At the end of five years, the agreement was to cease, and the profits to be divided.

Then the five-years' lease of Hope Mills and all its appurtenances was made out to "Hope Mills Co-operative Association," and duly signed. The rental was to be six hundred and sixty dollars per annum, the company to pay the taxes, and keep the mills in ordinary repair.

Then the managers and a number of the workmen marched over to Hope Mills in a body, opened the doors and barred shutters, and entered with an exultant step. They were to try their hand at good-fellowship in labor, and see if it would solve the vexations of the old system, or prove any stronger bond. Maverick had spread a little feast in what had been Eastman's office; and they sat down together, the ladies, joined by Sylvie Barry, Mrs. Darcy, and Miss Morgan, taking the head of the table. Some speeches were made, and some toasts drank, and everybody wished success to Hope Mills. Had John Hope unconsciously foretold their future when he christened them for his own glory? Darcy thought so. The name had a higher significance now, and was to be the earnest of many souls, the watchword to inspire them.

Miss McLeod bade them a hearty farewell. "There may arise some emergency, Mr. Darcy," said she, "when indorsing a note, or a similar matter, will be of great importance to you. I shall not promise to do much of it; but I am strongly interested in this experiment, and want it to have a fair trial. Let me hear from you occasionally; and, if you are in any great strait, apply to me."

Jack thanked her warmly, and she and Miss Lothrop went their way.

"She is a regular fairy godmother," he said enthusiastically to Maverick. "I wonder that you do not adore her!" and he studied his friend in astonishment.

"Have you never heard of people being so much alike they could not agree?" he asked with a light laugh. "What ever possessed her to bring Miss Lothrop? It was in bad taste, to say the least; and, whatever faults aunt Jean may have, she seldom makes a blunder of that kind."

"Why, Sylvie was—well, a good deal pleased with her. The acquaintance was so short"—

"Miss Barry is the most generous and least exacting woman that I ever saw. She judges people by her own noble soul. Jack Darcy"—Maverick shut his lips with a sudden resolution, and turned his face partly aside, then said in a curiously changed tone, "We are two fools to be talking about women, when there are more important matters on hand."

"But I shall always feel grateful to Miss McLeod. There are several moneyed men here in Yerbury whose capital is lying idle, who would not have done this thing for me if they knew it would keep half Yerbury from starving. Yet, if I had offered them ten per cent, they would hardly have hesitated. It does seem to me sometimes, that these old dons tempt one into lying first, and swindling afterward. If you make them all straight, they do not care how much crooked work you do elsewhere."

"Natural depravity and innate selfishness."

And now began the real work. The mills were cleaned of the year's accumulation of dust and cobwebs and general untidiness. Winston went at the machinery with hearty good-will, and put it in order. Circulars were sent out to the old patrons and to new houses, and workmen, workwomen, and children straggled in to see what was going on. Were Hope Mills to be really opened? and was Mr. Darcy to be master? True, a good many of the best men had gone off to try their luck elsewhere, but there were plenty left for a start. Only, there was a mystery these people could not understand. Something about wages, and something about money; and Jack patiently explained the matter, until, as he told Maverick, he felt like a cheap-John auctioneer, dispensing wares.

"The best thing will be to have a meeting," declared Maverick. "See here, Darcy: I'll hire Brock's Hall myself; and we will have a lecture, or a conference-meeting. Subject, 'Work and Wages.' I'll have some posters out too. Every one will know what we mean, that we are honest men and true; and you will be spared this everlasting palaver. Then we will have some rules, or by-laws, or something, for the workmen. Talk to Mr. Winston about it. He would make a capital speaker, with his glib tongue."

Darcy thought it an excellent plan, and they set about it immediately.

"But you'll have to post me," confessed Winston. "The only co-operation I ever was in was a building-association, and our treasurer ran off with our funds."

Maverick promised to "coach" him. Indeed, it was the doctor who gathered up statistics, and put them in a compact and telling form.

They had a large audience,—men and women. "Robert Winston, Esq.," was the orator of the evening. He was a fluent speaker, and had a good deal of humor. He began about the early Anglo-Saxon guilds, and the banding together of craftsmen when towns grew large and prosperous, and labor was performed in the workshops, instead of at home; of the importance of the woollen-manufacture in the days of Elizabeth, not only in England, but on the Continent, when kings did not disdain to borrow money of these corporations; of their final overthrow, and the causes leading to it; of the growth of trades-unions, and the views of conflicting writers on the subject. The workman's necessities so often compelled him to accept what he felt to be inadequate returns, because he could not wait,—it was work or starvation with him,—so that in dull times he was not only at the mercy of the employer, but every other starving workman. On the other hand, so few workmen ever informed themselves concerning the employer's perplexities and dangers, they had no broad and vital interest in the business until they all became leagued together, as in co-operation. Then they shared one another's burdens and prosperity. It was not the one great fortune, but the many comfortable incomes. It was the fruit of the noblest thought and the truest philanthropy. As a producer it had done its best work in France; and he went briefly over the work of the masons at Paris, and the Association Remquet, which, after carrying on printing business for ten years, divided among its members an average of over ten thousand francs; the cloth-factory at Vienna, with its flour-mill, bakery, grocery, coal-yard, and farm; the different societies in England, that were promising, to say the least. All this had been done by the thrift and economy of individual members, who educated themselves by doing business, and so were enabled to dispense with the profits of middle-men, and the greedy clutch of speculators.

After Winston had finished, Dr. Maverick went briefly over their plans for Hope Mills in a very simple and direct manner.

"Winston was capital!" said Jack afterward. "When we are hard up we can send him off on a lecturing-tour. But wasn't it rather over the heads of our people?"

"It was for others beside the workmen. You know, Darcy, some men are so used to swindling and misrepresentation, that they invariably accuse every plan of another, of the same motive. You will have a good deal of this back talk before your five years are ended; and I want Yerbury to know that this is an old, old scheme. I might have quoted the children of Israel, as aunt Jean did, and shocked the religious portion of the community. But, after all, isn't the greatest truth, the Golden Rule, co-operation in all forms?" and he glanced up triumphantly.

Jack did not gainsay him.

He had hit the truth in regard to Yerbury. Some of those who had managed to hold on to their money through all the stress of hard times raised their eyebrows and shook their heads in amused derision. "A fool and his money," said they, and "Set a beggar on horseback," besides numerous wise saws people love to fling at their neighbors. A mortifying collapse was predicted. There wasn't a woollen-mill in the country paying. The smaller people who had been easily induced to invest their money in building-lots, under the supposition that in a few years there would hardly be standing-room in Yerbury, looked askance at this project, so much more easily does speculation appeal to human nature, than the slower but more honorable results of industry.



CHAPTER XIV.

IT was easy enough now to get hands who would consent to the three-quarter wages. With one winter of semi-starvation the poor of Yerbury were glad to take any thing that promised bread. The masters were going to share with the men; but they were made distinctly to understand, that, unless the mills earned something over and above this, there could be no surplus, no dividends. Another thousand of the capital had been made up by some of the hands, who thought this promised as well as railroad-stocks, lots out on country barrens, or even savings banks.

To be sure, some burly fellows, whose wives could hardly keep soul and body together over their washing-tubs, swore great oaths that Jack Darcy was a fool to think he could find men to play into his hands that way! Bob Winston was a blower, and never kept at any one thing; and some of the rest were old screws, and in six months time everybody would see!

However, Hope Mills rang out its great bell cheerfully on Monday morning, the middle of September. A small procession wended their way in at the side gate. The engine, with Robert Winston at its helm, as they had not suited themselves with an engineer, puffed and groaned; but, if it was not a merry music, it was good to hear, for all that. The faces were pinched and thin with a year's care and want and the horrible fear of the future, but they tried to smile cheerfully. More than one poor woman had tears in her eyes, and spoke in that hysterical, half-laughing, half-crying tone, that told how deeply her feelings were moved.

By night they were quite settled in the old places, or adapted to new ones. Perhaps the year's experience had done these people some good: they had learned to manage closer. Cameron and Darcy had discussed thrifty French ways of management, and now meant to profit by them if possible. The American spirit of wastefulness should not run riot as it had in times past. Dyes and oils and chemicals were to be sharply looked after, and Cameron was the man to do it.

Before the first week was out, an engineer came to hand. There had been several applications, but some men raised their noses and laughed loudly at the rate of wages. A young chap just out of his time when the panic came on, and who had tried every thing, even to rail-roading, took the place with hearty thanks; a quick, bright fellow too, who had a love for his business, and said in ten minutes time, "She's a pretty engine, Mr. Winston!" with the enthusiasm of a true artist.

"That chap'll blow up Hope Mills in less than a month," said Jem Stixon, who had been refused. "You mark my words! I wouldn't have wife or child of mine working there."

Darcy watched the temper of the employees, and reported every few days to Maverick. The little social "we" and "ours" was working wonders, he thought.

"And we do nothing!" said Sylvie one evening, in a discontented tone, as she sat crocheting by Mrs. Darcy's pretty round table in the old library, that had become a kind of general business-room. "I thought you were going to set us women at work about something. Miss Morgan and I have been waiting patiently."

"There was the cooking-school"—

"But we have nothing to cook. And how are we to get any thing? unless we set up as those poor weavers in Toad Lane, on our pocket-money. I believe I beg from those who have a little, nearly half my time, to give to those who have nothing. And, would you believe it, some of the women begin to think they must be provided for. Mrs. Cairns asked me to-day when the relief-store was going to open. She didn't see why there shouldn't always be something here like the parish relief in England. And when Mrs. Ray offered to take Josie this winter, and keep her in shoes for what she could do, and teach her a little, Mrs. Cairns said, 'if she was worth any thing, she was worth more than that. She might have her for a dollar a week.'"

