"He takes to it like a duck to water, doesn't he, Jim?" "And," said Jim, telling the story afterward, "I allowed I'd never seen a young feller as knowing about castings as him. She took it down straight. You can't pile it on too thick for a woman, about her young 'un."

"Somebody ought to paint it," Blair said, under his breath.

Mrs. Maitland's face glowed; she came and stood beside him a moment in silence, resting her big, dirty hand on his shoulder. Then she said, half sheepishly, "I call that ladle the 'cradle of civilization.' Think what's inside of it! There are rails, that will hold New York and San Francisco together, and engines and machines for the whole world; there are telegraph wires that will bring—think of all the kinds of news they will bring, Blair,— wars, and births of babies! There are bridges in it, and pens that may write—well, maybe love-letters," she said, with sly and clumsy humor, "or even write, perhaps, the liberty of a race, as Lincoln's pen wrote it. Yes!" she said, her face full of luminous abstraction, "the cradle of civilization!"

He could hardly hear her voice in the giant tumult of exploding metal and the hammering and crashing in the adjacent mill; but when she said that, he looked round at her with the astonishment of one who sees a familiar face where he has supposed he would see a stranger. He forgot his shame in having a mother who ran an iron-mill; he even forgot that impudent thrust in the ribs; a spark of sympathy leaped between them as real in its invisibility as the white glitter of the molten iron sputtering over their heads. "Yes," he said, "it's all that, and it is magnificent, too!"

"Come on!" she said, with a proud look. Over her shoulder she flung back at him figures and statistics; she told him of the tons of bridge materials on the books; the rail contract she had just taken was a big thing, very big! "We've never handled such an order, but we can do it!"

They were walking rapidly from the foundry to the furnaces; Sarah Maitland was inspecting piles of pig, talking to puddlers, all the while bending and twisting between her strong fingers, with their blackened nails, a curl of borings, perhaps biting on it, thoughtfully, while she considered some piece of work, then blowing the crumbs of iron out from between her lips and bursting into quick directions or fault-finding. She stood among her men, in her short skirt, her gray hair straggling out over her forehead from under her shabby bonnet, and gave her orders; but for the first time in her life she was self-conscious—Blair was looking on! listening! thinking, no doubt, that one of these days he would be doing just what she was doing! For the moment she was as vain as a girl; then, abruptly, her happy excitement paused. She stood still, flinching and wincing, and putting a hand up to her eye.

"Ach!" she said; "a filing!" she looked with the other sympathetically watering eye at her son. "Here, take this thing out."

"I?" Blair said, dismayed. "Oh, I might hurt you." Then, in his helplessness and concern—for, ignorant as he was, he knew enough of the Works to know that an iron filing in your eye is no joke—he turned, with a flurried gesture, to one of the molders. "Get a doctor, can't you? Don't stand there staring!"

"Doctor?" said Mrs. Maitland. She gave her son a look, and laughed. "He's afraid he'll hurt me!" she said, with a warm joyousness in her voice; "Jim, got a jack-knife? Just dig this thing out." Jim came, dirty and hesitating, but prepared for a very common emergency of the Works. With a black thumb and forefinger he raised the wincing lid, and with the pointed blade of the jack-knife lifted, with delicacy and precision, the irritating iron speck from the eyeball. "'Bliged," Mrs. Maitland said. She clapped a rather grimy handkerchief over the poor red eye, and turned to Blair. "Come on!" she said, and struck him on the shoulder so heartily that he stumbled. Her cheek was blackened by the molder's greasy fingers, and so smeared with tears from the still watering eye that he could not bear to look at it. He hesitated, then offered her his handkerchief, which at least had the advantage of being clean. She took it, glanced at its elaborate monogram, and laughed; then she dabbed her eye with it. "I guess I'll have to put some of that cologne of yours on this fancy thing. Remember that green bottle with the calendar and the red ribbons on it, that you gave me when you were a little fellow? I've never had anything of my own fine enough to use the stuff on!"

When they got back to the office again she was very brief and business-like with him. She had had a fine morning, but she couldn't waste any more time! "You can keep all this that you have seen in your mind. I don't know just where I shall put you. If you have a preference, express it." Then she told him what his salary would be when he got to work, and what allowance he was to have for the present.

"Now, clear out, clear out!" she said; "good-by"; and turned her cheek toward him for their semi-annual parting. Blair, with his eyes shut, kissed her.

"Good-by, Mother. It has been awfully interesting. And I am awfully obliged to you about the allowance." On the threshold of the office he halted. "Mother," he said,—and his voice was generous even to wistfulness; "Mother, that cradle thing was stunning."

Mrs. Maitland nodded proudly; when he had gone, she folded his handkerchief up, and with a queer, shy gesture, slipped it into the bosom of her dress. Then she rang her bell. "Ask Mr. Ferguson to step here." When her superintendent took the chair beside her desk, she was all business; but when business was over and he got up, she stopped him: "Tell the bookkeeper to double Blair's allowance, beginning to-day."

Ferguson made a memorandum.

"And Mr. Ferguson, I have told Blair that I consent to his engagement with Elizabeth, and I shall make it possible for them to be married as soon as he graduates—"

"But—"

"I do this," she went on, her satisfaction warm in her voice, "because I think he needs the incentive that comes to a young man when he wants to get married. It is natural and proper. And I will see that things are right for them."

"In the first place," said Robert Ferguson, "I would not permit Elizabeth to marry Blair; but fortunately we need not discuss that. They have quarreled, and there is no longer any question of such a thing."

"Quarreled! but only this morning, not an hour ago, he let me suppose—" She paused. "Well, I'm sorry." She paused again, and made aimless marks with her pen on the blotter. "That's all this morning, Mr. Ferguson." And though he lingered to tell her, with grim amusement, of Elizabeth's angry bath, she made no further comment.

When he had left the office she got up and shut the door. Then she went back to her chair, and leaning an elbow on her desk, covered her lips with her hand. After she had sat thus for nearly ten minutes, she suddenly rang for an office-boy. "Take this handkerchief up to the house to my son," she said; "he forgot it."



CHAPTER IX

For the next five or six years Blair was not often at home. At the end of his freshman year he was conditioned, and found a tutor and the seashore and his sketching—for he painted with some enthusiasm just at that time—much more attractive than his mother and Mercer. After that he went to Europe in the long vacations.

"How much vacation have I had since I began to run his business for him?" his mother said once in answer to Nannie's intercession that he might be allowed to travel. But she let him go. She did not know how to do anything else; she always let him do what he pleased, and have what he wanted; she gave him everything, and she exacted no equivalent, either in scholarship or conduct. It never occurred to her to make him appreciate his privileges by paying for them, and so, of course, she pauperized him.

"Blair likes Europe," she said one Sunday afternoon to David Richie, who had come in to see Nannie, "but as for me, I wouldn't take an hour of my good time, or spend a dollar of my good money, to see the best of their cathedrals and statues and things. Do you mean to say there is a cathedral in the world as handsome as my new foundry?"

"Well," David said modestly, "I haven't seen any cathedrals, you know, Mrs. Maitland."

"It's small loss to you, David," she said kindly. "But I wish I'd thought to invite you to go along with Blair last summer. You might have liked it, though you are a pretty sensible fellow in most things." "Oh, I can't go to Europe till I can earn enough to pay my own way," David replied, and added with a quick look at Nannie, "besides, I like being in Mercer."

"Blair has no need to earn money," said Mrs. Maitland carelessly; then she blew out her lips in a bubbling sigh. "And he would rather see a cathedral than his mother."

The pathos of that pricked even the pleasant egotism of youth; David winced, and Nannie tried to murmur something of her brother's needing the rest.

Mrs. Maitland gave her grunt of amusement. "Rest! What's he ever done to tire him? Well! Clear out, clear out, you two,—if you're going to take a walk. I'm glad you came back for your vacation, David, at any rate. Nannie needs shaking up. She sticks at home here with me, and a girl ought to see people once in a while." She glanced at the two young creatures shrewdly. "Why not?" she reflected. She had never thought of it before, but "why not?" It would be a very sensible arrangement. The next moment she had decided that it should be! Nannie's money would be a help to the boy, and he needn't depend on his doctoring business. "I must put it through," she said to herself, just as she might have said that she should put through a piece of work in the office.

This match-making purpose made her invite David to supper very frequently, and every time he came she was apt, after he had taken his departure, to tramp into Nannie's parlor in the hope of being told that the "sensible arrangement" had been made. When she found them together, and caught a word or two about Elizabeth, she had no flash of insight. But, except to her, the situation as regarded David and Elizabeth was perfectly clear.

When, seven years before, the two boys had gone off together to college, Blair had confided to his friend that his faith in women was forever destroyed, "Though I shall love Elizabeth, always," he said.

"Maybe she'll come round?" David tried to comfort him.

"If she doesn't, I shall never love another woman," Blair said darkly.

David was silent. But as he and Blair were just then in the Damon and Pythias stage, and had sworn to each other that "no woman should ever come between them," he gave a hopeless shrug. "That dishes me," he said to himself; "so long as he will never love any other girl, I can't cut in."

