"I haven't got your education," she went on, with a simple humility that became her very touchingly, "we're poor people up here, us 'natives,' and we don't get much time for books, or when we do, we're too tired to read 'em much. I don't doubt you've been to college, yourself, and you've prob'ly learnt a lot about the mistakes that's been made in the world—a lot that I wouldn't understand. But I want to tell you one thing. I'm old enough to 'a been your mother, Mr. Wortley, my oldest boy'd 'a been twenty if he'd lived—and I've buried two besides him. You'll know I've seen trouble when I tell you that I've always thought we'd saved him and Annie if we could 'a had another doctor that'd had more experience with typhoid, and that's an awful thing to feel."

She paused a moment with somber eyes.

"I've worked hard since I was ten years old, and for the last five years there's been nothin' but me between the children and the poor house. You don't know much about that kind o' worry, Mr. Wortley, an' 'taint likely you ever will. I was married when I was nineteen—" Her eyes fell on the girl and softened lovingly, "'an what that means in the country with seven children an' no help, an' the winters what they are here, maybe you can guess a little. But I tell you this: I ain't had the sorrow, all told, that's preparin' for that girl, if you keep on like this. An' I wouldn't change my lot for hers, nor would she, if she knew."

There was a dead silence in the room. Only the short, grunting breaths of the sleeping dog stirred the air. The girl sat as if turned to stone, her arm hard about Caroline; the boy stared doubtfully at the woman, studying her plain, wrinkled face.

"I—I have plenty of money," he said, in a hollow thin little voice, "she will always—"

"Money!" Luella's voice shook with scorn, "what's money? The Lord knows, Mr. Wortley, I need money more'n you ever will, but let me tell you there's things money can't buy. Can you buy children—nice children like this one—to play with your children? Tell me that!"

"I shall never have any children," the girl's voice came in a husky, strained whisper, "I shall be too—too miserable," she concluded softly, and utterly to herself; she had absolutely forgotten the others, even the boy, whose eyes turned incessantly from her face to the older woman's.

Luella's shrewd glance enveloped the strong young figure. "I never heard 't misery prevented 'em," she said dryly.

The boy seemed unable to move, so intense was the concentration of his thoughts; his fingers stuck out stiffly in a purposeless, set gesture.

"If it is true, all that we thought," he said slowly, "then no hardship, no merely personal suffering should prevent ... the experiment must be made ... must inevitably, sometime...."

"But not with her, not her, Mr. Wortley!" Luella cried. Her expression turned quickly whimsical.

"You remind me o' me an' my mother one time, when I was a girl," she cried. "I wanted to prove that you c'd raise biscuits without the bakin' powder—I was terrible headstrong; I know what 'tis well 'nough, an' how hard 'tis to give 'way—an' she was tryin' to persuade me.

"'I think 't least you might let me make th' experiment,' I says, an' she turned to me—I c'n see her now an',

"'Luella,' says she, 'it's all very well for you to make th' experiment, but I'm the one that'll have to pay the bill!' she says.

"It'll be like that with you, Mr. Wortley—you'll make th' experiment, but she'll pay!"

There was another silence.

"We always pay," Luella added thoughtfully, "it don't seem just fair, but we do."

The young man shook himself suddenly, like a dog fresh from the water.

"I didn't mean to—God knows I wouldn't hurt a hair of her head," he said, in a low voice. His hands relaxed, his shoulders drooped. "It seemed the best thing only this morning—is that what you meant this morning, Dorothy, when we—when we—when I went away?" he asked gently.

She held out her hand to him, still clasping Caroline, and he knelt beside her, one arm around her neck.

"I—I don't want you ever—to do—what you—think—is—is wrong," she said brokenly, but with a brave effort at steadiness. "I'll—I'll never—leave you—Frank."

She gazed adoringly into his eyes, her hand tight in his. Luella's mouth twitched and she choked as she spoke.

"Oh, Mr. Wortley," she urged, "it isn't that I don't see what you mean—partly. You think I don't, but I do. There's awful mistakes made in marryin', we all see 'em; even 'way back here in the country dreadful things happen, an' the papers—we c'n read 'em, that's enough an' more'n enough. There's things that ought to be changed, I know, but not the way you want to change 'em—oh, not that way! It can't help any, not marryin', don't you see—folks must just take pains and marry more careful, 'cause we've begun this way and now we can't stop without somebody gettin' hurt—and that won't be you, nor any other man. Marryin's all we've got to tie to, Mr. Wortley, us women, an' we can't quit now!"

The boy looked thoughtfully at her: "I—I think perhaps you are right," he said slowly. He appeared unaccountably older; small, worried lines were cutting themselves deep around his eyes and mouth.

He threw back his head in an attempt to regain the old, masterful manner.

"I hope I am too sincere not to state honorably that I—I feel sure you are right!" he announced, "that is, in this particular instance. I have no desire to establish any point at the expense—at the expense...."

He frowned into space; his lips tightened obstinately.

"But it will have to be at somebody's expense!" he cried irritably. "Shall we always go on like this, putting off, putting off, letting this shameful, unsatisfactory state of things continue, just because it would be our wives that would suffer...."

"I guess that's about it," Luella answered, seriously.

"Then all I have to say is, we're damned cowards, all of us!" he cried, with the old flash of rage.

But it was the last time. Beaten, yet triumphant, he stooped for his harness and himself assumed it, with set teeth.

"I—I shouldn't have said that," he said, gravely. "It's—it's a very difficult thing ... a man has so many responsibilities...."

They waited patiently.

"It seems one must compromise—something—anyway," he went on, thinking his way painfully along. "I don't know why it seems so difficult to me now; ... they talked enough, all the others, and of course I shall never speak to your Aunt Ethel again—you may use your own judgment, Dorothy—because there are some insults...."

He shook himself again and drew the girl to her feet.

"Dearest," he said, and there was a sad little ring in his voice, but a strangely kind one, "I—we have been mistaken. It wouldn't do. I think—" he looked anxiously at Luella—"the sooner we get some one—to—to—a clergyman, you know, or a—a legal person of some kind—"

"I'll get Mr. Andrews right away," Luella assured him briskly. "He's Cong'ational, and he's a real pleasant young man—new here. Car'line, you run right down cross-lots to that first white house an' there he'll be, callin' this minute on the Wilkinses, 'cause she told me he would. You say Luella Judd wants him right away, an' he'll come."

"Yes, Luella, I will," said Caroline but her eyes were fastened on the girl.

She was in the boy's arms, her head on his shoulder; she clung to him tightly, shivering a little, hiding her face.

"You don't mind, darling?" he begged her earnestly, "you believe I am doing it for the best? You won't blame me for changing, after all I've said?"

She lifted her head and through her loving gray eyes looked out at him the woman she would be in ten years. A little tender smile curved her lips; she patted his shoulder as a mother caresses her headstrong, dearest son.

"Whatever you think is best, Frank dear," she said, "let's do that."

* * * * *

"I only hope to heaven she don't understand!" Luella muttered nervously, glancing unguardedly at Caroline.

Caroline stamped her foot angrily. Her sensitive little body had thrilled in the girl's arm; she had felt all the pathos and dignity of Luella's appeal, the young man seemed to her mysterious and noble. And now she was distrusted, grudged her free part in this exciting afternoon! She scowled at Luella.

"You must think I'm a baby, Luella Judd!" she cried irritably. "I understand all about it, just as well as you do! Didn't we have just the same thing in the family, ourselves?"

Luella gasped.

"For heaven's sakes, Car'line, wha' do you mean?" she demanded; "it's perfectly awful the things you city children know! I do declare, I don't think it's right!"

"Pooh!" said Caroline grandly. "I should hope I knew more'n that! Why, my Uncle Joe's own sister, her man that she was engaged to, he didn't believe in church weddings, either, and he told my mother if he had to stand up in gray trousers with those six girls in pink hats and the bishop all togged out and the whole town glaring at 'em he'd run away with Cousin Elizabeth, and he didn't know whether he'd marry her at all! And they cried and they begged 'em, and I was to be a flower girl and wear my white silk stockings, but still they wouldn't. And Cousin Elizabeth cried, too, and she said she'd never feel married in a travelling dress, but Cousin Richard said he guessed she would. And everybody was terribly angry with them, but they just had it in her aunt's house that was paralyzed and couldn't ever go out, and it was right next door to Cousin Richard's father's house, too, just like this! Not one bridesmaid and nobody had any cake in a box to take away. It was awful, just like Luella says, but afterwards we all forgave 'em. They ran off and did it in the afternoon—there was only her father and that paralyzed aunt."

She drew a long breath and smiled importantly at them.

Dorothy put an arm over her fat little shoulders.

"You must be my bridesmaid and my flower girl, too," she said softly.