"Such people ought to go hungry," declared Jane Morgan sharply.

"I've been thinking," said Jack, who now raised his eyes slowly, "there is one thing you might help do; and, indirectly, it would be very serviceable to me. Sylvie, you know Kit Connelly's corner, as they always call it?"

"Well, so it is: Mrs. Connelly earned the money that bought it, and I am glad she didn't let Dennis go on in business until he spent every cent of it. And oh, Jack! all we women of Yerbury ought to be doubly proud that she wouldn't let Den keep a beer-shop there, nor hire it to any one else."

"I hope you are. I think Kit was pretty plucky to take the black eyes and the grumbling. It was a good job for her when Den went over to the Bowman House for hostler. So, of course, it has been shut up a year and a half. You know, two blocks down below, Keppler's door stands open for everybody, and so many of the mill-hands pass that way. It is so easy to run in and get a glass, and the men who bring their lunches go down for a mug of ale. It is a terrible temptation, and I wonder if they are not more easily tempted on an empty stomach? Well, I've been considering for some days if we could not start a coffee-house there,—set Kit up in business. I'm not going to fling a temperance-pledge right in every man's face,—for that makes them spiteful. I do not even want to exhort. But if we put it there,—right in their way,—and there was a nice fire in the evening, and maybe a book or two"—

"Splendid, Jack! There's no such thing in Yerbury. Let's get about it right away!" and Sylvie sprang up, as if she would start at once.

They all laughed.

"There must be a little planning first. Mrs. Connelly is a bright, good-hearted creature, and can make good coffee; and Rose and Kathleen would make nice little maids. She stopped me to-night to inquire if there was any chance of their being taken in the mill. There must be some diversity of employment, or presently we shall all be doing the one thing again,"—and Jack smiled humorously. "Dennis gets low wages, Bernard is in the mill, and there are two younger boys. She takes in gentlemen's laundering, as you know. She was wishing she could rent out the store, but no one wants it. Now, if it could be altered into an attractive coffee-room, kept neat and bright, and—you will laugh at me, no doubt—but given a kind of style,—the cups clean and shining, the spoons decent, and some nice bread and butter for noon lunches. All this at a moderate price. The men pay five cents for their pint of ale, and it is often shared by two: they must not give more than three cents for their cup of coffee."

"I suppose you mean that we are to plan it all out for her," said Sylvie, and she looked across at Miss Morgan.

"It will not do to buy a pound of sugar and a pound of coffee at a time," said Jane concisely.

"Then I will be the capitalist," promised Sylvie.

"Exactly. Kit had better do this on some money that she must give an account of, and it will make her more careful. She owns a cow, so there is the milk. I should like this started quietly, not with a great blare of opposition to the dram-shops."

"Well, what must we do first?" asked Sylvie.

"I wish you and Jane would go down and call on her, and suggest the business. See how she takes it, and look around at the capabilities of the place. I will see to the fitting-up."

They went, as desired. Mrs. Connelly—a round, rosy, buxom Irishwoman, with a mellow voice, laughing eye, and artist-red hair—was very much taken with their plan. "To turn an honest penny in these hard times, and not be wronging any one, would just suit the likes of her. And there was the store standing empty,—but it might stand till the crack o' doom afore she'd have a drop of rum sold in it. There never was a better man than Den when he was sober, and sure she'd had sorrow enough along wid drinking. And there was Barney growin' up, and the two smaller ones, and she'd never, never put a bit of temptation in their way."

The store had been used for a meat-shop and green-grocery. Kit had sold the fixtures when she had been in sore need of money, so now it was a great bare room, with one large window and two small ones.

"Sure I can scrub an' whitewash it myself, an' put clean curtains to the windows. And you're very good to think of such a thing, Miss Barry,—may the saints bless you! An' if Mr. Darcy will see to getting what is wanted, I'll do my very best to please you all."

Sylvie blushed a little at taking the credit, but it was Jack's wish. Jack had a small portico built over the door-way, to keep out the cold in winter, and a neat sign put up, with but two words,—"Coffee-House." Sylvie and Miss Morgan ordered some cheap, small tables, some plain wooden chairs, and found two comfortable, old-fashioned, wooden settles. Then she collected old magazines and illustrated papers, and a rack was put up at one side for them. All the tables were covered with light marbled rubber-cloth, so that they would be kept fresh and sweet. The sugar and coffee were forthcoming. Kit could roast coffee to a turn. One Thursday evening the place was lighted up, and a few guests asked in; and the next day the fame of Kit Connelly's coffee-house began. Half the folks in Yerbury knew her and Dennis.

Rose Connelly, who was just seventeen, a nice fresh-looking girl, was to keep the books, and take the money as she was quite a scholar. Several of the mill-hands went over immediately for their lunches. Such splendid wheat, rye, and Graham bread, spread already, and brought on a clean plate! A nice bite for three cents, and a solid meal for six. Sylvie was to go down now and then, of a morning, to keep matters straight.

"There is one entering-wedge in the cause of temperance," she remarked, in her piquant way. "Only, Jack, it does not seem quite right for us women to take the credit of it. I confess, among all my plans, there has been nothing like this."

"I would rather not be openly connected with it," and Jack made a queer little grimace. "By and by I may have to do some real fighting on my own account, and I don't want too many vulnerable points. Human nature is rather queer and cranky, as you have, no doubt, observed by this time."

"But I do not see why any one should want to fight against your good work, Jack," said Sylvie, with an indignant flush. "I am sure it is no light undertaking to provide all these people with work; and everybody ought to strengthen your hands, instead of putting obstacles in the way."

"I must be prepared for all things."

Maverick was very enthusiastic over the coffee-house. It was a new institution in Yerbury. There had been in good times several so-called cheap lunch-rooms, but the fare was invariably poor.

"Keppler will be your first enemy, and your worst one," said the doctor with a shrewd smile.

"Very well. He must fight Miss Barry and Miss Morgan. I did send a man to do some work, but Miss Barry paid the bills. I keep my hands out of it altogether."

"Good for you, Jack. And how does business progress?"

"I am dubious," and Jack shook his head in a mock-serious way. "There is too much rose-color. Every thing works to a charm. Whether people really have learned something by the hard times, remains to be seen; but it looks so now. And we couldn't have a better working firm. Owen Cameron is the same kind of a man that Miss Morgan is for a woman, not stingy here and wasteful there, but a thorough-going economist. Every week he makes a little saving somewhere. It is what we needed to learn, badly enough. He manages to make the men understand that every penny saved is for the benefit of all, that a yard of cloth or a pound of wool spoiled is to the loss of all. And that is the only way to settle this business, this everlasting wrangle between labor and capital."

Amos Hurd and Peter Yardley used to talk over the other scheme of a co-operative store. It would not do to have too many irons in the fire in such times as these, when no one had any great deal of money. But it did seem as if poor people were paying at the dearest rate for every thing, partly because they asked for trust, and the only man willing to trust them to any extent kept a very full line of second or third rate articles, but the prices did not always correspond.

"Now, there's coal," said Yardley one evening. "At the trade-sale it went up ten cents a ton on the average. Our dealers here, who had their yards full, put up their prices from twenty to thirty cents. I know, on the other hand, if coal takes a sudden tumble, they may lose; but, after watching this thing for years, I find the prices go up five times with full yards, where they fall once. Now, I was thinking, when coal was bought for the mill, some extra car-loads might be ordered for the men."

"Yes," and Hurd opened his eyes widely. "Let us talk to Darcy about it."

Jack listened to their proposal with a sudden interest.

"It will be some trouble to you," he answered. "It is not as thoroughly screened, and there is the delivering. The men cannot carry it home in market-baskets."

"I don't know about the screening," said Yardley rather grimly. "When you clean up your bin, and find several bushels of sand and refuse out of five or six tons, you think half of it, at least, ought to have been good burning-coal. And in wholesale buying you get long tons."

"I can do it as well as not," replied Jack. "In fact,"—laughingly,—"it will rather redound to my credit to order largely, and we have a somewhat extensive coal-shed. But you must look up one or two men who will cart it, and a man to screen; and, when you have counted up your labor, decide upon what price you can offer your coal. Perhaps it would be as well to canvass, and learn how many tons you can dispose of."

The workmen had their own board of managers, of which Yardley had been elected president. They generally met every week, and now Yardley laid this matter before them. There would be an average saving, he thought, of two dollars on every ton, but the coal must be paid for in thirty days. If the men chose to leave one or two dollars every Monday night (for Darcy had wisely made Monday instead of Saturday pay-day) they might give in an order for one or two or even three tons.

Meanwhile Peter Yardley found some thorns even in his path. A good, stout Irish lad was willing to do the screening at a dollar per day; but when he spoke to several carters, who were not busy half the time, to a man they stuck to their regular price, fifty cents per ton. Not one of them would work by the day.

"I can fix that just right," declared one of the men. "My wife's brother has a heavy wagon and two mules. He used to do carting for the iron-mills, and since then he has had mostly catch-jobs. He owns a little place over on the creek-road; and I know he will be glad enough to do it, and maybe take part of his pay in coal."

Seth Williams was hunted up. He would come, and bring his son who would help about loading, for two dollars and a half a day. There were seventy-odd tons subscribed for, but they decided to make their order one hundred tons. Coal was selling at six dollars and a half per ton at Yerbury. After due calculation, they offered theirs to the men at four.

