This is the window where, one day, I crouched to see him go, When all the world with wrath was gray And desolate with snow.

Oh, this the glass where prophet-wise My fate I needs must spell; Through this I looked on Paradise, Through this I looked on Hell.

THEODOSIA GARRISON.



AMERICANS IN LONDON

By LADY WILLSHIRE

The author of the following essay on "Americans in London" is one of the most distinguished of the leaders of English Society. She is the daughter of Sir Sanford Freeling, who was for a time military secretary at Gibraltar. Her husband, Sir Arthur Willshire, was an officer in the Guards. Lady Willshire, in addition to her social activities, is, without ostentation, a woman whose charities occupy a large part of her time. In appearance she is over middle height, rather fragile, with great charm of manner. She is an accomplished musician and linguist. Her favorite recreations are riding, driving and bicycling, and she is looked upon as the best dancer in London Society.

I can well remember the time when I could easily reckon up the whole list of my American acquaintances resident in London on the fingers of one hand, and most of those were the wives of English husbands.

That was certainly not more than ten years ago, and then the majority of Americans that one chanced to meet in England were travelers, who knew very little of, and cared less apparently to see or take part in, the doings of our London society.

In ten years, however, amazing changes can and do take place, especially where the natives of the States are concerned, and nowadays I find that not only does it require a great many leaves in my capacious address book to hold the names of the Americans—and the women most particularly—who live and move and have a large part of their social being in London, but that a very impressive majority of these attractive and prominent ladies are not the life partners of voting, title-holding British subjects at all.

The good work accomplished both ways by the international marriage goes merrily on. At the present moment we can claim not less than twenty-five peeresses of transatlantic birth, while we don't pretend to keep anything like an exact record of the ever-increasing acquisitions, from American sources, to our gentry class; but, for all that, the present big average of American women who come across the ocean to conduct a successful siege of London no longer regard the English husband as a sort of necessary preliminary and essential ally to the business of getting on in our smart metropolitan society.

The fair and welcome invader from the land of the free and the home of the brave can, and does, "arrive" astonishingly well without masculine assistance and encouragement.

She may appear as maid, wife or widow; sometimes as divorcee; but, personally, she conducts her own campaign. Furthermore, she comes fully equipped to carry everything before her—she has wit, wealth and good looks at her command, and she works along approved and sensible lines of action.

If she has a thoroughgoing conquest of London planned out, she does not put up at a fashionable hotel and spread her fine plumage and wait for notice.

She usually begins by taking a house; she furnishes it with original but discreet good taste; she wears startlingly pretty gowns—quite the best, as a rule, that Paris can supply; she gives the most taking sorts of entertainments, and the ordinary result is that in one season she is not only launched and talked about, but securely placed and greatly admired.

And if you want to know why she does this thing, the answer you can get, as I did, from her own mouth; she simply "likes London and London society."

As an amiable, broad-minded woman, she does not love her own country so much that she cannot find a place in her heart for London, too, and that which chiefly appeals to her in our elderly, sprawling, sooty, amusing and splendid old capital is the fact that she finds it interesting.

There you have one explanation, at least, of the apparent phenomenon of the ever-growing circle of American women in the very heart of our biggest city. But it becomes a Londoner to confess that another good reason why she is so familiar and conspicuous a figure among us is because we reciprocate her liking with the strongest possible warmth of admiration.

Not only do we regard our American colony with genuine enthusiasm, and take pride and pleasure in the fact that it is the largest of its kind in any European capital, but social London pleasantly feels its influence.

Now, influence is one of those qualities that the American woman carries about with her just as naturally as she carries her pretty airs of independence, or her capacity for easy and amusing speech, and it is a sad mistake for anyone to take it for granted that on her wealth or her pulchritude alone all her claim to success and popularity in England rests.

In no way that I know of has her influence been more sensibly and beneficially felt among us than in the introduction of a quick, vivacious tone to conversation.

Her gift for light, easy, semi-humorous talk, her gay, self-confident way of telling a good story, constitute her a leading and most lasting attraction in English estimation. From her the English woman has learned, first, that which it seems every transatlantic sister is aware by intuition, that one supreme duty of the sex, as it is represented in society, is to know how to talk a little to everybody, to talk always in sprightly fashion, and never to adopt the English woman's depressing method of answering all conversational efforts and overtures with chilling monosyllables.

It is no exaggeration to say that since the tremendous enlargement of the American colony, the whole pace of London drawing-room talk has enormously improved. We British are not by nature a sprightly and speechful race, with the gift of gay gab, but under the American woman's cheerful influence we are enjoying a sort of reformation.

We send our daughters even to a fashionable school in fashionable Kensington, which is kept by a long-headed American woman, who will very nearly guarantee to bid a door post discourse freely and be obeyed. And the women to whom first honors are due for having inspired London with a wholesome respect for what I may justly call the very superior American parts of speech, are Mrs. George Cornwallis-West—perhaps better known on both sides of the ocean as Lady Randolph Churchill—and Consuelo, the Dowager Duchess of Manchester.

It would be a superfluous and ungrateful task to try to recall the number of years that have flown since these two women, unusually attractive as they are, even for Americans, came over to literally take London by storm.

Suffice it to say that, as Shakespeare wrote of Cleopatra, "age cannot wither nor custom stale her infinite variety;" and in spite of the amazing influx of their young and lovely and accomplished countrywomen into London since their day of arrival, these two ladies still stand, as they have stood for years, at the very top of the entire American set abroad.

Both of them, by marriage or through years of long association, have become thoroughly identified with English society, but, unlike Lady Vernon-Harcourt, widow of the great leader of the Liberal party, and daughter of the famous historian Motley, they have never lost their strong American individuality.

Lady Vernon-Harcourt, to sight and hearing, seems almost a typical and thoroughgoing English woman, but Mrs. George Cornwallis-West and the Duchess Consuelo are, to all intents and purposes, as distinctly American as the day on which they were presented as brides and beauties at one of Queen Victoria's drawing-rooms.

Then, as well as now, they were both fair to look upon, but they were also something more—they were the cleverest of talkers, and the beautiful Consuelo, in her soft, Southern voice, possessed a faculty for quaint and witty turns of phrase that made her an instant favorite.

At the time of her debut, London had yet to meet the American woman who could not only chatter along cheerfully and intelligently, but who could artfully and unembarrassedly tell an amusing story before the big and critical audience that the average dinner table supplies. Our fair Creole and the fair New Yorker were, however, more than equal to all and any such emergencies and occasions.

It was with their capable tongues, quite as much as with their charming faces, that they scored their social triumphs in England, and it was mainly through their beguiling conversational powers that they both caught the attention of the present king and queen—at that time Prince and Princess of Wales—and aroused royalty's prompt and lasting admiration.

Until that time no American could boast the fact that she was the friend of the queen, prince or princess, but the young duchess and Lady Randolph Churchill changed all that. They were the first of their nation to be asked to the Sandringham house parties, to be included in the lists of guests invited to meet royal folk at dinners, etc., and to inspire in the present king and queen the thoroughgoing liking they now cherish for American things in general and the American woman in particular.

A good deal of brown Thames water has flowed under London Bridge, it is true, since these exponents of two entirely different types of American womanhood came over to astonish even our blase society, but no two of their sex and nation have succeeded in making a more deep and lasting impression upon London than these, or have done more to insure the social success of their countrywomen who followed in their footsteps.

Consuelo, the duchess, is a grandmother to-day, but she is almost as prominent a figure in the gay world as she ever was; unlike Mrs. George Cornwallis-West, she never went in, so to speak, for political prestige. She has cared for social gayety pure and simple, preserved much of her beauty, maintained her reputation as the most delightful house-party guest in England, and is noted nowadays as being, as well, the most skillful, tactful and serenely polite bridge-whist partner in the United Kingdom.

When, a few months ago, a house-party for royalty was given at Chatsworth by the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, it was at the urgent request of both the king and queen that the Dowager Duchess of Manchester came over from Paris to spend a few days under the same roof with their majesties, whose affection for this low-voiced, sweet-tempered, witty American woman has never wavered. Every now and then one hears anew in London drawing rooms of some amusing saying of hers, for she is as gracious and graceful a conversationalist as of yore, and with three young and blooming American duchesses to rival her, still stands well apart from and ahead of them all, at least so far as the homage of our smart and titled society can be accepted as proof of a woman's position.

Of all the three young duchesses, I think her youthful Grace of Marlborough is far and away the most distinctly popular and influential. She has conquered even the most indifferent and the most prejudiced, by an exquisitely charming sweetness of manner that is quite irresistible.

She does not possess what a Frenchman would call the vif style of her average countrywomen, and she is not a very vigorous talker, but she is wonderfully sympathetic and attractive of manner; her porcelain fine, aristocratic prettiness makes her a distinguished figure wherever she goes, and from the first she presided at the head of her vast establishment, and took her rightful position in England with a natural dignity and a complete grasp of the situation that literally took the breath away from the rather skeptical British onlooker.

There is a story told, sub rosa, of the discomfiture of a high-nosed and rather too helpful aristocratic matron and relative, who, on the arrival of her shy looking, slim young Grace, undertook to set her right and well beforehand on points of etiquette, ducal duty and responsibilities, etc.

