And now—you start—the front door gives a slam— The hall resounds with little, hurrying feet, He climbs upon your knee—the wee, shorn lamb,— And dries your tears with kisses, warm and sweet. You fold your sorrow from his happy eyes— (You always said they should have been a girl's.) Half of his Eden sunlight buried lies Amid the meshes of those baby curls.



BROWN BETTY

By GRACE S. RICHMOND

"It's all right, Joe," said Miss Farnsworth, rapidly drawing on a pair of heavy white gloves. "You needn't be in the least afraid to trust me with the colts. And the station agent can find somebody to help him load the wagon for me."

She sprang in and took her seat at the front of the big farm wagon—a most unusual and dainty figure there, in her crisp white linen. She gathered the reins deftly, said gayly to the people on the farmhouse porch: "When I come back I'll show you unpatriotic persons how to keep Fourth of July in the country," and would have driven off with a flourish but for one unforeseen and effective hindrance. Joe remained stolidly at the heads of the two restless black colts.

"You may give them their heads now, Joe," said the girl, decisively.

"In jest a minute, miss."

"Now. I'm in a hurry."

But Joe remained stationary. He turned his head and eyed uneasily a window above the porch, murmuring: "Jest a minute, now——"

Miss Farnsworth waited half the designated period, then she said, imperatively: "Joe, be so kind as to let go of those horses."

Joe pretended to have found something wrong with the bridle of the off horse. Miss Farnsworth watched him skeptically. And an instant later Stuart Jarvis appeared upon the porch, hat in hand, smiling at the driver of the farm wagon.

"May I go with you?" he asked, easily, coming up.

There was no reason why she should refuse, particularly with three middle-aged women, two elderly gentlemen, and four girls observing with interest from the porch. Neither was there good reason for refusing to allow Mr. Jarvis to take the reins, since he leaped up at the right side of the wagon, and held out his hand for them as a matter of course. But the moment they were around the first bend in the road Agnes Farnsworth attempted to adjust affairs to her original intentions.

"Would you mind letting me drive?" she asked. The words, though spoken with a silver tongue, had rather the effect of a notification than of an interrogation.

"Not in the least," returned Jarvis, making no motion, however, to resign the reins, "provided you can prove that I am authorized to give up my charge."

She looked at him as if she doubted whether she had heard aright. "You know perfectly well that I am accustomed to horses," she declared, moving as if she intended to change places with him.

He looked full down at her, smiling, but he still drove with the air of one who intends to continue in his present occupation. The black colts were going at a spanking trot, making nothing of the decided upward trend of the road. Their shining coats gleamed in the sun; alertness and power showed in every line of them. They were alive from the tips of their forward-pointing satin ears to the ends of their handsome uncropped tails, and they felt their life quiveringly.

"There is no reason in the world why I shouldn't drive," said Miss Farnsworth, with the pleasantly determined air of a girl who intends ultimately to have her own way. "If you had not appeared just at the moment you did, I should have come alone."

"Do you really think you would?" asked Jarvis, studying the left ear of the nigh horse.

"Certainly. Why not?"

"Because I told Joe not to let you go without me."

She colored under her summer's tan.

"May I ask," she inquired, somewhat stiffly, "why you didn't suggest to me an hour ago that you wished to get to the station?"

Jarvis smiled at this way of putting it. "Joe was intending to go with you," he explained.

She looked puzzled.

"Five minutes before you left, Joe came and told me that an accident had happened to one of his men, and that he couldn't go. He said he didn't think the colts were safe for you. I've been here only three days—I don't know anything about them. Joe does."

"Oh—nonsense!" said the girl. "I'm not afraid of them."

"They ran away day before yesterday."

"That makes no difference."

"They are crazily afraid of everything in the shape of a conveyance run by its own motive power, from a threshing machine to an automobile."

"That makes no difference, either," declared the young person beside him with energy. "Not the least in the world."

"Possibly not—to you. It makes an immense difference to me."

She looked away, although the words were said in a matter-of-fact tone hardly calculated to convey their full importance.

"Since you are here to take the reins away from me when I scream," she said, with a curling lip, "it is perfect nonsense to refuse to let me drive. Mr. Jarvis——"

"Put it politely," he warned her, smiling.

"Please change places with me." She said it imperiously.

He looked steadfastly down into her eyes for an instant, until her glance fell. Then he asked, lightly:

"Have you driven them before?"

"No."

"I wonder why," he mused.

She was silent, but her cheeks burned with displeasure.

"I'm glad we're to have a Fourth of July celebration," said he, driving steadily on. His tone became casual, with a pleasant inflection, quite as if there had been no controversy. "It will do the natives good—stir them up. I took the liberty, after you had sent your order, of wiring the dealer to add rather a good lot of explosives on my own account. They will come along with yours. It's lucky the wagon is big—we shall need it for all the stuff."

But the girl would not talk about the Fourth of July. She sat erect, with her very charming head in the air, and let the miles roll by in silence.

Upon the platform of the small freight house at the junction stood several boxes, a long roll and two trunks—all due at the farmhouse. As the wagon drew up to it, the freight agent came leisurely out to attend to business. His eyes fell at once upon the black team.

"Pretty likely pair," said he, with an approving pat upon the nearest shining flank. "Joe Hempstead's, ain't they? I heard he set considerable store by 'em. Well, they're all right—or will be, when they're a little older. I've got a mare now that I cal'late could show 'em a clean pair o' heels. She's round behind the station. I'll bring her out."

"Of course—that's what we came to see," observed Jarvis, as the man disappeared. "Getting our load is a secondary matter."

"Other matters are always secondary to the sight of a good horse," retorted his companion. She was leaning forward and Jarvis did not miss the opportunity to look at her. He gazed intently at a certain conjunction of curves at the back of her neck—a spot which always tempted him tremendously whenever he saw it.

The freight agent appeared round the corner of the station, leading an animal the sight of which made Jarvis' eyes light with pleasure. Agnes Farnsworth caught her breath softly and leaned still further forward.

The brown mare was led back and forth before them, the colts requiring a strong hand upon the reins as she caracoled in front of their exasperated eyes. Jarvis was obliged to give them his whole attention. But the girl slipped down from the wagon. She went up to the mare and laid a coaxing, caressing hand upon the velvet nose—a hand so gentle that the animal did not resent it. She spoke softly to her; inquired her name, and called her by it in a voice of music—Betty. Presently she asked for the halter, and the freight agent, somewhat doubtful, but too full of admiration for the near presence of beauty to refuse, gave it to her. Then, indeed, did Miss Farnsworth prove the truth of her assertion that she was accustomed to horses. In five minutes she had made love to the mare so effectively that the shy and hitherto somewhat disdainful creature was following her with a slack halter and an entreating nose. Incidentally Betty had allowed the slender fingers to open her mouth.

"Of course you are not selling her," remarked Miss Farnsworth, carelessly, as she walked away to examine her freight.

"Well—had an offer of two hundred and fifty for her last week."

She looked around with an astonished face. "And wouldn't take it?"

"Why—no. She's wu'th three hundred if she's wu'th a cent."

"You won't get three hundred for her," said the girl.

"She's as sound as a nut," declared the freight agent, with indignation. Miss Farnsworth laughed.

"She's a pretty creature," said she, "but I have eyes. How did she hurt her left hind ankle?"

The freight agent stared. "Her left hind ankle! Why—there ain't a sign of a limp in it. And her knee action's perfect."

"She was lame two weeks ago," said the girl, and looked at him. Jarvis had brought his colts to a temporary stand-still, and was observing the little scene with amusement.

"Why—she got a stone in that left hind foot," admitted the freight agent, walking the mare toward the corner of the building. "Any horse'll do that. She ain't lame now—wa'n't then to amount to anything. But I'd like to know how you guessed it."

She was still laughing. "I suppose you would let her go for two hundred and twenty-five, now, wouldn't you?"

The freight agent led his mare away without deigning to reply, except by a shake of the head. He came back and loaded the freight into the wagon, leaving the trunks till the last. As he was shouldering the first of these, Agnes stopped him.

"Will you take two hundred and fifty for Betty?" she asked, with perfect coolness, except for a certain gleam in her eyes.

"You ain't buyin' horses yourself?"

"I asked you a question."

"She ain't no lady's horse."

"I asked you if you would sell her for two hundred and fifty dollars," repeated the girl, and prepared to step up into the wagon. Jarvis was not getting down to assist her. The black pair were too restless for that.

"Why—I'd ought to have three hundred for her," the man hesitated.

Miss Farnsworth set her foot upon the step and drew herself up beside Jarvis. She did not look toward the freight agent. Just as the horses began to swing about, the man upon the platform said, haltingly:

"Well—if you mean it, and can pay me cash——"

She looked at him once more, quite indifferently. "I s'pose you can have her. But she's wu'th more."

"Mr. Jarvis," said the horse buyer, "can we lead her home?"

He shook his head. "Not behind the colts."

She gave him one glance of scorn—the last of any sort he received from her for some time to come. "Have you a saddle?" she asked of the agent.