It came duly to hand. After the first day, Williams hired another team on his own account, and his son drove one to its destination, making thereby extra time. Before the seventy tons had been delivered, the remainder was bespoken. They found when it had all been disposed of, and their workmen paid, that they had counted very closely, but there was a small balance on hand. This was deposited in the bank as a nucleus for a co-operative store as soon as there might be sufficient capital to warrant it. This, at least, had been a success. So many of the poorer class of Yerbury were not able to pay for the last ton of coal until they ordered again, being always that much behind.

Yardley was quite jubilant over his scheme.

"You forget that in this you and Hurd have received nothing for your trouble," said Darcy. "Then," smilingly, "you have no bad debts to count out. Still only a philanthropist can do business this way. If you were the proprietor of a coal-yard, you could not afford it."

"I think I have something for my trouble, Mr. Darcy," the man answered proudly. "I have saved ten dollars on my four tons of coal, and that surely pays me."

They were doing moderately well at the mill. Several orders had come in from old buyers; and now Winston started out on a travelling tour, being admirably fitted for that part of the business. At the West he managed to talk two large wool-dealers into a trade; they taking cloth of various grades in exchange, and disposing of it to the best of their ability.

"A regular old-fashioned barter," he wrote to Maverick. "It took a good deal of talking, to be sure, but I'm never the worse for that. They were pleased to get a fair price for their wool, and I lost nothing on my cloth. It clears out the stock, and keeps the men busy."

Indeed, Hope Mills was doing a great thing for Yerbury. There was a brisker air on the streets, a kind of inspiring music in the whir and clatter, that spoke of food and warmth and raiment. Good feeling and sympathy had been touched; and though some of the workmen, who were harassed by back debts, looked rather ruefully at their small weekly pittance, still it was so much better than no money and no employment.

At the Darcys they held what Sylvie laughingly called "symposiums." The churches were organizing their winter work, for there would be need enough. The few who had found employment merely made a ripple on the surface. Some who had stretched out their scanty means the past year now found themselves penniless. Others had tramped about the neighboring towns and cities, getting a few weeks' work here and there, but had no fancy for facing winter in this precarious manner. The hopeful feeling animating so many in the early autumn died out again. It was feared that we had not seen the worst of the panic.

To Sylvie, who the preceding winter had been engrossed in art-studies and delightful social life, the want and misery were appalling. She and Miss Morgan did organize a visiting-society according to an idea of Dr. Maverick's; and though they alleviated many cases of distress, and were the better able to distinguish who were worthy, still they increased upon their hands.

"I begin to realize that poor people do not make the best of their money," she said. "They do not know how to prepare dishes that shall be cheap and palatable. And, worst of all, many of them cannot cook a potato so that it shall be fit to eat."

"The weak point of this world, Miss Sylvie," said Dr. Maverick. "When women learn to make good bread and cook potatoes, there will be a decrease of one-half in dyspepsia. Now, what is the secret of the potatoes? Come, air your ideas! Give me a recipe, and I will take it around among my patients. I advise them pretty generally to bake them, but I find some soggy and watery even then."

"Overdone," said Miss Morgan briefly.

"Well, state the exact time."

The women looked at each other, and laughed.

"From twenty minutes to half an hour," said Mrs. Darcy. "Some kinds boil easier than others. For baking, three-quarters to an hour."

"But the infallible test?"

"Watchfulness," said Jane.

"I must admit that you seem to understand it thoroughly, judging from the specimens I have seen and eaten. But are you not a little chary in your information?" and he glanced from one to another.

"Miss Morgan shall be first spokeswoman," declared Sylvie gayly.

"If it is a boiled potato," began Jane sententiously, as if she were a child speaking a piece, "I put mine in the saucepan, and pour hot water over them, as they come to a boil sooner, taking care that they shall be as nearly of a size as possible. In about twenty minutes I try an average potato. If I can stick a fork through it nicely, it is done. Then I pour off the water, letting it drain until every drop is gone, when I shake up the lot two or three times rather hard and quick, stand them on the back of the stove with the cover partly off, so that the steam may escape; and you have a dry, light, flaky potato, unless it was irremediably bad to begin with. I have sometimes boiled new and rather small potatoes in twelve minutes over a good fire. But cooking, like liberty, has the same high price, eternal vigilance."

Maverick laughed. "I shall remember this," he exclaimed. "You will yet hear of me teaching some of my poor patients to cook potatoes. Heaven knows there is enough need of it. Wasn't there some talk of a school for useful arts?"

"Yes," answered Sylvie, "only there was no money to start with, and we have all been so busy."

"What would be needed?"

"Imprimis: a room, a cooking-stove, a fire, a cook, and some materials," replied Sylvie with merry audacity.

How pretty and bright she was! He liked to watch her in these changeful moods. One great charm of this place was finding her here so frequently.

"And Mr. Darcy has been so much engrossed with weightier matters," she continued in a half apology.

"I really think I ought to be more interested in this question than Mr. Darcy. It supplements my work. While cheap living is an imperative necessity in times of depression and low wages, I cannot see why we do not make it more of a study. While we are so ready to copy the vices of our French neighbors, perhaps their virtues would do us no harm. A doctor often finds himself quite nonplussed by something in the preparation of the patient's diet. The old doctrine preached years ago, on St. Paul's text of 'keeping the body under,' has worked as much damage as the asceticism of the middle ages. A good healthy body is the first requisite everywhere; and to keep it so, every one's first duty. When men began to consider the body a poor, vile thing, to be treated with contumely, and fed with what would just sustain life, they offered an outrage to the highest work of God. When people think it is no matter what they eat, and that no pains need be taken in the preparation, they have made a big lapse toward heathenism. Confusion of the physical senses leads to confusion of the moral sense; and weak, miserable bodies with hysterical nerves, though they may dream dreams, and see visions, cannot do good healthy work in this world. And your poor people need a good deal of training on this subject. It must be made an honorable, not a despised, business. If I were to build houses, I should make the kitchens large, light, and pretty; and, if any room had to be small and uninviting, it should be that for the storage of the best furniture," laughing humorously.

"Yes," responded Jane Morgan, "I like to go into an old-fashioned country kitchen, with a nice painted floor, and braided rag rugs laid down here and there: with a grandmother's corner by a sunny window, and a father's chair by the wide, cheerful chimney-piece, and a place for the children to play, with plenty of room to get about. Apples and nuts always taste so good in such a place! Instead, we have a stuffy little kitchen and a cheerless dining-room, that no one wants to sit in, and every member of the family goes to his or her room, and sociability is at an end. Then we must go to theatres, lectures, and concerts, just to catch a glimpse of the members of our own family."

"There is a good deal of truth in that," and the doctor nodded sagaciously. "And now I shall take steps for that school. I may count on you, Miss Morgan, may I not, and Miss Barry?"

They both promised.



CHAPTER XV.

MEANWHILE what had befallen Fred Lawrence?

He had been greatly shocked at his father's death. True, the tender, intense affection that had so sweetened childhood seemed to have died out; when they might have attained to an enduring friendship, they had gone separate ways, missing the exquisite sympathy that should have existed between them. Whether the distance was any disappointment to his father, he had never thought. He was the only son of the house, and his slightest wish had always been gratified. There had been no wretched vices that sap body and soul, nothing to bring dishonor on the old pure, family name; and, if David Lawrence missed something that he had hardly longed for, he still felt proud of his son.

But his son, bending over the coffined face, was stunned, paralyzed. Of this death he had never thought. Was it not rather a frightful dream?

The sharp reality followed fast enough. He listened, still bewildered by the horrible visions that crowded upon him. Hope Mills closed, notes going to protest, workmen clamoring for pay, Mr. Eastman quite out of reach, indeed, no one knew just where.

Mr. Minor did not spare his father-in-law. How could he trust every thing to Horace Eastman! How could he allow George to go on unchecked in such a career of wild speculation! forgetting that he had speculated quite as wildly. And now all the property was covered with mortgages, and not a dollar to be squeezed out of any thing. As for the bank business, that he sneered at. Let them look to the Eastmans. They might have known that a small manufacturing town like Yerbury could not stand such galloping progress. In his heart of hearts he thought George and Horace rather clever fellows to get away before the crash began. And if David Lawrence had only managed to provide well for his family,—his manifest duty,—the rest might have gone without a sigh, such trifles as notes and wages.

Fred Lawrence he looked upon as a baby. Indeed, Fred was of but little use in settling the business, much more plague than profit, since he stood up stoutly for his father's honor and integrity. He had that much of a son's love. And he characterized Horace Eastman's villany as it deserved: his education had not quite done away with his moral sense in such matters.

"Here for five years your father has given him a clean sweep with every thing! If you thrust temptation right in a man's way, what can you expect?"

"His honesty would not be of a very high order if it could withstand no temptation," Fred answered rather scornfully. "It was necessary for father to travel in the interests of the business. He surely could not stay here to watch him. And you thought well of Eastman."

"No man would play me such rascally tricks! There is no telling what he has done! Books can be doctored to look very fair."

But they found enough. Pay-rolls for men kept up long after they had been discharged, and many who had never been at all; systematic falsifications that could not be brought to light without a rigid inspection and comparison by an expert. But Hamilton Minor felt, with the world's wisdom, that bringing the Eastmans back as criminals would not be likely to lead to any restoration; while it would prove a family disgrace, and perhaps add Gertrude to the list of dependent ones.

"It makes me heart-sick!" declared Fred. "There is nothing but selfishness and hollowness and greed. Are truth and honor quite dead?"

"Very fine talk, my young friend," said Minor in a sneering tone; "but the question that more nearly concerns you is how you are all going to live, granting even that there may be enough to pay the debts. Of course this great house cannot be kept afloat. You had better discharge some of the servants, and retrench while you do remain in it."

