glibly proposed a new man, a man of assured efficiency, two years janitor of a "flat," and the brother of a friend; and Mercedes Van Arden had only bewildered compassion to justify her desire to forgive the culprit; and Doctor Van Arden frowned, that Katy spoke the word of power.

"Doctor," said she, "Amos mayn't know much about the furnace, but he's a decent, honest man that found my ten cents out on the steps and gave it to me; and I know how to run furnaces, and I'll learn him. What's more, I can burn up all the coal, and not smoke up the house or the neighborhood. And one good thing—if Amos can't run a furnace, he knows it now, anyhow; there's many a janitor man's been smoking up flats for years ain't found out that yet. Doctor, I'll answer for Amos if you ladies will keep him."

Amos was kept. I fancied that Mercedes was almost as grateful as he.

After this for a time matters went on in a sufficiently prosaic and satisfactory manner. We put both of the sisters up in the Monday Club and the doctor consented to talk to the club on the "Smoke Nuisance" at our meeting in which we discussed that bane of the housekeeper, under the startling caption, "The City of Dreadful Night." We asked Mercedes to embody her own Social Creed in a fifteen-minute paper; but she pleaded almost with tears that she was simply a student who had not studied enough to know, only to feel; and she blushed deeply. So she was reprieved. Meanwhile the doctor (who had been quietly working up a practise in our town for six years) began to be seen at the bedsides of divers prominent ladies.

Several of us asked the sisters to luncheon, to dinner and to bridge parties. In return, the sisters entertained the club at tea, a function whereat Katy covered herself with glory, and Nellie graciously consented to pass plates and listen and break two heavy Colonial goblets—Nellie was slim and light on her feet, but she surely had a heavy hand.

Katy came over to borrow our monkey wrench the next morning because Nellie and the friend whom she had recommended to assist in waiting, had contrived to loosen a water faucet. She was brimming with criticisms of this last helper, as well as of Nellie.

"Did she stay to help wash dishes?" Thus she let her suppressed disgust explode. "Well, I should say! And got extry pay for staying, too, and had her young man in for supper afterward; and the things she gave him to carry away, the fancy candies with bow-knots on them, and the cakes with roses, and the marionglasyes! And when I spoke up to her she claimed Miss Mercy told her to—and there's no saying, maybe she did! Her young man's on strike; he's at the locomotive works; she claims he gits four-fifty a day and he's striking for more, I expect; he's been on strike six weeks now, and he comes here to meals four times a week and eats—well, Miss Mercy said, 'Make him welcome,' so I do; but I own to you, Miss Patsy, something I feel real bad about. That young Mr. Gordon, it's his pa is president of the works; he's a real nice young man jest out of Harvard College, and he met Miss Mercy in Chicago and went 'round a lot with her, and I made up my mind and Nellie made up hers—and she ain't a fool, Nellie, for all she's so flighty—that they were going to make a match of it; but Nellie got Miss Mercy to promise she'd go speak to old Mr. Gordon about the strike; Miss Mercy's got a awful lot of stock herself, in the works; and I dunno the rights of it, but I'm sure those young things had words! It's a bitter black shame, too, it is, dragging that poor child in! Doctor don't like it any more than I do. And poor little Miss Mercy, she's scared to death; but that won't stop her; the more it hurts, the more she is sure she had ought to do it."

I didn't think little Miss Van Arden could move old Mr. Gordon's convictions; but it was true that she was the largest individual stockholder in the works, and hence she might make trouble with the wavering minds, certainly trouble enough to irritate the president, who was a sterling, but not always a patient man.

"They want to run the works as a closed shop, don't they?" I asked.

"Jest that. Miss Mercy, if she is a reforming lady, she ain't arrergant like most sich; and she asked me what I thought about the strike. She got my opinion of it cold. 'There's strikes and strikes,' says I. 'Strikes for higher wages may be right or wrong, as depends, but a strike for the right to keep every other man but your gang out of a job is bound to be wrong. I ain't no sympathy with any kind of closed shops, whether the bosses close 'em to union men, or the union men close 'em to everybody 'cept themselves.'"

The next day I saw the little Socialist's white, miserable face go by my window with Katy's solid cheer at her elbow. She had agreed to see Mr. Gordon first before she appeared at the board meetting, and (as Katy put it) "poured coal oil on the fire to put it out." Of course, there was a useless journey. Mr. Gordon felt moved to utter certain pet opinions of his own regarding the ease of making mischief when ignorant people interfered in business. If it was any comfort to her to know that she was giving him an infernal lot of trouble she could take it all right; but he had to do right according to his own conscience, and not hers, and he wished her good-morning. Very limp and dejected she departed.

"'The worst of it is,' she says to me, Katy related, 'the worst of all is, while I believe he ought to do what the men want rather than keep up the strike, I don't really feel sure they ought to want him to do it. It's so hard on the outside men.' Oh, she's got some sense straying about her, though it's mainly lost to view. But I do wish she could make it up with her beau. He ain't been 'round for a week; and when folks ain't got a meat diet they can't stand the strain of being crossed in love!"

Even Katy's Celtic loyalty was staggered the next week. She came over on a perfectly needless borrowing errand to tell me.

"Did you see it, ma'am? Being my afternoon out, I wasn't there. Did you see that woman tumble down on our grass and herself run out with Amos and Mrs. Kane?" (Mrs. Kane was the laundress, who acted also as scrubwoman once a week, Nellie's health not being equal to the weekly cleaning required in a tidy household.) "Did you see it? I began to sniff the minute I struck the hall. My word! I knowed it. Then I begun to hear the groans—'O-o-ah! O-o-ah!' mumbling, grumbling kind of groans—I didn't need anything more to get next to that situation, no, ma'am. Mrs. Kane come tumbling down-stairs. You know her, Miss Patsy, Tim Kane's widow, a fair-to-middling laundress and next door to a fool about everything else. Jest the kind that gits a good husband like Timothy and then fools away the money he leaves her and has to come on the wash tub. Down-stairs she comes—wild! The poor woman, they'd seen her fall outside, and Miss Mercy and she'd taken her in on a mattress with Amos to help; Amos wanted to call the amberlance, but Miss Mercy said no, they'd take her to the police; so they three took the poor creature into the house. And 'Oh, hear her groan!' I said, yes, she was easy to hear. I guess Amos felt all right; but you know niggers are biddable, and whatever they think, the creatures do like they're told.

"Well, I walked up-stairs. She was there in the guest chamber on one of the twin beds with the flowery card, 'Sleep gently in this quiet room,' etcetery, over the towsledest head and sech skirts! She'd been having a time for sure. Herself had put a wet ice bandage on the woman's head and a hot-water bag to her feet, and she was a-laying her hands, her own pretty, soft, little, white, trembling hands, to her awful shoes, but says I:

"'You stop! Don't you tech her!'

"'I must,' says she; 'they're soaked.'

"'Don't you see what's the matter of her?' say I. 'She's dead drunk!'

"I reckoned she'd deny it. Not a bit. 'I suppose so,' says she; 'that's why I wouldn't let them call the amberlance.'

"'And do you mean to keep her here?' says I. 'That drunken rubbish?'

"Well, she does; she was awful sorry for the trouble to us, but the woman fell down at her door, and she was in dire misery, and Miss Mercy she felt she had got to take her in. My word, Miss Patsy, I had to shet my teeth a minute to keep back my feelings, but every word I said was: 'I guess you better move that other bed out and then you can burn this one!' Heavens, I ain't going to describe the next hour till the doctor come. Now, she's laying comfortable in the doctor's gown, in that nice clean bed, and I've made her chicken broth and mustard plasters and everything else for her comfort.

"When the doctor come, she said, 'This goes the limit,' and then she bit off the rest and swallered it and said, 'We'll have to scrub her.' And we did—with washing powder and scouring soap. I hope it hurt, but I'm 'fraid it didn't."

"How does Nellie take it?"

The sorely tried Mrs. Biff grinned. "'Tis that keeps me from quite sinking; she is most dretful horrified and vowing she's going to leave."

However, Nellie did not go; it was the castaway whom they had succored who awoke in her right mind before any one was stirring the next morning, clothed herself, for lack of her own rags (which were airing in the back yard), in a decent brown dress, cloak and hat of the doctor's from the guest-room closet, put on the doctor's large, serviceable boots, and gathering the loose silver and three one-dollar banknotes left in Katy's cash box, otherwise her "cup" from the pantry shelf, departed into the unknown nether world from whence she came.

"And a mercy she didn't murder us in our beds!" opined Nellie; "maybe she will yet!"

Nellie's prophecy appeared less grotesque the following week when her young man, Phil, by Christian name—I did not come to know his surname—discovered at the police station or the engine house (he frequenting both places in his wealth of leisure) that the castaway had escaped from a quarantined house full of smallpox, in a little hamlet near by. Here was a situation! Nellie vowed she wouldn't sleep a wink were she Mrs. Kane or Amos, particularly Amos, because colored folk took naturally to smallpox.

Amos only grinned; but Mrs. Kane was palpably nervous and began inquiring into symptoms of what Nellie termed "the dread disease."

Presently she was feeling them faithfully. And Katy shrugged the shoulder of scorn. But scorn turned into consternation by Monday, for an agitated neighbor came to the front door to announce that Mrs. Kane was sick in bed with an awful fever and broke out terrible, and would the doctor please step over there.

"And all the clothes in the suds!" sighed Katy. "But that's nothing. Poor Miss Mercy! she's almost out of her mind; she says that she's to blame; she's brought smallpox on that innocent woman, and most like she'll die; and if she hadn't been so wicked and headstrong and had listened to her friend (she didn't name nobody, but I know she means young Gordon) and her sister, it wouldn't have happened; she hadn't even helped the woman who fetched the smallpox; she'd only tempted her to crime! And what should she say to poor Mrs. Bateman? Nobody wanted to rent her home to be a pest-house. And she'd set the house afire by hiring an ignorant man—Oh, she was a wicked girl! Her aunty often told her she was a fool, and oh, why hadn't she believed her and not tried to do things too big for her senseless head? And she's been fairly crying her eyes out. The poor, sweet, humble-minded little thing!"

Poor little Mercy! But I was to pity her much more during the succeeding ten minutes. Amos came out to the barberry hedge to tell our cook that Miss Mercy was in bed and he 'lowed she'd smallpox. He was off in pursuit of the doctor, who was at Mrs. Kane's who'd got a fearful bad case. Hardly was Amos out of sight than Nellie, in her cheap imitation of the latest fashion of big hat, dashed out of the gate after the street car. So do rats desert the sinking ship, I thought. Straightway I went over to the house. Katy herself answered the bell. She was in two minds about ejecting me by force, but she softened when I recalled to her how recently I had been vaccinated.

