Well, the most enterprising of these hotel accompaniments are the widows. Their superior advantages of experience is just overpowering, and these advantages are used with unscrupulous freedom. I say this with feeling, being one of the class that suffers from such unwarrantable competition.

A widow was in the hotel I have spoken of. Yes, what might be called two widows rolled into one, for she had put two husbands into their little beds, and tucked in the sods comfortably before she came to Long Branch in search of a third.

Sisters, she found him; her little traps and lines and baits had been all out to no sort of purpose for three or four weeks. She danced in the parlor, exhibited all the lines of a plumptitudinous figure at the bowling alley, which is a place I never saw, but have heard about; walked on the beach with a Leghorn hat on, curled up at the ears, and in front too, and Japanese umbrella, brown outside and yellow in the interior, which looked as if she had lots of money and meant to put it on the market with a dash.

There was a great deal said about this widow. Some observed that she was handsome. Some said she wasn't—mostly ladies. Some observed how graceful she was, at which others smiled and shook their heads. One person persisted in it that she was awful rich—two or three hundred thousand dollars, at least. Then that was contradicted. Forty thousand was more than any one could prove she had. Others persisted that her wealth, like her virtues, was unlimited. In fact, being a widow, she made the best of it and let people talk, minding her snares and traps and things all the same.

Last week a strange man came to that hotel. It was Saturday morning, and the first object that his eyes fell upon at breakfast was this widow, without the sign of a cap, and with a long curl straggling down to one shoulder, very fluffy and enticing. He looked at the curl; then his eyes wandered up to the widow's face. That face had smiled through a couple of matrimonial campaigns, and received the first battery of admiring eyes with a sweet, downcast look, innocent as blanc-mange. Then she lifted her eyes with slow modesty, and glanced wonderingly at her admirer, as if she were sort of bewildered by his looking so much that way.

The stranger did not smile, but a light came over his face when he caught that childlike glance. Then both these innocent creatures fell to eating. Then he happened to look up again. So did she—a romantic coincidence that sort of affinitized them to a great extent, before anybody saw what was going on.

After breakfast the stranger hunted up some one who knew him and the widow also. An introduction brought the two halves of that pair of scissors together, and the blades fitted beautifully. All they wanted was the rivet. But wait.

At twelve o'clock that day the stranger ventured to ask a favor. Would the widow give him a little music?

The widow said she would. The sweetness of a whole boiling of maple sugar was in her smile as she sat down by the parlor piano, and sent her two little hands fluttering over it like a pair of white pigeons with love-letters under their wings.

The widow flew her fingers; the widow looked at the stranger from under her eyelashes, and her voice thrilled through him till he began to think of magnolias and mocking-birds and other ornamental things which soften a man's feelings down to the fluffiness of a feather bed.

When she had done singing, he asked her to walk with him on the beach. She gave another slow lift of her eyelashes, said she would, and ran upstairs after the Leghorn and the Japanese umbrella, brown and yellow, with as many bones in it as the first April shad.

They walked the beach up and down, she leaning heavier and heavier on his arm at each turn. Then they sat down on the sand with their faces to the sea, and held the umbrella so as to shade off the people on the bank—they didn't care for the sun a bit—and in that condition they sat and talked and talked and talked.

By and by he got up from the sand. She lifted her eyes with a pitiful look of helplessness. He reached out his hand, and she rose to it gracefully, like a trout to a fly. The hand clung to his more than a minute after she got up—the sand was so uneven, you see. The stranger bore this with Christian fortitude, and really seemed as if he rather liked it. In fact, he encouraged her to hold on; and she did, with her sweet widowed face lifted to his just long enough to set his heart off like a windmill, when she dropped it again.

When they came up the flight of wooden steps that leads down from the bank, both her white hands were clasped over his arm as loving as the soft paws of a kitten, and he looked like a fellow that had been out shooting doves, and had come in with his net full.

They went in to lunch, and ate spring chickens; then they ended off with silly-bubs, which is a sweet froth that melts to nothing on the tongue—delicious, but not exactly hearty food.

Two hours after lunch, the stranger asked the widow to ride out with him; which she did, in the puffiest and silkiest of dresses, and with a lace parasol, lined with pink, between her and the sun. This was one of her snares, for she depended on that pink lining for her blushes, having left them a good way behind her somewhere about the first wedding.

The drive was paradisical. They talked, they smiled, they said the loveliest little things to each other with delicious reciprocity. He drove, and divided his manly attentions between her and the horses, giving her a generous share, which was creditable to him as a man.

It was nearly twelve o'clock that night when those two people went up to their neglected couches—nothing but a widow would have stood the shock of such impropriety among the critical of her sex; but she didn't care a mite.

Early the next morning, which was Sunday, these two persons were seen coming out of the little cubby-houses under the beach in the queerest sort of dresses—I cannot describe them, because, up to this time, beach flirtations have been forbidden subjects with me.

But they came out on the beach, clasped hands, and walked right into the biggest waves they could find.

What she said to him there I cannot tell, but by and by they came back to the hotel, the sneakiest-looking creatures you ever set your two eyes on.

I don't know when it was that she brought him to the point, but the widow had netted him so close that he didn't even try to flounder.

That night there was sacred music in the hotel parlor, and, somehow, a minister of the Gospel dropped in, with a white cravat on, and waited for something, looking as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.

He hadn't been there long before the strange gentleman came in with a swallow-tailed coat on, a white vest and cravat, with ball-gloves on his hands.

Hanging on to his arm was that widow, in a long, white dress, that streamed after her in windrows, and with a shower of lace falling over her.

The minister got up, and opened his book. The people hanging about hushed their talk, and in less than ten minutes a third gold ring was chucked over the other two that weighed down the widow's finger, and she walked off with number three as proud as a white peacock.

It took this widow just two days and part of a night to spring her traps and draw her hooks—but, then, she was a widow.

Sisters, there is a good deal of commotion in our hotel just now. Rural single ladies talk of going over to the other place.

I had a little hankering in that direction at first, but, come to think it over, mean to stay where I am. It isn't the house that has done this, but the bland atmosphere of Long Branch. If that sort of thing is indigenous to the place—and I mean to test it thoroughly—Russia is welcome to the Grand Duke; a whole-souled American is good enough for me. Besides, Russia is an awful cold place, and I don't think I ever could bring myself to eat cabbage-soup or the roe of a sturgeon.

Sisters, if this sort of thing lies in the atmosphere, don't you think it would be a good thing for the whole Society to come down here next summer? A generous diffusion of masculine energy into the course might be a desirable change. For my part, I don't mean to leave this place till frost comes. I believe this thing is going to be an epidemic at the Branch, and when contagions rage I am sure to catch any disease that is going. I have had the measles twice, and two pretty severe tugs with the scarlet-fever. In fact, I was celebrated, as a child, for catching double. One thing is certain—I never ran away because a disease was catching, and I'm not going to do it here. On the contrary, I am making over one of my old alpaca skirts into a bathing-dress. If I know myself I shall fight it out on that line, if it takes all winter.



CHAPTER XC.

THE YELLOW FLAG.

Dear sisters:—I have gone and done it! Now let me give you a little wholesome advice. It comes out of my superior knowledge of the world, and experience of the human heart. Never say that you won't do a thing, because if you do, just as sure as you live it is the very thing that you are sure to plunge into, whether you want to or not. Besides, people who know enough to doubt themselves, understand that men and women are made up principally of human nature. Now human nature is a great fraud, and isn't to be trusted when he's found in the interior of your own heart, or anywhere else.

In one of my reports, I expressed myself as shocked out of a year's growth, when I heard about gentlemen and ladies going into the salt-sea waves together, and submerging themselves like mermaids in the swell and foam of the ocean. I said, in the heat and glow of modest feminine shrinkitiveness, that nothing on earth, or in the water, should induce me to do it; but circumstances alter cases, and the capacity of eternal change is the essence of genius, which is always making new combinations and discarding old prejudices.

I say it with reluctance, but truth demands frankness. Sometimes I am a little hasty in my conclusions.

Have I said enough—need I go on to explain that the result of a thing proves its propriety?

Now, bathing in company, in the abstract, does seem—well, peculiar. I might add other words which at one time came uppermost in my mind; but, looking toward results, I feel constrained to say nothing on the social aspect of multitudinous ablutions, but go into the high moral question which has slowly presented itself to my understanding.

Isn't there a passage of Scripture somewhere that speaks about "fishers of men"? I think there is, and I am inclined to see that kind of business from a high moral stand-point. If men are to be legally caught with a dripping dress and an old straw hat for bait, who shall say that the thing is wrong? If men are told to go down to the sea in ships, what should prevent a female woman from going down in a four-cornered straw hat, a flannel tunic, and—well, pantalettes on? Everything depends on the point of view from which one sees a thing.