It would have been rather a relief to Mrs. Richie to know that her son had reached this artless conclusion, for the last thing she desired was that David's calflove should harden into any real purpose. Elizabeth—sweet-hearted below the careless selfishness of a temper which it never occurred to her must be controlled— was a most kissable young creature to her elders, and Mrs. Richie was heartily fond of her; but all the same she did not want a daughter-in-law with a temper! Elizabeth, on her part, repelled by David's mother's unattainable perfections, never allowed the older woman to feel intimate with her. That first meeting so many years ago, when they had each recoiled from the other, seemed to have left a gulf between them, which had never quite closed up. So Mrs. Richie was just as well pleased that in the next few years David, for one reason or another, did not see his old neighbor very often. By the time he was twenty-four, and well along in his course at the medical school, she had almost forgotten her vague apprehensions. The pause in the intimacy of the mother and son—the inevitable pause that comes between the boy's seventeenth and twentieth years—had ended, and David and his mother were frank and confidential friends again; yet, though she did not know it, one door was still closed between them: "He's forgotten all about it," Mrs. Richie told herself comfortably; and never guessed that in silence he remembered. Of course David's boyish idea of honor was no longer subject to the claim of friendship, for Blair had entirely recovered from his first passion. The only thing he feared now was his own unworth. After all, what had a dumb fellow like himself to offer such a radiant being?

For indeed she was radiant. The girl he had known nearly all his life, impetuous, devoid of self-consciousness, giving her sweet, sexless love with both generous hands, had vanished with the old frank days of dropping an uninvited head on a boy's shoulder. Now, though she was still impetuous, still unconscious of self, she was glowing with womanhood, and ready to be loved. She was not beautiful, except in so far as she was young, for youth is always beautiful; she was tall, of a sweet and delicate thinness, and with the faint coloring of a blush-rose; her dimple was exquisite; her brows were straight and fine, shading eyes wonderfully star-like, but often stormy—eyes of clear, dark amber, which, now that David had come home, were full of dreams.

Before her joyous personality, no wonder poor inarticulate David was torn with apprehensions! He did not share them with his mother, who, with more or less misgiving, began to guess how things were for herself; he knew instinctively that Mrs. Richie's gentle, orderly mind could not possibly understand Elizabeth, still less appreciate the peculiar charm to his inherent reasonableness of her sweet, stormy, undisciplined temperament. Nannie Maitland could not understand either, and yet it was to Nannie—kind, literal little Nannie, who never understood anything abstract, that David revealed his heart. She was intensely sympathetic, and having long ago relinquished the sister-in-law dream, encouraged him to rave about Elizabeth to his heart's content; in fact, for at least a year before Mrs. Maitland had evolved that "sensible arrangement" for her stepdaughter, David, whenever he was at home, used to go to see Nannie simply to pour out his hopes or his dismays. It was mostly dismays, for it seemed to him that Elizabeth was as uncertain as the wind! "She does—she doesn't," he used to say to himself; and then he would question Nannie, who, having received certain confidences from the other side, would reassure him so warmly that he would take heart again.

At the time that he finally dared to put his fate to the touch, Mrs. Maitland's match-making intentions for Nannie had reached a point where she had made up her mind to put the matter through without any more delay. "I'll speak to Mrs. Richie about it, and get the thing settled," she said to herself; "no use dawdling along this way!" But just the day before she found time to speak to Mrs. Richie—it was in David's midwinter recess—something happened.

Elizabeth had accepted—not too eagerly, of course—an invitation to walk with him; and off they went, down Sandusky Street to the river and across the old covered bridge. They stopped to say how do you do to Mrs. Todd, who was peering out from behind the scarlet geraniums in the window of the "saloon." Elizabeth took the usual suggestive joke about a "pretty pair" with a little hauteur, but David beamed, and as he left the room he squeezed Mrs. Todd suddenly round her fat waist, which made her squeak but pleased her very much. "Made for each other!" she whispered wheezily; and David slipped a bill into her hand through sheer joy.

"Better have some ice-cream," the old lady wheedled; "such hot blood needs cooling."

"Oh, Mrs. Todd, she is so cool, I don't need ice-cream," the young fellow mourned in her motherly ear.

"Get out with ye! Ain't you got eyes? She's waitin' to eat you up,—and starvin' for ye!" And David hurried after Elizabeth, who had reached the toll-gate and was waiting, if not to eat him, at any rate for his company.

"She's a dear old soul!" he said joyfully.

"I believe you gave her a kiss," Elizabeth declared.

"I gave her a hug. She said things I liked!"

Elizabeth, guessing what the things might have been, swerved away from the subject, and murmured how pretty the country looked. There had been a snow-storm the night before, and the fields were glistening, unbroken sheets of white; the road David chose was followed by a brook, that ran chuckling between the agate strips of ice along its banks; here and there a dipping branch had been caught and was held in a tinkling crystal prison, and here and there the ice conquered the current, and the water could be heard gurgling and complaining under its snowy covering. David thought that all the world was beautiful,—now that Mrs. Todd had bidden him use his eyes!

"Remember when we used to sled down this hill, Elizabeth?"

She turned her cool, glowing face toward him and nodded. "Indeed I do! And you used to haul my sled up to the top again."

"I don't think I have forgotten anything we did."

Instantly she veered away from personalities. "Isn't it a pity Blair dislikes Mercer so much? Nannie is dreadfully lonely without him."

"She has you; I don't see how she can be lonely."

"Oh, I don't count for anything compared to Blair." Her breath carried quickly. The starry light was in her eyes, but he did not see it. He was not daring to look at her.

"You count for everything to me," he said, in a constrained voice.

She was silent.

"Elizabeth...do you think you could—care? a little?"

She looked away from him without a word. David trembled; "It's all up—" he said to himself; and even as he said it, a small, cold hand was stretched out to him,—a hand that trembled:

"David, I am not good enough. Truly, I'm not."

The very shock of having his doubts and fears crumble so suddenly, made him stand stock-still; he turned very white. "What!" he said, in a low voice, "You—care? Oh no, you don't! You can't. I can't believe it."

Upon which Elizabeth was instantly joyous again. "Well, I won't, if you don't want me to," she said gaily, and walked on, leaving him standing, amazed, in the snow. Then she looked back at him over her shoulder. At that arch and lovely look he bounded to her, stammering something, he did not know what himself; but she laughed, glowing and scolding, swerving over to the other side of the path. "David! We are on a public road. Stop! Please!"

"To think of your caring," he said, almost in a whisper. His face, with its flash of ecstasy, was like wine to her; all her soul spoke fearlessly in her eyes: "Care? Why, David, I was only so awfully afraid you weren't going to ask me!"

His lip trembled. He was quite speechless. But Elizabeth was bubbling over with joy; then suddenly, her exhilaration flagged. "What will your mother say? She doesn't like me."

"Elizabeth! she loves you! How could she help it? How could anybody help it?"

"It's my temper," she said, sighing; "my wicked temper. Of course I never mean anything I say, and I can't imagine why people mind; but they do. Last week I made Cherry-pie cry. Of course she oughtn't to have been hurt;—she knows me. You see I am really a devil, David, to make dear, old Cherry-pie unhappy! But I don't believe I will ever lose my temper again as long as I live. I am going to be good, like your mother." The tears stood in her eyes. "Mrs. Richie is so simply perfect I am sort of afraid of her. I wish she had ever been wicked, like me. David, what shall we do if she won't consent?"

"She'll consent all right," he said, chuckling; and added with the sweet and trusting egotism of youth: "the only thing in the world Materna wants, you know, is my happiness. But do you suppose it would make any difference if she didn't consent? You are for me," he said with an abrupt solemnity that was almost harsh. "Nothing in the world can take you from me."

And she whispered, "Nothing."

Then David, like every lover who has ever loved, cast his challenge into the grinning face of Fate: "This is forever, Elizabeth."

"Forever, David."

On their way home, as they passed the toll-house, he left her and ran up the path to tap on the window; when Mrs. Todd beamed at him through the geraniums, "I've got her!" he cried. And the gay old voice called back, "Glory be!"

On the bridge in the gathering dusk they stood for some time without speaking, looking down at the river. Once or twice a passer-by glanced at the two figures leaning there on the hand- rail, and wondered at the foolishness of people who would stand in the cold and look at a river full of ice; but David and Elizabeth did not see the passing world. The hurrying water ran in a turbulent, foam-streaked flood; great sheets of ice, rocking and grinding against one another, made a continuous soft crash of sound. Sometimes one of them would strike the wooden casing of a pier, and then the whole bridge jarred and quivered, and the cake of ice, breaking and splintering, would heap itself on a long white spit that pushed up-stream through the rushing current. The river was yellow with mud torn up by a freshet back among the hills, but the last rays of the sun,—a disk of copper sinking into the brown haze behind the hills,—caught on the broken edges of the icy snow, and made a sudden white glitter almost from shore to shore.

"Elizabeth," David said, "I want to tell you something. I stood right here, and looked at a raft coming down the river, the evening that Blair told me that you and he—"

"Don't!" she said, shivering.

"I won't," he told her tenderly; "you were only a child; it didn't mean anything. Don't you suppose I understand? But I wanted you to know that it was then, nearly eight years ago, when I was just a boy, that I realized that I—" he paused.

She looked at him silently; her lip quivered and she nodded.

"And I have never changed since," he said. "I stood just here, leaning on this railing, and I was so wretched!" he laughed under his breath; "I didn't know what was the matter with me! I was only a cub, you know. But"—he spoke very softly—"all of a sudden I knew. Elizabeth, a woman on the raft looked up at me. There was a little baby. . . . Dear, it was then that I knew I loved you."

At those elemental words her heart came up into her throat. She could not speak, but suddenly she stooped and kissed the battered hand-rail where he said his hands had rested.

David, horrified, glancing right and left in the dusk and seeing no one, put a swift arm about her in which to whisper a single word. Then, very softly, he kissed her cheek. For a moment she seemed to ebb away from him; then, abruptly, like, the soft surge of a returning wave, she sank against his breast and her lips demanded his. . . .

