Philip and His Wife

I.

“ Now, mother dear, you are all comfortable, are n’t you ? Here is your Prayer-Book. See, I have put the roses over on the chest of drawers ; I don’t believe you ’ll notice the fragrance here.”

Mrs. Drayton moved her head languidly and glanced about. “ Yes, as comfortable as I can be. But I’m used to being uncomfortable. I think perhaps you might move my chair just a little further from the windows, Lyssie. Might n’t I feel a draft here ? ”

This was too important a question for a mere “ yes ” or “no.” Alicia Drayton knelt down beside her mother, and leaned her fresh young cheek towards the closed window. “ I don’t feel the slightest air, dear,” she said anxiously.

“Ah, well, you! I suppose you don’t. What color you have, Lyssie! I don’t see why I have n’t some of your health. I’m sure, when you were born, I gave you all of mine.”

“If you would just go out a little bit more ? ” Alicia suggested hopefully.

“ Oh, my dear, don’t be foolish,” said Mrs. Drayton. “ Go out! How can I go out ? It tires me to walk across the room. Yes, you had better move my chair. I’m sure there is a little air.”

“ Well,” Alicia said cheerfully, “ there ! Can you look out of the window if I put you as far away from it as this? ”

“ I don’t care about looking out of the window,” sighed Mrs. Drayton ; “ there is nothing to see; and I ’m going to read my chapter as soon as you have gone. I ’ll tell you what you may do, Lyssie. You may go over and ask Susy Carr to come in some time this morning. If she is out anywhere on the farm, see if you can’t find her, and tell her I hope she ’ll come. It’s very foolish in me, but I don’t like to be alone. I think I feel my loneliness more as I grow older.”

“ I wish papa were going to be at home this summer,” Lyssie said. “ Of course it’s lonely for you with only me.”

“ I was n’t finding fault with your father,” Mrs. Drayton answered quickly, “ and I have no complaint to make when I have you ; but now Cecil and Philip are coming, I suppose I sha’n’t see anything of you.”

“ Of course you will; and Cecil and Philip and Molly, too.”

“ Oh, don’t call the child by that ridiculous name!” said Molly’s grandmother, or rather, her step-grandmother, “ though her real name is ugly enough, poor child. Why Cecil should have named the baby after Philip’s mother, when she never knew her, and could n’t have had any affection for her, I never could understand.”

Mrs. Drayton’s unspoken inference that it would have been more fitting to have given her name to the child did not escape Alicia; but inferences are generally best left without comment, and she only said, “ Well, dear, everything is in order now, so I ’ll run up to Cecil’s. Eliza Todd is to bring a woman to help her with the windows, but I ’m going to take the covers off the pictures, and just see to the finishing touches. I think everything will be fixed by the time they get here; and I ‘ll stop and ask Miss Susan to come in and cheer you up.”

“ Very well,” said Mrs. Drayton, with that weary closing of the eyes which every one who has had the care of an invalid knows too well. “ I want everything to be nice for Cecil, I ‘m sure. But it’s a little bitter to be so much alone.”

“Oh, I’ll be back by dinner time,” Alicia reminded her brightly. “ Do you want me to take a bunch of poppies from you for Cecil’s tea table? ”

“ Why, of course,” said Mrs. Drayton, opening her eyes. “ Cecil does n’t really care for me— No, don’t interrupt me, Lyssie ! I know. But no one can say

I don’t do everything in the world for your dear papa’s daughter. No one can say she is n’t exactly like my own child.”

“ Why, of course,” said Alicia soothingly.

“ I don’t know why you say ‘of course’!” cried Mrs. Drayton. “I ‘m sure there are a great many stepmothers who might have made a difference.”

“ I only meant of course you loved Ceci,” Lyssie explained.

“ I remember,” Mrs. Drayton proceeded, with a hint of tears in her voice, “ I remember perfectly well, once, when you were both little things, somebody asked Susy Carr ‘which was Mr. Drayton’s child by his first wife.‘ I think that shows how I treated Cecil.”

Cecil’s stepmother almost sobbed, and her daughter had to stop to kiss and comfort her, though it was getting warmer every moment, and the walk to her sister’s house was long and sunny.

“ Oh, go, go ! ” said Mrs. Drayton. “ I felt you look over my head at the clock. I’m sure I don’t want to interfere with your plans about Cecil. I suppose you’ve told Esther to bring me my eggnog at eleven ? Give my love to Philip. I must say he ’s never let Cecil teach him to be disrespectful to me; he always pays me proper attention ; I must say that, in spite of Cecil’s neglect.”

Alicia Drayton was only twenty-one, but she excelled in the art, which is taught to perfection in a sick-room, of knowing when to ignore complaints. A certain angelic common sense gave her at once discrimination and tenderness, those two qualities which must be together for the full development of either.

“ Yes, Esther will bring the eggnog at eleven,” she said cheerfully. “ Goodby, mother darling.” She gave an anxious thought, as she went downstairs, to that possible draft; and her face sobered as she stood for a moment in the open doorway of the dark, cool hall, and saw the blaze of June sunshine over the garden. The thought of her mother sitting all alone, in the half-light of lowered curtains and bowed shutters, struck on the girl’s tender heart with a sort of shame at her own young vigor. She knew how Mrs. Drayton’s pallid face and weak eyes would have shrunk away from what she always spoke of as the “glare,” and how the hot fragrance of the roses would have made her poor, heavy head ache. “ But it does seem as though she might look out of the window,” Lyssie thought, sighing. Yet she had been content to let her mother be comfortable in her own way. From which it will be seen that Miss Alicia Drayton was an unusual young woman. Indeed, very early in life this girl had displayed the pathetic common sense of the child whose mother’s foolishness forces her into a discretion beyond her years. The village had acknowledged her merit long ago, — acknowledged it with the slight condescension with which Old Chester commented upon Youth.

“ A very good girl,” said the village, “ but” — for Old Chester was apt to balance its praise with a “but” — “it’s a pity the child has n’t more accomplishments. She’s been so busy taking care of her poor mother all these years that she has n’t a single accomplishment.”

Mrs. Drayton, however, would have explained that an invalid could not be expected to think of such trivial things as accomplishments. “ I’ve brought her up to be a good child,” said Mrs. Drayton ; and certainly nobody could deny that. In fact, Alicia’s mother did very little beside read her Bible, and meditate over certain small good books of the nature of Gathered Pearls and Daily Foods. She kept a little stand at her elbow for her half dozen devotional, wellworn volumes. Thomas à Kempis was there, and her Prayer-Book, dear with use, and with flowers pressed between the pages of especially significant saints’ days, and small marginal ejaculations scattered through the Psalter, — ejaculations which Mrs. Drayton not infrequently read aloud to her callers. There was also upon the stand a little calendar, with a text, a hymn, and a prayer for each day. This was a distinct interest in the poor sick lady’s life, for there was the element of surprise in tearing off each slip ; she was apt to inclose an especially beautiful page to the correspondent to whom she chanced to be writing, and she would add “ True ! ” or underline a word or phrase, to show how personal were these printed outbursts of religious feeling.

Her husband, compelled by ill health to live abroad, was greatly favored in this way. Yet he had been known to say that “ Frances’s goodness was the worst part of her.” Indeed, irreverent lips whispered that Mrs. Drayton’s goodness was the peculiar disease which needed European treatment.

“ But then, why did he marry her, if he did n’t want to live with her ? ” the village reflected. “ Everybody knew what Fanny Dacie was. And why did he marry again, anyhow ? His child by his first wife had a good home with the Ashurst Draytons. He had no need to marry again.”