As a marine picture, salt-sea waves rushing in upon a sandy beach can hardly be considered complete without throwing a little life into the foreground; but when that life is composed of a flock of old straw hats, and a lot of staggery, blinded, dripping people under them, I can't say that I hanker after this particular marine view.

From an artistic stand-point then I reject the whole subject; but as the means of catching a heart afloat, that same picture offers numerous facilities.

Well, sisters, as a social institution I no longer sneer at sea-bath flirtations. When two days of them end in matrimony, it isn't worth while to fight out the question on that line any longer. I give in.

Such engagements may be unstable as water, but a damp engagement is better than none at all.

With these sentiments, I finished off my bathing-dress, and put a red ribbon over a high-crowned, square-brimmed hat, coarse and clumsy, which was to keep my face from the sun, and my flowing tresses from the briny ocean waves.

Early in the morning I went out into the veranda, and took a survey of the ocean—the broad infinite expanse of waters into which I was about to plunge in search of—well, health.

In front of the veranda, on the high bank, was a pole, like the liberty-poles we run up on almost every village green of New England. On that pole a pale yellow flag was flying.

A chill ran over me, and I know that my arms must have been roughened like a grater.

"The yellow-fever." I knew it was in the harbor, shut up there by the authorities. Had it escaped through Sandy Hook, and come poisoning the waters along shore? Now that I was ready for the first plunge, were my best hopes to be frustrated? Had I sat up all night sewing red braid on that tunic, and those—well, Turkish pantalettes, for nothing? Had I conquered a great New England prejudice, to be conquered myself by careless health officers? Why hadn't they taken an example by some of the old stock, and divided the whole thing among them in perquisites? I only wish they had.

Sisters, it was a keen disappointment. I was looking at that yellow flag, with tears in my eyes, when Cousin E. E. came on to the veranda.

"Come, Phoemie," says she, bright as a May morning, "where is the new bathing-dress? It will be splendid bathing!"

I looked at her, I looked at the ocean and at the path that led down to the beach, along which half a dozen real nice-looking gentlemen were picking their steps like rabbits toward a sweet-apple trap. It was tantalizing.

"Yes," says she, as contented as a lamb, "it will be lovely bathing this morning; I mean to try it."

"Try it," says I; "haven't you read that yellow-fever is in the harbor?"

"Well, what then?" says she. "It won't hurt us."

"Won't hurt us," says I. "Did you ever hear of poison getting into water that could be washed out? No, if it is in the harbor, some of it will drift down here. Look, you can see it sweltering in the waves now."

She looked out on the ocean, where a faint yellow tinge rippled and shone with treacherous temptatiousness.

"Oh, that is only the sunshine," says she.

"But the fever," says I, "I know it is in the harbor, for the newspapers said so. They have run up the yellow flag wherever it is to be found. See there."

Cousin E. E. sat down and dropped both hands in her lap.

"Cousin Phoemie," says she, "I really don't know whether you are a real genius or the greatest goose that ever lived. You are just a puzzle to me. Who ever heard of yellow-fever in the water?"

"I have," says I, "in the harbor, and isn't the harbor all water?"

"Yes," says she, "that is true."

"Then, isn't it dangerous to bathe in that water, and don't that flag give us warning not to do it?"

"Cousin," says she; "as I said before, you know too much for common ideas to make an impression. Now do try to understand. There is one ship in the harbor that has yellow-fever on board—that is all. It will not be allowed to spread from that one ship."

"Oh," says I, drawing a deep breath, "then it has not poisoned the water."

"Not at all."

"But the yellow flag?"

"That means good bathing, and plenty of it. Come along. Don't you see people crowding down to the shore?"



CHAPTER XCI.

THE MAN THAT SAVED ME.

I ran into my room, and came out with a bundle in one hand and a coarse straw hat in the other. That group of gentlemen was just dropping down the bank out of sight, and after them went a crowd of girls, with their parasols flaming in the sun like a bed of poppies.

"Come," says I, all joyful animation, "I am dying to begin."

E. E. spread her parasol, and off we marched.

We came to the steep bank, and went down a flight of wooden stairs to the sandy shore. Right under the bank was a long row of cubby-houses, made of boards.

"This is ours," says E. E., "come in."

I went in. Sisters, what happened in the privacy of that board sanctuary, is not for the public—let this satisfy the curious.

Two ladies went into that little retreat, with bunched-up skirts, beehive bonnets, and a general assortment of dry-goods, such as weighs down the ladies of the present generation to an extent that approaches martyrdom.

Two persons came out skimped down into nothingness. They had grown tall and slim, not to say spooky. There was a deficiency of glossy ringlets under the two hats that squared off in front and behind, and were flapped down over each ear.

E. E.'s plumptitudinous figure was mostly lost and gone, and I—well, I felt like a church steeple on a very high hill. I say nothing, the subject being one of great delicacy; but from my experience in those Turkish—well, pantalettes—the female that begrudges her husband that class of garments, must hanker after change more than I do. When I came out of the little house, Dempster stood on the sand with a pair—well, of garments like mine, only more so, on, and a flaming red upper garment, bright enough to set the waves on fire, covering his broad bosom.

Another gentleman stood near him—blue and brown in his sea-outfit, youngish, and with eyes that made me wilt like a poppy the moment they fell upon me.

My goodness, how I did feel in that dress! It was all I could do to keep from kind of scrouching down to hide my bare feet; but it was of no use, so I dug them deep into the sand, and felt myself blushing all over, while that gentleman in blue fixed his eyes upon them.

Anyway, there was nothing to be so mightily timorous about, for, according to my calculation, two smaller or whiter feet didn't leave their prints in the sand that day, though I do make that assertion with my own lips, that ought to be mute.

Cousin Dempster came forward, took both E. E. and my trembling self by the hand, and led us to the water.

I took one glance: a swarm of straw hats, a crowd of men, women, and children were floundering, swimming, screaming, laughing, tumbling through the waves, that lifted them up, flung them down, pitched them forward, and behaved in a way that no well-bred ocean would have thought of doing.

I shrank—I shivered—the heart seemed to die in my agitated bosom when the first wave kissed my feet; I gave a little scream, but checked myself bravely. The waves were full of men, some of them were looking at me.

I determined to act bravely, and be the heroine of the occasion. I let go of Dempster's hand. A wave struck me, my head went down and my feet went up. In my fright and anguish I remembered their size and whiteness, and found consolation in the thought while I strove to right myself.

It was in vain; while I staggered with one big wave, another took me unawares, like a thief in the night, and dragged me under, like a wild beast growling over some poor helpless lamb—it tore me away. I shrieked—I plunged—I fought madly for my life. Up through the vivid green of the waters the sunshine came toward me like light upon beaming emeralds. I clutched at it. I tried to scream; but my mouth filled with water, green flashes shot through and through my eyes. I began to pray. The Green Mountains, the farm, and all my life there shot through my brain; things I had forgotten came uppermost, and those thoughts grew pleasant while the waters seemed roaring me to sleep.

Something came toward me, bluish. Was it a monster of the deep hungry for the life that was so fast dying out?

It seized me. I was born upward on a great wave, and swept off into the light. The claws of some monster, or the arms of some friend, held me close. Which was it?

Some power of good or evil, beastly or human, had dragged me into the sand, where white foam curled around me, and the sun struck down upon my eyes like fire.

Some man was thanking another for a great favor; a crowd of people came swarming around me. I attempted to open my eyes, but the water dripping down from my hair came into them sharp and salt.

"Is she sick? Is she afraid? Do tell who it is?"

These questions came from women who had rushed up from the waters, and flocked around me like mermaids. I did not care about them, but by and by it came to me that men might be there as well. I lifted my hand, swept the wet hair back from my face, and, with a smarting pain in my eyes, saw my deliverer.

His blue garments were black with dripping water, the thick hair streamed over his forehead, his bare feet looked hard and powerful on the sand. It was the man under whose admiring eyes I had blushed and trembled.

"My preserver!" said I, clasping my wet fingers in an ecstasy of gratitude; "shall I ever live to thank you for the poor life you have saved?"

He smiled, he shook his head; I am afraid he laughed, such was his joy and exultation; yet the modesty of true greatness possessed him still.

"It is nothing," he said. "A wave knocked you head-foremost—that was all."

I knew better. It was the inherent greatness of a noble soul that impelled him to make nothing of his own heroic act. He must have supported me miles on miles in those stalwart arms. No protest of his could lessen the bravery of his action or the force of my gratitude. If woman's gratitude and woman's love are anything, his reward shall be great.

They bore me into that weather-beaten cubby-house, and there, with the help of E. E., my dripping garments were taken off, my wet hair done up snugly under the braids that had been left behind, and, filled with tender gratitude, I walked up to my hero in blue before going to my apartment in the hotel.

