His father had been enormously wealthy, but his vast property had slipped out of his keeping, and had become involved in a lawsuit of such dimensions and such hopeless duration that Artie might just as well consider himself as a ward in chancery, and be done with it.

This loss of fortune, however, instead of demoralizing him, had been his salvation. It set him to work, and made a man of him. He never believed that he would inherit a dollar of his father's, so he prepared to make his own way in the world, regardless of golden hopes.

But not so his friends. His prospects, hazy as they were, made him most interesting to match-making mothers, and as his indomitable courage made him interesting to the other and better sort, you will see that Artie was pursued rather more than most eligible young men. This pursuit had made him wary and cautious. Had he been more introspective, it would have embittered him; but it shows his amiable modesty when I assert that Artie only fought shy of the more aggressive anglers, whose landing-nets were always in evidence, while he never refused to swim nimbly around and even nibble at the bait of the more tactful.

I have described him thus carefully, because it just shows how the most wary of men can be caught napping by the right kind of cleverness, and which was the right girl for him it took both us and him some time to discover.

At first sight, it seemed to be Flora. As Aubrey said: "It was all off with him from the moment he saw her." He had been the stroke in the Yale crew during two glorious years of victory, and, like most men who gloried in the companionship of athletic girls, he elected to fall in love with Flora, who, the first time she met him, wanted to know the difference between a putter and a bunker, which so tickled Artie that he put in two good hours explaining it to her.

Cary had known Flora for some time, but two girls could not have been more unlike. Cary was rich, courted, and flattered. She had only to express a wish to have it granted, yet, strange anomaly, she was the most unselfish girl I ever knew, and was always going out of her way to be nice to people.

Flora was poor. She went to college by means of a loan from a rich woman, and kept herself there by winning scholarships. She expected to teach for a living, and she hated the prospect. She had to work hard for everything she had, which was probably the reason why she was so selfish. To be sure, she was always offering you things, but it was either after some one else had offered first, or else she offered things you couldn't possibly want. And as to offering to do things for you, I never saw her equal at the formula, "I am going down-town. Can't I do something for you?" Yet if you by any chance made the mistake of saying, "That's awfully good of you. I would like three yards of French nainsook," in half an hour Flora would come in with the story that she had been telephoned out to luncheon and wasn't going down-town, or else had a headache and couldn't go, after all; or, if she went, she did her own shopping first and came in breathless with a "I'm so tired! I went everywhere for your French nainsook, but every shop was just out of it. I tried so hard, and now you'll think I am just stupid and can't shop."

At which you always had to comfort her and do something extra for her, to show that you didn't blame her in the least. Whenever she had grossly imposed upon you, Flora had a way of looking at you with what I called the "dog look,"—a humble, faithful, adoring, "don't-kick-me-because-I-love-you-so" look, which used to give me what Angel calls the jiggle-jaggles, which is only another name for twitching nerves,—either mental or physical.

However, I have noticed that these people who are always offering their "Can't I do something for you?" never expect to be taken up. I suppose it isn't in human nature any more to be helpful to a friend. The answer to that question is "Thank you so much, dear, for offering, but I really don't want a thing!" That cements the friendship.

Cary was honest, straightforward, and thoughtful. Flora was crafty, deceitful, and brilliant, but her innocent eyes and baby ways made her cleverness seem like that of a precocious child, so that she always disarmed suspicion.

She deceived me so skilfully and completely that I find myself thoroughly mixed in describing her, for at one moment I tell how she appeared to me at first, and the next I find myself setting her forth as I found her after Cary and Aubrey had set a trap to make me see her in her true light. They were obliged to set a trap, for my loyalty is of the blind, stupid sort, which will not be convinced, and all the arguments in the world would only have made me more ardently champion her as a friend.

You could not call Cary athletic, because she did not go in for out-of-door sports to the exclusion of the gentler forms of amusement. But whatever she did, she did so well that you would think she had given most of her time to the mastering of that one accomplishment. But here is where her cleverness showed most. It was not that she really did everything, and did it perfectly. It was that she never attempted anything which she had not mastered. For example, she never played whist, because she had no memory, no finesse, and because she played games of chance so much better. She could never settle herself down to a multitude of details, but she could plan and execute a coup of such brilliancy that it would make your hair stand on end. Such was Cary Farquhar, and her most successful coup was the way she compelled me to see Flora Forsyth in her true colours.

Sometimes I think I am quite clever. Again I think I am a perfect fool. And the agains come oftener than the sometimes.

I would enjoy making a continuous narrative of this story, as I could if I were writing a book, but this is a record of real life, and real life does not happen in finished chapters. If you try to make it, you either have to leave out a bit, or go back and repeat something.

Thus, in telling this story of Flora, if I told the perfect faith I had in her at first and of how utterly I came to know and despise her afterward, I should show to everybody the fool I made of myself, and that exhibition I prefer to keep as much to myself as possible. The Angel knows it, and that is bad enough. So that is why I must make a hodge-podge of it, telling a bit here and a bit there, just as things happened, and pretending that I saw through her from the first—which, however, I didn't.

But, in order to give some idea of her methods, which are of interest as a human document, I must set down faithfully how I came to be drawn into this love-story, and how the Angel and Cary pulled me out.

This is the very beginning of it.

If you knew our best man, you probably would not be surprised to make the discovery that I made—to wit: that two girls were in love with him at the same time, for the most ordinary of men have sometimes a powerful attraction for the most superior of girls, and Arthur Beguelin was much above the ordinary, in looks, manners, breeding, and wealth. He was, as I have said, almost rich, which would of itself, to the cynic, preclude his being at all nice. But he was nice. I liked him, the Angel liked him, and these two girls loved him.

I will admit, however, that I was surprised,—just a little,—at first, but after I thought about it, I said to Aubrey, "Well, why not?" He said, "Why not what?"

"Why shouldn't two girls be in love with him?"

"They should," said the Angel, pleasantly. "There is no doubt in the world that they should. But who are the girls and who is the man?"

I thought of course that he knew what I was talking about, or I shouldn't have begun in the middle like that, but after all, if you do begin in the middle, you can often skip the whole beginning, and hurry along to the end.

"Why, Artie Beg, to be sure! Who else? And as to the girls—well, as I discovered it for myself, I shall not be betraying their confidence to say that the girls are—will you promise not to tell nor to interfere in anyway?"

"Of course," said the Angel.

"Well, the girls are Flora Forsyth and Cary Farquhar."

"Flora Forsyth!" exclaimed the Angel, with a wry face.

"Now, Aubrey, what have you against that poor girl? To me she is one of the most fascinating creatures I ever saw. If I were a man, I should be crazy about her."

"Then if you had been Samson, Delilah would have made a fool of you just as easily as she did of him."

"But Flora is no Delilah, Aubrey."

"She's worse!" said the Angel, shortly.

Aubrey leaned back in his Morris chair and puffed at his pipe. Presently he spoke:

"Those two girls are both clever,—as clever as they make 'em,—but Cary's cleverness is full of ozone, while Flora's is permeated with a narcotic. Cary's tricks make one laugh, but the other girl's give one the shivers."

"Oh, is it as bad as that?" I said, in affright. "Don't you like her?"

"Like her!" reflected the Angel, slowly. "I hate her."

I gasped. Never, never had my husband expressed even a settled dislike of any one before, while as to the word "hate"—

"Oh, Aubrey!" I cried, tearfully. "I wish you had said it before. The fact is, I've—well, I've invited her to visit me and she says she'll come."

If I expected an explosion, I was mistaken. Aubrey bit into his pipe-stem and sat looking at me for a moment without speaking, a kind, wistful look which completely undid me, and made me resolved never, never again to do a single thing without consulting him first. Then he leaned forward and slowly began to empty and clean his pipe.

"You like her very much?" he said, tentatively.

"I do, indeed!" I exclaimed, enthusiastically. "And she is so fond of you. She fairly adores you. If you would only try to like her, Aubrey—she likes you so much—don't smile that way. You don't do her justice. Indeed you don't. Why, she is the dearest, most confiding, innocent little thing, just out of college last month—a baby couldn't have more clinging, dependent ways."

"I'm glad she is coming to visit you, if that's the way you feel about her," he said.

I drew a sigh of relief. Some husbands would have made such a fuss that their wives would have felt obliged to cancel the invitation. Aubrey was different.

"How did you come to invite her?" he asked, presently.

I smiled in pleased anticipation of a good long talk with my husband, in which I could explain everything.

"Why, you know at the wedding I saw that Artie was very much taken with her,—and—"

"First, tell me how she came to sit with the family, inside the white ribbon?"

"Why, she wrote and asked if she couldn't. She said she loved me so she felt as if she were losing a sister, and that she wanted to sit with mother and mourn with the family."

Aubrey grinned and I felt foolish.

"And you believed her, you silly little cat!"

"It does sound idiotic to repeat it, but it read as if she meant it," I said, blushing.

"Never mind, dear," said the Angel. "You are all right."

Now, when Aubrey says I am "all right," it means that I am all wrong, but that he loves me in spite of it.