"You'll go get your father, o' course, Mr. Wortley?" Luella appeared unconscious of the possibility of any refusal, and though he started, scowled, and shook his head, her warning glance in Caroline's direction checked him, and he plunged out of the door.

* * * * *

"And may God bless you both," the Reverend Mr. Andrews concluded unofficially, noting with a certain curiosity, the impeccable riding breeches of the groom, and the bride's looped-up linen habit—he had never married a couple attired in precisely that manner, and he scented romance.

"Your generosity, Mr. Wortley, to say nothing of your father—" He paused helplessly. "Mrs. Judd knows what this will mean to us this winter," he finished. "No, I thank you, Mr. Wortley, I thank you sir, but I never touch liquor in any form. But I drink their health in this excellent iced coffee, I do indeed."

Caroline slipped around to Luella, who sat mopping her eyes behind the kitchen door.

"I wish Mr. Wortley—Mr. Grumpy Wortley—wouldn't kiss me any more, Luella," she complained, "it prickles my face dreadfully. I don't see why I can't go with 'em as far as the Mountain Road—I'd love to ride on his horse. I was bridesmaid—why can't I? Do you think my mother'll let me keep this pin? What did you cry for, Luella? What was it he said to you? He's going to drive me down to the village to write some telegrams to New York with him, after they've started. And then he'll speak to mother about the pin, but we have to get the telegrams written first. Why do they always put it into the papers the first thing, Luella? When you were married, were there telegrams about it in the papers, up here?"

Luella tied on her checked apron and attacked the soiled dishes heaped on the kitchen table; her cheeks were deeply flushed and her hands trembled a little. She smiled affectionately at Caroline.

"I'll drive down with you, I guess, an' stop off at your ma's," she answered.

"No, it wasn't telegraphed 'round much when I was married, but then," with a humorous twinkling of her deep-set eyes, "I hadn't never studied into the marryin' question so thorough as some!"



VI

HIS FATHER'S HOUSE

Caroline stopped abruptly at the edge of the little pine-encircled glade that edged the pond-lily pond and waved her hand in warning.

"Hist! there are human creatures there!" she whispered loudly.

It would be evident to anyone not absolutely stone blind that she was a fairy. A lace-edged, snowy nightgown was caught up by a sky blue ribbon about her hips, trailing gloriously behind her over the grass; two large wings artfully constructed of wrapping-paper flopped behind her surprisingly bare shoulders—the nightgown was decidedly decollete, and had been made for a person several sizes larger than Caroline.

"Hooma keecha da!" crooned the General. His conversation was evidently based on the theory that the English language is a dark mystery, insoluble by system, but likely to be blundered into fortuitously, at any moment, if the searcher gabble with sufficient steadiness and persistence. His costume, consisting merely of the ordinary blue denim overalls of commerce, would have been positively commonplace were it not for the wings of bright pink tissue paper, which he wore with a somewhat confusing obstinacy, pinned firmly to his chest. Miss Honey assisted his wavering footsteps rather sulkily; she longed for the white and lacy draperies in front of her and regarded her ballet skirts of stitched newspaper with bare tolerance. It is true she wore a crown of tinfoil and carried a wand made of half a brass curtain rod; but her laced tan boots, stubbed and stained, showed with disgusting plainness, and nobody would take the trouble to make her a newspaper bodice.

"If you don't stop tickling me with that arrow, Brother Washburn, I'll go back!" she declared, snappishly.

The fourth member of the crew, whose bathing trunks and jersey, fitted with surprisingly life-like muslin wings, pointed to Puck, though the quiver slung across his shoulder woke conflicting memories of Diana, chuckled guiltily and took a flying leap from the big boulder into the center of the glade. His wings stiffened realistically, and as he landed, poised on one classically sandalled foot with arms outspread, the picnic party before him started violently, and one of them clutched the other's sleeve with a little cry.

"What the—oh, it's all right! He's the real thing, isn't he, now?"

The young man patted the girl's shoulder reassuringly and chuckled as the rest of the crew emerged from the pines and peered over the boulder.

"They're only children," he said.

She dropped her eyes and tightened her fingers around the shining drinking cup.

"Why, yes, they're only children," she repeated carelessly.

Now, each of these picnic people had said the same words, but it was entirely obvious to their fascinated audience that the words meant very different things. For this reason they sidled around the young lady impersonally, avoiding with care the edges of her pale-tinted billowy skirts, and lined up confidently beside the young gentleman.

Not that he controlled the picnic. It was spread out in front of her, bewitching, intimate, in its suggestion of you—and—I; two shiny plates, two knives, two forks, two fringed and glossy napkins. A dark red bottle was propped upright between two stones, a pile of thin, triangular sandwiches balanced daintily on some cool lettuce leaves, and a fascinating object that glistened mysteriously in the sun, held the platter of honor in the middle.

"The Honorable Mr. Puck," suggested the young man, in the tone of one continuing an interrupted conversation, "is figuring out how the chicken got into the jelly without busting it—am I not right?"

Brother grinned, and Caroline moved a little nearer. Miss Honey stared at the young lady's fluted skirts and glistening yellow waves of hair, at the sweeping plume in her hat, and her tiny high-heeled buckled slippers.

"I am obliged to admit," the young man went on, slicing into the quivering aspic, "that I don't know myself. I never could find out. Perhaps the young person in the—the not-too-long skirts, waved her wand over the bird and he jumped in and the hole closed up?" He slipped a section of the bird in question upon the lady's plate and held the red bottle over her cup.

"There was hard-boiled eggs stuck on those jelly things at our wedding," Brother remarked, "on the outside, all around. But they were bigger than yours."

"I don't doubt it for a moment," the young man assured him politely. "Have you been married long, may I ask? And which of these ladies—"

"Brother doesn't mean that he was married," Miss Honey explained, "it was his oldest sister. She married a lawyer. I was flower girl."

"Ima fow guh," murmured the General, thrusting out a fat and unexpected hand and snatching from a hitherto unperceived box a tiny cake encased in green frosting.

"Oh, dear, it's got the pistache!" said the yellow-haired lady disgustedly.

Miss Honey fled after the General, who, though he was obliged to wear whalebone braces in his shoes on account of youth and a waddling and undeveloped gait, scattered over the ground with the elusive clumsiness of a young duckling. Brother blushed, but scorned to desert his troop.

"He's awfully little, you know—he doesn't mean to steal," he explained.

"Twenty-two months," Caroline added, "and he does go so fast." She smiled doubtfully at the lady, who selected a cake covered with chocolate and looked at the young man.

"Don't forget that Mr. Walbridge wants to use the car at six," she said, "and you have to allow for that bad hill."

He looked a little uncomfortable. "Don't you want to speak to the children, Tina, dear?" he asked, dropping his voice; he sat very close to her.

"They have both spoken directly to you, you see, and children feel that so—not being noticed. They're trying to apologize to you for the cake."

She bit her lip and turned to Miss Honey, who arrived panting, with the General firmly secured by the band of his overalls. An oozy green paste dripped from his hand; one of the pink wings intermittently concealed his injured expression.

"That's all right," she said, "don't bother about the cake, little girl, the baby can have it."

Miss Honey sniffed.

"I guess you don't know much about babies if you think they can eat cake like that," she answered informingly.

"Hush, now, General, don't begin to hold your breath? Do you want a nice graham cracker! It's so nice!"

"So nice!" Caroline repeated mechanically, with a business-like smile at the General, helpfully champing her teeth.

The General wavered. He allowed one sticky paw to be cleaned with a handful of grass, but his expression was most undecided, and he was evidently in a position to hold his breath immediately if necessary.

Miss Honey nodded to Caroline. "You've got 'em, haven't you?" she asked.

Caroline fumbled at the interior of the nightgown and produced a somewhat defaced brown wafer.

"General want it?" she said invitingly. There was another moment of disheartening suspense. Brother assisted gallantly.

"They're fine, General!" he urged, "try one!" And he, too, nodded and chewed the empty air. Instinctively the strange young gentleman did the same.

The General looked around at them cautiously, noted the strained interest of the circle, smiled forgivingly, and reached out for the brown wafer. Peace was assured.

"If you could only see how ridiculous you looked," the young lady remarked, wiping her shining pink finger nails carefully, "you'd never do that again, Rob. Have a cake?"

He laughed, but blushed a little at her tone.

"I suppose so," he admitted. "No, thanks, I'll pass up the cake. Isn't there enough to go 'round, perhaps?"

He examined the box.

"By George, there are exactly three left!" he said delightedly. "Will the fairy queen hand one to her brother—the big brother—and one to—to the angel?"

Caroline moved firmly to the front. "I am the Queen," she explained, "but I let Miss Honey take the crown and the wand, or she wouldn't be anything. Brother isn't her brother—that's just his name. Brother Washburn. The General's her brother. I'll take that strawberry one. We're much obliged, thank you."

The cakes vanished unostentatiously and the young gentleman filled his cup and disposed of it before anyone spoke.