"Let me see you to-morrow," said I, pressing the hand of that heroic man. "Then I may find language to express my life-long gratitude."

He bowed; he drew his hand, with evident reluctance, from my clasp, and retreated.

Ah, sisters, my destiny has come! I feel it in every breath I draw, in every sweet thought that haunts my brain. To-morrow I shall see him again. To-morrow!

Oh, sisters, he has just left me. Alas! alas! for human aspirations. I had written thus far when he came.

I received him in my room, looking pale, and, I think, interesting, for the sweet romance of my feelings left its imprint on my features. He came in with hesitation, and sat down on the edge of his chair, looking ill at ease, as if wishing to escape a mention of his own heroism. I felt a glow of admiration, a thrill of tender gratitude.

"You have saved my life," I said, clasping my two hands, "and from this hour I devote that life to your happiness. Tell me how I can begin to repay you."

He sat uneasily; he shifted in his chair. Then he murmured:

"Anything you please; I never thought of asking. It was only my duty."

"Heroic man!" I exclaimed; "and brave as modest. It is my pleasure to be more than grateful. Never, never can I repay you save with the warmest and sweetest emotions of a woman's heart. I owe you—ah, how much—how much!"

My hands were clasped, my eyes were uplifted; emotion prevented me finishing my sentence. He spoke, while my soul halted for words—

"Well, if you think so much of just helping you out of the way of a seaward wave, supposing we say five dollars. It is my duty, as bathing-master, to help people up from the sand when they get face downwards, as you did; but as you insist, I don't mind a fiver."

Oh, sisters!



XCII.

PLEASURE BAY.

Dear sisters:—I really do think that Cousin Dempster is one of the best creatures that ever lived. He seems to understand all the wounds and pains that a female woman's heart is exposed to, and sort of eases them off, so that you are cheated out of half your natural suffering.

I cannot say that the bathing in the salt-sea waves was not a failure as a matrimonial speculation; but that is my luck. In some respects, the future to me is like a mirage—I put my hand out hopefully, and grasp nothing but fog.

That bathing-master was a fine-looking man until he opened his mouth and attempted to sit down on a chair. He created a pleasant delusion in my bosom for a few moments, and then—well, we will say nothing more about that—the private sanctuary of a female woman's thoughts are too sacred for a Report.

If I wept in the stillness of the night, no one but the angel that records broken love-dreams will ever know of it. With this precious angel I am in full sympathy. He has done too much of that kind of writing for me not to feel the cruel pangs of the long list of disappointments with which his books are blotted.

Well, I arose the next morning after my experimental bath, heavy-eyed, heavy-hearted, and altogether blue as indigo. Cousin Dempster saw this, and his generous heart seized upon a remedy.

"Let us go down to Pleasure Bay," says he. "What do you think of a day's crabbing?"

"Crabbing?" says I, "just as if I didn't feel crabbed enough already. Do you want me to keep it up all day?"

Dempster laughed; so did E. E.; just as if I'd said something awful funny, which I wasn't in the least conscious of, not having a spark of fun left in me since that salt-water deluge and its consequences.

"Oh," says he, as good-natured as pie, "there is nothing like Pleasure Bay when one has the blues—a lunch under the trees, and a boat before the breeze."

I stopped him; the dear, good fellow was launching off into poetry without knowing it; association with genins is doing everything with him. There is no knowing where he might have ended, if I hadn't lifted my forefinger, for a whole gust of poetry was riling up in his earthly nature like yeast in a baking of bread.

"I'll go to Pleasure Bay," says I, "but, for goodness sake, don't try that sort of thing again; genius isn't catching, and though you have married into our family, don't expect that it will spread like an epidemic into yours, because it won't."

"Why not?" says he; "is there nothing in association?"

"Well, I can't exactly decide," says I; "strange things do happen in that direction. I have heard of young women marrying literary men who never wrote a line worth reading before, who burst out into full-blown geniuses right in the honeymoon. But it is wonderful how much their style was like their husbands'. Of course, those must be cases of especial affinity. When a woman has ransacked a poor fellow's heart, she naturally begins to pillage his brain, and I reckon he must like it at first; but after that, he subsides into himself, and she subsides into herself, and somehow she writes just as she did before, and so does he!"

"Then there are plenty of young ladies who carry their ambition and their flirtations in among the newspaper people and stray Bohemians," says E. E., kindling up to the subject; "for every time they get into a new flirtation, which is once in about three months, their style changes, giving them a wonderful versatility of talent that, somehow, dies out after awhile, as she grows old and homely."

"That is," says Dempster, laughing, "every time a literary lady of this stamp changes her lover, she changes her style, too."

"Exactly," answers E. E., "and where she hasn't any good-natured lover she retires into modest privacy till one comes along."

I just listened, holding my breath.

"What," says I, "does fraud and deception creep into the sacred literature of our country? I cannot believe it."

"Can't you?" says E. E.; "but you have never been in Bohemia."

"No," says I, "that is a part of Europe that I hope to visit, but never have. Is it a popular place for Americans?"

"Oh, wonderfully popular, for people who dash off things here and there, write for this and that, and are willing to give half that they earn and know to any adventurer that comes along, free gratis for nothing; or, on occasion, sell reputation by the line, and for a price. Oh, Bohemia is a splendid place for adventurers and adventuresses to forage in!"

"What!" says I, "genius sell itself?"

"Yes," says she, "and its readers, too."

"Cousin E. E.," says I, "you slander the grandest, the purest, the most sublime people on the earth."

"Do I?" says she, nodding her head and laughing. "Wait and see."

"Remember—you are speaking of authors, the first and purest aristocracy known to our free nation."

"No; I speak of would-be authors—guerillas in literature—men and women of erratic ability, who adore inspiration and scorn work; for authorship, I am told, and believe, requires the hardest work of any calling in the world."

"I'm afraid it does," said I, drawing a long breath, "but then such work brings its own prompt payment. The power to write is happiness in itself."

"But what has this to do with Pleasure Bay?" says Dempster; "we mean to go there—not to Bohemia."

"Just so," says I, a-tying on my bonnet.

We got into Dempster's carriage, and after a delightful drive, we came down on the edge of a little bay, with green grass growing close down to the shore, and great, tall trees clumped here and there all around it.

I was so charmed with the scenery that I didn't realize where we were till the carriage stopped before a white house, with a long wooden stoop in front, when we got out and walked right away down to the shore, where a plank platform ran out from the land, and a cunning little boat, with white sails, lay dipping up and down like a duck in the water.

Sisters, I'm not timersome, but getting into a boat that rocks like a cradle in the water tries me, I must own to that. With what holding on and keeping your dress well down upon the ankles, one is seized with a sense of being awfully unsteady. This riles up the constitution to a state of dizziness that makes your ears buz like a bumblebee's nest.

I was thankful to get seated at last, and, tucking up my dress, prepared at once for a long sea-voyage. E. E. had slung a great straw gypsy hat on her arm, by the strings, when she left Long Branch, which she bent down over her head like an umbrella with herself for a handle; over that she spread a broad yellow parasol that blazed in the hot air like a great sunflower.

"Phoemie," says she, a-looking up from under her straw tent, "didn't you bring a flat?"

"No," says I; "the young fellows of that stamp didn't happen to be about when we started."

"Dear me! you'll burn your face up," says she; "that beehive is no protection."

"About as much as one of your York flats would be," says I. "But supposing I hoist my parasol, too—one don't need a beau for that."

The sun was pouring down like blazes, and I was mighty glad to spread my parasol, I can tell you; so I did it, and settled down on the same bench with E. E.

Dempster had been awful busy on shore, pulling out fish-lines, looking up nets that swung like a great hang-bird's nest, on the end of a pole: and now he was on his knees, hacking a fish into chunks, which he tied to a line and dropped into the bottom of the boat. At last he lifted his great straw hat, wiped the blazing warmth from his face, and jumped in.



CHAPTER XCIII.

NETTING CRABS.

Oh, sisters! judge of my feelings, when directly after Dempster, came a splendid gentleman—a creature of romance, shaded from the vulgar gaze by a felt hat, and dressed like a mariner along-shore. He lifted his hat to me, and also to E. E.—with a lofty reservation in her case.

"Mr. Burke," says Dempster, with a degree of carelessness that, I am sorry to say, is characteristic—"he will teach you how to catch the creatures; for there is an art in it."

"Then I shall never succeed," says I, in a low, gentle tone of voice. "Where anything but pure nature is expected, I must always keep in the shade. You know, Cousin E. E., what an artless young thing I always was."

