Tony had fallen into evil ways. I suspected as much as soon as I saw the manner of his living; I was sure of it when he informed me, with detestable glee, that there was to be a big house-warming dance the following evening, at which—well, Morleton, three miles away, had undergone a boom in my absence, and from the houses there and from the city, too, were to come—girls. Privately I made up my mind that the dance was a thing I would miss, and Tony must have read disapproval on my face, for he said no more about the festivities, and a little later proposed the shooting. There were woodcock left in the marshes; he had seen them—by accident, I guessed. He would send to the city for the guns, and we would put in a good day together. That sounded better, and I acquiesced promptly.

But before we had arisen from the table a waiter brought a telegram, and Tony's face fell into glum lines. It was an important business message and called him to the city over the next night. There was no help for it, he explained; but, as I had my car, he hoped I would worry it out alone till he got back. He would send down the guns by express against a further delay, and—there a lingering spark of his former affection for the twelve-bores glowed into life—would I personally see that they came over from the railroad station safely?

So it was that, a little after nine o'clock the following evening, in accordance with a wire from Tony, I drew up at the station platform just as the last train pulled in. A vibrator spring on the car was badly out of tune; I was bent over, testing it, when a voice exclaimed, joyfully, almost at my elbow: "Oh, there you are! What a scare I have had!"

I started and looked up. The impression I got was of a modish and very much up-tilted hat and of a veil which hid everything beneath its brim and the collar of a long, loose coat. These and nothing much besides; for the single post-lamp left the platform in semi-darkness. But I realized that this was a lady who addressed me, and that there was a mistake which I could not too speedily correct.

"I beg your pardon," I said, "but you see——"

"Of course I do," the voice interrupted. "If I had not, I dare say I would have sat on the station platform until—until you had finished fussing with that old machine of yours. Oh! I have heard all about your pet weakness. It was by the car I identified you. But I forgive you. You have waited a whole train for me. Go on with your tinkering. Only let me have a seat in the car, and tell the agent to bring over my trunk."

"Trunk!" I echoed.

"Yes, trunk! But not a very large one—you see, it is only for a few days. It will go nicely in the—now, what do you call the back part of your car?"

"The tonneau? But, really——"

The hat tilted just a shade more, and I was silenced by the command: "Not another word! Positively, you would keep me standing here forever. I had no idea you were so—contentious. Please help me in, and please have my trunk brought over. Here is my check. Then, if you insist, we can discuss the propriety of trunks on our way to the clubhouse."

I hesitated; but I gave her my arm, and, when she had settled herself in the seat beside the driver's, I walked over to where the agent stood beside the guns and a steamer trunk of modest size. I picked up the guns and told him to bring over the trunk. Together we put it into the tonneau, the while I debated with myself what to do and what to say. As a matter of fact, there seemed to be small choice. The lady was plainly determined to listen to no explanations. Moreover, to attempt to make her mistake clear to her just now was to place her in an embarrassing predicament; for whoever was to have met her had failed to appear, and already the station master had began to extinguish the lights. I caught at her words "the clubhouse." That could be none other than the Agawan. Well, I would take her there; the trip should be quickly made, and I would do my best to keep her in ignorance of my identity, at least until she was among friends.

"Now, this is very nice," she said, as I threw in the high gear and we shot into the darkness. "I've never been in an automobile before; we have very few of them in"—she named a little town in the South. "You must explain everything to me."

I welcomed the invitation, and promised myself to keep the topic alive as long as there was need for conversation. But I had hardly begun an enthusiastic exposition of the principles of a four-cylinder, gear-driven, twenty-horse-power, French touring car, when she checked me. "I forgot," she said. "We have never met before. We must start fair. You are to call me 'Margery'; I hate 'Miss Gans' from one who is really an old friend. And I shall call you—let me see?—yes, for the present, I shall call you 'Mr. Page.'"

I started. Who would not have started? "Page" is my Christian name. And I was to call her "Margery"? For just the briefest moment I wondered if my first impression of my companion could have been amiss. But I rallied my self-command and such shreds of gallantry as my life and my convictions had left. Undeniably she was a pretty girl, despite the disguising veil.

"It is a bargain," I said. "I shall hold you to it. But why the 'Mister Page'?"

"Toll to convention," she answered. "Besides, what would Edith say?"

That was a poser. Who in thunder was Edith? But I felt that I was on the right track. "As for Edith," I returned, "I don't believe she would object."

She shook her head wisely. "Well, per-haps not. But even ten years' friendship has its breaking point. And a wife——" She stopped there. She seemed to be considering the question.

"Doesn't it depend upon who is the wife?" I interpolated. Now I should learn if it was really I who was married.

"Yes," she admitted. "But yours! Oh, I know Edith! Better even than you do. I knew her long before you had even heard of her, and I could have told you things which would have been—useful to you—if only you had come to me first."

The thought was alluring. "I wish I had," I said, with more fervor than discretion.

She turned upon me quickly, and her face was very close to my own for an instant. Through the veil I managed to get a glimpse of her eyes. They pleased me immensely. "Why? Why? What do you mean?" she asked. There was a soft little lift to her voice which affected me queerly. I made sure that some part of me had made a short circuit with one of the battery wires. Then she lifted her chin. "But—nonsense!" she said. "How could you? I was in a convent school when you met and married Edith."

"And you haven't seen her since?"

"Since she was married? You know I haven't, you goose! Why, it is tonight I make my entree into the world of fashion?"

"At Agawan," I hazarded.

She nodded. "Where else? And you are to dance with me many times. Remember, I know none of the men there."

For the first time in my life I ceased to feel scorn for an accomplishment which I did not possess. But dancing, I reflected, was of the future, and the future must provide against itself. "Margery" was very much of the present. Then abruptly it occurred to me that the present would soon be of the past if we continued to travel as we were now moving; and I promptly cut down our speed by one-half. I explained that the rest of the road to the club was dangerous at night.

She gave a little shiver. "And there is no other road?"

I remembered that there was—a longer road—and at the first turn to the right I took to it. In a way it was a safer road, and if there was an accident—what would "Edith" say?

We slipped along in silence for a while. Then I asked her if she was warm enough. It was a balmy evening, with the faintest of air stirring. She laughed.

Her amusement stung me, but I had just identified a landmark, and knew the clubhouse to be less than a mile away. So I made another brilliant sally. "I am coming to that dance!" I announced.

She regarded me with an amazement which was obvious, though I could not see her face. And then, "Will you please to tell me," she inquired, "just when you made up your mind to that heroic act?"

After-reflection convinced me that nothing less than a criminal mistake in the mixing of my Rhine wine and seltzer was responsible for my reply. "Since I saw you," I answered, solemnly.

"Since you saw me?" Then something in the statement, of which I was not immediately aware, appeared to impress her with its humor. She laughed.

I gave the steering wheel a vicious jerk. We sheered dangerously. She uttered a little, frightened cry, and her gloved fingers closed upon my wrist. I was absolutely certain I had short-circuited a battery wire when, her hand still resting on my arm, she pleaded: "Forgive me for laughing. I remember now that Edith said you did not dance. You are coming this evening just for me, aren't you?"

What reply was there but the one I made?

"You poor fellow," she went on, and it seemed as if there were a soft pressure from her fingers. "You poor fellow. But—I tell you what we will do. We will watch the dancing together—as often as I can steal away. And we will have a long talk by ourselves, if-if——"

"If what?" I asked.

"If Edith doesn't mind!"

"Damn Edith!" was on my tongue, but politeness, rather than common sense, transmuted the sentence. "Oh, Edith won't mind," I declared, with conviction. And thereat we both laughed—though why, I am not sure. But all at once we seemed to know each other much better. And then the lights of the clubhouse came into view across the lawn, and we turned into the big gates.

During the passage of the driveway I devised an explanation. It was intended to salve my conscience for not plumping out the truth. The Lord alone knows what I intended should ensue. One thing only was clear to me—-we would have that "long talk to ourselves," if it could be contrived. So it was agreed between us that I was to come up to the dancing floor as soon as I had stabled the automobile and put on evening clothes. Our exact meeting place was a vague locality described by her as "wherever Edith is."

With that understanding we parted at the door of the clubhouse. I heard an attendant direct her to the ladies' dressing room, and him I commissioned to have her trunk conveyed where she might wish. As she disappeared within the doorway her hat brim gave me a saucy little nod of farewell.

When I was in my room the enormity of my offense and the absurdity of my position were forced upon me. Here I was impersonating another man and under promise to meet my victim in the very presence of the wife of the man I impersonated, perhaps face to face with the man himself. There could be no explanation, no palliation of the trick I had played, which would allow me to retire with a resemblance of countenance. Who would credit my statement of innocence, even was I willing to throw the burden of the mistake on the shoulders of—Margery? Margery! I pronounced the name aloud, but in a whisper, and liked the sound of it so well that I said it again.

Then I realized that I was standing in front of my shaving mirror, one hand clasping a collar, the other a tie, and that the glass reflected an expression positively disgusting in its rapture. I chucked the collar into a corner and sat down on the edge of the bed to think it out. At the end of twenty minutes I was where I had started in. But my mind was made up. At least she should not find me a coward. I would do exactly as I had promised.

I shaved and dressed. Half an hour later I was standing in the doorway of the dancing floor trying to discover where "Edith" was.

But "my wife," if present, inconsiderately was concealing her identity in the faces and figures of half a hundred or more women, not one of whom I knew. Margery apparently had not yet come upon the floor, or—the horrid thought obtruded itself—she had discovered who I was, or, rather, who I was not. And what more likely? I had been an ass not to think of this before. And as to the consequences? Each possibility was a shade more humiliating than the one before.