"Bee says," I said between laughing and crying, "that I am just like a stray dog. A pat on the head and a few kind words, and I'd follow anybody off."

"It would take something more substantial than that to make Bee follow anybody off," observed Bee's brother-in-law.

"Well, and so she and he were together all that evening, and afterward they corresponded. But Cary, being my bridesmaid, had, of course, the first claim on Artie's attention, but he was so taken with Flora that he sort of neglected Cary. Then, Cary being so spoiled by being rich and courted and flattered, was piqued into trying to make him notice her, which old stupid Artie refused to do, but tagged around after Flora as if she had hypnotized him. Then Cary must have been quite roused, for the first thing I knew she was showing unmistakable signs of its being the real thing with her, though, of course, she would deny it with oaths if I taxed her, while Flora—"

I stopped in sudden confusion.

"I forget," I faltered. "I said that neither had confided in me, but—"

Aubrey grinned.

"But Flora has," he supplemented. "She has confessed her love, not blushingly, but tumultuously, brazenly, tempestuously, and has begged you to help her!"

I paused aghast. Aubrey had exactly stated the case.

"Well, she told Cary, too," I said, in self-extenuation, "so she can't care very much that I've told you."

"Oh, no," said Aubrey, cheerfully. "She'll tell me herself the first chance she gets."

"She told Cary that she had told me, so we felt at liberty to talk it over," I added.

"She did?"

"And Cary was perfectly disgusted with her, and asked what I was going to do. I said I didn't know. Then what do you think she did? Cary asked me to ask Flora to visit me! What do you think of that for a bluff?"

Again Aubrey grinned. He shook his head.

"That was no bluff, Faith dear. That was a move in a game of chess. Cary Farquhar is the choicest—unmarried—girl I know! By Jove, she's a corker!"

"She just did it to throw me off—to show me that she didn't want him!" I persisted.

The Angel shook his head and smiled inscrutably.

"When does she come?" he asked.

"Next week."

Aubrey pulled at his pipe.

"There will be something doing here next week, I'm thinking."

There was something doing.

First, I told old Mary that I was going to have company.

One ordinarily does not ask permission of one's cook, but Mary was such a mother to me that I felt the announcement to be no more than her due.

"Who is it, Missus, dear?"

"Miss Flora Forsyth. Have you ever heard me speak of her?"

"Do you mean that blonde on the mantelpiece?" she asked, in the conversational tone of one who but passed the time o' day.

"Mary!" I said.

She walked up to Flora's picture, took it down, looked at it, and put it back.

"Well," I said, tentatively, "what do you think of her?"

"What do I think of her?" demanded Mary, wheeling on me so suddenly that I dodged. "I think she is a little blister—that's what I think of her. And you'll rue the day you ever asked her into your house."

Ordinarily one would reprove one's cook for such freedom of speech, but I had brought it on myself. Therefore I saved my breath, put on my hat, and went out, ruminating and somewhat shaken in my mind to have the two household authorities against me.

However, true to my determination to make her visit as attractive as possible, I purchased at least a dozen sorts of fine French marmalades, jellies, sweets, and fancy pickles, such as schoolgirls love.

She had told me so many times how she had always wanted her breakfast in her room, but had never been able to have it, that I decided to give her that privilege in my house. I told Mary with some misgivings, and showed her the things I had bought. To my surprise, Mary assented joyfully. I never knew why until after Flora left. Then Mary told me. I even selected the china she was to use on the breakfast-tray. It was blue and gold. Flora loved blue. Then I took a final look at everything, gave a few last orders, and dismissed all worry from my mind.

Her room, the guest chamber of the Jardines, was fresh for her. No one had ever slept in that bed, fluttered those curtains, nor written at that desk. Flora would be its first occupant.

And how her blond beauty matched its pale blue and gold loveliness! It gave me thrills of delight to think of her in the midst of it all.

But of course it was Cary I loved. Flora simply fascinated me. She possessed the attractions of a Circe, but Cary was worth a million of her, and I knew it and I wanted her to have Artie Beg, or anybody else on earth she fancied. The whole proposition was as plain as day when I came to think about it. I was Cary's champion, Cary's friend, and intended Cary to win. Why, therefore, had I permitted myself to be inveigled into asking Flora to visit me, under the supposition that I was going to help her? It was not because Cary had begged me to. Not at all. It was Flora herself who had managed it, I reflected, and it gave me a bitter, uncomfortable twinge to realize that whatever Flora had wanted me to do, in our brief friendship, I had done, no matter whose judgment it went against.

Had the girl hypnotic power, or was I a weak fool to be flattered into doing her bidding?

I don't like to think of myself as a weak fool, even for the sake of argument.

The two girls had hated each other at sight, as was natural. Cary admitted the reason with glorious frankness.

"Of course I hate her," she said, with a lift of her sleek brown head, "didn't she usurp my prerogatives at the wedding? The best man belongs, for that evening alone, to the maid of honour—he can't escape it—it is his fate. Common civility should have chained him to my chariot wheels, but with that white-headed Lilith at work on him, with her half-shut eyes, she had him queered before he even saw me. But wait. My turn will come."

Flora said to me:

"Of course I hate her, because you love her. You love her better than you love me. You have known her longer—that's the only reason! She doesn't care that for you. It's because you are married, and can give her a good time that she pretends to care for you. I know. Oh, you may laugh and think I am jealous or insane or anything you like. Well, then, I am jealous, for I love you better than anybody in the world, and I want you to love me in the same way. I love you better than I love my mother—or my father—or even Artie Beg! And I am jealous of every one you speak to. I am jealous most of all of Aubrey, for you have eyes for no one on earth but him. I could hate him when I think of it."

At that I did laugh, but she was a good actress, and said it as if she meant it.

Flora always acted as if she knew of my repressed childhood, and of how, all my life, I had thirsted for praise. No matter if it had been put on with a trowel, as hers undoubtedly was, I would have wrapped myself in its tropical warmth and luxuriance, and never paused to quarrel with its effulgence. While dear old Cary let her actions speak, and seldom put her affection for me into words. But she had been on the eve of sailing for a winter in Egypt when my hurried wedding preparations and frantic telegram arrested her. The party sailed without her, and she did not try to follow. And that was only one of the many sacrifices she had made for me, and made without a word, too.

She was a girl of thought and of ideas, but unfortunately she was a great heiress, and fortune-hunters had made her suspicious and cynical. Only Aubrey and I knew how glorious she could be when she let herself out and expressed her real self.

The first thing Flora did to make me uncomfortable was to pump the Angel about Artie's law-suit.

It was so intricate, so long drawn out, and so enormous in its proportions, that it bade fair to resemble the famous Jarndyce and Jarndyce. We had never mentioned it to Artie, but Flora, after a few reluctant words from Aubrey, persuaded Artie, in the easiest way imaginable, to tell her everything about it, from its inception. She told me she had even read half a dozen of her uncle's law-books, which bore upon the knotty points Artie had described to her. Instead of arousing his suspicions of mercenary motives, her innocent manner and flowerlike face deceived him into believing that her interest was very commendable. She explained that she had always wanted to study law, but that her father wouldn't let her, so that she always coaxed her friends to describe their law-suits to her, and then she read up on them by herself. Artie thought this was wonderful. So it was.

Cary would never listen to a word about it, nor read about it in the papers; nor could she be inveigled into expressing an opinion about it one way or the other. Her pride revolted from appearing even to know that he had such prospects, faint and distant though they were.

When Flora came, Mary put on her spectacles before she opened the door. I noticed the look she gave all three of us. It did not speak well for Flora.

But, at first, her shyness and modesty left nothing to be desired. Her clothes were simple even to plainness, her voice soft and deprecating, and her manner deferential in the extreme. She was always asking advice, and where that advice was given, she always followed it. Flattery could go no further.

Artie came to see her, morning, noon, and night. I was horrified to discover how far things seemed to have progressed, for, after all, it was Cary who must have Artie if she wanted him.

Cary called on Flora once, and we returned it, but she did not come again. So I resolved on a dinner, and Cary promised to come. The others were to be the Jimmies, Bee, and three more persons so insignificant, so vapid, so entirely not worth describing that, in a race, they would not even be mentioned as "also rans." In short, they were the typical dinner-guests the hostess always fills in with.

I worked hard on that dinner. Flora offered to help, but Mary, without actually refusing her assistance, managed to do without it, and I did not realize until afterward how quickly Flora accepted her fate, and curled herself up luxuriously on Aubrey's couch in Aubrey's particular corner to read, while I bleached the almonds which she had offered to do.

Flora kept me well informed of the progress of Artie's passion for her, and I could do nothing. I was surprised at her confiding such details to any one, dismayed for Cary's sake, and worried as to how it would turn out.

Finally the evening of the dinner came. I dressed and ran out to the kitchen to see if everything was all right, for Mary was so jealous she refused to let me engage an assistant, but doggedly persisted in preparing and serving the dinner entirely by herself.

To my surprise, I found the dining-room and kitchen shades pulled up to the tops of the windows, while every handsome dish Mary intended to use, and all the extra silver, were carefully placed on top of the laundry-tubs. Mary, apparently unconscious of observation, was flying around with pink cheeks, and the eyes behind the spectacles snapping with excitement.

