Buck got up, kicked his chair off onto the ground, and in choler uncontrollable, clacked his fists under Avery's nose and barked:

"Twit me another word—just one other word—and I'll drive that old nose of yourn clear up into the roof of your head!"

Then he locked his store door and stumped away across the field to the big barn, where the remains of Buck's Leviathan Circus reposed in isolated state.

No one knows by just what course of agonized reasoning he arrived at his final decision, but at dusk he came back to the store. With the dumb placidity of some ruminant, Avery was sitting in his same place on the platform of the emporium.

"Brick," said Ivory, humbly, "I've been thinking back and remembering what I wrote to her—and it's all of it pretty clear in my mind, 'cause I never wrote love letters to anyone else. And I can't face it. I couldn't sit in court and hear it. I couldn't sit here on this platform in my own home place and face the people afterward. I couldn't start on the road with a circus and have the face to stand before the big tent after it and bark like I used to. They'd grin me out of business. I'd be backed into the stall. No, I can't do it. Go down and see what she'll compromise on."

Avery came back after two hours and loomed in the dusk before the platform. He fixed his eyes on the plug hat that was still lowered in the attitude of despondency.

"I wrassled with her, Ivory, just the same as if I was handling my own money, and I beat her down to sixty-six hundred. She won't take a cent less."

"I'll tell you what that sounds like to me," snarled Buck, after a moment of meditation. "It sounds as if she was going to get five thousand and you was looking after your little old sixteen hundred."

A couple of tears squeezed out and down over Avery's flabby cheeks.

"This ain't the first time you've misjudged me, when I've been doing you a favor," said he. "And it's all on account of the same mis'able woman that I'm misjudged—and we was living so happy here, me and you. I wish she was in——" His voice broke.

"I ain't responsible for what I'm saying, Avery," pleaded Buck, contritely. "You know what things have happened to stir me up the last few hours—yes, all my life, for that matter. I ain't been comfortable in mind for thirty years till you come here and cheered me up and showed me what's what. I appreciate it and I'll prove that to you before we're done. We'll get along together all right after this. All is, you must see me through."

Then the two plug hats bent together in earnest conference.

The next morning Avery, armed with an order on the savings bank at the shire for six thousand six hundred dollars, and with Buck's bank book in his inside pocket, drove up to the door of Fyles' tavern in Buck's best carriage, and Signora Rosyelli flipped lightly up beside the peace commissioner.

He was to pay over the money on the neutral ground at the shire, receive the letters, put her aboard a train and then come back triumphantly into that interrupted otium cum dignitate of Smyrna Corner.

For two days a solitary and bereaved plug hat on the emporium's platform turned its fuzzy gloss toward the bend in the road at the clump of alders. But the sleek black nose of Buck's "reader" did not appear.

On the third day the bank book arrived by mail, its account minus six thousand six hundred dollars, and between its leaves a letter. It was an apologetic letter, and yet it was flavored with a note of complaint. Brick Avery stated that after thinking it all over he felt that, having been misjudged cruelly twice, it might happen again, and being old, he could not endure griefs of that kind. He had supported the first two, but being naturally tender-hearted and easily influenced, the third might be fatal. Moreover, the conscience of Signora Rosyelli had troubled her, so he believed, ever since the affair of the one thousand six hundred dollars. So he had decided that he would quiet her remorse by marrying her and taking entire charge of her improved finances. In fact, so certain was he that she would waste the money—being a woman fickle and vain—that he had insisted on the marriage, and she, realizing her dependence on his aid in cashing in, assented, and now he assured her that as her husband he was entitled to full control of their affairs—all of which, so the letter delicately hinted, was serving as retribution and bringing her into a proper frame of mind to realize her past enormities. The writer hoped that his own personal self-sacrifice in thus becoming the instrument of flagellation would be appreciated by one whom he esteemed highly.

They would be known at the fairs as Moseer and Madame Bottotte, and would do the genteel and compact gift-sale graft from the buggy—having the necessary capital now—and would accept the buggy and horse as a wedding present, knowing that an old friend with forty-three thousand four hundred dollars still left in the bank would not begrudge this small gift to a couple just starting out in life, and with deep regard for him and all inquiring friends, they were, etc.

In the more crucial moments of his life Buck had frequently refrained from anathema as a method of relief. Some situations were made vulgar and matter-of-fact by sulphurous ejaculation. It dulled the edge of rancor brutally, as a rock dulls a razor.

Now he merely turned the paper over, took out a stubby lead pencil, licked it and began to write on the blank side, flattening the paper on his bank book.

FOR SALE—1 Band Wagon, 1 Swan Chariot, 3 Lion Cages.

He paused here in his laborious scrawl and, despite his resolution of silence, muttered:

"It's going to be a clean sale. I don't never in all my life want to hear of a circus, see a circus, talk circus, see a circus man——"

"Crack 'em down, gents!" squalled the parrot. It was the first time for many hours that he had heard his master's voice, and the sound cheered him. He hooked his beak around a wire and rattled away jovially. He seemed to be relieved by the absence of the other plug hat that had been absorbing so much of the familiar, beloved and original plug hat's attention.

Ivory looked up at Elkanah vindictively and then resumed his soliloquy.

"No, sir, never! Half of circusing is a skin game all through—and I've done my share of the skinning. But to be skinned twice—me, I. Buck, proprietor—and the last time the worst, but——"

"Twenty can play it as well as one!" the parrot yelled, cocking his eye over the edge of the cage.

It was an evil scowl that flashed up from under the plug hat, but Elkanah in his new joy was oblivious.

"Me a man that's been all through it from A to Z—my affections trod on, all confidence in females destroyed and nothing ahead of me all the rest of my life! No, sir, I never want to hear of a circus again. Bit by the mouths I fed—and they thumbing their noses at me. That trick——"

"It's the old army game!" squealed the parrot, in nerve-racking rasp.

Ivory Buck arose, yanked the bottom off the cage, caught the squawking bird, wrung his neck, tossed him into the middle of the road, and then, sucking his bleeding finger, went on writing the copy for his advertisement.



SUPPER WITH NATICA

By ROBERT E. MACALARNEY

It isn't at all pleasant to burn one's fingers, but it's worth while burning them now and then, if you have to be scorched to be near a particularly attractive fire; at least I've found it that way. All of which leads me to Natica Drayton—Melsford that was.

I think I'm the only one of the crew she dragged at her heels who hasn't forgot about things and gone off after other game; some of them have been lashed to the burning stake of pretty uncomfortable domesticity, too. As for me—well, I've simply gone on caring, and I think I shall always go on.

Does she know it? Of course she knows it; always has known it, ever since that first summer at Sacandaga. Not that I've been ass enough to say anything after the first time. I'm only an ordinary sort of chap when it comes to intuition, but somehow I've never plucked up the cheek to do any talking about my own miserable self; not since she let me down as gently as she could, while I paddled her back from Birch Point to the canoe house, with Elephant Mountain ragged-backed in the moon-haze. For the life of me I couldn't tell you what it was she said. There was the drip of water from the paddle as I lifted it, stroke after stroke; the tiny hiss of smother at the prow, and twisted through it all, like a gathering string, Natica Melsford's voice, letting me down easy—as easily as she could.

After I had made fast, I remember feeling that somehow the moonlight had turned things extremely cold; and I reached for my sweater that lay in the stern. I also laughed a great deal too much around the logs at the bungalow fire, and then drank a deal more than too much at the clubhouse before turning in. Maybe it was cowardly to sneak back to town a couple of days later, "on business," of course—a shabby excuse for a chap that doesn't dabble in business more than I do. But I honestly needed to go to get back my equilibrium. I got it, though, and I've kept it pretty continuously. And this much is enough for that. Natica Melsford is the only interesting bit about this story, and let's get back to her.

That winter she married Jack Drayton. The afternoon we rehearsed for the wedding I looked at her, before we pranced down the aisle and endured the endless silly giggles of the bridesmaids, and the usher louts who would fall out of step, and grew more peevish by the minute. I looked her over then, and I said to myself: "You feeble paranoiac, imagine that girl tying up with you." Well, I couldn't very well imagine it, although I tried. But I was extremely noisy, and I heard two or three of the bridesmaids, to say nothing of the maid of honor and the bridegroom's mamma, tapping their gentle hammers, at my expense, at the breakfast. It was a year afterward that I began to fag regularly for the Drayton establishment.

Jack Drayton, by rights, ought to have been poisoned. He'd be the first to acknowledge it now. Perhaps if he'd married a girl who insisted on having things out the moment they began, the things wouldn't have happened. But Natica Melsford wasn't that sort. She was the kind that simply looked scorn into and clear through you, when she thought you were acting low down. This, with a man strung like Jack was, simply put the fat into the fire. It would have been different with me. I'd—well—I'd have made an abject crawl, to be sure. You see, her knowing this was the thing that must have always queered me with her. A woman prefers a man she can get furious at and who'll stick it out a bit, to one who caves in at the first sign of a frown. But Jack carried things too far.

No, he didn't mind my frequenting the house. He liked me and I liked him. But, all the same, I knew he didn't regard me as a foeman worthy of his steel. And, although the knowledge made me raw now and then, when he's come in with his easy, careless way, still I swallowed the mean feeling because it gave me a chance to see her. And don't imagine I went around hunting for trouble. It was at the club one night—I'd just come from the Draytons, and Jack hadn't been home to dinner—that I heard Rawlins Richardson and Horace Trevano chattering about Maisie Hartopp. The "Jo-Jo" song had made the biggest kind of a hit that winter at the Gaiety, and the hit had been made by the Hartopp singing it to a stage box which the Johnnies scrambled to bid in nightly.