That night David told his mother. He had been profoundly shaken by Elizabeth's lovely unexpected motion there in the twilight on the bridge; it was a motion so divinely unconscious of the outside world, that he was moved to the point of finding no words to say how moved he was. But she had felt him tremble from head to foot when her lips burned against his,—so she needed no words. His silence still lasted when, after an hour next door with her, he came home and sat down on the sofa beside his mother. He nuzzled his blond head against hers for a moment; then slipped an arm round her waist.

"It's all right, Materna," he said, with a sort of gasp.

"What is, dear?"

"Oh, mother, the idea of asking! The only thing in the world."

"You mean—you and Elizabeth?"

"Yes," he said.

She was silent for a moment; when she spoke her voice broke a little. "When was it, dear?"

"This afternoon," he said. And once started, he overflowed: "I can't get my breath yet, though I've known it since a quarter past four!"

Mrs. Richie laughed, and then sighed. "David, of course I'm happy, if you are; but—I hope she's good enough for you, dear." She felt him stiffen against her shoulder.

"Good enough? for me! Materna, she is perfect! Don't you suppose I know? I've know her nearly all my life, and I can say she is perfect. She is as perfect as you are; she said you were perfect this afternoon. Yes; I never supposed I could say that any woman was as good, and lovely, and pure, as you—"

"David, please don't say such things."

David was not listening. "But I can say it of Elizabeth! Oh, what a lucky fellow I am! I always thought Blair would get her. He's such a mighty good fellow,—and so darned good-looking, confound him!" David ruminated affectionately. "And he can talk; he's not bottled up, like me. To think she would look at me, when she could have had him,—or anybody else! It seems kind of mean to cut Blair out, when he isn't here. He hasn't seen her, you know, for about two years."

"Perhaps you would like to call it off until he gets home, and give him a chance?"

David grinned. "No, thank you. Oh, Materna, she is, you know, really, so—so sort of wonderful! Some time I want to talk to you about her. I don't believe anybody quite understands Elizabeth but me. But to think of her caring for me! To think of my having two such women to care for me." He took her hand gently and kissed it. "Mother," he said—he spoke with almost painful effort; "Mother, I want to tell you something. I want to tell you, because, being what you are, you can't in the least understand what it means; but I do want you to know: I've never kissed any woman but you, Materna, until I kissed—Her."

"Oh," said Helena Richie, in a stifled voice, "don't, David, don't; I can't bear it! And if she doesn't make you happy—"

"Make me happy?" David said. He paused; that unasked kiss burned once more against his lips; he almost shivered at the pang of it. "Materna," he said hoarsely, "if she or I were to die to-night, I, at any rate, have had happiness enough in these few hours to have made it worth while to have lived."

"Love doesn't mean just happiness," she said.

David was silent for a moment; then he said, very gently, "You are thinking of—of your little boy, who died?"

"Yes; and of my marriage; it was not happy, David."

He pressed his cheek against hers, without speaking. The grief of an unhappy marriage he had long ago guessed, and in this moment of his own happiness the remembrance of it was intolerable to him. As for the other grief: "when I think of the baby," he said, softly, "I feel as if that little beggar gave me my mother. I feel as if I had his job; and if I am not a good son—" he stopped, and looked at her, smiling; but something in her face— perhaps the pitiful effort to smile back through the tears of an old, old sorrow, gave him a sudden, solemn thrill; the race pain stirred in him; he seemed to see his own child, dead, in Elizabeth's arms.

"Mother!" he said, thickly, and caught her in his arms. She felt his heart pounding heavily in his side, but she smiled. "Yes," she said, "my little boy gave me another son, though I didn't deserve him! No, no, I didn't," she insisted, laying her soft mother-hand over his protesting lips; "I used to wonder sometimes, David, why God trusted you to me, instead of to a—a better woman—" again she checked his outburst that God had never made a better woman! "Hush, dear, hush. But I didn't mean that love might mean sorrow. There are worse things in the world than sorrow," she ended, almost in a whisper.

"Yes, there are worse things," he said quietly; "of course I know that. But they are not possible things where Elizabeth is concerned. There is only one thing that can hurt us: Death."

"Oh, my dear, my dear! Life can hurt so much more than death! So much more."

But David had nothing more to say of life and love. He retreated abruptly to the matter of fact; he had gone to his limit, not only of expression, but of that modesty of soul which forbids exposure of the emotions, and is as exquisite in a young man as physical modesty is in a girl. He was unwilling, indeed he was unable, to show even to his mother, even, perhaps, to Elizabeth, the speechless depths that had been stirred that afternoon by the first kiss of passion, and stirred again that night by the sight of tears for a baby,—a baby dead for almost a quarter of a century! He got up, thrust his hands into his pockets, and whistled. "Heaven knows how long it will be before we can be married! How soon do you think I can count on getting patients enough to get married?"

Mrs. Richie laughed, though there was still a break of pain in her voice. "My dear boy, when you leave the medical school I mean to give you an allowance which,—"

"No, Maternal" he interrupted her; "I am going to stand on my own legs!" David's feeling about self-support gave him a satisfaction out of all proportion to the pain it sometimes gave his mother. She winced now, as if his words hurt her.

"David! All that I have is yours."

"No," he said again. "I couldn't accept anything. I believe if a man can't take care of his wife himself, he has no business to have a wife. It's bad enough for you to be supporting a big, hungry medical student; but I swear you sha'n't feed his wife, too. I can't be indebted, even to you!" he ended, with the laughing cock-sureness of high-minded youth.

"Indebted? Oh, David!" she said. For a moment his words wounded her; but when he had left her to go back to Elizabeth again, and she sat alone by her fireside, she forgot this surface wound in some deeper pain. David had said he had never kissed any woman but her, until he kissed Her. He had said that the things that were "worse than death" were not possible to Elizabeth. For a moment this soft mother felt a stab of something like jealousy; then her thought went back to that deeper pain. He had not supposed anybody could be as "perfect" as his mother. Helena Richie cowered, as if the sacred words were whips; she covered her face with her hands, and sat a long time without moving. Perhaps she was thinking of a certain old letter, locked away in her desk, and in her heart,—for she knew every word of it: "My child, your secret belongs to your Heavenly Father. It is never to be taken from His hands, except for one reason: to save some other child of His. Never for any smaller reason of peace of mind to yourself."

When she lifted her bowed head from her hands the fire was out. There were tears upon her face.



CHAPTER X

It was the very next afternoon that Mrs. Maitland found time to look after Nannie's matrimonial interests. In the raw December twilight she tramped muddily into Mrs. Richie's firelit parlor, which was fragrant with hyacinths blossoming on every window- sill. Mr. Ferguson had started them in August in his own cellar, for, as any landlord will tell you, it is the merest matter of business to do all you can for a good tenant. Mrs. Maitland found her superintendent and Mrs. Richie just shaking hands on David's luck, Mrs. Richie a little tremulous, and Robert Ferguson a little grudging, of course.

"Well, I hope they'll be happy," he said, sighing; "I suppose some marriages are happy, but—"

"Oh, Mr. Ferguson, you are delightful!" Mrs. Richie said; and it was at that moment that Mrs. Maitland came tramping in. Instantly the large, vital presence made the charming room seem small and crowded. There were too many flowers, too many ornaments, too many photographs of David. Mrs. Maitland sat down heavily on a gilded chair, that creaked so ominously that she rose and looked at it impatiently.

"Foolish sort of furniture," she said; "give me something solid, please, to sit on. Well, Mrs. Richie! How do you do?"

"Nannie has told you our great news?" Mrs. Richie inquired.

"Oh, so it's come to a head, has it?" Mrs. Maitland said, vastly pleased. "Of course I knew what was in the wind, but I didn't know it was settled. Fact is, I haven't seen her, except at breakfast, and then I was in too much of a hurry to think of it. Well, well, nothing could be better! That's what I came to see you about; I wanted to hurry things along. What do you say to it, Mr. Ferguson?"

Mrs. Maitland looked positively benign. She was sitting, a little gingerly, on the edge of the yellow damask sofa at one side of the fireplace, her feet wide apart, her skirt pulled back over her knees, so that her scorching petticoat was somewhat liberally displayed. Her big shoes began to steam in the comfortable heat of a soft-coal fire that was blazing and snapping between the brass jambs.

Mrs. Richie had drawn up a chair beside her, and Robert Ferguson stood with his elbow on the mantelpiece looking down at them. Even to Mr. Ferguson Mrs. Maitland's presence in the gently feminine room was incongruous. There was a little table at the side of the sofa, and Mrs. Maitland, thrusting out a large, gesticulating hand, swept a silver picture-frame to the floor; in the confusion of picking it up and putting it into a safer place the little emotional tension of the moment vanished. Mrs. Richie winked away a tear, and laughed, and said it was too absurd to think that their children were men and women, with their own. lives and interests and hopes—and love-affairs!

"But love-making is in the air, apparently," she said; "young Knight is going to be married."

"What, Goose Molly's stepson?" Mrs. Maitland said. "She used to make sheep's-eyes at—at somebody I knew. But she didn't get him! Well, I must give the boy a present."

"And the next thing," Mrs. Richie went on, "will be Nannie's engagement. Only it will be hard to find anybody good enough for Nannie!"

"Nannie?" said Mrs. Maitland blankly. "She is to be Elizabeth's bridesmaid, of course,—unless she gets married before our wedding comes off. A young doctor has to have patients before he can have a wife, so I'm afraid the chances are Elizabeth will be Nannie's bridesmaid."

She was so full of these maternal and womanly visions that the sudden slight rigidity of Mrs. Maitland's face did not strike her.

"Nannie has been so interested," Mrs. Richie went on. "David will always be grateful to her for helping his cause. I don't know what he would have done without Nannie to confide in!"

