That night Arnold Carruth realized himself as having an actual horror of his helpless state of pampered childhood. The man stirred in the soul of the boy, and it was a little rebel with sulky pout of lips and frown of childish brows who stole out of bed, got into some queer clothes, and crept down the back stairs. He heard his aunt Dorothy, who was not his aunt, singing an Italian song in the parlor, he heard the clink of silver and china from the butler's pantry, where the maids were washing the dinner dishes. He smelt his father's cigar, and he gave a little leap of joy on the grass of the lawn. At last he was out at night alone, and—he wore long stockings! That noon he had secreted a pair of his mother's toward that end. When he came home to luncheon he pulled them out of the darning-bag, which he had spied through a closet door that had been left ajar. One of the stockings was green silk, and the other was black, and both had holes in them, but all that mattered was the length. Arnold wore also his father's riding-breeches, which came over his shoes and which were enormously large, and one of his father's silk shirts. He had resolved to dress consistently for such a great occasion. His clothes hampered him, but he felt happy as he sped clumsily down the road.

However, both Johnny Trumbull and Lily Jennings, who were waiting for him at the rendezvous, were startled by his appearance. Both began to run, Johnny pulling Lily after him by the hand, but Arnold's cautious hallo arrested them. Johnny and Lily returned slowly, peering through the darkness.

"It's me," said Arnold, with gay disregard of grammar.

"You looked," said Lily, "like a real fat old man. What HAVE you got on, Arnold Carruth?"

Arnold slouched before his companions, ridiculous but triumphant. He hitched up a leg of the riding-breeches and displayed a long, green silk stocking. Both Johnny and Lily doubled up with laughter.

"What you laughing at?" inquired Arnold, crossly.

"Oh, nothing at all," said Lily. "Only you do look like a scarecrow broken loose. Doesn't he, Johnny?"

"I am going home," stated Arnold with dignity. He turned, but Johnny caught him in his little iron grip.

"Oh, shucks, Arnold Carruth!" said he. "Don't be a baby. Come on." And Arnold Carruth with difficulty came on.

People in the village, as a rule, retired early. Many lights were out when the affair began, many went out while it was in progress. All three of the band steered as clear of lighted houses as possible, and dodged behind trees and hedges when shadowy figures appeared on the road or carriage-wheels were heard in the distance. At their special destination they were sure to be entirely safe. Old Mr. Peter Van Ness always retired very early. To be sure, he did not go to sleep until late, and read in bed, but his room was in the rear of the house on the second floor, and all the windows, besides, were dark. Mr. Peter Van Ness was a very wealthy elderly gentleman, very benevolent. He had given the village a beautiful stone church with memorial windows, a soldiers' monument, a park, and a home for aged couples, called "The Van Ness Home." Mr. Van Ness lived alone with the exception of a housekeeper and a number of old, very well-disciplined servants. The servants always retired early, and Mr. Van Ness required the house to be quiet for his late reading. He was a very studious old gentleman.

To the Van Ness house, set back from the street in the midst of a well-kept lawn, the three repaired, but not as noiselessly as they could have wished. In fact, a light flared in an up-stairs window, which was wide open, and one woman's voice was heard in conclave with another.

"I should think," said the first, "that the lawn was full of cats. Did you ever hear such a mewing, Jane?"

That was the housekeeper's voice. The three, each of whom carried a squirming burlap potato-bag from the Trumbull cellar, stood close to a clump of stately pines full of windy songs, and trembled.

"It do sound like cats, ma'am," said another voice, which was Jane's, the maid, who had brought Mrs. Meeks, the housekeeper, a cup of hot water and peppermint, because her dinner had disagreed with her.

"Just listen," said Mrs. Meeks.

"Yes, ma'am, I should think there was hundreds of cats and little kittens."

"I am so afraid Mr. Van Ness will be disturbed."

"Yes, ma'am."

"You might go out and look, Jane."

"Oh, ma'am, they might be burglars!"

"How can they be burglars when they are cats?" demanded Mrs. Meeks, testily.

Arnold Carruth snickered, and Johnny on one side, and Lily on the other, prodded him with an elbow. They were close under the window.

"Burglars is up to all sorts of queer tricks, ma'am," said Jane. "They may mew like cats to tell one another what door to go in."

"Jane, you talk like an idiot," said Mrs. Meeks. "Burglars talking like cats! Who ever heard of such a thing? It sounds right under that window. Open my closet door and get those heavy old shoes and throw them out."

It was an awful moment. The three dared not move. The cats and kittens in the bags—not so many, after all—seemed to have turned into multiplication-tables. They were positively alarming in their determination to get out, their wrath with one another, and their vociferous discontent with the whole situation.

"I can't hold my bag much longer," said poor little Arnold Carruth.

"Hush up, cry-baby!" whispered Lily, fiercely, in spite of a clawing paw emerging from her own bag and threatening her bare arm.

Then came the shoes. One struck Arnold squarely on the shoulder, nearly knocking him down and making him lose hold of his bag. The other struck Lily's bag, and conditions became worse; but she held on despite a scratch. Lily had pluck.

Then Jane's voice sounded very near, as she leaned out of the window. "I guess they have went, ma'am," said she. "I seen something run."

"I can hear them," said Mrs. Meeks, querulously.

"I seen them run," persisted Jane, who was tired and wished to be gone.

"Well, close that window, anyway, for I know I hear them, even if they have gone," said Mrs. Meeks. The three heard with relief the window slammed down.

The light flashed out, and simultaneously Lily Jennings and Johnny Trumbull turned indignantly upon Arnold Carruth.

"There, you have gone and let all those poor cats go," said Johnny.

"And spoilt everything," said Lily.

Arnold rubbed his shoulder. "You would have let go if you had been hit right on the shoulder by a great shoe," said he, rather loudly.

"Hush up!" said Lily. "I wouldn't have let my cats go if I had been killed by a shoe; so there."

"Serves us right for taking a boy with curls," said Johnny Trumbull.

But he spoke unadvisedly. Arnold Carruth was no match whatever for Johnny Trumbull, and had never been allowed the honor of a combat with him; but surprise takes even a great champion at a disadvantage. Arnold turned upon Johnny like a flash, out shot a little white fist, up struck a dimpled leg clad in cloth and leather, and down sat Johnny Trumbull; and, worse, open flew his bag, and there was a yowling exodus.

"There go your cats, too, Johnny Trumbull," said Lily, in a perfectly calm whisper. At that moment both boys, victor and vanquished, felt a simultaneous throb of masculine wrath at Lily. Who was she to gloat over the misfortunes of men? But retribution came swiftly to Lily. That viciously clawing little paw shot out farther, and there was a limit to Spartanism in a little girl born so far from that heroic land. Lily let go of her bag and with difficulty stifled a shriek of pain.

"Whose cats are gone now?" demanded Johnny, rising.

"Yes, whose cats are gone now?" said Arnold.

Then Johnny promptly turned upon him and knocked him down and sat on him.

Lily looked at them, standing, a stately little figure in the darkness. "I am going home," said she. "My mother does not allow me to go with fighting boys."

Johnny rose, and so did Arnold, whimpering slightly. His shoulder ached considerably.

"He knocked me down," said Johnny.

Even as he whimpered and as he suffered, Arnold felt a thrill of triumph. "Always knew I could if I had a chance," said he.

"You couldn't if I had been expecting it," said Johnny.

"Folks get knocked down when they ain't expecting it most of the time," declared Arnold, with more philosophy than he realized.

"I don't think it makes much difference about the knocking down," said Lily. "All those poor cats and kittens that we were going to give a good home, where they wouldn't be starved, have got away, and they will run straight back to Mr. Jim Simmons's."

"If they haven't any more sense than to run back to a place where they don't get enough to eat and are kicked about by a lot of children, let them run," said Johnny.

"That's so," said Arnold. "I never did see what we were doing such a thing for, anyway—stealing Mr. Simmons's cats and giving them to Mr. Van Ness."

It was the girl alone who stood by her guns of righteousness. "I saw and I see," she declared, with dangerously loud emphasis. "It was only our duty to try to rescue poor helpless animals who don't know any better than to stay where they are badly treated. And Mr. Van Ness has so much money he doesn't know what to do with it; he would have been real pleased to give those cats a home and buy milk and liver for them. But it's all spoiled now. I will never undertake to do good again, with a lot of boys in the way, as long as I live; so there!" Lily turned about.

"Going to tell your mother!" said Johnny, with scorn which veiled anxiety.

"No, I'm NOT. I don't tell tales."

Lily marched off, and in her wake went Johnny and Arnold, two poor little disillusioned would-be knights of old romance in a wretchedly commonplace future, not far enough from their horizons for any glamour.

They went home, and of the three Johnny Trumbull was the only one who was discovered. For him his aunt Janet lay in wait and forced a confession. She listened grimly, but her eyes twinkled.

"You have learned to fight, John Trumbull," said she, when he had finished. "Now the very next thing you have to learn, and make yourself worthy of your grandfather Trumbull, is not to be a fool."

"Yes, Aunt Janet," said Johnny.

The next noon, when he came home from school, old Maria, who had been with the family ever since he could remember and long before, called him into the kitchen. There, greedily lapping milk from a saucer, were two very lean, tall kittens.

"See those nice little tommy-cats," said Maria, beaming upon Johnny, whom she loved and whom she sometimes fancied deprived of boyish joys. "Your aunt Janet sent me over to the Simmonses' for them this morning. They are overrun with cats—such poor, shiftless folks always be—and you can have them. We shall have to watch for a little while till they get wonted, so they won't run home."