"We were such a big family, you see," he explained to the pursed red mouth beside him, "and I know just how it is. You never get enough cake, and never that dressy kind. It's molasses cake and cookies, mostly."

Brother moved nearer and nodded.

"Well, but you can have all the cake you want, now, thank goodness," said the lady, glancing contentedly at the tea basket, complete with its polished fittings, at the big box of bonbons beside her, and the handsome silk motor coat that was spread as a carpet under her light dress.

"Oh, yes, but now I don't want it," he assured her, "I want—other things." He flashed a daring glance from two masterful brown eyes, and she smiled indulgently at him for a handsome, spoiled boy.

"Am I going to get them?" he persisted.

She laughed the light little laugh of the triumphant woman.

"My dear Bob," she said, "anybody who can buy all the cake he wants can usually get the—other things!"

His face clouded slightly.

"I hate to hear you talk like that, Christine," he began, "it's not fair to yourself—"

"How'd you know I was Puck?" Brother inquired genially. He made no pretense of including the lady in the conversation; for him she was simply not there.

"Oh, I'm not so ignorant as I look," the young man replied. "I don't believe you could stump me on anything you'd be likely to be—I've probably been 'em all myself. We were always rigging up at home. Didn't you use to do that, Tina?"

The lady shook her head decidedly.

"If I'd ever got hold of a—well, if I'd had a chance of things as nice as that biggest one's dragging through the dirt there, I'd have been doing something very different with it, I can assure you, Mr. Armstrong! I'd have been saving it."

"But at that age—" he protested.

"Oh, I knew real lace from imitation at that age, all right," she insisted.

"But you don't think of those things—you go in for the fun," he urged.

"It wasn't exactly my idea of fun."

"No?" he queried, "why, I thought all children did this sort of thing. We had a regular property room in the attic. We used to be rigged out as something-or-other all day Saturday, usually."

"What were you?" Brother demanded eagerly. Unconsciously he dropped, hugging his knees, by the side of the young man, and Caroline, observing the motion, came over a little shyly and stood behind them. The young lady raised her eyebrows and shot a side glance at her host, but he smiled back at her brightly.

"Well, we did quite a little in the pirate line," he replied. "I had an old Mexican sword and Ridgeway—that was my cousin—owned a pair of handcuffs."

"Handcuffs!" Brother's jaw dropped.

"Yes, sir, handcuffs. It was rather unusual, of course, and he was awfully proud of them. An uncle of his was a sheriff out in Pennsylvania somewhere, and when he died he left 'em to Ridge in his will. That was pretty grand, too, having it left in a will."

Caroline nodded and sat down on an old log behind the young man. A long smear of brown, wet bark appeared on the nightgown, and one end of the blue ribbon dribbled into a tiny pool of last night's shower, caught in a hollow stone.

"It was a toss-up who'd be pirate king," the young man went on, smiling over his shoulder at Caroline, "because I was older than he was, handcuffs or not, and after all, a sword is something. This one was hacked on the edge and every hack may have meant—probably did—a life."

He paused dramatically.

"I bet you they did!" Brother declared, clapping his hands on his knees.

"Weren't there any girls?"

Caroline slipped from the log and sprawled on the pine needles.

"Dear me, yes," said the young man, "I should say so. Four of them. Winifred and Ethel and Dorothea and the Babe—about as big as your General, there, and dreadfully greedy, the Babe was. Winifred had the brains and she made up most of the games; I tell you, that girl had a head!"

"Just like Caroline," Brother inserted eagerly.

"Probably," the young man agreed. "She was pretty certain to be Fairy Queen, too, I remember. But Thea sewed the clothes and begged the things we needed and looked after the Babe."

"And what did Ethel do?"

"Why, now you speak of it, I don't remember that Ethel did much of anything but look pretty and eat most of the luncheon," he said. "She used to be Pocahontas a good deal—she's very dark—and I usually was Captain John Smith. Ridge was Powhatan. And Ethel's married now. Good Lord! She has twins—of all things!—and they're named for Ridge and me."

"I'm glad General isn't twins," said Miss Honey thoughtfully, pulling her brother back from the fascinations of the tea basket and comforting him with the curtain-rod wand.

"Still, we could do the Princes in the Tower with him—them, I mean," Caroline reminded her, "and then, when they got bigger, the Corsican Brothers—don't you remember that play Uncle Joe told about?"

The young man laughed softly.

"If that's not Win all over!" he exclaimed. "She always planned for Ridge to be Mazeppa on one of the carriage horses, when he got the right size, but somehow, when you do get that size, you don't pull it off."

"I did Mazeppa," said Brother modestly, "but of course it was only a donkey. It wasn't much."

"We never had one," the young man explained. "Nothing but Ridge's goat, and she was pretty old. But she could carry a lot of lunch."

He turned suddenly on his elbow and smiled whimsically at the lady.

"Come on, Tina, what did you play?" he asked.

"Is it possible you have remembered that I still exist?" she answered, half mockingly, half seriously vexed. "I'm afraid I'm out of this, really. I never pretended to be anything, that I remember."

"But what did you do when you were a youngster?" he persisted, "you must have played something!"

She shook her head.

"We played jackstones," she said indulgently, after a moment of thought, "and then I went to school, of course, and—oh, I guess we cut out paper dolls."

Caroline looked aghast.

"Didn't you have any dog?" she demanded.

"I hope not, in a four-room flat," the lady returned with feeling. "One family kept one, though, and the nasty little thing jumped up on a lovely checked silk aunty had just given me, and ruined it. I tried to take it out with gasolene, but it made a dreadful spot, and I cried myself sick. Of course I didn't understand about rubbing the gasolene dry then; I was only eleven."

The children looked uncomfortably at the ground, conscious of a distinct lack of sympathy for the tragedy that even at this distance deepened the lovely rose of the lady's cheek and softened her dark blue eyes.

"But in the summer," the young man said, "surely it was different then! In the country—"

"Oh, mercy, we didn't get to the country very much," she interrupted. "You know July and August are bargain times in the stores and a dressmaker can't afford to leave. Aunty did all her buying then and I went with her. Dear me," as something in his face struck her, "you needn't look so horrified! It's not bad in New York a bit—there's something going on all the while; and then we went to Rockaway and Coney Island evenings, and had grand times. To tell you the truth, I never cared for the country—I don't sleep a bit well there. Of course, to come out this way, with everything nice, it's all very fine, but to stay in—no, thanks."

"I know what you mean, of course," he said, "but the city's no place for children. I'm mighty glad I didn't grow up there. And I've always had the idea the country would be the best place to settle down in, finally. You can potter around better there when you're old, don't you think so? I remember old Uncle Robert and his chrysanthemums—"

"Dear me, we all seem to be remembering a good deal this afternoon!" she broke in. "Since we're neither of us children and neither of us ready to settle down on account of old age, suppose we stick to town, Bob?"

There was a practical brightness in her voice, and her even white teeth, as she smiled persuasively at him, were very pretty. He smiled back at her.

"That seems a fair proposition," he agreed. He reached for her hand and for a moment her soft, bright coloring, her dainty completeness, framed in the green of the little glade, were all he saw. Then, as his eyes lingered on the cool little pond and the waving pine boughs dark against the blue sky, he sighed.

"But I'm sorry you don't like the country, Tina, I am, truly," he said boyishly. "I've had such bully times in it. And I—I rather had the idea that we liked the same things."

"Gracious!" the young lady murmured, "after the arguments we've had over plays and actors!"

"Oh well, I suppose girls are all alike. But I mean other things—"

"Where did you do the Pirates?" Brother inquired, politely.

"What? Where did I—oh to be sure," he returned good-naturedly. "We had an enormous cellar, all full of pillars, to hold it up, and queer little rooms and compartments in it; a milk room and vegetable bins and a workshop. You could ride on a wheel all round, dodging the pillars. There were all kinds of places to lie in wait there, and spring out. Win told us an awful thing out of Poe that happened in a cellar, and Thea would never go there after four in the afternoon.

"It was a jolly old place," he went on dreamily, "I can't keep my mind off it this afternoon, somehow, since I've seen you fellows rigged out the way we used to. And there was a pond back in the Christmas Tree Lot like this one. Ridge and I built a raft out there and stayed all day on it. It was something out of Clark Russell's books, and Win pushed a barrel out and rescued us. She was a wonder, that girl."

He chuckled softly to himself.

"We tried to stock that pond with oysters once, and Ridge and I printed invitations for a clambake on our handpress, on the strength of them, but it was a dreadful waste of money. When we found it wasn't working, Ridge nearly killed himself diving for 'em, so we could get some good out of 'em. There they lay at the bottom, showing just as plain as possible, but it was no use—Poor fellow, he'll never dive any more."

"Is he—did he—" Caroline had crawled along till her head lay almost on the young man's knee; her eyes were big with sympathy.

