"I wish," Allison was saying, "that people knew how to live up to themselves. That's an awkward phrase, but I don't know of anything better. Even their names don't fit 'em, and they get nicknames."

"'Father calls me William,'" murmured Rose.

"'And Mother calls me Will,'" Allison went on. "That's it, exactly. See how the 'Margarets' are adjusted to themselves by their friends. Some are 'Margie' and more of 'em are 'Peggy.' 'Margaret' who is allowed to wear her full name is very rare."

"I'm glad my name can't be changed, easily," she said, thoughtfully.

"It could be 'Rosie,' with an 'ie,' and if you were that sort, it would be. Take Aunt Francesca, for instance. She might be 'Frances' or 'Fanny' or even 'Fran,' but her name suits her, so she gets the full benefit of it, every time."

Madame turned away from the fire, with the air of one who has been away upon a long journey. "Did I hear my name? Did someone speak to me?"

"Only of you," Allison explained. "We were talking of names and nicknames and saying that yours suited you."

"If it didn't," observed Madame Bernard, "I'd change it. When we get civilised, I believe children will go by number until they get old enough to choose their own names. Fancy a squirming little imp with a terrible temper being saddled with the name of 'William,' by authority of Church and State. Except to his doting parents, he'll never be anything but 'Bill.'"

"Does my name fit me?" queried Isabel, much interested.

"It would," said Allison, "if you weren't quite so tall. Does my name fit me?"

He spoke to Madame Bernard but he looked at Rose. It was the older woman who answered him. "Yes, of course it does. How dare you ask me that when I named you myself?"

"I'd forgotten," Allison laughed. "I can't remember quite that far back."

They began to play once more and Isabel, pleading a headache, said good- night. She made her farewells very prettily and there was a moment's silence after the door closed.

"I'm afraid," said Madame, "that our little girl is lonely. Allison, can't you bestir yourself and find some young men to call upon her? I can't think of anybody but the Crosby twins."

"What's the matter with me?" inquired Allison, lightly. "Am I not calling? And behold, I give her a headache and she goes to bed."

"You're not exactly in her phase of youth," Madame objected. "She's my guest and she has to be entertained."

"I'm willing to do my share. I'll take her into town to the theatre some night, and to supper afterward, in the most brilliantly lighted place I can find."

"That's very nice of you," responded Rose, with a look of friendly appreciation. "I know she would enjoy the bright lights."

"We all do, in certain moods," he said. "Are you ready now?"

The voice of the violin rose to heights of ecstasy, sustained by full chords in the accompaniment. Mingled with the joy of it, like a breath of sadness and longing, was a theme in minor, full of question and heartbreak; of appeal that was almost prayer. And over it all, as always, hovering like some far light, was the call to which Rose answered. Dumbly, she knew that she must always answer it, though she were dead and the violin itself mingled with her dust.

Madame Bernard, still seated by the fire, stirred uneasily. Something had come into her house that vaguely troubled her, because she had no part in it. The air throbbed with something vital, keen, alive; the room trembled as from invisible wings imprisoned.

Old dreams and memories came back with a rush, and the little old lady sitting in the half light looked strangely broken and frail. The sound of marching and the steady beat of a drum vibrated through her consciousness and the singing violin was faint and far. She saw again the dusty street, where the blue column went forward with her Captain at the head, his face stern and cold, grimly set to some high Purpose that meant only anguish for her. The picture above the mantel, seen dimly through a mist, typified, to her, the ways of men and women since the world began—the young knight riding forward in his quest for the Grail, already forgetting what lay behind, while the woman knelt, waiting, waiting, waiting, as women always have and always must.

At last the music reached its end in a low chord that was at once a question and a call. Madame rose, about to say good-night, and go up- stairs where she might be alone. On the instant she paused. Her heart waited almost imperceptibly, then resumed its beat.

Still holding the violin, Allison was looking at Rose. Subconsciously, Madame noted his tall straight figure, his broad well-set shoulders, his boyish face, and his big brown eyes. But Rose had illumined as from some inward light; her lovely face was transfigured into a beauty beyond all words.

Francesca slipped out without speaking and went, unheard, to her own room. She felt guilty because she had discerned something of which Rose herself was as yet entirely unconscious. With the instinctive sex- loyalty that distinguishes fine women from the other sort, Madame hoped that Allison did not know.

"And so," she said to herself, "Love has come back to my house, after many years of absence. I wonder if he cares? He must, oh, he must!" Francesca had no selfish thought of her own loneliness, if her Rose should go away. Though her own heart was forever in the keeping of a distant grave, she could still be glad of another's joy.

Rose turned away from the piano and Allison put his violin into the case. "It's late," he said, regretfully, "and you must be tired."

"Perhaps I am, but I don't know it."

"You respond so fully to the music that it is a great pleasure to play with you. I wish I could always have you as my accompanist."

"I do, too," murmured Rose, turning her face away. The deep colour mounted to the roots of her hair and he studied her impersonally, as he would have studied any other lovely thing.

"Why?" he began, then laughed.

"Why what?" asked Rose, quickly.

"I was about to ask you a very foolish question."

"Don't hesitate," she said. "Most questions are foolish."

"This is worse—it's idiotic. I was going to ask you why you hadn't married."

With a sharp stab at the heart, Rose noted the past tense. "Why haven't you?" she queried, forcing a smile.

"There is only one answer to that question, and yet people keep on asking it. They might as well ask why you don't buy an automobile."

"Well?" continued Rose, inquiringly.

"Because 'the not impossible she,' or 'he,' hasn't come, that's all."

"Perhaps only one knows," she suggested.

"No," replied Allison, "in any true mating, they both know—they must."

There was a long pause. A smouldering log, in the fireplace, broke and fell into the embers. The dying flame took new life and the warm glow filled the room.

"Is that why people don't buy automobiles?" queried Rose, chiefly because she did not know what else to say.

"The answer to that is that they do."

"Sounds as if you might have taken it from Alice in Wonderland," she commented. "Maybe they've had to give each other up," she concluded, enigmatically.

"People who will give each other up should be obliged to do it," he returned. "May I leave my violin here? I'll be coming again so soon."

"Surely. I hope you will."

"Good-night." He took her hand for a moment, in his warm, steady clasp, and subtly, Rose answered to the man—not the violin. She was deathly white when the door closed, and she trembled all the way up-stairs.

When she saw herself in the mirror, she was startled, for, in her ghostly pallor, her deep eyes burned like stars. She knew, now. The woman who had so hungered for Life had suddenly come face to face with its utmost wonder; its highest gift of joy—or pain.

The heart of a man is divided into many compartments, mostly isolated. Sometimes there is a door between two of them, or even three may be joined, but usually, each one is complete in itself. Within the different chambers his soul sojourns as it will, since immeasurably beyond woman, he possesses the power of detachment, of intermittence.

Once in a lifetime, possibly, under the influence of some sweeping passion, all the doors are flung wide and the one beloved woman may enter in. Yet she is wise, with the wisdom of the Sphinx, if she refuses to go. Let her say to him: "Close all these doors, except that which bears my name. In that chamber and in that alone, we shall dwell together." For, with these words, the memories housed in the other chambers crumble to dust and ashes, blown only by vagrant winds of Fate.

In the heart of a woman there are few chambers and still fewer doors. Instead of business-like compartments, neatly labelled, there are long, labyrinthine passages, all opening into one another and inextricably bound together. To shut out one, or even part of one, requires the building of a wall, but it takes a long time and the barrier is never firm.

At a single strain of music, the scent of a flower, or even one glimpse of a path of moonlight lying fair upon a Summer sea, the barriers crumble and fall. Through the long corridors the ghosts of the past walk unforbidden, hindered only by broken promises, dead hopes, and dream- dust.

Even while the petals of long-dead roses rustle through the winding passages, where the windows are hung with cobwebs, greyed at last from iridescence to despairing shadows, a barrier may fall at the sound of a talismanic name, for the hands of women are small and slow to build and the hearts of women are tender beyond all words.

Hidden in the centre of the labyrinth is one small secret chamber, and the door may open only at the touch of one other hand. The woman herself may go into it for peace and sanctuary, when the world goes wrong, but always alone, until the great day comes when two may enter it together.

As Theseus carried the thread of Ariadne through the labyrinth of Crete, there are many who attempt to find the secret chamber, but vainly, for the thread will always break in the wrong heart.

When the door is opened, at last, by the one who has made his way through the devious passages, there is so little to be seen that sometimes even the man himself laughs the woman to scorn and despoils her of her few treasures.

The secret chamber is only a bare, white room, where is erected the high altar of her soul, served through life, by her own faith. Upon the altar burns steadfastly the one light, waiting for him who at last has come and consecrated in his name. The door of the sanctuary is rock-ribbed and heavy, and he who has not the key may beat and call in vain, while within, unheeding, the woman guards her light.

Pitifully often the man does not care. Sometimes he does not even suspect that he has been admitted into the inmost sanctuary of her heart, for there are men who may never know what sanctuary means, nor what the opening of the door has cost. But the man who is worthy will kneel at the altar for a moment, with the woman beside him, and thereafter, when the outside world has been cruel to him, he may go in sometimes, with her, to warm his hands at those divine fires and kindle his failing courage anew.