Nobody knows to this day just what passed between the fair girl and the stately matron, but the duchess was not very much bothered with unnecessary advice after one short interview with her rather officious social fairy-godmother. And if the duchess was not ready to take advice, it was simply because she did not need it. When she gave her first great house party at Blenheim, it rather outrivaled in splendor anything of the sort done in England in a long time, and her chief guests were royalties; nevertheless, there was not a hitch or a mistake in all the elaborate proceedings; and a critical peer, who enjoyed the magnificent hospitality of the Marlboroughs, was heard to remark afterward that to be born an American millionairess is to apparently know by instinct all that has to be taught from childhood to a native English duchess.

That Her Grace of Marlborough has a natural taste for splendid surroundings is shown by her fondness for big Blenheim and the marvelous luxury she has introduced into every part of that vast mansion; and when her indulgent father offered to buy for her a house in London, she imposed but two guiding conditions on his choice for her of a home in town.

"I want the biggest house on the most fashionable street," she is said to have said. The result was that Mr. Vanderbilt purchased Sunderland House, in Curzon Street, and there the duchess is fittingly installed.

There the most sumptuous decorating and furnishing has been done, and when she entertains, her dinners will be the most splendid and her balls the largest and most luxurious of the season, for whatever the duchess does is done in almost regal style.

Eventually no London hostess can or will outshine her, and yet this first among the American duchesses is not very socially inclined. She prefers the country life and Blenheim to the best that London can give her, and this taste is to a great measure shared by many of our American peeresses and guests.

The Countess of Orford, Lady Monson, the Countess of Donoughmore, Mrs. Spender Clay, Lady Charles Ross and Mrs. Langhorne Shaw, for example, find English country life pre-eminently to their taste, and all but avoid the town, save in the very height of the season.

Lady Orford—who was Miss Corbin—lives at Waborne Hall, her husband's magnificent Georgian place in Norfolk. There she gives shooting parties, from there she goes with her husband and pretty young daughter to fish in Scotland and Norway, and the chief interest that brings her up to London is her taste for music and the opera, which, she declares, is the only pleasure that one cannot gratify out of town.

Next after music, sport—fishing most especially—engages her particular interest. Though she rarely goes out with the guns, her husband declares she is a capital shot, and that she could and would ride to hounds with the most daring of our fox-hunting peeresses, if Norfolk was a hunting shire.

Prominent, however, among the hunting set is the handsome Countess of Donoughmore, whose father, the American millionaire Grace, owns Battle Abbey, and has made England his home for many years. His slender, pretty daughter, who was Miss Eleana Grace before she married an Irish earl, rode to hounds from her days of floating locks and short skirts.

Now, as a fair and fashionable peeress, she hunts Ireland and England both with all the zest and skill of a native-born Irish woman. Her keenest American competitor, in the art of hard cross-country riding, is a young and beautiful Virginian, Mrs. Langhorne-Shaw, who comes over every year to hunt, and for no other purpose.

In spite of all her youth and beauty and charm, this fair sister-in-law of the famous American artist, Charles Dana Gibson, scarcely makes an appearance in London at all. She arrives in England at the season when the scent is best and the hounds at their briskest, and, American-wise, she takes a house in the very heart of the hunting district.

Sometimes she brings over her own string of horses from her native State, for she is a judge of sound and capable animals; and she has done more than any other one of her sex and race to prove that the American-built riding habit is a capital garment, and that when she is well mounted and in the field there are few in England who can surpass an American woman at hard and intelligent riding.

Lady Monson, though less of a sportswoman than Lady Donoughmore or Mrs. Langhorne-Shaw, is, if anything, more devoted to country life in England than either, for a very great part of every year she spends, by preference, at her husband's beautiful home, "Barton Hall," and there she entertains not only extensively and luxuriously, but chiefly the diplomats, domestic and foreign.

This capacity for gathering about her quite the most interesting among notable men has made her house parties rather famous in an enviable way, and has given Lady Monson a marked reputation as a hostess. Her husband is the nephew of Sir Edmund Monson, the well-known ambassador to France, and Lady Monson is herself a famous beauty. Before her first marriage, to a wealthy New Yorker, she was Miss Romaine Stone, and celebrated in London, Newport and New York for a uniquely delicate loveliness of face and form.

Her beauty was, indeed, as widely talked about and ardently admired in London as was that of Lady Naylor Leyland some years ago, or as we now very enthusiastically discuss the charming features of Mrs. Sam Chauncey or Lady Ross, who are prominent members of the younger American colony.

Both of the last-mentioned fair women hail from the State of Kentucky—Lady Ross was Miss Patricia Ellison, of Louisville, and Mrs. Chauncey belongs to the ever-growing class of American women who have created a deep impression on London society by making the very most of some particular talent or taste or feature.

Society in these days, like the professions of war, law or medicine, is in the hands of the specialists; and I think that the American women who came over to carve out their own social way saw this opportunity at once and have developed it in a quite remarkable fashion.

The arbiters of social place are not handing out any of the big prizes to the women who are just agreeable in a commonplace style. Do the striking thing in London, and do it well, is the rule for success at this time, and the energetic, quickly perceiving American woman loses not a week nor a day after her arrival in proving to us that she is a definite person indeed.

London society is made up of as many as ten different sets, all independent and powerful, each one in its own way, and the skill of the woman from New York or Chicago is displayed by her promptness in deciding on just the set into which she prefers to enter.

Mrs. Bradley Martin, Lady Deerhurst, Lady Bagot; Cora, Lady Strafford—now known by her new married title as Mrs. Kennard—Lady Newborough and a score of others one could mention, are to be included among the Americans who have devoted their talents entirely to the conquering of the smartest of smart sets. Most of these have married titles, it is true, but titles are not essential, after all, where natural social gifts are possessed; Mrs. Sam Chauncey, for instance, is a case in point.

Mrs. Chauncey is an American widow and a beauty, with a most agreeable manner and lively intelligence; she presides in a bewitching bijou of a little house in Hertford Street, and drives one of the smartest miniature victorias that appear in the park. But London's first and most striking impression concerning this delightful acquisition from the States was derived from her wonderful and lovely gowns—her French frocks are, for taste and becomingness, quite paralyzing to even a breath of criticism, and from the first moment of her debut in London they excited only the most whole-souled enthusiasm in the hearts of all beholders of both sexes.

To say that she is rather particularly famous as the best dressed woman in our great city is, perhaps, to make a pretty strong assertion, in the face of very serious competition offered by women notable for the perfection of their wardrobe, but this claim really stands on good grounds. Even among her compatriots, she seems always astonishingly well gowned, and really, if we are going to honestly give honor where honor is due, we must put natural pride and sentiment aside and agree that the presence of the American woman in London has had a marked and salutary influence on the whole dress problem as English women look at it.

Not to mince matters, we may as well confess that les Americaines do gown themselves with superlative taste. Our peeresses and visitors from the States know what to wear and how to wear it; they show so much tact in their choice of colors, they put on their gay gowns and hats with such a completeness of touch, and display so much instinct for style in the choice and use of small etceteras, that it is idle to say we English have not been compelled to notice and admire.

If imitation is truly the sincerest flattery, as some ancient wiseacre said years ago, then there is pretty clear evidence daily afforded to prove that we are complimenting our American sisters by slowly adopting their ideas of dress.

More and more each season does Paris send us the sort of gown and hatpin, belt and handkerchief and hair ornament, that goes to New York, and more and more is the saying, "She dresses quite like an American woman," accepted as a kindly comment, wherever it is offered.

A general impression, also, is prevailing to the effect that one reason why our American cousins wear their fine frocks with such good results is because they hold their heads high and their backs flat and straight. There is even now, in London, a vastly popular corsetiere who does not hesitate to recommend herself as the only artiste in town who can persuade any form, stout or lean, to assume at once the exact outlines of the admired American figure.

The Duchess of Roxburghe, Mrs. Kennard and the Countess of Suffolk are all very fair examples, in our eyes, of the high perfection of line to which the feminine form divine can and does attain in America; for all these women hold themselves with the most superlative grace, wear gowns that would make Solomon in all his glory feel envious, and help to maintain the now fixed belief in England that all Americans are tall, straight, slender and born with a capacity for wearing diamond tiaras with as much ease as straw hats.

It would not be fair, though, to lay too much of the social success of King Edward's fair new subjects and visitors wholly at their wardrobe doors, for the two most influential and prominent American women just now in London are neither of them titled, nor do they place too much stress on the gorgeousness of their frocks and frills.

Both Mrs. Arthur Paget—who was Miss Minnie Stevens, of New York—and Mrs. Ronalds are listed everywhere among the most popular of our hostesses, and Mrs. Ronalds, especially, is a distinct power in the musical world. Scarcely a famous artist comes to town but sooner or later he hears, to his advantage, of this wealthy American.

Her red and white music room—by far the most artistic and completely equipped private salon of its kind in London—has sheltered distinguished companies of the very fashionable and intellectual English music lovers; she has made her Sunday afternoons of something more than mere frivolous importance, and won for them, indeed, a decided and enviable celebrity, for Mrs. Ronalds is one of those American women who possess a genius for hospitality.

Mrs. Paget, it is true, takes due rank in the same category, and both these women have all the truly American tastes for featuring their entertainments most delightfully. To continue in the commonplace round of quite conventional functions, as approved by society, is not to be borne by these energetic and novelty-loving ladies, and a dinner, a supper party or a dance at Mrs. Paget's is sure to develop some unexpected and charming phase.