"Lost his leg," he told her briefly. "Philippines. Above the knee. He ran away from college to go. He had the fever badly, too, and he'll never be fit for much again, I'm afraid. But he's just as brave about it—"

"Oh, yes," Brother burst out eagerly, "I bet you he is!"

"We had such plans," he said softly, "all of us, you know, for coming back to the old place and ending up there. Win says her kids shall stay there if she can't."

"Where is she?"

"Oh, she's 'most anywhere. Her husband's in the Navy—Asiatic Squadron—and she hangs about where he's likely to strike the country next. She was in Honolulu the last I heard. So she's not likely to do much for the place, you see."

"Where's Thea?" Miss Honey inquired.

"Wha tee?" mimicked the General, with an astounding similarity of inflection.

The young man threw his light cap at the baby's head; it landed grotesquely cocked over one eye, and the General, promptly sitting upon it to protect himself from further attacks, fell into convulsions of laughter as the young man threatened him.

"Thea's out West, on a ranch just out of Denver. She was married first, and her boys have ponies now—broncos. Of course it's fine for them out there, but she says she won't be happy till they can get East for a year or two. She wants them to see the place and grow up a little in it. She wants 'em to see the attic and poke about the barn and the stable and climb over the rocks. You see they're on the ranch all summer and in school in Denver all winter, and Thea says they don't know the look of an old stone wall with an apple tree in the corner. She says the fruit's not nearly so nice out there."

"Where is the place? Near here?"

"No, not so very. It's in the Berkshires, just out of Great Barrington. Father's practice was there, and grandfather's, too. Grandfather built it."

"That's where Lenox is, the Berkshires, isn't it?" the lady inquired with a yawn.

"Heavens, its nothing like Lenox!" he assured her hastily.

"No?" she moved slightly and scowled.

"My foot's asleep! That comes of sitting here forever!"

She got up slowly and with little tentative gasps and cries stamped her prickled feet.

"Aunty has several customers who go to Lenox"—a vicious stamp—"it must be grand there, I think. One of them, a regular swell, too—she thinks nothing of a hundred and fifty for a dress"—a faint stamp and a squeal of anguish—"told her that property was going up like everything around there. You could probably"—a determined little jump—"sell your old place and buy a nice house right in Lenox."

The young man sat up suddenly. "Sell the place!" he repeated, "sell the place!"

He had been watching her pretty, vexed contortions with lazy pleasure, noticing through rings of cigarette smoke her dainty ankles, white through the mesh of the thin silk stockings, her straight, slim back, and the clear flush that deepened her eyes. But now his face changed, and he stared at her in frank irritation.

"Sell the place!" echoed Brother and Miss Honey in horror, and Caroline's lower lip pushed out scornfully.

The lady stamped again, but not wholly as a therapeutic measure.

"Well, really!" she cried, "any one would think that these children were your friends, and I was the stranger, from the way you all talk. What is the matter with you, anyway? What are you quarreling about, Rob?"

He looked at her thoughtfully, appraisingly.

"I don't think we're quarreling, Tina," he said, "its only that we look at things differently. And—and looking at things in the same way rather makes people friends, you know."

He glanced down at the children, close about him now, and then over appealingly at her. But she had moved to a rock a little away from them and now sat on it, her face turned toward the road, leaning on her pale pink parasol: she did not catch the glance.

"What became of the Babe?" Caroline suggested suddenly.

"Babe? She's—her name's Margaret—at school now. She's growing awfully pretty."

"And is she going to live at the place, too?" queried the young lady sharply.

"Babe's going to capture a corporation or trust or something, and have oceans of money and build on a wing and a conservatory and make Italian gardens, I believe," he answered, pleasantly enough.

"But I'd just as soon she left the gardens alone," he went on, "the rest of us like 'em the way they are. There was one separate one on the west side, just for Uncle Robert's chrysanthemums. He used to work all the morning there and then read in the afternoon. He'd sit on the side porch with his pipe and Bismarck—he was an old collie—and he did tell the bulliest yarns. He helped us with lessons, too. I don't know what we'd have done without Uncle Rob. Father was so busy—he had a big country practice and he used to get terribly tired—and we went to Uncle Rob for everything. He got us out of more scrapes, Ridge and me—

"There were tiger lillies in the south garden and lots of clumps of peonies. Grandmother put those there. And fennel and mint. Mother used to like dahlias—it seems as if she must have had a quarter of a mile of dahlias, but of course she didn't—all colors. That garden ran right up against the house, and directly next to the bricks was a row of white geraniums. They looked awfully well against the red. It's a brick house and the date is in bricks over the door—1840. Of course it's been rented for ten years now, but we have our things stored in the attic and the people are careful and—well they love the old place, you know, and they keep up the gardens. They wanted to buy when father died and again after mother—

"But Ridge and I just hung on and leased it from year to year. We always hoped to get it back. And now to think that I should be the one to do it!"

"How are you the one?" Brother inquired practically.

"Why Uncle Wesley that ran away to sea—I used to have his room, just over the kitchen, and many a time I've climbed down the side porch just as he did, and run away fishing—Uncle Wesley died in England, last year, and left me considerably more than he'd ever have made if he'd minded grandmother and studied to be a parson. It seems Uncle Rob knew where he was all the time, and wrote him, before he was sick himself, to leave the money to the family, and by George, he did.

"Lots of the old stuff is there—the sideboard and the library table and grandfather's old desk mother kept the preserves in.

"I used to lie on an old sofa in the dining-room on hot afternoons, waiting for it to get cool, reading some travel book, eating summer apples, and listening to Win and Thea practicing duets in the parlor. Lord, I can hear 'em now! I'd look out at the brick walls, hot, you know, in the sun, and the pear tree, with the nurse rocking Babe under it, and old Annie shelling peas by the kitchen door, and it all seemed so comfortable—"

His eyes were half closed. The children listened dreamily, huddled against him; low red rays crept down from the west-bound sun and struck the little pond to copper, the nickel dishes to silver, the lady's skirt to a peach-colored glory; a little sudden breeze set the red bottle tinkling between the stones. But to the group entranced with memories so vivid that reality blurred before them, the peach and copper glories were ripe fruit against an old brick wall, the tinkle echoed from an old piano in a dim, green-shuttered parlor, and the soft snoring of the General, asleep on the silk motor coat, was the drowsy breathing of a contented little fellow in knickerbockers dreaming in a window seat.

"Did you ever go to Atlantic City?"

The lady's voice woke them as a gong wakes a sleeper. "Now that's my idea of the country!"

He stared at her vaguely.

"But—but that's no place for children," he protested. He had hardly grown up at that moment, himself.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"It's not exactly necessary to have six children, you know," she said, "and then you needn't be worried over a place for them, and can afford to think a little about the place you'd like for yourself."

The sun was in her eyes and she missed the look in his as he jumped up from the astonished group and seized her wrist.

"Christine, you simply shan't talk that way!" he said. "I don't know what's the matter with you to-day—why are you so different? Are you trying to tease me? Because I might as well tell you right now that you're succeeding a little too well."

The pink parasol dropped between them. Her eyes met his squarely, though her voice shook a little.

"Let my wrist go, Mr. Armstrong," she said, "you hurt me. I assure you I'm not different at all. If you really want to know what the matter with me is, let me ask you if you saw anything out of the way before your friends there interfered?" she pointed to the little group he had left. "We seemed to be getting on very well then."

His face fell, and she went on more quickly and with less controlled tones.

"You are the one that is different! I have always been just the same—just exactly the same! Ask anybody if I've changed—ask aunty! 'Tina has the best temper of any girl I know,' aunty always says. But its just as she warned me. Aunty always knows—she's seen lots and lots of people and plenty of swells, too—it isn't as if you were the only one, Mr. Armstrong!"

He looked curiously at the flushed, lovely face; curiously, as though he had never really studied it before.

"Perhaps—perhaps it is I," he said slowly, "I—maybe you're right. And of course I know—" he smiled oddly at the pretty picture she made—"that I'm not the only one."

Something in his tone irritated her; she unfurled the rosy parasol angrily.

"Aunty said from the beginning you'd be hard to get on with," she flashed out. "She said the second time you came to the house with Mr. Walbridge for his sister's fitting and asked Kitty and I for a ride in the machine, 'I'm perfectly willing you girls should go, for they're both all right and I think the dark one's serious, but—"

"You discussed me with your aunt, then?"

She looked at him in amazement.

"Discussed you with aunty? Why certainly I did. Why shouldn't I? How do you suppose I'm to get anywhere, placed as I am, Mr. Armstrong, unless I'm pretty careful? I've nothing but my looks—I know that perfectly well—and I can't afford to make any mistakes. And aunty said, 'I think the dark one's serious, Tina, but I don't know, somehow, I'd keep in with Walbridge. He may not have so much money, but he'll be easier to manage. Armstrong seems like any other gay young fellow, and for all I know he is—he's certainly generous—but I'd rather have you Mrs. Walter Walbridge and lose the family custom, than have you tied up to an obstinate man."