Then had followed the talk with Agatha, when matrimony was proposed as a certain and sure remedy for these present ills: a cure the young man disdained with anger.

Mrs. Lawrence kept to her room, and was too ill to listen to business details, even if she could have helped in any way, which she could not. She fancied now, like many another woman, that her husband had been her only delight in life, and that there was nothing left. When Agatha suggested that she had been very short-sighted to consent to mortgaging Hope Terrace, she cried, and said "she would have given up every thing for him, and now that he was gone she wanted no fortune,—she should never leave her room again until she was carried."

If there had been any bright little Sylvie to run in and comfort her! any strong-hearted, tender woman, to whom he could turn! He seemed now to realize more keenly what he had lost, than on the night Sylvie rejected him. And that other strong, manly soul—no, bitterly as he might regret, he could no more go back to him than to Sylvie.

He roused himself, and began his work, utterly astounded at the extravagance that met him on every side. No doubt it looked right enough when there was plenty of money; but it seemed now as if the servants had been masters and mistresses, that all these luxuries existed for their sake,—the gardens and graperies, the greenhouses with their wealth of costly flowers; the horses standing idle in the stable, with only servants to use them; his father a plain man, his mother confined mostly to two or three rooms, and occasional visitors; supplies ordered lavishly, and wasted in a manner that seemed wicked even to him. He wondered in a vague way if the system was not radically wrong that brought such waste and carelessness in vogue, when hundreds had not the necessities of life. He remembered one talk his father had with Horace Eastman over in the library yonder, with champagne and cigars between them, in the height of one of the strikes, and how Eastman had figured to a penny the exact percentage of wages the mill could afford to pay. What if they had given up a little of their luxury, and he his ill-gotten gains!

He had the pictures packed under his supervision, and sent to New York. Not without a pang; for many of them he had selected, and each one had some pleasant reminder. The choice collection of the greenhouse was offered for sale, the elegant furniture, and all the most valuable of the personal property. Times were hard, and sales were slow; but there would be sufficient realized, it was thought, to pay the floating indebtedness. Hope Terrace and the mills would probably go for the mortgages. There was a small life-insurance settled upon Mrs. Lawrence, and the children would be fortuneless.

By spring the estate was in a fair way of settlement. Fred had vibrated between the city and Yerbury all winter, but his mother had been taken to Mrs. Minor's. A gardener and his wife were placed in charge of the house, while efforts were being made to rent it. A few rooms had not been disturbed.

And now Frederic De Woolfe Lawrence looked about him to see what could be done. Up to this time he had never given himself an anxious thought about money or his future. Now it stared him unpleasantly in the face. What could he do?

Many things, he said at first, with the buoyant certainty of youth and inexperience. Here was his education, his talents, his fine mental training. Surely he had the magical open-sesame of some door.

So he set to work industriously, and wrote several articles on the history and the philosophy of the pure sciences. Very fine-drawn indeed, very intellectual and analytical, as he went through the different schools of thought, being able, it seemed to him, to argue as well for the one side as for the other. Then he tried Neo-Platonism with its profoundly mystical aspects and its brilliant array of philosophers, its fascinating aspects of Pantheism. The new world and to-day had nothing for him; the dead and gone past, every thing.

Alas! From every side he heard the cry, Literature had been overdone. No one would buy, no one would read, in this great turmoil. Everybody wrote now, schoolgirls, college-fledglings: even small farmers and mechanics, with the training of the present and a smattering of knowledge, set up for geniuses.

One advised him to try the realistic school: the old-time philosophies had lost the high place they once held, and to gain the attention of to-day writers must have snap and vim. Another recommended popular science made easy and attractive to general readers, something that caught at the first glance. Life was too short to be devoting years to any one branch of study. Still another was fain to persuade him to attack the pernicious systems and monstrous abuses of the present day. Then he stumbled over Crosby, one of his college-chums and a member of the L—— Club, where he had been a frequent and welcome visitor the winter before.

"My dear fellow," said he, with patronizing good-nature, "take my advice, and let literature alone. It is one of the most uncertain things. To-day you may suit, to-morrow a chap comes along with some new fandango or summersault of high art, and the world leaves everybody to run after him, and you are thrown over. A man cannot earn his salt unless he has the entree of the initiated ring. As for journalism, you may hammer at that for twenty years before you get a position."

Poor Fred went back to his room sorely depressed. It was a quiet, clean room in a second-rate hotel, for which he paid twelve dollars a week. There he sat and brooded, until taking up the paper one morning he saw the arrival of one of his old professors at the "Grand Union." Perhaps he might put him in the way of something. So he plucked up heart, and went to call.

Professor Dennison received him very cordially, and expressed the warmest sympathy for the loss of his father and his fortune. He listened attentively to the young man's desires, and answered in suavest of tones.

There were so many applications: every avenue seemed full. Young lawyers and doctors, finding no opening, had gone back to teaching, and the college-graduates of every year swelled this number. He would bear it in mind, and see what he could do; but he advised his young friend not to build too high hopes. "If I could make a place I should put you in it at once," he said kindly, just as he said it to a dozen others.

It was so everywhere. There were no copyists, translators, or writers needed. The clerkships were overcrowded. It was not that there were too many doing one thing, but everything,—too many people in the world. Could the Malthusian doctrine be right, after all?

He dropped into his brother-in-law's office one morning, and, though he hated to ask a favor of him, discussed in a rather fragmentary and abashed way the possibility of getting any thing to do; and a fortnight after, Mr. Minor sent him word of a broker who wanted a clerk, salary fifty dollars per month.

It was better than nothing. Then, too, it was a beginning, although he could imagine more congenial employments. It did not look much like hard times, to note the immense amount of stocks and bonds that passed through the hands of this great house.

Just at this period Irene returned. A fine, stately girl, with the indescribable air that foreign society gives. Yet she seemed haughty, bitter, and satirical; and it came out presently that she and Gertrude had quarrelled over a possible husband, and the amiable Gertrude had taunted her with dependence in the future. Irene had sold some diamonds, and travelled on the proceeds.

"I think you were very short-sighted, Irene," said Mrs. Minor when she had drawn this story out of her sister. "A handsome American girl does stand a better chance for matrimony abroad than here. So many fortunes have been lost in the panic, and certainly I cannot blame these men for choosing heiresses. You have been in society a great deal here, and you will find fresh young girls beginning to crowd you out. Fred has nothing, and from present indications will hardly be able to take care of himself. It was such a misfortune that papa had every thing mortgaged! So Gertrude was right," in a bitterly suave tone: "you must be dependent upon some one until you do marry."

"Oh, no! I might set up millinery,—with my taste and aptitude for arrangement. I think I have read of reduced young women who made fortunes in that line," retorted Irene the queenly, in her unmoved way. She was not one to cry out at a dagger-thrust.

"Don't be a fool!" advised Mrs. Minor, in a short, incisive tone.

She, like most other people, had meant to economize this summer; but now she made a sudden start for Newport. Irene certainly was peerless in her half-mourning, with her statuesque figure. But there was not an eligible at Newport, so they turned their steps Saratoga-ward. And here they found an old admirer of Mrs. Minor's, Gordon Barringer, a widower for the second time, the owner of a silver-mine and a railroad, and Heaven alone knew the length and breadth of his possessions.

Miss Agatha Lawrence had turned up her aristocratic nose at him, as a rather coarse and self-assured person, as proud of his want of education as other men were of its acquirement. Now he was about forty, stout, high-colored, loud of voice, and with an important swagger. But money had given "our enterprising citizen" power, and he both understood and wielded it skilfully.

His wife had been dead barely six months, but when he met Irene Lawrence he decided at once that the penniless beauty would be only too glad to marry him. He was proud to think he could afford to be so magnanimous. Mrs. Minor settled herself to the fact that there must be no foolish dallying. Of course Irene would see. She could not be so idiotically, so fatally blind!

I do not know that at this period of her life Irene Lawrence had any ideal. She had made conquests so easily, she had found men so much alike, and in her secret heart she despised them for being so ready to kneel and bow at beauty's shrine. It seemed to her as if youth and fortune were alike boundless; and she literally took no thought for the morrow, until the tidings of her father's death was followed by the subsequent news of loss of fortune.

If George Eastman had a self-conviction that he and his cousin had contributed to this downfall, he tried to make it up to Irene in brotherly kindness and generous expenditure where money was concerned. He solaced himself with the thought that, after all, he had no more than his own, or what should have been his own rightfully, though he fancied he could not have gone on to the end quite as Horace had.

When Sir Christopher Frodsham came across the two ladies in Paris, Gertrude exulted at the easy conquest. A man of fifty, whose young years and health had been spent in sowing a plentiful crop of wild oats, but to whom had come now, quite unexpectedly, a fortune and a title; and prosperity, after years of rather bitter economy, made him miserly, as it not unfrequently does such men. That he would have been glad to marry this young, beautiful girl, for himself alone, was most true. And Irene, in the bewilderment of the losses, inclined to his proposal, and begged time for consideration.

He was not a man she could admire, respect, or love. He was narrow, egotistical, selfish, and with the pitiful vanity of a worn-out roue. Frodsham Park was in a lonely, mountainous part of England, bordering on Wales; and this man would look upon his wife as a nurse and companion, and the mother of an heir.

There must have been a little strain of heroism in the girl. Suddenly, in one of those quick, vivid flashes, like mental lightning, she saw that she could not do this thing. She was not at all given to analysis; she had never dissected her own soul, or that of her neighbors; but she arrived at one of those swift, clear verdicts,—she could not marry Sir Christopher; and she told him so, with a frankness a trifle tenderer, perhaps, than she had used with her lovers heretofore, as if some way she had wronged him in thought.