Johnny gazed at the kittens, fast distending with the new milk, and felt presumably much as dear Robin Hood may have felt after one of his successful raids in the fair, poetic past.

"Pretty, ain't they?" said Maria. "They have drank up a whole saucer of milk. 'Most starved. I s'pose."

Johnny gathered up the two forlorn kittens and sat down in a kitchen chair, with one on each shoulder, hard, boyish cheeks pressed against furry, purring sides, and the little fighting Cock of the Walk felt his heart glad and tender with the love of the strong for the weak.



DANIEL AND LITTLE DAN'L

THE Wise homestead dated back more than a century, yet it had nothing imposing about it except its site. It was a simple, glaringly white cottage. There was a center front door with two windows on each side; there was a low slant of roof, pierced by unpicturesque dormers. On the left of the house was an ell, which had formerly been used as a shoemaker's shop, but now served as a kitchen. In the low attic of the ell was stored the shoemaker's bench, whereon David Wise's grandfather had sat for nearly eighty years of working days; after him his eldest son, Daniel's father, had occupied the same hollow seat of patient toil. Daniel had sat there for twenty-odd years, then had suddenly realized both the lack of necessity and the lack of customers, since the great shoe-plant had been built down in the village. Then Daniel had retired—although he did not use that expression. Daniel said to his friends and his niece Dora that he had "quit work." But he told himself, without the least bitterness, that work had quit him.

After Daniel had retired, his one physiological peculiarity assumed enormous proportions. It had always been with him, but steady work had held it, to a great extent, at bay. Daniel was a moral coward before physical conditions. He was as one who suffers, not so much from agony of the flesh as from agony of the mind induced thereby. Daniel was a coward before one of the simplest, most inevitable happenings of earthly life. He was a coward before summer heat. All winter he dreaded summer. Summer poisoned the spring for him. Only during the autumn did he experience anything of peace. Summer was then over, and between him and another summer stretched the blessed perspective of winter. Then Daniel Wise drew a long breath and looked about him, and spelled out the beauty of the earth in his simple primer of understanding. Daniel had in his garden behind the house a prolific grape-vine. He ate the grapes, full of the savor of the dead summer, with the gusto of a poet who can at last enjoy triumph over his enemy.

Possibly it was the vein of poetry in Daniel which made him a coward—which made him so vulnerable. During the autumn he reveled in the tints of the landscape which his sitting-room windows commanded. There were many maples and oaks. Day by day the roofs of the houses in the village became more evident, as the maples shed their crimson and gold and purple rags of summer. The oaks remained, great shaggy masses of dark gold and burning russet; later they took on soft hues, making clearer the blue firmament between the boughs. Daniel watched the autumn trees with pure delight. "He will go to-day," he said of a flaming maple after a night of frost which had crisped the white arches of the grass in his dooryard. All day he sat and watched the maple cast its glory, and did not bother much with his simple meals. The Wise house was erected on three terraces. Always through the dry summer the grass was burned to an ugly negation of color. Later, when rain came, the grass was a brilliant green, patched with rosy sorrel and golden stars of arnica. Then later still came the diamond brilliance of the frost. So dry were the terraces in summer-time that no flowers would flourish. When Daniel's mother had come to the house as a bride she had planted under a window a blush-rose bush, but always the blush-roses were few and covered with insects. It was not until the autumn, when it was time for the flowers to die, that the sorrel blessing of waste lands flushed rosily and the arnica showed its stars of slender threads of gold, and there might even be a slight glimpse of purple aster and a dusty spray or two of goldenrod. Then Daniel did not shrink from the sight of the terraces. In summer-time the awful negative glare of them under the afternoon sun maddened him.

In winter he often visited his brother John in the village. He was very fond of John, and John's wife, and their only daughter, Dora. When John died, and later his wife, he would have gone to live with Dora, but she married. Then her husband also died, and Dora took up dressmaking, supporting herself and her delicate little girl-baby. Daniel adored this child. She had been named for him, although her mother had been aghast before the proposition. "Name a girl Daniel, uncle!" she had cried.

"She is going to have what I own after I have done with it, anyway," declared Daniel, gazing with awe and rapture at the tiny flannel bundle in his niece's arms. "That won't make any difference, but I do wish you could make up your mind to call her after me, Dora."

Dora Lee was soft-hearted. She named her girl-baby Daniel, and called her Danny, which was not, after all, so bad, and her old uncle loved the child as if she had been his own. Little Daniel—he always called her Daniel, or, rather, "Dan'l"—was the only reason for his descending into the village on summer days when the weather was hot. Daniel, when he visited the village in summer-time, wore always a green leaf inside his hat and carried an umbrella and a palm-leaf fan. This caused the village boys to shout, "Hullo, grandma!" after him. Daniel, being a little hard of hearing, was oblivious, but he would have been in any case. His whole mind was concentrated in getting along that dusty glare of street, stopping at the store for a paper bag of candy, and finally ending in Dora's little dark parlor, holding his beloved namesake on his knee, watching her blissfully suck a barley stick while he waved his palmleaf fan. Dora would be fitting gowns in the next room. He would hear the hum of feminine chatter over strictly feminine topics. He felt very much aloof, even while holding the little girl on his knee. Daniel had never married—had never even h ad a sweetheart. The marriageable women he had seen had not been of the type to attract a dreamer like Daniel Wise. Many of those women thought him "a little off."

Dora Lee, his niece, privately wondered if her uncle had his full allotment of understanding. He seemed much more at home with her little daughter than with herself, and Dora considered herself a very good business woman, with possibly an unusual endowment of common sense. She was such a good business woman that when she died suddenly she left her child with quite a sum in the bank, besides the house. Daniel did not hesitate for a moment. He engaged Miss Sarah Dean for a housekeeper, and took the little girl (hardly more than a baby) to his own home. Dora had left a will, in which she appointed Daniel guardian in spite of her doubt concerning his measure of understanding. There was much comment in the village when Daniel took his little namesake to live in his lonely house on the terrace. "A man and an old maid to bring up that poor child!" they said. But Daniel called Dr. Trumbull to his support. "It is much better for that delicate child to be out of this village, which drains the south hill," Dr. Trumbull declared. "That child needs pure air. It is hot enough in summer all around here, and hot enough at Daniel's, but the air is pure there."

There was no gossip about Daniel and Miss Sarah Dean. Gossip would have seemed about as foolish concerning him and a dry blade of field-grass. Sarah Dean looked like that. She wore rusty black gowns, and her gray-blond hair was swept curtainwise over her ears on either side of her very thin, mildly severe wedge of a face. Sarah was a notable housekeeper and a good cook. She could make an endless variety of cakes and puddings and pies, and her biscuits were marvels. Daniel had long catered for himself, and a rasher of bacon, with an egg, suited him much better for supper than hot biscuits, preserves, and five kinds of cake. Still, he did not complain, and did not understand that Sarah's fare was not suitable for the child, until Dr. Trumbull told him so.

"Don't you let that child live on that kind of food if you want her to live at all," said Dr. Trumbull. "Lord! what are the women made of, and the men they feed, for that matter? Why, Daniel, there are many people in this place, and hard-working people, too, who eat a quantity of food, yet don't get enough nourishment for a litter of kittens."

"What shall I do?" asked Daniel in a puzzled way.

"Do? You can cook a beefsteak yourself, can't you? Sarah Dean would fry one as hard as soleleather."

"Yes, I can cook a beefsteak real nice," said Daniel.

"Do it, then; and cook some chops, too, and plenty of eggs."

"I don't exactly hanker after quite so much sweet stuff," said Daniel. "I wonder if Sarah's feelings will be hurt."

"It is much better for feelings to be hurt than stomachs," declared Dr. Trumbull, "but Sarah's feelings will not be hurt. I know her. She is a wiry woman. Give her a knock and she springs back into place. Don't worry about her, Daniel."

When Daniel went home that night he carried a juicy steak, and he cooked it, and he and little Dan'l had a square meal. Sarah refused the steak with a slight air of hauteur, but she behaved very well. When she set away her untasted layer-cakes and pies and cookies, she eyed them somewhat anxiously. Her standard of values seemed toppling before her mental vision. "They will starve to death if they live on such victuals as beefsteak, instead of good nourishing hot biscuits and cake," she thought. After the supper dishes were cleared away she went into the sitting-room where Daniel Wise sat beside a window, waiting in a sort of stern patience for a whiff of air. It was a very close evening. The sun was red in the low west, but a heaving sea of mist was rising over the lowlands.

Sarah sat down opposite Daniel. "Close, ain't it?" said she. She began knitting her lace edging.

"Pretty close," replied Daniel. He spoke with an effect of forced politeness. Although he had such a horror of extreme heat, he was always chary of boldly expressing his mind concerning it, for he had a feeling that he might be guilty of blasphemy, since he regarded the weather as being due to an Almighty mandate. Therefore, although he suffered, he was extremely polite.

"It is awful up-stairs in little Dan'l's room," said Sarah. "I have got all the windows open except the one that's right on the bed, and I told her she needn't keep more than the sheet and one comfortable over her."

Daniel looked anxious. "Children ain't ever overcome when they are in bed, in the house, are they?"

"Land, no! I never heard of such a thing. And, anyway, little Dan'l's so thin it ain't likely she feels the heat as much as some."

"I hope she don't."

Daniel continued to sit hunched up on himself, gazing with a sort of mournful irritation out of the window upon the landscape over which the misty shadows vaguely wavered.