Then, just as I was about to turn away to hide myself, to forget myself, anywhere, anyhow, I saw Margery; and, to save my soul, I could not have left without a lingering look by which to remember all the sweet lines of her face and figure. Bereft of that long coat and close veil, for the first time I saw what I had only guessed at before. She had stepped from the shelter of a palm to lay a detaining hand upon the arm of an older woman; and as she stood there, with bright eyes regarding the dancers, her head tilted back, the thought of flight fled from me.

The woman she stood beside was not "Edith," but Mrs. "Ted" Mason—the wife of one of the best fellows I ever knew, and a stanch friend of mine. Instantly my resolve was made. Mrs. "Ted's" loyalty should be put to the supreme test. She should be my confessor, and, unless I was mistaken, the counsel for my defense. I started on my way around the hem of promenaders.

Twice I was delayed by the incursions of dancers, and when I reached the side of my prospective ally she was alone. Out on the floor a slender figure in lavender was smiling in the face of her partner—a man I knew I was to dislike exceedingly when I should meet him.

Mrs. "Ted's" eyes grew big when I stood before her. And when she spoke it was with the air of a tragedy queen. "Do I see aright? Is it you? Or is it your wraith? Is this Page Winslow? And is this scene of revelry—a dancing floor? Oh, Page, Page! In my old age to give me this shock is cruel—unlike you—utterly cruel, I say!"

My face burned for the shame I could not conceal, but I was beyond the point where any attack was to divert me. I explained—lies came so readily now. I was present to-night by promise to Tony Rennert, I said. Only by engaging to show myself at the dance had I been able to persuade him to give me his company for a day's shooting. And Tony was detained in the city, and I was here alone, unprotected, liable at any moment to be seized with stage fright and to swoon. Such a thing would be disgraceful and embarrassing as well to all my friends—in other words, to herself. No, I corrected myself, that was not quite true. There was one other person present who might remember me—a Miss Gans——

"Margery Gans!" Mrs. Ted's amazement left her speechless for a moment. Then, while the first words of my confession stuck in my throat, she burst out: "And you of all men! Why, she is just out of a convent school! Tonight is her first! How on earth——?"

It was harder than ever now to say what I was trying to say, and she gave me small opportunity. "Why? Why?" she resumed, and suddenly her voice took on a gravity which her mischievous eyes belied. "My dear Page, do you believe in the instrumentality of coincidence?"

My confusion was patent, and she went on. "Because, whatever you have believed, you must believe in it from this night. Do you know what has happened to Margery Gans?"

"What?" I gasped.

Mrs. "Ted" studied me from beneath lowered lids. "Oh!" she said, and "Oh!" again. Then she linked her arm in mine. "There are chairs behind this palm," she suggested.

We sat down. "Page," she said, "I would not have believed it of you if you had not told me yourself."

"What?" I asked, but her gaze was disconcerting; and when she smiled wisely, I did not repeat the question.

She laid her fan across my hand. "I wonder," she remarked, reflectively, "I wonder how and when you and Margery met. But, no, that is unfair. Don't tell me. I am very glad you did meet—that is all. And I was nearer to the truth than I thought when I asked you about coincidences. This is what I was going to tell you. Margery is the guest to-night of Edith Page—Mrs. Stoughton Page. At the last moment Edith's baby was taken ill with the croup, and she sent word she could not leave home. She asked me to act as chaperon. Soon afterward Stoughton Page arrived in his car with Margery, and must have hurried home at once when he heard the baby was sick, for I haven't been able to find him. I have told Margery that Mrs. Page was detained at home, but I have not told her the details, and I don't wish you to. She would think it more serious than it is, and it would spoil her evening."

I nodded.

"And now," she went on, "the affair is up to you and me. I am chaperon, and you are one of the few men she appears to know. What are you going to do about it?"

A minute before I would have replied: "Tell her the whole truth." But now a way out of the immediate complications seemed to present itself—a way beset with difficulties, but still a way. I made the one reply which seemed to be safe. "Do?" I said. "Do all I can to give Miss Gans a good time. I don't dance, you know, but——"

"But what?"

"But I'll hang around and talk to her and take her into supper—if she'll let me—and—all that sort of thing."

"You dear!" cried Mrs. "Ted." "You dear, self-sacrificing thing!" With this last she cocked a supercilious eye.

"But not if you're going to bait me, or make fun of me afterward," I qualified.

"I wouldn't think of it," declared Mrs. "Ted."

"And you promise not to mention my name to her, not even to allude to me? This sort of thing is altogether out of my line."

"You surprise me," she said, but she promised.

So it happened that, a little later, in one of those nooks which the genius of decorators devises, and the man of discernment discovers, Margery and I were having that talk—"all to ourselves." It developed that we had an affinity of tastes. It was her ambition to travel—she had never traveled. She delighted in long tramps—heretofore she had found no one to be her companion. She was sure that automobiling was "just the best sort of fun," judging from the one ride she had had. And so time slipped by, and I had utterly forgotten "Edith" and the other "Mr. Page," and everything else except one thing, when Mrs. "Ted's" voice, just outside the barrier of foliage which hid us, complained that Miss Gans could not be found anywhere.

Margery heard, and flushed. "Come on," she said. "This is disgraceful." She rose.

"But——" I objected.

"No buts," she insisted. "Have you forgotten Edith?"

"For the time being," I admitted.

She brushed past me. Her bearing was one of indignant scorn. But, over her shoulder, she remarked, as she looked back: "What a nice place this would be to eat supper."

I replied judiciously that whoever selected it for that purpose should anticipate the supper hour by early occupation. I added that it was my intention to pass the intervening time in the smoking room—alone.

She declared that I smoked too much. In Edith's absence, she supposed, it was her duty, etc. Supper was at twelve o'clock; eleven-thirty seemed to be about the right hour to resume occupation of the bower.

Mrs. "Ted" saw us coming to her, and waited. Margery presented me. Mrs. "Ted" was properly grave. She remarked that she had had the honor of knowing the gentleman so long that sometimes she forgot to put the "Mister" before his name. It was a contagious habit, she had observed.

I withdrew. Mrs. "Ted's" variety is infinite, and I was afraid she would forget—promises.

In the smoking room I got a corner to myself. But, not for long. Three men came and sat down near by; and, in company with long glasses filled with ice and other things, told stories. Most of these were of people of whom I knew nothing. But the mention of one name caught my attention. It was "Stoughton Page." It appeared that he had met with an accident early in the evening. His automobile had broken down on the way to meet the seven-fifty train, and he had footed it to the railroad station, only to find that whoever he was to meet there had not come down. He had crawled back to the club, and somebody called "Bobbie" had towed him to his home.

As I flung away my cigar and left the smoking room, I was more than' ever of the opinion that Mrs. "Ted's" conclusions upon the instrumentality of coincidence had excellent premises. But I was wary of another meeting with that lady, and so it wanted only a few minutes of twelve when my maneuvers brought me, unnoticed, I hoped, to the bower of my seeking. Only to find it empty. Nor was my search of the floor rewarded by a glimpse of the lavender gown. It was at this point that I began to call myself names, and it must have been that I spoke one of them aloud. If not, then mental telepathy had a remarkable demonstration.

"I would hardly call you a 'fool,' Mr. Page," said a laughing voice just behind me. "But, really, you are just a little shortsighted, aren't you?"

"I am sure I have been looking everywhere," I answered, reproachfully.

"For how long, and for whom?" she inquired.

"Let us discuss it in the bower," I suggested.

"How very improper!" she remarked. But she led the way in, and, for the hour that followed, the world began and ended for me just where a little semicircle of palms drew its friendly screen about Margery and me. I believe I ate something; I know I made two forays upon the supper table and hurried back just in time to come upon Mrs. "Ted," who made a most exasperating face at me, but said nothing. And I remember recording a mental note of Margery's fondness for sweetbreads en coquille. But of the rest my recollection retains only the picture of a slender girl in the depths of a big, cane chair, a slipper impertinently cocked upon the rung of another chair, the soft light which filtered through the leaves throwing into tantalizing shadow the curves of a mouth and the hide-and-seek play of blue eyes which were successfully employed in supplying me with an entirely new set of sensations.

This experience, absorbing to myself, apparently was not without its diversion to the other party, for there was just enough left of "Home, Sweet Home" to identify the air when Margery suddenly slipped from the chair, and I, perforce, followed her. "I will be ready in ten minutes," she told me. "Meet me downstairs." Then she turned—to run into the arms of Mrs. "Ted."

I waited by. There was no alternative; Mrs. "Ted" held me with a glance that definitely said: "Flight is at your peril."

She asked Margery a question. I did not catch the words, but Margery's reply was unmistakable. "Why, of course, Mr. Page will take me home. Edith expects me, you know." And with that she passed into the dressing room.

Mrs. "Ted's" perplexity would have been comic from another point of view than mine. To me it was like unto the frown of Jove. There was a little pause before she spoke. "Was there ever such another man?" she said. "If it was anyone but you, Page, I would tell that girl the truth at once. Mr. Stoughton Page has not come for her, and has sent no word. I see why, now, though I don't understand it all, by any means. But—well, I am going to trust the rest to you, only—remember!"

I never liked Mrs. "Ted" as I did at that moment, and my liking was not altogether selfish, either. As for her "Remember," it was—significant.

But when she had followed Margery, and I was walking slowly down the stairway, an appreciation of my own position began to obscure every other feeling. A trickle of something cold seemed to pass down my spine, and I am not accounted timid. In a haze I blundered over to the table. There I had the sense to sit down and try to fit together the few facts which must guide me.

The proposition shaped itself something like this: Given an automobile and a young woman who believes you to be the husband of her dearest friend—which you are not—how are you, without chaperon or voucher, to deliver her, safely and without destruction of her faith in you or of the good opinion of others for herself, into the keeping of this other man's wife—residence unknown—at three o'clock in the morning?