It is to Mrs. Paget, for example, that we are indebted for the introduction of that purely American festivity, "The Ladies' Luncheon." "The Ladies' Luncheon" is now quite acclimatized here; we have accepted it as we have also accepted "The Ladies' Dinner-party," which was wholly unknown previous to the American invasion. Whether Mrs. Paget was instrumental or not in making for the last-mentioned form of entertainment a place among our conservative hostesses is not quite proven, but it is safe to say that this tall, vivacious, energetic lady, who skates as well as she dances, golfs and drives a motor car, carries almost more social power in her small right hand than any other untitled woman in London.

She is heartily admired by our present king and queen, who find in her sparkling talk very much the same mental stimulus that one derives from the Duchess Consuelo's gay epigrams, and, above everything else, the court and its circle of society reverence the charms of the woman whose brain bubbles over with ideas.

If a dance, a dinner, a bazaar or a picnic is on foot, Mrs. Paget can map out and put through the enterprise with amazing skill and readiness, and she shows all the American's shrewd business instinct for profitably pleasing a ticket-purchasing public when a charity fund must be swelled or a hospital assisted.

With her vigor, high spirits and infinite variety of charm, she is enormously sought after and courted and feted, but it is noticeable, and none the less admirable, in English eyes, that the American woman established in a foreign land rarely or never fails in either her admiration or her affection for her country across the sea.

At the time of the Spanish-American War, this extreme loyalty to their native home and the land of their birth was made evident in not one but a dozen ways that never escaped the notice of English eyes. Expatriated though in a measure she is, the Anglicized American woman scarcely ever loses her sense of pride and profound satisfaction in being an American, after all, and so strong is this feeling in these delightful women that it is accepted quite as a matter of course, both by them and by their English friends, that their sons should frequently go back to the mothers' land in order to find their wives.

Two notable instances of the son's love for his mother's country and his instinctive interest in her countrywomen have been supplied in the marriages of the young Duke of Manchester and the son of Sir William and Lady Vernon-Harcourt.

It seems scarcely more than natural that Mr. Lewis Vernon-Harcourt should marry pretty Miss Burns, of New York, though, through his mother as well as his father, all his interests and sympathies are naturally centered in England.

Yet it is safe to say that when the average Englishman marries an American he does not feel in the least as though he was marrying, so to speak, outside the family circle.

The marvelous adaptability of the American woman robs the situation of any difficulty, and in no way, so far, has the American wife of the Englishman showed more astonishing adaptability than in the cordial interest with which she often identifies herself with her husband's political interests, if he is in Parliament.

Three of the keenest politicians in petticoats that England possesses are American women by birth; and the first and leading spirit among them is the American wife of Mr. Chamberlain.

Mrs. Chamberlain cares little or nothing for society, and beyond the obligatory functions at which she has been obliged to preside or attend, she shows small taste for the frivolities of that special world of men and women where the main task and occupation of every day is to amuse one's self. But in the affairs of state she feels a very burning interest indeed.

She is one of the two women in the British empire who are admitted by men to understand the mysterious and, to the average feminine mind, inexplicable fiscal problem; she knows all about tariff reform; she is her husband's first secretary, confidante and adviser; she is said to be the most discreet lady in speech, where her husband's political interests are concerned, and when he speaks in public Mrs. Chamberlain sits so near to him that, in case of a lapse of memory, she can play the part of stage prompter.

Every one of his speeches she commits to memory, and can, therefore, give him any missing word at any critical moment, and in this way she is even more helpful than the capable and intellectual Lady Vernon-Harcourt was to her distinguished husband.

There is still a third American woman to whose abilities her English husband is deeply indebted. This is Lady Curzon, who has very clearly defined diplomatic gifts, who is naturally highly ambitious, and who has, in her zeal to help her husband, learned to speak more East Indian dialects and Oriental tongues than any white woman in India.

Fourth, perhaps, of this list should be mentioned Lady Cheylesmore, who was in her girlhood, spent at Newport and New York, so well known and admired, especially for her wonderful red hair, which Whistler loved to paint.

Lady Cheylesmore was Miss Elizabeth French in those days, and now she is proud to be known as the wife of the mayor of Westminster, for her husband has lately been chosen for that very dignified position. As one of London's lady mayoresses, she will dispense delightful hospitality in her handsome house in Upper Grosvenor Street, which is famous for its three wonderful drawing rooms, decorated by the Brothers Adam, and regarded by connoisseurs as one of the most perfect examples of their art and taste.

At her dinner parties Lady Cheylesmore entertains many politicians of note, and in one way or another, by her infinite tact and good sense, does much to aid and abet her husband's well-known aspirations to a brilliant parliamentary place.

She is one of the ardently ambitious American women of whose very real and deserved triumphs we hear so much artistically as well as socially, these days. And let it be said here and now, to London's credit, that there is no city in the world that gives to its resident daughters of Uncle Sam a heartier measure of praise and encouragement in all their accomplishments.

We may, some of us, cherish high tariff principles and believe in restricting the immigration. None of us, however, is ready to vote for any measures that will bar out or discourage one class of fair and accomplished aliens who cross the ocean bent on conquering London, and who in the end are so often conquered in turn by London's charm, and who settle down to form an element in our society that is fast becoming as familiar and as welcome as it is admirable and indispensable.



THE BLOOD OF BLINK BONNY

By MARTHA MCCULLOCH-WILLIAMS

Miss Allys Rhett stood upon the clubhouse lawn, a vision in filmy white, smiling her softest, most enchanting smile. There was a reason for the smile—a reason strictly feminine, yet doubly masculine. She had walked down the steps that led from the piazza betwixt Rich Hilary and Jack Adair, the catches of the season, in full view of the Hammond girl, who was left to waste her sweetness upon prosy old Van Ammerer.

The Hammond girl had been rather nasty all summer—she was, moreover, well known to be in hot pursuit of Rich Hilary. Until Allys came on the scene it had seemed the pursuit must be successful. They had gone abroad on the same steamer the year before, dawdled through a London season, and come home simultaneously—he rather bored and languid, she of a demure and downcast, but withal possessive, air. She had said they were not engaged—"oh, dear no, only excellent friends," but looking all the while a contradiction of the words. Then unwisely she had taken Hilary to that tiresome tea for the little Rhett girl—and behold! the mischief was done.

The little Rhett girl was not little; instead, she was divinely tall, and lithe as a young ash. No child, either. What with inclination and mother-wisdom, her coming out had waited for her to find herself. At nineteen she had found herself—a woman, well poised and charming as she was beautiful. Notwithstanding Hilary had not instantly surrendered—horse, foot and dragoons. Rather he had held out for terms—the full honors of war, as became a man rising thirty, and prospective heir to more millions than he well knew what to do with.

Two or three of the millions had taken shape in the Bay Park, the newest and finest of metropolitan courses. Hilary's father, a power alike on the turf and in the street, had built it, and controlled it absolutely—of course through the figment of an obedient jockey club. A trace of sentiment, conjoined to a deal of pride, had made him revive an old-time stake—the Far and Near. It dated back to that limbo of racing things—"before the war." Banker Hilary's grandfather, a leader among gentlemen horsemen of that good day, had been of those who instituted it—a fact upon which no turf scribe had failed to dilate when telling the glories of the course. The event was, of course, set down a classic—as well it might be, all things considered. The founders had framed it so liberally as to admit the best in training—hence the name. The refounders made conditions something narrower, but offset that by quadrupling the value.

This was Far and Near day—with a record crowd, and hot, bright summer weather. The track was well known to be lightning fast, and the entry list was so big and puzzling that the Far and Near might well prove anybody's race. There were favorites, of course, also rank outsiders. One heard their names everywhere in the massed throng that had overflowed the big stand, the lawn, the free field, and broken in human waves upon the green velvet of the infield. This by President Hilary's own order. He had come to the track early, and looked to everything—with a result that there was no trouble anywhere.

The crowd had been gayly demonstrative through the first two races. It had watched the third in tense silence—except that moiety of it ebbing and flowing through the clubhouse. It was the silence of edged patience. Albeit the early races were fair betting propositions, the most of those who watched them had come to lay wagers on some Far and Near candidate—and the Far and Near candidates had been getting their preliminaries.

They numbered just nineteen. Seventeen had been out when Allys and her squires stopped under the shade of a tree. Notwithstanding the shadow, she put up her white parasol, tilting it at just the angle to make it throw her head and shoulders in high relief. Adair glanced at her, caught a hard breath, nipped it, then looked steadily down the course a minute.

Hilary smiled—a smile that got no further than the corners of his red lips—his eyes, indeed, gloomed the more for it—then turned upon Allys with: "Pick the winner for us, won't you? You are so delightful feminine you know nothing of horses, therefore ought to bring us luck. Say, now, what shall we back?"

"It depends," Allys said, twirling her parasol ever so lightly. "Do you want to lose? Or do you really care to win?"

"To win, please, O oracle, if it's all the same to you," Hilary said, supplication in his voice, although his eyes danced.

Allys gave him a long look. "Then you must take Heathflower," she said. "I have the Wickliffe boy's word for it—he wrote me only yesterday: 'Miss Allys, if you want to get wealthy, bet all your real money on that Heathflower thing.'"