Mr. William Drayton, however, had thought differently. After the calamity of his first wife’s death, he had left the baby Cecil with his sister-in-law in Ashurst, and, dazed and bewildered by his grief, had gone away to forget. For several years he wandered aimlessly about the world. And when he drifted home again, and found Cecil, with her mother’s eyes and her mother’s name, — which made him wince whenever he had to address her, — when he found her irritable and discontented among her cousins in Colonel Drayton’s household, why, then he married again. He did not love the child, but it was hers, so it must have a home. He took Cecil and went back to Old Chester, and opened up the house he had closed when his wife died. What the associations were, what strange certainties came to him of that dead wife’s sympathy in his search for a new wife, he did not confide to any one, least of all to Miss Frances Dacie, while he sought to impress upon her that his happiness and her welfare, — a more truthful man might have reversed these adjectives, — his happiness and her welfare depended upon their marriage. Miss Dacie was thirty-one ; she yielded to his entreaty without that foolish hesitation which younger ladies sometimes deem necessary. Then, having provided a mother for little Cecil, William Drayton found, in a year or two, that his health demanded foreign travel.

“ And the unfortunate part of it is,” said Mr. Drayton, forty years old, gray, blasé, standing with his back to the fireplace in the Rev. Dr. Lavendar’s study, — “the unfortunate part of it is, my wife is such a wretched invalid (she has never been well, you know, since little Lyssie was born) she is n’t able to go with me. She could n’t stand traveling, and traveling, King says, is what I need. My only consolation is that I can live so much more cheaply in Europe, which of course is a good thing for Frances and the girls.”

And thus it was that Mr. William Drayton became a fugitive from matrimony.

He did give a thought sometimes to the task which Miss Dacie had assumed because of her desire to promote his happiness. But he consoled himself by reflecting upon her welfare. 舠She likes living in the Poindexter house,” he thought, his cold, heavy eyes closing in a smile, “ and it’s a great satisfaction to her to be married, even if she does have to wrestle with Cecilia ; but I’ve no doubt that little monkey, Alicia, will improve Cecilia.”

That Cecilia needed to be improved no one could deny. Her aunt, Mrs. Henry Drayton of Ashurst, used to testify to that emphatically.

“ I had that child seven years,” she would say, “ and nobody can tell me anything about her. She is the strangest creature ! — though I ’m sure I tried to make her a good child. Poor Frances ! I must say I pity her.”

Indeed, Mrs. Henry Drayton had continued to try to make Cecil a good child even after she had handed her over, “ with a sigh of relief,” to Mrs. William.

“ Cecil, my dear, you ought not to call your mamma 舠 Mrs. Drayton,’ ” she instructed her niece.

“ My mamma is dead, and I don’t love Mrs. Drayton,” Cecil answered, with a little pause between her slow sentences.

“ That has nothing to do with it,” said Mrs. Henry. “ She is your father’s wife, and you should treat her with respect even if you don’t love her; and it isn’t respectful to say ‘ Mrs. Drayton.’ ”

“ I ‘d just as lief say ‘ Miss Dacie,’ ” the child said, “ but I won’t say ‘ mamma,’because she is n’t my mamma.”

Her aunt gasped, and cried, “ You are a naughty little girl ! Of course you are not to say ‘ Miss Dacie ; ’ she is your papa’s wife, and ” —

“ How many wives can papa have ? ” Cecil interposed calmly ; “ my mother is his wife.”

“ Your mother is a saint in heaven ! — at least I hope she is,” said Mrs. Henry, horrified. “ If I were your mamma, I’d send you to bed without any supper.” “ I’m glad papa did n’t marry you ; that would have been worse than Mrs. Drayton,” her niece announced.

And then Mrs. Henry wept with Mrs. William, and said she pitied her with all her heart ; and nobody was more rejoiced than she, when, at eighteen, Cecil, just home from boarding-school, became engaged to Philip Shore.

“ I rejoice on your account, dear Frances,” she wrote to Cecil’s stepmother. “ What a relief it must be, after your noble devotion of these eleven years, at last to hand her over to a husband, — though I must say I pity the young man ! The colonel and I are delighted to hear what an estimable person he is, though I’m sorry he has n’t expectations from his uncle. However, Cecil has money enough for both. I hope, for your sake, they will be married at once.”

But they were not married at once. Philip spent three years in one of the Paris studios, and Mrs. Drayton was still obliged to endure her step-daughter’s indolence, and willful ways, and occasional black tempers ; and also her cold indifference, not only to herself, but, it must be admitted, to Old Chester !

When at last she married Philip Shore, Old Chester drew a breath of satisfaction. “ Dear Philip,” it said, — “ such a really superior young man ! Now poor Cecil will improve.”

But, except that Philip took her away for a year, no improvement was visible. She came back when Molly was born, and then everybody said they hoped the baby would make a difference in Cecil. It did ; it added to the strange, passionate, untrained nature the passion of maternity.

“Though I don’t care now what they say about me,” Cecil said languidly to her husband, looking down at the small head upon her arm ; “ I have this ! And really, Philip, you must admit I am of some value to Old Chester ? I give it something to gossip about. If I were suddenly to grow good, people would be disappointed ! ”

There was truth in this. All her life Cecil had afforded to her friends that interest of shuddering disapproval which is so delightful. Even her father had felt it when he came home to see her married. “ There are possibilities in this affair,” he thought, watching her with amiable, impersonal interest. “ If this Philip would get drunk once in a while, or swear at her, I think it might turn out pretty well. But he won’t, he won’t,” said Mr. Drayton, with real regret ; “ he ’ll be too damned polite to her.” He was surprised at his fatherly solicitude ; for the paternal tie is weakened after twelve years of absence, broken only by occasional visits. “ The young man,” he meditated, standing on the threshold, bidding adieu to the departing bride and groom, — “ the young man is in love ; there’s no doubt about that. And as for her, I suppose he is the first man she has seen, and so she’s in love, too. But very likely she’d have married the Devil to get away from Frances.” He was really interested ; perhaps, could his visit have been prolonged, he might have felt some anxiety in spite of himself. He was absent-minded as he listened to Old Chester’s praise of Philip, and ominous omission of Cecil’s name. “ The boy is an ascetic,” he was saying to himself, “ and she ” — He closed his lips ; at least she was Cecilia’s child. He had not seen her since, for, the winter that the young husband and wife were in Paris, there were reasons why Mr. Drayton could not ask his daughter to visit what he called his “humble roof” in Cannes ; and so, to avoid embarrassing inhospitality, he had found it necessary to be in Egypt for his health. The next time he came to Old Chester, Philip and his wife were living in town, and, as Mrs. Drayton explained, “dear William was unwilling to take a moment from me, though he would have been interested to see Molly, of course.”

When her step-daughter married, the consolation of living in the finest house in Old Chester was taken away from Mrs. Drayton. The Poindexter house had belonged to the first Mrs. Drayton, and had been settled on her child, as was also her not inconsiderable fortune. But when the plans for Cecil’s wedding were made, Mr. Drayton arranged that his wife and younger daughter should take a house in the village, “ where,” he wrote, “ as soon as my miserable health permits, I shall hope to join my dear ones permanently.” But thus far his health had not permitted.

That moving from her sister’s house had been a great trial to Alicia, who had been born there, and had spent a happy childhood in its gardens and orchards; but she had not been able to think very much of her own feelings. All her childish courage was needed to sustain her mother, who wept and moaned, and said that Cecil had turned her out of doors. “ Papa has made this arrangement, Mrs. Drayton,” her step-daughter reminded her briefly; and Mrs. Drayton’s pride refused her the luxury of finding fault with her husband. It was nine years ago that this change was made, but Alicia’s deepest home feeling was still for the great brick house on the hill, where she had spent those twelve happy years. She could see it from her window in the village, lifting above the foliage on the hillside its square, flat roof with the white balustrade. The house had white corner trimmings, and white lintels and copings, and the worn brick floor of the veranda was darkened by a roof lifted above the second-story windows by four white columns. It was cool on this porch, even on a June day like this on which Cecil and her husband were coming back to Old Chester to spend the summer, — a day brimming with hot sunshine, and with not a breath of wind to carry the scents of the garden up to the open windows of the house.