"Yes, ma'am. Not a very good one, but such as 'tis."

"Will you ride her home for me?" she asked, over a cool shoulder, of the man beside her.

"Not while you drive the colts," he answered, with a keen glance at her, in which she might have read several things if she had taken the trouble.

"Have you a side-saddle?" she demanded of the freight agent.

"Well—if you'll wait five minutes—I 'low I can get one."

As the man disappeared, Miss Farnsworth jumped down from the wagon once more. She produced a letter, and, from the letter a key. With this she opened one of the trunks, which yet stood upon the platform, lifted a tray, dived among sundry garments, and drew out with an air of triumph something made of dark green cloth and folded carefully. With this she walked away into the empty, country freight house.

When, after two minutes' absence, she emerged again, she was holding up the skirt of a riding habit and carrying a bundle of something which she took to the trunk and hastily stowed away. She said nothing whatever to Jarvis, but stood awaiting the return of the freight agent with an averted cheek.

When the mare reappeared upon the scene she wore an old side-saddle of ancient pattern, and was clumsily bridled with headgear too large for her. Jarvis gave her one glance, and spoke with decision.

"If you will hold these horses a minute, I'll look that affair over," he said.

The other man grinned. "All the same to me," he returned, amicably. "Like enough you're more used to this sort of business than I be."

Jarvis went at the big bridle, rearranging straps, getting out his knife and cutting an extra hole or two, tightening it and bringing it more nearly to fit the sleek, small head of the mare. Miss Farnsworth looked on silently. If she appreciated this care for her safety, she did not make it apparent. Only, as Jarvis finished a very careful examination and testing of the side-saddle and stood erect with a smile at her, she said: "Thank you"—quite as if she had no mind to say it. With which he was obliged to be content.

He silently put her upon the mare, held the animal quiet while he looked for the space of one slow breath gravely up into the girl's face, meeting only lowered lashes and a scornful mouth, and let go the bits. An instant later brown Betty and her rider were twenty rods down the road.

The two men watched her round the turn. Then Jarvis sprang to his place.

"Load the rest of the stuff in—quick," he said, and the other obeyed.

"Gee!" remarked the station agent to himself, watching the cloud of dust in which the wagon was disappearing. "Looks like he'd got left. He can't catch the mare—not with that load. Say, but her and Betty made a picture—that's right."

* * * * *

The road from Crofton Junction to the Hempstead Farms lay, for the most part, down hill. The black pair appreciated this fact. They had been trained in double harness from the beginning, and their ideas of life and its purposes were identical. They now joined forces to take the freight home in the shortest and most impracticable space of time.

Jarvis kept them well in hand. If he had had them in front of a light vehicle of some sort, unencumbered with a miscellaneous and unstowable lot of freight, he would have enjoyed letting them have their will. As it was, he was obliged to consider several conflicting elements in the situation and restrain the colts accordingly. His pace, therefore, was not sufficiently fast to allow him to gain upon the fleet-footed mare and her rider, and the winding road gave him no hint of their whereabouts. He did not belong to the household of boarders at the Hempstead Farms; his presence there just now was a matter of business with one of the elderly gentlemen who were taking their vacation upon the farmhouse porch—that and a certain willingness to attend carefully and unhurriedly to business which had brought him within sight of a certain girl.

It was a bit dull driving back alone. He was not familiar with the road; it was not the one by which he had come. Miss Farnsworth had not planned this outcome of the trip from the beginning—he gave her credit for that; neither could he expect a girl who had fallen in love with, and purchased, a saddle horse within the short space of fifteen minutes, to wait for it to be sent leisurely home. But it occurred to him that she might have been willing to let the mare trot lightly along the road just ahead of the blacks, where Betty's nearness might least disconcert Tim and Tom, and where she might now and then exchange a word with their driver over her shoulder—even that cool shoulder of hers.

All at once he caught sight of the brown mare. As he approached a fork in the road, Miss Farnsworth and Betty came galloping up the east split of the fork—the one which did not lead toward Hempstead Farms. He laughed to himself, for he perceived at once that she had taken the wrong road and was spurring to get back to the fork before he should have passed.

But in this she did not succeed. Jarvis reached the corner before her. He drew up a little to let her in ahead of him, for the road was narrow. But as she neared him she motioned him ahead, and to humor her when he could he went on, though he doubted the wisdom of letting the blacks hear Betty's sharp-ringing little hoofs at their heels.

"How do you like her?" he called, as he passed, managing a shift of the reins and an uplifted hat. He smiled at her quite as if he had nothing in the world against her, though he was feeling at the moment that the brute creation are not the only things which need a certain amount of taming.

"Oh, she's a dear," answered Miss Farnsworth, in a voice as sweet as a flute. "Isn't she the prettiest thing? She's a perfect saddle-horse—except for the tricks I haven't found out yet."

She was smiling back at him, all traces of petulance smoothed quite out of her face. Her cheeks were brilliantly pink, her hair blown by the breeze. She carried her wide-brimmed straw hat on the pommel of her saddle; evidently it had not proved satisfactory as a riding hat. Altogether, in the brief chance he had for observation, Jarvis was of the notion that there might be two opinions as to what creature was the prettiest thing on the Crofton road that day.

There was not much talk possible. There could be no question that Tim and Tom heard Betty coming on behind them, and were exercised thereby. The mare's stride was shorter than that of the colts; her hoofbeats reached them in quicker rhythm than their own. As a small clock ticking beside a big one seems to say to the latter, "Hurry up—hurry up"—-so Betty's rapid trot behind stirred up the young pair in front to greater valor.

If Betty's rider, being avowedly an expert horsewoman, recognized this, it did not appear in any pains she took to avoid it. Betty danced behind faster and faster; and faster and faster did the blacks strain to draw away from her.

There came at length a moment when Jarvis could not have boasted that he still had them in hand. About the most that he could do was to keep them in the road and on their feet. Two minutes before Miss Agnes Farnsworth appeared at the fork of the road the driver of the blacks could at any moment have pulled them with a powerful hand back upon their haunches and brought them to a quick-breathing standstill. Two minutes afterward neither he nor any other man could have done it.

And yet Jarvis did not make so much as a turn of the head to suggest to Betty's rider that she call off the race. This, of course, was what he should have done; it was obviously the only common-sense thing to do. Plainly, since he would not do it, there was still one more mettlesome spirit upon the Crofton road to be reckoned with that morning.

II.

Under such circumstances it was nearly inevitable that something should happen. It had seemed to Jarvis, as he was rushed along, that the only thing probable, since Miss Farnsworth had proved her ability to ride the mare, was that he himself should meet disaster in some form. The black team were, to all intents and purposes, and until the cause of their high-headedness should be removed, running away. They were nearing a place which he could see was likely to prove the rockiest and most winding of any part of this rocky and winding New England road.

But, as usual, it was not the foreseen which happened, but the unforeseen. A particularly vigorous lurch of the wagon displaced one of the two trunks from its position, and the next roll and pitch sent it off. The brown mare swerved, but she was so near the back of the wagon that her wheel to the right did not carry her beyond the trunk, itself bounding to the right. The unexpected sheer did not unhorse her rider, but the mare went down in a helpless sprawl over the great obstacle in her path, and the girlish figure in the saddle went with her.

Jarvis had recognized the fall of the trunk, and in the one quick glance back he was able to give he saw the mare go down. His team, startled afresh by the crash, leaped ahead. Although he had been using every muscle more and more strenuously for the last fifteen minutes, new power rushed into his arms. He used every means in his power to quiet the pair, and, after a little, it began to tell. The ceasing of the mare's hoofbeats upon the road behind withdrew from the situation what had been its most dangerous element, and at length, coming to a sudden sharp rise in the road, Jarvis succeeded in pulling the colts down to a walk. The instant it became possible he turned them about.

"Now," he said, aloud, to them—and his voice was harsh with anxiety—"spoil you or not, you may go back at the top of your speed," and he sent them, wild-eyed and breathing hard, straight back over their tracks. And as he neared the place where the mare had fallen, he held his breath and his heart grew sick within him.

It was an unfrequented road, and no one had come over it since himself. As he turned the bend he saw just what he had expected to see, and a great sob shook him. Then he gathered himself, with a mighty grip upon his whole being, for what there might be left to do for her.

The brown mare lay in a pitiful heap, her fore legs doubled under her. Beneath her, kept from being thrown over Betty's head by her foot in the stirrup, and caught under the roll of the mare's body, lay the slender figure of her rider.

"Oh—God!" groaned the man, as he threw himself upon the ground beside her. But as he fearfully turned her head toward him, that he might see first the worst there was, two dark-lashed, gray eyes slowly unclosed and looked up into his, and a smile, so faint that it was but the hint of a smile, trembled about her mouth.

In the swiftness of his relief Jarvis had to lay stern hands upon his own impulses. He smiled back at her with lips not quite steady. Then he set about releasing her.