"H'm! Who is the Wickliffe boy? Tell us that before we play his tip," Adair demanded. Hilary could not speak for laughing.

Allys smiled entrancingly. "The Wickliffe boy—is a knight-errant born out of time," she said. "I'm wondering if it will last. We came to know him last summer—mother and I—down at Hollymount, my uncle's place in Virginia. The Wickliffe boy, Billy by name, lives at Lyonesse, which is Hollymount's next neighbor. It belongs to Billy's uncle, the dearest old bachelor—maybe that is the reason the boy has such reverence for womankind. I don't know which he comes nearest worshiping—women or horses. Whenever we rode out—he was my steadfast gallant—he managed somehow to pass through or by or around Haw Bush, where the Heathflower thing was bred. Old Major Mediwether, her owner, is Billy's best chum. They match beautifully—though the major is nearly eighty, and Billy just my age—rising nineteen."

"They must have made it interesting for you. I'm sure you couldn't tell half so much about either of us," Adair said, with a deeply injured air.

Allys shook her head at him. "They are dears," she said, emphatically. "And they taught me a lot I should never have known—about horses and men."

"Anything specific—as about the Heathflower thing?" Hilary asked, affecting to speak with awe.

Allys nodded. "A heap," she said. "I can hear Billy now, as we watched her on the training track, saying: 'She hasn't got any looks—but legs are better for winnin'. And she must win; she's bound to—whenever she feels like it, and the track and the weights suit her. She can't help it—she's got eight full crosses of Blink Bonny blood.'"

"Blink Bonny! H'm! Who was he? What did he do?" Hilary asked.

Allys looked at him severely. "'He' happens to have been 'she,'" she said. "As for the doing, it was only winning the Derby, with the Oaks right on top of it. Mighty few mares have ever done that—as you would know if you had grown up in Virginia, with time to know everything. Billy does know everything about pedigrees—he can reel them off at least a hundred years back. Remember, now, I'm strictly quoting him: 'Blink Bonny is really ancient history—she won the year poor old Dick Ten Broek tried so hard to have his American-bred ones carry off the blue ribbon of the turf. He didn't win it—no American did—until one of them had luck enough to try for it with something of Blink Bonny's blood. Iroquois went back to her through his sire, Bonnie Scotland-Iroquois, who wasn't really a great horse, but a good one that happened on a great chance.'"

"Why, Allys darling, I can hardly believe my ears! Here you are talking horse like a veteran, when I always thought you didn't know a fetlock from a wishbone," the Hammond girl cooed, swimming up behind them on old Van Ammerer's arm. They were headed for the paddock, although it was not quite time for the saddling bell. The Heathflower thing was still invisible—Allys searched the course for her through Hilary's glass, saying the while over her shoulder, with her most infantine smile: "You thought right, Camilla dear. I don't really know anything—have only a parrot faculty of repeating what I hear."

The Hammond girl flushed—that was what she had said of Allys when people laughed over the Rhett mots. But before she could counter, Allys cried joyously: "At last! The Heathflower thing! Really, she hasn't any looks—but see her run, will you?"

"She does move like a winner—but it's impossible she can stay," Hilary said, almost arrogantly. "Pedigree is all very well—until it runs up against performance——"

"Right you are! Quite mighty right, Rich, me boy," old Van Ammerer interrupted. "But I didn't know they let dark horses run in the Far and Near——"

"Lucky you are young, Van—you have such a lot to learn," Adair said, brusquely, as they went toward the paddock. It was thronged, but somehow at sight of Hilary the human masses fell respectfully apart—albeit the men and women there had forgotten themselves, even forgotten each other for the time being, in their poignant eagerness over the big race.

They were hardly through the gate and well established in an eddy when the bell brought the racers pacing or scurrying in. The Heathflower thing came straight off the course, and stood spiritlessly, drooping her head and blinking her eyes. Clear eyes, matching the loose, satiny skin, beneath which whipcord muscles stood out, or played at each least motion, they told the eye initiate that she was in the pink of condition. Like her so-famous ancestors, a bay with black points, neither under nor over size, with a fine, lean head, a long neck, and four splendid legs, it was a marvel that she could so utterly lack any trace of equine comeliness. Her chest was noticeably narrow, her barrel out of proportion to shoulders and quarters. Still, against those patent blemishes, a judge of conformation would have set the splendid sloping shoulders, the reaching forearm, the bunches of massy muscle in the long loin, the quarters well let down into perfect houghs, the fine, clean bone of knees and ankles, the firm, close-grained hoofs spreading faintly from coronet to base.

Clean-limbed throughout, with ears that, if they drooped, had no trace of coarseness and were set wide apart above a basin face, the mare showed race indisputably, notwithstanding the white in her forehead was too smudgy to be called a star, or that, though her muzzle tapered finely, the lower lip habitually protruded a bit. A four-year-old, she was still a maiden—consequently had but a feather on her back in the Far and Near. The handicapper had laughed, half wearily, half compassionately as he allotted it, muttering something about the jockey club robbing the cradle and the grave—that poor old Major Meriwether, it was well known, hadn't any money to spare; what he did have was the gambler's instinct to sit into any game where the stakes were big.

The race was open to three-year-olds and upward, and run over a distance—two miles and a half. The distance kept out the sprinters—it also, now and again, played hob with racing idols. To win a horse must be able to go—also to stay. With twenty thousand of added money, there was sure to be always a long list of entries. The conditions held one curious survival from the original fixture—namely, that, horses brought over three hundred miles to run in it got a three-pound allowance if they reached the course less than a week before the day of the race.

Major Meriwether had chuckled whenever he thought of that. He knew "the weight of a stable key may win or lose a race." And the Heathflower thing was a splendid traveler, coming out of her padded stall as ready to run as when she went into it. She had got to the Bay Park only two days back, in charge of her rubber, Amos, and Black Tim, her jockey. Tim stood at her head, Amos was giving her lank sides their last polish, as Allys and her train swept down upon them.

Allys nodded to them gayly, as she asked: "Tim, have you come up to break New York? I hear your stable will need a special car to take home its money—after the Far and Near."

"Yessum, dat's so!" Tim said.

Amos scowled at him, but said to Allys, respectfully: "Please'um, don't ax dat dar fool boy no mo' 'bout de Flower—hit's mighty bad luck sayin' whut you gwine do, ontwel you is done done it."

"Dar come Marse Billy Wickliffe—you kin ax him all you wanter." Tim giggled, then clapped his hand over his mouth. Tim was lathy—long-legged, long-armed, with an ashy-black complexion and very big eyes. As he stood fondling the Flower's nose, he glared disdain of all the other candidates, or, rather, of the knots of folk gathered admiringly about them.

Allys turned half about—for two breaths at least she had a snobbish impulse to overlook Billy and hurry away. Billy was tall, with a face like a young Greek god—but how greet him there with the Hammond girl to see, in a checked suit, patently ready-made, with the noisiest of shirts, a flowing bright red tie, and a sunburned straw hat? If it were only Adair, she would not mind—Hilary was, she knew, very much more critical. She might have run away, but that she caught the Hammond girl's look—amusement and satisfaction struggled through it, although the young lady tried hard to mask them.

Allys turned wholly, holding out both hands, and saying: "Billy, by all that's delightful! I've just been telling these people about you. Come, show them I kept well within the truth."

Billy caught the outstretched hands, his heart so openly in his eyes Hilary wanted to strangle him on the spot. The Hammond girl laughed, and turned to whisper in Van Ammerer's ear. Adair, alone of the group, shook hands. Although the others gave him civil, if formal, greeting, Billy felt their hostility intuitively, and flung up his head like a stag at bay.

"You got my note—have you done it yet?" he asked, bending over Allys in a fashion that made Hilary's teeth set hard.

She laughed back at him: "Have you done it yet? Bet your whole fortune on the Heathflower thing at a hundred to one?"

Billy nodded confidently. "That's just what I have done. Unc' Robert was willin'—he thought as I did, such a little bit o' money was better risked than kept."

"H'm! I hope you kept the price of a return ticket," Hilary said, trying to speak jocularly. "Really, Mr. Wickliffe, you can't think that ugly brute has a chance to be even in the money."

"My money's talkin' for me," Billy said, facing Hilary. "'Tain't much—only a thousand. Lordy! if I could, wouldn't I burn up these ringsters! You ought to a-heard 'em, Miss Allys, when I went at 'em. 'The Heathflower thing, did you say?' the first one asked me. 'Oh, say! do you want to rob us poor fellows? Couldn't think of layin' you less'n a thousand to one on that proposition.' But he cut it mighty quick to a hundred to one when I said: 'I'd take you for a hundred, only I know you couldn't pay.' Tell you he rubbed his slate in a hurry after I got down fifty. The next one tried to be smart as he was—sang out to some o' the rest: 'Here's the wild man from Borneo, come to skin us alive!' Then made out he was skeered to death when I offered him one little pitiful rag of a ten. But when they saw me keep on right down the line, some of 'em shut up and looked a little anxious, some cut the price, and some got sassier than ever. They called me Rube, and Johnny-on-the-spot-of-wealth, and Shekels, and a heap of other things. But I didn't mind. Still, next time I'll send my money by one of those commissioner fellows. To-day I couldn't risk it."