"And—excuse me, but I'm really interested," he asked, "could you be Mrs. Walter Walbridge?"

"Yes, I could," she answered, "he asked me when he lent you the machine. I suppose he thought you might," she added simply.

He drew a long breath.

"And you answered—"

"I said I'd think it over," she said softly. "I—are you really angry with me, Rob? We're friends, aren't we? Friends—"

Her eyes lifted to his. "You see, Rob," she went on, still softly, "a girl like me has to be awfully straight and pretty careful. It's not easy to go to theaters and suppers and out with the machines and keep your head—you can't always tell about men. And I've cost aunty quite a lot, though of course, my clothes were the cheapest, really, all made in the house. I had two good offers to go on the stage, but she wouldn't have it. And even if Mr. Walbridge's mother did make a fuss, she can't help his getting the money. Of course I told him I'd think it over, but I always liked—"

"And now you've thought it over," he interrupted quickly, "and you've found out that your remarkably able aunt was right. You're a wise little girl, Tina, for if I know Walter, he will be easier to manage! He's a lucky fellow—always was. But he'll never get his car at six to-night."

He plucked out his watch and strapping up the tea basket began to push the things hastily into it.

She stared ahead of her, her chin shaking a little, her eyes a little dim and most beautiful.

"I—you don't—you're not angry, Rob?" She leaned over him.

"Tina, if you look like that I'll kiss you, and Walter will call me out!" he said lightly. "Of course I'm not angry—we're as chummy as you'll let me be. Come on and find the choo-choo car!"

He slipped his arm through the basket handle and made for his coat. The children scrambled off it apologetically; they were not quite certain where they stood in the present crisis. But he smiled at them reassuringly.

"We'll have to meet again," he called, already beyond them, "and have some more of those little cakes! Good-by till next time!"

"Good-by! Good-by!" they called, and Miss Honey, eyeing the pink parasol longingly, ventured, "Good-by, Miss Tina!"

The lady did not answer, but walked slowly after the young man, shaking out her billowy skirts. Soon he was behind the big boulder; soon she had followed him.

"Yady go!" the General announced.

"They had a quarrel, didn't they?" Miss Honey queried. "But they made up, so it was all right."

Caroline shook her head wisely.

"We—ell," she mused, "they made it up, but I don't believe he changed his mind, just the same."

Something puffed loudly in the road, whirred down to a steady growl, and grew fainter and fainter.

"There they go!" Brother cried.

He picked up a bit of bark and tossed it into the little pool.

"I bet you Ridge will be glad to get back to the Place," he said.



VII

THE PRETENDERS

Midsummer dust lay ankle-deep in the road, white and hot. The asphalt sidewalk baked in the noon sun, the leaves hung motionless from the full trees; only the breathless nasturtiums flickered like flames along the fences, for the other flowers wilted in the glare. Caroline, hatless and happy as a lizard in the relentless heat, spun along on her bicycle, the only bit of movement on all the long stretch of the road. The householders had all retired behind their green blinds; even New England yielded to August's imperious siesta, and it might have been a deserted village, empty and mysterious, through which she glided.

By little and little she grew to feel this; her feet moved more and more slowly on the pedals, her brows knitted as the great idea grew. Her lips moved, inaudibly at first, but soon began the sing-song murmur so well known to those who crept upon her unawares.

"I am all alone; the rest have gone—where have they gone!—where could they go? Oh, they're dead. Murdered! No, the town was besieged, and we made ropes with our hair, and bowstrings.... And they all marched out, and they closed the city gates...." Slower and slower the pedals moved: Caroline was pushing uphill. "So then the Mayor said: 'No, this sacrifice is too great—I can not allow you to make it, my brave children. Death—and worse—await you beyond these walls. Let us die here together.'" Her chin quivered. At the summit of the hill she paused.

"'Then die! Die like the dogs you are!' cried the Captain"—with feet perched high she swooped down the slope, her heart pounding with excitement, narrowly escaping collision at the bottom with an empty van, crawling through the heat, manned by a somnolent, huddled driver. Its hollow, cumbrous rattling pointed sharply the loneliness of the silent road, almost bare now of houses, for they were on the very outskirts of the village, and in a flash Caroline knew it for what it was, and shuddered.

"It's the Tumbrel!" she murmured softly, and to her awed fancy the graceful, slim-necked figures in flowered gowns drooped dreadfully or stiffened in a last pathetic defiance as they rolled by.

"Courage, my sister, courage!" whispered the brave gentleman, while the hoarse crowd shouted.... "And I am Marie Antoinette!" cried Caroline in a burst of inspiration.

Dismounting, she walked proudly beside her wheel; scornfully she held her head above that vulgar, cruel mob; the driver, poor in illusions, drowsed stupidly in front of the baleful wagon-load he knew not of, and clattered down the hill. To the ill-fated Queen, who followed the curving line of the twelve-foot iron fence that had sprung up at her side, ten minutes seemed but one. Lost in tragic musing, she wandered swiftly on; had you, meeting her suddenly, asked her where she was going, there is little doubt that she would have told you she was escaping to her palace. And all at once, as she halted a moment opposite a clear space in the shrubbery and thickly planted trees that followed the inside line Of the iron fence, she beheld the palace, high on a terraced knoll. It was of clean-cut gray stone, rising into a square tower at one corner, from which the flag drooped in bright folds of red and blue. The windows shone like mirrors; trim, striped awnings broke the severe angles of the long building; brilliant flower-beds gleamed from the smooth turf and bordered the neat walks of crushed gray stone. It stood massively above its terraces, a very castle of romance to Caroline, who had never before seen it so polished and beflagged. Wonderingly she tried the great wrought-iron gate, but it was securely locked, and a new sign was attached to it:

PRIVATE PROPERTY!

ALL TRESPASSERS ARE WARNED

FROM THE PREMISES!

VISITORS PLEASE RING AT THE LODGE.

Caroline stared at it vaguely. So delicate are the oscillations of the imaginative imp, that it is hard to say just where he swings his slaves into determined self-delusion. If you had shaken Caroline severely and demanded of her in the character of an impatient adult the name of her castle, she would undoubtedly have informed you that it was Graystone Tower, a long deserted mansion, too expensive hitherto for any occupants but the children who roamed every inch of it for the first spring flowers and coasted down its terraces in winter. But no one was there to shake her, and so with parted lips and dreamy eyes she speculated as to whether they would fire the cannon on her arrival and whether she would scatter coins among her loyal servants or merely order an ox roasted whole in honor of her safe return.

Soon she reached the smaller gate, but before she tried the handle the sign warned her that it would be useless. She frowned: no one could keep up the spirit of a royal home-coming under these disadvantages. Suddenly her eyes brightened, she tossed her head, and following what was apparently a little blind alley of shrubbery, she plunged into a tangle of undergrowth and disappeared. Only her bicycle, resting against the fence, showed that some one had passed that way. Working herself through the screen of leaves, she emerged into a fairly cleared path that her accustomed feet followed to its logical climax—a deep depression scooped out under the sharp, down-pointed iron prongs, worn smooth by the frequent pressure of small bodies. The fence had lost its shiny blackness by now and the grass grew rank and untended around the mouth of the gap. Wriggling through, Caroline straightened herself and strolled unconcerned toward the castle, not so near her now. Soon she reached a newly rolled tennis court; farther on two saddled horses pawed beside a little summer-house, impatient for the start; an iridescent fountain tossed two gleaming balls high into the air. Caroline moved like one in a dream; her fancy, grown so overwhelmingly real, dazzled her, fairly. But it was like the court of the Sleeping Beauty—no one came or called.

At length, wandering on, she came upon a gardener in a neat gray livery, clipping with a large, distorted pair of scissors the velvet edge of a flower-bed. He resembled so undeniably the gardeners in that ageless chronicle of Alice that Caroline smiled approvingly upon him.

"You are one of my gardeners, I suppose," she said regally.

"Yes, Miss," he replied, respectfully, touching his banded cap, "I am that."

"You garden very well," said Marie Antoinette, dizzy with delight at his manner.

"Yes, Miss; thank you, Miss, I'm sure," and the cap came off.

She walked on superbly. At last it had happened, and she, Caroline in the flesh, had fought her way through the prickly hedge of every-day appearance and won into the garden of romance, where dreams were true and anything might happen.

At that moment there came to meet her from behind a great beech tree a slender little lady. She had gray hair puffed daintily and fancifully about her small, pale face, and knots of pale blue ribbon, woven in and out of her lacy, trailing gown, repeated the color of her mild, round eyes. Half consciously Caroline muttered: "Here is one of my ladies-in-waiting," when the little lady rushed at her, smiling delightedly.