I took up the premises separatively. First, the automobile. I lighted the lamps and cranked the engine. The motor started sweetly, and mentally I checked off the first item. Second, the young woman. I recalled my experience of the evening, and decided that, as Mrs. "Ted" trusted me, Margery would have no reason to distrust me. So far so good. Third, "the safe delivery." That depended upon knowledge of the place we were to reach, and of the roads thereto.

I hunted up a stableman, and asked him for the shortest and best route to Mr. Stoughton Page's place. He gave me directions. I made him repeat them. As the repetition was a little more confusing than the original information, I thanked him and decided to stake my chances on the apparent facts that the traveling was excellent and the distance only eight miles. The devil of it was there were four turnouts. I suspected that, before I was through, Mr. Stoughton Page's reputation as an automobile driver would not be undamaged in the estimation of at least one person. But for that and for what must be when the crisis arrived—well, it was inevitable. I threw in the clutch and drew out of the stable. At any rate, there were the hours back of me, and Margery was—Margery. There was sweetness in this thought, and infinite anguish, too.

She met me at the steps, hooded and veiled, and, with a pretty air of possession which made my heart leap, instructed the doorman to have "the trunk put into the tonneau, please." A minute later we were off, Mrs. "Ted" watching our departure and calling out: "Remember! I consider myself responsible for Miss Gans until she is with Mrs. Page!"

"Miss Gans" and "Mrs. Page"! Even to my dull comprehension those formalities conveyed their warning. A quickened sense of how I stood toward the slender girl, nestled so comfortably in the seat beside me, stimulated my determination to do nothing, to say nothing, which she could recall to my shame when—when the time came.

I must have administered my intentions with strictness; for, presently, she said, suppressing the suspicion of a yawn: "Are you so very tired? Am I such dreadfully slow company?"

"Neither," I said, with emphasis, and stopped there.

She laughed. "You meant to say both. But the automobile does make one silent, doesn't it? And contented, too. I shall look back on this evening for a long time to come."

"Thank you."

"For what?"

"For the pleasure of your company."

She became very grave over my statement. "If you really mean that, I am very glad," she said. "For I like you, Mr. Page, 'deed I do. And I will confess you are very different from the picture I had made of you—for myself."

"For yourself?" I began, quickly, but caught myself and added, with unimpeachable politeness: "I am flattered that I should improve on acquaintance."

"You surely do," she replied. "Yet it is not so much that you do not look exactly as I had imagined. It is not that. But, you see, all I had heard of you came from Edith, and she—she nearly made me loathe you in advance by her continual singing of your praises. I had—yes, I had about decided to stay away to-night, when I thought it would be better to come and see for myself."

"And you aren't sorry?"

"Of course not. Haven't I told you?"

"Margery!" I cried. Duty and discretion slipped my mind. Anyhow, I reflected, a woman who would make a fool of a man as "Edith" had done deserved no consideration. "Margery!" I repeated, very earnestly, and something in my voice must have warned her.

She uttered a little "Oh!" and drew away from me. But I leaned toward her, and spoke her name again.

And just then we struck a hummock on the side of the road, and the jolt threw me violently against the steering wheel. Margery clutched at me and held on. We came to a dead stop, and she sank back into the seat.

For an instant afterward I wavered between saying what it was in my heart to say and silence. But my pose was not heroic, and, to speak the entire truth, I was having some difficulty in regaining my breath. So I got out of the car slowly and explained. Something was wrong with the machinery, probably a ground wire, broken by the shock. It was nothing at which to be alarmed. Was she hurt?

She assured me she was not and that alarm was furtherest from her. I began my investigation, but the broken ground wire was not the only trouble. It I promptly repaired, and still the engine would not respond to my cranking. There were spasmodic explosions, but they came to naught. Nor was the trouble due to any one of the half dozen primary accidents for which, in turn, I made tests. There was a fine, fat spark at the plugs, the vibrator buzzed properly, the gasoline feed appeared to be adequate, the carburettor was performing its duty, and the engine did not seem to be overheated. The manifest fact was that the motor would not run. A few irregular beats, I say, I got out of it by almost winding my arm out of its socket with the crank, only to have the thing die away before I could regain my seat in the car. In my desperation I advanced the spark to a point which resulted in a "back kick" so tremendous that I was nearly thrown into the air.

Margery was patient and sympathetic through it all. She sat very still and watched me. When at last I came upon the real trouble and she understood from my pause and silence that I was puzzled by it, she asked: "Will you do something for me?"

"Anything," I answered.

"Then, take all the time you need. It doesn't matter in the least about me. I am very comfortable, and only sorry I can't help you."

"But you do help me," I said; "you help me a great deal. If you only knew how much, you——"

"Tell me about it," she put in quickly—"what it is that has made us stop."

I obeyed reluctantly. "It is this little spring." I held it up. "You see, it closes the valve, and the end of it is broken, and the valve does not act as it should. The worst of the thing is that I have no substitute with me."

"And you can't mend the spring?"

"I'm going to try. But I must keep you waiting—perhaps quite a while."

"And that is all that is worrying you? Won't you forget I am here?"

"The one thing I cannot do," I answered. I dropped the spring and stepped to the side of the car. "Margery!" I said. "Margery, don't you understand? I can't forget."

"But you have forgotten!" she interposed instantly. "You have forgotten Edith."

"Edith!" I ejaculated, in exasperation. "Edith may go to the devil for all I care!"

"Mr. Page!" she cried. There was no trace of raillery in her voice. I had hurt her, and I knew, even in that moment, that for this she would never forgive me, unless—unless——

I told her the truth. "I am not Mr. Page," I said, bluntly.

She leaned forward and gazed at me in blank amazement. But what she was able to see of my face must have convinced her that I spoke the truth. "Not Mr. Page?" she echoed, faintly, and shrank from me.

"No," I said; "my name is Winslow. And I am not married to Edith, or to anyone else. Mr. Stoughton Page, so far as I know, is at home and has been all evening."

I waited for her to speak, but she sat very still, her hands dropped in her lap, her head turned from me, and I thought that I knew a little of what she was thinking, and every second, which passed made it harder for me to have her think this.

"Let me tell you something," I said at last. "It was a mistake, and it was all my fault. I did not know who you were when I first saw you. I only thought of taking you quickly to the club and leaving you there before you should find out that I was not the person I let you think I was. But on the way to the club I—I—it seemed to me as if I must have known you all my life. And then—I saw Mrs. Mason, and she has been my friend for so long, and—everything helped me. So, when no one came to take you home, I could not bear to give you up that way and maybe never see you again. And I did—what I did. And—that is all."

She had not moved while I spoke and her face was denied me. But now she looked up. The veil hid her eyes; I could only guess at what was in her mind.

"You let me call you 'Mr. Page'?" she said, after a moment.

"Page is my first name," I answered.

She gave a little gasp. Somehow, I felt that my case was not so nearly hopeless. "And Mrs. Mason—did she—was she also helping to deceive me?" she asked.

"She thought it was Mr. Stoughton Page who brought you to the club. She never knew, until we were leaving, that you did not know who I was. Oh, it was all my fault, all my fault, I tell you!" I finished, as she regarded me in silence. "I let you think everything you did—I never tried to help you out, after the first, because I couldn't. I loved you, Margery."

"You took a strange way to prove it," she returned.

Her head was thrown back, her gloved hands pressed together. "Oh! oh! I hate you! It was contemptible! To take advantage of my trust! To lie to me! How could you do it?"

I turned away miserable, bitter with myself. And all the while I worked on the valve, stretching the spring so it would do its work and replacing the part, she said nothing. Even when I had started the engine and found it to work smoothly and climbed back in the car, she was silent. But she drew away from me with a movement which was unmistakable.

The east had begun to lighten long since, and there was a white streak along the horizon, streaked with the clearest of amber and rose, as we came to a crossroad, a mile on, and I got a glimpse of a signpost. If its information was correct, I had made the turns in the road aright, and we were within half a mile of our destination. A minute later we topped a slope, and I marked down a large, stone house which answered the description I had from the club stableman. It was approached by a driveway bordered with trees and shrubbery.

I brought the car to a stop at the gates. "I believe this is Mr. Page's place," I said.

"Yes," she said. It was the first word she had spoken since she knew who I was.

"And before we go in," I went on, "I thought you might wish to tell me who I am to be."

"I have nothing to do with that," she answered. "Please take me to the house."

"But," I insisted, "they will probably ask questions. If they do not, they will wonder. And I can hardly be a stranger to you—under the circumstances."

"You will please take me to the house," she repeated.

I started up the driveway, and once or twice it seemed to me she was about to speak. But she did not, and at the steps I got down and rang the bell. It was a matter of five minutes before there was response. Then there came the faint sound of footsteps from within, and the door was opened. A tall man, in dressing gown, candle in hand, sleep in his eyes, replied to my inquiry. Yes, this was Mr. Stoughton Page's house, and he was Mr. Page. What did I want?

Before I could explain, a voice spoke at my elbow, and Margery stepped into the flickering circle of light. "Only to ask you for shelter," she said.

The man in the dressing gown stared at her, then recognition sprang into his face, and he put down the candle hastily. "Margery Gans!" he cried.

"None other," she answered. "Margery Gans, at your service, or, rather, at your door, and, with her, Mr. Page Winslow, to whom she owes her presence here and an evening of experiences besides. We are just from the dance at the club, at which, sir, you failed me. Is it a welcome, or must we go further?"

He held the door open and began to explain. Presently he realized that I was standing by, and urged me to come in. But I said no, I must return to the club, and all the while I looked at Margery, hoping for some little sign.

But she kept her face resolutely upon her host, and said nothing. Then, as I turned to go, she laid a hand upon his arm. "Oh!" she exclaimed, "I had almost forgotten my trunk! It is in the car. Could you find some one to bring it in?"