Sarah knitted. She could knit in the dark. After a while she rose and said she guessed she would go to bed, as to-morrow was her sweeping-day.

Sarah went, and Daniel sat alone.

Presently a little pale figure stole to him through the dusk—the child, in her straight white nightgown, padding softly on tiny naked feet.

"Is that you, Dan'l?"

"Yes, Uncle Dan'l."

"Is it too hot to sleep up in your room?"

"I didn't feel so very hot, Uncle Dan'l, but skeeters were biting me, and a great big black thing just flew in my window!"

"A bat, most likely."

"A bat!" Little Dan'l shuddered. She began a little stifled wail. "I'm afeard of bats," she lamented.

Daniel gathered the tiny creature up. "You can jest set here with Uncle Dan'l," said he. "It is jest a little cooler here, I guess. Once in a while there comes a little whiff of wind."

"Won't any bats come?"

"Lord, no! Your Uncle Dan'l won't let any bats come within a gun-shot."

The little creature settled down contentedly in the old man's lap. Her fair, thin locks fell over his shirt-sleeved arm, her upturned profile was sweetly pure and clear even in the dusk. She was so delicately small that he might have been holding a fairy, from the slight roundness of the childish limbs and figure. Poor little girl!—Dan'l was much too small and thin. Old man Daniel gazed down at her anxiously.

"Jest as soon as the nice fall weather comes," said he, "uncle is going to take you down to the village real often, and you can get acquainted with some other nice little girls and play with them, and that will do uncle's little Dan'l good."

"I saw little Lucy Rose," piped the child, "and she looked at me real pleasant, and Lily Jennings wore a pretty dress. Would they play with me, uncle?"

"Of course they would. You don't feel quite so hot, here, do you?"

"I wasn't so hot, anyway; I was afeard of bats."

"There ain't any bats here."

"And skeeters."

"Uncle don't believe there's any skeeters, neither."

"I don't hear any sing," agreed little Dan'l in a weak voice. Very soon she was fast asleep. The old man sat holding her, and loving her with a simple crystalline intensity which was fairly heavenly. He himself almost disregarded the heat, being raised above it by sheer exaltation of spirit. All the love which had lain latent in his heart leaped to life before the helplessness of this little child in his arms. He realized himself as much greater and of more importance upon the face of the earth than he had ever been before. He became paternity incarnate and superblessed. It was a long time before he carried the little child back to her room and laid her, still as inert with sleep as a lily, upon her bed. He bent over her with a curious waving motion of his old shoulders as if they bore wings of love and protection; then he crept back down-stairs.

On nights like that he did not go to bed. All the bedrooms were under the slant of the roof and were hot. He preferred to sit until dawn beside his open window, and doze when he could, and wait with despairing patience for the infrequent puffs of cool air breathing blessedly of wet swamp places, which, even when the burning sun arose, would only show dewy eyes of cool reflection. Daniel Wise, as he sat there through the sultry night, even prayed for courage, as a devout sentinel might have prayed at his post. The imagination of the deserter was not in the man. He never even dreamed of appropriating to his own needs any portion of his savings, and going for a brief respite to the deep shadows of mountainous places, or to a cool coast, where the great waves broke in foam upon the sand, breathing out the mighty saving breath of the sea. It never occurred to him that he could do anything but remain at his post and suffer in body and soul and mind, and not complain.

The next morning was terrible. The summer had been one of unusually fervid heat, but that one day was its climax. David went panting up-stairs to his room at dawn. He did not wish Sarah Dean to know that he had sat up all night. He opened his bed, tidily, as was his wont. Through living alone he had acquired many of the habits of an orderly housewife. He went down-stairs, and Sarah was in the kitchen.

"It is a dreadful hot day," said she as Daniel approached the sink to wash his face and hands.

"It does seem a little warm," admitted Daniel, with his studied air of politeness with respect to the weather as an ordinance of God.

"Warm!" echoed Sarah Dean. Her thin face blazed a scarlet wedge between the sleek curtains of her dank hair; perspiration stood on her triangle of forehead. "It is the hottest day I ever knew!" she said, defiantly, and there was open rebellion in her tone.

"It IS sort of warmish, I rather guess," said Daniel.

After breakfast, old Daniel announced his intention of taking little Dan'l out for a walk.

At that Sarah Dean fairly exploded. "Be you gone clean daft, Dan'l?" said she. "Don't you know that it actually ain't safe to take out such a delicate little thing as that on such a day?"

"Dr. Trumbull said to take her outdoors for a walk every day, rain or shine," returned Daniel, obstinately.

"But Dr. Trumbull didn't say to take her out if it rained fire and brimstone, I suppose," said Sarah Dean, viciously.

Daniel looked at her with mild astonishment.

"It is as much as that child's life is worth to take her out such a day as this," declared Sarah, viciously.

"Dr. Trumbull said to take no account of the weather," said Daniel with stubborn patience, "and we will walk on the shady side of the road, and go to Bradley's Brook. It's always a little cool there."

"If she faints away before you get there, you bring her right home," said Sarah. She was almost ferocious. "Just because YOU don't feel the heat, to take out that little pindlin' girl such a day!" she exclaimed.

"Dr. Trumbull said to," persisted Daniel, although he looked a little troubled. Sarah Dean did not dream that, for himself, Daniel Wise would have preferred facing an army with banners to going out under that terrible fusillade of sun-rays. She did not dream of the actual heroism which actuated him when he set out with little Dan'l, holding his big umbrella over her little sunbonneted head and waving in his other hand a palm-leaf fan.

Little Dan'l danced with glee as she went out of the yard. The small, anemic creature did not feel the heat except as a stimulant. Daniel had to keep charging her to walk slowly. "Don't go so fast, little Dan'l, or you'll get overhet, and then what will Mis' Dean say?" he continually repeated.

Little Dan'l's thin, pretty face peeped up at him from between the sides of her green sunbonnet. She pointed one dainty finger at a cloud of pale yellow butterflies in the field beside which they were walking. "Want to chase flutterbies," she chirped. Little Dan'l had a fascinating way of misplacing her consonants in long words.

"No; you'll get overhet. You just walk along slow with Uncle Dan'l, and pretty soon we'll come to the pretty brook," said Daniel.

"Where the lagon-dries live?" asked little Dan'l, meaning dragon-flies.

"Yes," said Daniel. He was conscious, as he spoke, of increasing waves of thready black floating before his eyes. They had floated since dawn, but now they were increasing. Some of the time he could hardly see the narrow sidewalk path between the dusty meadowsweet and hardhack bushes, since those floating black threads wove together into a veritable veil before him. At such times he walked unsteadily, and little Dan'l eyed him curiously.

"Why don't you walk the way you always do?" she queried.

"Uncle Dan'l can't see jest straight, somehow," replied the old man; "guess it's because it's rather warm."

It was in truth a day of terror because of the heat. It was one of those days which break records, which live in men's memories as great catastrophes, which furnish head-lines for newspapers, and are alluded to with shudders at past sufferings. It was one of those days which seem to forecast the Dreadful Day of Revelation wherein no shelter may be found from the judgment of the fiery firmament. On that day men fell in their tracks and died, or were rushed to hospitals to be succored as by a miracle. And on that day the poor old man who had all his life feared and dreaded the heat as the most loathly happening of earth, walked afield for love of the little child. As Daniel went on the heat seemed to become palpable—something which could actually be seen. There was now a thin, gaseous horror over the blazing sky, which did not temper the heat, but increased it, giving it the added torment of steam. The clogging moisture seemed to brood over the accursed earth, like some foul bird with deadly menace in wings and beak.

Daniel walked more and more unsteadily. Once he might have fallen had not the child thrown one little arm around a bending knee. "You 'most tumbled down. Uncle Dan'l," said she. Her little voice had a surprised and frightened note in it.

"Don't you be scared," gasped Daniel; "we have got 'most to the brook; then we'll be all right. Don't you be scared, and—you walk real slow and not get overhet."

The brook was near, and it was time. Daniel staggered under the trees beside which the little stream trickled over its bed of stones. It was not much of a brook at best, and the drought had caused it to lose much of its life. However, it was still there, and there were delicious little hollows of coolness between the stones over which it flowed, and large trees stood about with their feet rooted in the blessed damp. Then Daniel sank down. He tried to reach a hand to the water, but could not. The black veil had woven a compact mass before his eyes. There was a terrible throbbing in his head, but his arms were numb.

Little Dan'l stood looking at him, and her lip quivered. With a mighty effort Daniel cleared away the veil and saw the piteous baby face. "Take—Uncle Dan'l's hat and—fetch him—some water," he gasped. "Don't go too—close and—tumble in."

The child obeyed. Daniel tried to take the dripping hat, but failed. Little Dan'l was wise enough to pour the water over the old man's head, but she commenced to weep, the pitiful, despairing wail of a child who sees failing that upon which she has leaned for support.

Daniel rallied again. The water on his head gave him momentary relief, but more than anything else his love for the child nerved him to effort.

"Listen, little Dan'l," he said, and his voice sounded in his own ears like a small voice of a soul thousands of miles away. "You take the—umbrella, and—you take the fan, and you go real slow, so you don't get overhet, and you tell Mis' Dean, and—"

Then old Daniel's tremendous nerve, that he had summoned for the sake of love, failed him, and he sank back. He was quite unconscious—his face, staring blindly up at the terrible sky between the trees, was to little Dan'l like the face of a stranger. She gave one cry, more like the yelp of a trodden animal than a child's voice. Then she took the open umbrella and sped away. The umbrella bobbed wildly—nothing could be seen of poor little Dan'l but her small, speeding feet. She wailed loudly all the way.