Alicia Drayton had sheltered herself under a big umbrella when she climbed the hill; but she was glad to sit down on the porch steps and rest, and fan herself with her hat, before going indoors to her pleasant task of giving the final touches of order and comfort to her sister’s house. She called over her shoulder to Eliza Todd, who was scrubbing somewhere within, and came clattering through the hall to tell Miss Drayton that all the mopboards were cleaned, and every window was done, “ and done good,” Eliza said ; and that consciousness made her feel enough at leisure to stand leaning on her broom listening to Miss Lyssie, who was incapable of seeing any reason why she should not tell her scrubbing-woman how happy she was to have her sister at home again.

“ And Molly! Molly is my little niece, Eliza; she ’s just eight. Oh, she is the dearest little thing! Though she can’t be very little now ; she was five the last time I saw her, and of course she’s grown since then.”

“ And have they just the one ? ” said Eliza.

舠 Yes,” said Miss Drayton. “ I’m sure I don’t know what my sister would do if there were any others, she loves Molly so much !舡

“Well,” Eliza commented, “a mother, she’s always got love enough to go round, somehow. I wish you could say the same of shoes.”

“ How is Job, Eliza? ” the girl asked kindly.

“ He’s been sober for three days,” said Job’s wife. “If your sister had to count days between sprees, she might say she was glad there was only one. And me with six, an’ another coming! Well, Miss Lyssie, the Good Man’s judgment ain’t just like ours, is it? Me with six, an’ only one in a nice house like this ! Well, I guess I ’ll go back to that hall; it wants to be swep’ once more.”

Alicia followed her in pitying silence, and a grave look lingered in her face even when she was busy with her pleasant work. Her scrubwoman’s domestic infelicities were very puzzling to Lyssie. Once, hesitatingly, after discouraging efforts to reconcile the husband and wife, whose violent quarrels were commonplace village gossip, she had suggested to Miss Carr that Eliza be advised to leave Job.

“ They don’t like each other, Miss Susan,” the girl said, “ and he treats her badly, and we have to support the children.”

“ Why, he is her husband, Lyssie Drayton ! ” cried Miss Susan. “ You don’t know what you are talking about, child ! ” And her horrified disapproval closed Alicia’s lips.

“ But I’m going to ask Ceci what she thinks,” Lyssie said to herself, when, late in the afternoon, a half hour before it was time to expect the stage, she went out on the porch again to rest. And then, in her own happiness, she could not help forgetting poor Eliza and her troubles. A red rose leaned its chin upon the balustrade and looked at her. Alicia pulled it down against her cheek in a pretty caress ; it made her think of her sister. It was brimmed with sunshine, and hot and sweet with passionate color. She remembered how Cecil liked to sit in the Sunshine, with lovely, lazy, half-shut eyes, and strong white fingers clasped behind her head ; her lip — Alicia looked at the rose—what a way Cecil had of holding her lip between her teeth, and then letting it go, wet and red ! Alicia twisted the thorny stem, but dropped it quickly, and put her finger to her lips and said, “Ouch! ” and then tried again to pluck it. “ I ’ll put it on her dressing table,” she reflected, “ and tell her it looks like her.”

II.

At five, when the yellow coach, swinging, pitching on its big springs, came rumbling up the lane, with much clattering of harness and cracking of the whip, Cecil Shore’s house was all ready for her. Philip was on the top seat with the driver, his hand on the collar of a big dog, whose trepidation at his swaying elevation was manifest ; his master’s face broke into a smile at the sight of Alicia, standing in happy excitement on the steps, and before the horses could come to a standstill he had swung himself down and kissed her, with one hand on her shoulder, and the other dragging Eric back, for the dog had followed him with a flying leap. Then he turned and opened the stage door, which was glowing with an Italian landscape of mountains, lakes, and Lombardy poplars.

“ Let me help you, Cecil, ” he said.

Cecil, in the dark cavern of the coach, was smiling at some one beside her.

“ Yes, that is Lyssie, that is my sister,”she was explaining. “ Lys dear, here we are! Have you worked your little hands off for us?” The soft, dark feathers of her wide hat brushed the top of the stage doorway, as, slowly, touching her husband’s arm to steady herself, she came down the two hinged steps ; then she smiled up at Alicia, and put two fingers under the girl’s chin and kissed her. “ Bless your dear little heart! ” she said. 舠I hope you are not worn out by house-cleaning ? ” And then she looked over her shoulder at the gentleman who had followed her from the coach, and upon whom Eric was bestowing a warm, wet welcome.

“This is Mr. Carey, Lyssie; my sister, Mr. Carey. Oh, don’t let Eric jump all over you ! Well, Lys dear, how are you ? Oh, Lyssie, I left my book in the stage ; get it, dear, will you ? ”

Alicia had no eyes for any one but Cecil. She ran back for the book, and stopped to hug Molly once again, and said no more than “ Excuse me ” when she brushed past Mr. Carey and followed her sister into the drawing-room. There she put Cecil into a big chair, and then stood and looked at her, her breath shaken by a happiness which brought the tears to her eyes.

“ Oh, my dear ! ” she said ; strangely enough, the older woman stirred all the mother in the girl. “ Oh, Ceci, to think you are here ! ” She slipped down to the floor, and put her arms about her sister’s waist and kissed her shoulder. “ Are you well ? Is Philip well ? Molly looks as blooming as a rose. Oh, Ceci, there never was anybody so dear as you !

“ Molly is an angel,” Molly’s mother declared. “ Lyssie, here is Mr. Carey. Mr. Carey, a declaration is being made me.” She bent Alicia’s face back and kissed her, smiling, and then she glanced about the long, pleasant room.

舠 Oh, how familiar it all looks ! Mr. Carey, my sister has put this whole house in order for me.”

Mr. Carey, standing in the doorway, was civilly surprised at Miss Drayton’s goodness, and cleverness, and anything else that Mrs. Shore chose to say, but he was plainly more interested in Eric, who ought to have some water, he said.

“ Here, you brute,” he protested, “ don’t jump on me! Mrs. Shore, may Erie come into the parlor ? ”

“ You must ask Lyssie,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “ May he come in, Lys ? How cool it is in here with this white matting on the floor! Lyssie, the house looks as though it had been lived in always; and let me see — it’s three years since we’ve been here, is n’t it ? Those poppies are superb. Oh, what color, what color! Mrs. Drayton sent them ? She’s very good, I’m sure. I hope she is quite well ? Molly, come pull off mamma’s gloves. And how is Old Chester, Lyssie ? Is everybody asleep? Do you think they will waken up to talk about me ? Oh, do put those poppies here beside me ; that scarlet is — I think it is an expression of religion. Poor Lys, how I shock you! Mr. Carey, did you know that Mr. Shore was the Example of Old Chester, and I the Warning ? We come like two traveling evangelists.”

“ Well, I will go and assist the Example,” said the young man, and went out into the hall, where the master of the house was giving directions about trunks and boxes.

Alicia was so far used to the excited happiness of the arrival that she glanced at Mr. Carey, and thought that his short, rough, blond hair made him rather good looking. He also glanced at her with a pair of candid, obstinate blue eyes, and said to himself, “ To think of those two women being sisters ! ” Indeed, his impression of her was deep enough to make him say, while he was looking after Eric’s comfort, “ She seems like a mighty nice girl.”

Cecil, meantime, in her big, cool bedroom, was explaining her guest to her sister. “ I hardly know him ; I’ve only seen him twice. He’s a friend of Philip’s; he’s a lawyer, but quite an authority on pig iron, too. He looks it, somehow, don’t you think he does ? The word suggests him,—pig iron. Well, you know Philip is writing a book on the chemical changes in pig iron, — Heaven knows why! One would think he had enough on his hands with his scholarship fund and his political people; but he persuaded Mr. Carey to come down for a fortnight and help him about something. Philip thinks him charming,” she ended, and smiled, with the corner of her red lip drooping ; “ but really, he is n’t bad, Lys ? ”

She had taken a gold pin from her hair, and two braids fell heavily upon her shoulders. Lyssie, her elbows on the toilet table, and her chin in her hands, sat absorbed in looking at her. “ Oh, Ceci, I wish you would never go away again,” she said.