Over this, as I said, she and Gertrude had bitter words and a parting. Now the same thing stared her in the face again. This lover was too obtuse to be stung by the fine arts of coquetry that lengthened practice had brought to perfection. In all the bravery of self-assertion, he did not know when he was beaten; and so he fought against the intangible spear-points with which Miss Lawrence could surround herself.

Mr. Barringer was called to New York on important business law-suits; and two days after, Mrs. Minor declared herself wearied out with Saratoga. Irene felt the walls of fate closing remorselessly about her. Why should she struggle? she asked herself. After all, what could she do but marry?

Meanwhile, Hope Mills had been sold. Fred made some inquiries about it.

"A woman—a rich old maid, I believe, by name McLeod, who knows enough to drive a sharp bargain—has taken it. Some one is to set up the business, I heard; an impecunious nephew, no doubt. No one but a fool would make a venture when the market is overstocked with goods. It is a shame that the estate had to lose such a valuable piece of property; but there was no income to pay taxes and interest, and, standing empty, it would soon have eaten itself up."

Fred sighed. For the first time, he wondered how it would have ended if he had been brought up to some useful business, and perhaps have taken Eastman's place with his father. As for stock and share jobbing, he was heartily sick of it. To him it appeared an immense system of swindling the ignorant and unsuspecting.

However, he was not destined to nurse his disgust very long in brooding silence. The last of September the great house of Bristol, Stokes, & Co., collapsed. The wreck was unexpected, the ruin wide-spread. The house of Minor & Morgan was hard hit, which did not improve Mr. Minor's temper, though, Spartan-like, he wore a cheerful face, and kept his losses to himself. Even if it should be his turn next, the world must not know it.

"There's a letter that concerns you, though it was sent to me as administrator," said Minor to Fred, as he sauntered in one morning, tossing the missive over to him.

Fred opened it with languid indifference, and his eye wandered over the following lines:—

HAMILTON MINOR, ESQ.

Dear Sir,—On taking possession of Hope Mills, for business purposes, I find some personal property belonging to the late Mr. Lawrence. It may have a value for the family, and shall be at your disposal whenever you desire it. Respectfully yours,

JOHN DARCY.

"As soon as Hope Terrace is disposed of, the accounts can be audited and settled," said Minor in a sharp, business-like way. "The debts have all come in, and been paid dollar for dollar; though, if your father had been a prudent man, he would have made sure of something for his family. No one expects estates to pay more than fifty per cent nowadays."

Fred rose, and crushed Jack Darcy's note in his pocket, holding himself proudly, while his cheek flushed.

"I am very thankful," in a clear, cold tone. "My father's life was pure and honorable, and no man can fling a stone at his grave. I would rather be penniless, as I am, than have it otherwise."

"Oh! very well, very well," sneeringly.

Fred walked out of the office, and turned into Broadway. The same curious, restless, hurrying throng. Where were they all going? Did they find room and work? How clearly the sun shone! The sky was so blue, with great drifts of white floating about,—strange barques on a mystical sea. In spite of the outside roar and rush, there was a solemn and awesome stillness within him. He began to feel how entirety alone he stood. A twelvemonth ago there were hosts of friends pulling him hither and yon, proposing this and that, laughing and chatting gayly. Where were they now? Not all weak and false, but the shadow of circumstances had drifted them apart. We do not always cease to love or like when separation ensues; and in this shifting, changing life, people drop out, yet are not quite forgotten. Some of the young fellows whom fortune had buffeted had found a place in active, stirring life: he, with his education, refinement, accomplishments, and talent, was merely a piece of driftwood. Sylvie Barry had been right,—he was a useless appendage to the world. Ah, no wonder she despised him! Sturdy, honest Jack Darcy could find a place. His self-complacency was more than touched,—it was shattered, completely broken up. The present was blank and colorless, the future like a thick mist in which there penetrated not one ray of light. What did all his elaborate philosophies for him now?—art, that was to regenerate the world; science, that explained and refined, and found a place and a reason for every thing in the universe; man, the most important of all. And here he was, tossed aside like a weed. Who cared whether his nature was foul or kinglike? He was, in truth, one of the atoms floating about in space, and finding no use or purpose. The world could go on just as well without him. Why, if he should drop himself over into the river, there would be only a ripple. He laughed, as if his personality was something that did not really belong to him, that could be put off at will, that was, in truth, answerable to no power. All of life, then, had been a lie!

He stumbled onward blindly. A sense of dreary mystery crept over him,—an utter hopelessness. He essayed to stretch out his hand to some passer-by, but the careless faces mocked him. There was no strength or stay. He could not even cry out with his anguish,—it was a dumb, inarticulate voice. All his idols had been destroyed, and there was no God to cry to!

His last three weeks' salary had gone down in Bristol & Co.'s ruin. There were some jewels to sell, a few more pictures, several sets of rare books, and—what then?

Starvation had appeared so utterly improbable in this great, thriving world, and here he was, almost face to face with it,—he who had never taken an anxious thought about any thing, who had felt as if he really honored money by the spending of it. A beggar! An object of charity to Hamilton Minor!

No, that should never be. He tried to rouse himself from his lethargy. He went around to stores and offices where he was not known, and asked for something to do, as if in a curious masquerade. The same answer everywhere. Nothing! The sun went slowly down, the street-lamps were lighted. Every inch of his body ached with the long tramp and nervous exhaustion. He had eaten nothing since breakfast, but he was not hungry. What if he did steal quietly over to the river, and end it all?

The desperation was hardly black enough for that. Somewhere near midnight he strolled home: how much longer would there be a home, he wondered?

He thrust his hand in his pocket, and the bit of folded paper struck sharp against his fingers, so he drew it out. Hardly the familiar school-boy scrawl: Jack used to hate writing, he remembered. This had a decisive force about it. How odd that business-like "John" looked! "Jack!" He uttered the name aloud, and a thrill seemed to warm his frozen heart,—to stir emotions most contradictory. A sense of shame predominated, tingling his very finger-ends, crimsoning his pale cheeks, and stinging his soul with a sense of utter humiliation. He had prided himself so much upon the immaculate honor of his life, and lo! here he stood, self-convicted of one of the basest of sins,—broken faith. Not from any sudden, hot dispute, not from a knowledge of deception or any small meanness, but deliberate, well-considered treachery. It would have been manlier had he said to Jack, "Our ways lie apart, and in the future we shall meet so seldom, it is hardly worth while to keep up a pretence of friendship." He had skulked away instead, kept out of sight,—basely shunned the strong, tender soul that had helped to make a peevish boyhood sunny and bright.

Black as this ingratitude looked to him now, he experienced a strange and intense desire to see his olden friend once more. What was he doing at Hope Mills? Had he found a place?

The next morning's mail brought him a check for sixty dollars, for an article he had thought little of himself, and sent merely because he had happened to finish it, and was despatching his ventures out on the sea of chance. Then he went over to Mrs. Minor's: he had not seen his mother for several days.

He was quite in the habit of going directly up to her room; but, as he neared it, he heard voices raised in no gentle discussion. Agatha stood in the middle of the room, flushed, angry, an open note in her hand; Mrs. Lawrence was weeping hysterically, while Irene sat pale and sullen, but her eyes gleaming with a dangerous fire.

"Very well: if you deliberately decide to take a beggar's portion, then, do not look to me for any further help," said Mrs. Minor. "This marriage would have afforded you every luxury; and you have thrown aside the chance, like a silly school-girl. Perhaps you have some secret, favored lover!" and the glittering eyes might have annihilated a weaker woman than Irene Lawrence.

"If I had, I should go to him. I would live on crusts and a cup of cold water with him, rather than luxury," with a bitter, stinging emphasis, "and my own humiliation. The man would drive me mad, Agatha! Some day, yielding to an irresistible impulse, I should murder him;" and she gave a shrill, unnatural laugh.

Fred went over to her, and took her hand. His business in life was to be her champion, her defender, her support,—not only against this monstrous marriage, at which her soul revolted, but Agatha's sneers and flings, and the dependence a proud soul must naturally feel when the very bread turns to ashes in one's mouth. How it was to be done, he could not tell at that moment; but he drew one long breath of honest, hopeful manliness, and resolved to leave no stone unturned.

His mother wept in his comforting arms. She was very much shattered,—quite an old woman long before her time, made so by the follies of an indolent, enervating life. Like a pang the thought pierced his brain, that for these paltry results his father had given the strength and labor of manhood.



CHAPTER XVI.

THERE were a few faint hints of autumn in Yerbury. The air was warm, and freighted with the peculiar sweetness of over-ripe grapes and apples, of dried balsam and faded golden-rod by the wayside. The very air seemed to quiver with intense contrasts of color, the yellow beeches standing out in strong relief, the bronze-red of one great oak, the bluish-green of the spruce, and the tender tints of fading, long-armed larches, drooping in regretful sadness. Lights of silvery gray and russet-brown, pale gold and hazy purple, and a sapphire sky bending over all. The artistic side of Fred Lawrence's soul was touched as he had once fancied nothing this side of Europe could touch it.

For a moment a mighty rush of regret came over him. This magnificent place had been his home. Perhaps he would have been more than human not to have experienced a pang.

He wandered about for some time. It was too lovely to go in and explore those dusty, darkened rooms: this evening would answer for that. He paced the lawn, he lingered by the gate; he took a turn about the grapery, now used for profit by the thrifty farmer who had charge of the place. Then he turned, and went down the street. The bells were ringing for six. From his height above, he could see the laborers wending their way, the great chimney of Hope Mills. He would walk in that direction. They would all be gone by the time he reached it.