She was half-way home when, plodding along in a cloud of brown dust, a horse appeared in the road. The horse wore a straw bonnet and advanced very slowly. He drew a buggy, and in the buggy were Dr. Trumbull and Johnny, his son. He had called at Daniel's to see the little girl, and, on being told that they had gone to walk, had said something under his breath and turned his horse's head down the road.

"When we meet them, you must get out, Johnny," he said, "and I will take in that poor old man and that baby. I wish I could put common sense in every bottle of medicine. A day like this!"

Dr. Trumbull exclaimed when he saw the great bobbing black umbrella and heard the wails. The straw-bonneted horse stopped abruptly. Dr. Trumbull leaned out of the buggy. "Who are you?" he demanded.

"Uncle Dan'l is gone," shrieked the child.

"Gone where? What do you mean?"

"He—tumbled right down, and then he was-somebody else. He ain't there."

"Where is 'there'? Speak up quick!"

"The brook—Uncle Dan'l went away at the brook."

Dr. Trumbull acted swiftly. He gave Johnny a push. "Get out," he said. "Take that baby into Jim Mann's house there, and tell Mrs. Mann to keep her in the shade and look out for her, and you tell Jim, if he hasn't got his horse in his farm-wagon, to look lively and harness her in and put all the ice they've got in the house in the wagon. Hurry!"

Johnny was over the wheel before his father had finished speaking, and Jim Mann just then drew up alongside in his farm-wagon.

"What's to pay?" he inquired, breathless. He was a thin, sinewy man, scantily clad in cotton trousers and a shirt wide open at the breast. Green leaves protruded from under the brim of his tilted straw hat.

"Old Daniel Wise is overcome by the heat," answered Dr. Trumbull. "Put all the ice you have in the house in your wagon, and come along. I'll leave my horse and buggy here. Your horse is faster."

Presently the farm-wagon clattered down the road, dust-hidden behind a galloping horse. Mrs. Jim Mann, who was a loving mother of children, was soothing little Dan'l. Johnny Trumbull watched at the gate. When the wagon returned he ran out and hung on behind, while the strong, ungainly farm-horse galloped to the house set high on the sun-baked terraces.

When old Daniel revived he found himself in the best parlor, with ice all about him. Thunder was rolling overhead and hail clattered on the windows. A sudden storm, the heat-breaker, had come up and the dreadful day was vanquished. Daniel looked up and smiled a vague smile of astonishment at Dr. Trumbull and Sarah Dean; then his eyes wandered anxiously about.

"The child is all right," said Dr. Trumbull; "don't you worry, Daniel. Mrs. Jim Mann is taking care of her. Don't you try to talk. You didn't exactly have a sunstroke, but the heat was too much for you."

But Daniel spoke, in spite of the doctor's mandate. "The heat," said he, in a curiously clear voice, "ain't never goin' to be too much for me again."

"Don't you talk, Daniel," repeated Dr. Trumbull. "You've always been nervous about the heat. Maybe you won't be again, but keep still. When I told you to take that child out every day I didn't mean when the world was like Sodom and Gomorrah. Thank God, it will be cooler now."

Sarah Dean stood beside the doctor. She looked pale and severe, but adequate. She did not even state that she had urged old Daniel not to go out. There was true character in Sarah Dean.

The weather that summer was an unexpected quantity. Instead of the day after the storm being cool, it was hot. However, old Daniel, after his recovery, insisted on going out of doors with little Dan'l after breakfast. The only concession which he would make to Sarah Dean, who was fairly frantic with anxiety, was that he would merely go down the road as far as the big elm-tree, that he would sit down there, and let the child play about within sight.

"You'll be brought home agin, sure as preachin'," said Sarah Dean, "and if you're brought home ag'in, you won't get up ag'in."

Old Daniel laughed. "Now don't you worry, Sarah," said he. "I'll set down under that big ellum and keep cool."

Old Daniel, at Sarah's earnest entreaties, took a palm-leaf fan. But he did not use it. He sat peacefully under the cool trail of the great elm all the forenoon, while little Dan'l played with her doll. The child was rather languid after her shock of the day before, and not disposed to run about. Also, she had a great sense of responsibility about the old man. Sarah Dean had privately charged her not to let Uncle Daniel get "overhet." She continually glanced up at him with loving, anxious, baby eyes.

"Be you overhet. Uncle Dan'l?" she would ask.

"No, little Dan'l, uncle ain't a mite overhet," the old man would assure her. Now and then little Dan'l left her doll, climbed into the old man's lap, and waved the palm-leaf fan before his face.

Old Daniel Wise loved her so that he seemed, to himself, fairly alight with happiness. He made up his mind that he would find some little girl in the village to come now and then and play with little Dan'l. In the cool of that evening he stole out of the back door, covertly, lest Sarah Dean discover him, and walked slowly to the rector's house in the village. The rector's wife was sitting on her cool, vine-shaded veranda. She was alone, and Daniel was glad. He asked her if the little girl who had come to live with her, Content Adams, could not come the next afternoon and see little Dan'l. "Little Dan'l had ought to see other children once in a while, and Sarah Dean makes real nice cookies," he stated, pleadingly.

Sally Patterson laughed good-naturedly. "Of course she can, Mr. Wise," she said.

The next afternoon Sally herself drove the rector's horse, and brought Content to pay a call on little Dan'l. Sally and Sarah Dean visited in the sitting-room, and left the little girls alone in the parlor with a plate of cookies, to get acquainted. They sat in solemn silence and stared at each other. Neither spoke. Neither ate a cooky. When Sally took her leave, she asked little Dan'l if she had had a nice time with Content, and little Dan'l said, "Yes, ma'am."

Sarah insisted upon Content's carrying the cookies home in the dish with a napkin over it.

"When can I go again to see that other little girl?" asked Content as she and Sally were jogging home.

"Oh, almost any time. I will drive you over-because it is rather a lonesome walk for you. Did you like the little girl? She is younger than you."

"Yes'm."

Also little Dan'l inquired of old Daniel when the other little girl was coming again, and nodded emphatically when asked if she had had a nice time. Evidently both had enjoyed, after the inscrutable fashion of childhood, their silent session with each other. Content came generally once a week, and old Daniel was invited to take little Dan'l to the rector's. On that occasion Lucy Rose was present, and Lily Jennings. The four little girls had tea together at a little table set on the porch, and only Lily Jennings talked. The rector drove old Daniel and the child home, and after they had arrived the child's tongue was loosened and she chattered. She had seen everything there was to be seen at the rector's. She told of it in her little silver pipe of a voice. She had to be checked and put to bed, lest she be tired out.

"I never knew that child could talk so much," Sarah said to Daniel, after the little girl had gone up-stairs.

"She talks quite some when she's alone with me."

"And she seems to see everything."

"Ain't much that child don't see," said Daniel, proudly.

The summer continued unusually hot, but Daniel never again succumbed. When autumn came, for the first time in his old life old Daniel Wise was sorrowful. He dreaded the effect of the frost and the winter upon his precious little Dan'l, whom he put before himself as fondly as any father could have done, and as the season progressed his dread seemed justified. Poor little Dan'l had cold after cold. Content Adams and Lucy Rose came to see her. The rector's wife and the doctor's sent dainties. But the child coughed and pined, and old Daniel began to look forward to spring and summer—the seasons which had been his bugaboos through life—as if they were angels. When the February thaw came, he told little Dan'l, "Jest look at the snow meltin' and the drops hangin' on the trees; that is a sign of summer."

Old Daniel watched for the first green light along the fences and the meadow hollows. When the trees began to cast slightly blurred shadows, because of budding leaves, and the robins hopped over the terraces, and now and then the air was cleft with blue wings, he became jubilant. "Spring is jest about here, and then uncle's little Dan'l will stop coughin', and run out of doors and pick flowers," he told the child beside the window.

Spring came that year with a riotous rush. Blossoms, leaves, birds, and flowers—all arrived pellmell, fairly smothering the world with sweetness and music. In May, about the first of the month, there was an intensely hot day. It was as hot as midsummer. Old Daniel with little Dan'l went afield. It was, to both, as if they fairly saw the carnival-arrival of flowers, of green garlands upon treebranches, of birds and butterflies. "Spring is right here!" said old Daniel. "Summer is right here! Pick them vilets in that holler, little Dan'l." The old man sat on a stone in the meadowland, and watched the child in the blue-gleaming hollow gather up violets in her little hands as if they were jewels. The sun beat upon his head, the air was heavy with fragrance, laden with moisture. Old Daniel wiped his forehead. He was heated, but so happy that he was not aware of it. He saw wonderful new lights over everything. He had wielded love, the one invincible weapon of the whole earth, and had conquered his intangible and dreadful enemy. When, for the sake of that little beloved life, his own life had become as nothing, old Daniel found himself superior to it. He sat there in the tumultuous heat of the May day, watching the child picking violets and gathering strength with every breath of the young air of the year, and he realized that the fear of his whole life was overcome for ever. He realized that never again, though they might bring suffering, even death, would he dread the summers with their torrid winds and their burning lights, since, through love, he had become under-lord of all the conditions of his life upon earth.



BIG SISTER SOLLY

IT did seem strange that Sally Patterson, who, according to her own self-estimation, was the least adapted of any woman in the village, should have been the one chosen by a theoretically selective providence to deal with a psychological problem.