"Don't say a word, Missus," she said, sitting on her heels before the oven door. "I did it for the benefit of the rubber factory opposite. They think I don't notice, but look at them windows. Not a light in any of 'em, but all the curtains moving just a little. Do they think I don't know there's a rubber behind every damn one of 'em? Don't laugh, Missus dear, and don't look over there, whatever you do. If they want a look at the things we eat, why let 'em! They know what they cost, but I'll bet they never do more than ask the price of 'em, and then buy soup-bones and canned vegetables for their own stomachs."

Mary didn't say stomachs, but much of Mary's conversation does not look well in print.

"And just wait till I take in the 'peche flambee'!" she chuckled. "I'll bet they'll order out the fire department!"

I said nothing, for the very excellent reason that there was really nothing to say. Mary has a way of being rather conclusive. There was no use in remonstrating or telling her not to, for she simply would not have obeyed me, so I forbore to give the order.

Flora heard Mary let Artie Beg in, and ran down the corridor to meet him. She was a vision in white—her graduation dress—with her snowy shoulders rising modestly from a tulle bertha. I paused in order to let her greet him first, and, to my consternation, before I could make known my presence, I heard her say, plaintively:

"Aren't you going to kiss me?"

Then with a stifled groan Artie flung his arms around her, pressing her to him as if he would never let her go. Then he pushed her away from him almost roughly, and Flora laughed a low, tantalizing laugh, and crept back to him to lean her head on his shoulder, and lay her arms around his neck.

I turned and fled. I fairly stampeded down the hall, running full tilt against Aubrey, and nearly folding him up.

"Oh! Oh!" I gasped, dancing up and down before him excitedly.

He seized both my hands.

"Hold still, Faith! What's the matter? Tell me!"

"They're engaged!" I wailed. "I'm too late! Cary has lost him!"

"Who?"

"Artie and Flora."

"What makes you think so?"

"He's kissing her! And she asked him to, just as if she had a right. I would not think so much of it, if he had just grabbed her and kissed her without a word, for she looks too witching, and any man might lose his head, but for her to ask for it—oh, what shall I do!"

"Hold on! You say she asked him to—tell me just how."

I told him.

The Angel put both hands in his pockets and whistled.

"Don't worry," he said. "They're not engaged."

I felt relieved at once, for the Angel does not write books from guesswork. He knows things.

But I was greatly confused at going back. Of course they did not know that I had seen and heard, and equally, of course, I could not tell them. But I had my confusion all to myself. Artie seemed about as usual (which he wouldn't have done if he had known that there was powder on his coat), and Flora was as cool as an iceberg.

It seems to me, as I look back, that that was the first time I suspected anything. It was almost uncanny to see her sitting there looking so shy and demure, when two minutes before she had begged a man to kiss her, and laughed that cool, tantalizing laugh, as of one who knew her power and revelled in the sight of her victim's struggles to escape.

I turned to Cary, my well-bred girl, my friend, with a feeling of relief, as if I had found a refuge. Cary flushed a little as she greeted Artie, and Flora's lip curled perceptibly.

I glanced at the Angel, and saw that he, too, had noticed it. But then, Aubrey sees everything. That is why he writes as he does. His manner as he greeted Cary was so cordial that it caused Artie to look up, and then, to my surprise, Artie got up from his chair, and came and stood by Cary and took her fan.

I wish you could have seen Flora's blue eyes turn green.

Then Bee and the Jimmies came, and, as usual, I straightway forgot everything else, and bent my energies toward playing the part of hostess so that Bee would not feel disgraced.

I followed her eye as it travelled over our gowns and around the apartment. Bee does not realize that she has silently appointed herself Superior General to the universe, so she was somewhat disconcerted, when, as she finally leaned back with a sigh which seemed to say, "This is really as well as anybody could do who didn't have me to consult with," to hear Aubrey say, slyly:

"Well, Bee, does it suit?"

Bee assumed her most Park Lane air, and replied:

"I don't know what you mean, Aubrey."

Then to avoid further pleasantries, Mary standing in the doorway, I marshalled them all out to the table.

Flora was between Aubrey and Artie, but I put Cary on the other side of Artie, while I took Jimmie by me, and mercilessly handed Mrs. Jimmie over to the "also rans."

Flora, who pretended jealousy of the Angel to veil her instinctive dislike of one who read her through and through, frankly turned her back on him, and tried all her wiles on Artie, which would not have disconcerted him, had not the Also Ran commenced to smile and attract Mrs. Jimmie's attention to it.

This brought Artie from his trance sufficiently to cause him to turn his attention to Cary, but it was so palpably forced that Cary devoted herself with ardour to Jimmie, and left Artie speechless.

Then something spurred Flora to do a foolish thing. She deliberately began to bait Cary—to say things to annoy her—to try to mortify her. At first Cary refused to see what was evident to the rest of us. (Oh, my dinner-party was proving such a success!)

At this critical juncture, Mary appeared bearing the chafing-dish full of blazing, flaming peaches, and in watching me ladle the fiery liquid, hostilities were for the moment discontinued. Involuntarily, as Mary's satisfied countenance betokened her complete happiness at the successful culmination of the dinner, my eyes wandered to the dining-room windows. I had drawn the shades with my own hand, but some mysterious agent had been at work, for they were let fly to the very window-tops.

I glanced at Mary. She pressed her lips together with a whimsical twist, and surreptitiously raised a finger in sly warning.

"Them rubbers are having a fit!" she murmured in my ear, as she deferentially took a blazing peach from me, and placed it before Flora with a look so black it seemed to say:

"If you get your deserts, you little blister, it would set fire to you!"

They were talking about love when I began listening again,—and Cary made some remark inaudible to me, which gave Flora the opportunity to say:

"Is it true, then, what I have heard? Were you ever disappointed in love?"

"Always!" said Cary, evenly.

Jimmie grinned and jogged my elbow.

"Isn't she a dandy?" he whispered. "Never turned a hair."

Flora flushed angrily because Artie laughed and looked appreciatively at Cary, as if really seeing her for the first time.

Every woman knows when that supreme moment comes—at least, every woman has who has liked a man before he has liked her. She feels it without looking at him. She knows it from the innermost consciousness of her being. "He is looking at me," says her heart, "for the first time, with the eyes which a man has for a woman."

Many a man has been selected first, as Cary selected Artie, and been wooed by her as modestly and legitimately as she did, without suspecting that he did not take the initiative every time.

So a little modest courage and restrained self-reliance crept into Cary's manner, which had never been there before, and I, believing implicitly in the Angel's ipse dixit that Flora and the best man were not engaged, had visions of the first bridesmaid's winning her lost place with him, and, oh, making him pay for his neglect.

If man only knew how heavily a flouted woman, after she has safely won him, does make him pay for his bad taste, he would be more careful.

But Artie never knew. He sat there, listening to the biting words which passed back and forth between Flora and Cary, without his modesty permitting him to realize that he was the stake these two clever girls were throwing mental dice for.

But Jimmie knew, for his blue eyes turned black, and his cigarettes burned out in two puffs, and his nervous hands clenched and unclenched in his wicked wish to say something to aggravate the affair. Finally, meeting my derisive grin, he wrenched my little finger under the table, under pretence of picking up my handkerchief, and whispered:

"Oh, Lord, give me strength to keep out of this row!"

I laughed, of course, and so missed something, for the next thing I heard, the conversation had become more personal, and Flora was saying:

"Love is an acquisition. The more you have, the more you want."

"Pardon me," said Cary. "To my mind, love is a sacrifice. Yet the more you give, the more you gain."

"But I don't want to believe that!" pouted Flora, charmingly. "That is a cruel, ascetic conception of love. It makes me shiver, like reading the New Testament."

For the first time Artie spoke.

"You prefer, then, the Song of Solomon?" And the Angel brought his hand down on the table a little heavily, and looked at me.

"Yes, I do!" laughed Flora, thinking she had scored. "And I know—because I have loved!"

"You have loved, have you?" said Cary, leaning forward to look at her across Artie's tucked shirt-front. "Then if you have, truly and deeply, as a woman can, when she meets the man who is her mate, can you jest so lightly about love being an acquisition? Are you thinking of his income and what he can give you more than your father has been able to do? Does your idea of marriage consist of dinner-parties and routs? Or do you think of the man himself? Of his noble qualities of heart and mind? Does not the idea of permanent prosperity sometimes fade, and in its place do you not sometimes see the man you love, poor, neglected by his friends, and jeered by his enemies? Does he not sometimes appear to you stretched on a weary bed of sickness? Can you picture yourself his only friend, his only helper, his only comforter? If he were crippled for life, would you go out to try to earn bread for two, rejoicing that Fate had only taken his strength to toil, and not his strength to love? Would you still count yourself a blessed woman if you knew that everything were swept away but the love of a man worth loving like that?"

Flora quailed, and drew back, abashed and a little frightened, but Artie's face was a study. At a sign from Aubrey, I looked at Mrs. Jimmie and rose. Just behind me, as I turned, I heard Artie whisper to Cary:

"Tell me, have you ever loved like that?"