The streets were indeed nearly deserted. In the shade here the wind blew a little chilly. Yes, it was just the same; but then, it would not be likely to alter in a year. Why, it seemed a decade almost, since the night he had come home to his dying father!

Ah, if they had been more to each other! Did he go about with a lonely spirit, Fred wondered, feeling the uselessness and insufficiency of the life he was leading? Had he been glad to lay the burthen down?

A sudden firm, manful step ran down the stone stairway with a cheerful ring, and a voice hummed a tune softly, as one sometimes does for a seeming accompaniment, when the mind is occupied with other things;—a tall, robust figure, with long arms, and a springy step, as if he might still leap a post, or jump the creek. He was rushing off, when, curiously enough, with no other motive than an impulse, he turned, and saw an almost motionless figure.

Whether he would send for the articles belonging to his father, or visit Hope Mills in person, risking a sight of Jack Darcy, or whether he would summon courage enough to ask for his old friend, were matters that Fred had put off for to-morrow's decision. Why he had wandered here at all, amazed him now; and he stood quite breathless at the unexpected apparition, without power to move or speak.

If he had still been in the high tide of prosperity, Jack would have passed him by silently, but with no rudeness. Something in the bent head, the pale face, the general melancholy attitude, came home to his heart,—his fresh, generous, magnanimous heart. He ventured a step nearer, he put out his hand.

"Fred, old fellow!"

The rich, full voice might have melted any heart. The frank, honest eyes lighted with wonderful tenderness: there was a glow and earnestness that could come only from a large, forgiving soul, capable of putting by its own sense of pain or any past discomfiture.

Fred Lawrence crimsoned to the very edge of his hair, to the farthest depths of his soul. He would have taken the hand: then he drew back with a gesture of self-reproach, as if he could tread his past sinful pride in the dust.

"Let's forget the bygones," the hearty young fellow began, "that is, if you would like to have it so," drawing back a trifle to give him his choice as a delicate woman might have done.

"Thank you, Jack," grasping the warm, firm hand in his own pale, cold one, and raising his soft dark eyes, so near to tears. Just now no other words would come.

Jack drew the hand through his arm. "I've thought of you so many times," he began, as if they had parted the best of friends. "It has been a sad year for many, doubly so for you."

"Sad indeed. O Jack!"

It was all uttered in the long tremulous swell of voice that tells the whole story.

"Yes."

With that, their friendship was renewed. Women might have fallen into each other's arms with expressions of penitence and forgiveness; but they had said their say, as was characteristic of both.

"Were you coming in?" and Darcy turned back as he asked the question.

"No: I only reached Yerbury an hour or so ago on a little business. Some remembrance of old time brought me hither."

"I am glad it did. Shall we walk down Main Street? Are you staying at Hope Terrace?"

"I shall be for a few days."

A silence fell between them. There was no one else in the street; and their steps sounded with a steady tramp, as if they might walk on to some definite end.

"Jack, dear old friend, after requiting your tender love to my exacting and selfish boyhood with a pitiless treachery that will always shame my manhood, I wonder if I dare ask it back, if I dare come to you."

"There is nothing to give back. I do believe I have kept up a sort of girlish hankering for you. And now, if I can do any thing, if you are in any perplexity"—

"Come up to Hope Terrace, and take tea with me. I want to talk to you all the evening. You have just the same mesmeric strength that used to soothe me when a boy. What a milk-and-water cub I must have been! I wonder you did not throw me over."

Jack laughed.

"Let us turn back to Kit Connelly's, and I can send a message home, so that mother will not keep tea waiting."

That done, they strolled on together the same path by which Fred had come. The sun had dropped down behind the hill, and the glowing tints had faded to purple-black and indistinct grays. They wound around the hills, and came up to the very gate where their last good-by had been uttered. And Fred remembered then that this was the first time Jack had shared the hospitality of Hope Terrace, now when it was no longer his.

Mrs. Milroy gave them some supper in a pretty little apartment which had been the servants' parlor, and was now hers. Then they went up to Fred's room, which had been opened and aired. Some of its choicest belongings had been taken away, but another than Fred would not have remarked this. And here they renewed the remembrances of the years that had fallen between.

"It seems cowardly to come to you in trouble, and to take so large a share of your sympathy again," Fred said with his good-night. "But you always were so strong and earnest."

He went down to the mill the next day, and was much interested in the working of Jack's plans.

"You found your place," he said with a curious intonation, as if he half envied the man before him.

"Yet in all truth I should not have chosen this," Jack answered with honest gravity. "But, when I found circumstances would keep me here, I resolved to work at it persistently and faithfully; and I learned in it the larger lesson of the true dignity of labor. If I should solve my problem successfully, I can ask no more. Five years is a long while when you count the days," and he smiled.

"You will succeed, I know. You have just that mastery over every thing."

Jack finally persuaded Fred to come down to the well-remembered cottage, and see his mother. Mrs. Darcy would have welcomed her bitterest enemy if Jack had desired her to.

All this time Jack was thinking whether he could do his old friend a good turn. He hated to offer him any subordinate position in the mill. At present he could attend to the book-keeping. Then he heard there was to be a change at the paper-mills, and went over. They wanted a clerk and foreman, one with taste enough to select pretty designs, and who could keep books.

"I do not know as you would like it, Fred," he continued with some hesitation in his cheery tones.

"I have been a dawdler long enough, and I have had a bitter experience in finding any thing to do. I shall be glad to take it, and you may believe I will try my best. Many, many thanks for your kind interest."

There had been a sharp, short struggle in Fred's soul. He would rather have gone elsewhere, where he was not known. But if fate had resolved to bring him back to Yerbury, if she had offered him bread here, while it had been stones elsewhere, he would certainly be a fool to starve for pride's sake. Some wholesome ideas had found lodgement in his brain, along with the Greek myths and synthetic philosophies. If he could not astonish the world with brilliant reasoning, he might at least get his own living.

He went back to the city, and discussed the project with his mother and Irene. She had a tender longing for her son: to be with him would afford her greater satisfaction than the magnificence of her daughter's house. Irene consented stonily. It was burying herself alive, but then no one would torment her with hateful marriages. To stay here with Agatha was simply unendurable.

Mrs. Minor made no further comment than to say she did not think her mother could be kept as comfortable. Irene was her own mistress.

So Fred Lawrence went back to Yerbury and work. It was an altogether new undertaking. He had no business training and no experience, except his desultory two months in Bristol's office. Yet from the very first day there was something that interested him here, although for awhile the smells, the dust and disorder, half sickened him. As for any wound to his pride, he felt that less because the whole world seemed to have taken a general overturn. Half of the elegant houses in the neighborhood of Hope Terrace were for sale, and shut up. Expensive country mansions to be used for a few summer months were quite beyond present incomes. A month at the seaside cost much less. Costly scientific, or rather unscientific gardening,—since the true aim of science must be the best adjustment of power to the desired result,—graperies, green-houses, henneries standing empty, the money lavished upon them so much waste material at present,—where had the wealth gone to so suddenly? He could not understand the rapid and wide-spread ruin. Even of themselves,—how was it that for years there should be no stint, but absolute wastefulness, and then nothing at all?

He was so new to any business results, that he seemed like a child groping in the dark. And here was Jack Darcy, with his academy training merely, managing one of the great problems of the day, taking hold manfully to right the wrongs brought about by selfishness and utter disregard for one's neighbor. Had Plotinus struck the grand key-note when he said he "was striving to bring the God within us in harmony with the God of the universe"? For might there not be false gods within?

He found he had not much time for abstruse speculations, which was all the better for his mental health. After enduring the dirt and disorder of the office for a week, he set about remedying that. He might not be able to regenerate the world, but he could make one little room decent. The office-boy and the scrub-woman were called in; the desks and shelves were cleared of the accumulation of months, and presented quite an orderly aspect. He found his hands blistered by the rough handling, but the reward was a wholesome hunger and a good night's sleep. Not quite as entertaining, perhaps, as a scramble in the Sierras or the Alps, but productive of as beneficial results.

Then there was a home to be found. Living at Hope Terrace on a thousand a year would hardly be possible, even if it could be had rent free. So he asked Mrs. Darcy's advice about the matter, and she proposed a pretty cottage,—there were so many standing empty. It seemed very queer to be counselling this proud, sad-eyed young man, who a year or two ago had hardly deigned to look at them. Yet, like Jack, she still held a tender feeling for the pretty, enthusiastic boy she remembered.

There had been in his mind a great struggle about Sylvie. He knew now that she belonged to Jack. That thorough manliness and integrity, that earnest, unflinching soul, the rich, generous temperament that could be so tender to weakness, so forgiving to wrong, was the soul of her ideal hero. And he had dared to offer her his poor, paltry affectation of love! Blinded by his own arrogant self-esteem, he had spurned the pure pearl, and taken the empty, glittering shell to her as the kind of treasure he was satisfied to deal in.

How thoroughly he despised himself! It was such a keen, bitter humiliation! Not only that he had aspired to her, but that he should have misrepresented and traduced Jack, not from an overwhelming passion of jealousy,—that might be pardoned,—but a shallow, overweening vanity of wealth and position.

"She shall see that I have learned to respect and honor him!" he said to himself with an intensity of regret that was very honest and real. "If I can never regain her esteem, I shall at least try for my old place in his regard."