“ My dear! I should die here,” Cecil assured her seriously. “ A summer is all I can think of. I wanted Molly to be in the country, in some quiet place, and I wanted to see you, so I thought I could stand Old Chester for three months. But this room is certainly very nice,” she broke off, with such a kind look that Alicia forgot the fatigue of her day’s work. She glanced at the white curtains in the four deep windows, and reflected how she had hammered her thumb in putting them up; but what did that matter? Cecil liked her room! There was matting on the floor, and white covers on the furniture, and a deep white valance about the bed, whose four tall posts were crowned with a tester. It, too, was hung with white dimity. There were two silver candlesticks on the table, and an India china bowl full of pale pink roses. There was also a deep red rose in a glass on the toilet table.

“ I thought it looked like you, Ceci,” the younger sister said timidly.

“ No, not a rose, Lys,” she corrected her slowly, with a melodious break of silence between her sentences. “ I’m a peony. I’ve no soul. Put it in Philip’s room. He is all soul! Philip has almost converted Mr. Carey (his name is Roger, — Roger Carey) to his political opinions. Not quite, though, as he has an interest in a rolling-mill at Mercer, and iron rust doth corrupt, so he’s still a Republican. But I almost wish he would get converted, I’m so tired of hearing the excellent Philip plead with him. They talked about it in the train, all the way to Mercer. I composed a new soup in my mind, to keep the refrain of ‘ reform ’ from putting me to sleep. Well, what do you think of him, Lys?”

“ He looks rather nice,” Alicia commented, “ and he was good to Eric.”

“ Oh, he is given up to dogs and horses and all that sort of thing; he ’s that sort of a man. But he’s good natured, and, thank Heaven, he has a sense of humor. I like to talk to him, though he is rude. I think, if he had been born in a different class, he would have knocked his wife down sometimes, or sworn at her, anyhow.”

“ Is he married ? ” Lyssie said.

“Oh dear, no; he has n’t money enough to marry. What do you think of his looks ? ”

“ I ‘d rather think of yours,” Lyssie declared. “ His eyes seemed nice, and I thought he was rather a rosy person ; oh, quite good looking, I think. But, Ceci, I think you — Oh, when you bring those two braids around behind your ears and cross them on top of your head, with those little tendrils of curls sticking out of them, they look like a chaplet of laurel ! ”

“ You are rather nice looking yourself,” said the other, thrusting the gold pin through these same splendid braids, and glancing with kind eyes at her young sister, who indeed had no more claim to beauty than is given by mere youth, with perhaps a fresh color, and frank eyes, and a well-shaped head set on a slender, girlish neck. “ Yes, though not a raving beauty, you are nice to look at. How is our dear papa, Lys ? I have n’t heard from him for six months. I think he never included me among his ‘ dear ones.’ ”

“ About the same, I think,” Alicia answered soberly. “Mother had a letter last week. I wish she were able to join him, Ceci. I think, if she just got through the voyage, Cannes would be good for her.”

“ Good gracious ! ” cried Cecil. “ Well, Lyssie, don’t let Mrs. Drayton come down upon him unexpectedly; don’t surprise him, dear.”

“ Oh, there really is n’t any chance of her doing it,” Lyssie said; “ but why not ? I always thought that it would be so pleasant, to be surprised? ”

“I — I don’t think it would be pleasant,” Mrs. Shore answered briefly ; and added, “ for our dear papa.” And then she laughed, and pushed her chair back from the dressing table, resting her fingers on its linen cover, and glancing into the long mirror which stood behind it, between the windows.

“ Well, is there anything interesting going on in Old Chester? Oh, I forgot to tell you. Mr. Carey is a sort of relation of some Mrs. Pendleton (or rather of her husband) who has come to Old Chester to live. He had forgotten it, but Philip discovered it in some way. Who is she ? ”

“ Well, she’s a widow ; she’s — oh, I ’ll tell you who she is, Ceci : she was the Miss Amanda Townsend whom we used to hear about when we were children, — don’t you remember ? She was engaged to Mr. Joseph Lavendar, and they quarreled; and she married some rich man right off, — oh, in a month, I think, or something like that. Well, he was Mr. Pendleton ; he died nearly two years ago. Such crape ! She must have been very much attached to him ; she’s all covered up in crape yet. And he left her a house here, and quite a lot of money,” said Lyssie, with some awe; “ they say five thousand a year ! ”

Cecil laughed, and rose. “ What a fortune ! I should think Mr. Joseph would try to make up.”

“ I think he’d like to,” Lyssie said; “ but they say that if she marries again she has to give up the money ; and then, I don’t think Dr. Lavendar likes her, so Mr. Joseph could n’t.”

“ Is Dr. Lavendar just as dusty and tangled looking as ever ? ” Cecil inquired. “ People really ought not to be allowed to offend the world by their looks ! I had such a time this spring with my coachman. He appeared, if you please, in blue spectacles. It did n’t interfere with his driving, of course, but he was a perfect object! I told him I could n’t have it. He could take off the spectacles or leave. He left: so annoying in him! ”

“ But the poor man’s eyes,” protested Lyssie ; “ perhaps he needed blue glasses ? ”

“ Well, that was n’t my affair,” Cecil said gayly ; “ and I certainly was not going to endure blue goggles because Jones had poor eyes.”

“ But he must have felt rather discouraged,” Lyssie persisted, still sympathizing with Jones, “ to lose a place just because ” —

“ Oh, those people don’t mind,” Cecil interrupted her carelessly. “ Come ! let’s go to the nursery. Molly is delicious. Have you seen her ? ”

The visit to the nursery delayed supper, but that did not trouble Mrs. Shore. She brought Molly downstairs with her, and kept her at her side at the table, feeding her with lumps of sugar dipped in coffee, to the child’s delight, and her father’s great but reticent annoyance.

Mr. Carey’s keen eyes noticed the annoyance in spite of the reticence. “ Funny match,” he thought, glancing at his hostess across his wineglass; and he reflected that the other sister was “ more like Shore.”

“ The other,” sitting opposite him, was defending herself from a charge of neglect.

“ It’s very ungracious in you,” Mrs. Shore was saying, “ to leave me the moment you’ve had your supper ! ”

“You know I’d like to stay, Ceci,” the girl pleaded, “but I don’t want to leave mother alone all the evening. I was here in the morning, you know.”

“ You rushed home to give her her dinner,” interrupted Cecil gayly ; “ I am certain of that! Molly, will you be as good to mamma, when she is old and fussy, as aunt Lyssie is to grandmamma? ” Alicia’s color rose a little. “ Of course I went home; I wanted some dinner myself. But I was here all the afternoon, and I could n’t be away in the evening, too ? ” she ended anxiously.

And Roger Carey, listening, said to himself again, “ She ’s a mighty nice little thing.” But he laughed, notwithstanding his appreciation of her character, when Mrs. Shore declared droily, “ Oh, Lyssie, your especial form of selfishness is unselfishness! ”

“ At least it is an unusual form,” Philip said, smiling ; “ but anything unusual is very bad, Lys ! ”

And then the group about the table broke up, and Alicia said she must go home. Cecil reproached her, and her brother enticed her, and Mr. Carey said that, as an unprejudiced outsider, he must say he thought she was neglecting her family. But she was charmingly firm ; so Philip and his guest escorted her to her door, through a mist of June moonlight, full of the scent of dewy leaves and blossoming grass.

Cecil, left alone upon the porch, cuddled Molly in her arms, and thought how tired she was with her journey, and how delightful it would be to have nothing whatever to do for the next three months.