And Cary's murmured reply:

"Not yet, but—I could."

After that, Flora's fascination seemed to wane. Mrs. Jimmie never had liked her, and as we went into the drawing-room she gave Cary one of her rare and highly prized caresses, which Cary received gratefully.

As for Artie, he never left Cary's side. He was the first to follow us to the drawing-room, for as I always let men smoke at the table, we always leave it en masse.

He said little, but he listened to every word Cary spoke, and he watched her as if fascinated.

I was jubilant, and my sober old Angel almost permitted himself to look pleased, but not quite. The Angel is never reckless with his emotions.

Dinner had been over about two hours, and Mrs. Jimmie was beginning to look at the clock, when Aubrey approached and whispered:

"I haven't heard a sound in the kitchen since dinner, and Mary hasn't entered the dining-room. Don't you think we would better take a look at her?"

The kitchen was separated from the dining-room by only the butler's pantry. As we opened the swinging door, a figure holding a chafing-dish in both hands attempted to rise from the cracker-box, but sank back again, shaking with laughter.

"It's me, Boss dear! Don't look so scared, but I'm drunk as a fool. How many of them awful peaches did you eat, Missis?"

"Only one," I said.

"And you, Boss?"

"Only one. How many did you eat?"

"Only half a one, but I finished all the juice in the dish—"

"Juice!" I cried. "Why, Mary, that was brandy and kirschwasser, and two or three other things."

"Don't I know it? But I never thought, Missis dear, I came here to rubber at that fight between Miss Farquhar and the little blister—"

"Mary!"

"Not a word more, Missis dear, if you don't like it! But anyhow I came here to—rest myself, and I began absent-mindedly to take a sip out of this big spoon here, and soon it was all gone. Then when you all went into the other room, I tried to get up, but my legs didn't want to, and, be the powers, they haven't wanted to since, though I've tried 'em every two minutes or so. I've just set here, helpless as a new-born babe that can't roll over in its crib. I meant to flag the first one of you that went past the door, for if somebody would prop me up in front of the sink, I could begin on a pile of dishes there big enough to scare a dog from his cats."

Aubrey and I leaned against each other in silent but hysterical delight. Mary was deeply pleased to see us so diverted.

Her legs recovered sufficiently before we left for her to walk to the sink, while we went back to our guests.

Every one was leaving, and Artie was taking Cary home. I looked to see how Flora took it, but her appealing blue eyes were fixed in their most appealing way upon the Also Ran, who was plainly undergoing thrills of exquisite torture therefrom. Jimmie gave one look at the tableau, and turned toward the door with his tongue in his cheek.

After that curious evening, there seemed to be a tremendous emotional upheaval. Artie hardly came near Flora, and when he did call, appeared to derive much satisfaction from gazing at her with a quizzical look in his eyes which seemed to annoy her excessively. The Also Ran was omnipresent, and was instant in season, out of season. But instead of arousing Artie's jealousy, this seemed only to amuse him.

Finally the cause of Artie's visits developed. He blurted it out to me one day with the red face of a shamed schoolboy.

"Faith, I wish you'd do me the favour to ask Cary Farquhar here some evening, and let me know! I've been going there till I'm ashamed to face the butler, but I never can see her alone, and the last two times she has sent down her excuses, and wouldn't see me at all."

I could have squealed for joy, but, mindful of Cary's dignity, I said:

"I don't believe she'd come, Artie. I'm afraid—"

"Afraid that she'd suspect that I would be here too? I don't believe I've made it as plain as that!" he interrupted.

"Do you mean to say that you are really and truly—?"

"I mean just that," he said, with a new earnestness in his manner, that I never had noted before.

"Oh, Artie!" I cried. "I'm so glad! But what if she's—"

"Don't say it! It makes me cold all over to think of it. That's why I want you to ask her here. I've got to see her. Why, Faith, she's—really, Faith, she's the only girl in the world, now isn't she?"

"So I've thought for years!" I cried, warmly.

"Talk about love being instantaneous," said Artie, plunging his hands into his pockets, and striding up and down. "I've loved her and loved her hard ever since she explained what love meant to her that night at your dinner. Why, if I could get her to love me that way, I'd be richer than John D! But shucks! She never will! What am I, I'd like to know, to expect such a miracle?"

"You're very nice!" I stuttered, in my haste, "and just the man for her, both Aubrey and I think, but I'll tell you where the trouble is. She thinks you belong to Flora."

"Never!" replied Artie, vehemently. "I never thought of marrying Flora. She—well, she sort of appealed to me—you know how! She wanted me to help her to understand golf. She said it made her feel so out of it not to know what people were talking about who played the game—you know she was a poke at college, and didn't go in for athletics at all. Well, you can understand it when you look at her. She couldn't get into a sweater and a short skirt and play basket-ball, now could she? She'd be wanting some man always about to hold her things or pitch the ball for her. She is such a dependent little thing. Then she had always wanted to study law and her people wouldn't let her—don't blame 'em for it!—but she wanted me to help her to understand it just for practice, she said, so I tried to. But as to marrying her! Well, to tell the truth—she—er—she does things—I mean, I think her emotions are a little too volcanic to suit me, and I'm no prude.

"You'll tell Cary this, won't you, Faith? All but that last. Explain how I came to get tangled up with the girl. You can do it so she won't suspect that you're working for me. You can bring it in casually, without bungling it. Tell her I never gave a serious thought to Flora in my life."

"I will, and I'll get her here for you!" I cried, as he rose to go.

I followed him to the door, and as I closed it after him the door of the butler's pantry opened noiselessly, and there stood old Mary with her finger on her lip. She motioned me to precede her, and she followed me down the hall to my room and into it, carefully closing the door behind her. "Missis," she whispered, kneeling down beside my chair. "Scold me! Do! I've been made the real fool of by that little blister. Lord, if I wouldn't like to take her across my knee with a fat pine shingle in my good right hand. Listen! She heard you at the telephone, and knew you expected Mr. Beguelin this afternoon, so she comes to me just after lunch and she says to me, 'Mary, Mr. Beguelin is coming this evening, so I think I'll take a little nap on the couch if you'll cover me up with the brown rug.' The brown rug, see? Just the colour of the couch, and the one I always keep put away for the Boss. Of course I couldn't refuse after she said you said to give it to her—"

"I didn't," I interrupted.

"I know it. I know it now! But the little devil knew that I was going out, and that you would answer the door yourself—"

"Mary!" I shrieked, in a whisper. "She wasn't in there all the time, was she?"

"That's just what she was! Listening to every word you said. I just came in a minute ago, or I'd have let you know. But he got up to go, just as I had my hand on the door-knob."

"What shall I do?" I murmured, distractedly. Then, after a pause, I said, "Perhaps she was asleep and didn't hear!"

Mary gave me such a contemptuous look that I hurriedly apologized.

Then the Angel came in, and I told Mary to go, and then I told him everything. He thought quite awhile before speaking.

"Do you care for her very much, Faith dear?" he said, in his dear, gentle way.

"If she has done the abominable thing that Mary says, I'll—hate her! I'll turn her out of the house!" I cried, viciously.

"Ah!" said Aubrey, in a satisfied tone. He knows I wouldn't, but it does do me so much good to threaten to do the awful things I'd like to do if I were a cruel woman.

He rose and left the room. I started to follow him, but he waved me back.

"I won't be gone a moment. Wait for me here."

I waited three or four years, and then, when I had grown white-haired with age, he came back.

"Begin at the beginning, tell everything, and don't skip a word," I demanded.

"Well," he began, obediently. "She was sobbing gently—not for effect this time. I went in softly, and asked her what the matter was. She said she had been out all the afternoon to see a friend who had just been obliged to place her mother in a lunatic asylum, and she was crying for sympathy. Then, as she saw me look at my rug, she said Mary had left the rug out for her to take a nap early in the afternoon, and that she had intended to, but had decided to go out instead. Now what I object to is the style of her lying. I admire a good lie, but a clumsy, misshapen, rippled affair like that one is an abomination in the sight of the Lord."

I stood up with a flaming face.

"Don't get excited," said Aubrey. "She is going home to-morrow. Keep calm to-night, and the next time you see Artie, he will relieve all your feelings by what he will say."

"Why? What does he know?"

"Well, the Also Ran admires athletic girls, you know, not being able to sit astride a horse himself, and through his boasting Artie has discovered that Flora is a crack golf player—won the cup for her college in her junior year."

I fell on the bed in a fit of hysterical laughter.

"If that's the way you are going to take it, I feel that I can tell you the worst," said Aubrey, with a relieved face. "The fact is, I believe that that girl has a game on with the Also Ran."

"Oh, no, Aubrey!" I cried. "I know that she is too desperately in love with Artie to care about anybody else. She is so fascinating I have but one fear, and that is that Artie will come under her sway again. If he does, Cary would never forgive it."

"You are barking up the wrong tree, my dear," said my husband. "It is far more likely that Artie has already gone too far with Flora for Cary to forgive, and that's why she won't see him."