"Well, Miss Patsy, that's so," she admitted, "and besides, I ain't absolutely sure 'tis smallpox. But she'd a kinder chill and I wouldn't let her come down-stairs. Say, you don't happen to have seen Nellie anywhere?"

When I told her, she drew a long sigh. We were standing at the side door, where a great Norway fir shakes its blue-green shadows.

"'Tis like her," said Katy bitterly, "and only yesterday Miss Mercy gave her sech a pretty waist. And now she's run off and Miss Mercy's got the smallpox—mebbe. Well, I dunno as it's as dangerous as Alterruria, and mebbe one will cure the other—Oh, say! Look, Miss Patsy!"

I looked. They came in a kind of rush with the flutter of brilliant autumn leaves, swirling around the house corner—Nellie and young Ralph Gordon. Nellie's cheeks were blazing, but young Gordon looked white and stern.

"Why, Nellie Small, ain't you run away?" cried Katy.

Before Nellie could retort, the young gentleman took the limelight.

"Where is Miss Mercy?" he demanded in that tone of voice which the novelists call "tense;" "I must say a few words to her. You can let me say them through the door, if you wish, Mrs. Biff."

Katy hardly considered; her eyes shone into his masterful face. She turned on her heel and he followed her. Instantly Nellie's excitement found burning words: "I heard her, Miss McFarlin! She thinks I ran away! Me! Well, I know she has a mean opinion of me, but I didn't expect she'd be that unjust. I'm jest as fond of Miss Mercy as she is; I only sprinted down the street to ketch her young man, because I know they had a misunderstanding, and I was sure, no matter how mad he was, the minute I told him, he'd come a-running, and whether they let her see him or not, it would cheer her up a whole lot to know he tried. And as for Mrs. Biff's pitying Miss Mercy and finding fault with her, I can tell you she's made me believe things Mrs. Biff nor nobody else could if she offered me the kingdom of heaven and a chromo! I never believed before rich folks could be like her. I don't know what that Altrury of hers is, but if she believes in it I'm going to; and so is Phil, and he's going to make them stop the strike, too; and it's a whole lot because of what she's said and what I've said 'bout her. It is, for fair!"

Thereupon Nellie burst into tears, and disappeared behind the kitchen lattice.

Later, some hours later, I had a chance to tell Katy. But it was then no news to her. She shook her philosophic head. "'Lightning and grace,' Biff used to say, 'you can't noways bet on, for there's no manner of knowing where they'll strike.' Now that Nellie, she fairly bu'st into Miss Mercy's room, me being busy seeing Mr. Gordon safe outer the house; and I expected to find she'd riz Miss Mercy's temperature; but she'd most cured her instid; and Miss Mercy she set up and laffed out loud. And she ain't got smallpox, neither, not a bit; no more'n that ijit Sallie Kane, who's down with German measles and nothing wuss. I guess we was all more scared than hurt. But it beats all about Nellie—well, I want to be fair to all, she's been doing the sweeping better for a good while. All I say is, if Alterruria can convert Nellie Small there must be something decent in Alterruria."

"I wish it might convert all of us—a little," said I. "I'm afraid I'm not enlightened enough to desire entire conversion; it would demand a new incarnation!"

THROUGH THE TERRORS OF THE LAW

A STORY OF ARKANSAS

Sist' Esmeralda Humphreys was not present at the meeting of Zion Hard-shell Baptist Church. It is questionable whether there had been any such meeting had she been likely to attend, since how to dispense with the ministry of Sister Humphreys was its object, and the sister was a woman of power. But she had gone to the store for her semi-annual settlement of account. Therefore the disaffected in Zion raised their heads, perceiving that their hour was come.

The "church-house" (of a week-day the school-house) crowned a gentle rise of ground on the outskirts of an Arkansas plantation. It was backed by the great gum forests, where the sun rose, while on one side, winding toward the reddening evening skies, the cypress slash had eaten its way through the brown clay to the Black River. Full of mystery and uncanny beauty was the slash, its sluggish gleam of water creeping darkly under solemn cypresses and monstrous hackberry-trees, tinseled with cow-lilies in summer, spattered with blood-red berries in winter, green with delicate beauty when the cypress is in leaf, or gray and softly brown when its short-lived foliage falls. Did one care to deal in mystical analogy, one might find in the slash suggestions of the African's undeveloped soul, where brute and child still battle for mastery.

It was a school-house for children of the darker race only, and only negroes were in the little band whose hymns penetrated the wide sweep of cotton-fields, the weird African cadences wilder and more mournful than the hoot-owl's oboe keening in the forest. To-night the house was but sparsely filled by the regular worshipers, Zion congregation proper. Brother Zubaeel Morrow presided, because he had once attended a district Republican convention, where he had imbibed parliamentary lore.

"Dis meetin' will please come to ordah," he announced; "is you-all ready fo' de question?"

"W' are question, Bruddah Morrow?" called out a brother in the rear seats.

"Bruddah Carroll, you is out of ordah. Whenst I git in dis cheer an take dis gabble,"—he extended the hatchet used, before its promotion, to chop kindling,—"take notice, I is de Cheer; you-all is to 'dress me as 'Mist' Cheerman.' You is axin' 'bout de question: de question is, Shall Sist' Esmereldy Humphreys continner to usu'p de rights of we-alls pastor? Ain't dat the onderstandin' of dis here awjence?"

Signs of approval and assent came from the audience. The chairman, rising, took the attitude of the white speaker whom he had admired most at the convention, plunging one hand into the bosom of his coat—buttoned for that purpose—and gazing solemnly about him. All the colored population of the country-side were proud of the school-house, which was painted a neat lead color as to wood-work and brown as to walls; with red lettering done by a member who had followed the painter's trade (although not very far), declaring piously on the west wall, "The Lord will provide," and politely requesting on the east wall, "Please do not spit on the floor." A stately blackboard behind the teacher's desk showed her excellent moral sentiments and penmanship. There was no carpet on the floor, but it was clean and the windows glistened.

"Dis yere school-house, dis yere chu'ch-house, are a credit to de cullud ladies an' gen'l'men of Zion Baptis' Chu'ch," declaimed Brother Morrow, sonorously, "an' we-all had orter have a pastor who w'u'd—we'd correspond. I ain't sayin' one word of disparaguement of our late deseased pastor. He be'n a good, pious man" ("Amen!" from two half-grown lads in the rear), "but he had a terrible sight of losses an' troubles, losin' all of his chillen like he done; an' him sick such a spell befo' de Lawd called him f'om grace to glory. Mabbe he didn't be'n eloquent like the supply we had, but Elder W'ite had nare right to git Sist' Lucy Tompkins to run 'way wid 'im, f'om 'er good, kin', respectable husban'" (a little crumpled, elderly negro raised his head with an air of modest pride), "an' he done borry two dollars an' fifty cents of de cheer dat I don't expec' nothin' of ontwel de jedgment day! So w'en our pastor passed away we'all was like sheep outen a shepherd; an' we'en Sist' Humphreys done offah to keep de' chu'ch-house clean an' cyah on de services of Zion, an' make no cha'ges, we-all acceptid."

"Mist' Cheerman,"—a grizzled negro in decent black held up a finger,—"Mist' Cheerman, was hit Sist' Humphreys keep dis 'ouse dis away?"

"Yes, Bruddah Moore; she are a right good scrubber," admitted the chairman, while the congregation stared at the speaker, the richest colored man in the county, who had moved into the neighborhood recently, this being his first appearance in Zion.

"Fo' a spell," continued the chairman, "t'ings went on suspiciously enough. Sist' Humphreys be'n an edicated lady; an' she is a plumb good cook. Her preachin' didn't be'n whut we-all air longin' to heah; nare shakin' of de soul ovah de mouf of hell, nare mo'nin', nare revivals; but we hilt our peace, an' Zion attendid regular, an' las' socherable gatherin' there be'n nigh a hunderd, big an' little, presint—"

"And she gave us all cake and candy and lemonade with ice in it!" a woman's mellow voice called out.

The heads of the congregation went round in the direction of the voice, and a large number of rolling black eyes stared at the school-teacher, whose comely brown face showed that deepening of tint which is the same as an Anglo-Saxon's blush. "Teacher" had been educated at Tuskegee and was suspected of being "biggity."

The chairman gave her a gloomy nod. "No doubt, my sistah, no doubt hankerin' ayfter de flesh-pots of Egypt done fotch some po' sinnahs t' de altar. I ain't complainin' of de carnil an' carniferous food she done give us, but of de spitichul nu'ishment. I nev' did see a mo'ner rollin' on dis flo' w'ilst Sist Humphreys be'n yere. We-all be'n thirstin' an' famishin' fo' a good ol'-time revival. But we enjured ontwel one day de glory come on Br'er Pope, an' he hollered,—tryin' to lif' us all up,—Amen! Amen! Let de sinner quit sinnin' an' he shill be saved!' An' dat ar woman she call out: 'Yes; let 'im quit sinnin'! Let 'im quit sellin' of aigs to de sto' w'en he don't be keepin' only one hen!' Dat ar remark incinerated false an' wicked notions 'bout Unc' Alick Pope, who lives nigh de cunnel's chicken-yard." (A solitary giggle from the shoolmistress.) "She done fa'ly r'ar an' charge 'bout chicken-stealin'. Dat ain't promote edderfication nor good feelin'." (Groans of assent from a deeply interested audience.) "But nex' Sabbath come wuss. She done announce she be'n 'lowin' to preach us a serious discourse on de Ten Commandmints. Well, we-all done look dem commandmints up an' study on dem a heap. We felt tol'able secure on de Fust an' Second, she lumpin' dem togedder fo' one out at preachin'; an' we sat back easy, hopin' fo' grace an' true religion; but she jes slued roun' on to conjure-cha'ms an' such, invagin' ag'in' dem twell we got all de devotional feelin' plumb squoze outen us. Third Commandmint we natchelly didn't expec' no harm of; but ayfter de fust godly words 'bout profane sw'arin', ef she didn't git on to false sw'arin' befo' the gran' jury, 'bout crap-shootin', en git us all terrible oncomfortable. Nex' command she didn't be'n sound on, sayin' a heap 'bout washin' up in tubs Sattiddy nights, an' tew little 'bout de spitichul ovservation of the holy day; an' come down hard on a respectid brother who sayd once, 'I isn't to wash in winter'; an' sayd bad wuds 'bout sisters dat went visitin' Sattiddy evenin's, stidder washin' up ready fo' de holy day; sayd some sisters nev' did wash de po' little tricks' shirts, jes' taken a new flour-sack an' cut holes in it. She talked like dat ontwel it be'n right ondecent and onchristian; an' one sister dat's subjec' to fits providenchelly done t'rowed one an' bruk up de meetin'. But we-all sorter done spunk up on de Fif' Commandmint; looked lak hit be'n sho' harmliss; an' we done fotch de chillen to learn deir juty to deir parents. Well, dey sho' got it! But den she done scorched de parents mightily 'bout de 'zample dey be'n bleeged to set de chillen. Dat ar be'n a fearful, sufferin' hour, an' I nev' did see dis yere congregation so dry an' havin' to git out de pump so often. Dey went by whole famblies; an' befo' she be'n frow mighty nigh ever' las' chil' b'en taken outside. We didn't dast let 'em see frow it." (Groans all over the house.) "She nigh bust de chu'ch on de Sixth Commandmint wid outrageous rema'ks on razors. An' nex' Sunday comes de Seventh Commandmint, an' we ain't nowise willin to enjure her handlin' of dat, nohow." (Deep groans of assent from brothers and sisters alike.) "Nor de Eight', neider." ("No, no!" from the seat of Uncle Alexander Pope.) "Wust is, de ongodly outside, de Methodists an' de cullud folks from de Ridge, is fixin' to come over an' see we-all ripped up. De chu'ch house be'n plumb full ever' Sabbath, an' we-all don' dast stay 'way, not knowin' what scandillous stories will be circulated." ("Dat's so!" "Holp, Lord!" from earnest souls in the audience.) "An' de chu'ch is losin' of members. Bruddah Dan Williams done moved away." ("No, sah, no, he ain't; he b'en sent to de pen!") "I didn't say how come he moved, Brudder Carroll; he are gone. Unc' Jim Hollis done 'bandon his crop. Aunt Caledonia Ray lef' las' week 'count of injur'us reflections 'bout a mince pie she done mix up by mistake wid de week's wash she taken fum de big house. We done pled wid Sist' Humphreys to quit; but she won't quit. Now de question am: How shill we git saved f'om Sist' Humphreys an' git a preacher will preach religion—an' nuffin else?"