"Of course," he said, and turned back into the house. She threw a swift look over her shoulder, raised her veil, and stepped to the doorway. She held out both her hands.

I took them in mine. What I did concerned only us two. "Good-by, Margery," I said at last.

"No, no, not really good-by," she answered. "Just good-by for a little while——" She faltered.

"Page," I prompted.

"My 'Mr. Page,'" she repeated, softly, and, at the sound of returning footsteps, slipped from me into the dimness of the hall, and was gone.



THE GIFTS OF GOLD

Desire of joy—how keen, how keen it is! (Oh, the young heart—the young heart in its Spring!) There waits adventure on the road of bliss— A challenge in each note the free birds fling; The spur of pride to dare us climb and kiss— Desire of joy—how keen, how keen it is!

Desire of tears—but this is sweet, most sweet! (Oh, the young heart—the young heart in its Spring!) That sits a little while at Sorrow's feet And tastes of pain as some forbidden thing, That draught where all things sweet and bitter meet— Desire of tears—ah me, but it is sweet!

Desire of joy and tears—ah, gifts of gold! (Oh, the young heart—the young heart in its Spring!) Once only are these treasures in our hold, Once only is the rapture and the sting, And then comes peace—to tell us we are old— Desire of joy and tears—ah, gifts of gold!

THEODOSIA GARRISON.



ON LOVE TOKENS

By FRANK S. ARNETT

Recent excavations outside Pompeii's Stabian gate brought to light the bodies of a hundred hapless fugitives smothered two thousand years ago within actual sight of the fleet that came to save them. Necklaces were still borne on the charred but once beautiful necks of the women, and bracelets encircled their slender wrists. Thrice around the skeleton arm of one wound a chain of gold, and priceless stones were set in rings that still clung to the agony-clinched fingers of those that there had faced the fatal fumes of Vesuvius.

As one reflects upon these discoveries, he is at first inclined to philosophize on the slightness wrought by time in woman's nature. For were not all these blazing gems and precious metals but proof that the jewel madness that burns in her veins to-day has coursed through woman's veins throughout the ages?

But such a reflection is only partly correct. Among those bracelets, chains of gold and sparkling rings were many that proved no love of luxury, no mere desire for barbaric bedecking. Surely some were tokens of love, seized at that last moment when a hideous death approached; seized, too, when the choice lay between objects of far greater intrinsic value and these precious trinkets—precious because speaking with silent eloquence of long gone throbs of ecstasy, and of a bliss such as these women, even had they escaped, could never again have known. Glance around the room in which you are now seated, and, whether you are gray haired and dignified, or with youthful happiness are anticipating to-night's cotillion, dare you deny that the supposition is probable? Is there not somewhere near you, in sight, where occasionally your hand may touch it with regretful love, or hidden in some secret drawer whence you rarely trust yourself to take it—is there not a jewel, a scented glove, a bit of ribbon, a faded violet, or a lock of hair? Whatever it is, in time of a catastrophe—hastened flight—would it not first be seized in preference to your costliest treasure?

If you have no such possession, doubtless you are more peacefully content than those of us that have, but you have missed the supreme and most agonizing happiness with which the race is cursed.

For long before those Pompeiian days, when Nydia would have welcomed renewed blindness in exchange for one glimpse of Glaucus, or of some token of his care, men and women have cherished the gifts of those they loved. True, not all have valued them, nor have all had the power so to do. The beautiful Valois, quivering beneath the brand of the red-hot iron because of her madness for the cold, white diamond, knew nothing of the secret bliss in possessing purely as a token of love either a diamond or a rose. Nor did Maria Louisa, leaving her Jove-like husband to his fate, and escaping to Vienna with the crown's most costly jewels. Nor, I am afraid, did the majority of the American women competing in the attempt to eclipse royalty itself in their display of gems at the coronation of King Edward.

There have been others, too, that knew nothing of the love token—others whose ignorance of it was less deserving of censure. None was exchanged by Dante and Beatrice, even though from their first meeting, as he has told, "love lorded it over my soul!" Nor do I recall that any passed between Petrarch and Laura, even though at her death he wrote that "there is nothing more left me to live for"! But these were examples of the super-ideal love, such as is seldom known on earth, and such as, doubtless, would be unsatisfying to you or to me. We of a generation that demands, above all, the tangible in everything, whether financial or flirtatious, of the heart or of the stomach—we must have, must we not, real kisses, warm from the mouth, and actual love tokens, freely offered by or passionately pleaded from the hand of her we love?

In this we are far from original—although, as I hope to show, men, at least, are to-day more influenced by such keepsakes than ever before in the history of the world. The great majority of the human race, from peasant girls to empresses, and from shepherd lads to omnipotent tyrants, have known, to some extent, the sadness and the joy of the love token. The ballad that the lover-poet addressed to one who was "just a porcelain trifle, just a thing of puffs and patches," but who was, just the same, his adored—the ballad love token pleased even that unemotional doll. "And you kept it and you read it, belle Marquise!" Silly or supreme, all are vulnerable.

Therefore it is with no lack of authority that you learn that the human race has known it for some centuries—this love token. It took the form of birds among the ancient Greeks, although as for this purpose the birds were sold in the Athenian public market, the token lost its chief charm—secrecy. The Romans had a better—the ring, which, as the symbol of eternity, like the Egyptian snake touching its mouth with its tail, was the ideal emblem of love, which, too, should be, even if it seldom is, eternal.

Of course there were times, ages ago, when the love token had no place. When man was universally polygamous, and when the form of marriage was by capture, it can scarcely have existed. Nor could it have known the days when the jeunesse doree of Babylonia and Assyria assembled before the temple where twice a year all marriageable girls were brought together to be sold. Probably, also, the bride of early Britain never heard of one. As she was not permitted to refuse an offer of marriage, how could she ever have given a token of love?—at least to the man that became her husband.

But in time even the British maiden knew the love token. An ancient manuscript found in the Harleian library says that it was decreed that when lovers parted their gifts were to be returned intact or in an equivalent value, "unless the lover should have had a kiss when his gift was presented, in which case he can only claim half the value of his gift; the lady, on the contrary, kiss or no kiss, may claim her gift again!" Surely the first part of this was needless; was a love token, given in person, ever unaccompanied by a kiss? "However," continues this ordinarily quite sensible decree, "this extends only to gloves, rings, bracelets and such like small wares."

I protest against "wares" in such association. It sounds something too commercial for so fragile and fleeting a thing as love. And, too, it is an error to speak of a glove as though it were of less value than an automobile. In a lover's eyes the merest trifle is the most cherished token of love. Her carte des dances, for instance—for has not that dainty program and its tiny pencil been suspended by its silken cord from her soft, white arm? Or—but certainly this is no trifle—a satin slipper, absurdly small and with adorable curves.

Above all others, however, the miniature is the typical token of love. There lives no woman whose breath comes more quickly at the sound of some man's voice, or whose fingers tremble with happiness as they open his longed-for letters; no man whose hand, at a word lightly spoken of the one most dear to him, would instantly seek, were it still worn, the sword at his side; no one even faintly remembering the days of youth and longing and sweet unrest, whose heart does not respond to the mere mention of the miniature. The old family portraits, in their heavy frames of gilt, are very precious; even the hideous crayons must not be hidden in the garret, although we may wish they never had been drawn; and in the ancient baronial homes of England are portrait galleries of which the owners are justly proud.

But these are works treasured largely because of inherited arrogance. At best they are a part of the furnishing, at times almost a part of the very architecture. How different the miniature! Whereas the family portrait is for show, here we have that which proverbially in secret has been cherished. Quickly it has been thrust next a fair, lace-covered and fright-panting bosom; it has been the sole souvenir of a stolen happiness, an almost voice-gifted reminder of dear, dead days of the long ago; it was the pledge of his return given in the hasty or hard-fought flight of the daring youth whose image it is; or perhaps it bears the lady's face, and has been found on the breast of a warrior slain in battle; or, dearer than holy relic, was still caressed by the poet troubadour, even though he knew his mistress long ago proved faithless. More than one queen, for reasons of state, placed at the side of a mighty king, has gazed each night in hopeless adoration at the miniature of some one far from the throne, yet who, supreme and alone, reigned in her heart.

No token of love permitted by Venus has been the recipient of half the secret kisses the miniature may boast; none has so frequently been washed in tears. Almost, in fact, the tiny bit of color set in bijou jewels might be hidden by a single pressure of the lips, and one tear would be to it a bath of beauty. Indeed, its very name reveals it as the love token, for it comes to us from a certain word of French having in English the most velvet sounding and most endearing meaning in our somewhat limited language of passion.

Miniatures, to be sure, are the love tokens of comparative maturity—and, unfortunately, of comparative prosperity. Professor Sanford Bell, fellow in Clark University, who has the somewhat dubious honor of being the pioneer in the scientific treatment of the emotion of love between the sexes—I dislike that line intensely, but, really, I see no way out of it—has discovered that "as early as the sixth and seventh year presents are taken from their places of safekeeping, kissed and fondled as expressions of love for the absent giver." This is very beautiful and, doubtless, very true, but at the presumable age of the reader—anywhere from eighteen to eighty—one would kiss a miniature rather than a bird's nest or an apple, however rosy the latter may have been last winter.

Miniatures, flowers, handkerchiefs, gloves and ribbons, then, ever have been the favorite love tokens. We in the America of to-day are inclined to substitute houses and lots or steam yachts. But this is a temporary error. In time we will return to the glove, which means the same as the honestly outstretched or lovingly clasping hand; and to the flowers, the significance of each of which was perfectly understood by the old time Greek and Roman, himself gathering the chaplet that was to grace his sweetheart's brow. Better a thousand times than the wretched watch chains of hair worn by our fathers would be the embroidered handkerchiefs tucked triumphantly in their hats by the gallants of Elizabeth's day. That, to be sure, was a bit flamboyantly boastful; to exhibit a love token is as criminal as to boast of a kiss. The actor-lover is alone in clamoring for the calcium.