It seemed like small game for Jack Drayton to be trailing along with the ruck—the ruck meaning Tony Criswold and the rest of that just-out-of-college crew—but I didn't need signed affidavits, after five minutes of club chatter, to know that he was pretty well tied to an avenue window at Cherry's after the show. The Ruinart, too, that kept spouting from the bucket beside it, was a pet vintage of the Hartopp.

There was a lot of that silly chuckle, and I recalled reading somewhere that there was a husband belonging to the Hartopp, a medium good welterweight, who picked up a living flooring easy marks for private clubs at Paterson, N. J., and the like, and occasionally serving as a punching bag for the good uns before a championship mill. What the devil was there to do? I couldn't answer the riddle.

It sounds like old women's chatter, the meddlesome way I scribble this down. It would take a real thing in the line of literature to paint me right, anyway, I fancy. When a third party keeps mixing in with husband and wife, he deserves all the slanging that's coming to him; which same is my last squeal for mercy.

A month went by—two of them. Natica Drayton wasn't the strain that needs spectacles to see through things. Then, too, I guessed the loving friend sympathy racket was being worked by some of the bridge whist aggregation which met up with her every fortnight. She laughed more than she ought to have done. This was a bad sign with her. Once or twice, when the three of us dined together, and she was almost noisy over the benedictine, I could have choked Jack Drayton, for he didn't see. It's not a pretty thing for an outsider to sit a trois, and see things in a wife's manner that the husband doesn't or won't see; and worse than that, to know that the wife knows you see it and that he doesn't. Speak to Jack? I wouldn't have done it for worlds. As I said, I'm willing to burn my fingers and even cuddle the hurt; but I don't meddle with giant firecrackers except on the Fourth of July, and that didn't come until afterward.

I was to take her to the opera one night—Drayton had the habit of dropping in for an act or two and then disappearing—but on her own doorstep she tossed off her carriage wrap and sent Martin back to the stables.

"Let's talk, instead," she said, and she made me coffee in the library, with one of those French pots that gurgle conveniently when you don't exactly know what to say. That pot did a heap of gurgling before we began to talk. When she spoke, what she said almost took me off my chair.

"Percy, have you seen the show at the Gaiety?" she asked.

I had seen it more than once, and I said so.

"They tell me there's a song there——" she went on.

"There are a lot of songs," said I.

"There's one in particular."

There wasn't any use in fencing, so I answered: "You mean the 'Jo-Jo' song. It's a silly little ditty, and it's sung by——"

"A girl named Hartopp—Maisie Hartopp." She was speaking as if she were trying to remember where she'd heard the name.

Of course, me for the clumsy speech. "She's a winner," I cut in.

She got up at that, and walked over to the fireplace. "She seems to be," she said, picking at a bit of bronze, a wedding present, I think. Then she came over to where I was sitting and put a hand on my shoulder. I'd have got to my feet if I hadn't been afraid to face her. "Percy——" she began, and I felt the fingers on my shoulder quiver. I don't think the Apaches handed out anything much worse in the torture line than the quiver of a woman's ringers upon your shoulder, when you know that those fingers aren't quivering on your account. Maybe that occurred to her, for a second later she took her hand away. "You once said something foolish to me, Percy," she said.

I nodded my head, my eyes upon an edge of the Royal Bokhara. "It was in a canoe, wasn't it?" I replied. "There was a moon, of course, and the paddle blades went drip, drip."

"You meant what you said then, didn't you?"

My gaze was wavering from the rug by now. Little wonder, was it? "I meant it all right," I got out after a while. "Do you want to hear me say my little speech over again?" Was it possible that, after all, Natica Drayton had really decided to toss Jack over, and take on a fag, warranted kind and gentle, able to be driven by any lady? But I forgot that foolish notion pretty nearly right off.

"There is a husband," she went on, as if taking account of stock.

"There always is," I rejoined. "Some of 'em are good and the others are bad." I chuckled despite me, as I put in my mean little hack.

"I mean the Hartopp's husband," she explained.

"There is," I said. "'Boiler-plate' Hartopp. His given name is James, and he prize-fights fair to middling." All this wasn't quite good billiards, but we'd begun wrong that night, and we might as well keep it up, thought I.

Natica Drayton was tapping her foot upon the fender. "H'm," she mused. "Some of those horrid names sound interesting." Then she turned to me abruptly. "I think, perhaps, you ought to go now," she suggested.

"I think so, too," I agreed, rising very hastily, and taking my leave.

"Have you Friday evening disengaged?" She flung this after me before I had got to the hall.

"Yes," said I, all unthinking.

"Then we'll do it Friday," she said.

"We'll do what?" I asked, coming back to her. For once I felt rebellious, and showed it, whereat she smiled.

"Supper after the theater at Cherry's."

"Oh, well, I don't mind that," I volunteered.

"With 'Boiler-plate' Hartopp," she added.

The searchlight dawned upon me. It swung around the room once or twice, and that was enough. I knew in the flood of sudden illumination that the girl had planned this thing in advance, with the daring of despair—and a wife's despair, a very young wife's despair, is a more desperate thing than the anger of any other woman. Natica had planned it all in advance; had figured it, and the chances of it. And in the balance she had confidently thrown the asset of my assisting her.

The right sort of a man, I suppose, would have become enraged because of her taking things for granted. But I—I had been chained to her chariot too long a time to experience the mild sensation of resentment.

Natica wished to face her husband in a crowded restaurant after the play. More than that, she wished to face him in company with a man not of her sort, even as he—Drayton—was escorting a woman whose lane of living did not rightly cross his. The coincidence of Natica's means-to-an-end being the Hartopp's husband, was simply a gift of fate; an opportunity of administering poetic justice, which could not be denied. Had the Hartopp not possessed a convenient husband, Natica would have arranged for another companion. But even she had not dared to plan her coup alone, with her chosen instrument of wifely retaliation. Through it all, she had confidently counted on me, a discreet background, a pliant puppet.

She could not know what Drayton might do, after they had eyed one another from different tables. She did not much care. But she would at least have the painful joy of the Brahmin woman's hope, who trusts by some fresh incantation to secure a blessing, formerly vouchsafed her by the gods, but which now old-time petitions fail to renew. It seemed cold-blooded, the entire arrangement, and yet I knew it was not. She was far braver than I could have been, even to win her caring. But I understood.

I must have been rough as I took her hand. "Look here," I said. "It's a desperate game, Natica. You wouldn't have dared to say that to any other man than me. You've got used to seeing me fag for you. And I'm going to do it this time, too. But if you weaken, by Heaven, you'll deserve to lose for good. It's crazy, it's the act of a pair of paretics, but I'm going to see it through."

She was crying when I left her. "Percy, my dear," she said; then she began to laugh—that after dinner benedictine laugh of hers. "If there weren't Jack, that speech of yours just now might make me want to kiss you."

On the sidewalk I tried to figure out if there had been knockout drops in the coffee Natica had brewed for me. In any one of the forty-eight hours ensuing, I might have rung up the Draytons' on the telephone, and told her that I had come to my senses. But I didn't do anything of the sort. Instead, I hunted up a newspaper chap I knew, and he put me next to "Boiler-plate" Hartopp at the Metropole.

The bruiser wasn't as bad sort as I had fancied him. He was an Englishman all right—a cut below middle class; you could tell that by the way he clipped his initial h's off and on. I tried the ice at first—it's always best when you don't know the exact thickness of your frozen water. The way I tried it was to toss a flower or two at Maisie Hartopp and her "Jo-Jo" song.

He rose sure enough, and it didn't take me a quarter hour to see that the pug was really bowled out by the parcel of stage skirts who wore his name on the Gaiety bills. This made it a warmer game than it might have been otherwise, but I was in for it now, and I made the date.

No, I didn't mention Natica. Even a broken-to-harness shawl carrier has a shred of cautious decency about him. But I gabbled lightly about a certain feminine party who was keen on exemplars of the genuine thing in the line of the manly art. Whereupon "Boilerplate" acquired a pouter-pigeon chest, which fairly bulged over the bar railing, and gave me his word of honor he'd be waiting at Forty-fourth Street about eleven on Friday. He intimated, ere I left, that he'd bring his festive accouterments with him. And he did.

We were a bit late—Natica and I. It must have been a quarter past the hour when we drove up to Cherry's. I felt reasonably certain that if Jack Drayton were guarding a champagne bucket by the corner table that night, he was located then. In the offing, miserably self-conscious, a crush hat on the back of his really fine head, and two or three small locomotive headlights glinting from his broad expanse of evening shirt, was "Boiler-plate" Hartopp. The flunkeys were regarding him curiously, and once a waiter-captain came out and gave him what seemed to be an unsatisfactory report.

I think the man was just about to take the count from sheer nerves, when he made me out in the doorway. Natica winked—actually winked at me—as he floundered over his share of the introduction. Looking at her, and faintly divining her mood that night, I felt sorry for Jack, for "Boiler-plate" and for myself. I left them for a moment and went in to see about my table. Two minutes later I emerged, to face Drayton and the Hartopp unloading from an electric hansom. The under-toned remark of one of the footman came to me: "A bit behind schedule time to-night, eh, Charley?"