"Are you a queen, then?" she cried in a high, sweet voice. "How very pleasant. Dear me, how very pleasant!"

Caroline smiled with equal delight. Very few persons of this little lady's age had such quick sense; mostly they had to be taught the game.

"Yes," she answered, "I am. I am Queen Marie Antoinette."

The little lady fell back a step. Her blue eyes clouded and she pouted like a big baby.

"Why—why, how can you be?" she demanded, fretfully, "when that is who I am, myself!"

For a moment Caroline scowled; such flexibility was almost disconcerting. Then her natural good-humor and the training resulting from many summers with Miss Honey, who claimed all the best roles at once and shifted often, prompted her generous reply:

"All right. I'll be Mary Queen of Scots, then—I like it about as well."

The little lady beamed again.

"That will be very pleasant," she said, "I trust your majesty is quite well?"

"Yes, indeed," Caroline assured her, adding airily; "How well the castle is looking this morning! I think I'll have the flag out every day, now that I'm back."

Marie Antoinette flushed angrily and pouted once more.

"You! You!" she mimicked. "What have you to do with my flag? That goes up by my orders, let me inform you! Here, gardener—" and she waved her little parasol at the man in gray, who was already walking rapidly towards them—"is that flag in my honor or not?"

"Yes, Miss," he said promptly. "Sure it is, Miss," and he nodded politely at them both. For a moment the rival queens confronted each other fiercely, then her Majesty of France smiled at Scottish Mary.

"You see," she said, in her high, bright voice; "you see, I was right. But then, I always am. I shall have to leave your Royal Highness now, for I see one of my subjects coming whom I don't care for at all—she is not very pleasant."

Sweeping a low courtesy, the little lady glided away with a graceful, dipping motion; the white hand that lifted her trailing skirts was covered with turquoises.

Caroline looked where her royal sister had pointed, and saw a tall, handsome young woman hurrying toward her. She was dressed plainly in black, but with a rich plainness that could not have escaped the youngest of womankind. Opposite Caroline she paused, her hand on her heart.

"John! Oh, John! This—this is a child!"

"Yes, Miss; sure it is," said the gardener politely.

"But how did she get here? Surely no children come here?" Her hands were trembling.

"Yes, Miss, many of 'em—sure they do," he said pleasantly, with a good Irish smile.

But it was plain that his good-nature did not please the handsome lady. She bit her lip angrily.

"You know very well, John, that you are not to talk to me in that idiotic way," she said decidedly. "You know that there is no necessity for it as well as I do."

"All right, Miss," he replied, soothingly.

"And you are lying when you say that children come here," she went on, controlling herself with a great effort, "for they do not."

The gardener scratched his head doubtfully and walked away, muttering to himself. The girl turned to Caroline.

"Tell me," she demanded eagerly, her voice low and hurried, "how did you come here? Are you with friends? Where are they? What were you saying to that queen woman?"

"I—I—we were—I was Mary Queen of Scots," Caroline stammered, struggling, as the happy dreamer struggles, not to wake.

The girl started back from her, pale with an emotion that left her handsome face drawn and old.

"Good Heavens!—it can't be—a child! A child!" she cried. Tears stood in her dark eyes.

"How pitiful!" she said, softly, to herself. Then, forcing a smile, she leaned coaxingly over Caroline.

"I am only too delighted to make your Majesty's acquaintance," she said, her voice a little husky, but very sweet. "I have read of you often. But surely your Majesty has not been here long? I do not recall having seen you before to-day."

"N—no, you haven't," Caroline answered, a little grudgingly, "I only just came."

"Ah!" said the girl, "and how did you come? Not through the house surely?"

"I came under the fence," said Caroline, "the gates were locked. I was Marie Antoinette then, but I changed after she said she was."

"Oh! Oh!" the girl groaned, covering her face with slender, ringless hands.

"But I'd just as soon," Caroline assured her—"honestly I would. Only you need a Bothwell for her. I only thought of Marie Antoinette after the tumbrel went by. I suppose she's used to Marie Antoinette, prob'ly, and so you can't get her to change."

She nodded in the direction of the little lady, now far from them, white against the shrubbery.

The girl drew in her breath in little gasps, as if she had been running.

"Y—yes," she assented, "she's used to being Marie Antoinette. Where is the hole you got through? Is it big enough for—for anybody?"

"Oh, yes," said Caroline indifferently, "but nobody knows about it but me and a few other k—prisoners, I mean; I've used it when I was escaping before. I think it was a rabbit-hole first, and then we made it bigger. Isn't that funny—Alice got in by a rabbit-hole, too, didn't she? I thought of her as soon as I saw the gardener. He's very polite, isn't he?"

The girl pressed her lips together. "They are all polite here," she said briefly. "Do you mean that you go in and out of this hole as you like? Do they know of it? Is it far from here?"

"It's over there," Caroline waved, vaguely. "Why? Do you want to escape, too? Are you a queen?"

"No." The girl said it with a slight shudder. "No, I'm not. I'm—I'm—Oh, I'm Joan of Arc! You know about her, don't you, dear?"

Caroline nodded. "Are you trying to escape?" she repeated, interested at last.

"Yes," said the girl, "I am. But don't tell any one, will you? Don't tell that gardener, for instance."

"Oh, no," Caroline assured her, "I won't tell. Wouldn't he help you?"

The girl laughed, an excited, sobbing laugh.

"No, he wouldn't help me at all," she said. "Come on, walk a little. He is watching us. Don't tell him about the hole, will you? Promise me faithfully." She turned and seized the child's wrist. "Can you keep a promise?" she panted.

"Of course I can."

"And if any one should ask you, could you—oh, could you say you came in by the gate?"

Caroline wriggled free.

"Of course," she said scornfully. "Do you think I'm a baby?"

"Don't be angry—don't," the girl pleaded. "I don't mean to frighten you—your Majesty, I mean—but I am so excited, and—and I don't quite do what I intend to do or say just what I mean. I am quite all right now. You see, that gardener—he isn't really a gardener." She watched Caroline narrowly, quite unprepared for the sudden delight in her eyes.

"Oh, he's pretending, too!" cried Mary of Scots joyfully. "What is he, really?"

"He's—he's one of my jailers," said the girl somberly. "And the first thing he would do would be to stop up your hole under the fence."

"Oh!" Caroline stared respectfully at the gardener, not far from them now.

"Were you ever in chains?" she said, in an awed voice.

"No," said Joan of Arc, "I never was. I wouldn't be in this—this fortress if I had to be in chains. This is for well-behaved prisoners."

"Is Marie Antoinette a prisoner, too?"

"Yes," said the girl, wearily, "she is. And she has kept me one. I should not be here now but for her. She prevented my escape."

"The mean old thing!" Caroline cried, indignantly, "did she tell?"

"She called that gardener," said the girl, "just as I was walking out of the little gate. Of course I had to walk slowly. She is very malicious—poor thing," she added quickly.

They were close to a little arbor now, and not so far from the castle. Caroline could see figures here and there strolling on the upper terraces and sitting on the piazzas. The tinkle of a mandolin cut the soft air and the new-mown grass smelled sweet.

"I think this castle is lovely, though, don't you, Joan of Arc?" she burst out.

"It is an abominable castle," said the girl, in a muffled voice. "Abominable!"

"Well, then," said Caroline, practically, "if you feel that way, you'd better escape."

The girl stared at her.

"Tell me," she said, earnestly, "have you ever been in this place before? Where do you live?"

Caroline shrugged her shoulders impishly.

"I am Mary Queen of Scots," she replied, obstinately, "and I live in Scotland. Of course, I've been here before. Who are all those other people in the castle?"

The girl drew a long, worried breath. "I believe I should go mad if I stayed here much longer," she said, to herself. She drew Caroline down beside her behind the arbor.

"Listen to me, Mary Queen of Scots," she murmured, very low, with anxious glances all about her.

"I don't know who you are nor where you come from, but I believe you will help me—I believe you're sorry for me. You know how badly Joan of Arc's friends felt when she was in prison? I'm sure you do. Well I have a—a dear friend who would die for me, if it would help me. He has no idea where I am. He thinks I don't want to see him. He thinks—he must think—I'm no longer his—his—his friend. If I could only get to him, I should be safe."

"Why don't you write to him?" Caroline suggested.

The girl laughed bitterly.

"If you had prisoners in your fortress, and they wrote letters to their friends to come and get them out, would you mail the letters?" she demanded.

"I s'pose not," said Caroline gravely. Joan of Arc gulped.

"My letters never went," she said. "Now listen: I must go up to my room and get some money—I can't do anything without money. Will you wait here till I come back and not let anyone see you if you can help it? And if they do, will you say that you slipped in at the gate with a party that came in an automobile? One was here lately. Ask if you mayn't stay and see the flowers. And then I will meet you."