When the sanctuary is not profaned by him who has come hither, its blessedness is increased ten-fold; it takes on a certain divinity by being shared, and thereafter, they serve the light together.

And yet, through woman's eager trustfulness, the man who opens the door is not always the one divinely appointed to open it. Sometimes the light fails and the woman, weeping in the darkness, is left alone in her profaned temple, never to open its door again, or, after many years, to set another light high upon the altar, and, in the deepening shadows, pray.

So, because the door had never been opened, and because she knew the man had come at last who might enter the sanctuary with her, Rose lifted her ever-burning light that night to the high altar of her soul, and set herself to wait until he should find his way there.



VII

FATHER AND SON

The house seemed very quiet, though steadily, from a distant upper room, came the sound of a violin. For more than an hour, Allison had worked continuously at one difficult phrase. Colonel Kent smiled whimsically as he sat in the library, thinking that, by this time, he could almost play it himself.

Looking back over the thirty years, he could see where he had made mistakes in moulding the human clay entrusted to his care, yet, in the end, the mistakes had not mattered. Back in the beginning, he had formulated certain cherished ideals for his son, and had worked steadily toward them, unmindful of occasional difficulties and even failures.

Against his own judgment, he had yielded to Francesca in the choice of the boy's career. "Look at his hands," she had said. "You couldn't put hands like his at work in an office. If he isn't meant for music, we'll find it out soon enough."

But Allison had gone on, happily, along the chosen path, with never a question or doubt of his ultimate success. Just now, the Colonel was deeply grateful to Francesca, for the years abroad had been pleasant ones, and would have been wholly impossible had Allison been working in an office.

With a sigh, he began to pace back and forth through the hall, his hands in his pockets, and his grey head bowed. Before him was his own portrait, in uniform, his hand upon his sword. The sword itself, hanging in a corner of the hall, was dull and lifeless now. He had a curious sense that his work was done.

The tiny stream, rising from some cool pool among the mountains, is not unlike man's own beginning, for, at first, it gives no hint of its boundless possibilities. Grown to a river, taking to itself the water from a thousand secret channels, it leaps down the mountain, heedless of rocky barriers, with all the joy of lusty youth.

The river itself portrays humanity precisely, with its tortuous windings, its accumulation of driftwood, its unsuspected depths, and its crystalline shallows, singing in the Summer sun. Barriers may be built across its path, but they bring only power, as the conquering of an obstacle is always sure to do. Sometimes when the rocks and stone-clad hills loom large ahead, and eternity itself would be needed to carve a passage, there is an easy way around. The discovery of it makes the river sing with gladness and turns the murmurous deeps to living water, bright with ripples and foam.

Ultimately, too, in spite of rocks and driftwood, of endless seeking for a path, of tempestuous nights and days of ice and snow, man and the river reach the eternal sea, to be merged forever with the Everlasting.

Upstairs the music ceased. A door opened, then closed, and presently Allison came down, rubbing his hands. "It's a little cool up there," he said, "and yet, by the calendar, it's Spring. I wish this climate could be averaged up."

"Even then, we wouldn't be satisfied," the Colonel returned. "Who wants all his days to be alike?"

"Nobody. Still, it's a bit trying to freeze your nose one day and be obliged to keep all the windows open the next."

There was a long pause. The Colonel tapped his fingers restlessly upon the library table. Allison went over to the open fire and stood with his back to it, clasping his hands behind him. "What have you been doing all the morning, Dad?"

"Nothing. Just sitting here, thinking."

"Pretty hopeless occupation unless you have something in particular to think about."

"It's better to have nothing to think about than to be obliged to think of something unpleasant, isn't it?"

"I don't know," Allison responded, smothering a yawn. "Almost anything is better than being bored."

"You're not bored, are you?" asked the Colonel, quickly.

"Far from it, but I have my work. I was thinking of you."

"I can work, too," the Colonel replied. "I think as soon as the ground thaws out, I'll make a garden. A floral catalogue came yesterday and the pictures are very inspiring."

"Does it give any directions for distinguishing between the flowers and weeds?"

"No," laughed the Colonel, "but I've thought of trying the ingenious plan of the man who pulled up the plants and carefully watered the weeds, expecting the usual contrary results."

Luncheon was announced and they went out together, shivering at the change in temperature between the library and the dining-room, where there would be no cheerful open fire until the dinner hour.

"What are you going to do this afternoon?" queried the Colonel.

"Why, work, I suppose—at least until I get too tired to work any more."

"You seem to believe in an eight-hour day."

Something in the tone gave Allison an inkling of the fact that his father was lonely and restless in the big house. When they were abroad, he had managed to occupy himself pleasantly while Allison was busy, and, for the first time, the young man wondered whether it had been wise to come back.

The loneliness of the great rooms was evident, if one looked for it, and the silence was literally to be felt, everywhere. It is difficult for two people to be happy in a large house; they need the cosiness established by walls not too far apart, ceilings not too high, and the necessary furniture not too widely separated. A single row of books, within easy reach, may hint of companionship not possible to the great bookcase across a large room.

"I think," said Allison, "that perhaps this house is too large for us. Why should we need fifteen rooms?"

"We don't, but what's the use of moving again just now, when we're all settled."

"It's no trouble to move," returned the young man.

"It might be, if we did it ourselves. I fancy that Miss Rose could give us a few pointers on the subject of opening an old house."

"There may be something in that," admitted Allison. "What charming neighbours they are!" he added, in a burst of enthusiasm.

"Madame Bernard," replied the Colonel, with emphasis, "is one of the finest women I have ever had the good fortune to meet. Miss Rose is like her, but I have known only one other of the same sort."

"And the other was—"

"Your mother."

The Colonel pushed back his plate and went to the window. Beyond the mountains, somewhere in "God's acre," was the little sunken grave still enfolding a handful of sacred dust. With a sudden throb of pain, Allison realised, for the first time in his life, that his father was an old man. The fine, strong face, outlined clearly by the pitiless afternoon sun, was deeply lined: the broad shoulders were stooped a little, and the serene eyes dimmed as though by mist. In the moment he seemed to have crossed the dividing line between maturity and age.

Allison was about to suggest that they take a walk after luncheon, having Madame Bernard's household in mind as the ultimate object, but, before he could speak, the Colonel had turned away from the window.

"Some day you'll marry, lad," he said, in a strange tone.

Allison smiled and shrugged his shoulders doubtfully.

"And then," the Colonel continued, with a little catch in his voice, "the house will be none too large for two—for you two."

Very rarely, and for a moment only, Allison looked like his mother. For an instant she lived again in her son's eyes, then vanished.

"Dad," he said, gently, "I'm sure you wouldn't desert me even if I did marry. You've stood by me too long."

The stooped shoulders straightened and the Colonel smiled. "Do you mean that—if you married, you'd still—want me?"

"Most assuredly."

"She wouldn't."

"If she didn't," returned Allison, lightly, "she wouldn't get me. Not that I'm any prize to be wrangled over by the fair sex, individually or collectively, but you and I stand together, Dad, and don't you forget it."

The Colonel cleared his throat, tried to speak, then stopped abruptly. "I have been thinking," he continued, with a swift change of mood and subject, "that we might manage a dinner party. We're much indebted to Madame Bernard."

"Good idea! I don't know what sort of party it would prove to be, but, if we did our best, it would be all right with them. Anyhow, Aunt Francesca would give an air to it."

"So would the others, Miss Rose especially."

"I wonder why Aunt Francesca didn't marry again," mused Allison.

"Because her heart is deep enough to hold a grave."

"You knew her husband, didn't you?"

"He was my best friend," answered the Colonel, a little sadly. "How the years separate and destroy, and blot out the things that count for the most!"

"I wonder how she happened to be named 'Francesca.' It isn't an American name."

"She wasn't. Her name was 'Mary Frances,' and he changed it to 'Marie Francesca.' So she has been 'Marie Francesca' ever since, though she never uses the 'Marie.' That was his name for her."

"The change suits her someway. Queer idea she has about names fitting people, and yet it isn't so queer, either, when you come to think of it. Rose might have been named Abigail or Jerusha, yet I believe people would have found out she was like a rose and called her by her proper name."

Colonel Kent flashed a quick glance at him, but the expression of his face had not changed. "And Isabel?" he queried, lightly.

"Isabel's only a kid and it doesn't matter so much whether things fit her or not. I've promised to take her to the theatre," he continued, irrelevantly, "because Aunt Francesca wants her guest to be amused. I'm also commissioned to find some youths about twenty and trot 'em round for Isabel's inspection. Do you know of anybody?"

"I've seen only one who might do. There's a lanky boy with unruly hair and an expansive smile whom I've seen at the post-office a time or two. He usually has a girl with him, but she may be his sister. They look astonishingly alike."

"Bet it's the Crosby twins. I'd like to see the little devils, if they've grown up."

"They're grown up, whoever they are. The boy is almost as tall as I am and his sister doesn't lack much of it."

"I must hunt 'em up. They've already called on Isabel, and perhaps, when she returns the call, she'll take me along."

"Who brought them up?" asked the Colonel idly.

"They've brought themselves up, for the last five or six years, and I'm of the opinion that they've always done it."

"Let's invite them to the dinner party."