E. E. smiled—not at me but right up in the face of that strange gentleman. I declare, I never saw anything so bold in my life! But it was of no use; he came and sat down close to me. In fact, he took the parasol from my hand with a gallant air that made my heart beat like a partridge on a log. In one respect that movement wasn't an advantage: the parasol was not large enough to shade two, and he held it carelessly, as was natural to a dashing, splendid creature like him; but somehow the shade always fell on his side. I felt dreadfully certain that freckles were falling like split peas all over my face. Still he smiled so sweetly and looked so magnificent that, freckles or no freckles, I was ready to give him up my beehive, too, if he had only looked as if he wanted it.

Dear me, how that boat did heel up and rock as we went sailing off down to a green grassy point, where the gentleman told me the crabs swarmed like lady-bugs around a full-blown rose—pretty simliar, wasn't it, sisters, and so original?

I was dying to know what sort of a fish a crab was, never having seen any in our brooks. Were they like sun-fish, rainbowish and flat; or like trout, sparkled over with dripping jewels; or small and silvery, like shiners and pin-fish?

I did not like to ask that magnificent stranger about this, and let him believe that crabbing had been an amusement of my childhood up in the Green Mountains—not that I said so outright—but my idea of discretion is to say nothing of a thing you don't understand, but wait and find out. What is the good of telling the world how much you don't know?

Well, I hadn't the least idea what a crab was, but the name made me feel a little rily. The water was full of them; I was pretty sure to find out; so I waited.

By and by, Dempster flung a great stone co-slash into the water, and tied us up just below a little green point of land that took the sunshine in its long grass till it seemed full of drifting gold which spread out upon the water in soft, shiny ripples.

E. E. shut down her parasol. Mr. Burke shut mine. "Now," says he, "for the lines."

With this he took up a lump of raw fish, gave it a swing and a splash into the water, and handed me the other end. Dempster gave another line and a chunk of fish to his wife, and then took one of the hang-bird nets and stood by as if he meant to do business.

By and by I felt a sort of hungry nibbling at the end of my line, and gave it a jerk just as if it had been a brook trout, hard to catch.

"Oh, goodness!" I just dropped the line and screamed like everything, scared half to death. If ever an innocent female caught a claw-footed imp, I came near doing it then. Why the animal, varmint, double and twisted serpent—I don't know what to call it—clung to the bait till I hauled him clear out of the water, and then fell back with a big sprawl and an awful splash, sinking down again like a great mammoth spider that made the water bubble with disgust.

"What was it? What was it?" I said, turning my scared face on Mr. Burke. "What kind of young sea-devil is this?"

He laughed, and laid down the net he had just taken up.

"You pulled too quick," says he. "Crabs are like women."

"Like women," I shrieked. "What, those horrid things? Sir, I thank you!"

My voice shook so I could hardly get the words out with proper irony. A generous rage in behalf of my sex possessed me.

"You did not hear me out," says he, pleasant as a sweet apple. "I was going to say crabs were like women in this respect. They must be led along, enticed, persuaded up to the bait."

"Oh!" says I, "that is a sentiment I can appreciate, but the comparison is dreadful."

"There is hardly anything in nature which would not be dreadful compared to some females that I know of," says he.

I laid one hand on my bosom and bowed, but the next instant I felt one of those scraggly fiends pulling at my line, and I drew it softly in, hand-over-hand. Oh, how the beastly thing crept and crawled, and spread its scraggles as it nibbled and rose with the bait! I declare it made the flesh creep on my bones.

"That's right, draw gently—lure him up. Ho!"

As he spoke Mr. Burke just slid his net under the varmint, and flashed him up into the air, bait and all.

Sisters, there is no use in talking; if these creatures they call crabs ain't great salt-sea spiders, no such animals exist; and eels ain't fish, that's all.

Oh, I wish you could see them crawl up through the sea-grass and spread themselves. I declare it is just awful.

Well, down went this crab—which they all gloried in, being a great big gridiron of a fellow—into a hole in one end of the boat, and out went my bait after another.

At one great pull I brought up two wapping big fellows at a time, and trolled them on while Mr. Burke scooped them up. Chasing dragon flies in the old times was nothing to it.

E. E. was busy as a bee on her side of the boat, Dempster ladled the animals up for her, till we had a couple of dozen trying to creep away, and fighting each other like chickens in a coop.

By this time I could see that E. E., like a good many other people I could mention, was getting sort of restless for other attentions than those her husband could give. She kept casting side-glances at Mr. Burke, and at last says she to Dempster:

"Dempster, it isn't expected that a man should always be a-hanging about his wife. It's time for you to do some netting for Phoemie."

E. E. said this almost in a whisper, but I heard it, and all the temper in me riled up to my throat.

Sisters, this married woman was just dying to change off her husband for the beau that was devoting all his energies to me. I felt that the crisis had come that self-interest and a high moral standard demanded that I should keep this man from the lure of a married woman. I owed it to myself, to Dempster, and, above all, to the cause of morality, to hold that man firmly to his post.

"Phoemie," says Dempster, coming up to me and looking as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, "let me scoop for you?"

Before I could speak Mr. Burke took that nefarious hint and went over to E. E.

I gave Dempster a look of withering contempt, and flung my bait out with a splash that must have scared all the crabs out of a year's growth.

"No," says I, "you may be willing to desert the marital outposts, but I will not help you. Go back to your wife; I can catch all the crabs I want without help."

"Well, just as you like," says Dempster, and, settling down on the bow of the boat, he pulled his hat over his eyes and went to sleep, then and there.

Three crabs come up to my bait—nibble, nibble, nibble. I drew in the line, they crawled through the water after it. Still I drew and drew. Three great plump fellows came to the top of the water. It was a good chance to call Burke away. He was leaning over E. E. and whispering, while she listened.

"Here, here!" screamed I, "three at a haul. Will nobody help me?"

That man did not seem to hear me, but kept on whispering, while E. E. listened with a smile on her lips and her eyes half shut. The sight made me awful mad.

"I'll catch them myself," says I, and down I plunged my hand into the water. I meant to grip the crab, but he gripped me.

Oh, mercy, how he pinched and bit, and screwed his claws around my hand. It seemed as if he were twisting it into a corkscrew. I shrieked—I yelled—I tried to shake the varmint off—to dash him to atoms against the side of the boat. It was of no use: his sharp claws dug into me in fifty places; he bit like fury. The blood ran down my fingers, my voice grew weaker, but it broke up that flirtation. It was a cruel price, but I paid it cheerfully. While I retain my moral sense, no married woman shall degrade her sex by a flirtation in my presence. Never, never!

Yes, my screams broke up that well-arranged plan to delude Mr. Burke from my side, and it broke up the crabbing party too.

Dempster woke up and hauled in the lines. We had thirty crabs floundering in the hold, all fighting like imps of darkness.

"We'll have them for dinner," says Dempster, ferociously, "they won't be so lively half an hour from now."

He was right, it took us just fifteen minutes to sail back to that white house with the long stoop. Fifteen minutes after that, every crab was in water so hot that they gave up clawing and began to turn furiously red.

Half an hour after we sat around a long table out under the trees, with a great platter of those scrawny creatures lying with their red shells uppermost, a good deal easier to catch than they had been, I can tell you.

Mr. Burke was busy as could be, telling me how to put in my knife under the red shell, so as to lay the sweet white flesh open.

I say nothing, but it seemed to me there was one jealous female around those premises, and that female certainly was not me.

The meat of those creatures is just delicious—what there is of it.

Take it altogether, sisters, it seems to me that catching and eating crabs is an amusement which promises better than bathing.

If I am not very much mistaken, Mr. Burke held my hand longer than was quite necessary when he said good-night after we reached the hotel. I saw E. E. looking at us sideways, and I let it rest—rest lovingly in his clasp long enough to wring her heart. What right has she to have any feeling about it, I should like to know? Isn't she married?



CHAPTER XCIV.

EXTRA POLITENESS.

Dear sisters:—Life is a pleasant thing to have when its chariot-wheels revolve in smooth places. I went to bed last night angry with Cousin E. E. Ever since Mr. Burke was introduced into our party she has exhibited a desire for gentlemen's attention which I think entirely unbecoming a married lady. I do not wish to be severe or captious; such feelings should be left to maiden ladies of an age that I have not yet dreamed of reaching. But a married woman who hankers after any other man's society than that of her own lawful husband is—well, not to speak harshly, an example that some people may follow, but I won't.

This morning, as we sat on the long stoop of the hotel, gazing out on the broad expanse of the boundless ocean, Mr. Burke came gently to my side, and spoke:

"Miss Frost."

My heart beat; my eyelids dropped, but I lifted them, in shy innocence, to his face, inquiringly, wistfully. What would he say next?

"Miss Frost, have you ever seen a clam-bake?"

I reflected a moment. Were clam-bakes indigenous to our Vermont soil? Were they a product of the mountains, or a spontaneous growth of the river vales?