She looked hard in Caroline's eyes. "You're only playing," she said, suddenly. "You aren't—you aren't—What is your real name, dear?"

Caroline scowled.

"You better hurry up," she said, "or that gardener'll catch us. You're just like Marie Antoinette," she added irritably. "You think nobody can be anything but only yourself!"

Without a word the girl turned and left her, half running. Caroline heard her sobs.

At the same moment she caught the crunch of footsteps on the stone path that led to the arbor and crouched low behind it. Two men, talking idly, entered the spot of shade and sank down on the rustic bench.

"Look here, Ferris," said one voice, "is she really dippy—that one?"

"What do you mean?" This was a deeper voice, attached evidently to blue serge legs, for the speaker leaned to Caroline's eye level to scratch a match on one of them.

"Oh, I mean what I say." A gray striped coat sleeve poked through the lattice work, as the first speaker leaned hard on it. "If she is, then I am, that's all. It looks queer to me."

The blue legs crossed themselves tightly under the seat.

"Look here yourself, Riggs," said the second voice. "If you're curious in this matter, I advise you to ask the doctor. He's boss here, not I—thank God! I obey orders and draw my forty per, as per contract. The same to you, only it's hardly forty, I suppose."

"No, it's not," grunted Graycoat. "Not by a good sight. I see myself asking the old man. I only asked your private opinion, Ferris,—you needn't get sore about it."

"My young friend," said Bluelegs, slowly, "there's only one thing you can ask me in this place that I won't tell you, and that's my private opinion!"

There was a little pause. Caroline, reveling in conspiracy, lay quiet, wondering who these people were and what they were talking about.

"You are perfectly welcome to anything I know about Miss Aitken," Bluelegs continued, puffing at a fresh cigarette and throwing the old one through the lattice at Caroline's feet.

"Her brother was a pronounced epileptic—died in a fit. I have seen the doctor's certificate. She was greatly worried over his death, and the manner of it, and showed signs of incipient melancholia."

"As how?" interrupted Graycoat.

"Don't know," said Bluelegs briefly. "Uncle said so. Wouldn't speak to anybody; cried all day; off her feed—that sort of thing. Very obstinate."

"Um," Graycoat muttered thoughtfully, "so am I. But I'd hate to be shut up on that account."

"So her uncle," proceeded Bluelegs, "wishing to save her, if possible, from her brother's fate, decided to—er—take steps in that direction and—and here she is."

"So I see," said Graycoat. "Was the brother's epilepsy hereditary?"

"I believe not," Bluelegs returned. "I believe the young gentlemen inherited a little too much a little too soon for his best good, and hit up a rather fast pace; his constitution wasn't the best."

"Did she know about all this?"

"I believe she did. Thought she might have saved him if she'd known sooner, her uncle said."

"Ah," said Graycoat. "Why didn't this kind uncle put his nephew with the doctor?"

"He wasn't his trustee," Bluelegs answered, quietly.

"Dear me," said Graycoat gently, "how fortunate for the nephew!"

"That's as you look at it," responded Bluelegs.

Caroline dozed in the warm shade; in dreams she chased the French Queen around the iridescent fountain.

"Uncle any business—besides trusteeship?" asked Graycoat.

"You can search me," said Bluelegs.

"Niece about twenty-one, I take it?" asked Graycoat.

"Search me again," said Bluelegs.

"Should you think," Graycoat demanded, after a pause, "that this incipient melancholia was likely to last long—speaking, of course, professionally?"

"Really, Dr. Riggs, I don't know." Bluelegs replied. "I am not at all in touch with the case. The doctor has entire charge of it. He mentioned to me last week that he was sorry to see both in her and young Dahl evidences of clearly formed delusions—"

"Young Dahl!" cried Graycoat, "why, the boy is an admitted paranoiac!"

"Really?" said Bluelegs, "you know I don't do much but cocaine and morphia, these days. Did you know the doctor was going to print my pamphlet?"

"He can afford it, I judge," growled Graycoat. "He gets a hundred a week from Miss Aitken."

Bluelegs got up and sent a second cigarette after the first.

"Riggs," he said gravely, "if you're aiming to succeed as a magazine writer, you're beginning well; if it's your ambition to succeed in this business, and succeed right here, you're beginning badly. You were keen enough to get this place. If you talk much this way, you won't keep it long—you can take it from me. Let's come in to lunch."

Their tread on the arbor floor roused the sleeping conspirator; she sat up, rubbing her eyes half afraid that the clipped terraces, the floating, flag, the inhabited castle, were only parts of her dream. But even as she peered around the arbor, Joan of Arc rushed toward her. She wore a black shade hat and carried a fluffy black parasol under her arm.

"Be careful!" she panted. "We can't go yet—I was stopped. I had to talk. You say yes to whatever I say, will you? Then you can escape with me—" she smiled sweetly at Caroline—"a real escape, as they do in story books! Won't that be fine?" Her hand was at her heart again; a red circle burned in either cheek.

Caroline nodded eagerly.

"That will be grand!" she said. She had forgotten till that moment that she wanted to escape.

"Ah, Miss Aitken! Late for lunch again!"

Caroline started guiltily, for it was the voice of Bluelegs.

Joan threw her arm over Caroline's shoulder carelessly.

"Yes, Dr. Ferris, I'm afraid I am," she said. "I was delayed by this little visitor."

He looked suspiciously at them. "Who is she?" he asked.

"I don't know." Joan led Caroline along quickly. "She says she is Mary Queen of Scots."

He stared blankly.

"I found her conversing with Marie Antoinette," she went on easily, "and she seems to have slipped in with an automobile party—was there one? Children are so secretive, you know. She is trying to get out, but she says all the gates are locked."

"Oh, yes, that was the Dahls—they came to see Frederick," he explained.

"I see. You were left with the chauffeur, Mademoiselle, and it's easy to imagine the rest," he added with a smile. He had a very attractive smile, and Caroline slipped her hand into his offered one readily.

"You are fond of children?" said Joan, abruptly.

"Very," he answered simply. "Why not! And they are fond of me, as you see. My dear young lady, did you think we are all brutes because we must obey orders?"

She set her teeth and walked swiftly forward.

"I know you think us cruel," he went on frankly, "because we can not do for you the one thing that you want; but, except for that, have you anything to complain of?"

She smiled scornfully.

"'Except for that'?" she echoed, "no, Dr. Ferris, nothing in the world—but 'that'!"

"And you must remember," he continued, in his pleasant, soothing voice, "that it may not be for long, after all. If you continue to improve as you have—" She flung away impatiently. "Oh, yes, you have improved, you know; you eat better, you sleep better, your nerves are quieter. We get good reports of you. Many are ill longer than you. Do you like the new masseuse?"

She did not answer.

"Now, this little lady must have some lunch with us, and then, no doubt, we shall see that careless chauffeur again," he said easily. "Would you like to stay?" he asked Caroline.

"Yes, I would."

"Mary was always fickle, you know," he laughed, glancing at her clinging hand.

And, indeed, Caroline found him far more winning than the sulky, silent Joan, and leaned confidingly against him as they climbed the stone steps and passed through the rich, dark-paneled hall, hung with bright pictures, filled with bowls of flowers. Several men, uniformed like the gardener, stood about the steps and terraces; two stood by the door of a large, airy dining-room filled with hurrying waiters. About a long silver-laden table some twenty men and women, cool in lawn and lace and white flannel, were seated, eating and talking gaily. At the head was a large, tall man in a snowy vest; evidently the host, by his smiling, interested attention to everybody's wants. At his right was a vacant chair, and toward this Joan of Arc directed her steps. She had caught Caroline's hand in hers, and, as Bluelegs bent and whispered in the tall man's ear, she added:

"I think, doctor, if the little girl stays by me she will feel less shy, perhaps."

"Certainly, certainly—by all means. A good thought, Miss Aitken, a good thought," he answered in a rich, kind voice. He shook hands with Caroline warmly.

"So you find our grounds attractive?" he asked politely.

She nodded, a little shyly. All this company, so freshly dressed, so ceremoniously served, so utterly unconscious of her presence, embarrassed her a little. For not one of the ladies and gentlemen—there were no children—paid the slightest attention to her arrival, even when a place was made for her by Joan and a mug of milk procured. They talked, or, as she noticed now, sat, many of them, listless and silent, playing with their rings and bracelets, answering only with monosyllables the questions of the large, cordial doctor.

"Where is Marie Antoinette?" she whispered to her friend, who seemed nearer, suddenly, than these cold table-mates.

"She does not eat with us," said Joan, helping her to chicken and green peas, and beginning her own meal.

The doctor turned to them, having recommended some asparagus to the stolid lady at his left.

"I am glad to see your appetite so good, Miss Aitken," he observed, lowering his voice a little, "at this rate we shall have no excuse for keeping you much longer."