They found a pretty, convenient cottage, quite on the opposite side of Yerbury, suiting Fred much better than to be near his old friends. The furniture was brought over from the great house; and, though it had seemed but odds and ends there, it was amply sufficient. Irene's piano and some of the old family silver had been saved out of the wreck, a few of the less expensive pictures, and sufficient books to form quite a library. Fred really enjoyed arranging and planning. It was quite a matter of astonishment to him, that rules of art and harmony were needed at every step: if he could not make them remunerative in a written article, he could put them in practice here.

He kept much to himself, being busy in the office during the day, and at home in the evening. He was sick of society, of the world in general. He had met Maverick a few times, but he shrank from strangers. Mrs. Darcy's tender, unobtrusive motherliness, he enjoyed, but he did not dare to accept much of it. The duties of his life were marked out plainly before him, and he must not swerve from the path. It was to be a kind of neutral tint, twilight rather than sunshine; and the joys he might come to long for, he must put away with a firm hand.

The first of December every thing was in readiness for his small household, even to the tidy housekeeper Mrs. Darcy had found for him among her poor. Mrs. Lawrence and Irene came in the promised train; and he met them with a carriage and a multiplicity of wraps, although it was a bright, pleasant day. His mother clung to him with tremulous hands: he realized more than ever how much she had broken in the past year,—very little older than Mrs. Darcy if counted by years, but whole decades if judged by every other point.

Irene was cold and stately. She did not like coming here,—neither did she like staying at Mrs. Minor's. Wild thoughts had flooded her brain of going somewhere, and under a new name making a mark in the world. She had a fine voice, and a decided talent for histrionics, but how to get to this place where fame and fortune would be at her command? How to bridge across any chasm? Nothing, she said to herself, but just stand helpless, and see the great world go on, with no part nor lot in the matter. If she must be buried alive, as well at Yerbury as anywhere.

There had never been any sentiment between her and Fred; in truth, none of the Lawrence women ever were given to sentiment. She walked into the little parlor with the step of a queen, and gave a cool stare around.

"I hope you will like it"—with some hesitation. "There is your piano. And mother's room looks as it did at the Terrace, with the exception of its being so much smaller. And here is a library. Here is our dining-room—some of the old engravings, you see."

"Could I go to my room? Which is it, Fred?" and his mother looked up with a weak, pleading smile.

"Yes: let me carry you. You are so thin and light now, and you must be fatigued after all this journey;" and, taking her in his arms, he bore her up-stairs.

It was a pleasant room over the parlor, with an alcove toward the south, in which the mid-day sun was shining. A bright fire burned in the grate: there were her own easy-chairs, a bit of the carpet she had once chosen, the Persian rug she had admired so much when Fred first sent it home, the bed with its snowy drapery, and little ornaments with their familiar faces.

"It is delightful," she said, still clinging to her son's arm. "And I am to stay here with you? Agatha is very good, of course; but I have always had my own home, and if I did sign it away it was to save your poor dear father. I don't see how things could have ended so, only, if he had lived, it would all have been different;" and she wiped away the tears that came so easily now.

Fred put her in the chair nearest the fire, and began to unfasten her wraps. He had been quite an expert in delicate ways during his prosperity.

"Your room is next—there," nodding his head to the open doorway, and glancing up in his sister's immovable face. "I hope I made my divisions rightly: I thought you would like to be near mother."

"It is all as well as it can be, I suppose," she answered with weary indifference.

There came to Fred Lawrence just then a painful sense of want and loss, a far-reaching sympathy in something that had never been, and now, when the outside glitter was torn away, left life cold and barren. Was human love so much?

His mother went on in her weak, inconsequent way, yet her foolish praise was very sweet to him. He had been living such a lonely life for months, that even he was grateful for something that looked like home, for a woman's figure flitting about, and some voice beside his own.

The dinner-bell rang presently.

"I ordered yours brought up here," said Fred; "and I will have a little with you, then I must go back to the office."

"It is terrible, Fred! That you should have to"—

"Dignify labor," and he laughed. "Mother dear, I was so thankful to get something to do! And I am proud of making a home for you. Am I not your only son?"

"But a clerk!" Some of the old Hope disdain spoke out there. "I cannot bear to think of it—with all your education and talents and genius. I wish you had found some business. There is the five thousand dollars of the life-insurance, you know; and you could take it, though Agatha made me promise that I would not have it fooled away in any thing. But I should be glad to have you use it."

Fred stooped suddenly, and kissed her on the forehead. There was something in mother-love, after all.

Just then Martha West came in with the tray. Fred drew out the folding breakfast-table that his mother had so often used, while he was introducing Martha to his mother and sister. She courtesied, and proceeded to lay the cloth and the dishes, and disappeared for the viands themselves.

"Is one woman expected to do all the work?" asked Irene at length.

"She thinks she can—with so small a family. Of course I"—

Irene raised her hand deprecatingly. "Spare me details," she said. "It is very bitter to eat the bread of dependence: I have learned that already."

He made no answer. Mrs. Lawrence looked from one to the other in helpless bewilderment, but Martha entered again, and changed the troubled current.

It was quite a picnic dinner. Irene unbent a little at the sight of the rare china and beautiful old silver. She supposed every thing had gone down in the whirlpool of ruin, and that humiliation would be complete in delft and plated ware. Then she ventured to glance around.

Fred chatted gayly, making talk. It had not used to be one of his accomplishments in his magnificent days when women vied with each other in the delight of entertaining him. It was pleasant to see his mother touch the bell, and sit back in her chair while Martha brought in the dessert.

"And now I must go. Do not expect me much before seven. I wonder if you will feel able to come down to tea? Ah! there are the trunks, just in time. I will send them up, and you will feel quite at home when you have your belongings in place."

Then he went back to his desk, and for the next two hours was too busy to think. After all, there is nothing like energetic employment to keep dismal forebodings out of one's mind.

But that evening after supper, when they had gathered in the library, Mrs. Lawrence began to question him concerning Hope Mills. Agatha had said some one had started the business anew.

Fred explained.

"But how could the workmen do it alone? Your father never trusted them, Fred; and I am sure my father had trouble enough with them in his day! They were always an ignorant, unreasonable set. Don't you remember how they struck several years ago, and workmen had to come from elsewhere? They must have some head. And who found the money? Mr. Minor says they cannot possibly succeed."

Some time Fred would have to stand Jack Darcy on his true pedestal. As well do it now, and have it over.

"The project was Mr. Darcy's. I believe he had most of the capital. It was very generous of him to risk it in such times as these."

Irene looked up from her moody contemplation of the fire. A dull flush suffused her face.

"Not Jack Darcy," she said,—"Sylvie Barry's great hero."

"Yes."

"Sylvie Barry!" re-echoed Mrs. Lawrence, and she looked sharply at her son. "And she gave you up for him! Who is he?"

"He used to be in the mill," answered Irene, with all her olden scorn. "His father was there also. And the Darcys"—

"The Darcys can boast as good blood as we!" exclaimed Fred, his face in a sudden heat. "And Jack Darcy is a gentleman by birth, by instinct, and, best of all, the impulses of a true and noble heart."

The discussion recalled an old remembrance to Mrs. Lawrence. She looked vaguely at her son as if she were not quite certain, as she said,—

"Was there not something about him when you were boys? He was coarse and rough, wasn't he? and Agatha used to worry. I knew it was only a boy's folly; but she was glad when you went to college, and I think—there was his sister"—her maternal instincts taking alarm.

"No, he never had a sister. His father died, and he staid at home. His mother was delicate, and his grandmother old. She is dead, and he gets his small fortune from her. No, he was not coarse nor rude, but he was my champion in boyhood, my hero then; and it is the shame of my life that I should have let him drop out of it because I was the richer of the two. I despise myself for any thing so narrow and unmanly, and yet he was generous enough to forgive. I do not wonder at Miss Barry's choice when she contrasted us, and I honor her to-day for her discrimination. She never encouraged me, blind, idiotic fool that I was! and I have only my wretched vanity to blame. He is fully worthy of her, and that is the highest compliment I can pay him."

"Very magnanimous for a rejected lover," commented Irene with a touch of sarcasm.

"But you did love Sylvie?" Mrs. Lawrence said, bewildered by his rapid defence.

"I blush now at the thought of having offered her such a paltry regard. To me she will always be a sweet and peerless woman. I am glad she will have the strength of manhood to lean upon, the purity of its honor to trust, the exceeding tenderness of a soul that will never know a narrow or grudging thought, to confide in. All my years look poor and barren beside his."

"I can never forgive her"—

"You must, you must!" and Fred seized his mother's hand, pressing it to his lips. "There is nothing to forgive," he went on. "You would not have had her throw aside the love of her life for my fancied fortune that has taken wings. It was my blunder. And I want to say that I have taken up my old friendship for Jack Darcy, come back to the truth that money is one of the incidental surroundings of the man, but it can never be the man himself."

Irene's haughty lip curled, but no one openly gainsaid Fred.



CHAPTER XVII.

THE winter was a rather open one, with but little snow. Matters were somewhat better in Yerbury, but bad enough, Sylvie Barry thought. The churches began their usual work,—parish aids, clothing-clubs, and sewing-societies. It was as she said: they begged from the rich to give to the poor. Women met to make or to alter over garments, and devise means to render the poor more comfortable. There were so many miserable homes, so many inefficient wives and mothers, who were ignorant of the commonest principles of economy. They could live on meal-mush, they could go in rags, but the science of thrift was utterly unknown in many instances.

Sylvie had done her share of church work as a growing maiden. Every year there had been some mission, and a sewing-school.