When he had her out upon the grass she lay very white and still again. "Can you tell me where you are hurt?" he begged. Then, as she did not answer, he dashed off to a brook which gurgled in a hollow a rod away, and, coming back with a soaked handkerchief, gently bathed her face and hair. After a little her eyes unclosed again.

"I—don't think I'm—badly hurt. My shoulder and—my—knee——"

"I'll get you home as soon as you feel able."

She turned her head slowly toward the road. Divining her thought, Jarvis quietly placed himself between her eyes and the body of the brown mare. She understood.

"Is she dreadfully hurt?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Alive?"

He nodded. The girl lay still an instant, then she threw one arm across her eyes, and Jarvis saw that she was softly sobbing. He watched her for a little, then he took her other hand in his, holding it close and tenderly, as one would soothe an unhappy child.

"When I have taken you home," he said, very gently, "I will come back to Betty."

She drew her hand away quickly. "Take me home now," she whispered.

So Jarvis, as best he could, took her home. It was a hard journey, which he would have made easier for her if he could have got her to lean against him. But she sat erect, holding herself with a white face and compressed lips, and Jarvis, thinking things he dared not put into words, drove with as little jolt and jar as might be back to the Hempstead Farms.

Joe, coming across the barnyard, saw them, looked at them a second time, and strode hurriedly forward. Jarvis would have given the horses into his charge and looked after the girl himself, but she forestalled him, and it was Joe, the man of overalls and wide straw hat, who helped her to her room, the porch being for the moment mercifully bereft of boarders. It was the sunny hour of the morning there.

But presently she sent for him. He went at once, for he was preparing, with Joe, to go to the injured horse. Mrs. Hempstead took him to Miss Farnsworth's room, and stayed stiffly by while he crossed to the bed where the girl lay, still in her riding habit. As he came to her she held out her hand.

"Please forgive me," she said, with her head turned away. "I might have killed—you."

"No—you couldn't. I've something to live for, so I'm invulnerable—till I get it."

"Will you do something for me?" she asked. As she lay, with her head turned from him, the warm white curves at the back of her neck appealed to him more irresistibly than ever.

"Anything!"

She thrust one hand down under the folds of her skirt, drew out something heavy and shining which had lain there, and put it into his hand. Then she buried her face in the pillow. "Please——" she began—and could not finish.

Jarvis looked around at his landlady, standing by like the embodiment of propriety. He turned again to the girlish figure shaking with its passionate regret. Then he took the little revolver from her, bent and whispered, "I understand," and went quickly and silently away.

* * * * *

When Jarvis returned to Joe Hempstead, getting ready the flat drag known in country parlance as a "stone boat," his first words were eager.

"Joe, I don't know that there's the slightest hope of saving the mare, but I'd like to bring her home and try. It was out of the question to look her over much there. She went down on her knees—smash—and one leg was certainly broken below the knee. But I've a hope the leg I couldn't get at may only be bruised."

Joe nodded. "We'll do the best we can by her—for the little girl's sake," he declared. "She's a high-spirited young critter—the human one, I mean—but I guess she's a-takin' this pretty hard, and I'd like to help her out."

So presently brown Betty, lifting dumb eyes full of pain at the sound of a caressing voice, found herself in the hands of her friends.

"Well—it's a question, Joe," said Jarvis, slowly, ten minutes later. He was sitting with a hand on the mare's flank, after a thorough and skillful examination. Betty's head lay in Joe's lap, held firmly by hands which were both strong and tender. "It's a question whether it wouldn't be the kindest thing to end her troubles for her. I expect she'd tell us to, if she could talk. She'll have to be put in a sling, of course, and kept there for weeks."

"That there sprained leg——" Joe began, doubtfully.

"Yes—it'll be about as tough a proposition as the broken one. But——"

The two men looked at each other.

"If you say so——" agreed Joe.

"Let's try it," urged Jarvis. "It's a question of human suffering, or brute—and there's a possibility of success. I shall be here a day or two longer—over the Fourth. I'll play nurse as long as I stay—I'd like nothing better. I was born and brought up with horses—in Kentucky."

"What I ain't picked up about 'em I knew when I was born," said Joe, with a laugh and a pat of the mare's head. "All right—we'll turn ourselves into a couple of amachure vet'rinaries—seein' they ain't none hereabouts."

Between them they had soon bestowed the mare upon the stone boat in the best possible position for enduring the ride.

"Seems as if she understands the whole thing," Joe said, at length, looking down into the animal's face as her head lay quietly upon the blanket. "You're a lady," he said, softly, to Betty. The mare's beautiful liquid eyes looked dumbly back at him, and he stooped and rubbed her nose. "Yes, you're a lady," he repeated, "and we'll do our level best to deserve your trustin' us—poor little wreck."

In a roomy stall they put Betty. It was an afternoon's work to arrange it for the scientific treatment of the broken leg. Joe, with the readiness of a surgeon—he was, indeed, an amateur veterinary, and was consulted as such by the whole countryside—set the leg and put it in plaster of Paris. The two men rigged a sling which should keep the weight of the mare off the injured legs and support her body. With the help of two farm hands, Betty was put into this gear in a way which made it impossible for her to move enough to hurt the broken leg. A rest was provided for her head, and her equine comfort was in every way considered. When all was done, the farmer and the electrical engineer looked at each other with exceeding satisfaction.

"She'll get well," said Jarvis, with conviction. "I never saw it better done than you have managed it."

"Me?" returned Joe, with a laugh. "Well, say—I wouldn't mind havin' you for chief assistant when I go into the business perfessionally."

Jarvis spent the rest of the day, more or less, in the box stall. The evening was occupied in assisting Betty to receive the entire houseful of boarders, whom the news of the accident had reached at about supper time.

At midnight, having tried without success for an hour to sleep, he got up, dressed and went out through the warm July starlight to tell the brown mare he was sorry for her. He found a man's figure standing beside that of the animal.

"Well!" Joe greeted him. "You're another. I can't seem to sleep, thinkin' about this poor critter, slung up here—sufferin'—and not understandin'. They like company—now I'm sure of it. It's a good thing she can't know how many days and nights she's got to be strung here, ain't it?"

His hand was gently stroking the mare's shoulder, as if he thought it must ache. He looked around at Jarvis, standing in the rays of light from a lantern hanging on a peg near by.

"Go back to bed, Joe," advised Jarvis. "You've plenty to do to-morrow. I'll stay with the patient a while. I shall like to do it—I'm as bad as you, I can't sleep for thinking of her."

"Course you can't," thought Joe, going back to the house. "But you didn't say which 'her' 'twas that keeps you awake. I guess it's one's much as 'tis t'other."

It was about two o'clock in the morning that Jarvis, in a corner of the box stall, where the mare could see him, lying at full length upon a pile of hay, his hands clasped under his head, heard light and uneven footsteps slowly approaching across the barn floor. He was instantly alert in every sense, but he did not move.

"Betty dear," said a soft voice. Then a slender figure came into view in the dim light, walking with a limp and painfully. A loose blue robe trailed about her, and two long brown braids, curling at the ends, hung over her shoulders. She came slowly into the stall and stood and looked at Betty. Suddenly she put both arms around the mare's neck, laid her cheek against the animal's face, and spoke to her.

"Poor Betty," she said, pitifully. "Did you fall into the hands of a cruel girl, who hurt you for all the rest of your life? Can you forgive her, Betty? She didn't mean to do it, dear. She was out of temper herself, because she couldn't have her own way—when she didn't want her own way—Betty—can you understand? You were doing the best you could—she made you act such a silly part. Dear little Betty—she would stand beside you all night long, just to punish herself, if she could—but——"

She leaned against the side of the stall, and sank slowly down to the ground, with a hand pressed to her knee. Jarvis, on the hay, stirred involuntarily, and with a little cry of alarm the girl struggled to her feet again. At the next instant, as Jarvis spoke gently and his face came into view in the lantern light, she leaned once more, breathing quickly, against the side of the stall. Her face as she stared at him was like that of a startled child.

"You mustn't stand, you're not fit," he said, anxiously. "You ought not to have come. Let me help you back."

She gazed at him beseechingly. "Please let me stay a few minutes," she said. Was this meek creature the willful young person of the morning? "I can't sleep for thinking of her, and I want to make her understand that I'm sorry."

"I think she does. If she doesn't, she at least appreciates the tone of your voice. Even a horse might have sense enough for that. Let me bring you something for a seat, if you will stay."

He found an empty box, covered it with a new blanket, and set it by the side of the stall. She sat down and studied the arrangement of the appliances for the keeping of the mare in the quiet necessary to the healing of the broken leg. Jarvis explained it all to her, and she listened eagerly and attentively. But when he had finished she asked him abruptly:

"Did you hear what I said to Betty?"

"I could hardly help it."

"Then you heard me say that about being out of temper at not having my own way this morning—when I—really didn't want my own way." Her eyes were on Betty's patient little head.

"Do you expect me to believe that?" he asked, smiling.

"Did I seem to want it?"

"Very decidedly."

"Yet—if you had let me have it—do you know how I should have felt toward you?"

"I know how I should have felt toward myself."

"How would you?" she asked, curiously.