Amid a deep hum of applause Brother Morrow sat down. Half a dozen voices begged for attention; but the chair recognized Sister Susannah Belle Coffin. Sister Susannah was of exceeding comeliness and a light-brown complexion. If report spake truly, there was no one in Zion who had more reason to dread a fearless and minute exposition of the demands of the Seventh Commandment. She had started her career as a destroyer of domestic peace with a capital of good looks, a gift for cookery, a voice of silver, and two small unpremeditated children. "A single pussen like me wid two chillen," would be her plaintive excuse for demanding the good offices of the brothers in cutting wood or "palin' in her gyardin"; and too often, under the spell of Susannah's eyes and Susannah's voice and Susannah's cooking, the end of an innocent neighborly kindness was a jealous wife and a "parting." Sometimes Susannah wedded the departing husband, sometimes she flouted him; but steadily, single or wedded, Susannah's little garden-plot grew more beautiful, Susannah's kitchen range accumulated a more dazzling array of tin and copper, and Susannah's best room was more splendidly bedecked with curtains, pillow-shams, and a gilt mirror.

At present speaking, the dark enchantress was the lawful wedded wife of the young blacksmith, and the whole plantation had admired to see her enter the holy estate in white Swiss muslin and a voluminous veil which she utilized, later, as a window-curtain. She now inquired with much pleasing modesty of mien: "I jes want to ask, Mist' Cheerman, how're we-all to git Sist' Humphreys to go if she don' wanter?"

Sighs, allied to groans, bore testimony that she had voiced the forebodings of the audience. But a visiting brother who had the courage of his non-residence, came to the front; he suggested that a letter be sent to the sister, announcing the sense of the meeting, saying that the congregation was not edified by her ministrations and that the church-house would be closed until a new pastor had been selected.

"De motion, as de cheer un'erstands it, are to dismiss Sist' Esmeraldy Humphreys an' shet de do's on her," said the chairman. "Is—what is it, Sist' Macklin?"

He spoke kindly, and the woman whom he addressed seemed in need of kindness, since she was trembling visibly. She was a little creature in the pathetic compromise for mourning which poverty makes with grief—her accustomed winter jacket of brown, but with a somber garnishment of crape, black ribbons on her old gray hat, and a black border to her handkerchief.

The congregation looked at her, pityingly, as she began in the high-pitched voice of the unaccustomed speaker:

"Bruddah Morrow—I mean Bruddah Cheerman, I are right mortified Sist' Humphreys done chastice you all; but I jest got to b'ar my testimony you-all are mistaken 'bout her bein' crool. Oh, dear bruddahs an' sistahs, she ain't! You-all knows my—my boy"—she choked over the word, and the hearers waited in mute and awkward compassion, because her boy, the last of her children, had been hanged at the little county-seat only a month before for the murder of his wife—"my boy w'u'dn't repent; he w'u'dn't do nuffin but cuss de woman dat fotch him dar an' den nebber so much look at him. I spen' ever' las' cent I had on earth to try git him off, an' I taken de jail wash, I did, to be nigh 'im an' mabbe git him a bite like he's uster to eat; but he w'u'dn't paht lips wid me; sayd I be'n a good mudder to him, but he didn't want to h'ar me beggin' an' pleadin' wid 'im to repent an' make peace wid God. Oh, I did be'n in de brack water, wadin' deep! Look laak I c'u'dn't enjure hit nohow. I reckon I does nebber be able to see so well 'cause I cry so stiddy dem days. An' all de cry of my po' ol' hairt be'n, 'O Lawd, I don' no mo' ax you to save his life, but, O Lawd, don' let 'im die cussin'! Fotch 'im 'ome! I kin b'ar hit to have 'im go, if he sho' goes whar he kin be good an' be happy an' be safe; fo' I does know dat boy nev' did aim to be mean.' An' w'en my hairt be'n broke wid longin' an' mis'ry, Sist' Humphreys she come. She done holp me all fru; an' now she went to my boy; he hatter see her. I don' know w'at she say; but she come back to me an' say, 'Praise God, dat po' sinnah hab foun' peace an' joy—an' he want his mudder!' An' I did come. An' he putt his po' haid on my knees jes lak w'en he be'n a li'le boy an' uster laff 'bout de big kin'lin'-pile he allers keep fo' his mammy. An' Sist' Humphreys, some way she git dem jailer-men be so kin' an' tender to 'im, lak I cayn't noways tell. An' he did die happy. De Lawd sustain him, an' he sustain me. Blessed be de name of de Lawd, an' blessed be dat 'oman dat is his ministah!"

She sank down in her seat and wept quietly, while the impressionable African temperament sent forth pious ejaculations: "Holp, Lawd!" "Fotch comfort!" "Bless de mo'nahs!" The schoolmistress was in tears, and the stalwart young man near her openly wiped his eyes. Brother Moore bent his brows; even Brother Morrow winked hard: but Sister Susannah's emotion was most in evidence; she was sobbing violently into a pink-embroidered handkerchief. Presently she rose to her feet. Now Susannah was the woman who had lured the wretched murderer through a brutal passion to a brutal crime, and the eyes of the congregation were focused upon her.

"Bruddahs, sistahs," said Susannah, in her wonderful voice, with its chords of plaintive music, which made her hearers grin out of sheer emotion, "I nev' did aim to do dat po' young man hurt; but he sayd t'ings to me, t'ings"—she sighed and hung her head—"he hadn't orter have sayd, him bein' a married man; an' I be'n right mad at him, an' I own up I done him right onchristian an' onmussiful, for I didn't show no sympathy or even go see 'm hanged. Now, I do repent. But it ain't nare preachin' of Sist' Humphreys done give me a brokin an' a contrary hairt. Her scorchin' don' make me mo'n. Hit cakes up my hairt. She nev' did have one single revival. Rev. Bulkely of de Ridge he does have a mighty big one ever' spring; you kin hear de screeches 'mos' a mile! He tol' me hisse'f he w'u'd be willin' to minister a spell to dis sorely tried flock, an', mo'-ovah, he tol' me dat we-all c'u'dn't have Sist' Humphreys nor no woman preach to us; for it be'n ag'in' de rule of de Baptis' Chu'ch. Hit be'n forbid. We cayn't be Baptis' an' keep Sist' Humphreys."

With meek grace Susannah resumed her seat and the sheltering support of the blacksmith's arm. She had won. Now that a way of escape was opened,—a way, moreover, ending in a dazzling vista of a "big revival,"—no sympathy for the Widow Macklin could induce Zion to face the fiery chariots of the Seventh Commandment driven by Sister Humphreys.

In spite of the schoolmistress' eloquence and the stumbling speech of two boys who tried to tell that Sister Humphreys had done a heap for them, when the vote was put, only six of the forty-eight persons present voted to retain the preacher. Brother Moore declined to vote.

Susannah watched the downcast faces of Sister Humphreys' supporters through her half-shut eyes and smiled her languid, mysterious smile.

But of a sudden one of the two striplings who had spoken for Sister Humphreys left his place by the window and ran to the door.

With instant premonition of peril, the flock of Zion turned on the benches. A deep intake of breath signified their dismay as there entered a tall brown woman in widow's weeds. She cast a calm, full eye over the faces under the lamplights—faces already stricken awry with fear; for, notwithstanding their numbers and apparent strength of position, dread of the pastor insisted, as light insists through closed eyelids.

Sister Humphreys walked with no pause to the platform. Brother Morrow was so short a man and she was so tall a woman that her handsome head towered above his. She was a brown negro, but her lighter color and her regular features and thinner, more sensitive lips were due to no admixture of white blood; they came from a dash of the yellow races mixed long before her time in the Old World, where her ancestors were barbaric princes. She stood with the incomparable grace that is given sometimes to the bearer of burdens, tall, erect, shapely. She spoke in a mellow rich voice not raised a note above its speaking tone.

"Is this heah a meetin'?" gently interrogated Sister Humphreys of Brother Morrow, "or have you-all done aju'ned?"

"We done aju'ned, sistah," Brother Morrow replied quickly, flinching from a possible trap.

"In that case," Sister Humphreys argued at once, "will you kindly take you' seat an' let me speak fo' de las' time to Zion Baptis' Chu'ch?"

It was impossible to refuse a hearing. Brother Morrow shuffled into a lower seat.