It was conceded that little Content Adams was a psychological problem. She was the orphan child of very distant relatives of the rector. When her parents died she had been cared for by a widowed aunt on her mother's side, and this aunt had also borne the reputation of being a creature apart. When the aunt died, in a small village in the indefinite "Out West," the presiding clergyman had notified Edward Patterson of little Content's lonely and helpless estate. The aunt had subsisted upon an annuity which had died with her. The child had inherited nothing except personal property. The aunt's house had been bequeathed to the church over which the clergyman presided, and after her aunt's death he took her to his own home until she could be sent to her relatives, and he and his wife were exceedingly punctilious about every jot and tittle of the aunt's personal belongings. They even purchased two extra trunks for them, which they charged to the rector.

Little Content, traveling in the care of a lady who had known her aunt and happened to be coming East, had six large trunks, besides a hat-box and two suit-cases and a nailed-up wooden box containing odds and ends. Content made quite a sensation when she arrived and her baggage was piled on the station platform.

Poor Sally Patterson unpacked little Content's trunks. She had sent the little girl to school within a few days after her arrival. Lily Jennings and Amelia Wheeler called for her, and aided her down the street between them, arms interlocked. Content, although Sally had done her best with a pretty ready-made dress and a new hat, was undeniably a peculiar-looking child. In the first place, she had an expression so old that it was fairly uncanny.

"That child has downward curves beside her mouth already, and lines between her eyes, and what she will look like a few years hence is beyond me," Sally told her husband after she had seen the little girl go out of sight between Lily's curls and ruffles and ribbons and Amelia's smooth skirts.

"She doesn't look like a happy child," agreed the rector. "Poor little thing! Her aunt Eudora must have been a queer woman to train a child."

"She is certainly trained," said Sally, ruefully; "too much so. Content acts as if she were afraid to move or speak or even breathe unless somebody signals permission. I pity her."

She was in the storeroom, in the midst of Content's baggage. The rector sat on an old chair, smoking. He had a conviction that it behooved him as a man to stand by his wife during what might prove an ordeal. He had known Content's deceased aunt years before. He had also known the clergyman who had taken charge of her personal property and sent it on with Content.

"Be prepared for finding almost anything. Sally," he observed. "Mr. Zenock Shanksbury, as I remember him, was so conscientious that it amounted to mania. I am sure he has sent simply unspeakable things rather than incur the reproach of that conscience of his with regard to defrauding Content of one jot or tittle of that personal property."

Sally shook out a long, black silk dress, with jet dangling here and there. "Now here is this dress," said she. "I suppose I really must keep this, but when that child is grown up the silk will probably be cracked and entirely worthless."

"You had better take the two trunks and pack them with such things, and take your chances."

"Oh, I suppose so. I suppose I must take chances with everything except furs and wools, which will collect moths. Oh, goodness!" Sally held up an old-fashioned fitch fur tippet. Little vague winged things came from it like dust. "Moths!" said she, tragically. "Moths now. It is full of them. Edward, you need not tell me that clergyman's wife was conscientious. No conscientious woman would have sent an old fur tippet all eaten with moths into another woman's house. She could not."

Sally took flying leaps across the storeroom. She flung open the window and tossed out the mangy tippet. "This is simply awful!" she declared, as she returned. "Edward, don't you think we are justified in having Thomas take all these things out in the back yard and making a bonfire of the whole lot?"

"No, my dear."

"But, Edward, nobody can tell what will come next. If Content's aunt had died of a contagious disease, nothing could induce me to touch another thing."

"Well, dear, you know that she died from the shock of a carriage accident, because she had a weak heart."

"I know it, and of course there is nothing contagious about that." Sally took up an ancient bandbox and opened it. She displayed its contents: a very frivolous bonnet dating back in style a halfcentury, gay with roses and lace and green strings, and another with a heavy crape veil dependent.

"You certainly do not advise me to keep these?" asked Sally, despondently.

Edward Patterson looked puzzled. "Use your own judgment," he said, finally.

Sally summarily marched across the room and flung the gay bonnet and the mournful one out of the window. Then she took out a bundle of very old underwear which had turned a saffron yellow with age. "People are always coming to me for old linen in case of burns," she said, succinctly. "After these are washed I can supply an auto da fe."

Poor Sally worked all that day and several days afterward. The rector deserted her, and she relied upon her own good sense in the disposition of little Content's legacy. When all was over she told her husband.

"Well, Edward," said she, "there is exactly one trunk half full of things which the child may live to use, but it is highly improbable. We have had six bonfires, and I have given away three suits of old clothes to Thomas's father. The clothes were very large."

"Must have belonged to Eudora's first husband. He was a stout man," said Edward.

"And I have given two small suits of men's clothes to the Aid Society for the next out-West barrel."

"Eudora's second husband's."

"And I gave the washerwoman enough old baking-dishes to last her lifetime, and some cracked dishes. Most of the dishes were broken, but a few were only cracked; and I have given Silas Thomas's wife ten old wool dresses and a shawl and three old cloaks. All the other things which did not go into the bonfires went to the Aid Society. They will go back out West." Sally laughed, a girlish peal, and her husband joined. But suddenly her smooth forehead contracted. "Edward," said she.

"Well, dear?"

"I am terribly puzzled about one thing." The two were sitting in the study. Content had gone to bed. Nobody could hear easily, but Sally Patterson lowered her voice, and her honest, clear blue eyes had a frightened expression.

"What is it, dear?"

"You will think me very silly and cowardly, and I think I have never been cowardly, but this is really very strange. Come with me. I am such a goose, I don't dare go alone to that storeroom."

The rector rose. Sally switched on the lights as they went up-stairs to the storeroom.

"Tread very softly," she whispered. "Content is probably asleep."

The two tiptoed up the stairs and entered the storeroom. Sally approached one of the two new trunks which had come with Content from out West. She opened it. She took out a parcel nicely folded in a large towel.

"See here, Edward Patterson."

The rector stared as Sally shook out a dress-a gay, up-to-date dress, a young girl's dress, a very tall young girl's, for the skirts trailed on the floor as Sally held it as high as she could. It was made of a fine white muslin. There was white lace on the bodice, and there were knots of blue ribbon scattered over the whole, knots of blue ribbon confining tiny bunches of rosebuds and daisies. These knots of blue ribbon and the little flowers made it undeniably a young girl's costume. Even in the days of all ages wearing the costumes of all ages, an older woman would have been abashed before those exceedingly youthful knots of blue ribbons and flowers.

The rector looked approvingly at it. "That is very pretty, it seems to me," he said. "That must be worth keeping, Sally."

"Worth keeping! Well, Edward Patterson, just wait. You are a man, and of course you cannot understand how very strange it is about the dress." The rector looked inquiringly.

"I want to know," said Sally, "if Content's aunt Eudora had any young relative besides Content. I mean had she a grown-up young girl relative who would wear a dress like this?"

"I don't know of anybody. There might have been some relative of Eudora's first husband. No, he was an only child. I don't think it possible that Eudora had any young girl relative."

"If she had," said Sally, firmly, "she would have kept this dress. You are sure there was nobody else living with Content's aunt at the time she died?"

"Nobody except the servants, and they were an old man and his wife."

"Then whose dress was this?"

"I don't know, Sally."

"You don't know, and I don't. It is very strange."

"I suppose," said Edward Patterson, helpless before the feminine problem, "that—Eudora got it in some way."

"In some way," repeated Sally. "That is always a man's way out of a mystery when there is a mystery. There is a mystery. There is a mystery which worries me. I have not told you all yet, Edward."

"What more is there, dear?"

"I—asked Content whose dress this was, and she said—Oh, Edward, I do so despise mysteries."

"What did she say, Sally?"

"She said it was her big sister Solly's dress."

"Her what?"

"Her big sister Solly's dress. Edward, has Content ever had a sister? Has she a sister now?"

"No, she never had a sister, and she has none now," declared the rector, emphatically. "I knew all her family. What in the world ails the child?"

"She said her big sister Solly, Edward, and the very name is so inane. If she hasn't any big sister Solly, what are we going to do?"

"Why, the child must simply lie," said the rector.

"But, Edward, I don't think she knows she lies. You may laugh, but I think she is quite sure that she has a big sister Solly, and that this is her dress. I have not told you the whole. After she came home from school to-day she went up to her room, and she left the door open, and pretty soon I heard her talking. At first I thought perhaps Lily or Amelia was up there, although I had not seen either of them come in with Content. Then after a while, when I had occasion to go up-stairs, I looked in her room, and she was quite alone, although I had heard her talking as I went up-stairs. Then I said: 'Content, I thought somebody was in your room. I heard you talking.'

"And she said, looking right into my eyes: 'Yes, ma'am, I was talking.'

"'But there is nobody here,' I said.

"'Yes, ma'am,' she said. 'There isn't anybody here now, but my big sister Solly was here, and she is gone. You heard me talking to my big sister Solly.' I felt faint, Edward, and you know it takes a good deal to overcome me. I just sat down in Content's wicker rocking-chair. I looked at her and she looked at me. Her eyes were just as clear and blue, and her forehead looked like truth itself. She is not exactly a pretty child, and she has a peculiar appearance, but she does certainly look truthful and good, and she looked so then. She had tried to fluff her hair over her forehead a little as I had told her, and not pull it back so tight, and she wore her new dress, and her face and hands were as clean, and she stood straight. You know she is a little inclined to stoop, and I have talked to her about it. She stood straight, and looked at me with those blue eyes, and I did feel fairly dizzy."