At that, I tossed my head, for I felt that I knew how both Cary and Flora loved better than Aubrey did. Flattering myself, also, that I knew men pretty well, I had my doubts about the strength of Artie's character. It takes real courage for a man to be true to one woman, if another woman has pitted her fascinations against him.

I intended to avoid Flora, but I found her lying in wait for me, and beckoning me from the doorway. I went in, and at once, in order to seem natural, remarked upon her red eyes. But it seems that that was exactly what she wanted me to do. The girl had no pride. She wanted me to pity her.

"I'm ready to kill myself!" she cried. "I am perfectly sure that Artie has only been flirting with me and that some one has come between us. You can't want Cary to have him, or why did you invite me here, and arrange for me to see so much of him, and try so hard to bring us together? You are not two-faced like that, I hope?"

I was too bewildered to speak. Yet how could I answer her questions? Before I left her, I was convinced that it was all my fault. I told Aubrey so.

"Nonsense!" he said, quite roughly for him. "I think Mary's name for Flora is a good one. She is a little blister."

"No," I said, "she is not bad at heart. She is simply an impulsive, uncontrolled little animal, and more frank in her loves than most of us. That's all."

I saw the Angel set his lips together as if he could say something if he only dared, but his way of managing me is to give me my head and let circumstances teach me. He never forces Nature's hand.

Flora's visit was to have terminated the next day, but, to Aubrey's intense disgust and my utter rout, she begged for just three days more, and before I knew it I had consented. As I hurriedly left the room after consenting, I turned suddenly and met her gaze. Her eyes were a mere slit in her face, so narrowed and crafty they were. And the look she shot at me was a look of hatred.

Too bewildered by this curious girl's inexplicable actions to try to unravel my emotions and come to a decision regarding her, I kept out of her way all I could. I was simply waiting—waiting impatiently for the three days to pass. I only hoped that Artie would not come again while she was here.

But, alas, the very next morning I was at the telephone when I heard Flora run to the door to let somebody in, and before I could speak I heard her say, in that surprised, complaining tone of hers, "Aren't you going to kiss me?" and then—well, I got up and slammed the door so hard that the key fell out.

What a fool Artie was? What fools all men were, not to be able to keep faith with a woman, and such a woman as Cary Farquhar! I rushed from the study into my room, and burst into a storm of tears, in the midst of which Aubrey found me.

"Poor little Faith! Poor, discouraged, little match-maker!" he said, smoothing my hair. But at that last I sat up and shook his hand off.

"It's so disgusting of him!" I stammered. "If you could have heard him when he was talking about Flora!"

"How do you know it was Artie who came in?" said Aubrey, gently.

I opened my mouth and simply stared at him. Then I went to the glass, smoothed my hair and straightened my belt.

"Where are you going?" asked my husband.

"I am going to see!" I exclaimed. "And if it isn't Artie—if she is kissing every man that comes into this house, I'll—I'll kill her."

"What! You'll kill her if you find that Artie is not the faithless wretch you were crying about?"

"Oh, Aubrey! How can you?" I cried.

He tried to catch me as I flew past, but I eluded him, and started firmly down the long hall. But in spite of myself, my feet dragged. What was Flora attempting? Did she hate me as her look implied? Did she love Artie as she declared, or was she simply endeavouring to get married, and so save herself from a life of teaching, which she openly detested?

I kept on, however, goaded by my righteous indignation. To my astonishment I found, not Artie, but the Also Ran, with Flora frankly in his arms.

They sprang up at my swift entrance, and the man had the grace to look furiously confused. Flora never even changed colour. I asked no questions. I simply stood before them in accusing silence. But my look was black and ominous. Flora gave one swift glance at my uncompromising attitude, and then, with a modesty and grace and sweet appealing humility impossible to describe, she came a step toward me, holding out her arms and saying, plaintively:

"Won't you congratulate me? We are engaged."

I was struck dumb—that is, I would have been struck dumb, if I had not been rendered not only speechless, but unable to move by the actions of the man. Entirely unmindful of my presence, he sprang toward Flora, stammering, brokenly:

"Do you mean it, dear? Have you decided already? You said six months! You are sure you mean it?"

Then, not seeing the angry colour flame into Flora's pale, calm face, he turned to me, saying, brokenly:

"Oh, Mrs. Jardine! She has teased me so! I never dreamed she would decide so quickly. And I—you will forgive me! but I love her so!"

I looked away from his twitching face to Flora, and mentally resolved never to call him an Also Ran again. He did not deserve it. I am seldom sarcastic, but I knew Flora would understand.

"Flora," I said, distinctly, "you are to be congratulated."

Then I turned and left them.

The very day that Flora left, Cary came back to me.

"Well," she said, tentatively, "what do you think of her?"

"Well," I answered, cautiously, "I don't know."

Cary looked at me in disgust.

"Your loyalty amounts to nothing short of blindness and stupidity," she remarked, severely. "As for me, I am going to look at the nest the viper has left."

So saying, she got up and went into the blue room, Aubrey and I meekly following.

Pinned to the pillow was a note directed to me. Cary unpinned and handed it to me.

"Cleverest and best of women," it began, "Many thanks for your delightful hospitality. I have enjoyed it to the full—far more, indeed, than you know. Look under the mattress of this bed and you will understand."

We tore the bed to pieces without speaking. Then Aubrey and Cary looked at each other and laughed.

"Now will you believe," said Cary.

There were cigarette-boxes full of nothing but butts and ashes. There were three of my low-cut bodices. There were some of Aubrey's ties and a number of my best handkerchiefs.

I said nothing. I simply stared.

"We all knew of these things, Faith dear," said Aubrey, "but even if you had caught her wearing your clothes or smoking, we knew she would lie out of it, so we waited."

"We knew she hated you so that she couldn't help telling you," added Cary.

"Hated me?" I murmured. "What for?"

Cary blushed furiously, and looked at Aubrey.

"Has Ar— Have you—" I stammered, eagerly.

Cary nodded and Aubrey looked wise. Then Cary and I rushed for each other.

While we still had our arms around each other crying for joy, Mary appeared at the door with her apron filled with the neat little jars of jellies and marmalades I had got for Flora's breakfasts. They had not been opened. Mary regarded me with grim but whimsical defiance.

"The little blister never got a blamed one of 'em, Missis!" she said.



CHAPTER VII

THE PRICE OF QUIET

Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie were among our frequent visitors in the new apartment. Jimmie can never realize that I am really married, and in view of our manifold travelling experiences together he regards the Angel with an eye in which sympathy and apprehension are mingled.

His congratulations at the wedding were unique. "I'd like to congratulate you, old man," he said, wringing the Angel's hand, "but honestly I think you are up against it."

To me at their first call he said:

"What will you do with such a man—you, who have gone scrapping through life, browbeating gentle souls like myself into giving you your own way on every point, and letting you ride rough-shod over us without a protest? He requires consideration and tact and a degree of courtesy—none of which you possess. And you can't drag him away from his writing to go to the morgue or a pawn-shop with you the way you did me in Europe. And most of all he must have quiet. Gee whiz! There will be hours together when you must hold your tongue. You'll die!"

"No, I won't," I declared. "You don't know him. He is an Angel." And with that the argument closed, for Jimmie went off into such a fit of laughter that he choked, and his wife came in a fright to find me pounding him on the back with unnecessary force.

"But why," said Jimmie, when order had been restored, "did you take an apartment, when Aubrey's chief requirement is absence of noise! Furthermore, why do you live in New York, that city which reigns supreme in its accumulation of unnecessary bedlam?"

"Ah, we have thought of all those things," I said, proudly. "First, we avoided a street paved with cobblestones. Second, we took the top floor. Third, there are no houses opposite—only the Park."

"But best of all," said the Angel, speaking for the first time, as Jimmie noted, "it is in the lease that no children are allowed, for children, after all, are the most noise-producing animals which exist. So if an apartment can be noise-proof—"

"Exactly," cut in Jimmie. "If!"

"That's what I say—if it can," said the Angel, "this one should prove so. Faith and I certainly took sufficient pains in selecting it."

"Well, I don't want to discourage you," said Jimmie, and then, after the manner of those who begin their sentences in that way, he proceeded to discourage us in every sort of ingenious fashion which lay at his command. Verily, friends are invaluable in domestic crises!

Nevertheless, his gloomy prophecies disturbed us. We tried to make light of our fears—to pooh-pooh them—to pretend a scorn for Jimmie's opinions, which in secret we were far from feeling, for the fact remained that the Jimmies were experienced and we were not. "Living in an apartment," Jimmie had declared, "is like driving. You may have perfect control over your own horse, but you have constantly to fear the bad driving of other people."

These words kept ringing in our ears. We never forgot for a moment that there were people under us. We crept in gently if a supper after the theatre kept us out until two in the morning. We never allowed the piano to be played after ten in the evening nor before breakfast. We gave up the loved society of our dog, and boarded him in the country because dogs, cats, and parrots were not allowed.