Allison's eyes danced at the suggestion. "All right, but we'll have to see 'em first. They may not want to come."

"I've often wondered," mused the Colonel, "why it is so much more pleasant to entertain than it is to be entertained. I'd rather have a guest any day than to be one."

"And yet," returned Allison, "if you are a guest, you can get away any time you want to, within reasonable limits. If you're entertaining, you've got to keep it going until they all want to go."

"In that case, it might be better for us if we went to Crosbys'."

"We can do that, too. I think it would be fun, though, to have 'em here. We need another man in one sense, though not in another."

"I have frequently had occasion to observe," remarked the Colonel, "that many promising dinners are wholly spoiled by the idea that there must be an equal number of men and women. One uncongenial guest can ruin a dinner more easily than a poor salad—and that is saying a great deal."

"Your salad days aren't over yet, evidently."

"I hope not."

The hour of talk had done the Colonel a great deal of good, and he was quite himself again. Some new magazines had come in the afternoon mail and lay on the library table. He fingered the paper knife absently as he tore off the outer wrappings and threw them into the fire.

"I believe I'll go up and work for a couple of hours," said Allison, "and then we'll go out for a walk."

"All right, lad. I'll be ready."

Even after the strains of the violin sounded faintly from upstairs, accompanied by a rhythmic tread as Allison walked to and fro, Colonel Kent did not begin to cut the leaves.

Instead, he sat gazing into the fire, thinking. Quite unconsciously, for years, he had been carrying a heavy burden—the fear that Allison would marry and that his marriage would bring separation. Now he was greatly reassured. "And yet," he thought, "there's no telling what a woman may do."

The sense that his work was done still haunted him, and, resolutely, he tried to push it aside. "While there's life, there's work," he said to himself. He knew, however, as he had not known before, that Allison was past the need of his father, except for companionship.

The old house seemed familiar, yet as though it belonged to another life. He remembered the building of it, when, with a girl's golden head upon his shoulder, they had studied plans together far into the night. As though it were yesterday, their delight at the real beginning came back. There was another radiant hour, when the rough flooring for the first story was laid, and, with bare scantlings reared, skeleton-like, all around them, they actually went into their own house.

One by one, through the vanished years, he sought out the links that bound him to the past. The day the bride came home from the honeymoon, and knelt, with him, upon the hearth-stone, to light their first fire together; the day she came to him, smiling, to whisper to him the secret that lay beneath her heart; the long waiting, half fearful and half sweet, then the hours of terror that made an eternity of a night, then the dawn, that brought the ultimate, unbroken peace which only God can change.

Over there, in front of the fireplace in the library, the little mother had lain in her last sleep. The heavy scent of tuberoses, the rumble of wheels, the slow sound of many feet, and the tiny, wailing cry that followed them when he and she went out of their house together for the last time—it all came back, but, mercifully, without pain.

Were it not for this divine forgetting, few of us could bear life. One can recall only the fact of suffering, never the suffering itself. When a sorrow is once healed, it leaves only a tender memory, to come back, perhaps, in many a twilight hour, with tears from which the bitterness has been distilled.

Slowly, too, by the wonderful magic of the years, unknown joys reveal themselves and stand before us, as though risen from the dead. At such and such a time, we were happy, but we did not know it. In the midst of sorrow, the joy comes back, not reproachfully, but to beckon us on, with clearer sight, to those which lie on the path beyond.

He remembered, too, that after the first sharp agony of bereavement was over; when he had learned that even Death does not deny Love, he had seemed to enter some mysterious fellowship. Gradually, he became aware of the hidden griefs of others, and from many unsuspected sources came consolation. Even those whom he had thought hard and cold cherished some holy of holies—some sacred altar where a bruised heart had been healed and the bitterness taken away.

He had come to see that the world was full of kindness; that through the countless masks of varying personalities, all hearts beat in perfect unison, and that joy, in reality, is immortal, while pain dies in a day.

"And yet," he thought, "how strange it is that life must be nearly over, before one fully learns to live."

The fire crackled cheerily on the hearth, the sunbeams danced gaily through the old house, spending gold-dust generously in corners that were usually dark, and the uncut magazine slipped to the floor. Above, the violin sang high and clear. The Colonel leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

When Allison came down, he was asleep, with the peace of Heaven upon his face, and so quiet that the young man leaned over him, a little frightened, to wait for the next deep breath. Reassured, he did not wake him, but went for his walk alone.



VIII

"THE YEAR'S AT THE SPRING"

Outside, in the grey darkness, the earth was soft with snow. Upon the illimitable horizon beyond the mountain peaks were straying gleams of dawn, colourless, but none the less surely a promise of daybreak.

Rose had been awake for some time, listening to the ice-clad branches that clattered with every passing breeze. A maple bough, tapping on her window as ghostly fingers might, had first aroused her from a medley of dreams.

She went to the window, shivering a little, and, while she stood there, watching the faint glow in the East, the wind changed in quality, though it was still cool. Hints of warmth and fragrance were indefinably blended with the cold, and Rose laughed as she crept back to bed, for she had chanced upon the mysterious hour when the Weaver of the Seasons changed the pattern upon the loom.

Having raised another window shade, she could see the dawn from where she lay. Tints of gold and amethyst came slowly upon the grey and made the horizon delicately iridescent, like mother-of-pearl. Warm and soft from the Southland, the first wind of Spring danced merrily into Madame Francesca's sleeping garden, thrilling all the life beneath the sod. With the first beam of sun, the ice began to drip from the imprisoned trees and every fibre of shrub and tree to quiver with aspiration, as though a clod should suddenly find a soul.

In the watcher's heart, too, had come another Spring, for once in time and tune with the outer world. The heart's seasons seldom coincide with the calendar. Who among us has not been made desolate beyond all words upon some golden day when the little creatures of the air and meadow were life incarnate, from sheer joy of living? Who among us has not come home, singing, when the streets were almost impassable with snow, or met a friend with a happy, smiling face, in the midst of a pouring rain?

The soul, too, has its own hours of Winter and Spring. Gethsemane and Calvary may come to us in the time of roses and Easter rise upon us in a December night. How shall we know, in our own agony, of another's gladness, or, on that blessed to-morrow when the struggle is over, help someone else to bear our own forgotten pain?

True sympathy is possible only when the season of one soul accords with that of another, or else when memory, divinely tender, brings back a vivid, scarlet hour out of grey, forgotten days, to enable us to share, with another, his own full measure of sorrow or of joy.

Ah, but the world was awake at last! Javelin-like, across a field of melting snow, went a flash of blue wings, and in Madame Francesca's own garden a robin piped his cheery strain upon the topmost bough of a dripping tree.

The woman, too, was awake, in every fibre of body and soul. Even her finger-tips seemed sentient and alive; her heart was strangely lifted, as though by imprisoned wings. She had no doubt of the ultimate hour, when he would know also, yet, half-afraid, she shrank from it, as she would not have shrunk from pain.

Madame had once remarked that civilisation must have begun not earlier than nine in the morning, or later than noon. She had a horror of the early breakfast, when the family, cold, but clean, gathers itself around the board which only last night was festive and strives valiantly to be pleasant. It was almost an axiom with her that human, friendly conversation was not possible before nine in the morning.

So, as there was no one else to be pleased, the three women breakfasted when and where they chose. If Rose preferred to robe herself immaculately in white linen and have her coffee in the dining-room at seven, she was at liberty to do so. If she wanted it in her own room, at ten, that also was easily managed, but this was the only "movable feast" Madame would permit. Luncheon and dinner went precisely by tae clock, year in and year out.

Too happy to sleep and yearning to be outdoors, Rose dressed quietly and tiptoed down-stairs. She smiled whimsically as the heavy front door slammed behind her, wondering if it would wake the others and if they, too, would know that it was Spring.

Tips of green showed now and then where the bulbs were planted, and, down in the wild garden, when she brushed aside the snow, Rose found a blushing hepatica in full bloom. "How indiscreet," she thought, then added, to herself, "but what sublime courage it must take to blossom now!"

The plump robin, whose winter had evidently been pleasant, hopped about the garden after her, occasionally seeking shelter on the lower bough of a tree if she turned, or came too near. "Don't be afraid," she called, aloud, then laughed, as with a farewell chirp and a flutter of wings, the robin took himself beyond the reach of further conversational liberties.

Her pulses leaped with abundant life; the wet road lured her eager feet. She went out, leaving the gate open, and turned toward the woods, where a flock of wild geese, breasting the chill winds far above the river, was steadily cleaving a passage to the friendly North.

When she reached the woods, where the white birches stood like shy dryads among the oaks, she heard once more the robin's flutelike call. It was answered by another, exactly upon the same notes, yet wholly different as to quality. Presently, among the trees, she caught a glimpse of a tall man, and she paused for an instant, frightened. Then her heart leaped and her cheeks burned, as she saw who it was.

"Boy!" she called, clearly. "Oh, Boy!"

Allison turned, startled, then came to her, smiling, hat in hand. "Upon my word," he said. "I didn't think there was anyone else mad enough to come out at this hour."

"Why it's Spring! Didn't you know?"

"Yes. It came this morning just before sunrise."

"Were you awake?"

"Yes, were you?"

"Of course," she answered. "I couldn't stay in."

"Nor could I."