In this secrecy, so essential to the love token, our writers of romance have found salvation. Even Fielding, to whom we owe the birth of the English novel, could not overlook it—although we are almost asleep when we reach the point where Billy Booth, about to depart, is presented by Amelia with a collection of trinkets packed in a casket worked by her own fair hands. It wasn't the least bit like it, was it?

The fact is, we must turn to France for the real thing, and to whom more satisfyingly than to Dumas and his reckless musketeers, each of whom, as well as the author, dwelt in "a careless paradise," and constantly at hand had some reminder of her who, for the moment, was the one woman on earth. We scarcely have a bowing acquaintance with these three worthies before the valiant D'Artagnan makes the almost fatal but well-intentioned mistake of calling the attention of Aramis to the fact that he has stepped upon a handkerchief—a handkerchief Aramis, in fact, has covered with his foot to conceal from a crowd of roisterers; a love token from Mme. de Bois-Tracy—a dainty affair, all richly embroidered, and with a coronet in one corner.

Again, surely you are neither too old nor too young to remember this:

At the moment she spoke these words a rap on the ceiling made her raise her head, and a voice which reached her through the ceiling cried:

"Dear Madame Bonacieux, open the little passage door for me, and I will come down to you."

Melodramatic? Certainly. Cheap? I'm not so sure—in fact, no! not to any man whose heart is not far grayer than his beard. For then commenced as pretty a race as ever was—Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D'Artagnan speeding from Paris to London, D'Artagnan bearing a letter; each in turn to take it as they are killed by the cardinal's hirelings—all this to save the honor of Anne of Austria by bringing back the love token given by her to the Duke of Buckingham, who keeps it in a tiny chapel draped with gold-worked tapestry of Persian silk, on an altar beneath a portrait of the woman he loves.

D'Artagnan's part in that adventure is the most gallant deed known in all the literature of love tokens. There have been similar gifts that were more tragic; what was the famous diamond necklace but a hopeless, mad love token from the Cardinal de Rohan to Marie Antoinette? And there have been those that were more sad; recall the great Mirabeau, dying amid flowers that were themselves death, drinking the hasheesh that was poison, placing on his forehead the tiny handkerchief drenched with the tears of the one beautiful woman that disinterestedly had loved him; the one that, forced from his last bedside, had refused a casket filled with gold and had left behind this final, mute and eloquent token of her love.

The poets, of course, ever have had a greater affection for love tokens than have the novelists. With some this has been real; with others "copy." Keats, who, through all his brief life, knew the consummate luxury of sadness, had on his deathbed the melancholy ecstasy of a letter from his love—and this he lacked the courage to read, for it would have anguished him with a clearer knowledge of all the exquisite happiness he was leaving on earth; his love, like his art, having been beautiful in its immaturity. And so this last token of love, unread, was placed at his own desire beside him in his coffin.

Decidedly we are less touched by Tom Moore, who desired that, at his death, his heart should be presented to his mistress:

Tell her it liv'd upon smiles and wine Of the brightest hue while it lingered here.

Which fact must have been a great comfort to the recipient of this final love token.

But Byron was the man for love tokens. To "Mary" on receiving her picture, to "a lady" who sent him a lock of her hair braided with his own, and to scores of others, he wrote still living lines. Several such verses seem now more ludicrous than lovely. To her who presented him with the velvet band that had bound her tresses, he vowed:

Oh! I will wear it next my heart; 'Twill bind my soul in bonds to thee; From me again 'twill ne'er depart, But mingle in the grave with me.

This was written in 1806. He was then eighteen. Think of the love tokens "binding his soul," and otherwise encumbering him, during the eighteen years that followed, and of all those, if he kept his promises, that now "mingle in the grave" with him! Fortunately, however, the poet had the happy facility of disencumbering himself. His love tokens to one unfortunate were a chain and lute. The gifts were charmed, "her truth in absence to divine." The chain shivered in the grasp of any other that took it from her neck; the chords of the lute were mute when another attempted to sing to her of his love. And how in his element was Byron when he could write to her:

'Tis past—to them and thee adieu— False heart, frail chain and silent lute.

But, despite Moore's insincerity and Byron's vagaries, the man of to-day more frequently, and longer than woman, cherishes his tokens of love.

How often do men bring breach of promise suits? Women—none possibly that you or I personally know—will calmly enter the courtroom and brutally exhibit their love letters and love tokens—the most sacred things on earth, are they not?—to indifferent jurors, gleeful reporters and the gloating public.

Compare such a courtroom scene with the floral games of the Toulouse of long ago, and the legendary origin of the golden violet. Imprisoned by her father because of her love, the girl threw from between the bars a bouquet to her lover—a bouquet of a violet, an eglantine and a marigold. In a later siege, the lover saved the father's life, but lost his own. Dying, he took the flowers from his bosom and implored that they be returned to his sweetheart. The maiden's death followed quickly. All she had on earth she left, in memory of her love token, to the celebration of the floral games, and the golden violet became the troubadours' most cherished prize.

There are still such girls—but they are not often met with, and, once met with, are likely to have changed on a second meeting. "Pale ghosts of a passionate past come thronging," at times, to them perhaps; more likely they join with their companions in cynically singing:

But now how we smile at the fond love token, And laugh at the sweet words spoken low.

This phase of woman's character is not particularly novel. Poor Sir John Suckling, long curled, arrayed in velvets and satins, a princely host, seemingly the typical gallant, yet secretly devoured by melancholy, a suicide at the end, doubtless knew whereof he spoke when he said:

I am confirmed a woman can Love this, or that, or any man: This day she's melting hot, To-morrow swears she knows you not.

The twentieth century girl, of the rare, real sort, cherishes her love tokens not, perhaps, with the same, but with an equal, affection as she of troubadour days. Her tokens, to be sure, are different:

Your boxing gloves slyly I've fastened Out of sight in the corner, right here. I'd put them up high, but I "dassent," You see it would look rather queer!

And that the twentieth century girl of this sort, even if boxing gloves are love tokens with her, is just the same dear, old-time girl we all love, she proves by her ultimate confession:

Dear old chap, I'm not given to gushing, You know, but I'm tired to-night. . . . . . I think I am centuries older, Yet if you were here I dare say, I should put my head down on your shoulder And cry—you remember my way!

Despite this up-to-dateness, this true good fellowship, or perhaps because of it, many women still living there are that have known the anguish of a love token that should have been destroyed in the long ago—in the long ago when the heartbreak had come—and gone, as they thought. There have been women of supreme beauty and of brainy splendor, dressed to descend where the words were to be spoken, "Until death do you part"—who at that last moment of freedom have seized with a curse and angrily torn into shreds the cherished souvenir of a love of—oh, when was it? Other brides there have been, arranged for the sacrifice, that have locked the door while there was yet time, and, kissing the love token of that long ago, have thrust it into their bosom, that their heart might beat against it even while, kneeling at the altar, they whispered, "I will."

You don't believe it? Oh, very well; some day this madness, that is rearoused by a faded violet or a time-stained ribbon, may enter into even your life. But I hope you may be spared it.

A man? Ah, how often when he has grappled sturdily with duty, with honor—how often has the love token, with divine promise, stared him in the face and cried like Clarimonde returned from the grave:

If thou wilt be mine, I shall make thee happier than God himself in His paradise; the angels themselves will be jealous of thee. I am Beauty—I am Youth—I am Life—come to me!—together we shall be Love. Our lives will flow on like a dream—in one eternal kiss.

Has enough been said to cause you to wonder why no one has written the history of the love token? Such a stately and wondrous work it should make! Why has no one honored it with even the rambling lightness of an essay? Elia could have done that much—and Leigh Hunt have done it even better. Lamb, it is true, has talked with quaint airiness of valentines, which are a sort of love token, and has admitted, poor old bachelor! that the postman's knock on St. Valentine's Day brings "visions of love, of Cupids, of Hymens!—delightful, eternal commonplaces; which, having been, will always be."

But this, while, perhaps, the essence of the love token, is not its history, and I shall hazard a guess as to why that is not written. The reason is that it is not only the cherished token of a woman's love, but is also the irritating reminder of her equality with man. At the altar she unhesitatingly swears to love eternally—an oath sometimes beyond her power to keep; but in increasing numbers she refuses to make the promise of obedience—a promise always possible to fulfill. With the freedom that in this generation is hers, even before marriage, has come a fierce desire for monopoly, and to such a one the token of a single love has lost its tenderness. She keeps such tokens by the score, with all the pride of a Sioux warrior in his array of scalps. The man lovingly cherishes a single one. To her he is an incident in life's story. To him she is its climax.

With this increased freedom permitted in woman's conduct, the love tokens she gives have become even more treasured, for the liberty she now possesses has turned her love tokens into fertilizers of a slumbering jealousy. As they were unknown when woman had no choice, was bought or captured, so they became again unknown in the one-time commonplace of domesticity, wherein there was no more room for the preservation of love tokens than there would be in a seraglio under lock and key. Non-possession, or, at least, uncertainty, is for the love token a perfectly safe endowment policy in the insurance company of passion. Thus it is that the liberty to-day given woman in American society has made the love token more treasured than ever it has been in all the history of the world. Yet no one writes its history; not only because of the angering equality it bespeaks, but also, and chiefly, because the men that could write it best are those that mingle something akin to a curse with the kiss they secretly press upon some trifling souvenir, men to whom it has brought suffering, or to whom only a hopeless longing after ideal love is represented by the token—which is rarely the evidence of triumph, but rather of regret, the reminder of something lost or unattained.