The summer night fell like a perfumed curtain across the valley ; the dusk had a certain richness of texture, as though one might lay one’s lace against it and feel its softness. From the pool below the terraces came the bell-like clang of frogs. Katydids answered each other in the tulip-trees, and the shrill, monotonous note of the cicada rose and fell, and rose again. Molly had fallen asleep, and Cecil felt the little limbs relax, and the head grow heavy upon her arm ; she looked down at her, and leaned her face towards the child’s soft, parted lips, and felt her breath upon her cheek; she lifted the little limp, warm hand to her lips, and kissed it gently ; but Molly stirred and fretted, and her mother was plainly relieved when the nurse came to take her to bed.

“ How heavy she is getting, Rosa ! ” Mrs. Shore said, with that frowning pride common to mothers when any pain comes to them from the child’s strength ; and her eyes followed the little figure in Rosa’s arms with a sort of passionate tenderness, before she allowed herself to sink back into her chair, and yawn, and think that her arm was really stiff from the child’s weight.

“ Yes, it will be good for her to be here,” she reflected; “the duller it is, the better on her account. But, good heavens ! I don’t know how I am going to stand it. Perhaps I was a fool not to have sent her to Alicia, and taken Philip abroad for the summer? ”

No nicety of thought prevented Mrs. Shore from regarding her husband’s entire financial dependence upon her with anything but a crude truthfulness; but she was apt to confound such dependence with a certain silent acquiescence in her plans, and to feel that she really might have “ taken ” him abroad, or that she had “ brought” him to Old Chester.

In the half-light there upon the old porch, where the climbing roses and the wistaria grew so thick about the pillars that they made an almost impenetrable lattice against the faint yellow light still lingering in the west, the singular and distinguished beauty of Cecil Shore’s face was less noticeable than was that peculiar brutality one sees sometimes in refined and cultivated faces which have known nothing but ease : faces which have never shown eagerness, because all their desires are at hand ; nor pity, because they have never suffered ; nor humility, because their tributary world has made their sins those of omission rather than of commission.

“ But this Mr. Carey is entertaining,” Cecil was thinking,—“if a friend of Philip’s can be entertaining! ” She sighed, and looked wearily about her. “Yes, it must be good for Molly,” she repeated, as though for self-encouragement. Sometimes the sense of a lack of interest comes over one with a horrible physical sinking. “ And nothing ever has been interesting except that first year I was married ! ” she said to herself.

She was just thirty : nearly half her life, perhaps, was lived ; why in the world should another thirty years seem so horrible ? She had so many of the conditions which are supposed to mean happiness. She had Molly. “ But, after all, Molly is not myself,” she thought. In a mother this keen sense of personal identity is significant; it was even conceivable, with this sense, that Cecil Shore’s little daughter might some time bore her. As she lay back in her chair, her face grew curiously dull and heavy, as though for very weariness of her own well being ; and then a faint amusement came into her eyes at the remembrance of her husband’s excellence, and with it a contemptuous impatience of her own good humor. For she was very good humored with Philip. Even Old Chester, snubbed and shocked and honestly grieved at a thousand faults, — even Old Chester had to admit that she was very agreeable to Philip. “ She makes him very comfortable,” Old Chester said. “ She is a good housekeeper, and that is most praiseworthy. She gives a great deal of thought to her food. She is lazy, but she trains her cook herself ! ” Her failings were all on the side of impertinence to her elders and betters, in extravagance, in indolence, in not bringing Molly up according to Old Chester traditions. But, for all that, she made Philip “ very comfortable.”

“ How he hates it! ” she thought to herself, a keen humor lighting her eyes. “ He does n’t want to be made comfortable. I think he would really like it better if I were not so agreeable to him. Oh, he ought to have been a monk, — he ought to have been a monk! ”

III.

Mrs. Drayton had been quite right in saying that Philip was always properly attentive. His first call in Old Chester was upon her ; and though he was careful to say that his wife had sent him, with her love and apologies that the fatigue of the journey kept her from coming herself, no credit was given to Cecil.

“ Sent him ! ” Mrs. Drayton said afterwards to Alicia, aggrieved, but shrewd. “ As if I did n’t know what that amounted to! She does n’t even know he has been to see me. Oh, when I think how I took her mother’s place to Cecil, it is a little bitter to feel that she does n’t eare for me.” Her eyes filled, and Lyssie knelt down and put her arms about her and comforted her, with that sincere and troubled tenderness — love knows it well —that dares not stop to think of truth.

“ Ceci was so tired with her journey. Of course she wants to see you, dearest, but ” —

“ Oh,” cried Mrs. Drayton, “you don’t understand. Only a mother can understand the pang that a child’s ingratitude causes. Of course I try to be forgiving, — ‘ seventy times seven ’ is my motto, — but Cecil was always like my own child to me. Did I ever tell you that somebody once asked Susy Carr which of you was your father’s child by his first wife ? Well, that shows how I loved her. And I’m sure, only the other day I made you carry her some poppies. I’m always showing her my affection, and she despises, despi— ” And Mrs. Drayton broke down and wept.

Alicia, very pitiful of what her clear eyes told her was not wounded love, but wounded vanity, stayed in the darkened room for an hour, though she had not given Esther her orders for the day, nor picked the roses, nor fed her pigeons, nor had a moment to run up the hill to see Cecil.

On this particular occasion, however, in spite of Mrs. Drayton’s insight into Cecil’s feelings, her step-daughter did know that Philip was being “ properly attentive.” That morning, as he and Molly and Mr. Carey had started down to the village together, Cecil, standing on the porch to see them off, said gayly, “ Spare Mr. Carey Mrs. Drayton, Philip. He has done nothing to deserve Mrs. Drayton, I’m sure. And make me as fatigued as possible, do! I shall not be equal to a call for a week.”

Molly, hanging on her father’s hand, said gravely, “Why doesn’t mamma like grandmamma ? ” At which Roger Carey, under his breath, said something about little pitchers, and Philip laughed in spite of himself, but looked annoyed, and called Molly’s attention to the fact that she had better pick some daisies for her aunt Lyssie.

They left Mr. Carey at his kinswoman’s door before Philip went to make his call upon Mrs. Drayton. “Turn up at the tavern about eleven, Carey,” he said, “ and we ’ll walk back together.”

“ Eleven ! ” thought Mr. Carey, with dismay. “Must I stay with the old lady until eleven ? ”

Mrs. Pendleton was plainly of the opinion that he must, for she had many things to talk about. She was a pretty little woman, in spite of the heavy crape in which she was swathed ; her face was round and somewhat rosy, and her light brown hair waved down over her ears, and about a forehead as smooth as though she were fourteen instead of forty-five. There was hardly a wrinkle on her placid face. Dr. Lavendar had been heard to say, in this connection, that “ thought made wrinkles.” And the inference was obvious ! Yet the fact that Mrs. Pendleton was known in the world of letters might seem to contradict such an inference. To be sure, it was only as “Amanda P.,” but almost every one who had seen the thin volume of verses had heard Mrs. Pendleton’s modest acknowledgment of its authorship.

“ I suppose,” she used to confess whenever she gave away a copy of the book, “I suppose it was unfeminine to publish, but ‘Amanda P.’ is not like appearing under my own name. That I never could have done; it would have been so unfeminine.” Indeed, in Old Chester Mrs. Pendleton was as distinguished by her femininity as by literature. Her delicate manners were of the kind that used to be called “ genteel,” and she always displayed the timidity and modesty that are expected of a “ very feminine ” female. She had fainted once when a little mouse ran across the chancel in church, and she had been known to say that she thought certain words in the service “ most indelicate.”

As she talked, Mr. Carey felt again his old impatience with her, which he had forgotten, as he had forgotten her, and he wished he could intercept Philip somewhere before the hour for meeting him at the tavern was up. Mrs. Pendleton did, however, give him a good deal of Old Chester gossip, for which he was not ungrateful. She told him that Frances Drayton, Cecil Shore’s stepmother, was a most lovable character, and Alicia a devoted and dutiful daughter; that Susan Carr was quite philanthropic ; and that Jane Temple had married very much beneath her. Mrs. Pendleton had lived in Old Chester only a short time, but it was another of her characteristics, this of speaking of persons whom she knew slightly by their first names.