There wasn't anything to do then, for they were fair inside. "Boiler-plate" was finishing some elephantine pleasantry to Natica, when he saw what I saw. A foolish grin rippled across his wide face. "Hullo!" he said to the Hartopp, who looked properly peevish, and then waspish, as she let her glance travel to Natica, who stood perfectly poised and, I fancied, a trifle expectant. Drayton eyed them together and in particular. The color streaked his forehead and faded out. Then he saw me, and, although he never may have murder in his eyes again, it was there at that choice moment. We weren't at all spectacular, you mustn't think that. It was all very quick, and there were a lot of people coming and going.

She was in instant command of the situation. Why shouldn't she have been, having created it? And unexpectedly, suddenly as she had encountered her quarry, equally suddenly she shifted her position, without the time to take me into her confidence.

"Don't bother about our table, Percy," she said. "Now that we've met friends, it will be jollier to dine en famille. It will be ever so much nicer than eating in a stuffy restaurant, and the butler won't have gone to bed yet. Run out and get us a theater wagon."

I went out to the carriage man in a trance. The gods, of a deed, were fighting furiously on Natica's side—for she could not have foreseen this vantage, readily as she swung her attack by its aid. Exquisite torture, truly, to flaunt a husband's folly in his own face, over his own mahogany, with the source of that folly looking on. Drayton's bounden civility to his wife, and to the other woman, must make him present himself as a target. He knew it, his wife knew it; as yet the other woman but dimly suspected it—not being over subtle—and it smote me in the face continuously. The puppet always feels the most cut up at times like these. In a way, it is because his vanity is being seared. Mine fairly crackled.

So we rattled off up the avenue. The only comfortable ones among us were Natica and Hartopp. He seemed to think the occurrence a pleasant bit of chance, and he wasn't in the least jealous, not he. I suppose the wife had him schooled to her stage ways of doing things.

Once he turned to Jack with a chuckle and said: "This is a jossy bit of luck, ain't it, each of us out with the other man's better?"

Natica laughed shamelessly. "You've such a keen appreciation of the ridiculous, Mr. Hartopp," she said. And when "Boiler-plate" tried to deny the insinuation, his wife nudged him on the arm and whispered: "Shut up, Jim."

There isn't any use in stringing out the amateur theatricals the five of us indulged in that night. The Drayton servants were too well chosen to show any surprise at being told to put on a champagne supper at midnight, and then go to bed before it was served. We sat at that mahogany table until the candelabra were guttering, and each of us had toyed more than he ought to have done with his glass. Natica acted as if she were entertaining in earnest, and for the time being I actually think she felt that she was. She got the Hartopp to sing her "Jo-Jo" song, and the Hartopp actually did it as if she enjoyed it. Afterward Natica induced "Boiler-plate" to tell about the time he mixed it up with Fitzsimmons for ten rounds.

"It was a lucky punch that put me out," he kept repeating, almost pathetically. "You know Fitz's lucky punch."

I might have seen what was in the wind if I hadn't been thick-headed, what with the champagne and the rattles. "Boiler-plate" once started on the ring, it was an easy transition.

"You've boxing gloves, haven't you, Jack?" asked Natica. "Get them for Mr. Hartopp. Let's see him demonstrate Mr. Fitzsimmons' lucky punch."

Drayton turned without a word, and made as if to go upstairs. At the door he turned. "Come on, Hartopp," he said. "I'll lend you a rowing jersey."

"You clear a place in the drawing room, Percy," said Natica, briskly. "Be sure that the shades are drawn. It would be awful to be raided by the police." And I obediently piled the gilt parlor furniture in corners.

The Hartopp fluttered anxiously around Natica the while. She was a woman, and she was beginning to half understand. "Please," she said, touching Natica's arm. "Jim's been drinking, and he's very rough when he's been drinking. We've all been foolish, but only foolish, remember. Jim and I sail for London next week. Just let us slip away now, and forget all about it."

Natica laughed. Her eyes were on the door. "Remember, we've only been foolish," repeated the Hartopp. "Only foolish, that's all." She went to Natica and shook her arm roughly; there were feet upon the stairs. "You silly," she snapped. "You ought to be glad you're married to a gentleman. He's different from all the others. I can tell you that, and I know. And I tell you that Jim's been drinking. Jack will——"

Natica's pose stiffened, but she did not look around. "Yes, Jack will what?" she said, coldly.

The Hartopp flushed. "He'll be hurt," she finished, weakly. Then, as the two from upstairs entered, she whispered: "He'll be hurt worse than you are now."

The "Boiler-plate" looked very foolish in an old Yale rowing shirt, with the "Y" stretched taut across his ponderous chest. He had a pair of arms like a blacksmith. Jack Drayton had taken off his coat and was in his shirt sleeves. He never looked at Natica, nor at the Hartopp; but he tossed me a stopwatch and told me to keep time.

"We'll box five rounds, Percy," he said.

Natica clapped her hands. "What fun!" she cried. "Jack, you're boxing against my champion."

The "Boiler-plate," who had been regarding the work at hand with much gravity, again allowed his countenance to be relaxed by the old, foolish grin. "Oh, I say," he interposed. "That's all right, but so long as Maisie is in the room I'm fighting for her—she's my wife, you know."

The Hartopp went to Natica with a softened gleam in her eyes; "I saw a telephone in the hall," she said. "I'm going out to call a cab." I heard her at the lever as they began to spar.

I don't believe I could get a job at timekeeping in a real mill. My rounds must have been wonderfully and fearfully made. For I forgot all about the stop-watch now and then, while I learned the truth of the Hartopp's caution that "Boiler-plate" grew rough after he'd been drinking a bit.

I knew that Jack had been a pretty fair boxer at the university, but, after I had called time for the first round, the thing was to all intents and purposes a genuine fight, and he was all in several times over. The "Boiler-plate's" fists made a noise like a woodchopper. Natica stood watching it with a queer, queer smile. But I saw—and I saw it with a sinking at the heart, for I realized that I'd cherished the guilty hope that things were not really going to be straightened out—that with every mark of the "Boiler-plate's" glove, her husband was coming back into his own.

She half sprang toward them when Jack went down with a crash, after I had got them started on the last go. Drayton arose warily, the blood spurting from a nasty cut over the eye, where the heel of the other's glove had scraped. The "Boiler-plate" lumbered dangerously near just then, and Natica, despite her, uttered a cry of warning.

I saw Jack turn away from the mountain in the Yale rowing shirt, and his eyes met Natica's squarely for the first time since Cherry's. Something he read in them made him laugh. This was only for the fraction of a second, however, for a glove, with the nth power behind it, lifted him a clear three feet into a stack of gilt chairs near his own corner.

He didn't move, and the "Boilerplate" stared at him stupidly.

"Say, you made him look at you," he said to Natica. "I didn't mean to land on him blind."

But she did not heed him. She was among the gilt chairs, with Jack Drayton's head upon her lap. The wheels of a cab stopped outside, and the Hartopp was seizing her dazed lord and master. She had his coat and bediamonded linen in her hands, and she clutched the "Boiler-plate" firmly, leading him to the door.

"Say, Maisie, wait a minute," he protested. "I've got the swell's college shirt on, and I didn't mean to land on him blind."

I opened the door, for she signaled with her eyes. "Come on, Jim, there's a dear," she said. Between us we cajoled him into the coupe. As I shut the door, she leaned to me and whispered: "Tell her for me she's a cat—a cruel cat."

I handed the driver a bill. "You've a very bad memory, cabby, haven't you?" I asked.

"Extremely bad, sir," said he, touching his hat.

"But, Maisie, I've got the swell's college shirt on," I heard "Boiler-plate" insist. Then the wheels moved.

The Draytons were both upon their feet when I stole back into the hall. I needed my hat and coat, or I shouldn't have set foot within the house again that night. Jack, a bit staggery and holding to the back of a chair, mopped the cut on his temple with a handkerchief, his wife's handkerchief, in his free hand. Natica, a smear of red on the front of her frock, stood beside him, with a strangely happy expression in her face and pose. A great many things had been pushed over the precipice which leads to forgetfulness, in the time I had been out on the sidewalk busy with the cabby.

"Good-night, Percy," Jack called out.

"Good-night," said I, going to him to take his hand, for he was too wobbly to have met me halfway.

"It's been a nightmare," said he. "We'll wake up to-morrow morning and know that we've only been asleep."

"Yes," I agreed, but looking at the puffiness in his face, I thought this was coming it a bit strong.

"Good-night, Percy," said Natica. And gently as she spoke the words, it came to me with a sudden rush of conviction that I had ceased fagging for the Drayton establishment for good—now.

"It was coming to me," said Jack. I was fiddling on the threshold uncertainly.

"Hush, you foolish boy," whispered Natica, touching the cut on his forehead, just once, with a very tender finger.

"Yes, it was coming to you," said I. I was glad that they perceived the conviction in my speech.

And that is how I had my last supper with Natica.



BY THE FOUNTAIN

BY MARGARET HOUSTON

There was nothing in the aspect of the white brick mansion to indicate that a tragedy was going on inside. A woman quietly dressed, her face showing delicately above her dark furs, came lightly down the steps. She paused a half second at the gateway and looked back, but there was no hesitation in the glance.

"Jules," she said to the coachman, "you may drive to the park."

She did not look back as they drove away.

There should be no gossiping among the servants. Everything should be done decently. From the park she could take the suburban and go quietly into town. From there—the world was wide. There was a note on his dresser, he would read it to-night and understand—no, not understand, she had ceased to expect that of him—but he would know—in some dull, stern way he would see—he would see. She caught sight of her face in the little mirror of the brougham and lowered her veil. Ah, it was a bitter, barren thing, this striving, striving, endlessly striving to be understood. She had endured it for four years and she was worn heartsick with the strain. Her soul cried out for warmth, for life, for breathing room; was not one's first duty to one's self after all? She turned suddenly—Jules stood by the open door.