"What did you say?"

"Well, after a bit I pulled myself together and I said: 'My dear little girl, what is this? What do you mean about your big sister Sarah?' Edward, I could not bring myself to say that idiotic Solly. In fact, I did think I must be mistaken and had not heard correctly. But Content just looked at me as if she thought me very stupid. 'Solly,' said she. 'My sister's name is Solly.'

"'But, my dear,' I said, 'I understand that you had no sister.'

"'Yes,' said she, 'I have my big sister Solly.'

"'But where has she been all the time?' said I.

"Then Content looked at me and smiled, and it was quite a wonderful smile, Edward. She smiled as if she knew so much more than I could ever know, and quite pitied me."

"She did not answer your question?"

"No, only by that smile which seemed to tell whole volumes about that awful Solly's whereabouts, only I was too ignorant to read them.

"'Where is she now, dear?' I said, after a little.

"'She is gone now,' said Content.

"'Gone where?' said I.

"And then the child smiled at me again. Edward, what are we going to do? Is she untruthful, or has she too much imagination? I have heard of such a thing as too much imagination, and children telling lies which were not really lies."

"So have I," agreed the rector, dryly, "but I never believed in it." The rector started to leave the room.

"What are you going to do?" inquired Sally.

"I am going to endeavor to discriminate between lies and imagination," replied the rector.

Sally plucked at his coat-sleeve as they went down-stairs. "My dear," she whispered, "I think she is asleep."

"She will have to wake up."

"But, my dear, she may be nervous. Would it not be better to wait until to-morrow?"

"I think not," said Edward Patterson. Usually an easy-going man, when he was aroused he was determined to extremes. Into Content's room he marched, Sally following. Neither of them saw their small son Jim peeking around his door. He had heard—he could not help it—the conversation earlier in the day between Content and his mother. He had also heard other things. He now felt entirely justified in listening, although he had a good code of honor. He considered himself in a way responsible, knowing what he knew, for the peace of mind of his parents. Therefore he listened, peeking around the doorway of his dark room.

The electric light flashed out from Content's room, and the little interior was revealed. It was charmingly pretty. Sally had done her best to make this not altogether welcome little stranger's room attractive. There were garlands of rosebuds swung from the top of the white satin-papered walls. There were dainty toilet things, a little dressing-table decked with ivory, a case of books, chairs cushioned with rosebud chintz, windows curtained with the same.

In the little white bed, with a rose-sprinkled coverlid over her, lay Content. She was not asleep. Directly, when the light flashed out, she looked at the rector and his wife with her clear blue eyes. Her fair hair, braided neatly and tied with pink ribbons, lay in two tails on either side of her small, certainly very good face. Her forehead was beautiful, very white and full, giving her an expression of candor which was even noble. Content, little lonely girl among strangers in a strange place, mutely beseeching love and pity, from her whole attitude toward life and the world, looked up at Edward Patterson and Sally, and the rector realized that his determination was giving way. He began to believe in imagination, even to the extent of a sister Solly. He had never had a daughter, and sometimes the thought of one had made his heart tender. His voice was very kind when he spoke.

"Well, little girl," he said, "what is this I hear?"

Sally stared at her husband and stifled a chuckle.

As for Content, she looked at the rector and said nothing. It was obvious that she did not know what he had heard. The rector explained.

"My dear little girl," he said, "your aunt Sally"—they had agreed upon the relationship of uncle and aunt to Content—"tells me that you have been telling her about your—big sister Solly." The rector half gasped as he said Solly. He seemed to himself to be on the driveling verge of idiocy before the pronunciation of that absurdly inane name.

Content's responding voice came from the pink-and-white nest in which she was snuggled, like the fluting pipe of a canary.

"Yes, sir," said she.

"My dear child," said the rector, "you know perfectly well that you have no big sister—Solly." Every time the rector said Solly he swallowed hard.

Content smiled as Sally had described her smiling. She said nothing. The rector felt reproved and looked down upon from enormous heights of innocence and childhood and the wisdom thereof. However, he persisted.

"Content," he said, "what did you mean by telling your aunt Sally what you did?"

"I was talking with my big sister Solly," replied Content, with the calmness of one stating a fundamental truth of nature.

The rector's face grew stern. "Content," he said, "look at me."

Content looked. Looking seemed to be the instinctive action which distinguished her as an individual.

"Have you a big sister—Solly?" asked the rector. His face was stern, but his voice faltered.

"Yes, sir."

"Then—tell me so."

"I have a big sister Solly," said Content. Now she spoke rather wearily, although still sweetly, as if puzzled why she had been disturbed in sleep to be asked such an obvious question.

"Where has she been all the time, that we have known nothing about her?" demanded the rector.

Content smiled. However, she spoke. "Home," said she.

"When did she come here?"

"This morning."

"Where is she now?"

Content smiled and was silent. The rector cast a helpless look at his wife. He now did not care if she did see that he was completely at a loss. How could a great, robust man and a clergyman be harsh to a tender little girl child in a pink-andwhite nest of innocent dreams?

Sally pitied him. She spoke more harshly than her husband. "Content Adams," said she, "you know perfectly well that you have no big sister Solly. Now tell me the truth. Tell me you have no big sister Solly."

"I have a big sister Solly," said Content.

"Come, Edward," said Sally. "There is no use in staying and talking to this obstinate little girl any longer." Then she spoke to Content. "Before you go to sleep," said she, "you must say your prayers, if you have not already done so."

"I have said my prayers," replied Content, and her blue eyes were full of horrified astonishment at the suspicion.

"Then," said Sally, "you had better say them over and add something. Pray that you may always tell the truth."

"Yes, ma'am," said Content, in her little canary pipe.

The rector and his wife went out. Sally switched off the light with a snap as she passed. Out in the hall she stopped and held her husband's arms hard. "Hush!" she whispered. They both listened. They heard this, in the faintest plaint of a voice:

"They don't believe you are here, Sister Solly, but I do."

Sally dashed back into the rosebud room and switched on the light. She stared around. She opened a closet door. Then she turned off the light and joined her husband.

"There was nobody there?" he whispered.

"Of course not."

When they were back in the study the rector and his wife looked at each other.

"We will do the best we can," said Sally. "Don't worry, Edward, for you have to write your sermon to-morrow. We will manage some way. I will admit that I rather wish Content had had some other distant relative besides you who could have taken charge of her."

"You poor child!" said the rector. "It is hard on you, Sally, for she is no kith nor kin of yours."

"Indeed I don't mind," said Sally Patterson, "if only I can succeed in bringing her up."

Meantime Jim Patterson, up-stairs, sitting over his next day's algebra lesson, was even more perplexed than were his parents in the study. He paid little attention to his book. "I can manage little Lucy," he reflected, "but if the others have got hold of it, I don't know."

Presently he rose and stole very softly through the hall to Content's door. She was timid, and always left it open so she could see the hall light until she fell asleep. "Content," whispered Jim.

There came the faintest "What?" in response.

"Don't you," said Jim, in a theatrical whisper, "say another word at school to anybody about your big sister Solly. If you do, I'll whop you, if you are a girl."

"Don't care!" was sighed forth from the room.

"And I'll whop your old big sister Solly, too."

There was a tiny sob.

"I will," declared Jim. "Now you mind!"

The next day Jim cornered little Lucy Rose under a cedar-tree before school began. He paid no attention to Bubby Harvey and Tom Simmons, who were openly sniggering at him. Little Lucy gazed up at Jim, and the blue-green shade of the cedar seemed to bring out only more clearly the white-rose softness of her dear little face. Jim bent over her.

"Want you to do something for me," he whispered.

Little Lucy nodded gravely.

"If my new cousin Content ever says anything to you again—I heard her yesterday—about her big sister Solly, don't you ever say a word about it to anybody else. You will promise me, won't you, little Lucy?"

A troubled expression came into little Lucy's kind eyes. "But she told Lily, and Lily told Amelia, and Amelia told her grandmother Wheeler, and her grandmother Wheeler told Miss Parmalee when she met her on the street after school, and Miss Parmalee called on my aunt Martha and told her," said little Lucy.

"Oh, shucks!" said Jim.

"And my aunt Martha told my father that she thought perhaps she ought to ask for her when she called on your mother. She said Arnold Carruth's aunt Flora was going to call, and his aunt Dorothy. I heard Miss Acton tell Miss Parmalee that she thought they ought to ask for her when they called on your mother, too."

"Little Lucy," he said, and lowered his voice, "you must promise me never, as long as you live, to tell what I am going to tell you."

Little Lucy looked frightened.

"Promise!" insisted Jim.

"I promise," said little Lucy, in a weak voice.

"Never, as long as you live, to tell anybody. Promise!"

"I promise."

"Now, you know if you break your promise and tell, you will be guilty of a dreadful lie and be very wicked."

Little Lucy shivered. "I never will."

"Well, my new cousin Content Adams—tells lies."

Little Lucy gasped.

"Yes, she does. She says she has a big sister Solly, and she hasn't got any big sister Solly. She never did have, and she never will have. She makes believe."

"Makes believe?" said little Lucy, in a hopeful voice.

"Making believe is just a real mean way of lying. Now I made Content promise last night never to say one word in school about her big sister Solly, and I am going to tell you this, so you can tell Lily and the others and not lie. Of course, I don't want to lie myself, because my father is rector, and, besides, mother doesn't approve of it; but if anybody is going to lie, I am the one. Now, you mind, little Lucy. Content's big sister Solly has gone away, and she is never coming back. If you tell Lily and the others I said so, I can't see how you will be lying."