"What makes you so suddenly avaricious, Billy?" Allys asked. "Last summer you cared less for money than anything. There must be a reason—tell me, does it wear frocks?"

"Not the special reason," Billy said, with an adoring look; then in her ear: "I know you don't care for money any more'n I do. But I'm bound to have some—if there's any chance—it's—it's because of the major. I'll tell you all about it, after the race."

The parade was nearly over when Allys and her three swains came again to the lawn. By some odd chance, the long shots had been well toward the head of it, leaving the two favorites and the three second choices to bring up the rear. The Heathflower thing was immediately in front of them. She had moved so soberly, plodding with low head and sleepy eyes, the watchers had given her an ironic cheer, mingled with cat calls. All the others had got a welcome more or less enthusiastic, but it was only when Aramis, even-money favorite, came through the paddock gate that the crowd got to its feet.

All up and down, and round about, roaring cheers greeted him, followed him—men flung up their hats for him, women in shrill falsetto cried his name. Nobody could fail to understand that he carried the hopes and the fortunes of a great multitude. Nobody could fail to understand either that Aldegonde, who followed right on his heels, would win or lose for as many. The pair were blood-brothers, sons of the great Hamburg, but one out of an imported dam, the other from a mare tracing to Lexington, and richly inbred to that great sire.

Still the line of cleavage was not patriotic nor even international. Folk had picked one or the other to win freakishly—on hunches of all sorts, tips of all manners, pure fancy, or "inside information" of the hollowest sort. As to looks, pedigree, or performance, there was hardly a pin to choose between the pair. Both were three-year-olds, tried in the fire of spring racing; both held able to go the distance and stay the route, in that they had won from everything except from each other.

By some curious chance they had not met before that season—in their two-year-old form they had won and lost to each other.

Thus to many onlookers the Far and Near held out a promise of such an equine duel as would make it the race of the century. And certainly two handsomer or gallanter beasts than the pair of raking chestnuts, long-striding, racelike, with white-starred faces and single white hind feet, never looked through a bridle.

Notwithstanding, the second choices were far from friendless, albeit their greatest support was for the place or to show. The greeting they got was tame compared to that of the favorites, but still a volleying cheer, rising and falling along the quarter-mile of humanity banked and massed either side the course. Shrewd form players and the plainer sort had taken liberal fliers on them—that was evident by the way the shouting mounted in the free field, and the jam in front of the betting ring.

Not a few of the professional layers had turned their slates and were out on watch for the event that would mean thousands in or out of their pockets. Among the second choices Artillery, the black Meddler mare, was held a shade the best. Next to her came Tay Ho, a son of Hastings, five years old, who might have divided honors with the favorites but for being an arrant rogue. To-day he ran in blinkers, and nodded the least bit in his stride, whereas his stable mate, Petrel, the last of the second choices, went as free as ever water ran.

Billy watched the parade, scarcely conscious that Allys clung to his arm. Hilary stood at her other hand, frowning blackly. The finish line was almost in front of them.

Hilary moved back a pace. "We can see better here," he said, trying to draw Allys along with him. She shook her head obstinately, but said nothing; in her heart she was resolved that Billy should have the comfort of her presence in his hour of defeat.

Since she was very far from being a model young person, Hilary's manifest anger was not displeasing. She was going to marry him—but only at her own time, and upon her own conditions. So far, there was no engagement—she had fenced and played with him beautifully all through the last three months. He had no right whatever to be nasty about Billy; of course, if it were some grown-up body, Adair for example, there might be a color of reason for his wrath. He ought to understand that Billy was, in a way, her guest—also a person to whom she owed something in the way of hospitality. What provoked her most was knowing that Hilary was less jealous than ashamed—ashamed to have her thus openly countenance anybody who wore Billy's clothes. She was all the angrier for her own moment of snobbishness—men ought to be above such paltry things, she reasoned; anyway, she was bound to stand by Billy to the inevitably bitter end.

The start was tedious. Again and again the line of rainbow jackets drew taut across the course, only to break and tangle, and at last dissolve into its original gaudy units. Billy sighed as he watched it, then smiled shyly, and drew a long breath, saying in Allys' ear: "I hate to win except right square out."

"I don't understand," Allys returned.

Billy looked at her in surprise.

"Don't you see—the favorites have got so much on their backs, the longer they wheel and turn, the more they take out of themselves?" he asked. "I'll bet they are frettin' like everything, too. See there! One of them chestnut-sorrels—can't tell whether it's Aramis or Aldegonde—is cuttin' up high didoes. And the Heathflower thing standin' like a little lamb——"

"She may be standing there when the race is over," Hilary interrupted.

Billy did not put down his glass, but said over his shoulder: "Oh, I reckon Tim can stop her before she gets that far around. Don't know, though—if she feels like runnin' she's a handful. And this is one of the days—I know, because she looks as though she couldn't beat a funeral."

Allys pressed Billy's arm—it was all she could do to show her enjoyment of the way he had turned things. Hilary bent toward her, saying, with a hard smile: "You seem to be on Mr. Wickliffe's side—I wonder will you back his judgment?"

"Maybe so," Allys said, without turning her head. "That is, if you care to make it anything worth while. I'm not quite sure which I'd like best—a winter in Paris or a pearl necklace—and I know I shan't ever get them at bridge—I have no luck at all."

"Give you millions against—just one word," Hilary whispered; then aloud: "Is it a bet?"

"Say yes, Miss Allys," Billy entreated. "You ain't trustin' to my judgment—remember that—but to the blood of Blink Bonny."

"I take you up," Allys said, nodding to Hilary. As well this way as any other, she thought—besides, she could hold him off as long as she chose. Her father would stand by her loyally—he was in no haste to see her established. Besides, this was what she had always craved—to watch a race with a heartrending wager on its event.

"Here they come!" Billy shouted, dropping his glass, and flinging up his head.

Up course the rainbow line had at last held steady, then, as the tape flew up, bellied out like a sail in gusty wind, and been rent into flecks and tatters. The lightweights, of course, were in the foremost of the flecks and tatters—all, that is, save the Heathflower thing, who came absolutely last. Tim's orange jacket and scarlet sash were dust-dimmed by the time he came to the stand. But right in front of him were Aldegonde's tiger stripes, black and yellow, and the blue and white in the saddle of Aramis.

"Last all the way—eh, Miss Allys?" Adair said, leaning across Billy, who would have given back but that Allys clung to him in silence, her eyes glued to the glass, flushing and paling, her breath coming quicker even thus early in the race.

There were open lengths all along—the lightweights were bent on making it a runaway race. Billy knew they could never do it. A horseman born and made, he marked their stride, and understood even better than their jockeys how much the killing pace was taking out of them. It did not astonish him that in the outstretch, before a mile had been run, three of the first flight chucked it up, falling back, back, till even the Heathflower thing showed them her heels. At the mile there were more counterfeits proven—as the race swept down upon the stand the second time there were but seven of the original contenders really in it. The rest were tailing hopelessly. One or two even pulled up. But the Heathflower thing was among the seven, and keeping place right behind the favorites.

Allys clutched Billy's arm so hard her fingers half buried in it. She was getting the thrills she had pined for with a vengeance, now that her freedom, her future, were to be colored by the issue of the race.

The Heathflower thing could not win, of course; still, it was pure delight to have her so far redeem herself. If she was even near the real contenders at the finish, Billy's faith would be justified. So many, at shorter odds, had already fallen out, there would be distinction in staying all the way.

If the impossible happened, the Heathflower thing won, then she would have Hilary in a very proper frame of mind. Losing always hurt him dreadfully—it would be gall and wormwood to have lost to such a winner. She felt this rather than thought it—connected thought indeed was impossible in view of what was happening out on the course.

In the outstretch, for the second time, Aramis shot forward like the arrow from a bended bow. He had been running under wraps—now thus far from home, his jockey, the most famous of them all, gave him his head, evidently thinking there would be but one horse in the race. All in a breath two open lengths showed between Aramis and the others; then Aldegonde with a mighty burst lapped the leader's flank. Tay Ho was right behind—so close his backers set up a breathless shout. The Flower was still last, but strive, strain, stretch as the flying leaders might, they got no further away from her.

Billy flung up his hat, then clapped his hand over his mouth and said, smotheredly:

"See that, Miss Allys! Let her come into the stretch with just one breath more'n those fine fellows, and it's all over but the cashin' in."

"Billy, you're an angel! I thought we were hopelessly beaten," Allys breathed rather than said.

Hilary's mouth set. Adair, watching him narrowly, saw it also whiten when, at the second mile post, the three leaders swept the turn barely heads apart, with the Heathflower thing right on their heels. More than that, she was running strongly, easily, clearly not distressed, although Aramis, still leading, rolled the least bit.

Could that leggy bay really stay the route? Was there any reason for the Wickliffe boy's unreason? Was there also any chance for him?—there Adair stopped short, smiling a thought grimly to see how all unconsciously, all femininely, Allys drooped to Billy's upright, youthful strength.

Hilary likewise noted it—with a thumping heart that sent the color surging over his face. Habitually he held himself well in hand—it amazed and angered him to find himself thus swept beyond himself. To all of us come moments when instinct masters reason—the primal masculine instinct of possession told him he would win or lose his quicksilver sweetheart on the issue of this race.