"The year's at the spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearled,"

Rose quoted. "You know the rest, don't you?"

"The rest doesn't matter. 'Morning waits at the end of the world—Gypsy, come away!'"

"I'll go," she breathed, her eyes fixed on his, "anywhere!"

"To the river, then. The last time I saw it, ice and snow had hidden it completely."

The path was narrow until they got out of the woods, so Rose went ahead. "I don't believe I fooled that robin by whistling to him," Allison continued. "He pretended I did, but I believe he was only trying to be polite."

"He wasn't, if it was the same robin I saw in our garden this morning. I spoke to him most pleasantly and told him not to be afraid of me, but he disappeared with a very brief, chirpy good-bye."

"Don't hurry so," he said, as he came up beside her and assisted her over a fallen tree. "We've got the whole day, haven't we?"

"We have all the time there is," laughed Rose. "Everybody has, for that matter."

"Have you had your breakfast?"

"No, have you?"

"Far from it. Everybody was asleep when I came out."

"Then you'll have breakfast with me," she said, quickly.

"Thank you," he smiled, "for taking the hint."

"But won't your father miss you?" she queried, with mock seriousness.

"He pays no attention whatever to my irregular habits, and I think that's one reason why we get on so well together. It's a wise father who knows his own child."

"Especially if it is a wise child," she replied. Her eyes were dancing with mirth, a scarlet signal burned on either cheek, and her parted lips were crimson. She seemed lovelier to him than ever before.

"Honestly, Rose, you seem to get prettier every day."

"Then," she smiled, "if I were younger, I might eventually become dangerous."

"Rose—"

"Old Rose," she interrupted. The high colour faded from her face as she spoke and left her pale.

Allison put his hand on her arm and stopped. "Rose, please don't. You're not a day older than I am."

"Ten years," she insisted stubbornly, for women are wont to lean upon the knife that stabs them and she was in a reckless mood. "When you're forty, I'll be fifty."

A shadow crossed his face. "It hurts me, someway, to have you talk so. I don't know how—nor why."

In a single swift surge her colour came back. "All right," she answered, quietly, "hereafter I'm thirty, also. Thanking you for giving me ten more years of life, for I love it so!"

The sun was well up in the heavens when they came to the river, and the dark, rippling surface gave back the light in a thousand little dancing gleams. The ice was broken, the snow was gone, and fragments of shattered crystal went gently toward the open sea, lured by the song of the river underneath.

"It doesn't look deep," remarked Rose.

"But it is, nevertheless. I nearly drowned myself here when I was a kid, trying to dive to the bottom."

"I'm glad you didn't succeed. What a heavy blow it would have been to your father!"

"Dear old Dad," said Allison, gently. "I'm all he has."

"And all he wants."

"It's after eight," Allison complained, looking at his watch, "and I'm starving."

"So am I. Likewise my skirts are wet, so we'd better go."

When they reached Madame Bernard's, Rose ordered breakfast in the dining-room, for two, then excused herself to put on dry clothing. Allison waited before the open fire until she came down, fresh and tailor-made, in another gown and a white linen collar.

"I thought women always wore soft, fluffy things in the morning," he observed, as they sat down.

"Some do—the fluffy ones, always."

"Who, for instance, are the fluffy ones?"

"Aunt Francesca for one and Isabel for another."

"How long is the kid going to stay?"

"Until she gets ready to go home, I suppose."

"I thought she had no home."

"She hasn't. Poor Isabel is a martyr to the Cause of Woman."

"How so?"

"Her mother is Emancipated, with a large E, and has no time for trifles like a daughter. She devotes herself to what she calls the Higher World Service."

"So Isabel is stranded, on a desert island."

"Yes, except for us."

"How good you are!" he exclaimed, with honest admiration.

"It was Aunt Francesca," returned Rose, flushing slightly. "I had nothing to do with it. She took me from a desert island, too."

"Is Isabel emancipated?"

"Not in the sense that her mother is."

"I don't see but what she is free."

"She is. She can do exactly as she pleases and there is no one to say her nay."

"I thought all women did as they please."

"They do, in the sense that we all do as we please. If you make a sacrifice, you do it because you can get more pleasure out of making it than you would otherwise."

"You've been reading Spencer."

"I plead guilty," she laughed.

"If it's true," he went on, after a moment's pause, "a genuine New England conscience must be an unholy joy to its proud possessor."

"It's unholy at all events. One lump, or two?" she asked, as the coffee was brought in.

"Two, please."

It seemed very pleasant to Allison to sit there in the warm, sunny room, with Rose opposite him, pouring his coffee. There was an air of cosiness and domestic peace about it hitherto outside his experience. For the first time he was conscious of the peculiar graciousness and sense of home that only a home-loving woman may give to a house.

"I like this," he said, as he took the steaming cup. "I'd like to do it often."

"We'd like to have you," she returned, hospitably.

"I thought you all had breakfast together at some fixed hour, and early at that."

"How little you know Aunt Francesca! You can have breakfast in this house in any room you choose, at any hour before noon, all the year round. Sometimes we're all together, sometimes only two. Usually, however I'm alone, as I seem to get up a little earlier than the others."

"I think I'll drop in occasionally, then. It looks as if there'd always be somebody to bear me company. Perhaps I'll bring Dad, too. He'd like to have you pour his coffee."

There was no mistaking the admiration in Allison's eyes and Rose turned hers away. He sat with his back to the dining-room door and she, across from him, faced it squarely. For the merest fraction of a second Isabel, in a pink silk negligee, stood in the doorway, then vanished, as noiselessly as she had come. Her eyes were full of mysterious meaning that Rose was powerless to translate.

"I'd enjoy it," Rose said quickly. "I love to pour the coffee and Aunt Francesca always lets me on the rare occasions when we breakfast together."

If her colour was a little brighter, if her voice was in a higher key, if her eyes had changed their expression, Allison did not notice it. Yet, in the instant, she had attained a certain dual consciousness— there seemed to be two of her. One was the woman of the world, well- schooled in self-control, tactful, watchful, ready to smooth any awkwardness, and, at every point, to guard her guest. The other was Primitive Woman; questioning, curious, and watchful in the sense of rivalry. She put it resolutely aside to think about later, and was very glad that Allison did not know.

She was greatly relieved when he went home, promising to return later for a few hours of work upon a difficult concerto. "We'll do it again," he said, laughing, as he went down the steps. "Ask Aunt Francesca to give me a meal ticket, to be used solely for breakfasts, will you?"

Rose only smiled in answer, but waved her hand to him as he went out of the gate. She stood pensively in the hall for a moment or two after she had closed the door, and would have gone up to her own room had she not heard a step at the head of the stairs.

Isabel was coming down, also fresh and tailor-made, with a white linen collar and a dashing crimson tie. Rose strolled into the library, took up a magazine, sat down, and pretended to read.

"I'm so sorry to be late to breakfast," remarked Isabel, following her. "But perhaps it's just as well, as I wasn't invited."

"Nobody was invited," returned Rose, coolly. "I went out for an early walk, chanced to meet Mr. Kent, and he invited himself here to breakfast."

"I didn't know you were in the habit of taking early walks."

"I'm trying to acquire the habit," answered Rose, with icy sweetness.

"It won't be hard," Isabel said, maliciously, "if they're all equally pleasant." She slammed the door as she went out, shutting Rose in the library.

For an instant Rose was angry, then her sense of humour triumphed and she laughed quietly until the tears came. There was no need now to meditate upon that mysterious look in the girl's eyes, for she had translated it herself.

"The idea," said Rose to herself. "That foolish little child!" She tried to recall the conversation at the breakfast table, and remembered, with regret, that they had discussed Isabel quite freely. The thought that Isabel might have been listening before she made her presence known came forward persistently, though Rose hated herself for it.

Then, with swift resolution, she put all annoying thoughts aside to dwell, happily, upon the perfect hour that nothing could ever change or spoil. She went into the hall by another door opening out of the library, thus avoiding Isabel, and sought her own room, singing to herself:

"The year's at the spring, And day's at the morn, The morning's at seven, The hillside's dew-pearled, The lark's on the wing, The snail's on the thorn; God's in His heaven— All's right with the world!"



IX

A KNIGHT-ERRANT

Another mongrel had been added to the Crosby collection, so the canine herd now numbered twenty, all in the best of health and spirits. Some unpleasantness had been caused at the breakfast table by a gentle hint from Juliet to the effect that the dog supply seemed somewhat in excess of the demand. She had added insult to injury by threatening to chloroform the next dog her brother brought home.

"Huh!" Romeo sneered, "they're as much yours as mine. You brought home the spotted one yourself."

"That was only because the boys were teasing him. I didn't want him."

"I've never brought home any without good reasons, and you know it. Besides, we've got room here for forty dogs, and they're all fenced in. They don't bother anybody."

"Except by barking," complained Juliet.

"They don't bark much unless somebody goes by, and there aren't any neighbours near enough to hear 'em, even then."

"They do bark," Juliet put in fretfully. "They bark all the time at something. They bark when they're hungry and when they've eaten too much, and they bark at the sun and moon and stars, and when they're not barking, some or all of 'em are fighting. They drive me crazy."