Little Lucy gazed at the boy. She looked like truth incarnate. "But," said she, in her adorable stupidity of innocence, "I don't see how she could go away if she was never here, Jim."

"Oh, of course she couldn't. But all you have to do is to say that you heard me say she had gone. Don't you understand?"

"I don't understand how Content's big sister Solly could possibly go away if she was never here."

"Little Lucy, I wouldn't ask you to tell a lie for the world, but if you were just to say that you heard me say—"

"I think it would be a lie," said little Lucy, "because how can I help knowing if she was never here she couldn't—"

"Oh, well, little Lucy," cried Jim, in despair, still with tenderness—how could he be anything but tender with little Lucy?—"all I ask is never to say anything about it."

"If they ask me?"

"Anyway, you can hold your tongue. You know it isn't wicked to hold your tongue."

Little Lucy absurdly stuck out the pointed tip of her little red tongue. Then she shook her head slowly.

"Well," she said, "I will hold my tongue."

This encounter with innocence and logic had left him worsted. Jim could see no way out of the fact that his father, the rector, his mother, the rector's wife, and he, the rector's son, were disgraced by their relationship to such an unsanctified little soul as this queer Content Adams.

And yet he looked at the poor lonely little girl, who was trying very hard to learn her lessons, who suggested in her very pose and movement a little, scared rabbit ready to leap the road for some bush of hiding, and while he was angry with her he pitied her. He had no doubts concerning Content's keeping her promise. He was quite sure that he would now say nothing whatever about that big sister Solly to the others, but he was not prepared for what happened that very afternoon.

When he went home from school his heart stood still to see Miss Martha Rose, and Arnold Carruth's aunt Flora, and his aunt who was not his aunt, Miss Dorothy Vernon, who was visiting her, all walking along in state with their lace-trimmed parasols, their white gloves, and their nice card-cases. Jim jumped a fence and raced across lots home, and gained on them. He burst in on his mother, sitting on the porch, which was inclosed by wire netting overgrown with a budding vine. It was the first warm day of the season.

"Mother," cried Jim Patterson—"mother, they are coming!"

"Who, for goodness' sake, Jim?"

"Why, Arnold's aunt Flora and his aunt Dorothy and little Lucy's aunt Martha. They are coming to call."

Involuntarily Sally's hand went up to smooth her pretty hair. "Well, what of it, Jim?" said she.

"Mother, they will ask for—big sister Solly!"

Sally Patterson turned pale. "How do you know?"

"Mother, Content has been talking at school. A lot know. You will see they will ask for—"

"Run right in and tell Content to stay in her room," whispered Sally, hastily, for the callers, their white-kidded hands holding their card-cases genteelly, were coming up the walk.

Sally advanced, smiling. She put a brave face on the matter, but she realized that she, Sally Patterson, who had never been a coward, was positively afraid before this absurdity. The callers sat with her on the pleasant porch, with the young vine-shadows making networks over their best gowns. Tea was served presently by the maid, and, much to Sally's relief, before the maid appeared came the inquiry. Miss Martha Rose made it.

"We would be pleased to see Miss Solly Adams also," said Miss Martha.

Flora Carruth echoed her. "I was so glad to hear another nice girl had come to the village," said she with enthusiasm. Miss Dorothy Vernon said something indefinite to the same effect.

"I am sorry," replied Sally, with an effort, "but there is no Miss Solly Adams here now." She spoke the truth as nearly as she could manage without unraveling the whole ridiculous affair. The callers sighed with regret, tea was served with little cakes, and they fluttered down the walk, holding their card-cases, and that ordeal was over.

But Sally sought the rector in his study, and she was trembling. "Edward," she cried out, regardless of her husband's sermon, "something must be done now."

"Why, what is the matter, Sally?"

"People are—calling on her."

"Calling on whom?"

"Big sister—Solly!" Sally explained.

"Well, don't worry, dear," said the rector. "Of course we will do something, but we must think it over. Where is the child now?"

"She and Jim are out in the garden. I saw them pass the window just now. Jim is such a dear boy, he tries hard to be nice to her. Edward Patterson, we ought not to wait."

"My dear, we must."

Meantime Jim and Content Adams were out in the garden. Jim had gone to Content's door and tapped and called out, rather rudely: "Content, I say, put on your hat and come along out in the garden. I've got something to tell you."

"Don't want to," protested Content's little voice, faintly.

"You come right along."

And Content came along. She was an obedient child, and she liked Jim, although she stood much in awe of him. She followed him into the garden back of the rectory, and they sat down on the bench beneath the weeping willow. The minute they were seated Jim began to talk.

"Now," said he, "I want to know."

Content glanced up at him, then looked down and turned pale.

"I want to know, honest Injun," said Jim, "what you are telling such awful whoppers about your old big sister Solly for?"

Content was silent. This time she did not smile, a tear trickled out of her right eye and ran over the pale cheek.

"Because you know," said Jim, observant of the tear, but ruthless, "that you haven't any big sister Solly, and never did have. You are getting us all in an awful mess over it, and father is rector here, and mother is his wife, and I am his son, and you are his niece, and it is downright mean. Why do you tell such whoppers? Out with it!"

Content was trembling violently. "I lived with Aunt Eudora," she whispered.

"Well, what of that? Other folks have lived with their aunts and not told whoppers."

"They haven't lived with Aunt Eudora."

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Content Adams, and you the rector's niece, talking that way about dead folks."

"I don't mean to talk about poor Aunt Eudora," fairly sobbed Content. "Aunt Eudora was a real good aunt, but she was grown up. She was a good deal more grown up than your mother; she really was, and when I first went to live with her I was 'most a little baby; I couldn't speak—plain, and I had to go to bed real early, and slept 'way off from everybody, and I used to be afraid—all alone, and so—"

"Well, go on," said Jim, but his voice was softer. It WAS hard lines for a little kid, especially if she was a girl.

"And so," went on the little, plaintive voice, "I got to thinking how nice it would be if I only had a big sister, and I used to cry and say to myself—I couldn't speak plain, you know, I was so little-'Big sister would be real solly.' And then first thing I knew—she came."

"Who came?"

"Big sister Solly."

"What rot! She didn't come. Content Adams, you know she didn't come."

"She must have come," persisted the little girl, in a frightened whisper. "She must have. Oh, Jim, you don't know. Big sister Solly must have come, or I would have died like my father and mother."

Jim's arm, which was near her, twitched convulsively, but he did not put it around her.

"She did—co-me," sobbed Content. "Big sister Solly did come."

"Well, have it so," said Jim, suddenly. "No use going over that any longer. Have it she came, but she ain't here now, anyway. Content Adams, you can't look me in the face and tell me that."

Content looked at Jim, and her little face was almost terrible, so full of bewilderment and fear it was. "Jim," whispered Content, "I can't have big sister Solly not be here. I can't send her away. What would she think?"

Jim stared. "Think? Why, she isn't alive to think, anyhow!"

"I can't make her—dead," sobbed Content. "She came when I wanted her, and now when I don't so much, when I've got Uncle Edward and Aunt Sally and you, and don't feel so dreadful lonesome, I can't be so bad as to make her dead."

Jim whistled. Then his face brightened up. He looked at Content with a shrewd and cheerful grin. "See here, kid, you say your sister Solly is big, grown up, don't you?" he inquired.

Content nodded pitifully.

"Then why, if she is grown up and pretty, don't she have a beau?"

Content stopped sobbing and gave him a quick glance.

"Then—why doesn't she get married, and go out West to live?"

Jim chuckled. Instead of a sob, a faint echo of his chuckle came from Content.

Jim laughed merrily. "I say, Content," he cried, "let's have it she's married now, and gone?"

"Well," said Content.

Jim put his arm around her very nicely and protectingly. "It's all right, then," said he, "as all right as it can be for a girl. Say, Content, ain't it a shame you aren't a boy?"

"I can't help it," said Content, meekly.

"You see," said Jim, thoughtfully, "I don't, as a rule, care much about girls, but if you could coast down-hill and skate, and do a few things like that, you would be almost as good as a boy."

Content surveyed him, and her pessimistic little face assumed upward curves. "I will," said she. "I will do anything, Jim. I will fight if you want me to, just like a boy."

"I don't believe you could lick any of us fellers unless you get a good deal harder in the muscles," said Jim, eying her thoughtfully; "but we'll play ball, and maybe by and by you can begin with Arnold Carruth."

"Could lick him now," said Content.

But Jim's face sobered before her readiness. "Oh no, you mustn't go to fighting right away," said he. "It wouldn't do. You really are a girl, you know, and father is rector."

"Then I won't," said Content; "but I COULD knock down that little boy with curls; I know I could."

"Well, you needn't. I'll like you just as well. You see, Content"—Jim's voice faltered, for he was a boy, and on the verge of sentiment before which he was shamed—"you see, Content, now your big sister Solly is married and gone out West, why, you can have me for your brother, and of course a brother is a good deal better than a sister."

"Yes," said Content, eagerly.

"I am going," said Jim, "to marry Lucy Rose when I grow up, but I haven't got any sister, and I'd like you first rate for one. So I'll be your big brother instead of your cousin."

"Big brother Solly?"

"Say, Content, that is an awful name, but I don't care. You're only a girl. You can call me anything you want to, but you mustn't call me Solly when there is anybody within hearing."

"I won't."