But day by day we found that each one of these self-inflicted maxims was being violated by all the other residents. Singing popular songs, a pianola, half a dozen fox terriers, laughing and shouting good nights in the corridors kept us awake half the night, and worst of all, what we patiently submitted to as visitors with children, we, to our horror, discovered were residents with children, and children of the most detested sort at that. Five of these hyenas in human form lived below us. Their parents were of the easy-going sort. They had all come from a plantation in Virginia, and they had brought their plantation manners with them.

Now, ordinary children are bad enough, and even well-trained ones at that, in the matter of noise, but the noises made by the Gottlieb children were something too appalling to be called by the plain, ordinary word. They had never learned to close a door. They slammed it, and every cup and saucer on our floor danced in reply. When their mother wanted them, she never thought of going to the room they were in to speak to them. She sat still and called. They yelled back defiant negatives or whining questions, and then the negro nurse was sent, and she hauled them in by one arm, their legs dragging rebelliously on the floor and their other arm clutching wildly at pillars or furniture to delay their reluctant progress.

They had a piano, and all five of them took piano lessons. Out of the kindness of their hearts they invited the three children who lived opposite them on the same floor to practise on their piano, so that from seven in the morning until nine at night we were treated to five-finger exercises and scales. Their favourite diversion was a game which consisted of the entire eight racing through their apartment, jumping the nursery bed, and landing against the wall beyond. They had hardwood floors and no rugs.

And the Angel must have quiet in which to write!

We discussed the situation, and resolved to take action. Move? Certainly not! We had done our best in taking this apartment, and we modestly felt that our best was not to be sneezed at. We would make the other people move,—the impertinent people who had dared to produce children off the premises, and then to introduce them ready-made in a non-children apartment-house. Of course a landlord could not protect himself against the home-grown article, so to speak, but he could defend both himself and us against articles of foreign manufacture, and so flagrantly, as evidenced by the names of these "made in Germany."

Other noises which stunned us were remediable by other means. For example, the janitor of the apartment-house which stood next had a pleasant little habit of three times a day emptying some dozen or more metal garbage-cans in the stone-paved court, and as these with their lids and handles merrily jingled back into place, a roar as if from a boiler factory rose, reverberating between the high buildings until, when it reached the sensitive ears of the Jardines, it created pandemonium.

At such times the Angel used to look at me in dumb but helpless misery. I tried bribing the janitor, but they changed so often I couldn't afford it. Then, without a word to the Angel, I appealed to the Health Department. I made a stirring plea. I set forth that not only our health, but our lives (by which I meant our pocketbooks, because the Angel could not write in a noise), were threatened, and I implored protection.

An Irishman answered. God bless soft-hearted, pleasant-spoken Irishmen! This one rescued us from a slow death by torture. He was amenable to blarney. He got it. The result was that never again did any of the serial of janitors, which ran continuously next door, empty garbage-cans in the court.

Rendered jubilant by this victory, we confidently prepared to meet the agents of our building. But before we could arrange this, Considine, the novelist who had come to New York for the winter, called. He was one of the Angel's dearest friends, and we greeted him with effusion.

"I've come to say good-bye," he said at once. "I'm off to-morrow for my farm."

"For a visit?" I cried, unwilling to believe the worst.

"No, for good. I'm done. I'm finished. New York has put an end to me!"

"Why, how do you mean?" we asked, in a breath.

"The noise! The blankety, blankety, et cetera noise of this ditto ditto town! The remainder of these remarks will be sent in a plain, sealed envelope upon application and the receipt of a two-cent stamp!"

The Angel and I looked at each other. We dared not speak.

"How—why—" I faltered at last.

It was all Considine needed—perhaps more than he needed—to set him going.

"I came here under contract, as you know. I was behindhand in my work, but I hoped that the inspiration I would receive from the society of my fellow authors would give me an impetus I lacked in the country. There I often have to spur myself to my work. Here I hoped to work more steadily and with less effort. Ye gods!" He got up and strode around the apartment. "Ye gods! What fallacies we provincials believe! I was in heaven on my farm and didn't know it! And from that celestial paradise of peace and quiet and tranquillity of nature, I deliberately came to this—with a view of bettering my surroundings! When I think of it—when I consider the money I have spent and the time I have lost—" he stopped by reason of choking.

"Why, do you know," he began again, squaring around on the Angel, "I've spent twenty thousand dollars on that apartment of mine, trying to make it sound-proof so that I could make ten thousand by writing! I rented the apartment below me—had to, in order to get a fellow out whose son was learning the violin. I've bribed, threatened, enjoined, and at the last a subway explosion of dynamite broke all the double windows and mirrors, knocked down my Italian chandeliers, and—people tell me I have no redress! Now they have started some kind of a drilling machine in the next block that runs all night, and I can't sleep. New York to live in? New York to work in? Why, I'd rather be a yellow dog in Louisville than to be Mayor of New York!"

But before he could go the bell rang and Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie walked in, so then Considine came back for ten minutes, and stayed two hours.

We told them what we had been discussing, and then we all took comfortable chairs. Cigars and tall glasses with ice and decanters and things that fizz were produced, and, as Jimmie said, "we had such a hammerfest on the City of New York as the old town hadn't experienced in many a long day."

But then, when you come to think of it, didn't she deserve it?

In New York the elevated trains thundering over your head and darkening the street, surface electric cars beneath them being run at lightning speed, the street paved with cobblestones over which delivery carts are being driven at a pace which is cruelty to animals, form a combination of noises compared to which a battery of artillery in action is a lullaby, and which I defy any other city in the world to equal. A hen crossing a country lane in front of a carriage, squawking and wild-eyed, is a picture of my state of mind whenever I have a street to cross. Yesterday there were two street-car accidents and one runaway, which I saw with my own eyes in an hour's outing, and I had no sooner locked myself in my sixth-floor apartment with a sigh of relief at being saved from sudden death when a crash came in the street below, and by hanging out of the window I saw that an electric car had struck a plate-glass delivery wagon in the rear, upset it, smashed the glass, thrown the horse on his side, and so pushed them, horse, cart, and all, for a quarter of a block before the car could be stopped. I shrieked loud and long, but in the noise of the city no one heard me, and all the good it did was to ease my own mind.

New York is a good place to come to, to be amused, or to spend money, but as a city of terrific and unnecessary noises, there is not one in the world which can compare to it.

Scissors-grinders are allowed to use a bugle—a bugle, mind you, well known to be the most far-reaching sound of all sounds, and intended to carry over the roar of even artillery, else why is it used in a battle? So this bugling begins about seven in the morning, and penetrates the most hermetically sealed apartments. Then the street-cleaners, the "White Wings," garbage and ash-can men begin their deadly rounds, and the clang of dashing empty metal cans on the stone-paved courts and areas reverberates between high buildings until one longs for the silence of the grave.

The noise and shock of blasting rock is incessant. They are blasting all along the Hudson shore and in Central Park. It sounds like cannonading, and the succession of explosions sometimes wakens one before dawn or after midnight with the frightened conviction that a foreign fleet is upon us to force us to reduce the tariff. The blasting occasionally goes a little too far, and breaks windows or brings down pieces of the ceiling. Last week it caved in a house and broke some arms and legs of the occupants. One woman went into convulsions, and was rigid for hours from the shock, but as nobody was killed no action was taken.

Old clothes men are permitted a string of bells on their carts, which all jangle out of tune and at once, while street-cries of all descriptions abound in such numbers and of such a quality that I often wonder that the very babies trundled by in their perambulators do not go into spasms with the confusion of it.

Considine and I stated all this with some excusable heat while the Angel was serving our guests with what their different tastes demanded. It always gives me a feeling of unholy joy seeing Mrs. Jimmie trying to join her husband in his low pleasures. She regarded it as a religious duty to take beer when he did while we were abroad, but in England and here he takes whiskey and soda, so as champagne is not always on tap in people's houses, sometimes she tries to emulate his example.

Have you ever seen anybody take cod-liver oil? Well, that is the look which comes over Mrs. Jimmie's face when the odour of whiskey assails her aristocratic nostrils. Nevertheless she valiantly sits the whole evening through with her long glass in her hand. The ice melts and the whole mess grows warm and nauseous, but she hangs on, sipping at it with an air of determined enjoyment painful to see. If she did as she would like, she would either hold her nose and gulp it all down at once or else she would fling glass and all out of the window.

In vain we all try to make it easy for her to refuse. If we don't offer it she looks hurt, so the kindest thing we can do is to pretend we notice nothing, and to let her believe that she is her husband's boon companion, since that is her futile ambition.

Jimmie crossed his feet, blew a cloud of smoke into the air, and carried on the attack by saying:

"London, Paris, and Berlin all put together cannot furnish the noise of New York, while the roar of Chicago is the stillness of a cathedral compared to it. And most of it, I may be allowed to state, is entirely unnecessary. The papers are full of accounts of nervous collapses, the sanatoria are crowded, while I never heard as much about insanity in the whole of my life elsewhere as I have heard in New York in one year. There is not a day in which the papers do not contain some mention of insane wards in the city hospitals, but people here are so accustomed to it, that no one except a newcomer like yourself would be likely to notice it."

Considine nodded.