"Jule," said Romeo, sternly, "I don't see what's the matter with you lately. You act like a sissy girl. Go up into the attic and work on the trapeze for an hour or two, and you'll feel better. It wouldn't surprise me now if you got so sissy that you were afraid of mice and snakes."

Juliet's anger rose to the point of tears. "I'm not afraid of mice," she sobbed, "and you know it. And I'll hold a little green snake by the tail just as long as you will, so there!"

Man-like, Romeo hated tears. "Shut up, Jule," he said, not unkindly, "and we'll arbitrate."

When her sobs ceased and she had washed her face in cold water, they calmly argued the question at issue. Romeo candidly admitted that twenty dogs might well be sufficient for people of simple tastes and Juliet did not deny that only a "sissy girl" would be annoyed by barking. Eventually, Romeo promised not to bring home any more dogs unless the present supply should be depleted by disappearance or accident, and Juliet promised not to chloroform any without his consent. With one accord, they decided to fit out the dogs with brown leather collars trimmed with yellow and to train the herd to follow the automobile.

"They ought to be trained by the thirtieth of June," observed Romeo. "It would make more of a celebration for Uncle if we took 'em along."

"Did you order the monogram put on the automobile?"

"Sure. I told 'em to put 'The Yellow Peril' on each door and on the back, and the initials, 'C. T.' above it everywhere." The twins had adopted a common monogram, signifying "Crosby Twins." It adorned their stationery and their seal, but, as they seldom wrote letters, it had not been of much use.

"We might have the initials put on the dogs' collars, too," Juliet suggested.

"Sure," assented Romeo, cordially. "Then, if we lose any of 'em on the road, we can identify 'em when they're found, and get 'em back."

Juliet saw that she had made a mistake and hoped Romeo would forget about it, but vainly, for he lounged over and made a memorandum on the slate that hung in the hall.

"I wonder," continued Romeo, thoughtfully, "if the yard is big enough to train 'em in. We ought not to go out on the road until the thirtieth."

"That's easy enough," Juliet answered, with a superior air.

"How'd you go about it?" he demanded.

"If they were my dogs and I wanted 'em to follow me in an automobile, I'd let 'em fast for a day or two and fill the back seat of the machine with raw meat. They'd follow quick enough and be good and lively about it, too. They wouldn't need to be trained."

"Jule," said Romeo, solemnly, "will you please forgive me for calling you a 'sissy girl'?"

"Sure!" Juliet had learned long before she was twenty, that "forgive me," from a man's lips, indicates the uttermost depths of abasement and devotion.

"The fasting won't hurt 'em," Romeo continued, eager to change the subject. "They're all in good condition now."

"Except the last one. You can see some of his ribs yet."

"You can't by June."

"No, I guess not. Say, Romie, oughtn't she to be coming to see us by now?"

"Who?"

"Isabel—what's-her-name. You know, up at Bernard's."

Happy-hearted comrade though she was, Juliet had a secret longing for feminine association, at rare intervals. It would be pleasant she thought, to go skating sometimes with a girl or two instead of the usual crowd of boys. She hated herself fiercely for disloyalty, but the idea recurred persistently.

"I'm not up on etiquette," Romeo replied, casually, "but I should think, if she wanted to come, she could do it by now. We made a polite call as far as I know."

"We didn't leave any cards."

"Cards? What kind of cards?"

"Why, little cards with our names on 'em. People always leave 'em, in the books, when they make calls."

Romeo went over to the slate again and made another memorandum. "I'll get 'em. What'll we have on 'em?"

"We always go together," Juliet suggested, "so I think one will do. Just put on it 'The Crosby Twins,' with our address."

"No need of the address. Everybody who knows us knows where we live."

"Perhaps," Juliet went on, meditatively, "she doesn't like me."

"If she doesn't," Romeo retorted, "I'll know the reason why. Do you remember what I did to the red-headed boy from the Ridge who said he wouldn't skate with the crowd if there was a girl in it?"

Juliet nodded with satisfaction. "But you know, Romie, you can't hit a girl."

"That's so," he admitted disconsolately. "That fresh kid had to wear beefsteak over one eye for almost a week."

Juliet laughed at the idea of Isabel with beefsteak bandaged over one eye. "We won't worry about things we can't help," she said, philosophically. "We've done the proper thing and now it's up to her. If she doesn't come before we get the automobile, she doesn't get invited to go out in it."

"You bet she doesn't."

The talk quickly turned to the unfailing subject of automobiles. "The Yellow Peril" had been ordered and half paid for, but there was delay in delivery. The brown clothes trimmed with tan leather had also been ordered, as well as the brown felt hats, exactly alike, with yellow ribbon bands. They had the goggles and enjoyed glaring fiercely at each other through them, especially at meals. Juliet had thought of making a veil of yellow chiffon, but Romeo had objected violently. He thought they should look as much alike as possible, so she had yielded.

They had decided to make a wide track through the yard and around the barn to practise on. Suitable space for the, automobile had already been set aside in the barn and safely fenced in beyond the reach of canine interference. Romeo had not seen the necessity of the fence until Juliet had pointed out that some of the dogs would want to sleep on the leather cushions. "It would make it smell so doggy," she had said, "that we'd have to call it 'The Yellow Dog' instead of 'The Yellow Peril.'"

Romeo, with true masculine detachment, could talk automobile with unfailing enthusiasm, and yet think continually about something else. The thought that Isabel might not like Juliet had not occurred to him. It seemed impossible that anybody should not like Juliet, for, in the fond eyes of her twin, she was the most sane and sensible girl in the world.

"Anyhow," thought Romeo as he went to sleep that night, "if Jule wants her to come here, she's got to do it, that's all."

He meditated upon the problem for several days without reaching any satisfactory conclusion. At last he determined to go up to see Isabel himself, and, as he phrased it in his own mind, "see how the land lays." It would be difficult to elude Juliet, but, in Romeo's experience, the things one determined to do could nearly always be done.

It was an easy matter to make an errand to the City, "to poke 'em up a bit about the machine," and to get the visiting cards, which had promptly been ordered by mail. Juliet rather insisted upon going along, but was easily dissuaded by the fact that "there might be a row, and anyway, it's a man's job."

He came home about dusk with several packages, one of which he carefully concealed under a pile of leaves in the fence corner just inside the yard. He could easily reach through the palings and lift it over the fence as he passed.

Juliet admired the cards, was delighted with a box of chocolates and two new novels, and condescended to approve of Romeo's new red tie. He had gloves in his pocket, but feared to show them to her, gloves being her pet object of scorn.

After they had cleared off the table, Romeo strolled over to the window. Five of the dogs were gathered about some small object and the yard was littered with bits of white. Under his breath Romeo said something that sounded like profanity, and Juliet pricked up her ears.

"What's the matter?" she demanded.

"I brought home some flowers," explained Romeo, carefully, for it was written in the covenant that the twins should never, under any circumstances, lie to each other, "and I must have dropped 'em. The dogs have torn 'em to pieces, box and all."

Juliet clapped her hands gleefully. "I'm glad of it!"

"Why?" he asked quickly, with an uneasy sense that she was a mind- reader.

"Because we've got so many dogs."

Romeo chose to take offence at the innocent remark and relapsed into gloomy silence. Disdaining to speak, Juliet curled up on the decrepit sofa with a book and the chocolates, and presently went to sleep.

"Fortune favours the brave," he quoted to himself, as he tiptoed into the kitchen, cautiously closing the door. A subtle perfume filled the room and he sniffed appreciatively. An open bottle of vanilla extract stood on the kitchen table, where a pan of fudges was cooling, marked off into neat squares. He wrapped the pan in a newspaper, anointed his handkerchief liberally with the fragrant extract, and softly stole out into the night.

The dogs followed him to the back fence, but did not bark. Only a few soft whines followed him as he sped down the road, thrilled with a sense of adventure and romance. If Juliet should happen to wake, she would think he had gone away because he was angry, and never need know that like some misunderstood knight of old, he was merely upon an errand of chivalry for her. The fudges would do as well as the calla lilies, probably, though he felt instinctively that they were not quite as elegant.

It was a long way to Madame Bernard's, and Juliet's knight-errant was weary, after an exhausting day in town. He paused outside the gate long enough to clean the dust from his shoes with the most soiled of his two handkerchiefs, then went boldly up the steps and rang the bell.

He was embarrassed to find Colonel Kent and Allison there, though the younger man's tact speedily set him at ease again, and enabled him to offer Isabel the pan of fudges with unwonted grace of manner. Then he went over to Madame Bernard.

"Juliet couldn't come to-night," he said, "but here's our card."

Madame could not repress a smile as she read "The Crosby Twins" engraved in the fashionable script of the moment. "How very original," she said, kindly. "Nobody but you and Juliet would have thought of it."

"Jule thought of it," he replied, with evident pride. "She's more up on etiquette than I am."

"If it's proper for husband and wife to have their names engraved on the same card," Madame went on, "it must be all right for twins."

"It's more proper," Romeo returned, "because nobody is so much related as twins are. Husband and wife are only relatives by marriage."

Colonel Kent laughed appreciatively. "Good! May I have some of Miss Isabel's candy?"

Isabel, convulsed with secret mirth, informally passed the pan, and only Romeo refused. "I can have 'em any time," he said, generously. "Doesn't Jule make dandy fudges, though?"