The hour was nearly up when Roger went away, saying that he wanted to have a look at Old Chester before going home. He walked down by the church, and wondered what philosophy Dr. Lavendar exploited ; for plain religion would scarcely have warranted Mrs. Pendleton’s appreciative remark that old Dr. Lavendar was very learned, though — though a little shabby. She did not mean to speak unkindly, but he was certainly shabby.

It was a pretty little church, the walls all rustling and tremulous with ivy, and with a flutter of sparrows’ wings about the eaves. Philip had told him that Miss Drayton sung in the choir on Sundays. “ I ’ve a great mind to go to church while I’m here.” the young man reflected. And with this thought in his mind, it was natural enough to turn and walk up on the other side of the street, past a low, whitewashed wall crowned by a dusty hawthorn hedge. It was remarkable how often Mr. Roger Carey glanced over that hedge at the white house behind it. “ Perhaps she ’ll happen to come out,” he said to himself. Possibly to keep such a chance open he stopped. and seemed to examine, with frowning interest, the fringe of grass which straggled out from the lawn and hung over the wall; but no door opened in the silent, sunny house, and no light step came down the path, and he was obliged to walk on. He wondered whether, when Mrs. Shore had presented him to Miss Drayton, and he had bowed, and said nothing but that Eric ought to have a drink, he had seemed like a cub ? He really felt a little anxious. 舠 The next time I see her I ’ll make myself agreeable; I ’ll make a pretty speech.” he promised himself, his pleasant eyes crinkling into a laugh ; and then his whole face suddenly beamed, and he pulled off his hat, for there was the lady of his thoughts before him. The barn, connected with the house by a line of outbuildings, faced the street; its double doors were open, and on the threshold, with the cavernous dusk behind her, stood Alicia Drayton in a blue print gown, her soft hair blowing about her forehead, and a crowd of fantail pigeons strutting and cooing and tumbling over one another at her feet. Lyssie had a basket in her hand, and now and then she threw a handful of oats among them ; they walked over one another’s pink feet, and pressed their snowy breasts so closely together that the grain fell on their glistening backs and wings before it reached the floor. Lyssie, as she let the oats drop through her fingers, made a low coo in her throat, or stopped to admonish her jostling friends. Don’t push so, Snowball. Puff, you ’re rude. There ! there’s some all for yourself.” Then she looked out across the sunshine in front of the barn and saw Mr. Carey. She remembered quickly that her hair was rough, and she brushed the stray locks back with her wrist, but she smiled and said, “ Goodmorning. Yes, do ! ” when he called out to know if he might come in and admire her flock.

“ Why, are n’t they tame ! ” he said, as he took her hand, and then watched the pigeons flutter back after their moment’s consternation at his footsteps. He had really meant to look at Alicia, she made so pretty a picture standing on the barn floor, with the shadowy haymow behind her, and a dusty line of sunshine from the window in the roof lying like a bar between them, — he had intended to look at her, and perhaps even make his pretty speech ; but the pigeons interested him too much ; he had a dozen questions to ask about them.

“ Have you any swifts ? Do you call the young ones squabs or squalers ? The sheen on that one’s neck is like a bit of Roman glass! ”

“ Is it ? That’s Puff. Indeed they are tame ; look here ! ” She knelt down and stretched out her hand. “ Come, come, come,” she said, with the cooing sound in her throat; and one of the pigeons hopped upon her finger, clasping it with his red, hard little feet, and balancing back and forth with agitated entreaty to be careful, the fleeting iridescence of his rimpling breast striking out into sudden color. And as she knelt there, Roger, looking down at her, and seeing the pretty way her hair grew about the nape of her white neck, found the pigeons less absorbing. Then she said she would show him something else that was pretty, and stepped back into the dusky gloom of the barn and called “ Fanny, Fanny ! Come, Fan ! ” There was a scurry of uncertain little hoofs back in the recesses of the stable, and a bay colt, long-legged and shaggy, with small, suspicious ears pointed at the intruder, came with hesitating skips to her side.

“Is n’t she a beauty? ” Lyssie said. She had forgotten all her embarrassment of rumpled hair, and looked at him with the frankest, kindest eyes. Roger, examining the colt’s mouth and stroking its absurd legs, said “ yes,” and called her attention to several good points, as certain of her appreciation as if she had not been a girl. Fanny’s mother thrust her serious head over her manger, and watched the young people, and the pigeons, and the long shaft of sunshine falling in a pool on the rough floor at Fanny’s forefeet.

“ She’s named for my mother,” Alicia explained ; and after that they talked as easily as if they had known each other for years. Philip was making a lot of visits, Mr. Carey told her. “ Yes, he ’s been here with Molly,” said Alicia. “ It’s so sweet in Cecil to send them to see mother the first thing ; Cecil was too tired to come herself.”

“ Yes,” said Mr. Carey ; “so — ah — she said. I went down to see the church, Miss Drayton. Philip says we can come and hear you sing on Sunday ? ”

“ Oh, it is Miss Susan Carr who sings,” Lyssie explained ; “ she has a beautiful voice.”

She looked at him with such placid candor that it would have been absurd to make a “ pretty speech.” As he thought it over afterwards, Roger Carey was surprised to find that he had not made a single pretty speech in their whole talk as they stood there in the barn with Fanny and the pigeons ; perhaps it would have come had the talk been longer, but Alicia chanced to speak of Philip, and Mr. Carey, conscience-stricken, remembered that the hour was more than up.

“ Philip ! ” he said. “ What will Philip say to me ? I was to have met him half an hour ago.” Then he said goodby, and rushed away. But his haste was unnecessary ; Philip had not yet reached the tavern ; so he had to walk home by himself, thinking all the while, with regret, that he might have stayed a little longer in the barn.

The fact was, his host had forgotten him. After he had done his duty in calling upon his mother-in-law, there were many old friends whom he wanted to see. Then, too, he had to stop to point out familiar landmarks to his little daughter, which took time.

“ Look, that’s where father went to school.”

“ Is that where you used to draw pictures on your slate instead of doing sums ? ”

Philip’s confession would not have been approved by an educator: “ Yes ; it was a great deal better than sums.”

After that they stopped to buy some candy at Tommy Dove’s. “ I used to waste lots of my allowance here when Mr. Tommy’s father kept the apothecary shop,” Philip said ; and the purchase of a red-and-white-striped candy whistle, very stale and very strongly flavored with wintergreen, detained them at least a quarter of an hour. Then, too, they had to pause under one of the ailanthus trees on the green, so that her father might show Molly how to make a strange, husky noise through the whistle, while between her lips it was melting into sticky sweetness.

It was nearly noon before they reached the rectory, — a small, rambling house, with vines growing thick about its doors and windows. When they crossed the threshold, the visitors took one step down into a narrow hall, and then turned sharp to the right to enter Dr. Lavendar’s study, a small room, smelling of tobacco smoke and leather bindings. There was a work table, with a lathe beside it, standing in a flood of sunshine by a south window, but vines darkened the other windows, and the book-covered walls filled the room with a pleasant dusk. The old clergyman looked up from his sermon when Philip and Molly broke in upon his solitude. His eyes shone with pleasure ; he took his pipe from his lips, and stretched out his hand to them without rising.

“ Can’t get up,” he said, frowning, with great show of annoyance; “ this abominable dog has gone to sleep with his head on my foot! Dogs are perfect nuisances! ” But, as a shaggy old Scotch terrier rose, yawning and stretching, from the floor beside him, he did rise, and clapped Philip on the shoulder, twinkling at him from under bushy white eyebrows.

“ Good boy ! Good boy ! ” he said. “ And the child ? Nice child. Go and play in the garden, my dear. I can’t remember her name, Philip ? ”

Molly, obedient, and glad to get out again into the sunshine, would have stepped from the open French window into the deep, tangled sweetness of an old-fashioned garden, but Dr. Lavendar called her back. He put his pipe down on the mantelshelf, and searched slowly in all the pockets of his ancient dressinggown. “ There,” he said, “ there’s a nickel ! Now go.” And Molly, with a wondering glance at her father, went.