"Jules," she said, summoning a little severity of manner to counterbalance the tremor in her voice, "you need not come back for me. Jules," she added, turning again, "good-by—you have—you have been very faithful."

The man touched his hat gravely and stood like a sentinel till she had passed from sight among the trees.

It was late in November, and the maple boughs were a riot of red and gold. The sky beyond them looked pale and far away, as though a white veil had been drawn across its tender southern blue. She rejoiced now that she had elected to spend this last hour in the frosty outdoor gladness. With a little impulse of relief, she flung back her veil and drew a deep breath. Then she locked her hands inside her muff and began to walk briskly.

At the park's further end there was a bench, inside a sort of roofless summerhouse, where on warm days the fountain played in a rainbow. She knew the place well—she had sat there many times—with him and with another—-she would go there now and think her own thoughts. It was hidden from the driveways, and the place was sweet with memories which need not goad and pain her. She remembered the last time she had sat there. It came back to her now with a sudden vividness. It was the day she had refused—the other one. She remembered the dress she wore—a thin little mull, cut low about the throat and strewn with pink rosebuds. And it was on that same bench. She had done it very gently. She had simply shown him her ring, and begged him with a little catch of the breath to be her friend—always. His was the sort of heart a woman might warm herself by all her life. He was tender and impulsive like herself, and he had always understood—always. How could she have forgotten for so long? Friends were rare—and he had promised to be her friend through everything. Her friend! Had he realized how much that meant?

Her step had grown very slow; she quickened it, lifting her head, and reached the little plaza near the fountain, her face flushed with the walk, the dark tendrils of her hair fallen from beneath her floating veil.

It was very sad here now, and very lonely. She had not thought that any place long familiar could look so strange. She paused, almost dreading to enter the old retreat, clothed as it was in the withered vine robes of dead springs. It was so like the rainbow fountain of her own years, checked and desolate and still. A whirlwind of red and yellow leaves swept about her feet. She started nervously, and, opening the little gate, went in.

But the place was not deserted. A man sat on the bench. He rose as she closed the gate, and when she would have withdrawn, he came toward her and held out a hand.

"Oh," she said, feeling as if she were speaking in a dream, "is it—where did you come from?"

"It seems very natural to see you here," he said.

His face was bronzed and he had more beard than formerly, but his eyes were the same when he smiled.

"I did not dream you were anywhere near us," she went on, the wonder deepening in her eyes. "I was—you seem part of my thoughts—I was thinking of you only a moment ago."

"You were always kind," said the man. "Let me spread my overcoat on the bench—the stone is cold. You have been walking, haven't you?"

"Yes. I don't walk much—it tires me easily." She sat down, loosening the furs at her throat, Breathing quickly; her eyes searched his face, half dazed, half questioning. "But where have you been?" she asked. "Were you not in Africa?"

"Yes. I have been home only a few days—I don't wonder you are surprised finding me here; people don't often sit in the park at this time—but I find it cozier than the station across the way. I came out on the hill early this noon to look up old friends, and I found I'd an hour to wait."

"Am I not an old friend?" she asked. "Why have you not been to see—us?"

"I hope I may count you such," said the man. "I knew your husband, too, many years ago; but he said that you were ill; I saw him this morning."

"I have been ill," she answered, quickly, and looked away, pushing back her hair with the little movement he knew so well.

"I am sorry for that," he said. "I heard of your loss—I did not lose sight entirely of my friends. Your little boy," he added, his voice softening—"your little boy——"

"My baby died," she said.

"I know—I heard of it—I knew how keenly you could suffer. But I knew, too, how brave you were——"

"Oh!" she said, catching the lace at her throat. "If he—if my baby had lived—I might—I could——"

She checked herself with a sudden biting of the lip, but the tears broke from her eyelids and she bowed her face.

"Ah," said the man, "I know—this is very hard; but it is something, after all, to have felt—to have known. No loss can be so bitter as a lack—a need."

There was a moment's silence between them.

"Tell me of yourself," she said, quietly, at length.

"There is little to tell. My life is very much the same. I have neither wife nor child. Until a man finds those, he's a most indifferent topic."

"You have never married?" she asked.

"No. Your life is, fuller, sweeter, better. Tell me of that. I used to know your husband—did you know?"

"No," she said, "I did not know."

"Yes, we were chaps together, he and I, the same age, though he seemed older—he was a plucky little fellow—you did not know him long, I believe, before you married."

She was looking straight before her at the still fountain. "No," she said, "I did not know him long."

"Ah," mused the man, "I know him well. He is a prince—one of God's own. Somewhat quiet now, I find, but he was always rather reserved, his life made him so; he was such a kid when he began to support them all—the mother and the girls, you know. But he worked along, going to night school—always ready, always courageous. My father used to say he'd give all his four boys for that one. We never worked much, you know. I suppose those who don't know him call him stern, but he has carried a pretty heavy load all his life, and that sobers a man and takes the spring out of him—of course you know, though."

But the woman said nothing. The man paused, regarding her a moment, then he let his gaze follow hers.

"I was thinking of the fountain," she said; "how it once flashed and sang and played—and now——"

"And now," said the man, "it is silent and cold—but the bright water is there still, and when the spring comes back it will leap forth again. It reminds me of my friend of whom we were just speaking—your husband. All the glow and life are still in his heart, and you will waken them. I said when you were married, that he needed just that—a union with a rich, sunny nature like your own, to teach him all that he had missed, and give back to him all that he had lost."

Her, lashes fell slowly, and she stroked her muff with one white hand.

The man spoke on, musingly. "I suppose even you do not realize the good he does—the help he gives to others. He doesn't talk of himself—he never did—even to you, I suppose? No? It is like him, he was always so. It was—it was in the cemetery I saw him this morning. I—when I come home—I always go there—my mother is there, you remember—I found him by—by your little boy. He was talking, with the sexton when I came up. It seems the grass didn't grow about the little fellow's—bed. The man admitted that his own little folks were accustomed to play there—the lot is shady and close to the house—they bring their toys and frolic there till the grass is quite worn away. You should have seen his face when the man told him that. 'Let them come,' he said; 'don't stop them; the grass doesn't matter.' 'The boy won't be so lonely,' said he to me. 'It seems so far away out here—and he all by himself—he was such a little chap—I sort of feel one of us ought to stay with him—at night.'"

The woman raised her eyes to his face. "Ah," she said, softly, "did he—did he say that?"

"Yes—and it goes to show, what you doubtless know better than I, how deep and true and tender he is beneath it all. Shan't I lay this coat more about you? I think the air has grown chillier."

"No, thank you," she said, rising. "Yes, it is chillier."

The man rose also. She stood a moment—her hand on the little gate, her eyes grown dark and deep. He waited at her side.

Her fingers sought the latch absently.

"Let me open it for you," he said. "Were you going into town, or did you come for the walk?"

"I?" she said. "Oh, I told Jules not to come back for me—it's a short walk home." She smiled up at him for the first time with her old-time brightness. "And you," she said, "you haven't completed the round of your 'old friends' yet—you will come with me."



BAS BLEU

By ANNA A. ROGERS

Author of "PEACE AND THE VICES"

That his wife was keeping something from him had been unpleasantly apparent to Robert Penn for over two months; but what really wore upon his easily disturbed nerves was the equally obvious fact that her secret was the source of an unusual, unnatural, unseemly happiness, which she took no pains to disguise.

Robert was the very much overworked junior partner in the prosperous law firm of Messrs. Flagg, Bentnor & Penn; and the question of his taking a much-needed rest had been gravely discussed by the other two partners more than once during the year; but the mere suggestion of it put him into such a tantrum that they let it drop, trusting to a redistribution of the work of the office to lighten somewhat Penn's burden. So all the fashionable divorcees—hitherto Bentnor's specialty—were turned over to the junior partner, as a slight means of professional diversion.

But he threw himself into the cases of his clients, male and female, with the same old unsparing fervor, and Flagg and Bentnor—the latter was Penn's brother-in-law—raised their eyebrows and shook their heads behind his back.

What first drew Robert's attention to his wife's secret was the sudden inexplicable condoning of his own small negligences and ignorances, which had once been brought to book. So accustomed does the happily married husband of the day become to certain domestic requisitions that the withdrawal of them is apt to arouse his suspicions at once.

These jealous doubts, later on, ran the whole gamut from the postman to the rector of Mrs. Penn's church, but at first all Robert feared was that she had become indifferent to him. That, after five happy years, she should be sweetly serene when he suddenly remembered that he had bought tickets for the theater, just as they had settled down after dinner for a quiet evening, Mrs. Penn looking prettily domestic in a lilac tea gown! Nothing but the established repugnance of a self-made man to wasting four dollars, even to save his pride, made him uncover his delinquency—and he held his breath till the storm should pass. But no storm followed his confession. Instead of which, she sprang to her feet, laughing:

"Oh, I'm wild to see that play! It has a deep, ethical purpose. Can you give me six minutes to scratch off this gown and bundle myself into another?"

It was so unusual, and she made such a delightful picture standing in the doorway, that he felt that the occasion deserved recognition.

"You may have twelve minutes to dress in, Helen. I'll call a cab."

"Oh, Rob, how lovely!" and off she flew.

After a moment spent in the happy digestion of this delightful antenuptial way of exculpating a really outrageous masculine default, it slowly dawned upon him, as he arose and emptied the ash tray into the library fire, that it was most unusual, extraordinary, startling! There was a time when she would have made a scene, and either they would have spent the evening apart at home in silence, or together at the theater in a still more painful silence.