Everybody agreed that she did. Madame Francesca expressed something more than conventional regret that Juliet had not been able to come. "She was asleep," Romeo explained, with studied indifference.

"After she wakes," suggested Colonel Kent, "we'd like very much to have you both come to our house to dinner."

"Thank you," replied Romeo, somewhat stiffly. "We'd be very much pleased." Then to himself, he added: "That was a lie, but it wasn't to Jule, so it doesn't matter."

Rose made friendly inquiries about the dogs and told Allison that Romeo was said to have the finest collection of fishing tackle in the State. Much gratified, Romeo invited Allison to go fishing with him as soon as the season opened, and, as an afterthought, politely included the Colonel.

"I've never been fishing," remarked Isabel, as she could think of nothing else to say.

"Girls are an awful bother in a boat," Romeo returned, with youthful candour. "That is, except Juliet."

Isabel flushed faintly and bit her lips. To relieve an awkward pause, Madame Francesca asked Allison to play something.

"Yes," said Romeo, "go on and play." He meant to be particularly courteous, but his tone merely indicated that he would not be seriously annoyed by music.

As the first strains came from the piano and violin, Romeo established himself upon the couch beside Isabel, and, in a low, guarded tone, began to talk automobile. Isabel was so much interested that she wholly forgot Aunt Francesca's old-fashioned ideas about interrupting a player, and the conversation became animated.

Both Rose and Allison had too much good sense to be annoyed, but occasionally, until the last chord, they exchanged glances of amusement. When they stopped, Isabel was saying: "Your suits must be just lovely."

Romeo turned with a lordly wave of the hand. "You don't need to stop. Go on!"

"How can you expect us to play properly?" inquired Rose, tactfully, "when you're talking about automobiles? We'd much rather listen to you."

"Begin over again, won't you?" asked Allison. He added, with a trace of sarcasm wholly lost upon Romeo: "We've missed a good deal of it."

Thus encouraged, Romeo began again, thoughtfully allowing Isabel the credit of the original suggestion. He dwelt at length upon the fine points involved in the construction of "The Yellow Peril," described the brown leather and the specially designed costumes, and was almost carried away by enthusiasm when he pictured the triumphant progress of the yellow car, followed by twenty dogs in appropriate collars.

"Can you," he inquired of Allison, "think of anything more like a celebration that we could do for Uncle?"

"No," replied Allison, choking back a laugh, "unless you went out at night, too, and had fireworks."

Romeo's expressive face indicated displeasure. "Uncle was such a good man," he said, in a tone of quiet rebuke, "that I don't believe it would be appropriate."

Allison coughed and Colonel Kent hastily went to the window. Madame hid her face for an instant behind her fan and Isabel laughed openly. "I'm sure he was," said Rose, quickly. "Can you remember him at all?"

"No," Romeo responded, "we've never seen him, but he was a brick all the same."

"Are you going to run the car yourself?" queried Rose.

"Of course. Some day I'll take you out," he suggested, kindly, then turned to Isabel and played his highest trump. "Juliet said something about asking you to go with us the second time we went out. Of course it's her place to do it."

"I'd love to go," murmured Isabel.

"She'll ask you when you come out to return her call," Romeo continued.

"I've been meaning to come, but I've been waiting for good roads."

"When you come," he answered, "don't say anything about my having been here. It might make her feel bad to think I went out calling and left her asleep."

"All right—I won't."

As soon as it was possible, without obvious effort, Romeo made his escape, after shaking hands with everyone and promising to come again very soon. "I'll bring Jule next time. Good-night!"

Once outside, he ran toward home like a hunted wild animal, hoping with all his heart that Juliet was still asleep. It was probable, for more than once she had slept on the sofa all night.

But the kindly fate that had hitherto guided him suddenly failed him now. When he reached home, panting and breathless, having discovered that it was almost midnight, a drooping little figure in a torn kimona opened the door and fell, weeping into his arms.

"Oh, Romie! Romie!" cried Juliet, hysterically. "Where have you been?"

"There," he said, patting her shoulder awkwardly. "Don't take on so, Jule. You were asleep, so I went out for a walk. I met Colonel Kent and Allison and I've been with them all the evening. I'm sorry I stayed so long."

"I haven't lied," he continued, to himself, exultantly. "Every word is the literal truth."

"Oh, Romie," sobbed Juliet, with a fresh burst of tears, "I don't care where you've been as long as I've got you back! We're twins and we've got to stand by each other!"

Romeo gently extricated himself from her clinging arms, then stooped to kiss her wet cheek. "You bet!" he whispered.



X

SWEET-AND-TWENTY

Contrary to the usual custom of woman, Isabel was ready fully an hour before the appointed time. She stood before the fire, buttoning a new glove with the sense of abundant leisure that new gloves demand. The dancing flames picked out flashes of light from the silver spangles of her gown and sent them into the farthest corners of the room. A long white plume nestled against her dark hair and shaded her face from the light, but, even in the shadow, she was brilliant, for her eyes sparkled and the high colour bloomed upon her cheeks.

Madame Bernard and Rose sat near by, openly admiring her. She was almost childish in her delight at the immediate prospect and could scarcely wait for Allison to call for her. She went to the window and peered eagerly into the darkness, waiting.

"Isabel, my dear," said Madame, kindly, "never wait at the window for an unmarried man. Nor," she added as an afterthought, "for a married man, unless he happens to be your own husband."

Isabel turned back into the room, smiling, her colour a little brighter than before. "Why not?"

"Men keep best," returned Madame, somewhat enigmatically, "in a cool, dry atmosphere. If you'll remember that fact, it may save you trouble in the years to come."

"Such worldly wisdom," laughed Rose, "from such an unworldly woman!"

"I do love the theatre," Isabel sighed, "and I haven't seen a play for a long time."

"I'm afraid we haven't done as much as we might to make it pleasant for you," Madame continued, regretfully, "but we'll try to do better and doubtless can, now that the weather is improving."

"It's been lots nicer than staying alone in a hotel," the girl answered. "I used to go to the matinee a good deal, but I didn't know very many people and it's no fun to go alone. Don't you and Rose ever go, Aunt Francesca?"

"I go sometimes," said Rose, "but I can't even get her started."

The little grey lady laughed and tapped the arm of her chair with her folded fan. "I fully agree with the clever man who said that 'life would be very endurable were it not for its pleasures.' Far back, somewhere, there must be a strain of Scotch ancestry in me, for I 'take my pleasure sadly.'"

"Which means," commented Rose, "that the things other people find amusing do not necessarily amuse you."

"Possibly," Madame assented, with a shrug of her delicate shoulders, "but unless I'm obliged to, I won't sit in an uncomfortable chair, in a crowd, surrounded by many perfumes unhappily mixed, be played to by a bad orchestra, walked on at will by rude men, and, in the meantime, watch the exaggerated antics of people who cannot make themselves heard, even in a room with only three sides to it."

"I took her to a 'musical comedy' once, in a frivolous moment," explained Rose, "and she's never forgiven me."

"Why remind me of it?" questioned Madame. "I've been endeavouring for years to forget it."

Isabel's eyes wandered anxiously to the clock. She had a strong impulse to go to the window again, but remembered that Madame would not approve.

Presently there was the sound of wheels outside, and Allison, very handsome in his evening clothes, came in with an apology for his tardiness. After greeting Madame Bernard and Rose, he bowed to Isabel, with a mock deference which, none the less, contained subtle flattery.

"Silver Girl," he said, "you do me too much honour. I'm not at all sure that one escort is sufficient for so much loveliness."

Isabel smiled, then dimpled irresistibly. She had a secret sense of triumph which she did not stop to analyse.

"Come," he said. "In the words of the poet, 'the carriage waits.'"

They said good-night to the others, and went out. There was silence in the room until the sound of wheels had quite died away, then Rose sighed. With a swift pang, she envied Isabel's glorious youth, then the blood retreated from her heart in shame.

Madame sighed too, but for a different reason. "I suppose I shouldn't say it," she remarked, "but it's a relief to have that dear child out of the house for a little while."

"It's kind of Allison to take her," Rose answered, trying not to wish that she might change places with Isabel.

"Very kind. The Kents are singularly decent about everything. I suppose it was Allison who managed to have Romeo Crosby call upon her the other evening."

"I hardly think so. You remember that Allison hadn't seen him since he grew up."

"Shot up, you mean. How rapidly weeds grow!"

"Are the twins weeds?"

"I think so. Still, they're a wholesome and stimulating sort, even though they have done just as they pleased."

The fire died down into embers. The stillness would have been unbearable had it not been for the steady ticking of the clock. Madame leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Rose tried to read, but could not concentrate her mind upon the page.

Her thoughts were far away, with the two who had so recently left the house. In fancy she saw the brilliantly lighted streets, the throng of pleasure seekers and pretty women in gay attire. She heard the sound of wheels, the persistent "honk-honk" of motor cars, and, in the playhouse, the crash of cymbals and drums. Somewhere in the happy crowd were Allison and Isabel, while she sat in silence at home.

Madame Francesca stirred in her chair. "I've been asleep, I think."

"You're not going to wait until they come home, are you?"

"Why should I? Isabel has a key."