But even those that suffer most at sight of some such trifle, those to whom it would be anguish to write its history, would not for a throne part with it. And yet you, perhaps, are one of those that will have no conception of the meaning of all that I have said. Do you know what it is never to have felt the supremity of the love token? Are you so engulfed in the greed for gold that it could not touch you even were it to be slipped into your grasping fingers—so keen for power or so lustful for fame? Or you may be of those that believe romantic love to belong to the abnormal. But, in either case, even to you, like De Maupassant's horror-stricken youth dragged to the threshold of the priesthood, the day may come when you will shriek:

To never love—to turn from the sight of all beauty—to put out one's own eyes—to hide forever crouching in the chill shadows of some cloister—to visit none but the dying—to watch by unknown corpses!

For that is what it is to live without touching your lips to a token of love—even of a love that is lost.



TIMON CRUZ

Oh, lovely is the quinta in the warm and sunny morn, Acequima's ripple softly to the coming of the dawn; Fresh breezes toss the branches green, the chill of dusk is past, Sheer joy of living fills the world! Rare hour, too sweet to last! The roses fling their petals wide, their fragrance fills the air; It mingles with the orange buds which blossom everywhere; The birds chant loud their matins; all the earth seems newly born. Ah, happy is the quinta in the warm and sunny morn.

Oh, lovely is the quinta in the quiet afternoon When hushed and calm the breezes lie; the earth in lang'rous swoon Receives the sun's hot kisses; and the watchful hawk on high In breathless ether lonely hangs; faint rings the parrot's cry. The stillness is idyllic. As the slow sun swings round One feels earth's pulses beating; hears them throbbing through the ground, The grass where drowsy insects hum, the eaves where pigeons croon; Ah, lovely is the quinta in the tranquil afternoon.

Oh, lovely is the quinta in the gorgeous tropic night, When earth is drenched with sweetness, and the moonshine glimmers white Across the path, 'mid shadows wide, and outlines, too, the wall Where stand the broad banana trees and lemon flowers fall. A whisper low beyond the wall, a name below the breath— For Life is full of treachery, yet Love is Lord of Death— The tinkle of a gay guitar, a cry, a horse in flight— Ay Dios! guard the quinta in the gorgeous tropic night.

AUGUSTA DAVIES OGDEN.



AT HER WINDOW

(Serenade.)

By FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN

Come to thy window, Love, And through the lattice bars Show me a fairer sky above. With two more lovely stars; So shall the summer night Know new depths of delight, And I in dreams grow wise Remembering thine eyes.

Come to thy window, Sweet, And wide the lattice swing, That vagrant zephyrs may repeat What words my lips shall sing Unto your ears anew, Up from the fragrant dew, That all your dreams may be Like those that gladden me.

Come to thy window:—soft! Thy footstep light I hear. About me silence, but aloft A melody most dear. It is thy voice that fills The night's blue cup and spills Into the air the word A rose breathes to a bird.

Come to thy window:—so, I glimpse the gleam of grace. Rose of all roses now I know Featured in thy fair face: Now all love's joy is mine Save one heart that is thine. Dearest, my dream is this— Thy heart's beat and thy kiss!



THE LATE BLOSSOMING OF ELVIRA

By HARRIET WHITNEY DURBIN

In the house of Lawrence there were many daughters, and the eldest thereof was Elvira.

At the age of thirty-two Elvira, to the budding younger Lawrences, was hopelessly aged and sere, and Eulalie, in particular, a lately opened blossom of eighteen, made it a matter of daily duty to keep Elvira's soul from closing its eyes, even in the briefest nap, upon this fact.

Elvira had grown into her spinsterhood without rebellion and with the quietude of mind conferred by an even disposition. She had been a trifle old-maidish in her youth. That was in the era of bangs and frizzes and heads of hair that resembled ill-used dish mops.

"Gaudy but not neat," had been Elvira's comment, and she let her light brown locks lie softly close to her head, undipped and unkinked. And mankind, with eyes accustomed to the ever present moppy snarls and curls, vaguely supposed Elvira to be behind the times, and amiably passed her by.

Later, Elvira developed the spinsterly accomplishment of darning her own delicate silk stockings to finished perfection, and was promptly importuned by all the young Lawrences to darn theirs. She consented—and her doom was pronounced.

When twenty-five years of life had deepened the smooth pink of Elvira's cheek and amplified the lissome curves of her figure, her next younger sister, Hazel, a girl of twenty-two, had asked her to sit in the drawing room and play propriety on the evenings when the younger sister received callers, and she had done so.

When the matrimonial destiny of Hazel was fulfilled, Marion was coming forward to be chaperoned; then Rosamond; and now—thorniest bud on the Lawrence family tree—Eulalie was fully blown, and quite alive to the beguilements of dress and the desirability of beaux.

Eulalie's exactions were upsetting to the tranquil mind. Eulalie wanted—not possession of the earth, but to be the earth, and to be duly revolved around by friends, relatives and countless planetary lovers. Elvira's days grew turbid and her nights devoid of repose.

There had been no comforting maternal support to nestle against since the birth of the youngest Lawrence flower, and the paternal bush towered out of reach in an aloof atmosphere of bonds and rentals and dividends. One old-fashioned point of view he enforced upon his children's vision: the elder daughter must supervise and chaperon the younger ones to the last jot, and it must be done without disturbance of the business atmosphere.

So Elvira warred with her daily briers alone. Reproach and appeal alike spattered off Eulalie's buoyant nature as a water sprinkler's steadiest shower rolls in globules from the crisp, unmoistened leaves of the nasturtium.

"Spinsters are so fussy," she deplored, comfortably. "Just because they have no beaux themselves, they can't bear to see a girl have a caller now and then."

"My dear, keep up a slight acquaintance with truth," besought Elvira; "a caller now and then would give me a chance to mend my stockings and to get to bed by nine o'clock a few nights in the week. As it is, I have to idle my time away evening after evening, sitting and grinning at your flocks and herds of young men until I am so sleepy I have to go and coax pa to drop a big slipper on the floor overhead, to indicate that it's bedtime. Hazel and Marion and Rosamond encouraged only a moderate number of beaux, and them only until they naturally paired off with the right ones and could scat the rest off. But you hang on to them all. There is hardly an evening you don't have from one to five on hand, though you surely can't want them."

Eulalie giggled joyously.

"I do want them—every tinker of them. Poor old girl, you never knew the fun of keeping a lot of men in a continual squirm. However, I think possibly what you call the 'right one' is bobbing up."

"Most fervently do I hope so," sighed Elvira.

The strain of excessive chaperoning was wearing upon her.

"Your sister looks tired," a late acquisition of Eulalie's made observation, compassionately, one evening, seeing Elvira nod over her uncongenial Battenberg-ing by the piano lamp.

"Yes—she's such an early-to-bed crank," Eulalie cheerfully replied, "and I suppose it isn't a lot of fun to sit over there alone doing Battenberg with us chatting just out of good hearing range."

Hugh Griswold had been blessed with a good, old-fashioned mother, and among the precepts bequeathed her son had been one not so distant of kinship from the Golden Rule:

"Treat everybody well."

"Suppose we move into good hearing range, then?" he suggested.

"Oh, you can go, if you want to." Eulalie's eyebrows curved into brown velvet crescents. "I'm very well satisfied here. Did I tell you Major Yates was going to bring me a pair of guinea pigs to-morrow?"

The next time Hugh Griswold called he brought his uncle, an elderly widower, with a bald, intellectual forehead and large billows of whisker. The uncle beamed upon Eulalie with fatherly benignance, and then established friendly communication with Elvira.

"I thought it might brisk things up a little for Miss Elvira to let him come." Hugh's apologetic tone seemed, somehow, the result of Eulalie's upward-arching eyebrows.

"Oh," said she—a cool little crescendo.

II.

A demure black bow in Elvira's hair drew Eulalie's inquisitive glance at dinner the next evening.

"Since when have you taken to vain adornments?" she asked, an edgy emphasis on the pronoun. "It's miles out of style, you know."

Elvira received the information with tranquillity.

"Since when have you taken to observing what I wore? Same old bow that has decked me for some weeks. I never regarded it as the latest importation."

"Oh! I didn't know but you fancied Mr. Griswold's uncle was coming again."

"Not having learned to fish in my youth, I should hardly begin now." Elvira partook peacefully of her soup.

Mr. Griswold's uncle came again. When it was time to depart his nephew had to remind him of the fact.

"Your sister's conversation is so deeply engrossing," he apologized, blandly, to Eulalie.

"Is it?" Eulalie asked, languidly remote.

Several new varieties of thorn outcropped in Elvira's daily walk. So small a point as a new stock collar, sober gray though it was, occasioned one.

"No doubt Mr. Griswold's uncle will find it 'so engrossing.'" Eulalie's voice was sourly satirical, and her soft eyebrows made sharp angles.

Elvira stared in hopeless amaze at her grasping sister.

"She had two new young men yesterday—can it be possible she wants Mr. Courtenay, too?" wondered the harassed elder.

A loosening of the tension on Elvira's strained nerves came with the visit of Marion, the third daughter of the house, for this fact dovetailed neatly with a request from Hazel, the second daughter. She was not very well; was run down, and needed the tonic of companionship from home. Would Elvira come for a while and be the medicine? Possibly a change would do the latter good, and prove a reciprocal tonic.

"Tonic! It would be a balm of Gilead—an elixir of life—a sojourn at the fountain of youth and happiness for me to get away from the chaperoning of Eulalie for a while," Elvira admitted.

"Then go." Marion settled the question for her with kindly dispatch. "I'll look after the minx, and tell her some useful truth now and then, too."

III.

"Bless your scolding curls—you look as pretty and sweet and out of style as a fashion plate of '65."

Hazel had raked Elvira's hat off and was weaving her fingers through the flat, brown bands of her sister's hair.

"A neat pompadour, with an empire knot, would make an up-to-date etching of you."