"I lay fully one-half of it to the incessant noises which prey upon even strong nerves for nine months of the year without our realizing them," he said, "and these so work upon the nervous system that it only takes a slight shock to bring about a collapse, and then no weeks in the country, no physic, no tonics can avail. It means a rest cure or the insane ward. It is typical of our American civilization. New Yorkers are the most nervous people I ever saw. The children are nervous; little street urchins, who should not know what nerves are, tremble with nervous tension, while the exodus to the country on Friday nights fairly empties the town. Everybody wants to 'get away from the noise,' and it is an undisputed fact that men who have no right to allow themselves the luxury take every Saturday as a holiday, so that in many lines of business so many men are known to be out of town on Saturdays that business is practically suspended on that day except for routine work. This is true to such an extent in no other city that I know of, and why? It is the noise. Distracted nature clamours for a cessation of it, and the unfortunate who cannot afford the luxury must pay the penalty. It is a question for the Board of Health."

"Poor old chap!" said Jimmie. "It comes hard enough on us common people, but how writing chaps like you and Aubrey stand it, I can't see. I should think you'd find New York the very devil to write in."

"In some ways we do," said the Angel, "but it has its compensations. For example, not even Paris is so beautifully situated as New York. The tall office buildings in the lower end of town look down upon river sights and shipping with a broad expanse of blue water and green shores which a man would cross the ocean to see on the other side. The Hudson beautifies the West Side. Central Park is in my eyes the most beautiful park I ever saw. With its rocks and rolling greens, its trees and wild flowers, it forms a spot of loveliness that makes in the midst of the hot, rushing, busy city a dream of soothing repose. Washington Heights is a crowning wilderness looking down upon the city from Fort George, while the Sound and a glimpse of the village beyond seen through the faint blue haze of distance lend a touch of fairylike enchantment. The Jersey shore and the Palisades are one long drawn out joy, so that, turn where you will, you find New York beautiful."

"Then, too," said Mrs. Jimmie, speaking for the first time, "New York is old, and say what you will you feel the charm of the established, and it gives you a sense of satisfaction to realize that you can't detect the odour of varnish and new paint. New York has got beyond it, and has begun to take on the gray of age."

"The churches show this," I cut in. "They are beautiful stepping-places in the rush of city life. They cool and steady, and their history and traditions form a restful contrast to the bustle of the marketplace."

"But as to those who worship in these beautiful spots," said Considine, "it is safe to say that church parade in Fifth Avenue is an even smarter spectacle than church parade in Hyde Park, for American women have an air, a carriage, and a taste in dress which English women as a race can never acquire. In Hyde Park on Sunday morning, during the season, one will see half a dozen beauties whose clothes are Parisian and the loveliness of whose whole effect almost takes the breath away, but the general run of the other women makes one want to close one's eyes. In America the average woman is lovely enough to make each one worth looking at, while the word 'frump,' which is continually useful in England, might almost be dropped from the American language.

"As to manners in New York," he went on, "well, patriotic as I am, American manners in public in any city almost make me long for the outward politeness and inward insincerity of the Gallic nations. Russians and Poles are the only ones I have observed to be alike both in public and in private. In New York street-car etiquette or the etiquette of any public conveyance is something highly interesting from its variety of selfishness and rudeness."

"That is true," I said, "New York manners are seldom aggressively rude, except on the elevated trains. In other cities you are pushed about, walked over, elbowed aside, and often bodily hurt in crowds of their own selfish making. Not so in New York. Civilization has gone a step further here. In surface cars men never step on you, but they gently step ahead of you and take the seat you are aiming for, and if they can sit sidewise and occupy one and a half seats, and if you beg two of them to move closer together and let you have the remaining space, the two men may rise, one nearly always does and takes off his hat and begs you to have his place. Then all the eyes in the car are fixed on you—not reprovingly, or smilingly, or in derision or reproach, but earnestly, as if you form a social study which it might be worth their while to investigate. Never once during a year's observance of surface-car phenomena have I seen a row of luxuriously seated people make a movement to give place to a new-comer, no matter how old or how well gowned she may be. Even ladies will sometimes give their seats to each other. But they won't 'move up.'"

"In Denver," said Jimmie, "I once heard a conductor call out 'The gents will please step forward and the ladies set closter.' If I knew where that man was I would try to get him a position with the Metropolitan, for most of them feel as a conductor said here in New York when I jumped on him for not obeying my signal, 'Schmall bit do I care!'"

"Then the cars themselves," I cried, "Aren't they the most awful things! I can earnestly commend the surface cars of New York as the most awkward and uncomfortable to climb in and out of that I have ever seen. I use the word 'climb' advisedly, as the step is so high that one must take both hands to hoist oneself, while the conductor is generally obliged to reach down and seize the ambitious woman by the arm to assist her. The bell rings while you are still on the lower step; the conductor says, 'Step lively, please;' the car attains its maximum of speed at one jump; the conductor puts his dirty hand on your white silk back and gives you a forward shove, and you plunge into the nearest seat, apologizing to the people on each side of you for having sat in their laps. Then comes a cry, 'Hold fast,' and around a curve you go at a speed which throws people down, and on one occasion I saw a woman pitched from her seat.

"The Boston street railway system is the most perfect of any American city that I know of. There they pursue such a leisurely course that a Boston woman never rises from her seat until the car has come to a full stop. In fact, Bee and I were identified as strangers in town by the husband of our friend who met us at the terminus of one of the street-car lines, with his carriage. His never having seen us, and approaching us without hesitation, naturally led us to ask how he knew us. He answered:

"'Oh, I saw you walking through the car before it reached the corner and standing on the platform when it stopped, so I said to myself, "There they are!"'"

"I can easily believe you," said Considine, "but in saying that the etiquette of any public conveyance in New York is interesting from its varieties of selfishness, oughtn't you to confine your statement to surface-cars, elevated roads, and ferry-boats, and oughtn't you to make an exception of that dignified relic of antiquity, the Fifth Avenue stage? The most uncomfortable vehicle going, yet let me give the angel his due—in a stage people do move up; everybody waits on everybody else; hands fare; rings for change, and pays all of the old-fashioned courtesies which went from a busy city life with the advent of the conductor, the autocrat of ill manners and indifference."

"Superstition evidently does not obtain in New York on one subject at least," said Aubrey, "and that is the bad luck supposing to accrue from crossing a funeral procession. Never in any other city in the world have I seen such rudeness exhibited toward the following of the dead to their last resting-place as I have seen in New York. The beautiful custom in Catholic countries not only of giving them the right of way, but of the men removing their hats while the procession passes, has resolved itself into a funeral procession going on the run; the driver of the hearse watching his chance and fairly ducking between trucks and surface-cars, jolting the casket over the tracks until I myself have seen the wreaths slip from their places, and sometimes for five or ten minutes the hearse separated from its following carriages by a procession of vehicles which the policeman at the crossing had permitted to interfere. Such a proceeding is a disgrace to our boasted civilization. We are not yet too busy nor too poor to allow our business to pause for a moment to let the solemn procession of the dead pass uninterrupted and in dignity to its last resting-place. Such consideration would permit the hearse to be driven at a reasonably slow pace in keeping with the mournful feelings of its followers. As it is now, New York funerals go at almost the pace of automobiles."

"My brother once told me," I said, "that I was so slow that some day I would get run over by a hearse. Not being an acrobat, that fate may yet overtake me in New York and yet be no disgrace to my activity."

"I am more afraid of automobiles," said Considine, shaking his head, "than I am of what I shall get in the next world. I wouldn't own one or even ride in one to save myself from hanging. I always 'screech,' as Faith says, when my cab meets one."

"You don't know how quickly they can be stopped, Considine," said Jimmie.

"That may be," retorted Considine, "but are you going to pad your broughams and put fenders on your cab horses?"

"I was in an electric cab not long ago," I said, "and a bicyclist rode daringly in front of us. In crossing the trolley-tracks, his bicycle naturally slackened a little, and my careful chauffeur brought the machine to a dead stop. Result that I was pitched out over the dashboard and barely saved myself from landing on my head.

"When I was gathered up and put back I asked the man why he stopped so suddenly (I admit that it was a foolish question, but as I am always one who asks the grocer if his eggs are fresh, I may be pardoned for this one), and he answered: 'Well, did you want me to kill that man?' I replied that of the two alternatives I would infinitely have preferred to kill the man to being killed myself,—a reply which so offended the dignity of my Jehu that he charged me double. I never did get on very well with cab-drivers."

Jimmie laughed. He was remembering the time I knocked a Paris cabman's hat off with my parasol to make him stop his cab. My methods are inclined to be a little forceful if I am frightened.

"But New York is a city of resources," I continued. "There is always somewhere to go! New York only wakes up at night and the streets present as brilliant a spectacle as Paris, for until the gray dawn breaks in the sky the streets are full of pleasure-seekers; cabs and private carriages flit to and fro; the clubs, restaurants, and supper-rooms are full to overflowing, the lights flare, and the ceaseless whirl of America's greatest city goes on and on. And nobody ever looks bored or tired as they do in England. We are all having a good time, and we don't care who knows it. I love New York when it is time to play."