He shook his head. "I believe I'd better not try to explain that."

"Why not?"

"Dangerous ground."

"I don't understand."

"When you admit," he said, "that when you seem to want your own way, you really don't want it——"

"That was just in this instance," she interrupted, quickly.

"Such a thing never happened before?"

"Certainly not."

"How about the time you lost your slipper off under the table the night we were dining at the Dennisons' and you forbade me to get it? Then when you thought I hadn't——"

"Oh—that was a silly thing—don't mention it. This was different. You knew the horses weren't safe for me to drive——"

"You admit that?"

"For the sake of the argument, yes. But since you thought they weren't safe, it would have been a weak thing for you to have given in to me."

"Thank you—that's precisely the way I felt."

"But it doesn't prevent—it wouldn't prevent my wanting my own way—always—about everything——"

"When?"

She turned a brilliant color under the lantern rays.

He bent forward. "Are you warning me?"

"I'm trying to let you know the sort of person I am."

"Well," he said, leaning back again, and studying her with attention, noting the picture she unconsciously made in her blue robe, with the brown braids hanging over her shoulders, "I've been observing you with somewhat close scrutiny for about three years now, and it occurs to me that I'm fairly conversant with your moods and tenses. Perhaps I ought to be warned, but—I'm not."

"I've always been told that sort of thing grows upon one," she observed.

"What sort of thing? Having one's own way?"

She nodded.

"You're right there," he agreed. "I've been wanting mine, more or less strenuously, for three years."

"Elaine Dennison," she observed—somewhat irrelevantly, it might seem—"is the dearest, most amiable girl. She loves to make people happy."

"Yes—and doesn't succeed. And you—don't want to make them happy—and—could."

She shook her head. "No—I never could. Anybody who had much to do with me would have to learn at once that I must have my own way."

"And if he should chance to be the sort of person who always wants his own way, it would be disastrous. Yes—I see. And I comprehend your ideal. I saw such a man once. It was in a railway station. He stood at one side holding all the luggage, and his wife bought the tickets. She was larger than he—I should say about one hundred and fifty pounds larger. To take and hold such an enviable position as this woman held needs, I think, an excess of avoirdupois."

He was laughing down at her, for she had got to her feet, and he had risen with her. One hundred and twenty pounds of girlish grace and slenderness looked even less beside one hundred and eighty of well-distributed masculine bulk. But it was only his lips which laughed. His eyes dwelt on her with no raillery in their depths, only a longing which grew with each jesting word he spoke.

"Will you let me carry you in?" he asked, as she moved slowly toward Betty. She shook her head. She laid a caressing hand on the mare's smooth nose and whispered in her ear.

"Good-night, Betty," she said.

"You ought not to walk, with that knee. You can't fool with a knee—it's a bad place to get hurt. I'm going to carry you."

She stood still, looking up at him at last. "Good-night, Mr. Jarvis," she said.

He came close. "See here," he said, rapidly, under his breath, "I can't stand this any longer. You've put me off and put me off—and I've let you. You've had your way. Now I'm going to have mine. You shall answer me, one way or the other, to-night—now. I love you—I've told you so—twice with my lips—a hundred times in every other way. But I'm not going to be played with any longer. Will you take me—now—or never?"

"What a singular way—what a barbaric way," she said, with proud eyes.

"It may be singular—it may be primitive—it's my way—to end what I must. Will you answer me?"

"Yes, I'll answer you," she said, with uplifted head.

"Look at me, then."

She raised her eyes to his. Given the chance he so seldom got from her, he gazed eagerly down into their depths, revealed to him in the half light, half shadow, of the strange place they were in. She met the look steadily at first, then falteringly. At length the lashes fell.

In silence he waited, motionless. She tried to laugh lightly. "You're so tragic," she murmured.

There was no answer.

"We should never be happy together," she began, slowly. "You've a will like iron—I've felt it for three years. Mine is—I don't know what mine is—but it's not used to being denied. We should quarrel over everything, even when I knew, as I did to-day, that you were right. I—don't know how to tell you—but—I——"

She hesitated. He made no answer, no plea, simply stood, breathing deep but steadily, and steadily watching her.

"You're such a good friend," she went on, reluctantly, after a little. She was drooping against the door of the box stall like a flower which needs support, but he did not offer to help her. "Such a good friend I don't want to lose you—but I know by the way you speak that I'm going to lose you if—I——"

She raised her eyes little by little till they had reached his shoulders, broad and firm and motionless.

"Good-by, Mr. Jarvis," she said, very low, and in a voice which trembled a little. "But please don't mind very much. I'm not—worth it. I——"

She lifted her eyes once more from his shoulder to his face, to find the same look, intensified, meeting her with its steady fire. She paled slowly, dropped her eyes and turned as if to go, when a great breath, like a sob, shook her. She stood for an instant, faltering, then turned again and took one uncertain step toward him.

"Oh—I can't—I can't——" she breathed. "You're the stronger—and I—I—want you to be!"

With one quick stride he reached her. "Of course you do," he said, his voice exultant in its joy.

Behind them brown Betty watched with dumb eyes, wondering, perhaps, how so stormy a scene could be succeeded by such motionless calm. As for her, this new, strange way of standing, always standing, too full of pain to sleep, was a thing to be endured as best she might.



R. H.—A PORTRAIT

Not credulous, yet active in belief That good is better than the worst is bad; A generous courage mirrored in the glad Challenging eyes, that gentle oft with grief For honest woe—while lurking like a thief, Peering around the corners, humor creeps, Into the gravest matters pries and peeps,

Till grimmest face relaxes with relief; A heart beloved of the wiser gods Grown weary of solemnity prolonged— That snatches scraps of gladness while Fate nods, Varying life's prose with stories many-songed: One who has faced the dark and naught denied— Yet lives persistent on the brightest side.

ALLAN MUNIER.



THE FUTURE MRS. THORNTON

By SARAH GUERNSEY BRADLEY

From a worldly point of view there could be no question as to the wisdom and desirability of the match, and Miss Warren's family was worldly to the core.

It had been a crushing blow to Mrs. Warren's pride, and, incidentally, a blow in a vastly more material direction, that her two older daughters had made something of a mess of matrimony, pecuniarily speaking.

She was confessedly ambitious for Nancy—Nancy, the youngest, the cleverest, the fairest of the three. Position she always would have, being a Warren, but she wanted the girl to have all the other good things of this life, that for so many years had been unsatisfied desires. Not, of course, that she would want Nancy to marry for money, she assured herself virtuously; that, in addition to being an indirect violation of an article of the Decalogue, was so distinctly plebeian. But it would be so comfortable if Nancy's affections could only be engaged in a direction where the coffers were not exactly empty. In other words, money would be no obstacle to perfect connubial bliss.

And think of the future which awaited Nancy if she would but say the word! Even the fondly cherished memory of the Warrens' past glory dwindled into nothingness in comparison.

To be sure, Mr. James Thornton was not so young as he had been ten years ago—"What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all," Mrs. Warren was fond of quoting—nor, in point of girth, did he assume less aldermanic proportions as time rolled on, but there was such a golden lining to these small clouds of affliction, that he was very generally looked upon as an altogether desirable parti.

It must be admitted that, among other minor idiosyncrasies, Mr. James Thornton would now and then slip into the vernacular. Under great stress of feeling, in the heat of argument and the like, he had been known to break the Sixth Commandment in so far as the English of the king was concerned.

"You was," "those kind," "between you and I," would slip out, but these variations from the strictly conventional were looked upon as little eccentricities in which a man whose fortune went far above the million mark could well afford to indulge.

"James is so droll," the aristocratic Mrs. Warren would say comfortably, resolutely closing her eyes to the fact that James' early environment, and not his sense of humor, was responsible for his occasional lapses. For James' father, old Sid Thornton, as he was always called, could not have boasted even a bowing acquaintance with the very people who were now not only falling over each other in their mad anxiety to entertain his son, but were even more than willing to find that same son a suitable wife among their own fair daughters. Old Sid Thornton's homely boy, Jim, running away to sea, and Mr. James Thornton, back to the old town with a fortune at his disposal, and living in a mansion that was the admiration and envy of the whole county, were two totally different entities.

Temptingly did the mothers with marriageable daughters display their wares. But of all the number, and many of them were passing fair, Mr. James Thornton cast longing eyes on only one, and that was Nancy Warren. Frankly, he wanted to get married, settle down, perhaps go into politics when he had time; he wanted a mistress for that beautiful house on the hill, some one who would know how to preside at his table and dispense his hospitality; some one, in short, who would know, instinctively, all the little niceties which were as a sealed book to him, and the tall, fair, thoroughbred Miss Warren seemed ideally fitted for the post.

Encouraged thereto by the tactful Mrs. Warren, James had poured into her eager ears the secrets of his honest soul, and Mrs. Warren had listened with a sweet and ready sympathy that had caused James quite to forget a certain stinging snubbing he had received from the selfsame lady, because once, back in the dark ages—before Nancy had opened her blue eyes on this naughty world—when he was a gawky, freckle-faced boy of sixteen, he had dared to walk home from church with Mildred, the eldest daughter of the house of Warren.