Then she caught her by the shoulder and pulled her up in front of a mirror, snuggling her own face down beside Elvira's. "Look there—I've a mind to pinch you; you're three years older than I. What do you mean by looking at least eight younger, and just like a big peach, at that—hey?"

"Maybe it's because I don't frazzle up years of good vitality over little everyday snarls," Elvira replied, serenely, but added, more meekly, "I've been very near to it lately, though, with Eulalie and her young men."

"Eulalie—yes; she ought to be cuffed a time or two; I know her. Look here, Elv, you've simply got to let me fix you a pompadour and have your seams made straight. You'd have a presence to eclipse us all if you'd spunk up to your dressmaker and not let her put off crooked gores on you. I'm going to fix you."

"I thought I came here to nurse you."

"Oh, well, you can coddle me sometimes, when I think I'm getting yellow and peaked. But it's a whole lot of potions and powders just to have you here. All the same, I had another little nail to drive in importing you. I've got an old boy picked out—the baron we call him. He's a worthy soul—upright and straight walking as you please, so it needn't be any obstacle to you that he owns a whole bunch of mills a few miles out. He isn't here now, but soon will be, looking after the mills, and you've got to see him. He's quite a bit older than you, but that's no odds. His name is Courtenay——"

"Erastus?"

"How did you come by it so glibly?"

"One of Eulalie's planets has an uncle named that. He brought him to the house a few times, to brighten up my desert island."

"Oh, sweet innocence! So you know him! Then the romance is already cut and basted."

"There isn't a rag of romance about it. Mr. Courtenay hasn't tendered me his heart and his mills; I should not take them if he did so. Besides, I have a glimmer that Eulalie has her eye upon him."

"Did you ever know of a breathing man Eulalie did not have her eye upon?"

"Barring tramps, not one. Still, Mr. Courtenay might distance the field. Besides, again, Mr. Griswold says he—the uncle—vowed long ago to remain forever true to the memory of his first wife."

"Yes," reflected Hazel, "that is so final! But you'll let me pompadour your hair?"

"Oh, I don't care—if you don't pomp it too loudly."

Two weeks later Hazel wrote a letter to Marion, containing this item:

Elvira has lost the little up-and-down worry wrinkle between her eyes—the only one she had; she looks about twenty-two. Mr. Erastus Courtenay has come to Lindale to inspect his mills, but he hasn't seen the inside of one of them yet. He is here a great deal.

And this postscript was appended:

Tubs wouldn't hold the roses Mr. Courtenay squanders on Elvira.

Marion incautiously read the letter to Eulalie, and a tempest was at once put to steep in a teapot.

"Oh, brag to me about your modest, self-sacrificing spinsters! Mighty agreeable and willing was Miss Elvira to go and be a tonic to Madame Hazel—and, incidentally, be handy for a rich mill owner to waste roses on! The pair of them! Didn't know anything about it until she got to Lindale? You're green enough for sheep to eat if you think she wasn't planning it all ever since she heard of Hugh's uncle. She knew he would be going to Lindale soon, and mighty easy it was for her and Hazel to cook up a plot to have her there when he came. 'Oh, my, such a surprise to meet you here, Mr. Courtenay!'" Eulalie gave an imitation of Elvira's imagined giggle. "She's got to come straight home again—that's what she has."

"My stars, Laly," besought Marion, "don't beat up a tornado about it. What is it to you if Elvira does marry Hugh's uncle, or anybody she sees fit?"

"She has no business—it's absurd at her age."

"Thirty-two isn't decrepit."

"It's too old for such didoes. And she knows that Mr. Courtenay has vowed never to marry again, and that Hugh will inherit the mills if he doesn't."

"Oh, that's the snag! But you are not engaged to Hugh, are you?"

"No, not yet."

"Did Elvira know you had intentions that way?"

"She might have known I'd take him when I got ready if she kept her webs away from that old donkey of an uncle."

"What mortal, do you presume to say, could divine which one of your ninety and nine misguided admirers you were going, when you get good and ready, to favor with the empty husk of your frivolous little heart? And if anyone could tell, what law or statute have you against Elvira's equal right to the mills, provided she loves the miller?"

"It's scandalous!" Eulalie flew back to her grievance, unmindful of Marion's logic. "She's got to come back where I can keep an eye on her. And if the old guinea comes after her, I'll cut her out and marry him."

IV.

Those tubs of roses Hazel had touched upon buried their thorns sharply in Eulalie's memory. That any son of Adam could see her bewildering self and then give roses to Elvira was preposterous—besides, the mills would follow. An end must be to the folly.

She invoked Hugh Griswold's assistance. He ought to see that the roses might crowd him away from his inheritance.

"I'm afraid I ought to tell you something," she regretted, amiably. "I hear Elvira is plainly fishing for your uncle."

Hugh grinned comfortably.

"If there is any fishing doing, I rather reckon it's on uncle E.'s side of the pond," he said, easily.

"She has no business to let him, then!" Eulalie's eyes began to sparkle out blue fire. "A sly old minx she is! She——"

Hugh was looking intently at her, as if he saw her in some weird, new light. She tapered off suddenly, and grew plaintive.

"I want her back here, anyway. I'm not well, and Marion is cross to me."

"I'll stop and tell her so as I go through Lindale, on my annual camping tramp—shall I?"

"Oh, yes, do—please do," Eulalie pleaded, sweetly.

During the few days before his departure she grew pale and languid, and reminded him frequently of his promise.

"Be sure and send her right home," she urged. "Tell her I'm sick and miserable, and Marion doesn't treat me well."

V.

"Is Laly's illness a matter of doctors and drugs, or is it a becoming little paleness in a pink tea-gown?" wrote Hazel to Marion, after the arrival of Eulalie's ambassador, with her royal message. "If it is at all serious, Elvira will go home at once. If it isn't, I would like to keep her a while. She has refused the man of the mills, but I think he is trembling on the brink of another proposal, from which I hope a different result."

Marion wrote back:

"Tell Elvira to stay as long as she likes. Laly's pallor came out of her powder box. She eats rations enough for two."

When Hugh returned Eulalie made bitter moan about her hapless lot.

"I've been so hunted and harassed by autumn dudes that I didn't want, and their bleating autos, I haven't had the peace of a cat. And you stayed away so, and Elvira has utterly abandoned me. She never came home."

"Your sister Hazel wouldn't let her," said Hugh, looking inquisitively at Eulalie's healthful bloom.

"Oh, I got along. And I suppose those roses went to her head, poor old dear; it's such a new thing for her to have them given her. Didn't she chant paeans over them?"

"You couldn't notice any paeans," said Hugh, "but several fellows were trying to chant proposals to her besides uncle E. Ginger! but you ought to see Elvira now, Miss Eulalie; she's all dimply and pink, and her hair isn't slick, like it used to be, though it isn't messy, either; it's kind of crimpled up high, some way, like you'd raveled out a brown silk dress and piled up the ravelings. She wears new kind of things, too—dresses with jig-saw things—you know what I mean, frilly tricks that make you think of peach blossoms, or pie plant when it's cooked and all pink-white and clear. Why, it's true as preaching. I never knew her until I met her there at Lindale."

"So my prim, old-maid sister has turned butterfly since she went gadding?"

"No, she isn't a butterfly; she's too well supplied with brains for that; she couldn't keep that bunch of old worldlings hypnotized as she does if she hadn't a pile of original ideas of her own, though the dimples and frillicues may have caught them in the first place."

"Huh!" commented Eulalie, shortly. "I wonder how you happened to get so well acquainted with her, just passing through Lindale."

"I couldn't have," Hugh owned; "takes time to learn to appreciate a girl like that. If it hadn't been for your message, I suppose I never should have gone beyond the preface of her character; but when I saw the whirlwind she had stirred up among the dry leaves of the elderly boys' hearts, I concluded to postpone the tramping trip and watch the fun a while. Honestly, she was a new experience to me."

"I'm surprised to hear of her frivolity." A slight, shrewish flavor crept into Eulalie's smooth voice. "The way she used to persecute me for having a few beaux——"

"Oh, she doesn't want them, nor encourage them," Hugh quickly explained. "She just stays still, like a lamp, you know, that shines out soft and clear because it can't help it, and they go bumping along and sizzle their wings. It isn't her doings. They're mostly all too old for her—why, do you know, Miss Eulalie, I had supposed she was older than I, and I discovered she was two years younger?"

"I hope that won't prevent her being a good aunt to you," mused Eulalie, with restrained spite.

Hugh laughed, cheerily.

"She won't be any kind of an aunt to me—to uncle E.'s disgust. I did think he deserved a free field, because he discovered her in the chrysalis—when he came here with me; and he got it, so far as I was concerned. But he admitted to me that he thought it folly to keep on butting your head against a perfectly immovable wall, alluring as the wall might be; that he should go back to his mills and his former resolution and keep off the battlefield of love forever after. So then I concluded to give up my tramp entirely for this year and see if I could make a go with Cupid—and—a—Elvira is having a wedding dress made, and is going to accept me as a wedding present."



THE NEIGHBOR'S DOG

By UNA HUDSON

Half an hour after the new tenant had taken possession of the house next door, Miss Clementina Liddell looked out of her parlor window and saw a small, brown dog making himself very much at home on her front lawn.

Now, though the dog himself was small, his feet were not, and he was industriously digging a hole in the middle of Miss Clementina's bed of scarlet geraniums.

Miss Clementina was indignant. But for her unwillingness to speak to a gentleman to whom she had not been properly introduced, she would have promptly crossed the strip of grass between the two houses and demanded that the intruder be forced to return to his own lawn.

As it was, she went out and attempted to "shoo" him off. But the little brown dog would not shoo. He stopped digging, and, with much waving of his stubby tail and a friendly bark or two, launched himself at Miss Clementina.