"And yet it doesn't seem to do much good," said she. "The girls learn to hem a handkerchief, which a sewing-machine can do in ten seconds: they sew a few patches together, and perhaps make an apron. By the next winter they have forgotten all about it. And some of their mothers do not seem to care."

"The mothers need educating," Miss Morgan began, with a decisive nod of the head. "They were married out of shops and factories, and know very little, and have brought up their children to know less. I'm not one of the kind who can see no good in the world's progress, and who want to go back to the days of spinning-wheels, wax polish for tables and chairs, and a day spent every week scouring the brass andirons and candlesticks and door-knobs, and various other matters; but I do think we have gone to the other extreme. Women dawdle away half their lives. It is of no use to make clothes, you can buy them cheaper; it is of no use to mend, to do this or that, and so they do nothing."

"I was struck with a contrast I saw yesterday," returned Sylvie. "I had occasion to go to the Webbers,—you know the little cottage on Alden Street, Miss Morgan, where they always have such pretty flowers in the window. Mr. Webber works at satchel-making, and even in good times did not earn very high wages. They have a garden, in which they raise the most wonderful succession of crops; they keep some chickens, which they manage to have laying most of the time; and they have five children. It was quite late in the afternoon. Mrs. Webber sat by the window, making lace, on a cushion, at which she realizes about a dollar a week; Christine, the eldest girl, who still goes to school, was crocheting a baby's hood,—she does a good deal of work for Mrs. Burnett's fancy-store, and yet is a very smart scholar; Amelie, the next one, was darning the stockings; the boy, who comes third, was out-doors, tidying up the chicken-house; and the two little girls were in the corner, cutting and sewing patchwork, with a doll in the cradle between them. The house is always clean, the children are well and rosy, and play about a good deal, and Christine last year earned thirty dollars. Her mother puts half the money she earns in the bank for her marriage-portion. I was so glad it wasn't in Yerbury Bank! You wouldn't believe, that, though she is not quite sixteen, she has almost a hundred dollars saved up. And I must tell you, also, there was a most savory smell of the supper cooking. Altogether, it was so tidy and thrifty, with the clean, bright, and not unpretty faces, that I thought it would make a charming 'interior,' if only some Dutch artist could do justice to it in his minute, pains-taking way. Then I went to the Coles, who live around in the next street. The gate was off its hinges, and the two big boys were firing stones from the street at a post in the yard. They were ragged and dirty. I went in the house, and found the mother and the two girls in the sitting-room. I do not believe there was a piece of furniture whole, and every thing was dusty and shabby, with that close smell some people always have in their houses. Mrs. Cole sat by the window, in a listless manner, doing nothing. Martha had her baby on her lap, asleep, in a soiled and ragged dress, while she was reading; the little girl, who is about twelve, was cutting up some pretty pieces of silk into nothing, that I could see, but a general litter over the table. The kitchen looked dreadful. I had some baby-dresses for Martha, that Mrs. Kent gave me: so I unrolled my bundle, and displayed them. 'Oh,' said she, 'they are long, aren't they! and I've just put my baby in short dresses.' If you could have heard the kind of helpless, dissatisfied tone in which it was uttered! I had half a mind to bundle them up, and take them back. 'You can shorten them,' I answered, 'and some of them will make two dresses.' 'Yes,' she answered reluctantly, 'only I should want something for yokes and sleeves.' Then her mother came to inspect them, and she was rather more gracious. But I could not help contrasting the two families. Mr. Cole is a carpenter, and has earned very good wages. Martha ran a machine in the shoe-shop, bought a melodeon, and took two or three quarters' music-lessons; purchased a very handsome set of amethyst jewelry and two pretty silk dresses when she was married. And in the two years of her married life, her husband has done next to nothing, although he is a steady, pleasant fellow. Now he is at Pittsburg, earning just enough to pay his own board. She has her sewing-machine, but she doesn't know how to make any kind of garment decently. When they had money they bought every thing ready-made. She paid Miss Gilman twenty-two dollars to make her two silk dresses. If she had put one of them in some plain, simple garments, how much more serviceable it would have proved!"

"Such people are hardly worth helping," Miss Morgan said sharply.

"Isn't it a faulty system that makes them so?" asked Sylvie, drawing her brows into a little, perplexed frown. "Martha worked for two years, and earned a good deal of money. At one time she made ten dollars a week. It was just one thing,—fine stitching on shoes,—yet one would think she would understand a sewing-machine so completely that she could do any thing with it. But she actually hired part of her baby's wardrobe made; and the dresses she bought,—cheap coarse-trimmed things, I should have been ashamed of. Christine Webber wants to study for a teacher; and, as there is so little for girls to do, I think she will. She will make wiser investments of her money than Martha Cole, and think of the kind of wife her husband will get!"

"The era of prosperity was too much for some people," said Mrs. Darcy, with her motherly smile. "I used to wonder six or seven years ago, how it was that so many middle-class people could afford a servant, or fancy they needed one. A little more time spent in household duties would not have injured the women; and, if they had accustomed the children to take a part, it would have been much better for them. Then so much sewing was hired; and, although the income looked large, the expenditures swallowed it all up, and no one was any better off. How few had any stock of underclothing, bed-linen, or useful and durable articles!"

"Industry must come around in the fashion again. Even the despised patchwork doubtless had its uses. It taught children to sew, and to manage economically. I remember that I once had three quilts on hand at one time. The larger pieces went into the first, and so on. My last one was a very pretty little thing, and I saved all the scraps for it. Yet we often hear people laugh about the folly of cutting calico into bits to sew together again. Why should it not be considered honorable and respectable to put every thing to the best use?" and Miss Morgan glanced up with a confidence no one could gainsay.

"That is the grand secret," cried Sylvie,—"making economy honorable. You never see the nice old families flaunting their best silk and their point-laces on ordinary occasions. Something is kept sacred. And I do think there is more real economy among them, than among those who absolutely have a need for it. If wastefulness could once come to be considered a sin of ostentation and low-breeding, it would not have so many followers. Some people do it because they are afraid of being thought mean; but if they could be trained to that bravery of spirit that makes a work of beauty out of the poorest and smallest things because they are well done, and fitting to the place and season"—

"Bravo!" said a laughing voice as the door opened. "Mrs. Darcy, when the committee of ways and means have worn out your carpet by their frequent meetings in your charmed temple, you must insist upon their buying you a new one. Good-morning, ladies! Miss Barry, I set out to find you; and your aunt fancied you would be here, the place of all waifs and strays. I want you and Miss Morgan to go and inspect a room, or rather two rooms, to see if they will answer our purpose. Mrs. Lane had a school there."

"Oh, I know the place!" began Sylvie eagerly, buttoning up her sack again, and looking smilingly in Dr. Maverick's face, that had a sparkling wholesomeness born of the fresh air and brisk walk. And whenever he caught her eye with this light in it, so friendly and earnest, a thrill sped through his veins.

Miss Morgan was soon ready, and the three started. The place was only a few squares away, in a block of buildings where the stores on the lower floor stood empty; indeed, some of them had never been rented. Up-stairs there was one large room with three front windows, and a smaller room at the back with a fireplace, sink and water, and a large closet.

"I have had the offer of this place rent free until spring," began the doctor. "I have also collected fifty dollars in money and provisions,—imprimis, one barrel of flour, one box of miscellaneous packages, rice, barley, corn-starch, &c.,—and a second-hand range that will be put up as soon as you decide. In return for my arduous exertion and great benevolence, I shall call upon you now and then for meals or delicacies for my sick and famishing."

"You are just magnificent!" declared Sylvie, in breathless pleasure.

"I am desirous of getting this experiment started; and, since we shall have to help the poor and needy this winter, I shall put my gifts into this. Now you must consider what you want for furnishing. Biddy McKim is to work out a doctor's bill cleaning the place; Ward Collins will let you have ten dollars' worth of house-furnishing goods on another bill. I am going to look up all my bad debts to start you two women in business!" and he laughed gayly.

"Very good," said Miss Morgan, while Sylvie's face was still blending pleasure and astonishment.

"We are going to reform Yerbury, you see. The parsons tried their hands last winter; and, though there was need enough of spiritual food, there's something else required as well, while we are here in the body. You think the rooms will do? I want you to put a large table in that one,"—indicating the larger with his head,—"and we'll get two or three long benches, and have a tea-party now and then. Well, Miss Morgan, now you may take the floor. I see a crowd of ideas in your face."

"I am going to propose that when the place is cleaned, both floors shall be painted to begin with. Then a simple mopping up will keep them bright and fresh. Some idle half-grown boys can do it, I am sure; or I can do it myself—it would not be the first time."

"I'll look over my accounts, and levy on some delinquent," said the doctor. "I like that idea."

"Can we make out a list now?"

"Why, of course. Put down about all the things you will be likely to need, and I will have them sent if they do over run the account. Biddy will come to-morrow, and clean. Now, you can hardly have the school open every day unless you get more assistance, so I think I should take it at first two days in the week."

"A very good suggestion," replied Miss Morgan.

"It might not be sufficiently attended to warrant more than that. My experience has been that nearly every housekeeper considers herself a finished cook."

Maverick laughed.

They discussed necessary articles of kitchen paraphernalia, and finally walked down to Collins's store, and made their selection. Early the next morning Bridget McKim was on the spot: the place was cleaned, the stove put in place, the floor given one good coat of paint. Two days after, the second one was added. Sylvie drew up a code of regulations. The school would be open Tuesday and Friday, all day. The dinner would be cooked and eaten; the baking, and whatever was left over, divided among the scholars to take home. Miss Morgan was elected president, Miss Barry vice-president, a secretary, a treasurer, and two in an advisory board. At each session two ladies were to be present, and give instruction.