Now she had no thought of him—her eyes were only for the course, where four horses ran like a team as never any of them had run before. All through the first quarter of this fateful last half, they held each other safe, running side by side, stride for stride.

At the furlong pole beyond, Tay Ho's hooded head for the first time showed in front—only to be instantly eclipsed by the white star of Aldegonde. Aramis began to hang—the angry roar of his backers told he was out of it. Simultaneously, the jockeys sat down to ride—there was the cruel swish of catgut, the crueler prodding of steel. In the crowd a great hushed breath, like the sigh of a forest before the storm, told of tense heartstrings.

Almost instantly the sigh changed to a shouted roar as Tay Ho dropped back level with Aramis, leaving Aldegonde and the Heathflower thing half a length to the good. But next breath the falterers came again—together they held their place, their way, four mighty masses of blood and bone, of breath and fire and stay, fighting it out every inch of the way, with a living sea roaring, shouting, cursing, crying encouragement on either hand.

How they lay down to it! How they came up!

Stretch and gather! Stretch and gather, the game and gallant foursome held to it. Now, for the first time, the Heathflower thing showed all that was in her. Even those who stood to lose fortunes felt that her whirlwind rush deserved to win.

A hundred yards from the wire, whips still flying, rowels plowing furrows in satin coats, Aramis staggered, half stumbled, then fell back an open length.

Tim flung away his whip, and leaned far over, lying almost flat upon the Flower's neck to shout in her ear: "You see dat dar Mister Aldergown! Dee calls him bulldawg! Tote yosef, gal! Show 'im you's bulldawg, too." Perhaps the Flower resented the caution. Certainly, she hung a bit in the next stride. Tay Ho and Aldegonde, running either side of her, almost let in daylight between.

The cheers, the roars, mounted in deafening volume. The Heathflower thing answered them by going down, down, till it seemed she lay quite flat on earth. And then she came up, up, with a leap so long, so lancelike, it recovered all she had lost. Again she thrust herself forward—the horses either side of her thrust as far.

Twenty yards from home not one of the three was an inch to the good or the bad. Aldegonde's jockey slashed his mount savagely—somehow, one blow of the whip fell on the Flower's quarter—fell and won the race. With a sweep as of the wind she went away from it, and got her nose across the finish line three inches in front!

A near thing. Anybody must admit that. So near the tumult died to a breathless hush. Hilary half turned about. "I'm going to the judges' stand to see what won," he said. "I saw Aldegonde first."

"I don't know about that—but I reckon you won't go," Billy said, laying his hand upon Hilary's arm.

Hilary was furious. "Why not?" he demanded. He was no weakling, but somehow he could not get free of that impertinent young cub's grip.

"Oh, because you are—your father's son," Billy said, nonchalantly, then steadfastly, the lightness dying from face and voice: "I mean no disrespect, Mr. Hilary, but all of us have got to take account of human nature. We may think we know what won—you and me—but it's the judges' business to say so—and ours to be satisfied with the sayin'. That's only fair——"

"Let go my arm!" Hilary said, in a hoarse whisper, his eyes murderous.

Billy held him fast. "Not until you give me a gentleman's word you won't interfere," he said.

Allys looked at him amazed, enchanted. Here was no boy to be played with, petted and coaxed from his beliefs—rather a man standing for what he held the right with the fire and strength of youth.

Adair caught Hilary on the other side, saying under breath: "Hold still, Rich! You must! The wild man from Borneo is right this time. It would be horribly bad form if you said a questioning word—and, anyway, the judges saw—what we did."

Hilary turned upon Billy a look that made Allys hide her eyes, but nodded shortly, and strode away, not toward the stand. Billy turned to shield Allys, until by the stunned silence falling on the course, he knew the boards were going up—with the Flower's number at the top of them.

Then he took the fence in front at a flying leap, and came to himself only when he had both arms about the Flower's neck, his face pressed to it, and tears raining, as he whispered: "You won, lady! You had to! You wouldn't let Haw Bush be sold over the major's head. Hang the mortgages now—we'll save him, you and I! And you shall never, never run another race!"

As the Flower was led away to receive other flowers, the hideous horseshoe penalty of victory, the crowd was astounded to see in the middle of the course a tall youngster in loud plaids, leaping, shouting, hugging himself, laughing and crying in the same breath.

And this was what he shouted: "The blood of Blink Bonny! Hurrah! hurrah! Beat it if you can! Hurrah for Haw Bush! For Major Meriwether! For Tim! For Blink Bonny! Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!"

Allys watched him, smiling roguishly. "Billy is ridiculously young," she said to the constant Adair.

Adair looked glum. He knew, and knew she knew, that the boy they had welcomed was of full man's age—quite old enough, in fact, to be married.



MONOTONY

Love, does my love with weary burden fall Daily upon thy too accustomed ear With words so oft repeated that the dear, Sweet tones of early joy begin to pall? What gift of loving may I give to call Again to your deep eyes of brown the tear Of welling, full delight and love, the clear, Rose-petaled blush that holds my heart in thrall?

Not all the homage of the bees that wing Laden with honey through the clover days Wearies the tiny queen with heavy tune! Not all the rapture of the birds that fling Love melodies adrift through leafy ways Burdens the mothers on their nests in June!

PHILIP GERRY.



"PLUG" IVORY AND "PLUG" AVERY

By HOLMAN F. DAY

It was the queerest turnout that ever invaded Smyrna Corner.

Even the frogs of Smyrna swamp at the edge of the village gulped back their pipings, climbed the bank for a nearer view, and goggled in astonished silence as it passed, groaning, in the soft and early dusk.

'Twas a sort of van—almost a little house on wheels, with an elbow of stove funnel sticking out of one side. An old chaise top was fastened by strings and wire over a seat in front. Dust and mud covered everything with striated coatings, mask eloquent of wanderings over many soils. A cadaverous horse, knee-sprung and wheezy, dragged the van at the gait of a caterpillar.

Under the chaise top was hunched an old man, gaunt but huge of frame, his knees almost to his chin. Long, white hair fluffed over his bent shoulders, and little puffs of white whiskers stood out from his tanned cheeks. A fuzzy beaver hat barely covered the bald spot on his head. The reins were looped around his neck. Between his hands, huge as hams, moaned and sucked and suffled and droned a much-patched accordion. The instrument lamented like a tortured animal as he pulled it out and squatted it together. To its accompaniment, the old man sang over and over some words that he had fitted to the tune of "Old Dog Tray,"

"Plug" Ivory Buck sat outside the door of his "emporium" in Smyrna Corner, his chair tipped back comfortably, ankle roosting across his knee, his fuzzy stovepipe hat on the back of his head.

The end of his cigar, red in the May dusk, was cocked up close to his left eye with the arrogant tilt that signified the general temperament of "Plug" Ivory. For almost fifty years a circus man, he felt a bland and yet contemptuous superiority to those who had passed their lives in Smyrna Corner. However, when his father had died at the ripe age of ninety-three—died in the harness, even while gingerly and thriftily knuckling along a weight into the eighth notch of the bar of the scoop scales—Ivory had come back as sole heir to store, stock and stand, a seventy-two-year-old black sheep bringing a most amazing tail behind him—no less than a band chariot, a half dozen animal cages, a tent loaded on a great cart, and various impedimenta of "Buck's Leviathan Circus and Menagerie."

He trundled the array through the village's single street, stored the gilded glories in the big barn on the old home place, with the euphemism of circus terminology changed the sign "A. Buck, General Store," to "I. Buck, Commercial Emporium," and there he had lived five years, keeping "bachelor's hall" in the big house adjoining the store.

Sometimes he dropped vague hints that he might start on the road again, displaying as much assurance of long years ahead as though he were twenty-one. It was a general saying in Smyrna Corner that a Buck didn't think he was getting old until after he had turned ninety. The townspeople accepted Ivory as a sort of a wild goose of passage, called him "Plug" on account of his never varying style of headgear, and deferred to him because he had fifty thousand dollars tucked away in the savings bank at the shire.

The May dusk became tawny in the west, and he gazed out into it discontentedly.

"I wish them blamenation tadpoles shed their voices along with their tails," he grumbled, with an ear to the frogs in the marsh. "They ain't quite so bad when they get big enough to trill, but that everlasting yipping makes me lonesome. I'm a good mind to toss up this tenpenny nail and salt codfish business and get back to the sawdust once more."

There was a stir in a cage above his head, a parrot waddled down the bars, stood on his beak and yawped hoarsely:

"Crack 'em down, gents! The old army game!"

"If it wasn't for you, Elkanah, I swear I should die of listening to nothing but frogs tuning up and swallows twittering and old fools swapping guff," he went on, sourly, and then he suddenly cocked his ear, for a new note sounded faintly from the marsh.

"I never knew a bullfrog to get his bass as early as this," he mused, and as he listened and peered, the old horse's head came slowly bobbing around the alders at the bend of the road. Above the wailing of the distant accordion he caught a few words as the cart wabbled up the rise on its dished wheels:

Old horse Joe is ever faithful, O-o-o, o-o-o—ever true. We've been—o-o-o—wide world over, O-o-o, o-o-o, toodle-oodle—through.

Then a medley of dronings, and finally these words were lustily trolled with the confidence of one who safely reaches the last line:

A bet-tur friend than old horse Joe.

"Whoa, there! Whup!" screamed the parrot, swinging by one foot.