That was long before Mrs. Warren had felt poverty's vicious pinch, and before her life had become one continual struggle to make both ends meet. Somehow, her point of view had changed since then—points of view will change when the howl of the wolf is heard in the near distance, and yet one must smile and smile before one's little world—and, all other things being equal, Mr. James Thornton's home, garish with gold and onyx, and fairly shrieking with bad tapestries and faulty paintings and ponderous furniture, seemed as promising and fair a haven as she could possibly find for the youngest and only remaining daughter of the house of Warren. As for any little jarring notes in the decorative scheme of the Thornton abode, Mrs. Warren knew that she could trust Nancy to change all that, if she were once established there as the bride of Mr. James Thornton.

Now, Nancy had her share of the contrary spirit, and although she did not look altogether unfavorably upon the wooing of the affluent James, she took very good care that her mother should not suspect her state of mind. Perhaps that one unforgettable summer, of which her mother only dimly dreamed, made her despise herself for her tacit acquiescence, and she salved her accusing conscience with some outward show of opposition.

"Mr. Thornton is most kind, but his hands are positively beefy, mother," complained Nancy, one day, her short upper lip curling a bit scornfully. Mrs. Warren had just finished a long dissertation on the virtues of Mr. James Thornton, and, merely incidentally, of course, had touched on the great advantages that would accrue to the girl who should become his wife.

"You ought to know, my dear," Mrs. Warren replied, blandly, "that the sun of South Africa has a rather"—Mrs. Warren's broad a had a supercilious cadence—"toughening effect on the skin. Hands or no hands, he has more to recommend him than any man of your acquaintance." Mrs. Warren refrained from adding in what respect. "He is very much taken with you. Let him slip through your fingers and he'll be snapped up by some one else before you can say 'Jack Robinson.' Effie Paul"—Mrs. Warren began counting the pining ones on her fingers—"would give her old boots and shoes if she could annex him—she's a calculating creature; I never liked her. Alice Wood needs only half a chance to throw herself at his feet just as she already has done at his head. Her conduct has been disgraceful." Mrs. Warren sniffed the sniff of the virtuous and blameless. "There's not a girl of your acquaintance who would not jump at the chance of becoming Mrs. James Thornton."

"Did you ever read that story of Kipling's where he says, 'Regiments are like women—they will do anything for trinketry'?" inquired Nancy, calmly.

"Kipling may know a great deal about regiments, but he knows nothing about women," said Mrs. Warren, severely. "I am surprised to hear a girl of your age advocating any such idea! I have a higher opinion of my sex, thank Heaven!" She assumed the air of an early Christian martyr.

"Well, I think they're a pretty mercenary lot," said Nancy, stolidly.

"Not at all. People sometimes have a proper sense of the eternal fitness of things," her mother returned, with withering inconsistency. "Not, of course," she added, hastily, "that I would consent to your marrying Mr. Thornton if you didn't care for him."

Nancy's face was a study.

"I think too much of him for that." Mrs. Warren threw her head back proudly.

"He's a trifle unideal, mother; a bit different, you must admit," Nancy laughed. "To begin with, he has a regular bay window."

"Don't be vulgar, Anne," her mother said, sharply. "He inherits flesh."

"Yes, I remember once hearing dad say that old Sid Thornton looked exactly like an inflated bullfrog," Nancy laughed, wickedly.

"Your dear father had an unfortunate way of expressing himself." Mrs. Warren drew herself up stiffly. "And I must say, my dear, that you are much more like poor, dear Charles than you are like me." Mrs. Warren wiped away a tear, and Nancy wondered vaguely whether the tear was for her late and not too loudly lamented father or for the absence of her likeness to his relict.

The next moment Nancy, swiftly penitent, was at her mother's side, and, taking the still wonderfully young face between her hands, said softly: "Kiss me, Marmee. I'm a brute, I know I am. I know what an awful struggle it has been to keep up appearances. I—I'm sick of it all, too. Only—only, I must think, that's all. I must be perfectly sure—that I really care—for Mr. Thornton. Don't say anything more now, dearie," she pleaded, as her mother started to make some reply. "I'm going off to think." And, kissing her mother tenderly, this strange little creature of varying moods and tenses went up to her own room to have it out with herself. It was the one place where Nancy Warren felt that she could be perfectly honest with her own soul, where all shams and insincerities could safely be laid aside without fear of that arch-tyrant of a small town, Mrs. Grundy.

She opened her window, and, sitting down on the floor in front of it, her head on the broad sill, gazed, with curiously mingled emotions, at the imposing pile of gray stone on the hill, where Mr. James Thornton lived and moved and had his being.

Down deep in her heart of hearts, Nancy Warren knew that she was far more like her mother than that very lovely and very conventional woman dreamed.

She was a luxury-loving soul—things that were mere accidents to other women were absolute necessities to her. With a longing that almost amounted to a passion, she craved jewels, good gowns, laces and all the other dear, delightful pomps and vanities of this world, which only a plethoric purse can procure.

She reveled in the violets and orchids which, so sure as the day dawned, came down from the Thornton conservatories for the greater adornment of the house of Warren.

The rides in the fastest machines in the county, the cross-country runs on Mr. James Thornton's thoroughbred hunters, all these were as meat and drink to her.

Yes, Mr. James Thornton's offer was certainly tempting. It meant that everything in the world for which she most cared would be hers except—but that was singularly out-of-date. Nobody really married for that any more. To be sure, her sisters had, but she could not see that they were glaringly happy. And Mr. James Thornton was a good soul—everybody admitted that. And yet—for an instant the gray stone building in the distance, bathed in the golden radiance of the setting sun, grew misty and blurred. She saw another sunset, all pink and green and soft, indefinite violet, and above the deep, sweet, ceaseless sound of a wondrously opalescent sea she heard a man's voice ring clear and true with a love as eternal as that same changeless sea. She felt again that strange, sweet, unearthly happiness that comes to a woman once and once only. She buried her face in her hands to shut out the sight of that gray stone house on the hill, bathed in the significant, mocking, golden radiance of the setting sun. She heard again that man's voice, crushed and broken with a dull, hopeless despair. She saw his face grow pale as death as he heard her words of cruel, worldly wisdom. She felt again that same bitter ache at the heart, that horrible, gnawing sense of irreparable loss, as she had voluntarily put out of her life "the only good in the world."

"But we were too poor," she cried, passionately, jumping to her feet and throwing her head back defiantly. "It would have been madness—for me." She looked out of the window again at the gray stone house on the hill, and laughed mirthlessly.

Then she walked slowly away from the window, and stood irresolute for a moment, in the center of the room.

"This horrid, beastly poverty!" she burst out vehemently. "I'm sick of it all—of our wretched, miserable makeshifts. I'm tired, so tired, of everything. It will be such a rest." She rushed excitedly to the door, and ran, with the air of one who knows delay is fraught with danger, downstairs to her mother's room.

"Mother"—Mrs. Warren looked up fearfully, as she heard her daughter's voice—"I have thought it all over."

"Yes?" said Mrs. Warren, weakly. The reaction was almost too much for her after the half hour of sickening suspense.

"You must see Mr. Thornton when he comes to-night, for I have a splitting headache and I'm going to bed." Her mother stared at her blankly. Was this the end of all her hopes? "To-day is Tuesday—tell him that I will give him my answer Friday night. And, mother"—her voice dropped in a half-ashamed way—"the answer will be yes."

"My darling child"—Mrs. Warren took her daughter in her arms—"this is the very proudest and happiest moment of my life."

"Yes, mother, I know," Nancy freed herself from the clinging embrace. "I'm happy, awfully happy, too"—she said it as one would speak of the weather or some other deadly commonplace. "I think Mr. Thornton will make a model husband. And—and it's an end to all our nasty little economies!"

"Anne, don't be so material," Mrs. Warren interrupted, in a shocked voice.

"I'm not, mother; only think"—Nancy's eyes glistened—"no more velveteen masquerading as velvet, no more bargain-counter shoes and gloves, no more percaline petticoats with silk flounces, no more plain dresses because shirring and tucking take a few more yards; no more summers spent in close, cooped-up hall bedrooms in twelve-dollar-a-week hotels; grape-fruit every morning, and cream always!" She laughed half hysterically. "And Mr. Thornton is so good! It's wonderful to be so happy, isn't it, Marmee?"

Mrs. Warren looked at her apprehensively for a moment. "You're sure," she faltered—"you're sure you're doing it all without a regret for—for anybody, Nancy?"

Nancy's nails went deep into the palms of her hands. "Without a regret, Marmee," she smiled, brightly.

"And that you think you will be perfectly happy with James?"

"Perfectly," said Nancy, evenly.

Mrs. Warren, reassured, was radiant. "My darling child," she breathed, softly, "this means everything to me."

"You'll explain about the headache, won't you, Marmee?" Nancy asked, moving hurriedly toward the door. She knew that she should scream if she stayed a moment longer in her mother's presence.