"I do not think I have ever seen them growing in Vermont," says I, at last; "yet there are few roots or vegetables, wild or tame, that I don't know something about. There is wake-robin, on the mountains, with its spokes of red berries; and snake-root, and adder's-tongue; but I don't remember clam-bakes among them, and I know they are not cultivated in our parts as garden-sas, I beg pardon, as vegetables."

Mr. Burke smiled out loud, and his black mustache curled down on each side of his lips delightfully.

"I fancy you have never seen anything of the kind in Vermont. Clam-bakes are only found at the sea-side—principally around Rhode Island. I don't think they prevail much in the mountains, as yet."

"You don't say so!" says I. "Then they are a salt-water plant?"

"Principally found in the sand and mud."

"That don't seem to me very remarkable," says I; "most vegetables are found in one or the other. Watermelons, for instance, grow best in a bare sand-bank: perhaps your new-fangled vegetable is of that species?"

Again his black mustache gave a lovely curl, and his black eyes looked into mine so tenderly, as if something I had said tickled him almost to death.

"You are an original creature," said he.

I put one hand on my heart, and bowed.

"People about Sprucehill, especially the Society of Infinite Progress, have done me the honor to think so," says I.

"But about the clam-bake—if you like it, we must start for Pleasure Bay at once," says Mr. Burke.

"Do they grow down there?" says I.

"Not as a general thing, but we shall make out to get one up, with a little trouble."

"Do they grow so deep?" says I.

"You will see when we get there. Mrs. Dempster is ready, and the carriage is waiting."

To please that man I would have done almost anything; but it did seem a wild-goose chase for a lot of grown people to rush down to Pleasure Bay for the fun of pulling up a lot of the strangest vegetables that ever grew.

"Do make haste!" cried E. E. through the green slats of her window-blinds.

I got up and shook out my dress.

"It will be such fun!" she called out. "Mr. Burke has been so kind as to invite us, so don't keep him waiting."

I lifted my eyes to the dark orbs of that noble-looking man, and he must have known from the expression that I did not mean to keep him waiting in any respect. Gently bending my head, I withdrew.

I came from my room like a moving picture, with my black alpaca newly flounced, and surmounted by that fleecy white jacket with great buttons and double-breasted in front. Then my white hat, curled up victoriously, and the feather waving above it and curlecued around it, was enough to tantalize a minister.

Mr. Burke smiled graciously when he saw me come forth clad in the whiteness of my principles, and I knew that the sympathy between us was national as well as individual.

E. E. came out of her room flaunting a red jacket and a long black plume. Dashy for a married woman! But I said nothing. Let that young woman work out her own destiny; I am not her husband. I caught her sending sly glances from under her eyelashes at Mr. Burke. I wish Dempster had been close by, to see for himself, that's all.

If there is anything on earth that I detest, it is a flirty married woman.

We rode down to Pleasure Bay, four in the carriage, with that child perched up alongside of the driver. E. E. wanted to sit opposite to Mr. Burke, and, seized with a fit of extra politeness for that occasion only, insisted on it that I should get in first—which would have brought me face to face with Dempster. But I, too, was suffering under a sudden epidemic of good manners, and stepped back, bowing till the white feather shaded my face. She kept waving her hand; but I would not be persuaded into pushing myself before a married woman, and at last she got in, biting her lips as if she had a tenpenny nail between her teeth. I followed, looking innocent as a cat with cream on its tongue, and away we went.



CHAPTER XCV.

THE CLAM-BAKE.

Two carriage-loads of people were at Pleasure Bay, wandering about under the trees in front of the hotel. Down between them and the bank was a lot of men piling up a heap of round stones and crossing sticks of wood over them till a high sort of a cross-beam pinnacle was built, to which one of the men set fire. Mercy, how it blazed up and flashed through the cracks in the wood! They seemed to enjoy the blaze, and worked like beavers around it—though I don't know how a beaver works, never having seen one.

Some of the men went down to the water, and, dragging up great armfuls of dark green and yellow grass, swelled out here and there with bulbs and blisters, laid it in a heap before the fire. Some of the others sat down on the rocks, with pails of potatoes and sweet corn between their knees, which they began to wash and tie up in their husks.

I was awful curious to know what all this was about, but made up my mind to wait and see; for Mr. Burke seemed so anxious and busy that I didn't want to stop him by asking questions.

When the wet weeds, potatoes, and corn came on, I thought that the next thing would be some clam-bake; but instead of that, a fellow came down from the house with a lot of young chickens, picked clean, which he carried by the legs, and another loafed up from the water with three great horrid green monsters, like crabs swelled out—green as the sea-weed, and so dreadfully crawly that the very sight of them made me creep all over.

"What on earth are those creatures?" says I to Dempster; "mammoth cockroaches that have taken to a seafaring life, or what?"

"Why, lobsters," says he.

"Lobsters!" says I. "Not a bit of it. All the lobsters I have ever seen were bright red, and still as mice."

"That was after they were cooked," says he. "Wait till these come out, and they'll be red enough, I promise you."

Well, I waited and watched, for what these men were up to was more than I could make out. When the wood was all burned down they brushed the coals and ashes away with an old broom, and two colored men came up from the shore, carrying a two-bushel basket full of little longish-round creatures, hard as stone, and with a long black sort of a knot hanging out of one end. They were dripping wet, and pieces of sea-weed clung to them, as if they grew in the water like the crabs and lobsters.

Well, when the ashes were swept away, and nothing but the hot stones were left crowded close together, the two nig—well, colored persons, lifted that great basket between them and poured the round creatures among the hot stones till they sissed again. Then they piled on a heap of sea-weed, and a cloud of steam came pouring through. Then another layer, and over that the potatoes and corn were poured down and laid on. Then another layer of weeds, and the chickens and three great large fish, done up in cloths, were laid out for a steaming, and with them those live, green lobsters. Oh, mercy! how they did spread their claws and crawl through the sea-weed! It was enough to make you creep all over; but the men soon smothered them with steaming grass, which heaved up and down for a while, and then sank off, till the lobsters lay as dead as the chickens, and made no more fuss about being roasted alive.

By this time the whole heap—grass, chickens, corn, lobsters, and other shell creatures—was big as a small haystack. At last the two colored persons came down with a long tin pail, in which was a roll of butter and some vinegar. They sunk the pail down into the steaming sea-grass, clapped the corn on, and buried it with all the rest. Then more sea-weed and an old boat-sail flung over all, and that little mountain of roasting things was left to steam and sizzle while the whole party went to take a walk along the shore.

Mr. Burke kept by my side, and part of the time he carried my parasol, shading my face with it in the tenderest way.

He said something about the clam-bake, but I had really got so sick of everything in the fish, fowl, or vegetable line, that a curiosity, more or less, was of no consequence, so I said I should know how I liked clam-bakes better when I had seen one.

He answered that would be soon, for half an hour was enough to put one through.

Sisters, I was in no sort of hurry about it, for the rest of them were busy chatting and talking, so that we were just as good as alone, and the moments were precious as gold sands in an hour-glass.

By and by some one set up a shout. Mr. Burke wheeled right round, and says he:

"They are going to open the clam-bake; come and see it done?"



CHAPTER XCVI.

THAT CLAM BAKE.

He walked fast. I followed him with reluctant footsteps. What did I care for clam-bakes or any other new-fangled vegetable while he was by my side?

The crowd were all around that heap of sea-weed when we came up. Men, women, Irish help, and nig—well, colored freemen, with eager eyes and open mouths, were waiting for the sail-cloth to be taken off. On the grass, under the trees, a great long table was set out with plates, glasses, castors, and things. At the end, two pails of ice, with the necks of a dozen bottles peeping up like hungry birds in a nest, stood ready for somebody to uncork.

Well, the nig—freedman gave that sail a jerk, and a cloud of salty steam rolled up from the sea-grass. Then he raked away a winrow of that, dug out a pail of melted butter and vinegar, and held a lobster up by one claw, looking red as a British soldier's jacket. The creature had given up fighting, and hung in his hand meek as Moses. The poor thing was green enough when he went in, but came out blazing red and steaming hot.

More sea-weed; chickens dripping with gravy; heaps of corn; potatoes, mealy, and broken open; fish, and then those longish-round shell things, heaped in plates and dishes, were carried off to the table. We followed those dishes; we sat down to eat. Those longish hard-shelled creatures had all burst open, and something that smelt delicious lay inside, with black heads sticking out.

I watched to see what the rest did with those animals, then seized one by the head, drew him out, soused him in the melted butter, and dropped him softly into my open mouth.

"Delicious, scrumptious, beyond anything I ever ate in my life," says I, when Mr. Burke leaned toward me and wanted to know how I liked it. "But what are these black-headed things with shells, called?"

"Oh, soft-shells—the best part of the clam-bake, I think," says he.

"I reckon you are right," says I, taking another little fellow by the nape of the neck, and biting him off at the shoulders. Then I drank a glass of the sparklingest cider you ever tasted, and went in for an ear of corn, smoking hot, and the breast of a chicken.