Mrs. Maitland's face relaxed. So Nannie had not been slighted? She herself, Nannie's mother, had made a mistake; that was all. Well, she was sorry; she wished it had been Nannie. Poor 'thing, it was lonely for her, in that big, empty house! But these two people, patting themselves on the back with their personal satisfaction about their children, they must not guess her wish. There was no resentment in her mind; it was one of the chances of business. David had chosen Elizabeth,—more fool David! "for Nannie'll have—" Mrs. Maitland made some rapid calculations; "but it's not my kettle of fish," she reflected; and hoisted herself up from the low, deeply cushioned sofa.

"I hope Elizabeth will put her mind on housekeeping," she said. "A young doctor has to get all the pork he can for his shilling! He needs a saving wife."

"She'll have to be a saving wife, I'm afraid," Mrs. Richie said, with rueful pride, "for that foolish boy of mine declines, if you please, to be helped out by an allowance from me."

"Oh, he'll have more sense when he's more in love," Mrs. Maitland assured her easily. "I never knew a man yet who would refuse honest money when it was offered to him. Well, Mrs. Richie, with all this marrying going on, I suppose the next thing will be you and friend Ferguson." Even as she said it, she saw in a flash an inevitable meaning in the words, and she gave a great guffaw of laughter. "Bless you! I didn't mean that! I meant you'd be picking up a wife somewhere, Mr. Ferguson, and Mrs. Richie, here, would be finding a husband. But the other way would be easier, and a very sensible arrangement."

The two victims of her peculiar sense of humor held themselves as well as they could. Mrs. Richie reddened slightly, but looked blank. Robert Ferguson's jaw actually dropped, but he was able to say casually that of course it would be some time before the young people could be married.

"Well, give my love to Elizabeth," Mrs. Maitland said: "tell her not to jump into the river if she gets angry with David. Do you remember how she did that in one of her furies at Blair, Mr. Ferguson?" She gave a grunt of a laugh, and took herself off, pausing at the front door to call back, "Don't forget my good advice, you people!"

Robert Ferguson, putting on his hat with all possible expedition, got out of the house almost as quickly as she did. "I'd like to choke her!" he said to himself. He felt the desire to choke Mrs. Maitland several times that evening as he sat in his library pretending to read his newspaper. "She ought to be ashamed of herself! Mrs. Richie will think I have been—heaven knows what she will think!"

But the truth was, Mrs. Richie thought nothing at all; she forgot the incident entirely. It was Robert Ferguson who did the embarrassed thinking.

As for Mrs. Maitland, she went home through Mercer's mire and fog, her iron face softening into almost feminine concern. She was saying to herself that if Nannie didn't care, why, she didn't care! "But if she hankers after him"—Mrs. Maitland's face twinged with annoyance; "if she hankers after him, I'll make it up to her in some way. I'll give her a good big check!" But she must make sure about the "hankering." It would not be difficult to make sure. In these silent years together, the strong nature had drawn the weak nature to it, as a magnet draws a speck of iron. Nannie, timid to the point of awe, never daring even in her thoughts to criticize the powerful personality that dominated her daily life, nestled against it, so to speak, with perfect content. Sarah Maitland's esthetic deficiencies which separated her so tragically from her son, did not alienate Nannie. The fact that her stepmother was rich, and yet lived in a poverty-stricken locality; that the inconvenience of the old house amounted to squalor; that they were almost completely isolated from people of their own class;—none of these things disturbed Nannie. They were merely "Mamma's ways," that was all there was to say about them. She was not confidential with Mrs. Maitland, because she had nothing to confide. But if her stepmother had ever asked any personal question, she would have been incapable of not replying. Mrs. Maitland knew that, and proposed to satisfy herself as to the "hankering."

Supper was on the table when she got home, and though while bolting her food she glanced at Nannie rather keenly, she did not try to probe her feelings. "But she looks down in the mouth," Sarah Maitland thought. There must have been delicacy somewhere in the big nature, for she was careful not to speak of Elizabeth's engagement before Harris, for fear the girl might, by some involuntary tremor of lip or eyelid, betray herself.

"I'll look in on you after supper," she said.

Nannie, with a start, said, "Oh, thank you, Mamma."

When Mrs. Maitland, with her knitting and a fistful of unopened letters, came over to the parlor, she had also, tucked into her belt, a check.

It had never occurred to Nannie, in all these years and with a very liberal allowance, to mitigate her parlor. It was still a place of mirrors, grown perhaps a little dim; of chandeliers in balloons of brown paper-muslin, which, to be sure, had split here and there with age, so that a glimmer of cut glass sparkled dimly through the cracks; a place of marble-topped tables, and crimson brocade curtains dingy with age and soot; a place where still the only human thing was Nannie's drawing-board. She was bending over it now, copying with a faithful pencil a little picture of a man and a maid, and a dove and a Love. She was going to give the drawing to Elizabeth; in fact, she had begun it several days ago with joyous anticipation of this happy happening. But now, as she worked, her hand trembled. She had had a letter from Blair, and all her joyousness had fled:

"The Dean is an ass, of course; but mother'll get excited about it, I'm afraid. Do smooth her down, if you can."

No wonder Nannie's hand trembled!

Mrs. Maitland, putting her letters on the table, sat down heavily and began to knit. She glanced at Nannie over her spectacles. "Better get through with it," she said to herself. Then, aloud, "Well, Nannie, so David and Elizabeth have made a match of it?"

For a minute Nannie's face brightened. "Yes! Isn't it fine? I'm so pleased. David has been crazy about her ever since he was a boy."

Well! She was heart-whole! There was no doubt of that; Mrs. Maitland, visibly relieved, dismissed from her mind the whole foolish business of love-making. She began to read her letters, Nannie watching her furtively. When the third letter was taken up—a letter with the seal of the University in the upper left- hand corner of the envelope—Blair's sister breathed quickly. Mrs. Maitland, ripping the envelope open with a thrust of her forefinger, read it swiftly; then again, slowly. Then she said something under her breath and struck her fist on the table. Nannie's fingers whitened on her pencil. Sarah Maitland got up and stood on the hearth-rug, her back to the fire.

"I'll have to go East," she said, and began to bite her forefinger.

"Oh, Mamma," Nannie broke out, "I am sure there isn't anything really wrong. Perhaps he has been—a little foolish. Men are foolish in college. David got into hot water lots of times. But Blair hasn't done anything really bad, and—"

Mrs. Maitland gave her a somber look. "He wrote to you, did he?" she said. And Nannie realized that she had not advanced her brother's cause. Mrs. Maitland picked up her letters and began to sort them out. "When is he going to grow up?" she said. "He's twenty-four; and he's been dawdling round at college for the last two years! He's not bad; he hasn't stuff enough in him to be bad. He is just lazy and useless; and he's had every chance young man could have!"

"Mamma!" Nannie protested, "it isn't fair to speak that way of Blair, and it isn't true, not a word of it!" Nannie, the 'fraid- cat of twenty years ago,—afraid still of thunder-storms and the dark and Sarah Maitland, and what not,—Nannie, when it came to defending Blair, had all the audacious courage of love. "He is not lazy, he is not useless; he is—he is—" Nannie stammered with angry distress; "he is dear, and good, and kind, and never did any harm in his life. Never! It's perfectly dreadful, Mamma, for you to say such things about him!"

"Well, well!" said Sarah Maitland, lifting an amused eyebrow. It was as if a humming-bird had attacked a steel billet. Her face softened into pleased affection. "Well, stick up for him," she said; "I like it in you, my dear, though what you say is foolish enough. You remind me of your mother. But your brother has brains. Yes, I'll say that for him,—he's like me; he has brains. That's why I'm so out of patience with him," she ended, lapsing into moody displeasure again. "If he was a fool, I wouldn't mind his behaving like a fool. But he has brains." Then she said, briefly, "'Night," and tramped off to the dining room.

The next morning when Nannie, a little pale from a worried night, came down to breakfast, her stepmother's place was empty.

"Yes," Harris explained; "she went off at twelve, Miss Nannie. She didn't let on where. She said you'd know."

"I know," poor Nannie said, and turned paler than ever.



CHAPTER XI

After Mrs. Maitland had had an interview with the Dean, she went off across the yard, under the great elms dripping in the rainy January thaw. Following his directions, she found her way through the corridors of a new building whose inappropriate expensiveness was obvious at every turn. Blair had rooms there, as had most of the sons of rich fathers. The whole place smelt of money! In Blair's apartment money was less obvious than beauty—but it was expensive beauty. He had a few good pictures, and on one wall a wonderful tapestry of forest foliage and roebucks, that he had picked up in Europe at a price which added to the dealer's affection for traveling Americans. The furnishing was in quiet and, for that period, remarkably good taste; masculine enough to balance a certain delicacy of detail—exquisite Tanagra figures, water-colors and pastels of women in costumes of rose and violet gauze, incense smoldering in an ivory jar, and much small bijouterie that meant an almost feminine appreciation of exquisite and costly prettiness.

Mrs. Maitland came tramping down the hall, her face set and stern; but suddenly, almost at Blair's door, she paused. Some one was singing; she knew the voice—beautiful, joyous, beating and pulsating with life:

"Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine."

She moved over to a window that lit the long corridor, and listened:

"Or leave a kiss . . ."

Sarah Maitland stared out into the rain; the bare branches of the trees whipped against one another in the wind, but she did not see them. She leaned her forehead on the glass, listening to the golden voice. A warm wave seemed to rise in her breast, a wave of cosmic satisfaction in this vitality that was hers, because he was hers! Her eyes blurred so with emotion that she did not see the rocking branches in the rain. All the hardness of her face melted, under those melting cadences into exultant maternity:

"Or leave a kiss but in the cup, And I'll not look for wine; The thirst that from the soul—"

She smiled, then turned and knocked peremptorily at her son's door.