"Ain't you kind of working a friend to the limit and a little plus?" inquired Buck, sarcastically. The old horse had stopped before the emporium, legs spraddled, head down and sending the dust up in little puffs as he breathed.

"Joachim loves music," replied the stranger, mildly. "He'll travel all day if I'll only play and sing to him."

"Love of music will be the death of friend Joachim, then," commented Buck.

"Is there a hostelry near by?" asked the other, lifting his old hat politely. With satirical courtesy Buck lifted his—and at that psychological moment the only plug hats in the whole town of Smyrna saluted each other.

"There's a hossery down the road a ways, and a mannery, too, all run by old Sam Fyles."

"Crack 'em down, gents," rasped the parrot. "Twenty can play as well as one."

The man under the chaise top pricked up his ears and cast a significant look at the plug hat on the platform. Plug hat on the platform seemed to recognize some affinity in plug hat on the van, and there was an acceleration of mutual interest when the parrot croaked his sentence again.

Buck tipped forward with a clatter of his chair legs and trudged down to the roadside. He walked around the outfit with an inquisitive sniffing of his nose and a crinkling of eyebrows, and at last set himself before the man of the chaise top, his knuckles on his hips.

"Who be I?" he demanded.

The stranger surveyed him for some time, huggling his head down in cowering fashion, so it seemed in the dusk.

"You," he huskily ventured, "are Buck's Leviathan Circus and Menagerie; Ivory Buck, Proprietor."

"And you," declared Buck, "are Brick Avery, inventor of the dancing turkey and captor of the celebrated infant anaconda—side-show graft with me for eight years."

He put up his hand, and the stranger took it for a solemn shake, flinching at the same time.

"How long since?" pursued Buck.

"Thirty years for certain."

"Yes, all of that. Let's see! If I remember right, you threw up your side-show privilege with me pretty sudden, didn't you?" His teeth were set hard into his cigar.

The man on the van scratched a trembling forefinger through a cheek tuft.

"I don't exactly recollect how the—the change came about," he faltered.

"Well, I do! You ducked out across country the night of the punkin freshet, when I was mud bound and the elephant was afraid of the bridges. You and your dancin' turkey and infant anaconda and a cage of monkeys that wasn't yours and—Her!" He shouted the word. "What become of Her, Brick Avery?"

He seized a spoke of the forewheel and shook the old vehicle angrily. The spoke came away in his hand.

"Never mind it," quavered the man. "We're all coming to pieces, me and the whole caboodle. Don't hit me with it, though!"

He was eying the spoke in Buck's clutch.

"What did you steal her for, Brick Avery?"

"There isn't anything sure about her going away with me," the other protested.

Buck yanked away another spoke in his vehemence.

"Don't you lie to me," he bawled. "There wasn't telegraphs and telephones and railroads handy in them days, so that I could stop you or catch you, but I didn't need any telegraphs to tell me she had gone away with handsome Mounseer Hercules, of the curly hair." He snorted the sobriquet with bitter spite. "A girl I'd took off'n the streets and made the champion lady rider of—and was going to marry, and thought more of, damn yeh, than I did of all the rest of the world! What did ye do with her?"

"Well, she wanted to go along, and so I took her aboard. She seemed to want to get away from your show, near as I could find out." The giant hugged his knees together and blinked appealingly.

"It must be a bang-up living you're giving her," sneered Buck, running his eye over the equipage. In his passion he forgot the lapse of the years and the possibility of changes.

"Seems as if you hadn't heard the latest news," broke in Avery, his face suddenly clearing of the puckers of apprehension. "She never stuck to me no time. She didn't intend to. She just made believe that she was going to marry me so that I would take her along. She run away with the sixteen hundred dollars I had saved up and Signor Dellabunko—or something like that—who was waiting for her on the road, and I haven't seen hide nor hair of 'em since, nor I don't want to, and I've still got the letter that she left me, so that I can prove what I say. She was going to do the same thing to you, she said in it, but she had made up her mind that she couldn't work you so easy. It's all in that letter! Kind of a kick-you-and-run letter!"

In his agitation Buck broke another spoke from the crumbling wheel. The parrot cracked his beak against the cage's bars and yawled:

"It's the old army game, gents!"

"Hadn't you just as soon tear pickets off'n the fence there, or something like that?" wistfully queried Avery. "This is all I've got left, and I haven't any money, and I haven't had very much courage to do anything since she took that sixteen hundred dollars away from me." He scruffed his raspy palms on his upcocked knees. "I didn't really want to run away with her, Ivory, but she bossed me into it. I never was no hand to stand up for my rights. Any one, almost, could talk me 'round. I wish she'd stuck to you and let me alone." His big hands trembled on his knees, and his weak face, with its flabby chaps, had the wistful look one sees on a foxhound's visage. "When did you give up the road?" he asked.

"Haven't given it up!" The tone was curt and the scowl deepened. "I've stored my wagons and the round-top and the seats, but I'm liable to buy an elephant and a lemon and start out again 'most any time."

The eyes of the old men softened with a glint of appreciation as they looked at each other.

"I don't suppose you have to," suggested Avery, with a glance at the store.

"Fifty thousand in the bank and the stand of buildings here," replied Buck, with the careless ease of the "well-fixed." "How do you get your three squares nowadays?"

"Lecture on Lost Arts and Free Love and cure stuttering in one secret lesson, pay in advance," Avery replied, listlessly. "But there ain't the three squares in it. I wish I'd been as sharp as you are, and never let a woman whiffle me into a scrape."

"Nobody ever come it over me," declared Buck, pride slowly replacing his ire, but he added, gloomily; "excepting her, and I've never stopped thinking about it, and I've never seen another woman worth looking at—not for me, even if she did come it over me."

"But she didn't come it over you," insisted Avery. "I'm the one she come it over, and look at me!" He made a despairing gesture that embraced all his pathetic appanage. "You are the one that's come out 'unrivaled, stupendous and triumphant,' as your full sheeters used to say. If I was any help in steering her away I'm humbly glad of it, for I always liked you, Ivory."

This gradual shifting to the ground of the benefactor, even of the servile sort, was not entirely placating, as Ivory Buck's corrugated brow still hinted, but the constant iteration of admiration for his marvelous shrewdness and good fortune was having its effect. The old grudge and sorrow that had gnawed at his heart during so many years suddenly shooed away. The pain was assuaged. It was like opodeldoc stuffed into an aching tooth. He felt as though he would like to listen to a lot more of that comforting talk.

"Avery," he cried, with a heartiness that surprised even himself, "you're a poor old devil that's been abused, and you seem to be all in." He surveyed the wheezing horse and kicked another spoke from the yawning wheel.

"Crack 'em down, crack 'em down, gents!" squalled the parrot.

"If it wasn't for Elkanah, there, to holler that to me, with an occasional 'Hey, Rube!' I couldn't stay in this Godforsaken place fifteen minutes. There's no one here that can talk about anything except ensilage and new-milk cows. Now what say? Store your old traps along o' mine, squat down and take it comfortable. I reckon that you and me can find a few things to talk about that really amount to something!"

"I should hate to feel I was a burden on you, Ivory," stammered Avery, gasping at the amazing generosity of this invitation. "If there's any stutterers around here I might earn a little something on the side, perhaps."

"Me with fifty thousand in the bank and letting a guest of mine graft for a living? Not by a blame sight!" snorted Buck. "You just climb out and shut up and help me unharness old Pollyponeezus here."

Ten minutes afterward they had the canvas off the chariots and were inspecting them by lantern light, chattering old reminiscences and seeming almost to hear the "roomp-roomp" of the elephant and the snap of the ringmaster's whip.

To the astonishment of Smyrna Corner, two plug hats, around which wreaths of cigar smoke were cozily curling, blossomed on the platform of the emporium next morning, instead of one. The old men had thirty years of mutual confidences to impart, and set busily at it, the parrot waddling the monotonous round of his cage overhead and rasping:

"Crack 'em down, gents! The old army game!"

In two weeks "Plug" Ivory and "Plug" Avery were as much fixtures in the Smyrna scenery as the town pump. Occasionally of an evening the wail of the snuffling accordion wavered out over the village. Buck, his head thrown back and his eyes closed, seemed to get consoling echoes of the past even from this lugubrious assault on Melody, and loungers hovered at a respectful distance. No one dared to ask questions, and in this respect the old men differed from the town pump as features in the scenery.

Before a month had passed the two had so thoroughly renewed their youth that they were discussing the expense of fitting out a "hit-the-grit" circus, and were writing to the big shows for prices on superannuated or "shopworn" animals.

It was voted that the dancing turkey and infant anaconda grafts were no longer feasible. Once on a time the crowds would watch a turkey hopping about on a hot tin to the rig-a-jig of a fiddle and would come out satisfied that they had received their money's worth. A man could even exhibit an angleworm in a bottle and call it the infant anaconda, and escape being lynched. Brick Avery sadly testified to the passing of those glorious days.

However, it was decided that a cage of white leghorn fowls, colored with aniline dyes, could be shown even in these barren times as "Royal South American Witherlicks"; that Joachim could be converted into a passable zebra, and "Plug" Avery still had in his van the celluloid lemon peel as well as the glass cube that created the illusion of ice in the pink lemonade. The village painter was set at work on the new gilding of the chariots in the big barn.