"My people,"—a vague, incomprehensible thrill of apprehension and magnetic fascination stirred the attentive faces, all save the widow Macklin's; hers was bent on her own withered, toil-crooked hands while she prayed,—"I want to say, first, that I nev' did aim to keep on hu'tin' you' feelin's. But I am 'bleeged to save you' souls. You-all know how my po' husban' toiled an' prayed. Thar's ol' people who loved him an' followed his teachin's, but they went to their reward, an' he was lef' with a generation of young niggers who feared neither God nor man nor the grand jury—lying, stealing, with no more morals than pigs an' no great cleaner. It broken my po' ol' man's heart, so he hadn't no strength to stand the breast complaint, so he died. The last night I heard him praying for you, an' I come to him. When he looked up at me I knowed I couldn't hold him; I knowed he ain't never again goin' look up at me with the light in his eyes an' the love in his smile like he looked then. An' I sayd to him, 'Silas, honey, don' you worry 'bout that there wuthless flock of yours. I'll save 'em. I know the way. I sho' do!' An' he believed me; because of his believing me his end was peace. So you see, my people, I am 'bleeged to save you. I tol' him I know the way; I do know it. You' pastor, who is a saint in heaven, done used always the ways of gentleness. He preached the love of God, an' you swallered it down, smiling and happy; an' it ain't done you-all no mo' good than stick candy does do a person that done taken poison an' needs wahm water an' mustard. What you-all needed didn't be'n loving kindness, but the terrors of the law, an' not strained, neider. An' if it takes the las' day of my pilgrimage, you'll git 'em till you begin to repent an' show works meet for repentence. But when you begin to repent, the word of mercy will come. 'Cause when the prodigal son be'n a long way off, his father come a-runnin' to him. Now, hark to me: I went this evening to the cunnel. He explained to me about the Baptis' dis-cip-line." (A ripple of excitement in the audience.) "In consequence, this chu'ch will hereayfter be the Methodis' Zion Chu'ch. That is why I am speaking fo' the las' time to Zion Baptis' Chu'ch. Ayfter to-night there won't be no Zion Baptis' Chu'ch. There ain't no great difference in doctrine, an' the dis-cip-line is more convenient. Any brother or sister desiring it, an' not in danger of catching col', can be immersed. The cunnel an' I done talked this over; an' he done rented this chu'ch-house to me. If the congregation ain't satisfied, they got to take to the woods. I also got one word mo' to say: it is that the work of grace in this community is a right smart hampered by the evil doings of Sister Susannah Coffin."

Susannah and her husband were both on their feet, both ready to speak; but something in the attitude of the figure on the platform to which the long lines of the mourning-veil gave a strange suggestion of sibylline dignity, held speech away from them. Solemnly and not with any anger, Sister Humphreys' eyes searched the eyes of the man and woman before her, while the spectators held their breath. "Wherefo' it is bettah ever' way," she said slowly, "that both her an' her husband go out from us fo'evermo'. Bruddah Coffin, the cunnel has got another blacksmith, an' you ain't got no mo' reason fo' stayin' on longer. And as fo' you, Sister—"

"I won't go!" shrilled Susannah, hysterically weeping; it was with no pretense now. "You cayn't fo'ce me!"

"You will go, Sister, fo' you don' wanter lose the young man you got now. You will go; an' you will take him along of you; an' you will go so far he cayn't heah no word of my sermons. Go in peace."

Susannah faced about, writhing between fear and rage. "You cowards! you ornery, pusillanimous cowards!" she flung back at the gaping black faces. "You putt on dog when she ain't heah, but minute she lif's her han', you cayn't make a riffle! Ba-h-h! S-sh!" she hissed at them like a cat or a snake. "Come on, you fool nigger!" she jeered, pulling at her bewildered husband's collar; and in this sorry fashion, but still with her head high, she left Zion for ever.

"An' now," concluded Sister Esmeralda Humphreys sedately, "let us all try fo' to lead a bettah life. I shall preach nex' Sunday on the Seventh Commandment, an' all them that feels they have broke that commandment is at free liberty to stay away. I shall expec' to see all the res' of you, even if 'tis fallin' weader. Let us all sing befo' we go:

"'Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above.'"

Brother Moore arose. "Sist' Humphreys," he announced, "you got de right kin' o' gospil light in you. I cayn't jine in the singin' 'cause since I got my store teef I ain't be'n able to cyar' a chune; but I want to do sumfin de wuk er grace; an' I got up to say dat de nex' socherble gatherin' I'll donate de lemons."

"Dis meetin' accep's with t'anks," shouted Brother Morrow. "Now, le's show our beloved pastor the clouds is swep' away! All sing!"

And never had so noble a burst of melody wakened the echoes along the moonlit road as that which made the colonel outside turn, smiling, in his saddle.

"She didn't need me," he mused. "Well, so much the better. I reckon they need a good despot, and they've got one, all right."

THE REAL THING

The club had gone, save only the guest of the afternoon and a few friends of the hostess, who lingered to congratulate her. It had been a most successful meeting. The guest who had spoken was the president of a southern club. The hearers were warm in their praises of the leisurely music of her southern voice, the charm of her southern manner, so simple and direct and sympathetic, her beauty, her grace, even of the finish of her toilet. She had handled a weighty subject with a light touch (it was the child labor of the south), and her husband being a very large manufacturer, she had spoken out of experience as well as theory. Moreover, she had shown a luminous common sense and a tolerant humor such as did not always brighten such serious themes; and not only the earnest students of the club, but the more flippant members, were aroused to an unusual and captivated attention. Now they were loath to let her go; pressing about, tarrying amid the teacups, and only reluctantly faring forth as the maids appeared to remove the wreckage of the feast. The hostess sank, weary but elated, into a chair by Miss Clymer, the secretary, as the last silken skirt rustled away. Mrs. Waite, the president, who was dallying with socialism, had evidently introduced her new pet to the visitor, who listened politely.

"After all," suggested Mrs. Clymer, more from the amiable design of steering the conversation within safe limits than out of any craving to exploit her own views, "after all, do we really know how these people feel? Is there one of us, for example, who ever had an intimate friend among them, a woman who worked with her hands?"

"Madelaide Dunbar told me once," remarked the youngest club member, "that she was fonder of her maid than of most of her friends."

"Which maid?" inquired another. "The one who took her pearl necklace?"

"Nobody took those pearls; Madelaide hid them herself, and forgot all about it, and then found them in her soiled-handkerchief bag! But it wasn't that one. This one had a little wave to her nose and her eyes were near together."

"Is she with Madelaide now?"

"I think she married. Madelaide was buying teaspoons the other day, and asking for rather light weight—maybe they were for her wedding present."

The South Carolinian smothered a smile. "Madelaide doesn't exactly count," said the hostess.

A new voice took up the theme, a sweet, rather diffident voice, to which, nevertheless, the circle listened with an attention that was almost distinction. She who spoke had been born in the little mid-Western city, and there she had spent her early youth, but she had married a rich man of the East, and was only a visitor to-day. The Ridgelys were people of importance; and Constance Ridgely, the only child, who never went to parties with boys, and only paid visits with her mother, and finally disappeared into vistas of fashion and intimacy with the peerage, was a person of mark. The more, that no splendid transformation had altered her affection for the town, or her gentle, almost shy modesty of manner. She flushed slightly now as she spoke. "The best, the dearest girl friend I ever had, used to work with her hands," said she.

The sudden silence was almost the dumbness of dismay; but the hostess sprang nimbly to the rescue with a murmur of "How picturesque!"

"Why, of course," cried Mrs. Clymer. "I wish you would tell us of it. You mean Nannie, don't you?"

The Southerner leaned slightly forward, with a look of interest.

"It is so long ago," said Mrs. Curtis, who had been Constance Ridgely, "but something has made me think of Nannie all the afternoon. My friendship with Nannie began almost thirty years ago, when Miss Arthur kept the Pleasant Street kindergarten next to No. 3. The school was a dear; but I remember so well the odd mixture of admiration and dread I felt for the big, tumultuous public school. The boys used to make faces at us, but they were so daring and they turned somersaults so nimbly! And I was devoured with curiosity regarding the little girls who came to school without their nurses. I thought it must be grand! One little girl I singled out. She used to wear a red jersey and a red tam-o'-shanter. She wasn't precisely pretty—according to my childish, wax-dolly standard of beauty—but there was something fascinating in the way her silky mop of brown hair flung itself to the wind, in the flash of her brown eyes and her white teeth and the feather-down lightness of her motions. She was as reckless of her frock as her bones—I was trained to be very careful of both. The fearless rush with which she would slide down the high bank or skin up a tree to the very awful, oscillating top—I can't describe the awesome joy of seeing her! And she was so gay; she had the sweetest, merriest laugh in the world. I loved it. Ah, how many times did I glue my demure little face, which hid so many wild fancies, to a certain knot-hole in that high, high fence of Miss Arthur's, which all our mothers praised because it protected our privacy, watching the boys and girls, and my girl run out to recess! And, oh, the blow it was when the hour of recess at the kindergarten was changed! Because the No. 3 boys stole Bennie Olmstead's roller skates, and there was a combat, in which our injured and innocent boys were no match for the wicked No. 3's; and Miss Betty, who attended to minor matters of our physical comfort, being only the third kindergartner, who was learning and received no salary, and of course had most of the drudgery, washed at least four bloody noses and one bitten ear, and put butchers' brown paper on half a dozen bruises, while the little girls wept for sympathy and Bennie howled for his skates! I wept, too; but it was because I could never any more look through the knot-hole for Nannie. I knew her name, because I heard it so often. And then, in the midst of my dejection, I met her. It was by accident. Tina had come for me in the carriage, but Harland, having an errand at the harness shop, had sent her on ahead, and we two were waiting for him on the curb-stone. Of a sudden we heard an appalling outcry of canine yelps and boyish yells, and I saw a sickening sight, a wretched little dog with a tin can tied to his tail, which clattered against the bricks of the sidewalk as he bounded; and in the can a huge fire-cracker spitting fire! For sheer terror lest I should see the catastrophe, I covered up my face. And then I heard my Nannie's voice, 'Here, doggie! Here, poor doggie!' I let my little coward hands drop. I saw her welcome the terrified beast to the shelter of her skirts, while with one swift curve she plucked out the hissing red stick and hurled it with admirable certainty of aim straight at the pursuers. As they scampered away, she told them what she thought of them. Before they could rally, Harland came to the rescue with the carriage; and Tina pushed both of us into it. It was one of those double phaetons which we all used to have then. I don't know whether Tina's mercy would have included the dog; but he included himself with a flying leap into Nannie's lap."

"And that was how you met Nancy?" said Mrs. Clymer. "You took her home, didn't you, and found her conversation on the way very entertaining?"