Dr. Lavendar sat down in front of his work table. “ Back again, boy ? How long do you intend to stay ? How ’s your wife ? ”

“Well,” Philip told him briefly, and added that they should spend the summer in Old Chester.

“ You did n’t see Joseph in Mercer, as you came through ? Well, never mind ; he ’ll be here on Saturday, — never fails to come on Saturday. Hi, there, Danny ! Do you see that dog getting into my armchair ? I won’t have it; I ’ll give him away. Daniel, you ’re a scoundrel.” Then he got up and poked a cushion under Danny’s little old gray head.

“ I have seen only two or three people beside Mrs. Drayton,” said Philip, — “ oh ! and Mrs. Pendleton. I stopped at her house to present my friend, Roger Carey, who is staying with me. He is a connection of her husband’s.”

“ Yes, yes ; she’s come here to live,” said Dr. Lavendar, the eager sweetness of his old face changing suddenly. “You know who she is ? She ’s the girl who broke off with Joey. She lived in Mercer then. Well, that’s twenty years ago now ; but she’s the same woman, — the same woman! ”

“Perhaps she’s had a change of heart,” Philip suggested.

舠 Can the Ethiopian change his skin ? ” cried Dr. Lavendar tremulously. “ No, no, Philip. She threw Joey over for a rich man. And she has a small mouth. I will never trust a woman with a small mouth. Why ? When you’ve had more experience in life, you ’ll know why. Women with small mouths think of nothing but themselves. You can see it in this — ah — person. She threw Joey over !

“But if Mr. Joseph has forgiven her ” — Philip began ; but Dr. Lavendar would not discuss Mrs. Pendleton.

舠 I’m afraid I seem irritated,” he said apologetically ; “ sometimes I almost lose my patience in speaking of her. Yes, Joe forgave her, and I ought not to be resentful, I ’m sure. I ’m the gainer. I ’d have lost him if she ’d appreciated him. She ’s the kind of woman who comes out three or four words behind the rest of the congregation in the responses, Philip. If you were a clergyman, you’d know what that means ! ” He pulled his black silk skullcap down hard over his white hair that stood up very stiff and straight above his anxious, wrinkled forehead and his keen dark eyes. Then he sighed, and said, with a little effort, “ Look here, Philip, I’ve something to show you.”

He turned his swivel chair round a little, and began to fumble at the lock of a drawer in his table. “ I always keep the key in the lock,” he said, chuckling. “ If I did n’t, I should lose it twenty times a day ! ” He pulled the drawer open with an excited jerk, and took out some small packages of soft white tissue paper ; he unfolded them with eager haste, his lips opening and closing with interest.

“ Look at that! ” he said, and spread in the palm of his hand a dozen small, glittering stones. “ They are hyacinths. Joey got ’em for me. Look at this one.” He took a single stone up in his pinchers, and held it between Philip and the light. “ Some time, Philip, when you are a rich man, you shall give me a diamond to cut ? ”

“ You shall have it, sir,” Philip assured him ; “ but I’m afraid I ’ll never be a rich man. How does the book come on, Dr. Lavendar ? ”

The old clergyman shook his head. “ Fairly, Philip, fairly ; I think it will be done in about three years. You see, The History of Precious Stones cannot be written in a day. (That’s the title, — The History of Precious Stones. Don’t you think that is a good title ?) No, it can’t be written in a day. It is the history of the human race, when you come to think of it. And that’s a large subject, sir, a large subject. You see, there are so many discursions from the main subject necessary, — sub-subjects, as it were. Take, for instance, the story of the emerald of Artabanus ; of course that brings up his wife, and she at once recalls to the thoughtful reader the incident of her father and his general. Or say rubies : one is reminded of the dancer who lost his bride because Clisthenes objected that he ‘gesticulated with his legs.’ You remember the story of the ruby there, of course, Philip ? ”

Philip was prudently silent.

“ Of course all that must be given. Yes, I think it will certainly be three years before the book is finished. Then I ’ll rewrite it and polish it. I’ve no patience with those crude writers who don’t polish. Books are like sapphires ; they must be polished — polished ! or else you insult your readers.”

“ It will be a very valuable book, I’ve no doubt, sir.”

“ Why, certainly, certainly,” Dr. Lavendar agreed, rather curtly (the young man’s observation seemed trite) ; “ of course it will be valuable. It gives me pleasure to feel that I am going to be able to leave Joey a snug little sum ; he ’ll have a regular income from The History of Precious Stones, when I’m dead and gone, sir.”

Philip, suppressing any astonishment he might have felt at the profits of literature, examined an amethyst of very beautiful color, while Dr. Lavendar explained that all his stones were cheap. “ Joey can’t afford valuable stones,” he said; “ but for beauty, what is more beautiful than those drops of immortal, unchangeable light? Look here!” He rummaged in another drawer, and found a cracked china cup, half full of small, roughly cut stones. 舠 Topazes, garnets, green garnets, — look ! ” He took up a handful of them, and, standing there in the stream of sunshine from the deep window, let them slip by twos and threes between his fingers, a flashing drip of color.

Philip went away, smiling and sighing.

舠 What do you breathe such long breaths for, father?” said Molly; and he turned his sigh into a laugh, and said he was thinking it was pretty nice to live in Old Chester.

“ Everybody ’s so happy, Polly,” he explained.

“ But why do they all fuss so ? ” Molly inquired gravely ; and when he bade her remember that little girls did not know enough to talk about grown persons, she looked up at him and made her small excuse with puzzled face. “ But mamma said so. Mamma said that everybody here was awfully fussy, and they bored her to death.”

Her father was too busy pointing out a martin-house in the fork of an oak to make any comment on “mamma’s” views, and she did not look up to see the irritation in his face. She went springing along by his side over the short pasture turf, in a search for Miss Susan Carr, who was, they were told, looking after some late planting on her farm. They crossed a brook, that went bubbling between green banks, making whirling loops of foam about the larger stones in its path ; a cow, standing ankle-deep in its shallow rush, sighed, as they passed her, in calm and fragrant meditation. Old Chester was behind them, and high up on a hillside on the left the balconied roof of Cecil Shore’s house gleamed whitely above the treetops.

“ Oh, father,” said Molly, “ can’t I take off my shoes and stockings and wade? ”

And Philip, nothing loath to light a cigar and sit in the sun, said, “ Yes, by all means ! Miss Susan has to cross this field to get home, so we ‘ll wait for her here.”

He stretched himself out lazily under a beech, and with half-shut eyes watched, through the cigar smoke, the child holding her skirts well up out of the water, gripping the slippery stones with little bare white feet, and balancing herself in all the delightful excitement of a possible tumble. The beech leaves moved and whispered in a fresh breeze, and the brook kept up a low argument broken into chattering bursts; the sun shone warm on the green slope of the field, and far off, behind the hills, deep in the placid blue, great shiny clouds lay like the domes of a distant and celestial city. A man could forget the harshness of living, in such warm peace. Philip was almost sorry when Miss Susan Carr’s cordial, strident voice hailed him with affection and surprise. She came towards him, all unconscious of her heavy, muddy boots and her hot, red face.