Mr. Burke wanted me to eat some of the red lobster, but the thought of it made me creep all over, so I asked to be excused, and said I preferred a dozen or two more soft-shells.

There was a good deal of first-rate cider drank around that table, and we left a bushel of open shells under the trees, besides a heap of lobsters, clams, and chicken bones, well picked.

Then we went back to look at the place where they had been cooked, and found nothing but a heap of smoking stones, a ring of burnt grass, and a pile of steamy sea-weed. Somehow, the sight of it all made me feel sort of faint, and it didn't seem to me that I should ever want to eat or drink again.

We went home from Pleasure Bay in the carriage, feeling lazy and kind of half sea-sick.

That night I dreamed that a whole regiment of green lobsters were crawling over my bed, clawing at me fiercely as they went. Then I thought that Mr. Burke came and shoved them off with both arms flung out, and invited me to breakfast on a heap of empty shells, dipped in butter, which set awful heavy on my stomach.

In fact, I had a worrying night, and got up feeling as if I had been feasting on tenpenny nails and roasted flat-irons.



XCVII.

ONE HOUR OF HEAVEN.

Dear sisters:—You haven't the least idea of what warm weather is in Vermont. Why, if one of your mountain trout streams could have run through New York, it would have boiled over and cooked the poor little speckled creatures that live in its waves. You never saw anything like it in your born days. The sea breezes at Long Branch seemed to come over an ocean of melted lead, blasted up by some old furnace of a volcano. For one whole week I was just dying of envy, when I thought of the pigs roving loose in our village, with such lovely mud puddles to lie down in, without caring a sumarke whether their clothes were mussed—excuse that word, I got it here in York—or not.

While I was panting for breath on the sea-shore, I could think of them, with home-sick longing, up to their throats in the soft, mushy fluid of a delicious puddle, with swarms of yellow butterflies rising, floating, and settling around them, as if a bed of primroses had got tired of growing in one place, and had burst off on a grand spree through the air, settling down for a drink now and then.

Yes, sisters, I was brought, in the hot blast of those summer days, to a state of unchristian envy, and would have been glad to swap places with flounders, or have slept in some cellar, with a block of ice for a pillow.

But nothing that I ever saw lasts for ever, or if it does I haven't lived long enough to prove it. Still, one gets restless in weather like this, when human beings are dropping down dead in the streets of a city close by in dozens, from sunstrokes.

This morning I sat in my room, with a short gown and not over many skirts on, looking through the green slats of my door, and watching the sunshine shimmer down on the waves where the little white vessels were folding their sails, and going to sleep like birds too lazy for flying, when a colored person came to my door, and says he:

"Mr. Burke's compliments, and will Miss Frost take a walk with him on the beach?"

I started up, and, says I:

"Won't I!" Then I composed myself, and sent back compliments, and Miss Frost will have great pleasure in complying with Mr. Burke's polite invitation.

When the—colored messenger was gone, I sat down in the Boston rocker, clasped my hands, and drew a deep, deep sigh of ecstatic expectation. Then I remembered that he was waiting, and sprang to my feet.

With my two shaking hands I fastened the other woman's hair over my own, that would neither curl nor friz worth a cent that awful hot day. Then I put on a white muslin dress, that looked seraphically innocent, and tightened it up with a plaid silk sash, that circled my slender waist and floated off like a rainbow breaking through a cloud.

Then I took my parasol in one hand, held my flowing skirts up with the other, and went forth to meet my destiny. Oh, how my feet longed to dance! How my girlish heart beat and fluttered in this innocent bosom.

He was waiting for me in the long stoop, leaning against a post, and fanning his manly head with the broad brim of his Panama hat. Oh, how majestic, how—but language fails me here.

Arm in arm we walked along the beach. He leaned toward me, I leaned with gentle heaviness on him—delightful reciprocity—eloquent silence. A soft breeze blew up from the ocean, and kissed us both with refreshing softness.

"Ah!" said the noble man by my side, "this is delicious."

"Deliriously so," I murmured.

"You feel the revivifying effect?" says he.

"Exquisitely," says I, leaning a little more confidingly on his stalwart arm.

He bent his stately head and looked down into my eyes. Sisters, the thrill of that glance shook my delicate frame as bumble-bees set a full-blown rose to trembling when they swarm in its heart.

"Shall we go down to the sands?" says he; "the incoming tide is dashing them with coolness."

I understood the delicate meaning conveyed in these words. Nothing could be more exquisitely suggestive. The tide—what was that but his own noble self? The sands—pure, white, untrodden—in my whole life I never heard anything more typical.

"If you desire it," I said.

"If I desire it. Ah! Miss Frost, it is for you to say."

My heart leaped to this as a speckled trout snaps at a fly. Nothing so near a proposal had ever reached me before. But a New England woman is modest; she does not snatch at the first offer—far from it. I pretended not to understand the badly hidden meaning of his metaphor. A little art of this kind is feminine and excusable, even in a young girl dignified with Society membership and a mission. I felt that he could appreciate it. He did. Some people were below us on the sands. They paused to look up as this noble creature handed me down those wooden steps. The effect must have been artistical. My cloud-like skirts floated softly on the zephyrs. My scarf streamed out like a banner. I am afraid the curve of my boot might have been seen from below, for many admiring faces were turned that way, and Mr. Burke cast his eye downward in a fugitive manner.

At last we reached the sands, on which both the sun and waves were beating luminously. By a ridge of white sand he paused.

"Shall we sit here?" says he, with tender questioning.

"Anywhere," says I, with sweet feminine complacency.

Then I dropped down on the sand ridge, and sweeping my skirts together, cast a timid glance up and around.

That noble man was spreading a silk umbrella. There was a hitch in the spring, and, such was his eager impatience to occupy the seat I had so delicately suggested, that a real naughty word broke from his lips—a word I, as a missionary, never could forgive, if it hadn't been the proof of such loving impatience. As it was, like a recording angel, I blotted it out of my memory with a forgiving sigh.

That refractory umbrella was hoisted at last, and its owner placed himself on the sand beside me, holding it not seaward, but like a tent, shading us two from the whole world, while the sun took care of itself.

"This," says he, "is a sweet relief. Don't you find it so, Miss Frost?"

I answered him with a sigh, soft, but audible.

"Yes, one can draw a full breath here," says he. "I was sure you would enjoy it."

"I do, indeed," says I, playing with the sand in the innocence of my heart.

Evidently embarrassed by deep feeling, he too began to sift the white sand through his fingers, which came so near mine that they made me catch my breath for fear he might clasp them. On the contrary, he gave up the temptatious exercise, and throwing a generous restraint on himself, began to talk metaphorically and metaphysically about many things, especially about gathering maple-sap, of which he questioned me tenderly, veiling the hidden meaning in his heart, by a seeming interest in our trees.

He asked me, with infinite meaning in his voice, at what period the sparkling sap began to mount up from the curly roots of our maples, and vivify the trunk, twigs, and branches of that noble tree.

I understood his meaning, delicately veiled as it was. He wished to reveal his contempt of young saplings compared to the vigorous tree. It was a poetic way of comparing young snips of things with whole-souled girls, who had all the bloom of youth, and all the strength of maturity.

I spoke my mind on the subject. I said that strength, greenness, a full-grown trunk were necessary before sweet wholesome sap could circulate from root to top of a sugar maple. That saplings amounted to just nothing at all. In fact, they kept absorbing, but gave forth nothing; that a rich maturity was desirable before the maple became important as a forest-tree or an object of wealth.

I think he understood me—or rather he understood that I, with the exquisite intuition of genius, understood him. For right off, on that, he said that he would like to live in Vermont, and own maple-trees himself; that native sugar was a sweet business, and must have a softening tendency upon those who entered into it.

He sometimes bought it of little boys in the cars, and always felt a soothing influence after eating it, that made him long to drink the native sap fresh from the tree. In fact, he took a deep interest in Vermont and all its institutions.

While we were talking on these sweet subjects, quite a breeze sprang up from the water.

Things brighten around us. The sky looked blue. The heaving waves of the ocean began to swell and sparkle as if a diamond mine were breaking up in their depths. I am satisfied that Long Branch is all that it has been cracked up to be—and more too, when kindred souls meet on its sandy shores.

"How bright! how beautiful!" says he, backing off suddenly from the maple question, which had covered a world of hidden meaning, and looking out to sea, with a delicate wish, no doubt, to spare my blushes.

"Some persons have been kind enough to think so," says I, "but it isn't for me to say."

"I love the fitful changes—the soft transparency: nothing can be more lovely," says he.

The occasion required downcast eyes and shrinking silence. I gave him both. There could be no better answer for a speech so personal and yet so poetic.