"Entrancing. She was full of thrilling knowledge of the world. She went to school all alone. Her father was a carpenter, and she had a hatchet and a plane and a brace and bit all her very own. Her mother was dead, but she lived with her aunty, and she invited us most politely to get out and see her aunty, and her papa's shop in the back yard. 'We got a lovely home,' said Nannie."

"Was it?" laughed the youngest clubwoman.

"I thought it was; and, yes, I think it was, now. So specklessly, radiantly tidy. A tiny house of wood, but painted freshly in gray and white, and with a most wonderful garden. That belonged to Nannie's aunt. Nannie said she could make anything with a root grow. I remember she was out amid the phlox—such brilliant, luxuriant phlox as it was! She had on a white apron, which the sun made dazzling. By a wonderful coincidence, the aunt went to Tina's church, and Tina knew her; so Tina let me go inside the house, and the aunt gave us coffee hot from the stove, and delicious little spice cakes just out of the oven; and we carried out some to Harland; and it was a full half-hour before Tina's conscience stirred, and we had to go. By that time Nannie and I were very well acquainted. Yet I had always been amazingly slow about making friends.

"After this episode Nannie and I always nodded and grinned when we saw each other, going or coming from school. The next month Nannie appeared at our Sunday school and announced that she would always attend there if she might be in Miss Browning's class. Miss Browning taught my class. Fancy my happiness! It impressed me very much the way Nannie could make people do what she wanted. In summer another wonder happened. Nannie's father built our new stable. Nannie used to bring him his luncheon daily. Before the summer ended we were great chums."

"But did your mother approve of your intimacy?" asked Mrs. Waite, who was bewildered by conduct so opposed to her recollections of the Ridgelys.

"My mother was a wise woman. One day she sent me away on some pretext, and she asked Nannie into the house and showed her pictures and talked to her. Nannie adored my mother; and mamma never threw any obstacles in the way of my seeing Nannie, while Tina was always willing to take me to the Marshes; of course I never went alone. Tina thought Nannie one of the nicest little girls in town; and she had sense enough to see that while I was most often listless and shy with other girls, I was always happy with Nannie. I don't think I can quite express her charm. She was clever, but clever people have bored me. She was pretty, too; and she was a true, delicate-minded little gentlewoman, though her father was a mechanic and her aunt helped the family income by taking in fine washing; but it was none of those things. I think it was that she was so wholesome! Always cheerful. Always fearless. By consequence she was the most absolutely truthful being I ever knew. Aunt Kate"—to Mrs. Clymer—"you heard about the red paint? Shall I tell them?" At Mrs. Clymer's assent she continued, "It was a truly terrible experience. I was never so scared in my life; and I was always getting scared when I was little. Nannie's next-door neighbor was a little girl named Elsa Clarke, whose father was a painter by trade. He was an easy-tempered man, and sometimes used to let us paint. If we daubed ourselves (which we seldom failed to do), he would scrub us off with turpentine. I had some painful scenes with Tina; for even if the paint was gone, the scent of roses, you know. She was going to put a ban on the whole business, when Nannie contrived some oilcloth aprons out of a discarded table covering. This appeased her. One day Elsa's father gave us the dregs of a can of red paint. Another painter who was doing some work in the shop glowered at him, and from him to a white window sash that he had just finished. He was a very gruff old fellow, of whom I stood in dreadful fear. I thought he was very much such a looking man as the ogre in 'Jack and the Beanstalk.' 'Them kids will mess up something if you give 'em paint, you'll see,' the ogre growled, 'but they better keep clear of my sash, if they know what's good for 'em!' With that he followed Elsa's father out of the shop. We were left with our artistic fury. I don't know exactly how the calamity came about, but Elsa wanted the paint can which Nannie was using. If Elsa wanted anything and didn't get it, she grew angry. It was her papa's shop and her papa's paint and she had a right to have it, she would have it! 'But he gave it to us all,' I protested, rather shocked at the squabble. Nannie didn't say anything; she went on slapping the paint on a box in vast content. Then Elsa flew into a rage and laid hold of Nannie. I laid hold of her. And a dog in the household, hearing our loud voices, bounded joyously into the fray. And somehow Nannie tripped! The paint, the red, red paint made a ghastly cascade over the snowy whiteness of the ogre's window frame. Stupefied by the enormity of our mishap, we stood staring miserably at each other. Elsa burst into tears. As for me, I could hear my heart thump.

"'He's coming back,' gasped Elsa, 'and papa ain't with him. I saw him box a little girl's ears once jest for using his brush—let's run! Let's run! He'll think it was Jumper!' (Jumper was wagging his tail and affectionately sympathizing.)

"'Jumper didn't do it,' said Nannie.

"But Elsa was sprinting across the yard. My own terror seemed to clutch me and propel me without volition; I was outside and hurrying after Elsa before I realized. But at the sound of a dreadful, menacing voice I turned my head. Nannie had not fled. She was facing the brutal man who had boxed a little girl's ears; and he was demanding who had done That! The rumble of thunder was in his deep tones. I ran back; but I was in such a panic I had to hold on to the bench to keep me on my feet. Elsa, from the fortress of her kitchen, screamed that Jumper had done it.

"'Hay?' exploded the man. It seemed to me an appalling interjection.

"'Jumper didn't do it,' said Nannie. 'I fell and the paint splashed. I'll paint it over for you, all right.'

"'You!' the ogre bellowed, lifting his fist in a passion. 'You've done enough mischief!' I had been trying to speak, but I was so scared that my mouth only made little choking sounds, but now I did sob, 'Please, mister, we made her do it, Elsa and I. Elsa caught her arm and I caught Elsa's arm—I'll pay you for it!' I had my little purse out in my trembling fingers and would have given it all to him. Not Nannie. 'It can't take you an hour to paint it over,' said she. 'Will you take twenty-five cents—that's an hour's wages—and let me paint it? I'm awful sorry it happened.'

"'I've a mind to lick you both,' grumbled the man.

"But Nannie didn't flinch; she looked into his face, repeating, 'We're awful sorry; and we'll pay you. It wouldn't do any good to spank us; and I'll paint something else first, to show you I won't daub the glass.'

"'Well, you are a cool one,' said the man. I could hardly believe my eyes; he was grinning. Actually he did let Nannie show him how neatly she painted; and the end of it was, he taught us a great deal about painting."

"Didn't Nannie think you were plucky to run back?" said the Southerner. "Truly, Mrs. Curtis, I think you were braver than she!"

Mrs. Curtis shook her head. "I couldn't have done it but for Nannie. Merely being in her presence stiffened my limp courage. I was absurdly timid."

"Well, I don't wonder you were fond of her," cried the youngest member. "What were her people like?"

"Her mother was dead and she was an only child. Her father was the kindest, gentlest of men, with a placid shrewdness such as one may draw from life rather than books. He loved beautiful things. Why, he taught me more about the loveliness of shadows and trees than the great artists, since. And I recognize now how fine was his passion for what he called in his homely way 'a job good enough not to need putty.'"

"I remember Marsh well," said Mrs. Clymer. "He was a wonderful workman and a particularly considerate person to have about. He always cleaned up his shavings. I never saw the aunt. She was a nice sort, too, wasn't she, Connie?"

"Indeed she was! She was a widow with three children. The youngest, as Nannie told me with somber importance, was 'bedrid'; she hadn't walked for three years, and the doctor said she 'never would walk in this world'; but Mr. Marsh had made her a most ingenious wheeled chair, which was always at the window, with her little pale, smiling face above it. Then there was little Ned, who was four, and Oscar, who was working his way through college. They all spoke of Oscar with deep respect. He was awfully clever, I was sure; and his mother had a handsome photograph of him on the mantel, under his father's picture."

"That was Jedidiah Marsh," explained Mrs. Waite. "I remember him. He was a very handsome man and a plumber. He wasn't very much of a plumber as I recall him; but he was an inventor always going to patent something, which always turned out to have been discovered before. Finally he did put some machine on the market, and died leaving the business in a tangle, and lots of debts, which his widow and Caleb Marsh paid off to the last cent of interest, although it took them years to do it."

"Yes," said Mrs. Clymer; "he told Mr. Clymer once that maybe he wasn't legally liable for Jed's debts, but there never was a Marsh yet that anybody could find fault with for doing anything dishonest; and they shouldn't begin with Jed, who was all right, whether his washing machine was or wasn't. I have a sneaking idea myself that Caleb Marsh, who was shrewd in his simple way, did not take Jed's wonderful genius seriously; but Jed's wife did. Once I carried Nannie home when she had been to see you, Connie; and I remember their neat little parlor, with the pictures of Lincoln and Grant and the Rogers groups and some really fine, simple furniture which Marsh had made himself. But I remember best the two portraits over the mantel—a pretty girl I should have known was Nannie's mother, only an enlarged photograph, but very well done, and an oil portrait of Jedidiah, which had been done from a photograph by the gifted daughter of a neighbor, who was learning to paint. It was pretty awful. I wonder didn't Caleb Marsh think so, too."

"If he did, he never said so, you may be sure," said Mrs. Curtis quickly; "and somehow I have a kind of affection for that picture, too. There were always flowers before both of the portraits; perhaps in winter no more than some sprigs of lemon verbena or a pot of ivy, but always some green thing. Do you know, the pictures, and the flowers always before them, that little touch of faithful love, added an intangible and plaintive charm to the homely attraction of the house. I did love that room. It was so sunny, so spotless and peaceful, with the geraniums and the heliotrope in the window, and the white muslin curtains. There was a rug with a very bright and fierce-looking tiger on it before the fireplace (Mr. Marsh would have a fireplace), and Mr. Marsh's grandmother's andirons glittered behind the big peacock fan in summer time; and there used to float in through the window the lovely faint odors of old-fashioned flowers—spice pinks and sweetbrier roses and lemon verbenas."

Mrs. Clymer sighed. "I wish there were a better ending to the story."

"Does it end sadly?" asked the Southerner. "Did the little girls grow up and forget each other?"

Mrs. Curtis, who was looking absently over the lawn and the flowers, down the shady street, on which longer and warmer shadows were creeping, back perhaps in a reverie of her childhood, started a little; the sensitive blush which years in the world had not given her power to control, mantled her fair cheek; she turned and gave the Southerner's light smile a serious, almost solemn gaze. When she spoke it was with a gentle coldness, as if she felt she had been too frank with strangers—at least so the hostess interpreted it.