Blair, pausing in his song to comment on a thirst that rises otherwhere than in the soul, roared out a jolly command to "come in!" but for an instant he did not realize who stood on the threshold; nor was his mother able to distinguish him in the group of men lounging about a room dim with tobacco smoke. He was standing with his back to the door, pulling a somewhat reluctant cork from a bottle of sherry gripped between his knees.

Blair was immensely popular at college, not only because of the easy generosities of his wealth,—which were often only a pleasant form of selfishness that brought the fellows about him as honey brings flies, but because of a certain sympathetic quality of mind, a genius for companionship that was almost a genius for friendship. Now, his room was full of men. One of his guests was sitting on the window-sill, kicking his heels and swaying rhythmically back and forth to the twang of his banjo. One had begun to read aloud with passionate emphasis a poem, of which happily Mrs. Maitland did not catch the words; all of them were smoking. The door opened, but no one entered. One of the young men, feeling the draught, glanced languidly over his shoulder,—and got on his feet with extraordinary expedition! He said something under his breath. But it was the abrupt silence of the room that made Blair turn round. It did not need his stammering dismay, his half-cringing—"Clear out, will you, you fellows "—to get the men out of the room. They did not know who she was, but they knew she was Somebody. She did not speak, but the powerful personality seemed to sweep in and clear the atmosphere of its sickly triviality. She stood blocking up the doorway, looking at them; they were mostly Seniors, but there was not a man among them who did not feel foolish under that large and quiet look. Then she stepped a little aside. The movement was unmistakable. They jostled one another like a flock of sheep in their effort to get away quickly. Somebody muttered, "Good afternoon—" but the others were speechless. They left a speechless host behind them.

Mrs. Maitland, her rusty bonnet very much on one side, watched them go; then she closed the door behind them, and stood looking at her son who was still holding the corkscrew in his hands. Her feet were planted firmly wide apart, her hands were on her hips; her eyebrow was lifting ominously. "Well?" she said; with the echo of that golden voice still in her ears, her own voice was, even to herself, unexpectedly mild.

"I didn't expect you," Blair managed to say.

"I inferred as much," she said dryly; "so this is the way you keep up with your classes?"

"There are no lectures at this time of day," he said. "If you had been so kind, my dear mother, as to let me know you were coming"— he spoke with that exaggerated and impertinent politeness that confesses fright; "I would have met you. Instead of that, you— you—you burst in—" he was getting whiter and whiter. The thought that the men had seen the unkempt figure, the powerful face, the straggling locks of hair, the bare hands,—seen, in fact, the unlovely exterior of a large and generous nature, a nature which, alas, he, her son, had never seen; that they had seen her, and guessed, of course, that she was his mother, was positively unendurable to Blair. He tried to speak, but his voice shook into silence. His dismay was not entirely ignoble; the situation was excruciating to a man whose feeling for beauty was a form of religion; his mortification had in it the element of horror for a profaned ideal; his mother was an esthetic insult to motherhood.

"I've no fault to find with your friends being here, if they don't interfere with your studies," Mrs. Maitland said.

"Oh," he said rather blankly; then his shame of her stung him into fury: "why didn't you tell me that you—"

"I've been to see the Dean," she said; "sit down there and listen to me. Here, give me a chair; not that pincushion thing! Give me a chair fit for a man to sit on,—if you've got one in this upholstery shop."

Blair, with trembling hands, pushed a mahogany chair to her side. He did not sit down himself. He stood with folded arms and downcast eyes.

She was not unkind; she was not even ungentle. She was merely explicit: he was a fool. All this business,—she pointed to the bottle and the empty glasses; all this business was idiotic, it was a boy's foolishness. "It shows how young you are, Blair," she said kindly, "though the Lord knows you are old enough in years to have some sense!" But if he kept the foolishness up, and this other tomfoolery on account of which she had had to leave the Works and spend her valuable time talking to the Dean, why, he might be expelled. He would certainly be suspended. And that would put off his getting into business for still another year. "And you are twenty-four!" she said.

While she talked she looked about her, and the mother-softness began to die out of her eyes. Sarah Maitland had never seen her son's room; she saw, now, soft-green hangings, great bowls of roses, a sideboard with an array of glasses, a wonderfully carved ivory jar standing on a teak-wood table whose costliness, even to her uneducated eyes, was obvious. Suddenly she put on her spectacles, and still talking, rose, and walked slowly about the room glancing at the water-colors. By and by, just at the end of her harangue,—to which Blair had listened in complete silence,— she paused before a row of photographs on the mantelpiece; then, in the midst of a sentence, she broke off with an exclamation, leaned forward, and seizing a photograph, tore it in two, across the smiling face and the bare bosom, across the lovely, impudent line of the thigh, and flung it underfoot. "Shame on you! to let your mother see a thing like that!"

"I didn't ask my mother to see it."

"If you have thoughts like this," she said, "Elizabeth did well to throw you over for David."

Blair lifted one eyebrow with a glimmer of interest. "Oh, David has got her, has he?"

"At any rate, he's a man! He doesn't live like this"—she made a contemptuous gesture; "muddling with silks and paintings, and pictures of bad women! What kind of a room is this for a man? Full of flowers and stinking jars, and cushions, and truck? It's more fit for a—a creature like that picture"—she set her heel on the smiling face; "than for a man! I ought never to have sent you here. I ought to have put you to puddling." She looked at him in growing agitation. "My God! Blair, what are you—living this way, with silks and perfumery and clay baby dolls? You've got no guts to you! I didn't mind your making a fool of yourself; that's natural; nobody can get to be a man till he's been a fool; but this—" She stood there, with one hand on the mantelpiece beside the row of photographs and bits of carving and little silver trinkets, and looked at him in positive fright. "And you are my son," she said.

The torrent of her angry shame suddenly swept Blair's manhood of twenty-four years away; her very power stripped him bare as a baby; it almost seemed as if she had sucked his masculinity out of him and incorporated it into herself. He stood there like a cringing schoolboy expecting to be whipped. "One of the men gave me that picture; I—"

"You ought to have slapped his face! Listen to me: you are going to be looked after,—do you hear me? You are going to be watched. Do you understand?" She gathered up the whole row of photographs, innocent and offensive together, and threw them into the fire. "You are going to walk straight, or you are coming home, and going to work."

It was a match to gunpowder; in an instant Blair's temper, the terrific temper of the uniformly and lazily amiable man, flashed into furious words.

Stammering with rage, he told her what he thought of her; to record his opinion is not for edification. Even Sarah Maitland flinched before it. She left him with a bang. She saw the Dean again, and her recommendations of espionage were so extreme and so unwise that he found himself taking Blair's part in his effort to save the young man from the most insolent intrusion upon his privacy. She went back to Mercer in a whirl of anger but in somber silence. She had scorched and stung under the truths her son told her about herself; she had bled under the lies she had told him as to her feeling for him. She looked ten years older for that hour in his room. But she had nothing to say. She told poor, frightened Nannie that she had "seen Master Blair"; she added that he was a fool. To Robert Ferguson she was a little more explicit:

"Blair has not been behaving himself; he's in debt; he has been gambling. See that all these bills are paid. Tell Watson to give him a hundred dollars more a month; I won't have him running in debt in this way. Now what about the Duluth order?"



CHAPTER XII

Mr. Ferguson made no protest in regard to Blair's increased allowance. "If his mother wants to ruin him, it isn't my business," he said. The fact was, he had not recovered from his astonished resentment at Sarah Maitland's joke in Mrs. Richie's parlor. He thought about it constantly, and asked himself whether he did not owe his neighbor an apology of some kind. The difficulty was to know what kind, for after all he was perfectly innocent! "Such an idea never entered my head," he thought angrily; "but of course, if there has been anything in my conduct to put it into Mrs. Maitland's head, I ought to be thrashed! Perhaps I'd better not go in next door more than two or three times a week?" So, for once, Robert Ferguson was distinctly out with his employer, and when she told him to see that Blair had a hundred dollars more a month, he said, in his own mind, "be hanged to him! What difference does it make to me if she ruins him?" and held his tongue—until the next day. Then he barked out a remonstrance: "I suppose you know your own business, but if I had a boy I wouldn't increase his allowance because he was in debt."

"I want to keep him from getting in debt again," she explained, her face falling into troubled lines.

"If you will allow me to say so—having been a boy myself, that's not the way to do it."

Sarah Maitland flung herself back in her chair, and struck the desk with her fist. "I am at my wit's end to know what to do about him! My idea has been to make a man of him, by giving him what he wants, not making him fuss over five-cent pieces. He's had everything; he's never heard 'no' in his life. And yet—look at him!"

"That's the trouble with him. He's had too much. He needs a few no's. But he's like most rich boys; there isn't one rich man's son in ten who is worth his salt. If he were my boy," said Robert Ferguson, with that infallibility which everybody feels in regard to the way other people's children should be brought up, "if he were my son, I'd put him to work this summer."

Mrs. Maitland blew her lips out in a great sigh; then nibbled her forefinger, staring with blank eyes straight ahead of her. She was greatly perplexed. "I'll think it over," she said; "I'll think it over. Hold on; what's your hurry? I want to ask you something: your neighbor there, Mrs. Richie, seems to be a very attractive woman; 'fair and forty,' as the saying is—only I guess she's nearer fifty? But she's mighty good-looking, whatever her age is."

The color came into Robert Ferguson's face; this time he was really offended. Mrs. Maitland was actually venturing—"I have never noticed her looks," he said stiffly, and rose.