"Even if we don't really get away," explained Buck, "it's a good idea to keep the property from running down."

But the appearance of the new gilt inflamed their showmen's hearts. An irresistible hankering to get a nearer sniff of the sawdust, to mix with the old crowd, induced Buck to send a card to a sporting paper, advertising for correspondence from bareback riders, tumblers, specialty people and privilege speculators, who wanted to join a "one-ring, chase-the-fairs road show—no first-raters." He emphasized the fact that all personal interviews would be arranged later in New York City.

"We don't want anyone tracking down here," he confided to Avery. "That would call the bluff. But we can get some letters that maybe will perk us up a little."

The letters came in bundles—letters long, short, earnest and witty—whiffs from the good old world of the dressing tent. And they were read and discussed on the emporium's platform, and some were answered in non-committal style so as to draw out further correspondence, and all in all it was voted by both "Plugs" that a small amount of money invested in advertising certainly did produce its full worth of entertainment.

But in the midst of these innocent attempts to alleviate ennui something else came along beside letters. It was a woman—a slim, wiry, alert woman. She clambered down from the stage one day, advanced trippingly to the platform and courtesied low before the two plug hats, her long, draggly plume bobbing against her rouged cheek. The two plug hats arose and were doffed. Then the three faced each other.

"You don't hold your ages as well as I do, boys," she commented, after her sharp scrutiny.

"It's the old army game, gents!" screamed the parrot, excited by this new arrival, gay with her colors and her ribbons.

"It's Her!" gasped Plug Avery.

"It's Signory Rosy-elly!" choked Plug Avery.

She came up and sat down between them on one of the platform chairs.

"It was the longest time before I could place those names," she chattered. "'Buck & Avery, Consolidated Aggregation,' says I to myself. 'Buck & Avery,' I says. And, thinks I, them two old codgers must have gone to Kingdom Come, for I'm—let's see—I'm twenty, or something like that, years younger than either of you, as I remember." She poked each one jovially with her parasol.

"'Buck & Avery,' says I," she went on, cheerfully oblivious of their grimness. "'It's their boys,' I says, and so I came right along, for I need the job, and I couldn't explain the romantic part in a letter. I was thinking I'd surely be taken on when I told Buck and Avery's sons the romance. But I don't have to tell you, boys."

She jocosely poked them again.

"'A little old!' you say?"—they hadn't said anything, by the way, but stood there with gaping, toothless mouths. "Not a bit of it for a jay-town circuit. Of course, it isn't a Forepaugh job for me now or else I wouldn't be down here talking to Buck & Avery. But I'm still good for it all—rings, banners, hurdles, rump-cling gallop and the blazing hoop for the wind-up. You know what I can do, boys. Remember old times. Give me an engagement for old-times' sake." She flashed at them the arch looks of a faded coquette.

Buck, the poignancy of his ancient regret having been modified by his long course of consolation from the lips of Avery, was the first to recover. This faded woman, trying to stay time's ravages by her rouge, displaced the beauteous image he had cherished so long in his memory.

"Ain't you ashamed to face us two?" he demanded. "You that run away and broke your promise to me! You that ruined me!" He patted his breast dramatically and shot a thumb out at Avery.

"My sakes!" she cried. "You ain't so unprofessional as to remember all that silliness against me, are you? I was only a girl, and you couldn't expect me to love you—either of you. I'm a poor widow now," she sighed, "and I need work. And here you have been laying up grudges against me—the two of you—all these years! What would your wives have said?"

"We never got married," replied the two, in mournful duet.

But she wasn't in a consoling mood. "You're lucky!" she snapped. "I married a cheap, worthless renegade, who stole my money and ran away. He fell off a trapeze and broke his neck, and I was glad of it."

The look that passed between Plug Ivory and Plug Avery carried all the pith of the quotation: "The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small."

"So am I," grunted Buck, surlily. "No, I'm sorry he didn't live to torment you. No, the only thing I'm really sorry about is that 'twas Brick Avery's money he got away with."

Avery sighed.

"But I want to say to you, Signory Rosy-elly," continued Buck, with a burst of pride quite excusable, tipping his hat to one side and hooking his thumb into the armhole of his vest, "it wasn't my money you got, and it never will be my money you'll get. You just made the mistake of your life when you run away from me."

"He's got fifty thousand dollars in the bank," hoarsely whispered Avery, vicariously sharing in this pride of prosperity—the prosperity beyond her reach.

"Uh-huh! Correct!" corroborated Buck, surveying her in increasing triumph. This moment was really worth waiting through the years for, he reflected.

"Twenty can play as well as one," croaked the parrot, his beady eye pressed between the bars of his cage.

The signora glanced up at this new speaker, eyed Elkanah with a sage look that he returned, and then, after a moment's reflection, said:

"Thanks for the suggestion, old chap. That is to say, three can play as well as two, when there's fifty thousand in the bank. Buck, you know I'm always outspoken and straight to the point. No underhanded bluff for me. I'm going to sue you for ten thousand."

"Crack 'em down, gents!" remarked Elkanah, grimly.

Buck cast a malevolent look at the bird, and then, his cigar tip-tilted and the corner of his mouth sarcastically askew, suggested with an air as though the idea were the limit of satiric impossibility:

"I want to know! Breach of promise, I per-sume!"

"Good aim! You've rung the bell," rejoined the lady, coolly.

The unconscionable impudence of the bare suggestion fetched a gasp from both men. Plug Ivory's assumption of dignity crumbled immediately. The years rolled back. He felt one of those old-time fits of rage come bristling up the back of his head, the fury of old when he had tried to wither that giddy creature in his spasms of jealousy. But now, as in the past, her calm assurance put him out of countenance and his wild anathemas died away in sputterings.

"I know all that, Ivory Buck," she said, icily. "But how are you going to prove I was married? Where are you going to hunt for witnesses? Professional people are like wild geese—roosting on air and moulting their names like feathers. What proof of anything are you going to find after all these thirty years? While I—I've got your letters, every one—all your promises. Observe how I take my cue! Jury a-listening! I've been hunting the world over for you. You hid here. Here I find you—this poor, deserted woman, whose life has been wrecked by your faithlessness, finds you. Me, with a crape veil, a sniff in my nose, a crushed-creature face make-up, a tremolo in my voice and a smart lawyer such as I know about! What can you two old fools say to a country jury to block my bluff? Why, you can save money by handing me your bank book!"

In his fury Buck grabbed her chair and tipped it forward violently in order to dump her off his sacred platform. She fled out into space with a flutter of skirts, landed lightly as a cat and pirouetted on one toe, crooking her arms in the professional pose that appeals for applause.

"This is the first time Signora Rosyelli, champion bareback rider, ever tried to ride a mule," she chirped, "but you see she can do it and make her graceful dismount to the music of the band."

Several villagers across the road were gaping at the scene. She inquired the way to the tavern, one of them took her valise, and she went down the road, tossing a kiss from her finger tips toward the two plug hats. Plug hats watched her out of sight and then turned toward each other with simultaneous jerk.

"Don't that beat tophet and repeat?" they inquired, in exact unison.

"What are you going to do?" asked Plug Avery.

"Fight her! Fight her clear to the high, consolidated supreme court aggregation of the United States, or whatever they call it!" roared Plug Ivory.

"Nobody has ever beat her yet, except Dellybunko, and we ain't in his class," sighed Avery, despondently.

"You don't think, do you, that I'm going to lap my thumb and finger and peel her off ten thousand dollars?"

"Why don't you and she get married and we'll all live here, happy, hereafter?" wistfully suggested Avery. "If it was in a book it would end off like that—sure pop."

"This ain't no book," replied Buck, elbows on his knees, eyes moodily on the dusty planks.

"So you're bound to go to court?"

"Low court—high court—clear to the ridgepole—clear to the cupoly, and then I'll shin the weather vane with the star spangled banner of justice between my teeth."

"I heard a breach of promise trial once," related Avery, half closing his eyes in reminiscence, "and it was the funniest thing I ever listened to. 'Twas twenty years ago, and I'll bet that the people down there laugh yet when they see that fellow walk along the street. Them letters he wrote was certainly the squashiest—why, every one of them seemed to woggle like a tumbler of jelly—sweet and sloppy, as you might say! It being so long ago, when you was having your spell, I don't suppose you remember just what you wrote to her, do you?"

Avery still gazed at the same knothole, but a hot flush was crawling up from under his collar. He took off his plug hat and scuffed his wrist across his steaming forehead.

"I remember that he called her 'Ittikins, Pittikins, Popsy-sweet.' Thought I'd die laughing at that trial! Did you sling in any names like that, Ivory? You being so prominent now and settled down and having money in the bank, them kind of names, if you wrote mushy like that, will certainly tickle folks something tremendous."

A student in physiognomy might have read that memory was playing havoc with Buck's resolution. Avery was knitting his brows in deep reflection, knuckling his forehead.

"Seems as if," he went on, slowly, "she told me you called her something like 'Sweety-tweety,' or 'Tweeny-weeny Girlikins'—something like that. How them newspapers do like to string out things—funny kind of things, when a man is prominent and well known, and has got money in the bank! Folks can't help laughing—they just naturally can't, Ive! You'll be setting there in court, looking ugly as a gibcat and her lawyer reading them things out. Them cussed lawyers have a sassy way of——"