“ My dear Philip ! My dear boy ! ” she said, her kind, near-sighted brown eyes dimmed with pleasure. And then she kissed him heartily, and asked a dozen questions about his health and his concerns, and hugged Molly, and said she hoped Cecil was well. She stood there in her short linsey-woolsey skirt and loose baggy jacket, one hand on her hip, looking at him with those quick, anxious glances which, to be sure, do not see very deeply into a man’s soul, but are full of that mother comfort that often speaks in the faces of childless women. Philip’s affection answered her in his words and eyes. He and Molly went home with her ; and Molly had a cake, and went to visit the kittens in company with Miss Susan’s old Ellen ; and Philip drank a glass of wine, and Miss Susan talked and beamed. She gossiped, like all the rest of Old Chester ; but, by some mysterious method, Susan Carr’s gossip gave the listener a gentler feeling towards his kind. When she spoke of her neighbors’ faults, one knew that somehow they were simply virtues gone to seed ; and, what was more remarkable, her praise had no sting of insinuation in it, no suggestion that she could speak differently if she chose. Susan Carr’s heart was sound and sweet; she seemed to have brought from her fields and pastures the courage of the winds and sunshine, and the spirit of the steadfast earth. Her face was as fresh as an autumn morning ; her nut-brown hair, with a large, soft wave on either side of the parting, had not a thread of gray, though she was quite forty-five ; on her cheek there was the glow that a russet apple has on the side nearest the sun, and her dark eyes crinkled into laughter as easily as they had done at twenty. She had a great deal to say to Philip, and all in a loud, breezy, vibrating voice, full of eager and friendly confidence in his interest. She told him that Lyssie was the dearest child in the world, “and devoted to Frances,”she declared. “ Of course she has n’t Cecil’s looks; but she’s such a pleasant girl, and such a good child, too.” She had a good word for Mrs. Pendleton, though there was a little effort in her voice. She laughed good naturedly about the Lavendars. “ Yes, the dear old doctor still preaches on the Walls of the New Jerusalem. He is wonderfully learned, Philip, about precious stones ; and I don’t mind hearing about jacinth and chrysoprase and all those; it ‘s really interesting. And it is about heaven, too,” she added reverently.

“ I suppose you and Lyssie do a good deal of his parish work for him ? ” Philip said, lounging up and down the room, his hands in his pockets. “ How familiar everything looks, Miss Susan ! How well I remember the first time I came into this room with uncle Donald! ”

“ Do you ? ” she said, her face softening. “ How proud he was of you, Philip! Well, yes, Lyssie and I help the doctor sometimes. He’s getting old, dear old man. But he won’t spare himself. Careless as he is in his dress and about small things, in his work he’s as exact and as punctual ! Dear me, I wish the rest of us were half so methodical. You can’t make him remember to order Jones to clip the hedge by the church, or to tell his Mary to mend his surplice ; but if he has promised to see a poor soul at the upper village, he’s there on the minute ; or if he thinks Job Todd has been drinking, he’s sure to call just at the time he gets home from the shop, so as to keep him from abusing Eliza.”

Philip, listening and smiling, said “yes舡 or “no ” as Miss Susan seemed to expect; but he paid sudden attention when, in speaking again of Alicia, she referred incidentally to Eliza Todd’s unhappiness. Miss Susan did not speak of Eliza as a “ case,” and the absence of that objectionable word was sweet to Philip’s ears.

“Yes,” Miss Susan said, “Lyssie is really very useful in parish work. The way she has induced Eliza to stay with Job, when I was ready to give it up and let her go, is quite remarkable. Of course, there are matters that Lyssie can’t help us in ; for instance, that poor Ettie Brown and her baby. You remember you sent me some money for her, Philip ? ”

“ Cecil sent it,” he corrected her ; “ I am only her almoner.”

“ It ’s the same thing,” said Miss Susan, with that positiveness which confesses an unwillingness to acknowledge what is painful; “it’s just the same. Well, it would n’t have been proper to have had Lyssie have anything to do with that ; but she ’s invaluable in most things, and it’s wonderful how she has kept Eliza to her duty.”

“Her duty?” cried Philip sharply.

“ Do you call it duty ? ” The worn lines in his face deepened suddenly as he spoke. “ Why, Miss Susan, a thousand times better let Lyssie help the poor girl than meddle in the unspeakable viciousness of—I mean ”—he seemed to try to shake off his sudden earnestness —

“ I mean have any hand in keeping two people together who don’t love each other ! ”

“ Why, but, my dear Philip ! ” said Miss Susan, aghast.

But Philip offered no explanation ; he looked annoyed at himself, and said he must call Molly and go home.

“ I’ve forgotten all about Carey,” he observed. “ Roger Carey is staying with me. I’m going to bring him to call.”

Miss Susan was so bewildered by Philip’s extraordinary view of what was proper for Lyssie that she made no protest at his departure ; but her confused look changed abruptly when, with his hand upon the door, he made some careless, friendly comment upon Joseph Lavendar.

“ He still plays at the morning service, I suppose ? What a grave, splendid touch he has ! ” And then he went away.

“ Oh my ! ” said Susan Carr. “ I ’d almost forgotten it. Oh dear ! ” She sighed, and sat down as though suddenly tired. She sat as a man might, leaning forward, her clasped hands between her knees, and staring with an absent frown at her heavy boots ; then she seemed to realize her masculine attitude, and drew herself together with an effort to achieve some feminine grace. There was something pathetic in the constant endeavor of this gentle, robust woman, whose occupation had made her clumsy, to express in her body the very genuine and delicate femininity of her soul. “ Though I never can be silly,” she had long ago admitted sadly to herself.

The worried look which Philip’s allusion to Mr. Joseph Lavendar had brought into her face deepened, as she sat there frowning and tapping her foot upon the floor. After a while she rose, and tramped up and down the room, with her hands behind her, absorbed in thought. Then she stopped before a big, old-fashioned writing-desk, littered with farming papers, and with packages of vegetable seeds overflowing from crowded pigeonholes ; accounts and memoranda and ledgers lent it a most businesslike and unfeminine look. Miss Susan took a letter from a little drawer, and read it, standing up, twisting her lip absently between her thumb and forefinger.

MY DEAR MISS SUSAN, 舒 I have found a very good Te Deum in C. I send it with this. Will you be so good as to look it over, so that we can try it on Saturday ?

Very truly yours,

JOSEPH LAVENDAR.

P. S. May I add, although the somewhat businesslike tenor of my letter might seem to preclude the mention of tenderer sentiments, that I have long desired to address you upon the subject of my affections ? Delicacy only has restrained my pen or lips, and also the doubt (proper to a gentleman) of my own worthiness. But I cannot longer remain silent. I feel that the time has come when I must beg your amiable and ever ready sympathy and kindness, — for I believe that my future lies in your hands ; with your help, I venture to hope that I may become the happiest of men. I am sure that my brother has a warmer regard for you than for any one else whom I might mention, and your sympathy with my suit will mean very much to him. May I beg that you will think this over, and let me have an opportunity for free discourse upon the subject ?

Yrs. tr. J. L.

“ I never encouraged him,” said Susan Carr. “ Oh, I am so sorry, for I like him so much ! ”

She put her hands behind her, and began again to pace up and down the room. Philip’s coming and this letter made her think of his uncle, Donald Shore. She and Donald were to have been married, but Philip came into his uncle’s life, an orphan nephew, whose support was so much of a consideration that the quiet, prudent Donald felt it necessary to put the wedding off a year, and then two years, and after that another year. Then the postponement of eternity came between them, and Donald died. Susan Carr had felt no bitterness towards Philip. She loved him, at first because he was Donald’s nephew, and then for his own sake. Indeed, even while he postponed her marriage, he made another tie between herself and her slow and sober lover, whose affeetion for his nephew seemed to reconcile him to the delay of winning the hand of his 舠admirable Susan,” as he called her. When he died, she felt as though Philip belonged to her: it was she who made it possible for him to go abroad and study when he had finished college ; she who rejoiced with practical good sense when he married Cecil, who had plenty of money; and she who watched the unsatisfied, disappointed look deepening in his eyes, with the pang that his mother would have felt, had she lived. And through all these years the old love for Philip’s uncle lay fragrant in her heart. But now came this letter from Joseph Lavendar.

“ I can’t understand it,” said Miss Carr, reading the letter over again, the color deepening in her cheeks. “ And it’s too bad, for I do like him so. Well, I won’t give him ‘an opportunity’! That is the only kind thing I can do.”

Margaret Deland.