"I didn't forget; and we were not separated for several years. I went to the high school with Nannie; it was really I who went, for my entreaties overcame my mother's aversion to the clamorous life of a public school. We were so happy; and when I had the trouble with my eyes, Nannie used to read my lessons to me. She learned a whole different course so she could help me. You see, she was awfully clever. The more I knew of other girls, the finer Nannie seemed to me. The—the difference between the classes, the real thing which keeps them apart, is their lack of a common ground of experience. They haven't anything to talk about. I should have been as shy with another girl who worked for her living as she would have been with me, but I knew Nannie so well—I never knew any other woman friend so well, and only one man."

"Whom you married?" said the Southerner with an apologetic accent.

"Yes, poor dear," laughed Mrs. Curtis. "It wasn't treating him well, perhaps, but he brought it on himself."

"Did you go through the high school with your friend?" Mrs. Waite's deep voice was heard again. "But no, surely you weren't a graduate?"

"No; we went to Europe in my second year. I cried myself ill when we parted. My only comfort was that Nannie and I had promised each other that we would go to college together. Nannie was already earning money by her carving. Still—it was bitter. Youth can suffer so easily and so horribly!"

"Yet," said Mrs. Clymer, "though I admit you were a woeful object, Connie, I thought at the time, and I think now, that Nannie suffered the most. She didn't shed a tear that morning when she came up to your house to say good-by; and I went with you to the depot; but there was a look in her eyes which haunted me. And when she stood in the driveway as we rolled away, watching the carriage, and you turned and she waved her hand and smiled—I felt as if I had seen a surgical operation."

"And then? Oh, Mrs. Curtis, that wasn't the end of it?" cried the youngest member.

"Oh, no. I missed Nannie amid all the change and excitement; and I wrote her often. At first she wrote me as often. Now I can appreciate how hard she must have tried to collect the little items of news likely to interest me. And they were all about girls whom she barely knew, and things remote from her. Somehow she found out about everything. It was she who first wrote about when Annie Baylor had scarlet fever, and she who told first of that astounding happening, Mary Taine Willis' engagement. Mary was only three years older than we; it was almost like one of us being engaged. And her reports about the house and the grounds and the horses, my father said, were clearer and more useful than those of the man in charge. But somehow during the last year the letters grew a little less open-hearted and affectionate; a queer film of constraint froze over them, if I may call it that. And on my part I was conscious of a mingling of dread in my delight at the prospect of seeing Nannie when we had come. I knew she would be the same faithful, dear girl whom I should always love; but my Nannie was more—she was the leader, she had charm; I admired her so tremendously, I wondered should I admire her in the same way. Maybe you think that was horrid of me?"

"I don't know"—the Southern woman spoke before the others—"I know it was natural. Well, did you find it different? Had she changed?"

"I don't remember; I only remember that, in the first half-hour, my only fear was lest she should be disappointed in me. I admired everything about her; her very clothes were so dainty; and I had expected to be superior there, I fancy. But it wasn't that; it was my feeling that she was finer and stronger than my other friends. You know the pretty clothes, the pretty manners, are only signs of the real thing; and Nannie had the real thing, I was sure. But there was always that constraint about her. You would not believe," said Mrs. Curtis gently to the Southerner, "you would not believe how absurdly this intangible reserve of hers hurt me."

"I think it was very nasty of her, myself," laughed the Southerner; "but did it never occur to you that some other friend of yours might have been making mischief? You were a very desirable chum, some one might have filled your friend's head with notions of how different were your classes and walks in life; and how you were too loyal and kind hearted to desert or repel an old friend, but you might find such ties a drag on you. If that happened she would be a little morbid about making advances. She was probably proud in her own way."

"There was Elsa Clarke," Mrs. Clymer suggested; "she was always trying to be intimate with you; and if ever there was a sly little climber, it was she."

"Wait a minute!" exclaimed the hostess. "I am beginning to reminisce, myself. Wasn't there a boy in the Marsh family, Nannie Marsh's brother or cousin? Yes, her cousin, Oscar. Why, to be sure. He came back from college and was a clerk in Norris Blanchard's store, and fell madly in love with Gladys Blanchard. She treated him abominably, they did say. Led him on, and then married that young man from Massachusetts; and Oscar shot himself in the front yard while they were standing up under the floral bell."

"How ghastly," murmured the youngest member, "to kill himself—"

"Oh, it didn't kill him, though they thought he would die. I don't know but his uncle wondered sometimes if it wouldn't have been better. For after he got up he took to drink and notions—wild, anarchistic, socialistic—"

"He couldn't take to them both at the same time," Mrs. Waite interrupted with fervor. "They are absolutely antagonistic, socialism—"

"Yes, yes, to be sure"—the hostess hastily turned a conversational switch before the collision—"of course I didn't mean to say he believed in both, only that he took to making fierce speeches at the populist meetings, and wrote articles for the papers, girding at the rich. And he used to get drunk. The poor Marshes felt awfully. I shouldn't be a bit surprised if that was what made Nannie a little shy and stiff. Did she tell you about Oscar's tragedy?"

"Not until I found it out myself. I somehow had the feeling that I wasn't so gladly welcomed as I used to be. And Mrs. Marsh was changed and saddened. But the little chair was no longer by the window; and I knew the mother grieved. Dear little Hattie, always so patient and so pleased with every little thing. One day Nannie was walking home with me, and we met Oscar. After that I knew. I will own up, when I saw his condition, I—I told you I was a coward—I simply turned and ran away. To be sure, Nannie had seen him also, and said suddenly, 'Good-by, Connie; I can't go any farther'; but that is only a mitigation, not an excuse. I was so ashamed of myself I hardly slept all night. Nannie was coming to see me the next afternoon. I was awfully afraid she wouldn't come, and almost as afraid to see her when she did come. And when she began to talk, I couldn't think of anything better than to kiss her, with my eyes shut—as if I were going to have a tooth pulled! We both cried. It gave me a weird, earthquaky sensation to see Nannie cry. I had never, through all our years of intimacy, seen her cry. But almost immediately she pulled herself together, and said, 'Well, I'm not going to stand it. Daddy has found a place in the country where Oscar can go and learn the business and then be a partner. If he has a little property of his own he will stop wanting to overturn things so bad. So—he's going; and he did seem to feel bad about making aunty so wretched; and he's promised to give up drinking and talking; so I don't know what I'm crying about, unless it is having to give up going to college with you! But it's only putting it off for a year. I'll make it all back by then; I'm going into the furniture factory this summer.' But when I saw the family I realized for the first time what this education, which we take so lightly, indeed often with weariness, means to those who have to deny themselves for it. The love of it was a passion with Nannie's people. They seemed to think a college was a wonderful place, where one learned all the secrets of life and art and knowledge. When they spoke of it their voices would drop reverentially, as they dropped when they spoke of heaven. To have this glory for Nannie put off another year seemed cruel to them. 'Well,' I suggested to Mr. Marsh, 'at least it will be I who will have to miss her, and not you.' 'It's wicked to take such comfort,' said he, 'but I guess I can't help taking it a mite. Nannie is so very comforting and pleasant to have around.'"

"He certainly was a nice man," said Mrs. Clymer. "Do you remember him beaming at Nannie's graduation? I thought I should be bored, but I wasn't; and you, my dear, were a little drama of delight by yourself, so scared when she began, and so radiant presently; and darting such furious glances at Elsa Clarke."

"Well," retorted Mrs. Curtis, "wasn't she whispering all through the essay to a boy she had with her! But she was on the stage afterward, before any of us, and she had sent Nannie a most impressive and expensive bouquet; and she was hugging her and making joyful noise over her when my father and I came up. Father paid her the prettiest of compliments and called her Miss Nannie. Her own father and her aunt and Ned stood by, with Oscar, who had come in from the country for this important occasion. Mr. Marsh did not say a word. But I never knew before how many different kinds of smiles a man could smile. And somehow, after that evening, although Nannie was so little affected by the glamour of it all, I was provoked with her; somehow, she was more like her old gay self with me. Why do you suppose, Mrs. Atherton?"

"I suppose," ventured the Southerner, smiling, "because she felt that her little triumph (no doubt she overvalued it, in spite of the level head you give her); she felt it made her a little better worth your friendship. But—what happened next? You went to college?"

"Yes, I went; and we had to have that odious little Elsa with us, because she was going, too. I was most dolefully homesick; and oh, how I missed Nannie! I wrote her, if I weren't so afraid of the ferocious cabmen who roared so at one, I should run away, and it was all her fault—"

"Your father did want—" Mrs. Curtis cut Mrs. Clymer's sentence off with a quick "Ah, they wouldn't accept; they were quite as proud as we. However, the time dragged itself away, and I went home for the Christmas holidays. I found Nannie in very different circumstances, but quite as cheerful. She was working in the factory, and earning good wages, and she had all sorts of racy experiences with human nature to relate. How the whole family hung on my college stories! And Oscar was doing well, and becoming cheerful, and they could all talk proudly about him again! They comforted me as much as my own people, and I went back with a show of courage. Nannie wrote me every week. I don't know just when I began to feel a change in the letters, not in their affection or their gaiety; but she no longer told me so much about her studies (for she wanted to keep up with me and enter in the second year); after a while she hardly mentioned them; yet she had shown the keenest interest. My people came on east for me that summer, and as we made several visits, it was late in the summer when we came home. Although I had noticed this change in Nannie's letters, I had not dreamed what it really meant; and I was not prepared for the shock I received. She greeted me with all her old affection; but at my first inquiry about her savings, she answered, 'Yes, I have enough—if I go.' 'If!' I cried. 'Don't be talking of if's!' 'Indeed, I ought not,' she answered very gravely, 'for there is no if about it; I know that I oughtn't to go. It isn't fair to the others.' 'But they want you to go!' I pleaded in inexpressible dismay. 'It will be the awfulest disappointment!' It seems to me that I still remember every word of her reply. She said that she knew it, that her education had been the whole family's day dream. But that, in the first place, it would be harder than they would admit for them to have her go. 'If it were only this it would be hard,' she said, 'but we could bear it; but—it isn't. What they couldn't bear would be to—to have me grow away from them. I couldn't, truly; but—you know Elsa is at home now. She talks of nothing but her college, her college friends, her high marks at exams, her basketball team, and all that. She is always complaining of her own people's plain ways. Connie, I can see so plainly that when she has finished the education which her parents are pinching themselves to give her she will use it to establish herself as far as possible from them.'

"'Oh, Elsa?' I sniffed. 'I can believe anything of Elsa. You couldn't be so horrid and snobbish!'