At that instant was born in Robert Penn's already overwrought brain the thought that his wife no longer loved him!

Robert loathed all theatergoing. The mere physical restraint was torture to so active, high-strung a man, but when it came to a problem play—— He not unnaturally considered that it represented the full measure of his devotion to his wife, to spend an evening beside her listening to the same old jumble of human motives, human passions, that had occupied him all day long. Hate, jealousy, revenge, greed, infidelity were the staples of his trade, as it were; the untangling of law, if not always equity, from the seething mass was his raison d'etre, and moreover paid his coal bills. That Helen was almost morbidly fond of the theater had long been his heaviest cross.

His thin, dark face looked very worn as he hunched himself into his overcoat in the hall, and, looking up, saw Helen running down the stairs, just as she used to do in the dear old sweetheart days, chattering merrily the while:

"Talk of Protean artists! Vaudeville clamor for me some day—you'll see! I'll be five characters in twenty-five minutes, and no one of them Helen Penn!"

And then she looked so altogether exactly the way he liked his wife to look, that he whispered something quite absurdly lover-like to her as he put her into the cab. She laughed in an excited, detached way and made no response in kind, and again his mood changed and a chilly fog of vague suspicion closed in upon him.

At the theater he leaned back in his seat and watched Helen with eyes that began to reinventory her personality, seeking to comprehend this strange exhilaration that had recently uplifted her out of all her environment.

Once, between the second and third acts, Helen asked Robert for a pencil and made a note on the margin of her program, which she laughingly refused to let him read. It was all that was needed to crystallize his resentment, and muttering something about "a whiff of tobacco," he got up and went to the lobby.

It so happened that Mr. Flagg, the dignified senior member of their successful firm, was strolling about alone with a cigarette, and after greetings between the two Flagg said, in a low tone, to Robert:

"It's all up with your side of the Perry case! The evidence in rebuttal will knock you higher than Haman. I've just got hold of it—I'll explain in the morning. It seems that your pretty client has been hoodwinking caro sposo for two years—all the time looking like a Botticello angel, all pure soul and sublimated thought, dressed always in shades of gray—pearl gray, Penn!" laughed Flagg; "a dove with the heart of a—— There's the bell! Come down early to-morrow, there's work ahead for us all."

The first thing that Robert did as he sank into his seat was to note the shade of Helen's gown—it was a dull lead color!

If jealousy is once allowed so much as a finger tip within the portals of a heart, the chances are that within an inconceivably short time he will be in entire possession, sprawled all over the place, yelling for corroboration and drinking it thirstily until madness comes.

Every little unrelated incident in Robert's home life fell suddenly into place under suspicion's nimble fingers. Up to that time he had been reasonably sure of the integrity of his hearthstone. Only within those eight weeks had these new symptoms been developing in the conduct of the wife of his bosom, the mother of his little daughter, Betty. Her curiously happy exaltation, her absentmindedness, her long, smiling reveries; the look of flushed excitement on her pretty face, the odd impression of breathlessness; the muttering of strange words in her sleep, followed by bursts of almost ribald laughter. Could it be possible that she was leading a double life, like that other woman?—-a life to which he had no latchkey?

What was that devilish thing in "The Cross of Berny"—from Gautier's pen, if he remembered rightly, among those four royal collaborateurs—"To call a woman—my wife! What revolting indiscretion! To call children——" But the thought of little Betty hushed even his mad imaginings.

However, it was his business to fathom all this mystery at once. An idealist was a blind ass—look at Perry!

Penn did not rest well that first night after the problem play, nor for many nights to come.

One morning a question of law came up at the office that made it expedient that one of the firm should go at once to Washington to consult a supreme authority, and Robert was sent, that he might have the benefit of even that small change of scene. He rushed home to throw a few things into a bag and kiss his wife and Betty good-by. He opened the front door with his latchkey as usual, and as usual called out:

"Helen, where are you?"

There was a low cry, the shuffle of feet across a hardwood floor, the bang of a door closed quickly, and then in a voice toned to sudden insouciance and overdoing it:

"Here I am, Rob, in the library."

He stood frozen stiff for an instant, as his legal experience whispered to him all the possibilities hidden in those few sounds. The main thing was to keep his head! He went to the library and found Helen sitting alone in his own especial chair, peacefully reading Boswell's "Life of Johnson," as he was quick to notice as he passed behind her.

Although her attitude was one of rather sleepy repose, there were signs of a hasty rearrangement of the mise en scene, which corroborated the aural evidence which reached him in the hall. Near the door to the reception room was a piece of paper; he slipped on a round "Carteret" pencil as he went to his desk in a silence that he felt that he could not break, without also breaking a few other things.

Helen sat watching him in surprise—not an altogether genuine surprise, he thought, after one glance—thank Heaven, he was an expert in moral turpitudes and sinuosities—the woman did not live who could deceive him!

"Did you forget something, Rob? Why didn't you telephone? I could have sent it to you," she asked, simply. Ah, that accursed simplicity! Well, she would find that he was not simple, that was one sure thing.

"No, Helen, I forgot nothing—I never do forget anything," he said, with sullen meaning. "Where's Betty?"

"It's a fair day and it's eleven; of course she is out in the park," replied Helen, smiling.

He smiled too, but in such a way that she sat forward in her chair with dilated eyes, into which Robert read a rising fear.

"Dear, what is it? What is wrong?"

"Wrong? Who said wrong? I didn't," he found himself saying, greatly to his disappointment, for suspicions are useless until graduated into—evidence; so he hastened to explain his errand; sorting over some papers at his desk meanwhile. All the time his mind was intent upon one thing only—the possession of that piece of paper lying near the reception-room door.

He walked toward the cabinet in the corner to fill his pockets with cigars; the paper was lying just behind him, and as he turned he would stoop and pick it up.

He heard a slight noise behind him, and, wheeling-swiftly, discovered Helen creeping toward the paper, her hand already outstretched. With one quick movement he snatched it from the floor, and forced himself to hold it aloft and laugh a little. He might have spared himself all that finesse, for she ran to him, clinging to his arm, laughing, coaxing, pouting, begging him to give it to her—unread!

"Rob, you'll break my heart if you read that. Please not now—later perhaps—some day I will explain; please, dear!"

"If the contents of this paper are sufficiently serious to break your heart if I do read it, perhaps mine will be broken if I don't. So, as a measure of self-preservation——" He put the piece of note paper into his pocket. His face was white, his pulse was galloping like mad, and yet he managed a rather ghastly smile into her face, upraised and pleading.

"Face of a Botticello angel!" he thought, and steeled his heart against her.

She sank into a chair half laughing and yet with an introverted expression—"recueillement d'esprit," he thought to himself, bitterly. Brushing her hair in passing lightly with his lips, he left the room and presently the house. When she discovered that he had gone without again seeing her, she flew to the telephone and held a long incoherent talk with some one she not infrequently called "Ben, dear," to whom she confided certain undefined fears about her husband and her future. A suggestion of a trip to Europe from the other end of the telephone met with her unbounded gratitude and enthusiasm. After urging haste, she left the colloquy almost her old smiling self, and went to the library, where she did not continue the reading of Boswell's "Life of Johnson," but went thence directly to the reception room—into which Robert had peered before leaving the house—and, stooping, she drew from under the lounge many sheets of paper, and was soon lost in their perusal.

Robert had been forced to wait until he was settled on the train for Washington before he found time to read the note whose possession had caused Helen such perturbation. It was evidently the middle page of a letter, a single sheet, note size, torn from a pad. The handwriting was unquestionably masculine, entirely unfamiliar to Penn, hurried and full of what Helen would have called—temperament.

After one glance, the blood rushed to his head, and his hot eyes devoured again and again these words:

Since our interview yesterday, and in regard to that irresistible scene of the blue stockings, I am not willing to let it drop.

However, I should like to suggest abbreviation, and I fear I shall have to ask you to change the shade to a dull bluish gray. If you will come to my office in the morning, I feel sure we can soon arrange a climax which shall embody your own wishes and mine. As to the effect—the after-effect—of her husband's death on H. P.'s character, attention will be diverted from that by the previous gossip about——

And there it ended.

The initials, H. P.—Helen Penn—were the tacks that fastened conviction to Robert's consciousness; conviction of an intrigue of long standing and unspeakable familiarities—all these verbal obscurities were only too sickeningly familiar to him, fresh from the Perry letters—but here was more!

Apparently a coolly plotted murder—one ray of light only his eyes clung to—the "climax" was yet in limine!

In a well-built city house the insertion of a latchkey and opening of a front door between ten and eleven o'clock at night are noises easily covered by the urban roar of even one of the lateral streets of a great city. Robert entered and closed the door with—he assured himself—no greater minimum of noise than is instinctive toward midnight with even a sober married man. Among all the emotions which had seethed through his mind during the past few hours, a reaction was at that moment in possession of him, in favor of his wife, who had been to him a well of sweet water through all those years. If evil was drawing near to her, why push her toward it? Surely a finer thing would be to warn and protect her, to beat down underfoot his own wounded ego and win her back!

The electric light in the hall was burning, and he went directly to the library. Touching an electric button near the door, the room was flooded with light, and there before his weary eyes, hanging over the back of his Morris chair, was—Heaven help him!—a pair of long delft-blue silk stockings! Robert's agony was black upon him, his mind once more full of crawling, writhing suspicions; his mouth and throat were parched, his pulse beats filled the world.