"I hope you share my feelings in this."

That moment—that precious, precious moment—was broken in upon in a way that makes me clench my teeth as I write. Up the sands, racing forward like a young colt, came "that child," with her flat flying back by the strings, and a broken parasol in her hand; up she flew toward Mr. Burke.

"Come here," says she, "I want you to whip that boy out there within an inch of his life. I broke my parasol over his head, but it wasn't half enough; I want you to give it to him good."

"But what has he done," says Mr. Burke, no doubt riled to the depths of his noble heart, as I was.

"Done enough, I should think. He mimicked the way I carried my parasol, and said some folks wanted to be young ladies before they could read—that's what he has done," says the creature, flaming out like a bantam.

"Perhaps we had better go in," says Mr. Burke, lifting himself out of the sand.

"Not till you've given him hail Columbia," says the creature, taking a new grip on her broken parasol.

"I rather think he has got that," says Mr. Burke, reaching out his hand to help me up.

I arose. I jerked that Leghorn flat by the strings, and tied it under the creature's chin with a pull that made her scream. Then I took Mr. Burke's arm and mounted the wooden steps, with a feeling at my heart that is not to be described by mortal pen. What a world of bliss that wicked little wretch broke in upon. His soul was verging towards mine so beautifully. The final words were burning on his lips when she rushed in. Still, memory is left, reason is left. I know what was in that noble heart, and that knowledge is bliss.

I felt this: I knew his meaning. To a common woman he might have said, "I love you dearly. I wish above all things to spend my life with you;" but to a creature made up of sensitive pride and poetic niceties, unclothed proposals of this kind must be quite out of place. Of course I understood all that, and felt the refinement of his conduct deeply.

What more could a man say than this? In order to be delicately personal, one must talk by comparisons. To praise the State one is born in, is to praise one's self. To seize upon any material thing for a poetical comparison with a human being, is to be intensely complimentary to that being.

For the first time in my life I feel the sweet certainty of duplication. My heart swells with the beautiful faith of hope deferred. Those heavenly lines we have sung so often together in our meeting-house come back to my mind—

"To patient faith the prize is sure—"

I dare not go farther and complete the rhyme, because human sensation should not encroach on the divine; but the spirit of that hymn sings in my heart; for if there is anything on this earth that woman should be grateful for, it is love.

Yes, my sisters, at last I feel that I am beloved. A ray of sympathetic feeling has darted from a grand and noble soul to mine, changing that dull, sandy coast to Elysium.

Last night, when I retired to the secrecy of my chamber, it seemed to me that if ever a woman's heart—beg pardon, a young girl's heart—was born again, mine had become more tenderly infantine than it was when I lay one week old in my loving mother's arms.

The moonlight was streaming through the muslin curtains of my room when I entered it. It was an ovation of silvery light dawning upon the new life that opens before me. I do not know how other people feel when the crisis of fate is on them, but in my heart there is room for nothing but infinite thankfulness.

Yes, sisters, I think you can conscientiously congratulate me. Virtue does sometimes meet with its own reward, especially when it is combined with youthfulness, elegance, and high mental attributes.



XCVI.

C. O. D.

Dear sisters:—The cruelty of one female woman to another is something awful. As a general thing, E. E. Dempster is a good-natured, amiable person, but her conduct on the very day after that heavenly season on the shore was worthy of the Spanish Inquisition. She has lacerated the heart in my bosom, and torn me away from this place like a ruthless highwayman. That is what she has done.

Early in the morning, while I was dreaming sweetly of the sea-shore, that unfeeling female rushed into my room.

"Phoemie," says she, "you can't sleep any longer. We are packing up for the city. Cecilia has been insulted here, and I won't stay another hour in the place."

"What! what is it?" says I. "How could you! He was just giving up metaphor and coming squarely out in the sweetest way."

"You will have no more than time to pack your trunk before the train starts," says she.

"Starts—what for! where?"

"For New York, and after that to Saratoga; Cecilia insists on it, poor, sweet darling."

"For New York?" says I.

"On the way to Saratoga."

"But—but who is going. Is—is—?"

"Why, you and I, Dempster, and that sweet, ill-used child. Would you believe it, that rude boy's father refuses to whip him, and said a girl that could give a black eye with her parasol was—well, I can't find the heart to repeat it. At any rate, she doesn't stay another hour under the same roof with that little fiend."

"But is that all—Oh, tell me is no one else going?" says I feeling as if a ton of lead had been heaped on me.

"Dear me. There is no one else to care for the poor child. Of course, no one will take it up but us. So make haste."

Out she went, leaving me just heart-broken and ready to give up. How could I go? how could I leave him and "the Branch," as if my soul were fleeing from his?

It was of no use. E. E. was set upon going, and I couldn't help myself.

Well, sisters, two hours after I left that bed we had packed up bag and baggage, given a cart-load of trunks for the express-men to smash or carry, just as they liked, and then took a little run of railroad, and a sail in a steamboat so grand and airy, and no ending, that we began to feel sorry that James Fisk was dead, or that his splendid ghost didn't roam along the steamboat track and keep things ship-shape, as he left them.

Well, in that steamboat we reached New York, warm, restless, and nigh about ready to give out, or take a friendly sunstroke and be peaceably carried away to a cool vault in some shady graveyard.

I mentioned this alternative to Cousin Dempster, but he shook his head and answered that some of us might find ourselves waking up in a more uncomfortable place than the streets of New York; which I thought impossible, but said nothing.

Well, we had a few hours to stay in the city before a boat would be ready to take us to Saratoga Springs—a name that sounded so cool and refreshing, that I longed to get there and breathe again.

Cousin E. E. said, when we went ashore:

"Phoemie," says she, "there are a few hours before us; suppose we go a-shopping? I want ever so many things. Saratoga is a dressy place, and I haven't a thing to wear."

Then, before I could object, says she to Dempster:

"A check, my dear, or if you have the funds on hand."

Dempster gave a sigh that shook his manly bosom through and through, and says he:

"There," drawing a roll of bank bills from his vest pocket, "will that do?"

E. E. unrolled the bills and sorted them out.

"Ten, twenty, fifty, ten, ten, ten, fif— Why, Dempster, what do you mean? How far will a hundred and fifty dollars go? I want to spend more than that on Valenciennes lace for Cecilia's dress. The child must have something to wear."

She spoke in a grieved, half-angry way, that touched Dempster to the heart. He took out his pocket-book, but not another sign of money was in it. Then he felt in three or four pockets with the air of a man who was tormented with doubts of finding anything. At last he stopped looking.

"I haven't another red cent about me, dear. Indeed I haven't."

"Dear me, what am I to do? There is a guipure sacque at Stewart's that I must have."

"Couldn't you get along without it?" says Dempster, with such pathetic earnestness that I really felt sorry for him.

"Get along without it! How can you ask?"

"That Brussels lace thing," faltered Dempster.

"What, that? I have had it six months at least; besides, I saw another just like it at the hotel, and that is enough to disgust one with anything. If people will pattern after me, I can't help it. Then again one gets so tired of the same thing."

"But I have no more money."

"Can't you draw a check?"

"My check-book is at the office."

"Always so when I want anything. Now, Dempster, this is too bad."

"Well," says Dempster, desperately, "get the thing, and tell Stewart to charge it?"

Cousin E. E. turned her face away. It was awful cloudy, and I could see that she was biting her lips. She had an awful long bill at Stewart's already. Then her face lighted up.

"Can't I have them sent C. O. D., by express? You will have time to get plenty of money before then," says she, as soft as silk weed.

"I hate the system," says Dempster; "money in hand is the only way a lady should make purchases. Then she knows what she is about. Everything else leads to extravagance. I hate bills as if they were copperheads; they are things I never will forgive."

I saw that E. E. turned pale, and a red flush came around her eyes as if she were just ready to burst out a-crying.

Dempster thought it was because he had stood out about the money and gave in a trifle.

"For this once," says he, "have the things charged, but bring the bill with you. I must know what I am about in these matters."

"But I mightn't find them all in one place. Hadn't we better make it a C. O. D., just for once?" says she, pleading for her own way as if her mouth were full of humble pie.

"Do as you please for this once," says he, half out of patience, "but remember, I am set against bills and running accounts—pay as you go along, is my motto."

E. E. drew a deep breath, and, putting the money in a little mite of a leather satchel fastened to her side by a belt, took up her parasol and prepared to march off.

Cecilia followed after, surveying her little toadstool of a parasol, and stooping forward as she walked, like an undersized kangaroo.

I only wish E. E., or even Cousin Dempster, could see that child as I see her. But they can't. Where she is concerned, they seem born fools, both of them.