"'She doesn't mean to be horrid, or know she is; she speaks of her mother with tears in her eyes. It is only that she has gone into another world from them, and wants to stay there. I don't want to go into any other world than my father's and the others'. I don't want any better taste than they have! I want better taste and I want them to have it, but I want us all to get it together. Whatever I get I want to share with them. I couldn't if I went away. I used to think I could bring it all back in a lump; but I know better now. You can't pot culture and give it away as you choose; you have to grow it from the seed. What I am afraid of is that they should not get what I get. So far they have; why, aunty knows more of Virgil from hearing me translate aloud than I do myself; and dad is wonderful in geometry, and he has taught me to love Charles Lamb, whom he loved just from the extracts in the literature. First he bought the Essays, then I bought him the Letters. It is that way with so many things. You know'—she laughed—'you know we have some long-legged Fra Angelico angels instead of the pictures of Lincoln and Grant; they are in other frames, which my father made, and hang in the hall; and the Rogers groups have gone up-stairs, and, Connie, Oscar and dad and I have had a real artist paint a pastel of Uncle Jed as a present for aunty, and we have it in the parlor now; and nobody's feelings are hurt; we were all pleased together. That is the right way. I can't take any other way. Not even to be with you, Connie. No, dear, I can't go.' I am afraid I made it harder for her with my selfish grief, and her father almost frantically opposed the sacrifice, he who was always so tranquil; and Oscar was angry, and Ned cried. Oh, we gave poor Nannie a frightful quarter of an hour; but she did not go."

"What became of her? How did it turn out in the end?" asked the youngest member.

"I don't know," answered Mrs. Curtis.

"Did her conduct make a breach between you?" Mrs. Waite showed the dawn of disapproval on her brow.

"Surely not. But in my next year we went abroad unexpectedly, on account of my mother's health. We stayed four years; and while we were away, my grandfather died, and the house here was sold. At first we both wrote often; but, as the years went by, insensibly we wrote less often. Both of us, I suppose. That same film of constraint was over Nannie's letters that had been over her manner before. Then it went away. This time it came, and did not go away. Then the letters ceased altogether. When I—when I found I was going to marry Mr. Curtis, I wrote Nannie the very first letter. There was no answer. I wrote again—not once, but many times. After a long while my letters came back to me, unopened, with the post-office inscription, 'Not to be found.' I wrote to Elsa, who was home. I asked her for Nannie's address; for some word about her. She wrote back that the Marshes had sold their house after Oscar's trouble, to raise money for his defense; and they had all moved away, she believed, to Dakota, but she didn't know where. She said Nannie avoided everybody."

"And what was Oscar's trouble?" demanded Mrs. Waite. "I know there was some iniquitous blunder of the law, but what exactly was it?"

Mrs. Clymer, who had been watching Mrs. Curtis attentively, explained while the other woman seemed searching for the right words. "Oscar was convicted of burning the store of a rival merchant who had treated him very treacherously. He had lost his temper, and threatened the man. What he meant, he explained, was to give him a good hiding. But he was overheard; and when, that night, the store burned, and Oscar was discovered to have gone there, suspicion lighted on him. Of course, all his former wild actions were brought up against him, although he had quite reformed. There had been a number of incendiary fires, and you know how people always want somebody punished; poor Oscar Marsh was sent to the penitentiary, after his people had spent almost their last dollar to defend him. They moved away, and all trace of them was lost. It is a wretched story. And really, Oscar was innocent. A year afterward (I always credited it mostly to Nannie) it was discovered that the man had set fire to the store himself. Nannie got the insurance company on his trail. He fled. The governor pardoned Oscar. And that is all any of us know."

"It is a sad story," sighed Mrs. Waite. "I think she did wrong not to educate herself."

"I think she did quite right," said Mrs. Curtis.

"But as it was, the sacrifice was so useless," urged the youngest member. "She didn't lift them; they only all went under the waves together."

"Not necessarily," objected the Southerner. "Why be so dismal? Why not be cheerful? They had their good trade and their good sense and their love for each other. I am going to suppose that those things are more than money, and that they went to work in a new place, rose little by little, and then more and more, and are all prosperous and respected, and Miss Nannie has married the young superintendent of her new factory, who has now risen to be the main partner; he is of an old though impoverished family—"

"You think so much of family in the South, don't you?" interjected Mrs. Waite.

"Well, we have so many old and good but impoverished families there, you see. I think the chances are she married such a boy; and they have made money, and Oscar has a nice plantation near them, and is married to a sweet little Southern girl, and his mother adores the baby; and Ned goes to college, and Mr. Marsh is a prosperous builder, high in the Scottish Rite, and growing used to his dress coat—"

"But," said the hostess, "you are having them all south; they went to Dakota."

"Why, so they did! I forgot," cried the Southerner. "Maybe it was a mistake; and anyhow, they would have done better to go south!"

Everybody laughed and Mrs. Curtis' fine eyes lit up. "I perceive you are a psychic, Mrs. Atherton," she said gaily. "And they did go south. Being a psychic, can't you tell me something? Why didn't Nannie answer my letters?"

The Southerner dropped her chin and looked upward in the pose of a seer; no one noticed Mrs. Clymer's sudden movement or the ripple of quick emotion in Mrs. Curtis' face. "That's easy," she responded. "I see a slim girl with dark hair walking with another girl who answers to the name of Elsa. The dark-haired girl gives her a letter, stamped, but not addressed. She has sent a letter to her friend, which has not reached her. Letters sometimes do not reach people who are hurrying through Egypt or—or other places. This letter she gives to Elsa, who is to marry the cousin of an acquaintance of the friend. She is to post it—voilà tout!"

"She was engaged to Bertha Miller's cousin; and she did try awfully hard to be intimate with Constance," whispered Mrs. Clymer in the hostess' ear; while everybody laughed again.

"He drinks like a fish," returned the hostess irrelevantly.

"Oh, Mrs. Atherton, don't stop, tell us more," begged the youngest member. "I feel so interested in Nannie. Has she any children?" The youngest member had just acquired the most remarkable baby in the world.

"I reckon," jested the Southerner, "two or three. Two boys, let us say—"

"How nice!" cried Mrs. Curtis, coloring prettily. "I have two boys."

"And—I think a little girl, whom she has named Constance, Constance Ridgely—Are we going, Mrs. Clymer?"

Mrs. Clymer laid a kindly hand on her shoulder, saying, "Yes, my dear, I must go; but as I am stopping on my way, I shall walk; and Constance will take care of you."

"Thank you, Aunt Kate," said Mrs. Curtis, so low the others—except the Southerner—did not hear. They were alone in the carriage before she made any sign of that which had stirred her profoundly. Then she turned on her companion a pale face and eyes that were swimming in tears.

"Yes, dear," said the Southerner, whose lips were smiling, but whose own eyes were wet.

"Oh—Nannie!" cried Constance Ridgely. And the faces of the two women were strangely like the faces of the two little girls who had found each other years and years ago.

THE OLD PARTISAN

A STORY OF THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF 1896

I sat so far back in the gallery that my opinion of my delegate friend dwindled with every session. Nevertheless my unimportant seat had its advantages. I could see the vast assembly and watch the throbbing of the Republican pulse if I could not hear its heart-beats. Therefore, perhaps, I studied my neighbors more than I might study them under different circumstances. The great wooden hall had its transient and unsubstantial character stamped on every bare wooden joist and unclinched nail. It was gaudy with flags and bunting and cheap portraits. There were tin bannerettes crookedly marshaled on the floor, to indicate the homes of the different states. A few delegates, doubtless new to the business and over-zealous, were already on the floor, but none of the principals were visible. They were perspiring and arguing in those committee rooms, those hotel lobbies and crowded hotel rooms where the real business of the convention was already done and neatly prepared for presentation to the nation. I had nothing to keep me from studying my neighbors. In front of me sat two people who had occupied the same seats at every session that I was present, a young girl and an old man. The girl wore the omnipresent shirt waist (of pretty blue and white tints, with snowy cuffs and collar), and her green straw hat was decked with blue cornflowers, from which I inferred that she had an eye on the fashions. Her black hair was thick and glossy under the green straw. I thought that she had a graceful neck. It was very white. Whiter than her face, which kept a touch of sunburn, as if she were often out in the open air. Somehow I concluded that she was a shop-girl and rode a wheel. If I were wrong it is not likely that I shall ever know.

The old man I fancied, was not so old as he looked; his delicate, haggard profile may have owed its sunken lines and the dim eye to sickness rather than to years. He wore the heavy black broadcloth of the rural politician, and his coat sagged over his narrow chest as if he had left his waistcoat at home. On his coat lapel were four old-fashioned Blaine badges. Incessantly he fanned himself.

"It can't be they ain't going to nominate him to-day?" he asked rather than asserted, his voice breaking on the higher notes, the mere wreck of a voice.

"Oh, maybe later," the girl reassured him.

"Well, I wanted to attend a Republican convention once more before I died. Your ma would have it I wasn't strong enough; but I knew better; you and I knew better; didn't we, Jenny?"

She made no answer except to pat his thin, ribbed brown hand with her soft, white, slim one; but there was a world of sympathy in the gesture and her silent smile.

"I wonder what your ma said when she came down-stairs and found the letter, and us gone," he cackled with the garrulous glee of a child recounting successful mischief; "made me think of the times when you was little and I stole you away for the circus. Once, your pa thought you was lost—'member? And once, you had on your school dress and you'd tore it—she did scold you that time. But we had fun when they used to let me have money, didn't we, Jenny?"

"Well, now I earn money, we have good times, too, grandpa," said Jenny, smiling the same tender, comprehending smile.

"We do that; I don't know what I would do 'cept for you, lambie, and this is—this is a grand time, Jenny, you look and listen; it's a great thing to see a nation making its principles and its president—and such a president!"

He half turned his head as he spoke, with a mounting enthusiasm, thus bringing his flushing face and eager eyes—no longer dim—into the focus of his next neighbor's bright gray eyes. The neighbor was a young man, not very young, but hardly to be called elderly, of an alert bearing and kindly smile.

"I think him a pretty fair man myself," said the other with a jocose understatement; "I come from his town."

What was there in such a simple statement to bring a distinctly anxious look into the young girl's soft eyes? There it was; one could not mistake it.

"Well!" said the old man: there was a flattering deference in his voice. "Well, well. And—and maybe you've seen him lately?" The quavering tones sharpened with a keener feeling; it was almost as if the man were inquiring for some one on whom he had a great stake of affection. "How did he look? Was he better, stronger?"

"Oh, he looked elegant," said the Ohio man, easily, but with a disconcerted side glance at the girl whose eyes were imploring him.