Then into the silence fell Helen's laugh from the floor above, a long peal of mirth that spoke clearly of companionship. He had not made a life study of psychic differentiation for nothing—Helen was not alone! From that instant, all pretenses were abandoned, Robert was a sleuthhound on a keen scent.

With his head well forward, he crept up the carpeted stairway. The upper hall light was burning low; from his wife's "sewing room," as it was called, came the sound of voices. The door was ajar, and from the crevice a strong light flooded out into the twilight of the hall. Now entirely mad with jealousy, he softly glided toward the crack, but before his eyes could further feed his torture, his ears served up a plenitude, in Helen's voice—that dear, clear, sweet voice that had sung his child to sleep and——

"Mr. Stillingfleet—my dear Mr. Stillingfleet, if I may be allowed the liberty——"

"My dearest creature," interrupted a deep voice, muffled, almost as if by intent disguised, "if it be a liberty to call me dear, I find myself craving the instant fall of kingdoms."

"La, sir, you confuse me quite!" There was a rustle of silken skirts and Helen laughed again.

Peering cautiously in, this sight met Robert's bloodshot eyes: Helen—or at least the fantastic figure which had her voice—stood by the mantelpiece. The hair was high-rolled and powdered, in it two nodding white plumes; she wore a yellow brocade gown strangely cut, long black mitts on her hands, which waved a huge fan coquettishly at a man—a creature in the costume of Goldsmith's day—who stood near her, bowing low. On his head was a wig, powdered and in queue, his face a mask of paint and powder and patches. He was clad in a huge waistcoat, long coat, knee breeches and hose—blue hose—upon his comely legs! Putting out his hand toward Helen's, he said with sickening affectation, seizing her hand and raising it to his lips:

"It's high time we were off to Montague's, my fair H. P. 'Time flies, death urges, knells call, heaven invites!'"

For an instant a very ancient and honorable desire to enter that room and violently change the face of several things dominated the listening husband; that he did not marked the high tide of his nervous breakdown. A sudden reaction, common to the neurasthenic, swept over him, and his soul withdrew in anguish from the sickening horror of the discovery. He crept softly down the stairs, seized hat and coat and staggered out into the night.

It was five days before Benjamin Bentnor's best detective work succeeded in finding his brother-in-law in a hall bedroom at an obscure hotel in Washington, for a strong impulse of duty to be performed had landed Robert there, although he had completely lost sight of his mission. When Ben found him, he was seated on the edge of the bed, his head bowed in his hands.

Bentnor's gentleness toward him would have shown a saner man that his condition was serious; but it took a physician to do that in the end, and a year of rest and travel to cure him.

At first, however, all Bentnor could do was to sit about rather helplessly and chatter in an effort to break through Robert's gloom. The second day after he found his brother-in-law, he was at his wits' end to find further subjects for cheerful conversation, until toward evening he had a sudden inspiration!

To be sure it was Helen's secret, but surely she would not object to anything which might serve to arouse her poor husband's interest, however slightly, and bring him to the point of consenting to return to his home.

Bentnor was short, stout, slightly bald, and somehow radiated comfort, even while sitting astride of a cane-bottomed chair, and smoking another man's brand of cigarettes, in a one-windowed room nine feet by ten and a half.

"Helen Bentnor Penn's a great girl, isn't she, Rob?" No response came from the huddled figure on the bed.

"Of course, all the Bentnors have brains—you must have observed that for yourself; but she's the first literary genius among us, although I've always felt that all I needed was leisure—however, that's neither here nor there. Helen has arrived, and shall have the honor. Why, the editor who accepted that clever little lever de rideau of hers and brings it out in this month's issue of his magazine, was downright enthusiastic—can you imagine an editor having any enthusiasm left in him, Penn? I can't, for one. Must have a magnificent flow of gastric juice! However that may be, this chap has taken Helen up con amore, and written advice as to some changes, and given her interviews and all that. Most amateurs have to have several 'fittings,' I suppose. And then the check he sent her—by Jove, even I was surprised!"

Robert looked up for the first time, and turned a haggard face, blank with wonder, toward his wife's brother. Ben laughed.

"Well, I suppose it is a bit of a shock to a man to find that his wife's brains have a market value." He was greatly encouraged by Penn's aroused interest and hurried on with his tale:

"It strikes me I oughtn't to be telling you this, Rob, for it was Helen's birthday surprise for you. She's been in an ecstasy over it for about eight weeks. Don't you tell her I've told you! Promise!"

"Trust me," murmured Penn, and a smile twitched at his face.

"Such plottings and plans and secrecy! I've been in it up to the neck from the first. On your birthday—somehow she's in love with you yet, Penn—Lord, how does a man do that?—for breakfast she was to show you the magazine within whose fold is to be found her first literary lambkin; for luncheon—for you were to spend the day at home—she was going to give you the check! Generous little beggar, Nell! She said she had never been able to really give you anything before—she had only bought with your money and forced upon you things you didn't want. Then that night after dinner she and I were to act her two-part play—we've been at it for weeks, tooth and nail, powder and patches——"

"You and Helen!" gasped Robert.

"Great Scott! who on earth else?—the editor?" laughed Bentnor, little dreaming what the few words meant to the distraught man before him. "Perhaps you think I can't do that sort of thing! It's in our blood, the love of the buskin. The fact is, I've always had my suspicions that in the time of Charles the Second—well, never mind. We had our last final farewell dress rehearsal the night you came on here. I tell you I'm great in it. Helen, to be sure, does fairly well as Hester Piozzi, but wait till you see me as Mr. Stillingfleet! You know he was the fellow whose grayish-blue stockings gave the name for all time to 'blue-stocking' clubs. He and Dr. Johnson were always buzzing around the literary women of that day, the pretty D'Arblay, the dignified Mistress Montague of Portman Square, and the great Piozzi herself—of course, you remember?"

"Yes, I remember," whispered Robert, his face once more hidden, but a great peace possessing him. "Ben," he cried, almost joyfully, "what's the title of Helen's play?"

"Bas Bleu," said Bentnor, concealing his triumph at his own tactics in the lighting of his twenty-third cigarette.

Robert groaned, and his head again drooped in unspeakable humiliation. And in that moment he made up his mind that no one should ever share his guilty secret. To make a pathetic appeal to Helen, dwelling upon his love, his doubts, his torturing jealousy, was one thing; quite another to tell that hopelessly humorous, refusing-to-be-pathetic story of those ridiculous bas bleus—they dangled everywhere from every point of his story; flying, pirouetting, circling and pin-wheeling in a psychic pas seul! It was impossible for even a member of the firm of Flagg, Bentnor & Penn to be impressive. Let them call it a nervous breakdown, his lips were forever sealed.

Then the thought of his home came to him like distant music. He saw himself opening his door; he saw a small ball of white coming down the stairs backward in a terrifying fury of speed, the little, fat, half-bare legs and a swirl of tiny skirts all that was visible of his wee daughter coming to greet him. He saw himself catch her off the last step and lift her in his arms, burying his face against the baby's hot, panting little body, then he heard Helen's voice and the sound of her scurrying feet!

Robert sprang up, and with a burst of wild laughter, shouted:

"Ben, let's go home! I believe you're dead right—I've got nervous prostration, and I've got it bad!"



THE VAGABOND

Your arms have held me till they seemed my home. Your heart denies me; and the spells I weave Are powerless to hold you. You must roam, And I must, grieving, hide the thing I grieve. Oh, love that does not love me, will there come No time when I am all too dear to leave?

Is life so rich without me? Will there be No ache of loneliness? No sudden sting Of loss—of longing? Will your memory Dwell on no passionate, sweet, familiar thing, Soft touch or whispered word? Are you so free From any ties but those new days may bring?

So much I miss you that I do not dare To let my heart turn backward, nor my eyes Search the wide future that is swept so bare Of all I coveted. Yet deeplier lies Than any misery of dull despair The fear that you may some day come to prize The things I stand for, when I am not there To fill your needs with all my sympathies.

M. M.



THE DOING OF THE LAMBS

By SUSAN SAYRE TITSWORTH

"Well, so long, fellows," said the Goat, and rose to go.

"Good-night, old man," responded the cheerful chorus of his hosts. As the Goat went out into the hall there was silence in the room he had left, which lasted until after he had opened the hall door and had had time to close it. But instead of closing it, he merely bumped noisily against it, and rattled the knob, and stood listening. As if his departure were a signal, a roar of laughter from within followed his stratagem. One voice rose above the noise.

"By George!" it said. "Isn't he the limit?"

The Goat closed the door silently and mounted the stairs to his own room in the apartment above. His suspicions were confirmed.

They had dragged him in with them as they all came over together from dinner at the Commons, to tell them some more of his wild Western tales. It was not the first time they had done it. They were a select little group of Eastern men, two or three years out of Harvard or Yale, in rather good repute with the faculty of the Law School for the quality of their work, and known among their fellow students as the Lambs, from their somewhat ostentatious habit of flocking together.

The Goat was from the West, a graduate of a prairie college of Moravian foundation, an athletic, good-looking young fellow in badly-fitting clothes, who appeared in no way ashamed to admit that he had never before been east of the Mississippi, and was frankly impressed by New York. His gaucherie was not ungraceful; there was an attractive impertinence in his cheerful assertions that his Moravian grandparents had desired him not to smoke or drink until he had completed his education and was earning his own living, and that, consequently, he knew tobacco only by sight and smell, and had contented himself with looking on the wine when it was red. There was one vacant seat at the table, which the Lambs occupied at the Commons; with an eye to future entertainment they had invited the Goat to join them, and in the two months since the term began, the arrangement had given general satisfaction.