Rose remembered how Aunt Francesca had invariably waited for her, when some gallant cavalier had escorted her to opera or play, and was foolishly glad, for no discoverable reason.

"I was dreaming," Madame went on, drowsily, "of the little house where Love lived."

"Where was it?" asked Rose gently.

"You know. I've told you of the little house in the woods where I went as a bride, when I was no older than Isabel. When we turned the key and went away, we must have left some of our love there. I've never been back, but I like to think that some of the old-time sweetness is still in the house, shut away like a jewel of great price, safe from meddling hands."

Only once before, in the fifteen years they had lived together, had Madame Bernard spoken of her brief marriage, yet Rose knew, by a thousand little betrayals, that the past was not dead, but vitally alive.

"I can bear it," said Madame, half to herself, "because I have been his wife. If he had been taken away before we were married, I should have gone, too. But now I have only to wait until God brings us together again."

Outwardly, Rose was calm and unperturbed; inwardly, tense and unstrung. She wondered if, at last, the sorrow had been healed enough for speech. Upstairs there was a room that was always locked. No one but Aunt Francesca ever entered it, and she but rarely. Once or twice, Rose had chanced to see her coming through the open door, transfigured by some spiritual exaltation too great for words. For days afterward there was about her a certain uplift of soul, fading gradually into her usual serenity.

Mr. Boffin stalked in, jumped into Madame's lap, and began to purr industriously. She laughed as she stroked his tawny head and the purr increased rapidly in speed and volume.

"Don't let him burst himself," cautioned Rose, welcoming the change of mood. "I never knew a cat to purr so—well, so thoroughly, did you?"

"He's lost his hold of the brake," Madame answered. "Are you going to wait until Isabel comes home?"

"Of course not."

"Then let's go up and read for a little while."

Rose waited until Madame was half way up the long flight before she turned down the lights and followed her. It made a pretty picture—the little white-haired lady in grey on the long stairway, with the yellow cat upon her shoulder, looking back with the inscrutable calmness of the Sphinx.

Rose felt that, for herself, sleep would be impossible until Isabel returned. She hoped that Aunt Francesca would not want her to read aloud, but, as it chanced, she did. However, the chosen book was of the sort which banishes insomnia, and, in less than an hour, Madame was sound asleep, with Mr. Boffin purring in his luxurious silk-lined basket at the foot of her bed.

Alone in her own room, Rose waited, frankly jealous of her young cousin and fiercely despising herself for it. She recalled the happy hours she and Allison had spent with their music and berated herself bitterly for her selfishness, but to no avail. As the hours dragged by, every moment seemed an eternity. Worn by her unaccustomed struggle with self, she finally slept.

Meanwhile, Isabel was the gayest of the gay. The glittering lights of the playhouse formed a fitting background for her, and Allison watched her beautiful, changing face with an ever-increasing sense of delight. The play itself was an old story to him, but the girl was a new sensation, and while she watched the mimic world beyond the footlights, he watched her.

The curtain of the first act descended upon a woman, waiting at the window for a man who did not come, and, most happily, Isabel remembered the conversation at home in the earlier part of the evening.

"Foolish woman," she said, "to wait at the window."

"Why?" asked Allison, secretly amused.

"I wouldn't wait at the window for an unmarried man, nor for a married man, either, unless he was my own husband."

"Why?" he asked, again.

"Because men keep best in a cool dry atmosphere. Didn't you know that?"

"How did you happen to discover it, Sweet-and-Twenty?"

Isabel answered with a smile, which meant much or little, as one chose. Presently she remembered something else that happened to be useful.

"Look," she said, indicating a man in the front seat who had fallen asleep. "He's taking his pleasure sadly."

"Perhaps he's happier to be asleep. He may not care for the play."

"Somebody once said," she went on hastily, seeing that she was making a good impression, "that life would be very endurable were it not for its pleasures."

Allison laughed. He had the sense of discovering a bright star that had been temporarily overshadowed by surrounding planets.

"I didn't know you could talk so well," he observed, with evident admiration.

Isabel flushed with pleasure—not guilt. She had no thought of sailing under false colours, but reflected the life about her as innocently as a mirror might, if conveniently placed.

Repeated curtain calls for the leading woman, at the end of the third act, delayed the final curtain by the few minutes that would have enabled them to catch the earlier of the two theatre trains. Allison was not wholly displeased, though he feared that Aunt Francesca and Rose might be unduly anxious about Isabel. As they had more than an hour and a half to wait, before the last train, he suggested going to a popular restaurant.

Thrilled with pleasure and excitement, she eagerly consented. Fortunately, she did not have to talk much, for the chatter of the gay crowd, and the hard-working orchestra made conversation difficult, if not impossible.

"I've never been in a place like this before," she ventured. "So late, I mean."

"But you enjoy it, don't you?"

"Oh, yes! So much!" The dark eyes that turned to his were full of happy eagerness, like a child's.

Allison's pulses quickened, with man's insatiable love of Youth. "We'll do it again," he said, "if you'll come with me."

"I will, if Aunt Francesca will let me."

"She's willing to trust you with me, I think. She's known me ever since I was born and she helped father bring me up. Aunt Francesca has been like a mother to me."

"She says she doesn't care for the theatre," resumed Isabel, who did not care to talk about Aunt Francesca, "but I love it. I believe I could go every night."

"Don't make the mistake of going too often to see what pleases you, for you might tire of it. Perhaps plays 'keep best in a cool, dry atmosphere,' as you say men do."

"You're laughing at me," she said, reproachfully.

"Indeed I'm not. I knew a man once who fell desperately in love with a woman, and, as soon as he found that she cared for him, he started for the uttermost ends of the earth."

"What for?"

"That they might not risk losing their love for each other, through satiety. You know it's said to die more often of indigestion than starvation."

"I don't know anything about it," she murmured with downcast eyes.

"You will, though, before long. Some awkward, half-baked young man about twenty will come to you, bearing the divine fire."

"I don't know any," she answered.

"How about the pleasing child who called upon you the other night, with the imported bonbons?" Allison's tone was not wholly kind, for he had just discovered that he did not like Romeo Crosby.

Isabel became fairly radiant with smiles.

"Wasn't he too funny?"

"He's all right," returned Allison, generously, "I'm afraid, however, that he'll be taking you out so much that I won't have a chance."

"Oh, no!" said Isabel, softly. Then she added with frankness utterly free from coquetry, "I like you much better."

"Really? Why, please?"

"Oh, I don't know. You're so much more, well, grown-up, you know, and more refined."

"Thank you, I'm glad the slight foreign polish distinguishes me somewhat"

"Cousin Rose said you were very distinguished." She watched him narrowly as she spoke.

"So is Cousin Rose. In fact, no one could be more so," he answered, with evident approval.

"Is she going to play your accompaniments for you, when you begin the season?"

A shadow crossed his face. "I'm afraid not. I wish she could."

"Why can't she?"

"On account of Madame Grundy. It wouldn't be proper."

"I don't see why," objected Isabel, daringly. "She's ten years older than you are."

Allison bit his lips and the expression of his face subtly changed. "You're ten years younger," he replied, coldly, "and I couldn't take you. That doesn't make any difference."

Seeing that she had made a mistake, Isabel sat quietly in her chair and watched the people around her until it was time to go. Greatly to her delight, they went to the station in an automobile.

"Isn't this glorious!" she cried. "I'm so glad the Crosbys are going to have one. I hope they'll take me often."

With the sure instinct of Primitive Woman, she had said the one thing calculated to make Allison forget his momentary change of mood.

"I'm sorry I have none," he said. "'Romeo Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?' How times have changed! The modern Lochinvar has a touring-car, and some day you'll be eloping in the most up-to-date fashion."

"What makes you talk to me about him?" queried Isabel, with uplifted eyes. "You know I don't like him."

"All right," he answered, good-naturedly. "I won't. I hope Aunt Francesca won't be worried about you because we're so late in getting back."

"I don't see why she should mind. Mamma never cares what I do. She's often been away for weeks, lecturing, and I've been in the hotel alone."

He repressed the uncharitable comment that was upon his lips and reverted to the subject of the play. "I'm glad you've enjoyed it. I wanted you to have a good time."

"I've had the best time I ever had in my life," she responded, with evident sincerity. "Isn't it wonderful what they can do with a room that has only three sides?"

"It surely is. I've had a good time, too, Silver Girl. Thank you for coming."

"You're welcome," she returned sweetly.

The carriage was waiting at the station, and Isabel was very quiet all the way home. Thinking that she must be tired, Allison said little until they reached Madame Bernard's, and he had seen her safely into the house. He insisted upon taking off her gloves and coat and would have extended his friendly services to her hat, had she not laughingly forbade him to touch it.

"Good-night," he said. "We'll go again soon."

"All right. Good-night, and thank you ever so much."

The sound of the key in the lock had wakened Rose from her uneasy sleep. She heard their laughter, though she could not distinguish what they said, and recognised a new tone in Allison's voice. She heard the door close, the carriage roll away, and, after a little, Isabel's hushed footsteps on the stairs. Then another door closed softly and a light glimmered afar into the garden until the shade was drawn.