"It just struck me when I caught you in there the other day," she ruminated; "what do you know about her?" Buried deep in the casual question was another question, but Robert Ferguson did not hear it; she was not going to venture! He was so relieved, that he was instantly himself again. He told her briefly what little he knew: Mrs. Richie was a widow; husband dead many years. "I have an idea he was a crooked stick,—more from what she hasn't said than what she has said. There's a friend of hers I meet once in a while at her house, a Doctor King, and he intimated to me that her husband was a bad lot. It appears he hurt their child, when he was drunk. She never forgave him. I don't blame her, I'm sure; the baby died. It was after the death of the husband that she adopted David. She has no relations apparently; some friends in Old Chester, I believe; this Doctor King is one of 'em."

"Is she going to marry him?" Mrs. Maitland said.

"There might be objections on the part of the present incumbent," he said, with his meager smile.

Mrs. Maitland admitted that the doctor's wife presented difficulties; "but perhaps she'll die," she said, cheerfully; "I'm interested to know that Mrs. Richie has friends; I was wondering—" She did not say what she wondered. "She's a nice woman, Robert Ferguson, and a good woman, and a good- looking woman, too; 'fair and'—well, say 'fifty'! And if you had any sense—"

But this time Robert Ferguson really did get out of the office.

His advice about Blair, however, seemed superfluous. So far as behavior went, Mrs. Maitland had no further occasion to increase his allowance. His remaining months in the university were decorous enough, though his scholarship was no credit to him. He "squeaked through," as he expressed it to his sister, gaily, when she came east to see him graduate, three years behind the class in which he had entered college. But as to his conduct, that domiciliary visit had hardened him into a sort of contemptuous common sense. And his annoyed and humiliated manhood, combined with his esthetic taste, sufficed, also, to keep things fairly peaceful when he was at home, which was rarely for more than a week or two at a time. Quarrels with his mother had become excruciating experiences, like discords on the piano; they set his teeth on edge, though they never touched his heart. To avoid them, he would, he told Nannie, chuckling at her horror,—"lie like the devil!" His lying, however, was nothing more serious than a careful and entirely insincere politeness; but it answered his purpose, and "rows," as he called them, were very rare; although, indeed, his mother did her part in avoiding them, too. To Sarah Maitland, a difference with her son meant a pang at the very center of her being—her maternity; her heart was seared by it, but her taste was not offended because she had no taste. So, for differing reasons, peace was kept. The next fall, after a summer abroad, Blair went back to the university and took two or three special courses; also he began to paint rather seriously; all of which was his way of putting off the evil day of settling down in Mercer.

Meantime, life grew quite vivid to his sister. Elizabeth had once said that Nannie was "born an old maid"; and certainly these tranquil, gently useless years of being very busy about nothing, and living quite alone with her stepmother, had emphasized in her a simplicity and literalness of mind that was sometimes very amusing to the other three friends. At any rate, hers was a pallid little personality—perhaps it could not have been anything else in the household of a woman like Sarah Maitland, with whom, domestically, it was always either peace, or a sword! Nannie was incapable of anything but peace. "You are a 'fraid- cat," Elizabeth used to tell her, "but you're a perfect dear!" "Nannie is unscrupulously good," Blair said once; and her soft stubbornness in doing anything she conceived to be her duty, warranted his criticism. But during the first year that David and Elizabeth were engaged, her stagnant existence in the silent old house began to stir; little shocks of reality penetrated the gentle primness of her thought, and she came creeping out into the warmth and sunshine of other people's happiness; indeed, her shy appreciation of the lovers' experiences became almost an experience of her own, so closely did she nestle to all their emotions! It was a real blow to her when it was decided that David should enter a Philadelphia hospital as an interne. "Won't he be at home even for the long vacations?" Nannie asked, anxiously; when she was told that hospitals did not give "vacations," her only consolation was that she would have to console Elizabeth.

But when Robert Ferguson heard what was going to happen, he had nothing to console him. "I'll have a love-sick girl on my hands," he complained to Mrs. Richie. "You'll have to do your share of it," he barked at her. He had come in through the green door in the garden wall, with a big clump of some perennial in his hands, and a trowel under one arm. "Peonies have to be thinned out in the fall," he said grudgingly, "and I want to get rid of this lot. Where shall I put 'em?"

It was a warm October afternoon, and Mrs. Richie, who had been sitting on the stone bench under the big hawthorn in her garden, reading, until the dusk hid her page, looked up gratefully. "You are robbing yourself; I believe that is your precious white peony!"

"It's only half of it, and I get as much good out of it here as in my own garden," he grunted (he was sitting on his heels digging a hole big enough for a clump of peonies with a trowel, so no wonder he grunted); "besides, it improves my property to plant perennials; my next tenant may appreciate flowers," he ended, with the reproving significance which had become a joke between them.

"Oh," said Mrs. Richie, sighing, "I don't like to think of that 'next tenant.'"

He looked up at her a little startled. "What do you mean? You are not going to Philadelphia with David next April?"

"Why, you didn't suppose I would let David go alone?"

"What! You will leave Mercer?" he said. In his dismayed astonishment he dropped his trowel and stood up. "Will you please tell me why I should stay in Mercer, when David is in Philadelphia?"

Robert Ferguson was silent; then he tramped the earth in around the roots of the white peony, and said, sullenly, "It never occurred to me that you would go, too."

"You'll have to be extra nice to Elizabeth when we are not here," Mrs. Richie instructed him. David's mother was very anxious to be nice to Elizabeth herself; which was a confession, though she did not know it, of her old misgivings as to David's choice.

"Be nice? I?" said Mr. Ferguson, and snorted; "did you ever know me 'nice'?"

"Always," she said, smiling.

But he would not smile; he went back to his garden for some more roots; when he returned with a wedge taken from his bed of lemon- lilies, he said crossly, "David can manage his own affairs; he doesn't need apron-strings! I think I've mentioned that to you before?"

"I think I recall some such reference," she admitted, her voice trembling with friendly amusement.

But he went on growling and barking: "Foolish woman! to try the experiment at your age, of living in a strange place!"

At that she laughed outright: "That is the nicest way in the world to tell a friend you will miss her."

Robert Ferguson did not laugh. In fact, as the winter passed and the time drew near for the move to be made, nobody laughed very much. Certainly not the two young people; since David had left the medical school he had worked in Mercer's infirmary, and now they both felt as if the world would end for them when they ceased to see each other several times a day. David did his best to be cheerful about it; in fact, with that common sense of his which his engagement had accentuated, he was almost too cheerful. The hospital service would be a great advantage, he said, So great that perhaps the three years' engagement to which they were looking forward,—because David's finances would probably not be equal to a wife before that; the three years might be shortened to two. But to be parted for two years—it was "practically parting," for visits don't amount to anything; "it's tough," said David. "It's terrific!" Elizabeth said.

"Oh, well," David reminded her, "two years is a lot better than three."

It was curious to see how Love had developed these two young creatures: Elizabeth had sprung into swift and glowing womanhood; with triumphant candor her conduct confessed that she had forgotten everything but Love. She showed her heart to David, and to her little world, as freely as a flower that has opened overnight—a rose, still wet with dew, that bares a warm and fragrant bosom to the sun. David had matured, too; but his maturity was of the mind rather than the body; manhood suddenly fell upon him like a cloak, and because his sense of humor had always been a little defective, it was a somewhat heavy cloak, which hid and even hampered the spontaneous freedom of youth. He was deeply and passionately in love, but his face fell into lines of responsibility rather than passion; lines, even, of care. He grew markedly older; he thought incessantly of how soon he would be able to marry, and always in connection with his probable income and his possible expenses. Helena Richie was immensely proud of this sudden, serious manhood; but Elizabeth's uncle took it as a matter of course:—had he not, himself, ceased to be an ass at twenty? Why shouldn't David Richie show some sense at twenty-five!

As for Elizabeth, she simply adored. Perhaps she was, once in a while, a little annoyed at the rather ruthless power with which David would calmly override some foolish wish of hers; and sometimes there would be a gust of temper,—but it always yielded at his look or touch. When he was not near her, when she could not see the speechless passion in his eyes, or feel the tremor of his lips when they answered the demand of hers, then the anger lasted longer. Once or twice, when he was away from home, his letters, with their laconic taking of her love for granted, made her sharply displeased; but when he came back, and kissed her, she forgot everything but his arms. Curiously enough, the very completeness of her surrender kept him so entirely reverent of her that people who did not know him might have thought him cold— but Elizabeth knew! She knew his love, even when, as she fulminated against the misery of being left alone, David merely said, briefly, "Oh, well, two years is a lot better than three."

The two years of absence were to begin in April. It was in February that Robert Ferguson was told definitely just when his tenant would terminate her lease; he received the news in absolute silence. Mrs. Richie's note came at breakfast; he read it, then went into his library and shut the door. He sat down at his writing-table, his hands in his pockets, an unlighted cigar between his teeth. He sat there nearly an hour. Then, throwing the cigar into his waste-basket, he knocked his glasses off with a bewildered gesture; "Well, I'll be hanged," he said, softly. It was at that moment that he forgave Mrs. Maitland her outrageous joke of more than a year before. "I've always known that woman was no fool," he said, smiling ruefully at the remembrance of his anger at Sarah Maitland's advice. "It was darned good advice!" he said; but he looked positively dazed. "And I've always said I wouldn't give Life the chance to play another trick on me!" he reflected; "well, I won't. This is no silly love-affair; it's good common sense." Ten minutes later, as he started for his office, he caught sight of his face in the mirror in the hall. He had lifted one hand to take his hat from the rack, but as he suddenly saw himself, he stood stock-still, with upraised arm and extended fingers; Robert Ferguson had probably not been really aware of his reflection in a looking-glass for twenty-five years. He saw now a lean, lined, sad face, a morose droop of thin and bitter lips; he saw gray hair standing up stiffly above a careworn forehead; he saw kind, troubled eyes. And as he looked, he frowned. "I'm an ugly cuss," he said to himself, sighing; "and I look sixty." In point of fact, he was nearly fifty. "But so is she," he added, defiantly, and took down his hat. "Only, she looks forty." And then he thought of Mrs. Maitland's "fair and fifty," and smiled, in spite of himself. "Yes, she is rather good-looking," he admitted.