They had undertaken the education of the Goat; they set him up to the theater, with supper at the Black Cat or Pabst's afterward, and lay awake nights howling at the recollection of his naive and shrewd comments; they took him walking to show him the historical landmarks of New York, extemporizing the landmarks and the history as they went along, to the delighted gratitude of the Goat, who lamented that Arizona had no associations. They egged him on to tell stories of his prowess with lasso and lariat, of which he was boyishly proud, and listened with flattering attention to his relations of grizzly hunts and Greaser raids. He usually told these experiences as happening to a friend of his, and blushed and looked sheepish when they accused him of modesty. In return for the pleasure he afforded them, they coached him in first-year law, and gave him pointers about the professors' idiosyncrasies, feeling well repaid by his enthusiastic reports of his good progress, and of the encouraging impression he was making on his instructors.

And, finally, they were teaching him to smoke. After much urging, he had consented to try it, and had accomplished part of a cigar. Then he had suddenly become silent, looked at it intently for a few moments, and then, murmuring an indistinct excuse, had retired with precipitation. He appeared at breakfast the next morning, good-naturedly accepted all the chaffing he got, and bravely essayed another that evening.

That had been a week or more before. On this particular night he had successfully smoked a whole Chancellor without growing pale or letting it go out, treating them meanwhile to a vivacious narrative of a drunken gambler who had been run out of a little mining camp one stormy winter night, and had taken refuge with a friend of the Goat, also caught out in the blizzard, in a cave which proved to be the domicile of a big hibernating grizzly not thoroughly hibernated; at the close, he had, as usual, protested but not denied when they politely insisted on identifying his friend with himself. Then he had torn himself away to study common-law pleading in the suspicious manner previously described.

There was, however, no sign of resentment or of injured feelings in his face as he lit the gas in his own room. On the contrary, he grinned cheerfully at his reflection in the glass, and, pulling open his top drawer, took from the remote corner an unmistakably sophisticated brier and a package of Yale Mixture, and proceeded to light up. He grinned again as his teeth clamped on the stem, and jerked it into the corner of his mouth with a practiced twist of his tongue. Then he picked up a small and well-thumbed book lying half hidden among his law books and papers, and glanced over a few pages.

"I did that pretty well," he said, approvingly. "Pity those babes don't know their Bret Harte any better. Guess I'll ring in some of Teddy's '97 trip on 'em to-morrow night." And then he sat down to study.

The next day the Lamb from Boston announced that his cousin and her mother, who were passing through town on their way home from three years of wandering abroad, were coming to call on him at four. Therefore, at two, he and his brother Lambs began to prepare his room, and the only other one that was visible from the front door of their apartment, for the fitting reception of his relatives. This preparation consisted largely in moving all presentable articles in all the rooms into these two, and banishing all unpresentable into the most remote of the other rooms, and shutting that door. The Lamb from Brookline inspected the pictures and photographs, straightening the first, retiring some of the second, and adding a few of both borrowed from the other members of the flock, and arranged to suit his own artistic fancy; the Lamb from Philadelphia polished off the cups and saucers with a clean towel; then the Lamb from Boston took the towel and dusted the mantel. After their labors, they attired themselves in their "glad rags," and sat in readiness behind their half-closed doors, while the Boston Lamb laid out two or three law tomes on his couch, and assumed a studious attitude in his Morris chair. Promptly at four appeared the Cousin and the Aunt.

They were courteously impressed by the Lamb's bachelor quarters and the appurtenances thereof, nor was the significance of the "Cases on Quasi-Contracts," which the Lamb ostentatiously hustled away, lost upon them. The Cousin insisted on looking at it, and her comments were of so sprightly a character and so difficult to return in kind, that the Lamb, conscious of the open doors, and not desiring to subject the esprit de corps of his friends to a very severe strain, called in his brother Lambs to meet his relatives.

They attended promptly, three personable young men in irreproachable afternoon dress, overjoyed to find the Cousin as pretty as her voice was musical, and as entertaining as her skillful jolly of the Boston Lamb had led them to expect. In ten minutes the flock was hers to command. The Philadelphia Lamb took down from its new position on the Boston Lamb's wall the cherished Whistler of the Brookline Lamb, and presented it to her; the Boston Lamb begged her acceptance of the quaint little Cloisonne cup which she admired as she drank from it, and which was the property of the Philadelphia member; the Albany Lamb, on the plea that everything of value had already been abstracted from him to make the Boston Lamb's room pretty for her, offered her himself, and was in no way cast down when she declined him on the ground that he was too decorative to be truly useful. But in the middle of the recrimination that followed this turning state's evidence on the part of the Albany Lamb, the Cousin inquired:

"You are all law students—do any of you know a man named Freeman who is studying up here?" The flock looked at each other and smiled. Freeman was the Goat's name.

"She doesn't mean the Goat," explained the Boston Lamb, hastily. "We know a first-year man named Freeman," he added, turning to her, "but he's a wild and woolly Westerner, who'd never been off the plains of Arizona till he came here. There may be others, but we're educating only one."

"Oh, no," said the Cousin. "The Mr. Freeman I mean is the son of the consul-general to Japan—he's a San Francisco man, and he's been everywhere. We met him first in Cairo, and then we played together in Yokohama, and came as far as Honolulu together, last spring. He decided to study law in New York, and I know he lives up here somewhere."

"Such a nice young fellow!" contributed the Aunt.

"Don't know him," said the flock.

"We'll ask the Goat about him," suggested the Philadelphia Lamb.

"We've been so engrossed with our own pet Freeman that we haven't had time for any other," volunteered the Brookline Lamb.

"It's rather strange," began the Cousin, and then interrupted herself. "Anyway, I hope you'll all look him up; I am sure he will be very grateful." The flock acknowledged the bouquet by appropriate demonstrations.

"Our acquaintance with his namesake verges on the altruistic, also," ventured the Albany Lamb.

"I should not like, myself, to be the victim of your altruism," said the Cousin, with a slow glance that took them all in. In the midst of the delighted expostulations that greeted this shot, the apartment bell rang sharply. The Brookline Lamb, being nearest, went to open the door, and, having opened it, remarked in a subdued but unmistakably sincere manner:

"Well, I'll be——" A saving recollection of the Cousin and the Aunt brought him to a full stop there, but everybody looked up, and for a moment the flock was speechless. Not so the Goat, for it was the Goat who stood there, arrayed in the afternoon panoply of advanced civilization, with a cigarette between his fingers and the neatest of sticks under his arm.

"Beg pardon!" he said. "Didn't realize—regret exceedingly—should never have intruded—why, Miss Brewster!" And with an instant combination of high hat, stick and cigarette that showed much practice, he came in to shake hands with the Cousin, who, suddenly displaying a brilliant color, had risen and taken a step toward him.

"What luck! what bully good luck!" he went on. "Mrs. Brewster, how do you do? This is like old Cairo days. Boston, you brute, why didn't you mention this at luncheon?"

The flock choked; this was from the Goat, who had unobtrusively consumed most of the plate of toast at noon while the Lambs were discussing the visit of the Cousin and the Aunt. The Albany Lamb rose to the occasion feebly.

"There seems to have been some mistake," he said. The Goat put his hat on the bust of the young Augustus, and sat down on the divan beside the Cousin.

"Well, now I've happened in, mightn't I have some tea?" he inquired, genially. "No lemon, if you please," and he pointed a suggestive finger at the rum. In dazed silence the Brookline Lamb hastened to serve him, while the Cousin said, with a peculiar little smile tightening the corners of her mouth:

"I thought it was strange that you didn't know Mr. Freeman."

"We really don't," said the Boston Lamb, making a late recover. "I'm not at all sure that he is a fit person for you to associate with—all we know of him is what he has told us himself."

"That's all right," said the Goat, impudently. "And, anyway, I didn't come to see you this time, old man."

"What has he told you?" demanded the Cousin, as the Boston Lamb gasped with impotent rage.

"A series of Munchausen adventures," returned the Philadelphia Lamb, vindictively. "Six Apaches and three and a half Sioux with one throw of the lasso."

"Won out in a hugging match with a ten-foot grizzly," added the Albany Lamb.

"Nonsense!" said the Cousin, interrupting the Brookline Lamb's sarcasm in regard to nerve cures. "Hasn't he told you about the mob at Valladolid? Or about San Juan?" The flock gazed with unutterable reproach at the Goat, who sipped his tea with a critical frown, and observed, pleasantly:

"That happened to a friend of mine."

The Lambs surrendered at discretion, and roared. The Cousin glanced at the Aunt, and they rose.

"We have had the most attractive time," said the Cousin, prettily, as, suddenly sobered by this calamity, the Lambs protested in a body against her going. "It has been charming—and I am so interested in your experiment in altruism." The Lambs collapsed under the ex cathedra nature of the smile she bestowed upon them, as she turned and held out a frank hand to the Goat. "I am glad you happened in," she said. "I mailed a note to you this morning—you will doubtless get it to-night. Come and see us."

"The Holland, isn't it?" said the Goat, holding her hand, and then he made a short speech to her that sounded to the paralyzed Lambs like a Chinese laundry bill, but which evidently carried meaning to the Cousin, for she flushed and nodded. Then she turned back to the flock, who by this time, with touching unanimity, were showering devoted attentions on the Aunt. At the elevator they were all graciously dismissed except the Boston Lamb, who alone went down to put his relatives into their cab.

"Come and see us, all of you," called the Cousin, cordially, as the car began to descend.