"Yes, indeed, and I'm so sorry about the pain." Her mother followed her to the door. "Take some——"

"I have everything upstairs, thank you, mother. Good-night."

"Good-night, my darling child." Those kisses were the fondest her mother had ever given her. "How I wish that your poor dear father could know of our perfect happiness!"

Nancy passed out into the hall, closed the door behind her, and leaned for a moment against the wall. Mrs. Warren's idea of perfect happiness would have received a severe shock, could she have heard Nancy murmur, brokenly: "Dear old dad! Pray Heaven you don't know that your little Nance is a miserable, mercenary coward!"

* * * * *

There is a certain sense of relief that follows the consummation of a long-delayed decision, no matter how inherently distasteful that decision may be, and Nancy's first feeling when she awoke on the following morning was one of thankfulness that the preliminary step had been taken.

All burdens seem lighter, everything takes a different hue, in the morning when the sun is shining and the birds are singing, and after the months of sickening indecision Nancy experienced such a delightful sense of rest, such a freedom from suspense, that she actually laughed aloud as she said to herself: "Oh, I guess perhaps it's not going to be so bad, after all!"

By the time that Mr. James Thornton's daily offering of violets and orchids had arrived, she had about decided that she was a rather levelheaded young woman, and when, an hour after that, she found herself seated beside the devoted James, in his glaringly resplendent automobile, skimming along at an exhilarating pace over a fine stretch of country road, she had come to the conclusion that that arch-type of female foolishness, the Virgin with the Unfilled Lamp, was wisdom incarnate compared to the woman who deliberately throws aside the goods the gods provide her. Oh, yes, Nancy was fast becoming the more worthy daughter of a worthy mother!

James Thornton, reassured by what Mrs. Warren had delicately hinted to him the evening before, exulted in Nancy's buoyant spirits. He had never seen her so attractive. She chattered away merrily, laughed at his weighty jokes and his more or less pointless stories, and even forgot to be angry when for one brief, fleeting instant his massive hand closed over her slim, aristocratic one. It seemed too good to be true that this fascinating bit of femininity was soon to be his.

When they finally returned to the Warrens' modest house, the wily chauffeur, looking after them as they walked along the nasturtium-bordered path that led to the porch, winked the wink of one on the inside, and smiled broadly as he murmured: "She's a crackajack! And if there ain't somethin' doin' this time, I'll eat my goggles!"

* * * * *

"Don't you think, mother," said Nancy, an hour or so later—they were sitting in Nancy's room, Mrs. Warren, with unusual condescension, having come up for a little chat—"that it would have been rather nicer to have had dinner here Friday night, the eventful Friday night"—a queer little tremor ran over her—"instead of at Mr. Thornton's?"

"Why, no," said Mrs. Warren, complacently; "I think it will make everything easier for James if we are up there. You know he is inclined to be diffident, Nancy. A man always appears to better advantage in his own house."

"And of course that is the only thing to be considered." Nancy smiled half bitterly. She had lost a little of the buoyancy of a few hours before.

"Why, of course, my dear," Mrs. Warren began, hastily, "if you prefer to——?"

"Oh, no, let it go at that," returned Nancy, carelessly. "It will be all the same at the end of a lifetime." She shrugged her shoulders as she spoke. "What shall I wear, mother?" she asked the next moment, with an entire change of manner. "My white, virginal simplicity and all that sort of rot; my shabby little yellow, or the scarlet? Those are my 'devilish all,' you know."

"The white, by all means, Nancy." Mrs. Warren's tone was impressive; and for reasons of her own she chose to ignore the slang.

"Pink rose in the hair, I suppose, a Janice Meredith curl, bobbing on my neck and nearly scratching the life out of me, a few visibly invisible little pink ribbons, and any other 'parlor tricks' I happen to know——"

"Anne!" Her mother frowned angrily.

"Then be led into the conservatory"—Nancy paid no attention to the interruption—"have the moonlight turned on. Horrors, think of that artificial moonlight!" Nancy shuddered. "And then say yes! Heavens! I hope I shan't say yes until it's time. It would be awful to miscue at that stage of the game!"

Mrs. Warren rose abruptly from her chair, and without a word started for the door, quivering with indignation.

"There! I've been a brute again," cried Nancy, penitently, dashing after her mother.

"Yes, I think you have," blazed Mrs. Warren.

"I was only fooling, dearie; it's all going to be lovely, and I'm going into that conservatory just as valiantly as the Rough Riders charged up old San Juan! Only, Marmee, don't ask me to wear white—that would be too absurd! Frankly, I'm susceptible to color. You've heard about the little boy who whistled in the dark to keep his courage up?" Mrs. Warren smiled through her tears. "Well, I'm going to wear my red—red is cheerful, and not too innocent, and—and courageous—I mean," Nancy explained, hastily, as she caught her mother's look of wonder. "It always requires some courage for a girl to say she will marry a man, even when the circumstances are as—as happy as they are in this case. Didn't you feel just a little bit queer when you told dad you'd marry him?"

"Why, yes, I suppose I did," said Mrs. Warren, half doubtfully.

"Well, then," said Nancy, logically, "you can understand just what I mean. I've a scrap of lace"—reverting to the burning question—"that I'm going to hunt up, that will freshen the red a lot, and some day, Marmee"—she took her mother's face between her cool, slim hands, and laughed with a fine assumption of gayety—"we'll have such closetfuls of dainty, bewitching 'creations' that we'll quite forget we ever envied Mother Eve because she didn't have to rack her brains about what to wear."

Mrs. Warren laughed. Her indignation had vanished. Nancy had a winsome way with her when she chose that was irresistible to the older woman.

"Now you go take a nice little nap, Marmee"—she kissed her mother lightly on the forehead—"while the future Mrs. James Thornton ferrets out the scrap of lace which is to be the piece de resistance of Juliet's costume when she goes to meet her portly Romeo!" She laughed merrily, and with a sweeping courtesy ushered her mother out of the room.

As soon as the door had closed behind Mrs. Warren, Nancy, singing lustily, yet with a certain nervousness, as if to drown all power of thought, bustled about the room, peering into topsy-turvy bureau drawers and ransacking inconsequent-looking boxes, with a half-feverish energy, as though upon the unearthing of that particular piece of lace depended her hopes of heaven.

It seemed to be an elusive commodity, that scrap of rose-point; for twenty minutes' patient search failed utterly to bring it to the light of day.

Suddenly, Nancy espied a big, important-looking black walnut box on the floor of her closet, half hidden by a well-worn party coat which depended from the hook just above it. It was a mysterious-looking box, delightfully suggestive of old love letters and tender fooleries of that sort, or would have been, had it not been the property of an up-to-date, worldly-wise young woman who knew better than to save from the flames such sources of delicious torment, such instruments of exquisite torture.

In an instant Nancy had dragged the box to the door of the closet, and was down on her knees in front of it, going through its contents with ferret-like eagerness.

Yes! Her search was at last rewarded! For there, down under a pair of white satin dancing slippers, in provokingly easy view, lay the much desired finery.

She put her hand under the slippers to draw it from its resting place, and as she felt the lace slip easily as though across some smooth surface, looked with idle curiosity down into the box. Instantly a sharp little cry rang through the room, and she withdrew her hand as swiftly as though she had unearthed a nest of rattlers. Her face was ashen, her breath came quick and short.

"Oh, I didn't know it was there!" she gasped. "I had forgotten all about it. I thought it had been destroyed with all the rest. Why is it left to torment me now, now, now?" she cried, angrily. Then, with a swift revulsion of feeling, she murmured, brokenly: "Oh, Boy, Boy, is there no escaping you? No forgetting you just when I am trying to so hard?"

She sat very still for a moment. Then she put her hand into the box again and drew out, not the precious scrap of rose-point—that, to her, was as though it had never been—not a blurred, tear-stained love letter, not a bunch of faded violets, but a little, fat, bright blue pitcher, with great, flaming vermilion roses on either side, the most grotesquely and uncompromisingly ugly bit of crockery that one would find from Dan to Beersheba.

Have you never noticed that it is often the most whimsically inconsequent, the most utterly ordinary, the most intrinsically prosaic of inanimate things that, with a sudden and overwhelming rush, will call into being memories the tenderest, the deepest, the saddest? It may be a worthless little book, a withered flower ghastly in its brown grave clothes, a cheap, tawdry trinket; it may be something as intangible as a few bars of a hackneyed song ground out on a wheezy, asthmatic hand organ. But just so surely as one has lived—and therefore loved—one knows the inherent power to sting and wound in things the most pitiably commonplace. De Musset speaks of the "little pebble":

But when upon your fated way you meet Some dumb memorial of a passion dead, That little pebble stops you, and you dread To bruise your tender feet.

So to Nancy, coming suddenly and at the psychological moment upon that absurd bit of blue clay cajoled from a friendly waiter at a little, out-of-the-way Bohemian restaurant, one never-to-be-forgotten night, the bottom seemed to have dropped out of the universe. The things of this world seemed suddenly to lose their value, and to grow poor and mean and worthless. And she only knew that she was miserable, and heart-hungry, and soul-sick for one who never came, for one who never again would come, forever and forever.