And indeed she was; Mrs. Richie's quiet life with her son had kept her forehead smooth, and her eyes—eyes the color of a brook which loiters in shady places over last year's leaves—softly clear. There was a gentle placidity about her; the curious, shy hesitation, the deep, half-frightened sadness, which had been so marked when her landlord knew her first, had disappeared; sometimes she even showed soft gaieties of manner or speech which delighted her moody neighbor to the point of making him laugh. And laughing had all the charm of novelty to poor Robert Ferguson. "I never dreamed of her going away," he said to himself. Well, yes; certainly Mrs. Maitland had some sense, after all. When, a week later, blundering and abrupt, he referred to Mrs. Maitland's "sense," Mrs. Richie could not at first understand what he was talking about. "She 'knew more than you gave her credit for'? I thought you gave her credit for knowing everything! Oh, you don't want me to leave Mercer? I don't see the connection. I don't know everything! But you are very flattering, I'm sure. I am a 'good tenant,' I suppose?"

"Please don't go." She laughed at what she thought was his idea of a joke; then said, with half a sigh, that she did not know any one in Philadelphia; "when David isn't at home I shall be pretty lonely," she said.

" Please don't go," he said again, in a low voice. They were sitting before the fire in Mrs. Richie's parlor; the glass doors of the plant-room were open,—that plant-room, which had been his first concession to her; and the warm air of the parlor was fragrant with blossoming hyacinths. There was a little table between them, with a bowl of violets on it, and a big lamp. Robert Ferguson rose, and stood with his hands behind him, looking down at her. His hair, in a stiff brush above his forehead, was quite gray, but his face in its unwonted emotion seemed quivering with youth. He knocked off his glasses irritably. "I never know how to say things," he said, in a low voice; "but—please don't go."

Mrs. Richie stared at him in amazement.

"I think we'd better get married," he said.

"Mr. Ferguson!"

"I think I've cared about you ever since you came here, but I am such a fool I didn't know it until Mrs. Maitland said that absurd thing last fall."

"I—I don't know what you mean!" she parried, breathlessly; "at any rate, please don't say anything more about it."

"I have to say something more." He sat down again with the air of one preparing for a siege. "I've got several things to say. First, I want to find out my chances?"

"You haven't any."

His face moved. He put on his glasses carefully, with both hands. "Mrs. Richie, is there any one else? If so, I'll quit. I know you will answer straight; you are not like other women. Is there anybody else? That—that Old Chester doctor who comes to see you once in a while, I understand he's a widower now; wife's just died; and if—"

"There is nobody; never anybody."

"Ah!" he said, triumphantly; then frowned: "If your attachment to your husband makes you say I haven't any chance—but it can't be that."

Her eyes suddenly dilated. "Why not? Why do you say it can't be that?" she said in a frightened voice.

"I somehow got the impression—forgive me if I am saying anything I oughtn't to; but I had kind of an idea that you were not especially happy with him."

She was silent.

"But even if you were," he went on, "it is so many years; I don't mean to offend you, but a woman isn't faithful to a memory for so many years!" he looked at her incredulously; "not even you, I think."

"Such a thing is possible," she told him coldly; she had grown very pale. "But it is not because of—of my husband that I say I shall never marry again."

He interrupted her. "If it isn't a dead man nor a live man that's ahead of me, then it seems to me you can't say I haven't any chance—unless I am personally offensive to you?" There was an almost child-like consternation in his eyes; "am I? Of course I know I am a bear."

"Oh, please don't say things like that!" she protested. "A bear? You? Why, you are just my good, kind friend and neighbor; but—"

"Ah!" he said, "that scared me for a minute! Well, when I understood what was the matter with me (I didn't understand until about a week ago), I said to myself, 'If there's nobody ahead of me, that woman shall be my wife.' Of course, I am not talking sentimentalities to you; we are not David and Elizabeth! I'm fifty, and you are not far from it. But I—I—I'm hard hit, Mrs. Richie;" his voice trembled, and he twitched off his glasses with more than usual ferocity.

Mrs. Richie rose; "Mr. Ferguson," she said, gently, "I do appreciate the honor you do me, but—"

"Don't say a thing like that; it's foolish," he interrupted, frowning; "what 'honor' is it, to a woman like you, to have an ugly, bad-mannered fellow like me, want you for a wife? Why, how could I help it! How could any man help it? I don't know what Dr. King is thinking of, that he isn't sitting on your doorsteps waiting for a chance to ask you! I ought to have asked you long ago. I can't imagine why I didn't, except that I supposed we would go on always living next door to each other. And—and I thought anything like this, was over for me. . . . Mrs. Richie, please sit down, and let me finish what I have to say."

"There is no use, Mr. Ferguson," she said; but she sat down, her face falling into lines of sadness that made her look curiously old.

"There isn't anybody ahead of me: so far, so good. Now as to my chances; of course I realize that I haven't any,—to-day. But there's to-morrow, Mrs. Richie; and the day after to-morrow. There's next week, and next year;—and I don't change. Look how slow I was in finding out that I wanted you; it's taken me all these years! What a poor, dull fool I am! Well, I know it now; and you know it; and you don't personally dislike me. So perhaps some day," his harsh face was suddenly almost beautiful; "some day you'll be—my wife!" he said, under his breath. He had no idea that he was "talking sentimentalities"; he would have said he did not know how to be sentimental. But his voice was the voice of youth and passion.

She shook her head. "No," she said, quietly; "I can't marry you, Mr. Ferguson."

"But you are generally so reasonable," he protested, astonished and wistful; "why, it seems to me that you must be willing—after a while? Here we are, two people getting along in years, and our children have made a match of it; and we are used to each other, that's a very important thing in marriage. It's just plain common sense, after David is on his own legs in the hospital, for us to join forces. Perhaps in the early summer? I won't be unreasonably urgent. Surely"—he was gaining confidence from his own words—"surely you must see how sensible—"

Involuntarily, perhaps through sheer nervousness, she laughed. "Mrs. Maitland's 'sensible arrangement'? No, Mr. Ferguson; please let us forget all about this—"

He gave his snort of a laugh. "Forget? Now that isn't sensible. No, you dear, foolish woman; whatever else we do, we shall neither of us forget this. This is one of the things a man and woman don't forget;" in his earnestness he pushed aside the bowl of violets on the table between them, and caught her hand in both of his. "I'm going to get you yet," he said, he was as eager as a boy.

Before she could reply, or even draw back, David opened the parlor door, and stood aghast on the threshold. It was impossible to mistake the situation. The moment of sharp withdrawal between the two on either side of the table announced it, without the uttering of a word; David caught his breath. Robert Ferguson could have wrung the intruder's neck, but Mrs. Richie clutched at her son's presence with a gasp of relief: "Oh—David! I thought you were next door!"

"I was," David said, briefly; "I came in to get a book for Elizabeth."

"We were—talking," Mrs. Richie said, trying to laugh. Mr. Ferguson, standing with his back to the fire, was slowly putting on his glasses. "But we had finished our discussion," she ended breathlessly.

"For the moment," Mr. Ferguson said, significantly; and set his jaw.

"Well, David, have you and Elizabeth decided when she is to come and see us in Philadelphia?" Mrs. Richie asked, her voice still trembling.

"She says she'll come East whenever Mr. Ferguson can bring her," David said, rummaging among the books on the table. "But it's a pity to wait as long as that," he added, and the hint in his words was inescapable.

Robert Ferguson did not take hints. "I think I can manage to come pretty soon," he retorted.



CHAPTER XIII

When Mr. Ferguson said good night, David, apparently unable to find the book he had promised to take in to Elizabeth, made no effort to help his mother in her usual small nightly tasks of blowing out the lamps, tidying the table, folding up a newspaper or two. This was not like David, but Mrs. Richie was too absorbed to notice her son's absorption. Just as she was starting up- stairs, he burst out: "Materna—"

"Yes? What is it?"

He gave her a keenly searching look; then drew a breath of relief, and kissed her. "Nothing," he said.

But later, as he lay on his back in bed, his hands clasped behind his head, his pipe between his teeth, David was distinctly angry. "Of course she doesn't care a hang for him," he reflected; "I could see that; but I swear I'll go to Philadelphia right off." Before he slept he had made up his mind that was the best thing to do. That old man, gray and granite-faced, and silent, "that old codger," said the disrespectful cub of twenty-six, "should take advantage of friendship to be a nuisance,—confound him!" said David. "The idea of his daring to make love to her! I wanted to show him the door." As for his mother, even if she didn't "care a hang," he was half shocked, half hurt; he felt, as all young creatures do, a curious repulsion at the idea of love- making between people no longer young. It hurt his delicacy, it almost hurt his sense of reverence for his mother, to think that she had been obliged to listen to any words of love. "It's offensive," he said angrily; "yes; we'll clear out! We'll go to Philadelphia the first of March, instead of April."