"How soon?" begged the Albany Lamb, anxiously.

"Any time, after to-night," returned the Cousin, and was lowered from their sight.

Then with one accord they fell upon the Goat, and bore him into the apartment for condign punishment, regardless of his indignant assertions of his right as a citizen to a trial by a jury of his peers. When the Boston Lamb came leaping up the stairs to add his weight to the balancing of accounts, he found a riotous crowd.

"Just because my luggage was derailed and burned up out in the Kansas deserts," the Goat was saying, "and I struck New York in a suit of hobo clothes from Topeka—oh, you fellows are easy marks!"

"Where are your Moravian grandparents?" demanded the Albany Lamb.

"Don't know," said the Goat, unfilially. "They died before I was born. They weren't Moravians, anyway."

"See here!" The Boston Lamb jerked him to his feet with one hand and assaulted him with the other. "What was that stuff you were reeling off to my cousin? As her nearest male relative, geographically speaking, I insist on an explanation."

"That was Japanese," said the Goat, with a grin, and immediately favored the crowd with several more doubtfully emphatic remarks in the same tongue.

"I pass!" said the Boston Lamb, meekly. "But one thing more. Are you engaged to my cousin?"

"How very impertinent!" returned the Goat. "Why didn't you ask her?"

The Boston Lamb inserted four determined fingers between the Goat's collar and the back of his neck, and in view of the attitude of mind and body of the other Lambs, the Goat saw fit to yield.

"Not exactly, as yet," he admitted. "But to-night—I hope——"

"After which we are invited to call—oh, you brute!" groaned the Albany Lamb, and started for him. But the Goat had pulled himself loose, and gained the door. He stopped, however, to pull an oblong package from his coat pocket.

"Here," he said, tossing it toward the crowd. "The smokes are on me tonight. Sorry I can't be here to assist, for they're a distinct advance on your husky old Chancellors. Also, there's a case of fairly good booze downstairs that the janitor is taking care of until you call for it. So long, fellows!" And with a wave of his hat the Goat departed.



THE UNATTAINED

A gem apart In the unreached heart Of a shy and secret place; Swift-winged in flight As a meteor's light In the far-off field of space.

More sweet and clear To the spirit's ear Than a wave-song on the beach; Like the baffling blue Of a mountain view, Or a dream just out of reach.

Like light withdrawn By a rain-swept dawn, When the clouds are wild and gray; Like a wind that blows Through the orchard close Ever and ever away.

WILLIAM HAMILTON HAYNE.



THE FLATTERER

By GEORGE HIBBARD

Miss Miriam Whiting languidly descended the broad terrace steps. If her slow progress suggested bodily weariness, her whole bearing was not less indicative of spiritual lassitude. She allowed her hand to stray indolently along the balustrade, as with the other she held the lace-covered sunshade at a careless angle over her shoulder.

On the lawn the guests from outside were gathered. Collected in groups or wandering in pairs, they dotted the grounds. As one of those staying in the house, she appeared as a semi-official hostess with a modified duty of seeing that all went as well as possible. Her head ached slightly, as she began to discover. Even the light of the late afternoon was trying. The dress which she expected to wear had proved too dilapidated, and she had been obliged to put on one she wished to save for more important occasions. The invitation which she needed for the satisfactory conduct of her modish itineracy from country house to country house had not come in the early mail as she expected.

The band, hidden in a small, thick boscage of the wide gardens, broke into a mockingly cheerful air. At intervals some distant laugh taunted her. She was late, she knew. The shadows had begun to lengthen across the open spaces by the fountain, and she could almost see Mrs. Gunnison's tart and ominous frown of displeasure. Why was she there, except to be seen; so that the world should know that one who had just come from the Kingsmills' place on the Hudson had paused beneath the broad roofs of "Highlands" before, presumably, going to the Van Velsors, in Newport?

As with pinched lips she reflected, she quickened her pace carefully.

"Ah, senator!" she cried, as she held out her hand with regulated effusion. "I am so charmed. I did not know that you were to be here. You great ones of the earth are so busy and so much in demand——"

Senator Grayson bowed and beamed. He shifted in uneasy gratification from one foot to the other, and a rosier red showed in his round face.

"I did not think that you young ladies noticed us old politicians——"

"Every one should be given the benefit of a doubt. Of course, in our silly lives there is not very much chance to know about anything really worth while, but when a thing is really great even we cannot help hearing about it. Your last speech—the broad, far-reaching views——"

The senator stood in agreeable embarrassment.

"I read it," Miriam continued. "I could not go to sleep, because I wanted to finish it. Of course, I could not understand all, but I was entranced. Even I could feel the force and eloquence. I have heard of nothing else."

"Really?" cried the enchanted statesman. "Do you know I thought it had fallen flat? You are good to tell me. These side-lights are of the utmost value, and, indeed, I esteem your opinion. Would you let me get out a cup of tea? And—and—Mrs. Grayson was only saying the other day that she wanted to ask you to come to Washington for a visit this winter."

As the senator stumbled away, Miss Whiting felt a light touch at her elbow.

"In your most popular and successful manner, Miriam," said a slight, slim woman, whom she found standing beside her.

"He's a dear, if he is an old goose," said Miriam, defiantly. "And, of course, any shading would be lost on him."

"I know," continued the other, the sharp brown eyes in her lean brown face regarding the girl critically. "There are degrees of flattery even in your flattering. You have reduced it—or elevated it—to the proud position of an exact science."

Before Miriam could reply, a young man who had discovered her from afar advanced with what was evidently an unusual degree of precipitancy.

"Miss Whiting, I am delighted," he puffed. "I have been looking for you everywhere. I was in town, and I went to that bric-a-brac shop. The fan is undoubtedly a real Jacques Callot."

"I was sure," she murmured, "with your knowledge and taste, that you could decide at once. Of course, I did not know."

"And—and——" hesitated the youth, "I hope that you will not be offended. I told them to send it to you here. If you will accept it?"

"How terrible—and how kind of you!" Miriam cried, holding out both hands, as if led by an irresistible impulse. "But you are so generous. All your friends have discovered that. I always think of St. Francis sharing his cloak with the blind beggar."

"So good of you," he stuttered. "It's nothing. You must be tired. Can't I bring a chair for you? I am going to get one."

As the young man turned hurriedly away, Miriam grasped her companion's arm.

"I never thought that he would give it to me. Never, Janet—honestly," she exclaimed, with earnestness.

"The way of the transgressor is likely to be strewn—with surprises."

"I only thought of saying something pleasant at a dinner."

"I'd taken Bengy Wade's opinion without a moment's hesitation on the length of a fox terrier's tail, but a fan——"

"He wants to be considered artistic," pleaded Miriam.

"And the last touch about St. Francis, wasn't that a trifle overdone? Somewhat too thickly laid on? What used to be called by painters in a pre-impressionistic age—too great impasto. I am afraid that you are a little deteriorating."

"Miriam!"

Both turned, and found a tall lady calling with as great animation as a due regard for the requirements of a statuesque pose permitted.

"I want to speak to you," she exclaimed, as soon as words were possible. "I want you to come to my house to-morrow morning. I am going to have a little music. Emmeline is going to sing."

"Oh!" cried Miriam.

"Don't you like her singing?" the other inquired, earnestly.

"Oh, very much," assured Miriam. "Only—the truth is, I once heard her sing Brunnhilde's 'Awakening,' and she murdered it so horribly."

"Emmeline is often too ambitious," the other commented, with visible content.

"Lighter things she can do charmingly, and she should hold to them," Miriam announced, with decision.

"I arranged the program," said the lady, "and, for her own sake, I shall not let her attempt anything to which she is unequal. Of course, I shall not sing myself."

"Oh, Mrs. Ogden!"

"You know I never sing anything but Wagner, and then only when there are a few—when my hearers are in full sympathy. You will be sure to come," she added, as she turned to give another invitation. "By the way, you will be at Westbrook this autumn. I want you to ride Persiflage in the hunt as often as you like."

"Much better," commented Miriam's companion, as they strayed on. "Of course, nothing would please her—as a bitter rival—more than to hear her sister-in-law's singing abused. That touch about lighter things was masterly when she herself only sings Wagner for a few. But how do you manage with Emmeline?"

"I tell her that no one can conduct, an automobile as she does."

"My dear!"

"It's an amusing game," the girl answered.

"But is it a safe one?"

"Why not?" she exclaimed, challengingly.

The two advanced toward the spreading marquee which appeared to be the center of the mild social maelstrom. A greater ebullition perceptibly marked the spot. The conflict of voices arose more audibly. Many were constantly drawn inward, while by some counter-current others were, frequently cast outward to continue in drifting circles until again brought back to the gently agitated center. On the very edge of this vortex—the heart of which was the long table beneath the tent—sat a goodly sized lady. Her appearance might have been offered by a necromancer as the proof of a successfully accomplished trick, for the small camp stool on which she rested was so thoroughly concealed from sight that she might have been considered to rest upon air. Catching sight of Miriam, she beckoned to her with a vigor that threatened disruption of her gloves.

"Where have you been?" she cried, as Miriam and her friend approached. "I have been waiting for you. So many have been asking for you. I expected you to be here."

"My dear Mrs. Gunnison," cooed the girl, "you must forgive me. Absolutely, I could not help myself. I was all ready on time—but I have been admiring again your wonderful house. And I have been wondering at the perfect way in which it is kept up—the faultless manner in which everything is managed. I can only think of Lord Wantham's place. Though, of course, there is not the brilliancy there——"