"Because it wouldn't do," said Jim with weight.

"I never will, honest," said Content.

Presently they went into the house. Dr. Trumbull was there; he had been talking seriously to the rector and his wife. He had come over on purpose.

"It is a perfect absurdity," he said, "but I made ten calls this morning, and everywhere I was asked about that little Adams girl's big sister—why you keep her hidden. They have a theory that she is either an idiot or dreadfully disfigured. I had to tell them I know nothing about it."

"There isn't any girl," said the rector, wearily. "Sally, do explain."

Dr. Trumbull listened. "I have known such cases," he said when Sally had finished.

"What did you do for them?" Sally asked, anxiously.

"Nothing. Such cases have to be cured by time. Children get over these fancies when they grow up."

"Do you mean to say that we have to put up with big sister Solly until Content is grown up?" asked Sally, in a desperate tone. And then Jim came in. Content had run up-stairs.

"It is all right, mother," said Jim.

Sally caught him by the shoulders. "Oh, Jim, has she told you?"

Jim gave briefly, and with many omissions, an account of his conversation with Content.

"Did she say anything about that dress, Jim?" asked his mother.

"She said her aunt had meant it for that out-West rector's daughter Alice to graduate in, but Content wanted it for her big sister Solly, and told the rector's wife it was hers. Content says she knows she was a naughty girl, but after she had said it she was afraid to say it wasn't so. Mother, I think that poor little thing is scared 'most to death."

"Nobody is going to hurt her," said Sally. "Goodness! that rector's wife was so conscientious that she even let that dress go. Well, I can send it right back, and the girl will have it in time for her graduation, after all. Jim dear, call the poor child down. Tell her nobody is going to scold her." Sally's voice was very tender.

Jim returned with Content. She had on a little ruffled pink gown which seemed to reflect color on her cheeks. She wore an inscrutable expression, at once child-like and charming. She looked shy, furtively amused, yet happy. Sally realized that the pessimistic downward lines had disappeared, that Content was really a pretty little girl.

Sally put an arm around the small, pink figure. "So you and Jim have been talking, dear?" she said.

"Yes, ma'am," replied little Content. "Jim is my big brother—" She just caught herself before she said Solly.

"And your sister Solly is married and living out West?"

"Yes," said Content, with a long breath. "My sister Solly is married." Smiles broke all over her little face. She hid it in Sally's skirts, and a little peal of laughter like a bird-trill came from the soft muslin folds.



LITTLE LUCY ROSE

BACK of the rectory there was a splendid, long hill. The ground receded until the rectory garden was reached, and the hill was guarded on either flank by a thick growth of pines and cedars, and, being a part of the land appertaining to the rectory, was never invaded by the village children. This was considered very fortunate by Mrs. Patterson, Jim's mother, and for an odd reason. The rector's wife was very fond of coasting, as she was of most out-of-door sports, but her dignified position prevented her from enjoying them to the utmost. In many localities the clergyman's wife might have played golf and tennis, have rode and swum and coasted and skated, and nobody thought the worse of her; but in The Village it was different.

Sally had therefore rejoiced at the discovery of that splendid, isolated hill behind the house. It could not have been improved upon for a long, perfectly glorious coast, winding up on the pool of ice in the garden and bumping thrillingly between dry vegetables. Mrs. Patterson steered and Jim made the running pushes, and slid flat on his chest behind his mother. Jim was very proud of his mother. He often wished that he felt at liberty to tell of her feats. He had never been told not to tell, but realized, being rather a sharp boy, that silence was wiser. Jim's mother confided in him, and he respected her confidence. "Oh, Jim dear," she would often say, "there is a mothers' meeting this afternoon, and I would so much rather go coasting with you." Or, "There's a Guild meeting about a fair, and the ice in the garden is really quite smooth."

It was perhaps unbecoming a rector's wife, but Jim loved his mother better because she expressed a preference for the sports he loved, and considered that no other boy had a mother who was quite equal to his. Sally Patterson was small and wiry, with a bright face, and very thick, brown hair, which had a boyish crest over her forehead, and she could run as fast as Jim. Jim's father was much older than his mother, and very dignified, although he had a keen sense of humor. He used to laugh when his wife and son came in after their coasting expeditions.

"Well, boys," he would say, "had a good time?"

Jim was perfectly satisfied and convinced that his mother was the very best and most beautiful person in the village, even in the whole world, until Mr. Cyril Rose came to fill a vacancy of cashier in the bank, and his daughter, little Lucy Rose, as a matter of course, came with him. Little Lucy had no mother. Mr. Cyril's cousin, Martha Rose, kept his house, and there was a colored maid with a bad temper, who was said, however, to be invaluable "help."

Little Lucy attended Madame's school. She came the next Monday after Jim and his friends had planned to have a chicken roast and failed. After Jim saw little Lucy he thought no more of the chicken roast. It seemed to him that he thought no more of anything. He could not by any possibility have learned his lessons had it not been for the desire to appear a good scholar before little Lucy. Jim had never been a self-conscious boy, but that day he was so keenly worried about her opinion of him that his usual easy swing broke into a strut when he crossed the room. He need not have been so troubled, because little Lucy was not looking at him. She was not looking at any boy or girl. She was only trying to learn her lesson. Little Lucy was that rather rare creature, a very gentle, obedient child, with a single eye for her duty. She was so charming that it was sad to think how much her mother had missed, as far as this world was concerned.

The minute Madame saw her a singular light came into her eyes—the light of love of a childless woman for a child. Similar lights were in the eyes of Miss Parmalee and Miss Acton. They looked at one another with a sort of sweet confidence when they were drinking tea together after school in Madame's study.

"Did you ever see such a darling?" said Madame. Miss Parmalee said she never had, and Miss Acton echoed her.

"She is a little angel," said Madame.

"She worked so hard over her geography lesson," said Miss Parmalee, "and she got the Amazon River in New England and the Connecticut in South America, after all; but she was so sweet about it, she made me want to change the map of the world. Dear little soul, it did seem as if she ought to have rivers and everything else just where she chose."

"And she tried so hard to reach an octave, and her little finger is too short," said Miss Acton; "and she hasn't a bit of an ear for music, but her little voice is so sweet it does not matter."

"I have seen prettier children," said Madame, "but never one quite such a darling."

Miss Parmalee and Miss Acton agreed with Madame, and so did everybody else. Lily Jennings's beauty was quite eclipsed by little Lucy, but Lily did not care; she was herself one of little Lucy's most fervent admirers. She was really Jim Patterson's most formidable rival in the school. "You don't care about great, horrid boys, do you, dear?" Lily said to Lucy, entirely within hearing of Jim and Lee Westminster and Johnny Trumbull and Arnold Carruth and Bubby Harvey and Frank Ellis, and a number of others who glowered at her.

Dear little Lucy hesitated. She did not wish to hurt the feelings of boys, and the question had been loudly put. Finally she said she didn't know. Lack of definite knowledge was little Lucy's rock of refuge in time of need. She would look adorable, and say in her timid little fluty voice, "I don't—know." The last word came always with a sort of gasp which was alluring. All the listening boys were convinced that little Lucy loved them all individually and generally, because of her "I don't—know."

Everybody was convinced of little Lucy's affection for everybody, which was one reason for her charm. She flattered without knowing that she did so. It was impossible for her to look at any living thing except with soft eyes of love. It was impossible for her to speak without every tone conveying the sweetest deference and admiration. The whole atmosphere of Madame's school changed with the advent of the little girl. Everybody tried to live up to little Lucy's supposed ideal, but in reality she had no ideal. Lucy was the simplest of little girls, only intent upon being good, doing as she was told, and winning her father's approval, also her cousin Martha's.

Martha Rose was quite elderly, although still good-looking. She was not popular, because she was very silent. She dressed becomingly, received calls and returned them, but hardly spoke a word. People rather dreaded her coming. Miss Martha Rose would sit composedly in a proffered chair, her gloved hands crossed over her nice, gold-bound card-case, her chin tilted at an angle which never varied, her mouth in a set smile which never wavered, her slender feet in their best shoes toeing out precisely under the smooth sweep of her gray silk skirt. Miss Martha Rose dressed always in gray, a fashion which the village people grudgingly admired. It was undoubtedly becoming and distinguished, but savored ever so slightly of ostentation, as did her custom of always dressing little Lucy in blue. There were different shades and fabrics, but blue it always was. It was the best color for the child, as it revealed the fact that her big, dark eyes were blue. Shaded as they were by heavy, curly lashes, they would have been called black or brown, but the blue in them leaped to vision above the blue of blue frocks. Little Lucy had the finest, most delicate features, a mist of soft, dark hair, which curled slightly, as mist curls, over sweet, round temples. She was a small, daintily clad child, and she spoke and moved daintily and softly; and when her blue eyes were fixed upon anybody's face, that person straightway saw love and obedience and trust in them, and love met love half-way. Even Miss Martha Rose looked another woman when little Lucy's innocent blue eyes were fixed upon her rather handsome but colorless face between the folds of her silvery hair; Miss Martha's hair had turned prematurely gray. Light would come into Martha Rose's face, light and animation, although she never talked much even to Lucy. She never talked much to her cousin Cyril, but he was rather glad of it. He had a keen mind, but it was easily diverted, and he was engrossed in his business, and concerned lest he be disturbed by such things as feminine chatter, of which he certainly had none in his own home, if he kept aloof from Jenny, the colored maid. Hers was the only female voice ever heard to the point of annoyance in the Rose house.