She stepped hastily backward, but not before the front of her neat, pink morning gown had been hopelessly soiled by the dog's muddy feet.

"You bad, bad dog," she scolded, energetically, emphasizing her words by a lifted forefinger.

The little dog barked cheerfully and circled twice around her. He was so frankly, so joyously irrepressible, that Miss Clementina did not know whether to feel amused or vexed.

"Oh, well," she compromised, "I dare say you mean well. And we can fill up the hole you've dug, but I do hope you won't do it again."

She looked him over critically.

"You're thin," she decided, mentally; "shockingly thin. I'm afraid your master doesn't feed you enough. He probably has an absurd notion that a dog shouldn't be fed but once a day. I've heard of such things, and I think it's positively inhuman."

Miss Clementina glanced furtively toward the house next door. No one was in sight. She bent over the wriggling brown dog.

"You poor thing," she whispered, "come around to the kitchen. For once in your life you shall have all you can eat."

It was a rash promise, and the keeping of it involved the chops for luncheon and all the milk in the house.

"He's rather a nice dog, don't you think?" Miss Clementina said to the maid, as she watched him eat. "But he has a dreadful appetite. I think we'd best tell the butcher's boy to bring some dog's meat; chops are so expensive."

II.

Mr. Kent Maclin took his hat and stick and started for his customary after-dinner stroll. On the front porch he found a small, brown dog busily engaged in reducing the doormat to a pulp.

Mr. Maclin recognized the dog as one belonging to the next door neighbor; he had seen him earlier in the day digging in a bed of scarlet geraniums. If people would keep dogs, Mr. Maclin thought they ought at least to teach them to behave. Still, if the lady who owned the dog could stand it to have her flower beds ruined, Mr. Maclin supposed he ought not to mind a chewed-up doormat.

The dog was only a puppy, anyway. His manners would probably improve as he grew older. Mr. Maclin stooped and patted him kindly on the head. The stubby brown tail thumped the floor ecstatically, and a red tongue shot out and began licking the polish from Mr. Maclin's shoes.

"Jolly little beggar, aren't you?" said the gentleman. But he backed hastily away from the moist, red tongue.

III.

Mr. Maclin ordered a new doormat every three days, and kept a package of dog biscuits in the drawer of the library table. He dealt these out with a lavish hand whenever the little brown dog saw fit to call for them, and was not without hope that a cultivated taste for dog biscuit might in time replace a natural one for doormats.

Mr. Maclin would have been glad to make the acquaintance of the supposed owner of the little brown dog, but didn't quite know how to go about it.

But one day, as he watched the little brown dog digging as usual in the geranium bed, he had an inspiration.

He paid a visit to the florist, and came back with a long pasteboard box tucked under his arm. It was filled with a glowing mass of red geraniums.

The composition of a suitable note to accompany the flowers was a task requiring much time and mental effort.

Finally, in sheer desperation, Mr. Maclin wrote on one of his cards, "To replace the flowers the dog has dug up," and dropped it among the scarlet blossoms.

He had hesitated between "the dog" and "your dog," but had decided against the latter, being fearful that it might, perhaps, be construed as conveying a subtle hint of reproach. Mr. Maclin's lawn also was defaced by many unsightly holes.

Miss Clementina wondered a little that the article "the" should have replaced the possessive pronoun "my." But on reflection she decided that one might not unreasonably object to confessing in so many words to the possession of a dog who so persistently did all the things he ought not to do. And, anyway, it was nice of Mr. Maclin to have sent the flowers.

Miss Clementina wrote a charming note of thanks, and earnestly assured Mr. Maclin that she didn't object in the least to the little dog's digging up her lawn.

Mr. Maclin smiled at the naivete of the little note, and tucked it carefully away in his pocketbook.

Thereafter the two bowed soberly when they chanced to meet, and occasionally exchanged a casual remark concerning the weather.

And once, when Miss Clementina was picking the dead leaves from what was left of the geranium plants, Mr. Maclin paused to remark that the little brown dog seemed very fond of her.

"And of you, too," Miss Clementina had quickly returned. It couldn't be pleasant, she thought, for Mr. Maclin to feel that his pet had deserted him for a stranger.

"It's the dog biscuits I give him," Mr. Maclin explained, confidentially.

"Oh," said Miss Clementina, "is he fond of them? I've always considered meat much more nourishing."

"I dare say it is," Mr. Maclin agreed. "But dog biscuits are handier to keep about. And he comes for them so often."

Then, covered with confusion, he beat a hasty retreat. He hadn't intended to hint at the voracious appetite of Miss Clementina's pet.

IV.

Miss Clementina looked with dismay at the much battered object the little brown dog had just brought in and laid at her feet. It was all that remained of Mr. Maclin's best Panama hat.

Miss Clementina picked it up gingerly. She crossed the strip of lawn between the two houses and rang her neighbor's doorbell.

"I'm so sorry," she said, extending the hat to its owner. "It's really too bad of the little dog."

"It's of not the very slightest consequence," returned Mr. Maclin, gallantly.

"Oh, but I think it is," Miss Clementina insisted. "He's a very bad little dog, really. Don't you think perhaps you ought to whip him—not hard, but just enough to make him remember?"

"Whip him! Whip your dog! My dear Miss Liddell, I couldn't think of such a thing."

Miss Clementina's eyes seemed very wide indeed.

"But he's not my dog at all," she protested. "Isn't he yours, Mr. Maclin?"

"I never laid eyes on him," said Mr. Maclin, "until I moved here. The first time I saw him he was digging in your geranium bed."

"Oh!" said Miss Clementina, and began to laugh.

"And to think," she said, "of all the outrageous things he has done! And neither of us daring to say a word because we each thought he belonged to the other."

Mr. Maclin laughed with her. "I think," he said, "that from now on the little brown dog will have to reform."

V.

But the little brown dog did not reform. With unabated cheerfulness he continued to dig in Miss Clementina's geranium bed, and to chew Mr. Maclin's doormat.

"He's hungry," said Miss Clementina; "you should give him more dog biscuits."

"He has too much to eat," retorted Mr. Maclin. "He digs holes in the geranium bed to bury the bones you give him."

The little brown dog was fast becoming a bond of union between the lonely man and the lonelier woman.

"Your dog has chewed up my new magazine," Miss Clementina would call to her neighbor. "Do take him home."

"Oh, no," Mr. Maclin would call back. "That is not my dog. My dog is chasing a gray cat out of the back yard."

But one day the little brown dog disappeared. Mr. Maclin laid down a new doormat, and said he was glad it needn't be chewed up right away.

Miss Clementina filled in the holes in the geranium bed, and set out some new plants. She gathered up a bone, two old shoes and a chewed-up newspaper, and expressed the hope that once more she might be able to keep the lawn tidy.

Twenty-four hours later the little brown dog had not returned. Mr. Maclin went out and gave the unoffending new doormat a savage kick. Then he put on his hat and went down the street—whistling. It was not a musical whistle. On the contrary, it was shrill and ear-piercing. It was, in fact, the whistle that the little brown dog had been wont to interpret as meaning that Mr. Maclin desired his immediate presence.

Once, when Mr. Maclin paused for breath, he heard faintly: "Dog, dog, dog!"

It was thus that Miss Clementina had been in the habit of summoning the little brown dog.

Mr. Maclin turned and walked in the direction of her voice. Folly, like misery, loves company.

"The little brown dog," said Miss Clementina, when Mr. Maclin had overtaken her; "where do you suppose he can be? I've called until I'm hoarse."

"And I have whistled," said Mr. Maclin, "but he doesn't answer."

"I can't believe that he ran away," said Miss Clementina; "he was so fond of us."

"And I'm sure he wasn't stolen," said Mr. Maclin. "He wasn't valuable enough to steal."

"I thought," said Miss Clementina, "that I was glad to have him leave. He certainly did mess the place up terribly. But I miss him so, I'd be downright glad to have him come back and dig a hole in the geranium bed."

"I've a new doormat waiting for him," said Mr. Maclin. "Miss Clementina, where do you suppose he is?"

"I don't know," said Miss Clementina. "I only wish I did. Why, there's a little brown dog now. Perhaps——Here, dog, dog!"

Mr. Maclin's whistle supplemented Miss Clementina's call, but the brown dog took no heed.

"It's some one else's dog," said Miss Clementina. "Don't you see, he has on a collar?"

But Mr. Maclin had seen something else—a small, brass tag attached to the dog's collar.

"Miss Clementina," said he, "do you suppose the little brown dog's tax was paid?"

"Tax?" questioned Miss Clementina.

"Yes, the dog tax, you know."

"I didn't know there was a dog tax," said Miss Clementina.

"I'm afraid," said Mr. Maclin, "that the dog-catcher has caught the little brown dog."

To Miss Clementina's mind the dog-catcher suggested awful possibilities. "Oh!" she said, "what can we do?"

"I shall go at once to the pound," said Mr. Maclin, determinedly, "pay his tax and take him out."

VI.

At the end of an hour Mr. Maclin returned. With him came the little brown dog. He wriggled joyously, and planted his dirty feet on Miss Clementina's trailing skirts.

"His manners are just as bad as ever," she said. "But I'm so glad to have him back. Was it the dog-catcher?"

"It was the dog-catcher," said Mr. Maclin. "But it won't happen again. I've paid his tax and bought him a collar. See, there's a place on it for his owner's name. But, of course, I couldn't have it engraved, for he seems to have no owner. Miss Clementina, don't you think it a pity for so nice a little dog not to belong to some one?"

There was that in Mr. Maclin's voice that brought a faint flush to Miss Clementina's cheek.

"I suppose," went on the gentleman, "when he's digging in your geranium bed he thinks he's your dog, and when he's chewing my doormat he's probably laboring under the delusion that he's my dog. Miss Clementina, it would be so easy to make him our dog. Don't you think we'd better?"