The next morning he suggested his plan to his mother. "Could you pack up in three weeks, Materna?" he said; "I think I'd like to get you settled before I go to the hospital." Mrs. Richie's instant acceptance of the change of date made him more annoyed than ever. "He has worried her!" he thought angrily; "I wonder how long this thing has been going on?" But he said nothing to her. Nor did he mean to explain to Elizabeth just why he must shorten their last few weeks of being together. It would not be fair to his mother to explain, he said to himself;—he did not think of any unfairness to the "old codger." He was, however, a little uneasy at the prospect of breaking the fact of this earlier departure to Elizabeth without an explanation. Elizabeth might be hurt; she might say that he didn't want to stay with her. "She knows better!" he said to himself, grinning. The honest truth was, and he faced it with placidity, that if things were not explained to Elizabeth, she might get huffy,—this was David's word; but David knew how to check that "huffiness"!

They were to walk together that afternoon, and he manoeuvered for a few exquisite minutes alone before they went out. At first the moments were not very exquisite.

"Well! What happened to you last night? I thought you were going to bring me that book!"

"I couldn't. I had to stay at home."

"Why?"

"Well; Materna wanted me."

Elizabeth murmured a small, cold "Oh." Then she said, "Why didn't you send the book in by Uncle?"

"I didn't think of it," David said candidly.

Elizabeth's dimple straightened. "It would have been polite to have sent me a message."

"I took it for granted you'd know I was detained."

"You take too much for—" she began, but before she could utter the sharp words that trembled on her lips, he caught her in his arms and kissed her; instantly the little flame of temper was blown out.

"That's the worst of walking," David said, as she let him draw her down on the sofa beside him; "I can't kiss you on the street."

"Heavens, I should hope not!" she said. Then, forgetting what she thought was his forgetfulness, she relaxed within his arms, sighing with bliss. "'Oh, isn't it joyful,—joyful,—joyful—'" she hummed softly. "I do love to have you put your arms around me, David! Isn't it wonderful to love each other the way we do? I feel so sorry for other girls, because they aren't engaged to you; poor things! Do you suppose anybody in the world was ever as happy as I am?"

"You?" said David, scornfully; "you don't count at all, compared to me!" Then they both laughed for the sheer foolishness of that "joyfulness," which was so often on Elizabeth's lips. But David sighed. "Three years is a devilish long time to wait."

"Maybe it will be only two!" she whispered, her soft lips against his ear. But this was one of David's practical and responsible moments, so he said grimly, "Not much hope of that."

Elizabeth, agreeing sadly, got up to straighten her hat before the mirror over the mantelpiece. "It's hideously long. Oh, if I were only a rich girl!"

"Thank Heaven you are not!" he said, with such sudden cold incisiveness that she turned round and looked at him. "Do you think I'd marry a rich woman, and let her support me?"

"I don't see why she shouldn't, if she loved you," Elizabeth said calmly; "I don't see that it matters which has the money, the man or the girl."

"I see," David said; "I've always felt that way—even about mother. Materna has wanted to help me out lots of times, and I wouldn't let her. I could kick myself now when I think how often I have to put my hand in her pocket."

"I think," cried Elizabeth, "a man might love a girl enough to live on her money!"

"I don't," David said, soberly.

"Well," said Elizabeth, "don't worry. I haven't a cent, so you can't put your hand in my pocket! Come, we must start. I want to go and see Nannie for a minute, and Cherry-pie says I must be in before dark, because I have a cold."

"I like sitting here best," David confessed, but pulled himself up from the sofa, and in another minute Miss White, peering from an upper window, saw them walking off. "Made for each other!" said Cherry-pie, nibbling with happiness.

They had almost reached Nannie's before David said that—that he was afraid he would have to go away a month before he had planned. When he was most in earnest, his usual brevity of speech fell into a curtness that might have seemed, to one who did not know him, indifference. Elizabeth did know him, but even to her the ensuing explanation, which did not explain, was, through his very anxiety not to offend her, provokingly laconic.

"But you don't go on duty at the hospital until April," she said hotly. "Why do you leave Mercer the first of March?"

"Materna wants time to get settled."

"Mrs. Richie told me only yesterday that she was going to a hotel," Elizabeth said; "she said she wasn't going to look for a house until the fall, because she will be at the seashore this summer. It certainly doesn't take a month to find a hotel."

"Well, the fact is, there are reasons why it isn't pleasant for Materna to be in Mercer just now."

"Not pleasant to be in Mercer! What on earth do you mean?"

"I'm afraid I can't tell you. It's her affair."

"Oh, I didn't mean to intrude," Elizabeth said coldly.

"Now, Elizabeth," he protested, "that isn't a nice thing to say."

"Do you think you've been saying nice things? I am perfectly certain that you would never hesitate to tell your mother any of my reasons for doing things!"

"Elizabeth, I wouldn't leave Mercer a minute before the first of April, if I wasn't sure it was best for Materna. You know that."

"Oh, go!" she said; "go, and have all the secrets you want. I don't care."

"Elizabeth, be reasonable; I—"

But she had left him; they had reached the Maitland house, and, pushing aside his outstretched hand, she opened the iron gate herself, slammed it viciously, and ran up the curving steps to the door. As she waited for Harris to answer her ring, she looked back: "I think you are reasonable enough for both of us; please don't let me ever interfere with your plans!" She paused a minute in the hall, listening for a following step;—it did not come. "Well, if he's cross he can stay outside!" she told herself, and burst into the parlor. "Nannie!" she began,—"Oh, I beg your pardon!" she said. Blair was standing on the hearth-rug, talking vehemently to his sister; at the sound of the opening door he wheeled around and saw her, glowing, wounded, and amazingly handsome. "Elizabeth!" he said, staring at her. And he kept on staring while they shook hands. They were a handsome pair, the tall, dark, well-set-up man, and the girl almost as tall as he, with brown, gilt-flecked hair blowing about a vivid face which had the color, in the sharp February afternoon, of a blush-rose.

"Where's David?" Nannie said.



"I left him at the gate. He's coming in in a minute," Elizabeth said; and turned to Blair: "I didn't know you had come home."

Blair explained that he was only in Mercer for a day. "I'm in a hole," he said drolly, "and I've come home to have Nannie get me out."

"Nannie is always ready to get people out of holes;" Elizabeth said, but her voice was vague. She was listening for David's step, her cheeks beginning to burn with mortification, at his delay.

"Where is David?" Nannie demanded, returning from a fruitless search for him in the hall.

"He's a lucky dog," Blair said, looking at the charming, angry face with open and friendly admiration.

Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know about his luck. By the way, he is going to Philadelphia the first of March, Nannie," she said carelessly.

"I thought he didn't have to go until April?" Nannie sympathized.

"So did I. Perhaps he'll tell you why he has changed his mind. He hasn't deigned to give me his reasons yet."

And Blair, watching her, said to himself, "Same old Elizabeth!" He began to talk to her in his gay, teasing way, but she was not listening; suddenly she interrupted him, saying that she must go home. "I thought David was coming in, but I suppose he's walking up and down, waiting for me."

"If he doesn't know which side his bread is buttered, I'll walk home with you," Blair said; "and Nancy dear, while I'm gone, you see Mother and do your best, won't you?"

"Yes," poor Nannie sighed, "but I do wish—"

Blair did not wait to hear what she wished; he had eyes only for this self-absorbed young creature who would not listen when he spoke to her. At the gate she hesitated, looked hurriedly about her, up and down the squalid street; she did not answer, did not apparently hear, some question that he asked. Blair glanced up and down the street, too. "David doesn't appreciate his opportunities," he said.

Elizabeth's lip tightened, and she flung up her head; the rose in her cheeks was drowned in scarlet. She came out of her absorption, and began to sparkle at her companion; she teased him, but not too much; she flattered him, very delicately; she fell into half-sentimental reminiscences that made him laugh, then stabbed him gently with an indifferent word that showed how entirely she had forgotten him. And all the time her eyes were absent, and the straight line in her cheek held the dimple a prisoner. Blair, who had begun with a sort of good-natured, rather condescending amusement at his old playmate, found himself, to his surprise, on his mettle.

"Don't go home yet," he said; "let's take a walk."

"I'd love to!"

"Mercer seems to be just as hideous as ever," Blair said; "suppose we go across the river, and get away from it?"

She agreed lightly: "Horrid place." At the corner, she flashed a glance down the side street; David was not to be seen.

"Will David practise here, when he is ready to put out his shingle?"

"I'm sure I don't know. I can't keep track of David's plans."

"He is just as good as ever, I suppose?" Blair said, and watched her delicate lip droop.

"Better, if anything." And in the dusk, as they sauntered over the old bridge, she flung out gibe after gibe at her lover. Her cheeks grew hotter and hotter; it was like tearing her own flesh. The shame of it! The rapture of it! It hurt her so that the tears stood in her eyes; so she did it again, and yet again. "I don't pretend to live up to David," she said.

Blair, with a laugh, confessed that he had long ago given up any such ambition himself. On the bridge they stopped, and Blair looked back at the town lying close to the water. In the evening dusk lights were pricking out all along the shore; the waste- lands beyond the furnaces were vague with night mists, faintly amethyst in the east, bronze and black over the city. Here and there in the brown distances flames would suddenly burst out from unseen stacks, then sink, and the shadows close again.

"I wish I could paint it," Blair said dreamily; "Mercer from the bridge, at twilight, is really beautiful."

"I like the bridge," Elizabeth said, "for sentimental reasons. (Now," she added to herself, "now, I am a bad woman; to speak of that to another man is vile.) David and I," she said, significantly,—and laughed.

Even Blair was startled at the crudeness of the allusion. "I didn't suppose David ever condescended to be spoony," he said, and at the same instant, to his absolute amazement, she caught his arm and pulled his hand from the railing.