With the little blue pitcher held tightly in her hand, she walked over to the window and looked up at the big gray stone house that was soon to know her as its mistress. And for the very first time the perfect realization of what it all would mean was borne in upon her. She stood there for several minutes motionless, then with a violent, angry shake of the head she cried out in a high, defiant voice: "No, no, no, not until—not yet, not yet!"

She walked rapidly away from the window, and put the little blue pitcher in a post of honor on the mantelpiece. Then, crossing over to the dressing table, she picked up her purse and carefully counted the money. The result must have been satisfactory, for a half-triumphant smile flitted across her face. After that, from the mysterious depths of that same purse, she unearthed a time-table and studied it earnestly.

Then, sitting at her tiny desk, she nervously scrawled these words:

DEAR MOTHER: I have gone to New York to spend the night with Lilla Browning—made up my mind suddenly, and as I knew you were asleep, didn't want to bother you. Knew you couldn't possibly have any objection, because you are so fond of Lil. Want to do some shopping in the morning, and thought this would be the best way to get an early start. Expect me home to-morrow afternoon on the 5:45. Best regards to Mr. Thornton. Have Maggie press my red dress; tell her to be careful not to scorch it. I found the lace. By-by. NANCY.

"All's fair in love and war," she murmured, softly, rising from her chair, and taking off stock and belt preparatory to a change of costume. She smiled happily as she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her eyes were starlike, her whole expression was perfectly radiant.

"And you're responsible for it all, you little imp!" She shook her finger at the fat, bright blue pitcher with flaming vermilion roses on either side, as it stood on the mantelpiece in blissful unconsciousness of its total depravity.

In less than twenty minutes Nancy was dressed for the street and on her way to the railroad station. Ten minutes later two telegrams flashed over the wires. One ran:

MRS. JONATHAN BROWNING, West Seventy-second Street, New York City: Will spend to-night with you. Arrive about ten. Don't meet me. NANCY.

The second one was more brief:

MR. PHILIP PEIRCE. Princeton Club, New York City: Dine with me to-night at Scarlatti's at seven. ANNE WARREN.

Not until Nancy, after dismissing the hansom, found herself solitary and alone on the sidewalk in front of the gayly lighted little Bohemian restaurant, did she realize the foolishness, the craziness, of her undertaking. In fact, she had no very clear idea of what that undertaking was.

She looked after the retreating hansom, and a wretched, half-frightened homesickness swept over her.

Suppose Phil had not received the telegram! Suppose, receiving it, he had refused to come! She couldn't blame him, although he had once said that, no matter what——

And then—in speaking of it afterward, Nancy always declared that it was a positive physiological fact that at that moment her heart was located somewhere in the roof of her mouth—some one caught both her hands in his, some one's glad voice cried "Nance!" and in the twinkling of an eye the homesickness and the memory of the weeks of wretchedness had vanished, and all the misery of the past and all the uncertainty of the future were swallowed up in the joy of the present.

"I'm so sorry to be late." Phil's voice was as remorseful as though he had committed all of the seven deadly sins. "I received your telegram just as I was leaving the club to keep an engagement. Took me ten minutes at the 'phone to break the engagement decently. Jove! but I am glad to see you," he went on, enthusiastically.

"I hoped you would be, but of course I didn't know." It was not at all what Nancy had intended to say, but her heart thumped so furiously that she could scarcely think. She was mortally afraid that Phil would hear it pounding away.

"You know I told you that I should always be glad to see you, Nance." Then, abruptly: "I hope you haven't caught cold standing here waiting. It's not warm to-night. Shall we go inside now?" Nancy nodded, and Phil led the way into Scarlatti's.

She took the whole room in at a glance, and breathed a sigh of contentment so long, so deep, that it must have come from the tips of her toes.

There was the same absurd little orchestra in their same absurd "monkey clothes," the same motley crowd of half foreign, wholly happy men and women, the same indescribable odor of un-American cooking—she even rejoiced in that—and, best of all, on the long shelf that ran around the four sides of the room were the same little, fat, bright blue pitchers with great naming vermilion roses on either side. To be sure, she knew that one was missing, but that was mere detail.

"Phil," Nancy whispered, eagerly, pulling his coat sleeve violently as the waiter, with much bowing and scraping, started to lead the way in another direction, "our table is empty. Right over there—the tenth from the door. We always had that one, you know, under the picture of 'The Girl with the Laughing Eyes.' I always remembered that it was the tenth."

"Surely, we'll have the tenth, by all means." Phil tapped the waiter on the back, and motioned in the direction of the empty table.

"I thought perhaps you'd rather not," he whispered to Nancy, as they slipped into the old, familiar places. Evidently Phil had a memory for numbers, too. So often it is only the woman who can count ten.

"Now," began Phil, as soon as the dinner had been ordered and other preliminaries attended to, "tell me how on earth you and I happen to be here together? Did you drop straight from the clouds? Or aren't you here at all? Are you just a bit from a wildly improbable dream?"

"No," said Nancy, glibly, her equilibrium restored; "I'm spending the night with Lilla Browning, and it suddenly occurred to me that it would be fun for us to have dinner together." She paused a moment. "Once more," she added, watching Phil's face closely. "And isn't it just like that other time—the last time we were here together?" Phil looked at her curiously. "The people, and the soft lights, and the funny little musicians, and my meeting you——"

"Oh-h!" said Phil, quietly.

"And—-and everything," finished Nancy, lamely.

"Don't you remember?" she went on. "The paper had sent you off on some pesky assignment, and you were just a wee bit late. And we had a sort of a tiff about it until I happened to look up at the picture over the table, and 'The Girl with the Laughing Eyes' was looking straight down at us? And then, somehow, I had to laugh, too, and we made up. Don't you remember?"

Phil nodded. Did he not remember everything? Had he not been remembering ever since? That was the pity of it all!

"We were pretty happy that night, weren't we, Phil?"

"Don't, Nance." Phil's bright eyes had a curious, unusual brightness at that moment.

"And I made you—simply made you, you didn't want to—get me one of those foolish little pitchers." She pursued her theme relentlessly. "The waiter was so funny!" Nancy laughed merrily as at some droll recollection, "Phil, that was a whole year ago."

"Nonsense!" said Phil, indignantly. "It's ten years ago, if it's a day! Before you grew to be a worldly-wise old lady, and before I had become a cynical old man."

"You don't look very old, Phil."

"Well, I am; I'm as old as the hills. Do you know it has all been an awful pity, Nance?"

"What?" she asked, very softly, smiling adorably.

"Oh, everything——" He stopped short, the smile had escaped him. "Come," he said, abruptly, "let's talk about the weather, the—the—what a terrible winter it has been, hasn't it? Did you have lots of skating up in the country?"

"Yes, lots—about two months too much of it, and it has been the worst winter I ever hope to live through; but really, Phil, I didn't come to New York to talk about the weather." The laughter died out of Nancy's blue eyes. "I—I think I came to New York to ask your advice about something."

"My advice?" echoed Phil, wonderingly.

"Yes, I think so. Phil, suppose there, was a girl whose father had lost all his money and then had gone to work and died, and had left her and her mother just this side of the poorhouse. And suppose she and her mother had had to pinch and scrimp to keep their heads above the water, until they were sick of the whole business. And suppose a man with shoals of money—a fat, sort of elderly man, who wore diamond rings, and said 'you was,' and did lots of other things you and I don't like, yet was very kind and good—suppose this man wanted to marry this girl. Now, what would you advise her to do, if her mother were secretly crazy to have her marry him?"

"And she didn't care for anyone else?" Philip's tone was coldly judicial.

"And she didn't care for anyone else." His coldness frightened the lie through her unwilling lips, but she went white as she uttered it.

Philip eyed her narrowly.

"I can't see why you want my advice," he said, dully.

Then, very suddenly: "Nancy, suppose there was a man who was rather poor, as things go nowadays, and who had once been very fond of a girl who had treated him pretty badly. And suppose there was a woman"—with swift jealousy Nancy remembered the engagement Philip had broken in order to dine with her that evening—"not a very young woman, who had shoals of money, as you say, who rouged a little, and helped nature along a little in several ways, and did a number of other things that you and I don't exactly like, but who at heart was a very good sort—would you advise this man to marry her?"

"And he didn't care for anyone else?" Nancy whispered.

"And he didn't care for anyone else," said Phil, steadily.

Nancy bit her tongue to keep from crying out. Oh, the mortification, the humiliation, of it all! She would have given a week out of her life to have been back home.

"Why, if he cared for no one else, I——" The words came with an effort. "Who is she, Phil?"

"I'll tell you in a moment. Who is he, Nancy?" he asked, sternly.

"James Thornton—you've heard of him. Oh, what a pair of worldlings we are!" She pulled herself together with a supreme effort, and, raising her glass of red Hungarian wine to her lips, said lightly: "Here's to my successor! May she forgive me for this one last evening!" Her hand trembled, and some of the wine splashed on her white waist.