Wide-eyed and fearful, she slept no more, for the brimming Cup of Joy, that had seemed within her reach, was surely beyond it now. Oppressed with loss and pain, her heart beat slowly, as though it were weary of living. Until daybreak she wondered if he, too, was keeping the night watch, from a wholly different point of view.

But, man-like, Allison had long ago gone to sleep, in the big Colonial house beyond the turn in the road, idly humming to himself:

Come and kiss me, Sweet-and-Twenty; Youth's a stuff will not endure!



XI

KEEPING THE FAITH

Colonel Kent and Allison critically surveyed the table, where covers were laid for seven. "Someway it lacks the 'grand air' of Madame Bernard's," commented the Colonel, "yet I can't see anything wrong, can you?"

"Not a thing," Allison returned. "The 'grand air' you allude to comes, I think, from Aunt Francesca herself. When she takes her place opposite you, I'm sure we shall compare very favourably with our neighbours."

The Crosby twins arrived first, having chartered the station hack for the evening. As the minds of both were above such minor details as clothes, their attire was of the nondescript variety, but their exuberant youth and high spirits gallantly concealed all defects and the tact of their hosts quickly set them both at their ease.

Romeo somewhat ostentatiously left their card upon the mantel, so placed that all who came near might read in fashionable script: "The Crosby Twins." Having made this concession to the conventionalities, he lapsed at once into an agreeable informality that amused the Colonel very much.

Soon the Colonel was describing some of the great battles in which he had taken part, and Romeo listened with an eager interest which was all the more flattering because it was so evidently sincere. In the library, meanwhile, Allison was renewing his old acquaintance with Juliet.

"You used to be a perfect little devil," he smiled.

"I am yet," Juliet admitted, with a frank laugh. "At least people say so. Romie and I aren't popular with our neighbours."

"That doesn't speak well for the neighbours. Were they never young themselves?"

"I don't believe so. I've thought, sometimes, that lots of people were born grown-up."

"They say abroad, that there are no children in America—that they are merely little people treated like grown-ups."

"The modern American child is a horror," said Juliet, unconsciously quoting from an article in a recent magazine. "They're ill bred and they don't mind, and there's nobody who wants to make 'em mind except people who have no authority to do it."

"Why is it?" inquired Allison, secretly amused.

"Because spanking has gone out of fashion," she answered, in all seriousness. "It takes so much longer for moral suasion to work. Romie and I never had any 'moral suasion,'—we were brought up right."

Juliet's tone indicated a deep filial respect for her departed parents and there was a faraway look in her blue eyes which filled Allison with tender pity.

"You must be lonely sometimes," he said, kindly.

"Lonely?" repeated Juliet in astonishment; "why, how could I ever be lonely with Romie?"

"Of course you couldn't be lonely when he was there, but you must miss him when he's away from you."

"He's never away," she answered, with a toss of her curly head. "We're most always together, unless he goes to town—or up to your house," she added, as an afterthought.

Allison was about to say that Romeo had never been there before, but wisely kept silent.

"Twins are the most related of anybody," Juliet went on. "An older brother or sister may get ahead of you and be so different that you never catch up, but twins have to trot right along together. It's just the difference between tandem and double harness."

"Suppose Romeo should marry?" queried Allison, carelessly.

"I'd die," replied Juliet, firmly, her cheeks burning as with flame.

"Or suppose you married?"

"Then Romie would die," she answered, with conviction. "We've both promised not to get married and we always keep our promises to each other."

"And to other people, too?"

"Not always. Sometimes it's necessary to break a promise, or to lie, but never to each other. If Romie asks me anything I don't want to tell him, I just say 'King's X,' and if I ask him anything, he says 'it's none of your business,' and it's all right. Twins have to be square with each other."

"Don't you ever quarrel?"

"We may differ, and of course we have fought sometimes, but it doesn't last long. We can always arbitrate. Say, do you know Isabel Ross?"

"I have that pleasure. She's coming to dinner to-night, with Aunt Francesca and Miss Rose."

"Oh," said Juliet, in astonishment. "If I'd known that, I'd have dressed up more. I thought it was just us."

"It is 'just us,'" he assured her, kindly; "a very small and select party composed of our most charming neighbours, and believe me, my dear Miss Juliet, that nobody could possibly be 'dressed up more.'"

Juliet bloomed with pleasure and her eyes sparkled. "Isabel came out to see us," she continued, "and I don't think she had a good time. We showed her all our fishing rods, and let her help us make fudges, and we did stunts for her on the trapeze in the attic, and Romie told her she could have any one of our dogs, but she said she didn't want it, and she wouldn't stay to supper. I guess she thought I couldn't cook just because she can't. Romie said if I'd make another chocolate cake like the one I made the day after she was there, he'd take it up to her and show her whether I could cook or not."

"I believe he would," returned Allison, with a trace of sarcasm which Juliet entirely missed. Then he laughed at the vision of Romeo bearing the proof of his twin's culinary skill into Madame Bernard's living room.

"You come out and see us," urged Juliet, hospitably.

"I will, indeed. May I have a dog?"

"They're Romie's and I can't give 'em away, but I guess he could spare you one. Would you rather have a puppy or a full-grown dog?"

"I'd have to see 'em first," he replied, tactfully steering away from the danger of a choice. He had not felt the need of a dog and was merely trying to be pleasant.

"There's plenty to see," she went on, with a winning smile. "I like dogs myself but we fought once because I thought we had too many. We've named 'em all out of an old book we found in the attic. There's Achilles, and Hector, and Persephone, and Minerva, and Circe and Juno, and Priam, and Eurydice, and goodness knows how many more. Romie knows all their names, but I don't."

Hearing the sound of wheels outside, Colonel Kent, with a certain old- fashioned hospitality to which our generation might happily return, went to open the door himself for his expected guests. Juliet went hastily to the mirror to make sure that her turbulent curls were in order, and Romeo intercepted Allison on his way to the door.

"I heard what she said," Romeo remarked, in a low tone, "about my having been up here, but I didn't tell her I was here. I don't lie to Jule, but I'm responsible only for what I say, not for what she thinks."

Allison smiled with full understanding of the situation. "We men have to be careful what we say to women," he replied, with an air of caution and comradeship that made his young guest feel like a full-fledged man of the world.

"Sure," assented Romeo, with a broad grin and a movement of one eyelid which was almost—but not quite—a wink.

Presently the three other guests came in, followed by the Colonel. Madame Francesca was in white silk over which violets had been scattered with a lavish hand, then woven into the shining fabric. She wore violets in her hair and at her belt, and a single amethyst at her throat. Isabel was in white, with flounces of spangled lace, and Rose was unusually lovely in a gown of old gold satin and a necklace of palest topaz. In her dark hair was a single yellow rose.

Juliet was for the moment aghast at so much magnificence and painfully conscious of her own white muslin gown. Madame Francesca, reading her thought, drew the girl's tall head down and kissed her. "What a clover blossom you are," she said, "all in freshest white, with pink cheeks and sunshiny curls!"

Thus fortified, Juliet did not mind Isabel's instinctive careful appraisement of her gown, and she missed, happily, the evident admiration with which Romeo's eyes followed Isabel's every movement.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Allison was asking Rose, "so I could have ransacked the town for golden roses?"

"I've repeatedly done it myself," laughed Rose, "without success. I usually save my yellow gowns for June when all the yellow rose bushes in the garden may lavish their wealth upon me."

"Happy rose," Allison returned, lightly, "to die in so glorious a cause."

The twins were almost at the point of starvation when dinner was announced, though they had partaken liberally of bread and butter and jam just before leaving home. Romeo had complained a little but had not been sufficiently Spartan to refuse the offered refreshment.

"I don't see why you want to feed me now and spoil my dinner," he grumbled, as he reached out for a second slice.

"I don't want to spoil your dinner," Juliet had answered, with her mouth full. "Can't you see I'm eating, too? We don't want to be impolite when we're invited out, and eat too much."

"You've been reading the etiquette book," remarked Romeo, with unusual insight, "and there's more foolish things in that book than in any other we've got. When we're invited out to eat, why shouldn't we eat? They may have been cooking for days just to get ready for us and they won't like it if we only pick at things."

"Maybe they want some left," Juliet replied, brushing aside the crumbs. "I remember how mad Mamma was once when the minister ate two pieces of pie and she had to make another the next day or divide one piece between you and me."

"I'll bet she made another. She always fed us, and I remember that the kids around the corner couldn't even have bread and molasses between meals."

On the way to the dining-room, Juliet drew her brother aside and whispered to him: "watch the others, then you'll be sure of getting the right fork."

"Huh!" he returned, resentfully, having been accustomed to only one fork since he and Juliet began to keep house for themselves.

When he saw the array of silver at his plate, however, he blessed her for the hint. As the dinner progressed by small portions of oysters, soup, and fish, he gratefully remembered the bread and jam. The twins noted that the others always left a little on their plates, but proudly disdained the subterfuge for themselves.

Madame Francesca sat opposite the Colonel and Rose was at his right. Romeo sat next to her and across from them was Allison, between Isabel and Juliet.

Somewhat subdued by the unfamiliar situation, the twins said very little during dinner. Juliet took careful note of the appointments of the table and dining-room, and of the gowns the other women wore. When Romeo was not occupied with his dinner and the various forks, he watched Isabel with frank admiration, and wondered what made the difference between her and Juliet.