"I've been a Blaine man ever since he was run the time Bob Ingersoll nominated him," said the old man, who sighed as if relieved. "I was at that convention and heard the speech—"

"Ah, that was a speech to hear," said a man behind, and two or three men edged their heads nearer.

The old Republican straightened his bent shoulders, his winter-stung features softened and warmed at the manifestation of interest, his voice sank to the confidential undertone of the narrator.

"You're right, sir, right; it was a magnificent speech. I can see him jest as he stood there, a stoutish, good-looking man, smooth-faced, his eye straight ahead, and an alternate that sat next me—I was an alternate; I've been an alternate four times; I could have been a delegate, but I says, 'No, abler men than me are wanting it; I'm willing to fight in the ranks.' But I wished I had a vote, a free vote that day, I tell you. The alternate near me, he says, 'You'll hear something fine now; I've heard him speak.'"

"You did, too, I guess."

"We could hear from the first minute. That kinder fixed our attention. He had a mellow, rich kind of voice that melted into our ears. We found ourselves listening and liking him from the first sentence. At first he was as quiet as a summer breeze, but presently he began to warm up, and the words flowed out like a stream of jewels. It was electrifying: it was thrilling, sir; it took us off our feet before we knew it, and when he came to the climax, those of us that weren't yelling in the aisles were jumping up and down on our chairs! I know I found myself prancing up and down on my own hat on a chair, swinging somebody else's hat and screaming at the top of my voice, with the tears running down my cheeks. God! sir, there were men there on their feet cheering their throats out that had to vote against Blaine afterward—had to, because they were there instructed—no more free will than a checked trunk!" The light died out of his face. "Yes, sir, a great speech; never so great a speech, whoever made it; but it did no good, he wasn't nominated, and when we did nominate him we were cheated out of our victory. Well, we'll do better this day."

"We will that," said the other man, heartily; "McKinley—"

"You'll excuse me"—the old man struck in with a deprecating air, yet under the apology something fiercely eager and anxious that glued the hearer's eyes to his quivering old face—"You'll excuse me. I—I am a considerable of an invalid and I don't keep the run of things as I used to. You see, I live with my daughter, and you know how women folks are, fretting lest things should make you sick, and my girl she worries so, me reading the papers. Fact is I got a shock once, an awful shock"—he shivered involuntarily and his dim eyes clouded—"and it worried her seeing me read. Hadn't ought to; it don't worry Jenny here, who often gets me a paper, quiet like; but you know how it is with women—it's easier giving them their head a little—and so I don't see many papers, and I kinder dropped off. It seems queer, but I don't exactly sense it about this McKinley. Is he running against Blaine or jest for vice?"

The girl, under some feminine pretext of dropping and reaching for her handkerchief, threw upward a glance of appeal at the interlocutor. Hurriedly she stepped into the conversation. "My grandfather read a false report about—about Mr. Blaine's sickness, and he was not well at the time, and it brought on a bad attack."

"I understand," said the listener, with a grave nod of his head and movement of his eyes in the girl's direction.

"But about McKinley?" the old man persisted.

"He's for vice-president," the girl announced, her eyes fixed on the hesitating man from Canton. I have often admired the intrepid fashion in which a woman will put her conscience at a moral hedge, while a man of no finer spiritual fiber will be straining his eyes to find a hole through which he can crawl.

"McKinley is not opposed to Blaine, is he?" she asked the man.

"The Republican party has no name that is more loved than that of James G. Blaine," said the man, gravely.

"That's so, that's so!" the old partisan assented eagerly; "to my mind he's the logical candidate."

The Canton man nodded, and asked if he had ever seen Blaine.

"Once, only once. I was on a delegation sent to wait on him and ask him to our town to speak—he was in Cincinnati. I held out my hand when my turn came, and the chairman nearly knocked the breath out of me by saying, 'Here's the man gave more to our campaign fund and worked harder than any man in the county, and we all worked hard for you, too.' Well, Mr. Blaine looked at me. You know the intent way he looks. He has the most wonderful eyes; look right at you and seem to bore into you like a gimlet. I felt as if he was looking right down into my soul, and I tell you I was glad, for I choked up so I couldn't find a word, not a word, and I was ready and fluent enough in those days, too, I can tell you; but I stood there filling up, and squeezed his hand and gulped and got red, like a fool. But he understood. 'I have heard of your loyalty to Republican principles, Mr. Painter,' says he, in that beautiful voice of his that was like a violin; and I burst in—I couldn't help it—'It ain't loyalty to Republican principles, it's to you.' I said that right out. And he smiled, and said he, 'Well, that's wrong, but it isn't for me to quarrel with you there, Mr. Painter,' and then they pushed me along; but twice while the talk was going on I saw him look my way and caught his eye, and he smiled, and when we were all shaking hands for good-by he shook hands with a good firm grip, and said he, 'Good-by, Mr. Painter; I hope we shall meet again.'"

The old man drew a long sigh. "Those few moments paid for everything," he said. "I've never seen him since. I've been sick and lost money. I ain't the man I was. I never shall be put on any delegation again, or be sent to any convention; but I thought if I could only go once more to a Republican convention and hear them holler for Blaine, and holler once more myself, I'd be willinger to die. And I told Tom Hale that, and he and Jenny raised the money. Yes, Jenny, I'm going to tell—he and Jenny put off being married a bit so's I could go, and go on plenty of money. Jenny, she worked a month longer to have plenty, and Tom, he slipped ten dollars into my hand unbeknown to her, jest as we were going, so I'd always have a dime to give the waiter or the porter. I was never one of these hayseed farmers, too stingy to give a colored boy a dime when he'd done his best. I didn't need no money for badges; I got my old badges—see!"

He pushed out the lapel of his coat, covered with old-fashioned frayed bits of tinsel and ribbon, smiling confidently. The girl had flushed crimson to the rim of her white collar; but there was not a trace of petulance in her air; and, all at once looking at him, her eyes filled with tears.

"Tom's an awful good fellow," he said, "an awful good fellow."

"I'm sure of that," said the Canton man, with the frank American friendliness, making a little bow in Miss Jenny's direction; "but see here, Mr. Painter, do you come from Izard? Are you the man that saved the county for the Republicans by mortgaging his farm and then going on a house-to-house canvass?"

"That's me," the old man acquiesced, blushing with pleasure; "I didn't think, though, that it was known outside—"

"Things go further than you guess. I'm a newspaper man, and I can tell you that I shall speak of it again in my paper. Well, I guess they've got through with their mail, and the platform's coming in."

Thus he brushed aside the old man's agitated thanks.

"One moment," said the old man, "who—who's going to nominate him?"

For the space of an eyeblink the kindly Canton man looked embarrassed, then he said, briskly: "Foraker, Foraker, of Ohio—he's the principal one. That's he now, chairman of the committee on resolutions. He's there, the tall man with the mustache—"

"Isn't that elderly man, with the stoop shoulders and the chin beard and caved-in face, Teller?" It was a man near me, on the seat behind, who spoke, tapping the Canton man with his fan, to attract attention; already the pitiful concerns of the old man who was "a little off" (as I had heard some one on the seat whisper) were sucked out of notice in the whirlpool of the approaching political storm.

"Yes, that's Teller," answered the Canton man, his mouth straightening and growing thin.

"Is it to be a bolt?"

The Canton man nodded, at which the other whistled and communicated the information to his neighbors, one of whom remarked, "Let 'em bolt and be damned!" A general, subtle excitement seemed to communicate its vibrations to all the gallery. Perhaps I should except the old partisan; he questioned the girl in a whisper, and then, seeming to be satisfied, watched the strange scene that ensued with an expression of patient weariness. The girl explained parts of the platform to him and he assented; it was good Republican doctrine, he said, but what did they mean with all this talk against the money; were they having trouble with the mining states again? The Canton man stopped to explain—he certainly was good-humored.

During the next twenty minutes, filled as they were with savage emotion, while the galleries, like the floor, were on their chairs yelling, cheering, brandishing flags and fists and fans and pampas plumes of red, white and blue at the little band of silver men who marched through the ranks of their former comrades; he stood, he waved his fan in his feeble old hand, but he did not shout. "You must excuse me," said he, "I'm all right on the money question, but I'm saving my voice to shout for him!"

"That's right," said the Canton man; but he cast a backward glance which said as plainly as a glance can speak, "I wish I were out of this!"

Meanwhile, with an absent but happy smile, the old Blaine man was beating time to the vast waves of sound that rose and swelled above the band, above the cheering, above the cries of anger and scorn, the tremendous chorus that had stiffened men's hearts as they marched to death and rung through streets filled with armies and thrilled the waiting hearts at home:

"Three cheers for the red, white and blue!
Three cheers for the red, white and blue!
The army and navy for ever, three cheers for the red, white and blue!"

But when the chairman had stilled the tumult and made his grim comment, "There appear to be enough delegates left to transact business," the old partisan cast his eyes down to the floor with a chuckle. "I can't see the hole they made, it's so small. Say, ain't he a magnificent chairman; you can hear every word he says!"

"Bully chairman," said a cheerful "rooter" in the rear, who had enjoyed the episode more than words can say, and had cheered the passing of Silver with such choice quotations from popular songs as "Good-by, my lover, good-by," and "Just mention that you saw me," and plainly felt that he, too, had adorned the moment. "I nearly missed coming this morning, and I wouldn't have missed it for a tenner; they're going to nominate now."

The old man caught his breath; then he smiled. "I'll help you shout pretty soon," said he, while he sat down very carefully.

The "rooter," a good-looking young fellow with a Reed button and three or four gaudy badges decking his crash coat, nodded and tapped his temple furtively, still retaining his expression of radiant good-nature. The Canton man nodded and frowned.

I felt that the Canton man need not be afraid. Somehow we were all tacitly taking care that this poor, bewildered soul should not have its little dream of loyal, unselfish satisfaction dispelled.

"Ah, my countrymen," I thought, "you do a hundred crazy things, you crush les convenances under foot, you can be fooled by frantic visionaries, but how I love you!"

It was Baldwin of Iowa that made the first speech. He was one of the very few men—I had almost said of the two men—that we in the galleries had the pleasure of hearing; and we could hear every word.

He began with a glowing tribute to Blaine. At the first sentence our old man flung his gray head in the air with the gesture of the war horse when he catches the first, far-off scream of the trumpet. He leaned forward, his features twitching, his eyes burning; the fan dropped out of his limp hand; his fingers, rapping his palm, clenched and loosened themselves unconsciously in an overpowering agitation. His face was white as marble, with ominous blue shadows: but every muscle was astrain; his chest expanded; his shoulders drew back; his mouth was as strong and firm as a young man. For a second we could see what he had been at his prime.