"It looks like a drop of blood." She shivered slightly. "Champagne doesn't stain." Her mouth laughed, but her eyes were full of a dull despair. "When we are married we shall both be drinking that! Do you remember that foolish little song I used to sing, 'When we are married'?" She tried to hum it, but failed miserably. "We shall sing our songs with a difference, now. Oh, Boy, Boy, it has all been my fault, hasn't it?"

"What do you mean?" he asked, tensely.

"Oh, everything," she said, wearily. "The worldliness and the wretchedness, and now it is too late! 'Couldst thou not watch with me?' Boy, I'm afraid I'm going to cry." Her lip quivered pitifully.

"Nance, do you care?"

"Care? Of course I care!" She threw her head back defiantly, and her eyes filled with angry tears. "If I hadn't, I shouldn't be here to-night. I—I'd have been married two months ago. God knows I wish I had, before—before all this happened!"

"Then listen to me, Nance." Philip spoke very quietly, but his eyes burned into her soul. "There isn't any other woman, there never has been, there never could be. I love you, and love you only, with my whole soul, my whole strength——"

"But you said——" began Nancy, in a weak little voice.

"Never mind what I said," he answered, almost roughly. "I'd sworn I'd never trouble you again without some sign from you. Yet the instant I saw you, out there on the sidewalk, it was all I could do to keep from kneeling down and kissing your blessed little shoes. But I wouldn't have done it for fifteen thousand different worlds. Suddenly, when you were talking about that damnable man"—Phil ground his teeth savagely—"and his 'shoals of money,' that other idea occurred to me—a last resort, a final, forlorn hope that if you had a spark of feeling left for me you might show it then, and I made it all up out of whole cloth."

"Philip, you're a brute!" The tears were falling now, but the wraith of a smile hovered about the corners of Nancy's mouth.

"I know I am. I'm despicable, mean, cowardly, unmanly——"

"Hateful, paltry, contemptible." Nancy helped out his collection of adjectives, but, strange to relate, her smile deepened.

"And—happy!" finished Phil, triumphantly. "Nance"—-the tone was masterful—"you've got to marry me now, right off, to-night. I'm never going to let you get away from me again. I don't care for all the James Thorntons and all the filthy money in the world. Will you, Little Girl?" The masterful tone gave place to one of pleading tenderness. "Will you give it all up for the man who has never stopped loving you and worshiping you for one single instant since the blessed day when you first came into his life?"

"Oh, Phil, Phil, you wicked, contemptible old darling, if you hadn't asked me to pretty soon, I—I'd have asked you. I've tried to get along without you, and I just simply can't!"

"Nance, you're an angel!" cried Phil, rapturously. He leaned across the table, with a fine disregard of appearances, and kissed Nancy's hands. But nobody noticed it at all—except the waiter at a respectful distance, secretly jubilant in the expectation of an unusually large tip, and he didn't count. That is the beauty of those out-of-the-way Bohemian restaurants—people are so absorbed in their own love-making that they never have time to watch anyone else's.

"You're a perfect angel!" Phil declared again, fervently.

"I know I am; and I'm so happy"—Nancy's swift transition from grave to gay was always one of her greatest charms—"that I'm afraid if I don't get out of here pretty soon, they'll have to call in the police, for there's no telling what I may do! I feel like dancing a jig on top of this table!"

"I dare you," laughed Phil, happily.

"Well, it's only on your account that I don't," she said, airily. "Even though you are a liar, you look so respectable! And, oh, Phil," she went on, irrelevantly, "I have so much to tell you. I'll tell you all about everything—a certain fat blue pitcher I found the other day and that really brought me here to New York, about Mr. James Thornton and his artificial moonlight, and everything else—on our way to the minister's. But I say, Phil"—here the Charles Warren, matter-of-fact strain asserted itself—"if we are going to be married to-night, we must hurry, for it's after nine now, and I've got to be at Lilla's by ten o'clock. I wouldn't be late for anything. How surprised she'll be when Mr. and Mrs. Philip Peirce sail in!" She looked up suddenly at the picture over the table. "Boy," she said, very tenderly, "don't you think 'The Girl with the Laughing Eyes' looks as though she approved?"

But Phil had no eyes save for the shining eyes across the table, so his answer cannot be described.

* * * * *

"Phil," said Nancy, about a week later—they had just finished installing Phil's few Lares and Penates in their new quarters—"isn't this just the coziest little nook you've ever seen?"

"Absolutely," said Phil, with conviction.

"I wish mother could see how——" The smile was a bit wistful. "Phil, I really think we ought to go up to see mother. Of course she's furious—her not answering our telegram is proof positive of that. I'm scared to death at the thought of seeing her. She can look you through and through so, when she disapproves! I do think she might have written. We haven't done anything so perfectly dreadful. You don't suppose she is sick, do you?" she asked, anxiously.

"Why, no, Little Girl," said Phil, soothingly; "we'd have heard in some way if there had been anything of that sort."

"I think I'm getting nervous about her. Will you go up with me to-day, dear?"

"Why, certainly, Nance; whenever you want to go, just say the word. I'm having a holiday now!" Phil laughed like a happy schoolboy.

"All right, then, we'll go to-day. And please be on your very bestest behavior, Philly-Boy."

"Don't worry. I'll be the dutiful son to the queen's taste."

"And be sure," adjured Nancy, solemnly, "to tell mother you're really making quite a lot of money now, that we're not starving, and that I'm going to have some new clothes the first of next month."

* * * * *

Late that afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Philip Peirce reached the Warren house. Three pulls at the bell brought no response, and all rattlings and shakings of the doorknob were without result. The door was as tightly closed as though it never expected to be opened again till the crack o' doom.

At the back of the house the same conditions existed. Not a door, not a window, would yield.

Nancy was plainly vexed. "The Prodigal Son had a much better time than this when he came home," she complained, ruefully.

She and Phil walked around to the front of the house again, and down the nasturtium-bordered path that led from the porch to the street. There was absolutely no sign of life anywhere.

Suddenly, Nancy heard the "touf-touf" of an automobile, and down the road at a rapid pace came Mr. James Thornton's gorgeous machine, the chauffeur its sole occupant.

"Henry," she said, walking to the edge of the sidewalk, "can you tell me where Mrs. Warren is?"

"No, miss, I cannot." He drew himself up stiffly. Mrs. Warren's daughter was evidently in his bad books.

"Is Mr. Thornton at home?" she asked, timidly.

"No, miss, he is not." His lips clicked. Then, with sudden condescension, and head held very high, eyes looking straight ahead, he added: "Mr. Thornton is away on his wedding trip."

"His what?" gasped Nancy, weakly.

"Him and Mrs. Warren was married yesterday," he said, proudly. "She's a fine, fine lady!" And, touching the visor of his cap, he started the machine down the street.

Nancy leaned against a tree, too stunned for words. Then, as the humor of the whole situation flashed over her, she began to laugh, and laughed until, for lack of breath, she couldn't laugh any longer.

"Why, it's—the funniest thing—I've ever heard of, Phil!" she gasped.

"Well, it keeps the 'shoals of money' in the family!" said Phil, philosophically, and then he howled.

"Yes," Nancy mused, still panting for breath, "mother once said that if I let him slip through my fingers some one else would snap him up before you could say 'Jack Robinson." Her eyes danced. "I wonder if anyone said 'Jack Robinson'?"

"No, darling, there wasn't time. But, at any rate, we've made our wedding call on our parents," said Phil, gayly, "and I think we might as well go back to 'little old New York'!"

Then, hand in hand, like two gladsome children, Mr. and Mrs. Philip Peirce retraced their steps toward the station.



THE LADY & THE CAR

By CHURCHILL WILLIAMS

"And, if you don't mind, old fellow, will you bring over the guns yourself?"

That had been Tony Rennert's parting charge as he bolted from the breakfast table at the Agawan Club for the dogcart which was scheduled to make connections with the eight-forty-five for the city. Two days before, after eighteen months of leisurely travel abroad, I had been met on landing with Tony's urgent message to join him in bachelor quarters at the Agawan, and with an alacrity born of the wish to get close again to one of the "old crowd," I had straightway come down to the club in the twenty-horse-power car which had carried me faithfully for six weeks over the French roads. Come down to find myself among a lot of men I did not know and for whom, to be entirely frank, I did not care.

Agawan had changed since last I was there. Then it was a big, comfortable shooting box, with a good cook, an old-fashioned barn, and, behind it, kennels for half a dozen clever dogs. Now it was triple its former size, rebuilt and modernized, with many bedrooms, a double-deck piazza and a dancing floor. The barn was gone, a fine stable had taken its place, and tennis courts and golf links occupied a large part of its one-time brush-grown pasturage and sloping meadows. In short, it was a country club, glaring in its fresh paint and with all the abominations which the name of that institution suggests to a man to whom knickerbockers and loose coats, a gun, a dog, a pipe and never the flutter of a petticoat the whole day long give selfish but complete satisfaction.