Well, off we went one way, and Dempster the other—he to get the money, and his wife to spend it. I looked on, and wondered how any man living could afford to get married. The whole thing made me down-hearted, and half-ashamed of my relationship with a woman who could worry money out of her husband like that, and not feel how mean she was—could not my cousin see that she was poisoning the soul of her own child by an example which she was just as certain to follow as she was to live.

Well, we got into a carriage and drove up Broadway; but instead of going to Stewart's great marble building, E. E. stopped at some other places, and kept buying and buying till I got tired out, and sat on a round stool by the counter, saying nothing, but thinking a good deal. Each place we left, I heard her say, "Grand Union Hotel, Saratoga: C. O. D.," till I got tired to death of the word.

At one place my cousin and that child had a grand set-to in the store. Cecilia wanted a bright-red silk dress to wear under her lace one; but E. E. liked blue best, and ordered it. Then Cecilia declared she didn't want any dress at all, broke her new parasol striking it against the counter, and ended off by flinging herself down on a stool and drumming her feet against the counter—so mad that she cried till everybody in the store heard her.

Of course E. E. gave in, just to pacify her, while I would have given fifty of the brightest silver dollars ever issued by the U. S. Government, for the happiness of giving her the neatest little trouncing she ever got in her life. But luxuries like these, I can hardly expect just yet. How that cousin of mine can give up a parental prerogative so tempting to the hands I cannot imagine. I really would not put so much pleasure off an hour.



XCVII.

TAKEN IN.

Well, after trapesing about from one store to another till I was nigh about tired to death, E. E. concluded that she had got through her shopping, except a few things that we could carry in our pockets, which kept us rushing in and out of every little shop we came to for an hour longer. Then she said we would stop into Purssell's and get something to eat, for she was beginning to feel hungry. This had been the case with me ever so long; not that I hankered much in hot weather for hearty food, but I felt a sort of faintness; and when she said something about Purssell's having delicious peaches, I knew that they were exactly the thing which would appease all the internal longing of my nature.

But just as my mouth was beginning to water, E. E. took out her watch and gave a little scream.

"Why," says she, "who would a-thought it? We have but just fifteen minutes to reach the boat in?"

My heart sank. The taste of those peaches had almost got into my mouth, but now a taste of dust came in their place. I could just have sat down and cried.

"Never mind," says E. E.; "we can get dinner on board."

"Dinner on board!" Thin soup; hot meat down in the bottom of a steamboat, with a smell of oil, sour water, and musty linen all around you—that is what "a dinner on board" means, and nothing else. The very thought made me feel rily about the temper—all that I wanted was some peaches.

You will not wonder, sisters, that I hankered after this delicious fruit, which is about the only good thing that grows which we do not have in the old Vermont State. Only think of them—round, plump, juicy; with the redness of a warm sunset burning on one side, and pale-gold glowing on the other; cool, delicious, melting away in the mouth with a flavor that just makes you want to kiss some smiling baby while it is on your lips! Think of them! then imagine my feelings when I was hurried into a hack, and rattled off to the steamboat with the promise of a hot dinner in its internal regions. We saw peaches on every hand as we drove along—in stores, on street tables, in baskets carried by Irish women, who looked up at the carriage-window pleadingly as we drove along.

"Wait one minute," says I, as a woman came up with her long basket brimming over with the luscious fruit; "I must have some peaches."

"Not a second," says E. E.; "don't you see Dempster beckoning from the deck? The last bell is ringing. Come, come!"

The Irish woman lifted up her basket, and stood there enticing me. E. E. rushed up the plank, calling out: "Make haste, make haste!"

Cecilia sung out: "Come along, Phoemie!"

Two men had hold of the plank bridge. I had to cross then, or be left behind. I cast one yearning look towards the basket, rushed up the plank, and stood panting, by the side of Dempster.

"Oh dear, it is too bad!" says I.

"What is it, Phoemie?" says Dempster.

"Peaches!" says I. "Those delicious peaches—see how they glow in the sunshine!"

"Oh, nonsense! There is plenty on board," says he; "I'll go and get some."

"Not yet," says E. E.; "the deck is so crowded."

Dempster got seats for us and a stool for himself. The crowd was packed so close that one could hardly breathe. I was thirsty, I was tired out, and just ready to cry. E. E. was tired also, and a little cross. Cecilia was just as she always is—a nuisance. I felt like thanking Dempster when he jumped up, and says he:

"Now for the peaches!"

Away he went, just as good-natured as could be, calling back for me to keep his seat for him. I laid my parasol on it, and kept my hand on that; but a minute after came a great heathen of a fellow and attempted to take the stool.

"It is engaged," says I, pressing down my hand.

"What of that?" says he, jerking the stool away, and throwing my parasol on to the floor. "Every one for himself, and no favors."

I was blue as indigo before that. At another time this creature would have riled me into a tempest, but now I felt more like crying. But there he sat, plump on the stool, looking as self-contented as if butter would not melt in his mouth.

Dempster came back. I looked up longingly. His hands were empty.

"I am very sorry," says he, "but there isn't a peach on board."

Well, there I sat, with the sun pouring down on me, while E. E. read the illustrated papers, and that child made herself generally numerous among the passengers. After awhile I got up to look over the side of the vessel, when that horrid wretch snatched up my seat and carried it off, looking back at me and laughing.

I said nothing—what was the use?—but leaned against the cabin-door, holding my satchel, the most forlorn creature you ever saw. Just then some one spoke to me. I looked round. It was a roly-poly, oldish woman, who spread considerably over her chair, and held a travelling-basket on her lap. She had found an empty stool, and asked me to take it.

I sat down while she smiled blandly upon me.

"Never mind that fellow," says she. "Some men are born animals of one kind or another, so let them go."

Her words were kind—her manner motherly. I liked the woman. She is not elegant, I thought, but who could be with all that breadth of chest and brevity of limb? I smiled and thanked her, wondering who she was.

"Pretty scenery," says she, pointing to the bank on which some cottage-houses, and a wooden tavern with red maroon half-curtains at the window, seemed to set the whole neighborhood on fire. "Now I would give anything for a house like that. Snug, isn't it?"

She might have been looking at the wooden tavern, or at a cottage close by with a beautiful drapery of vines running along the porch. "Of course," thought I, "she means that."

"Yes," says I, "it looks delightfully quiet."

She nodded, and opened her basket, a capacious affair, quite large enough to hold half a peck of peaches. My mouth began to water. Perhaps—

"Take one," says she, handing over a cracker.

I took the disappointment, and tried to eat, but with that hankering after peaches in my throat it seemed like refreshing one's self on sawdust. She noticed this, I think, and, with a little hesitation, looked into her basket again, then closed it, and, looking towards me, whispered—

"That's dry eating. Come down to the cabin, and I'll give you something nice."

"Something nice!" I felt my eyes brighten. "Something nice—peaches, of course. What else could she have but peaches?" I thanked her with enthusiasm; my eyes gloated on her basket. Peaches and plenty of them—delicious!

The stranger arose, smoothed down her dress, and led the way downstairs. Her presence was imposing, her step firm as a rock. Assuredly my new acquaintance was no common person—a little stout, certainly, but so is the Queen of England.

I followed her eagerly, thinking of the peaches, longing for them with inexpressible longing. We went through the cabin—on and on—back of some curtains that draped it at one end. Here she paused, set her basket on a marble table, and proceeded to open it.

I did not wish to show the craving eagerness which possessed me, and delicately turned my eyes away. Then she spoke in a deep mellow voice, as though she had fed on peaches from the cradle up.

"Look a-here," says she. "Isn't this something nice?"

I looked! the basket was open. She held a tumbler in one hand and a bottle in the other, from which a stream of brandy gurgled. That rotund impostor came toward me, beaming.

"There," says she, "take right hold. It's first-rate Cognac."

All the Vermont blood in my veins riled suddenly. I drew myself up to the full queenly height that so many people have thought imposing. Disappointment sharpened virtue's indignation.

"Madam," says I, "you have practised a hospitable fraud—in Christian charity I will call it hospitable—on a New England lady, who looks upon temperance as a cardinal virtue. Put up your bottle. Maple sap and sweet cider from straws are the strongest drinks I ever indulge in."

"Maple sap," says she, with a rumbling, mellow laugh, which ended in a cough as the brandy went down her throat. "Sweet cider, through straws! Well, every one to her taste."

Here she filled the glass again and held it out, smiling like a harvest moon.

"What, you won't take the least nip, just to save it, you know?"

I turned my back upon that rotund tempter, and walked with a stately step to the deck, followed by a rich gurgle from the second glass as it went down that perfidious creature's throat.

"Goodness gracious! What a surprise!"

This was my exclamation when I saw Mr. Burke coming towards me, across the deck, with a small basketful of the most delicious peaches in his hand.

There he came, smiling so blandly, and held out the basket for me to help myself. He was going to Saratoga, he said. The hot season had driven him to seek mountainous air. O sisters!

THE END.