"Well, we've about done up the old town to-night," said Jimmie, as they prepared to leave. "She has hardly a leg to stand on."

"She deserves it," said Considine, gloomily. "I'm off. I'm about to desert and go back to my cabbages. New York won't let you work. She won't help you. She won't protect you. She mocks you. She laughs in your face. I'd rather die than try to work here!"

During every word of this impassioned speech the Angel and I had been growing colder and colder. We could see ourselves just where Considine had found himself—driven out of New York by reason of its abominable noise.

"And the worst of it is," went on Considine, "is that most of this noise is so unnecessary. It comes from—"

A terrific crash came from down-stairs. Three doors slammed. Then some one screamed shrilly. Considine gazed with starting eyes at the jingling globes and glasses and actually lost a little colour.

"What is it?" he whispered.

"It is nothing," said the Angel, with a wave of the hand, "but our little friends below stairs. Our neighbour is blessed with five charming little olive-branches, who have versatile tastes in athletics, and are bubbling over with animal spirits. We think privately that they are the meanest little devils that ever cursed an apartment-house, but their noise is dear to their parents, and they would not allow it when we fain would boil the children alive or beat them with bed-slats."

Jimmie laughed heartlessly, but Considine took his head between his hands.

"They have just illustrated what I was going to say. Nobody has any regard for the rights of others. Peddlers are allowed horns, and cornets, and strings of bells. Why not allow them to send up poisoned balloons to explode in your open windows, and thus call attention to their wares? I wouldn't object a bit more! Why do parents allow such noises? Have you ever remonstrated with the mother?"

"Oh, yes," said the Angel. "One day Faith called and apologized to Mrs. Gottlieb, but begged to know if she might not take the children out herself in order to let me finish a chapter. But Mrs. Gottlieb was justly incensed at any one daring to object to the healthful sports of her little brood, and said: 'Mrs. Jardine, my children are in their own apartment, and I shall allow them to make all the noise they wish.'"

"And the next day," I broke in, excitedly, "she bought the three girls tin horns and the boys drums!"

Considine ground his teeth.

"If our wicked ways of life demanded that each of us should bear some horrible affliction, but Providence had mitigated the sentence by allowing us to choose our own form of mutilation," he said, slowly, "instead of giving up an arm or a leg or an eye, I would give up both ears and say, 'Lord, make me deaf!' For, much as I love music and the sound of my friends' voices, I believe that I could give up all conversation, and for ever deny myself to Grieg and Beethoven and Wagner rather than stand the daily, hourly torture of the street sounds of a great city."

He looked around at us and real tears stood in his eyes.

"Do you know," said the Angel, answering the look in his friend's eyes, "I believe no one on earth understands the anguish those of us who compose suffer from noise. It is not nervousness which causes us this anguish. It is the creating spirit,—the power of the man who brings words to life in literature or who brings tones to life in music. It is part of the artistic temperament, and if I ever saw a child start and shake and go white at a sudden noise, I should lay my hand on the little chap's head and say to his mother: 'Take care of that child's brain, for in it lies the power of the creator of something great. Teach him above everything self-expression that he may not labour as too many do, yet labour in vain.'"

I loved Considine for the way he looked at my Angel after that speech and the way he moved toward him and took his hand in his big, soft, strong grip.

"I can't stand it!" he declared, standing up. "I'm going. I wouldn't live in New York if they'd give me the town. I'm going back to my five hundred acres and get in the middle of it with a revolver, and I'll shoot anything that approaches!"

But when they had all gone something like dismay seized us.

"He has so much more money than we have," I wailed, "and if he can't do anything where do we come in, I'd like to know!"

The Angel paced up and down thoughtfully with his hands behind his back,—an attitude conducive to deep meditation in men, I have observed.

"I think I have it," he said, finally. "Considine is too impulsive. He was not firm enough. Now I got an important letter from the agents to-day, saying that they could do nothing about the noise of the children. In the lease it expressly mentions them. I shall simply hold back the rent and see what that produces!"

I was filled with admiration at the Angel's firmness.

The result was speedily produced, such as it was. Jepson called. He called often. Then we began to get letters, and finally they threatened us with eviction. It made me feel quite Irish.

Then one day the owner and the agents and their lawyer called, and we discussed the matter. They were affable at first, but as the noise from the Gottlieb apartment grew more boisterous, their suavity departed, for they realized that our grievance was a substantial one, yet they declared they could do nothing.

"But it is in the lease," we protested. Then they delivered themselves of what they really had come to say.

"My dear sir," said the owner, "that lease and those rules can never be enforced in this city. They simply don't hold—that's all."

"Very well," I said, triumphantly. "If the clauses upon which we took the apartment do not hold, then neither does the clause regarding the payment of the rent obtain."

They all three broke in together with hysterical eagerness:

"Ah, but that does hold. You must know that, madam."

"The rent clause is the only clause which the law backs up, is it? We have no redress against your getting us here under false pretences?"

They looked at each other uneasily. Then their masculinity asserted itself. What? To be thus browbeaten by a woman? They looked commiseratingly at the Angel for being saddled with such a wife.

They stood up to go. I looked expectantly at Aubrey.

"Gentlemen," he said, quietly. "You have heard the noises from the surrounding apartments to-day, and you have admitted that they were extraordinary. I declare them not to be borne. If then, you cannot mitigate the nuisance, this apartment will be at your disposal from the first of February."

They smiled patronizingly. The lawyer even laid his hand on the Angel's shoulder. He should have known better than that.

"My dear fellow," he said, benevolently. "You are liable for the whole year's rent—until next October. You will see by your lease."

Aubrey shook his hand off haughtily.

"Provided the lease is signed," he said, quietly. "Will you gentlemen have the goodness to find my signature on this lease? I haven't even returned it to your office."

They examined it with dropped jaws. They had not even the strength to hand it back to him. Between them it fell to the floor,—the lease whose only binding clause was the one regarding the payment of the rent.

"From the first of February," repeated the Angel, politely.

"But my dear sir," protested the lawyer, recovering first. "Let us see if we cannot adjust this little difficulty. You sign the lease, for we cannot rent such an apartment as this in midwinter. We would lose eight months' rent if you gave it up now, and I will myself personally see Mr. Gottlieb in regard to his children's noise. It really is abominable."

"We shall move this month," said Aubrey. "From the first of February this apartment is yours."

"You are very stiff about it," said the owner. "Why not be reasonable?"

"I am perfectly reasonable," said Aubrey, gently. "I have listened for an hour to the justice you administer to a tenant with a signed lease. My reason is what is guiding me now."

He rose as he spoke and moved toward the door.

They glared at us both as they went out.

Aubrey sat and figured for a few moments in silence.

"It has cost us quite a little," he said at last, "to learn that such as we cannot live in New York. We will go into the country where the right to live, and to live this side of insanity, is guaranteed, not by a lease, but by the exact centre of five acres of ground."

"I have always wanted to!" I cried, with enthusiasm. "We will be commuters."

"We will commute," said Aubrey, pausing to let the fire-engines go by, "when necessary."



CHAPTER VIII

MOVING

So we began our search for the Quiet Life and the spot wherein to live it. It must be out-of-town, yet not so far but that the Angel and I could get to town for an occasional feast of music or the theatre.

We asked those of our friends who were commuters to exploit the glories of their own particular towns, but to our minds there was always some insuperable objection.

So one day I took down the telephone-book and looked over the names of the towns. Jersey was tabooed on account of its mosquitoes, and both Aubrey and I cared nothing for the seashore. But the Hudson, with its beauty and the delight of its hills rising in such a profusion of loveliness back of it, seemed to draw us irresistibly.

"Anything within an hour of New York," said Aubrey.

The telephone-book should answer. I resolved to read until I got a "hunch." That is not good English, but with me it is good sense, which is better.

Finally I found a number—97 Clovertown—Bucks, Miss Susan. Peach Orchard. The hunch was very distinct. I could fairly see my note-paper with Peach Orchard, Clovertown, stamped on it, for I instantly made up my mind that Susan must be asked to rent Peach Orchard for a term of years and go abroad. I felt sure that Europe would do her good. The more I thought of these names, the more sure I felt that we had arrived.

My next step was to look feverishly through the Clovertown names for a real estate agent. I found one, and without saying a word to the Angel, I called him up.

"Hello, Central. Give me Long Distance. Hello, Long Distance. Give me sixty-five Clovertown, please! Yes! All right. Is this Close and Murphy? Well, this is New York. I want to ask you if Peach Orchard is to let. What? I say, I would like to know if Miss Bucks would like to let Peach Orchard? She would? Well, how large is it? Four? Oh, five? Is there a good house on the place? And a stable? That's nice. I see. Yes. Well, I would like to see it to-day if I could, but it is snowing here. Not snowing there? Well, we might try. What time does a train leave 125th Street? In forty minutes? Well, my husband and I will be on that train. Oh, that's very nice. Our name is Jardine—Mr. and Mrs. Aubrey Jardine. Yes, I understand. Very well. Good-bye."