"You have had none for six months," she replied curtly.

"I am sorry you feel so bitterly," he said, "but you know I can not agree with you there. You will think more kindly of me some day, I hope, when time has freed your mind of its prejudice."

"When will that be?" she asked, meeting his eyes full for a moment.

"I wrote only this morning to your uncle, stating your gradual but steady improvement, and assuring him that in my opinion—subject, of course, to circumstances—it would be a matter of a few months more only," he said. "Does not that make your feelings a little—only a little more tender—"

"What did you say?" a shrill voice interrupted, "say that again, please."

Caroline had beguiled the woman next her, a frail, anemic little creature with pathetic eyes, into a halting conversation.

"I said," she repeated, buttering her roll thickly and appreciatively with fresh, clover-scented butter, "I said that no weather was too hot for me. I love it."

("Now, really, I am pleased," the big doctor murmured to the girl beside him. "Mrs. Du Long hasn't seemed so interested for days. In fact, she's been quite silent; I was alarmed about her. It's the child's influence.")

"—Uncle Joe said," Caroline went on, the roll at her mouth, "and he said I was a regular little snake."

She heard a guttural, growling sound beside her, lifted her eyes innocently, and for one flashing, doubtful second beheld the swollen, distorted face, the bulging eyes, the back-drawn snarling lips beside her. She did not see the plunging fork above her head, so quickly did Joan's arm intervene between her and it; she did not hear its impact against the big doctor's plate nor the gurgling voice of what had been the sad-eyed little woman beside her, for her head was buried in Joan's stifling skirt.

"Kill the snake! Kill the snake!" some one—or something—yelled, and then a grip of iron caught her arm and the voice of Bluelegs said sternly:

"Look straight ahead of you—don't turn your head! Don't turn, Miss Aitken—you can do nothing—they have her safe. The guards are here."

The room, indeed, seemed full of gardeners; a bell rang noisily near by.

"But the others—the others!" Joan gasped.

"They are all right—it won't trouble them," he answered quietly; and as Caroline and the girl looked fearfully where they were bidden, they saw the men and women eating placidly, talking with each other or sitting listless, staring idly at four liveried men who fought furiously with one small, snarling creature. Like the cruel witnesses in dreams, they sat, and the waiters served them swiftly and handed the dishes between their shoulders, as deaf as they. And suddenly they became terrible to Caroline, and the castle menacing, a thing to flee from.

"Step out this way," said Bluelegs, when the sounds of struggle had died away, "and take the child through the grounds, will you, please? Try to occupy her thoughts, and your own, too, if you can. This is one of the unfortunate things that rarely happen, but when they do—Yes, indeed, Mr. Ogden, it was certainly fine asparagus—I am glad you enjoyed it. No, she was only a little indisposed—she'll soon be well again. The heat of the sun, undoubtedly. Don't be alarmed, Miss Arliss, she will have every attention."

The gardeners had vanished from the steps where they went down, and none were seen in the grounds. Joan of Arc clutched Caroline's waist.

"Now—now!" she said, between her teeth; "now is the time not to faint! I never fainted—never. Come and show me that hole in the fence. There is no one about. But don't run."

They hurried across the sunlit, smiling terrace.

"What was the matter?" Caroline queried fearfully, "was she—was she—"

"Yes," said Joan brusquely. "Yes. Don't think about it. Don't run and don't think. Only find the hole."

They stood beside it. No one was near them; no one called to them. Silently Caroline slid under the sharp prongs. Joan of Arc put her hands under her skirt a moment and a white ruffled petticoat slipped around her feet. She adjusted it over her dress and pulled herself with difficulty through. As she stood erect in the soiled, stained petticoat, Caroline saw her knees, tremble under it, and she drooped against the fence, white-cheeked.

"Don't faint," she said severely to Caroline.

With shaking hands she tied the petticoat under her dress again and they crouched through the underbrush to the outer walk. Caroline reached for her wheel and the two peered fearfully up and down the empty road.

"I can't—I can't," the girl moaned, "my dress is so black—they can see it from the hill. Oh, what shall I do? I thought I could, and I can't!"

The measured trot of a pair of horses sounded on the road. An empty station wagon came rapidly toward them; groom and driver regarded them curiously.

The girl straightened herself and raised her hand with a pretty, imperious gesture.

"One moment, please," she said, "but are you going to the village?"

"Yes, Miss," said the driver, "to the station. Was there anything—"

She opened a bag at her side and took out carelessly a small gold piece.

"My little friend here," she said, in an even, low voice, "was showing me this beautiful building and grounds and I utterly neglected to note the time. I fear I have lost my train, if we try to walk back. If you could take us—"

"Certainly, Miss," said the driver. "William, put the young lady's wheel on top. Was it the express you wanted, Miss? I'm to meet it—the 2.08. Party from Boston."

They climbed in, the bicycle settled noisily into the trunk-rack on top, and the big chestnuts pounded down the hill.

Joan stared straight before her. Presently she drew a pair of black gloves from her little bag and put them on. Her lips moved steadily, and Caroline knew from her closed eyes that she was praying.

They drew into the neat station as the train Snorted itself in. The girl handed the gold piece to the driver.

"Divide it, please," she said calmly. "I am much obliged."

She walked to the drawing-room car, and signaled the black porter.

"I shall be safe to-night," she said softly, to the child by her side, "and I won't tell you my name, because it will not be mine much longer. But what is yours? Tell me quick!"

"All aboard! Next stop One Hund' Twent'-fifth Street!" some one called, hoarsely.

Caroline looked dazed. She tried to speak sensibly, but her tongue played tricks with her, and the tension of her feelings was too much for her. As the girl paused a second on the platform, and the train shuddered for its start, Caroline called above the escaping steam:

"I'm Mary Queen of Scots—I am! I am!"

The white face of Joan of Arc broke into a wavering smile.

"You dear little idiot," she called, chokingly, "I'll find you out yet! You'll see! Good-by—God bless your Majesty."

And while she might, Caroline ran beside the window, waving her hand at that tearful, happy face.



VIII

A WATCH IN THE NIGHT

The village clock boomed out the first strokes of eleven. Solemn and mellow, the waves of sound flowed over the sleeping streets; the aftertones vibrated plaintively. Caroline stirred restlessly, tossing off the sheet and muttering in her dreams. The tears had dried on her hot cheeks; her brows were still knitted.

"Four! Five! Six!" the big bell tolled.

Caroline sat up in bed and dropped her bare, pink legs over the edge. Her eyes were open now, but set in a fixed, unseeing stare.

"Seven! Eight!"

She fumbled with her toes for her leather barefoot sandals and slipped her feet under the ankle straps.

"Nine! Ten!" moaned the bell.

She moved forward, vaguely, in the broad path of moonlight that poured through the wide-open window, and ran her hands like a blind girl over the warm sill, lifting her knee to its level.

"Eleven!"

Before the murmuring aftertones had lost themselves in the night, Caroline was out of the window. She stole lightly along the tin roof, warm yet with the first intense heat of June, dropped easily to the level of the kitchen-ell, and, slipping down onto the massive trunk of the old wistaria, fitted accustomed feet into its curled niches and clambered down among the warm, fragrant clusters. Steeped in the full moon, it sent out its cloying perfume like a visible cloud; her white nightgown glistened ghostlike through the leaves.

She paused a moment in the shadow of the vine, and a great tawny cat, his orange markings distinct in the moonlight, stole to her, brushing against her bare ankles caressingly. As he curled and uncurled his soft tail about her little feet, a sudden impulse caught her, and she started swiftly through the wide backyard, bending to a broken gap in the privet hedge, cutting diagonally across the neighboring grounds, and emerging into a pleasant country road on the outskirts of the little village, with sleeping houses sprinkled along its length, well back, mostly, from its edge, showing here and there a light.

She struck into the soft, dusty road at a quick, swinging pace, the fruit of much walking, and the big yellow cat pattered at her side.

The night was almost windless; sweet, nameless odors poured up from the heated summer soil; the shadows of the grasses were outlined like Japanese pictures on the white roadway. Except for the child and the cat, no living being moved, as far as the eye could see; only the burdocks and mulleins swayed almost imperceptibly with breezes so delicate that the leaf tips of the trees could not feel them.

A great white moth, blundering against a heavy thistle head, tumbled against Caroline's elbow and fluttered clumsily into her face. She started, blinked, drew a long breath, and woke with a frightened gasp. Before her stretched the pale, curving road; above her the spangled sky throbbed and glittered; the earth, drenched in moonlight, beautiful as all lovely creatures caught sleeping, breathed softly into her face and with every breath put courage into her heart.

She looked down and saw the yellow cat, stopping, with one lifted paw, his green, lamplike eyes fixed unwaveringly on hers.

"Why, it's you, Red Rufus!" she whispered, "when did we come here? I don't remember—"

A bat whirred by: the cat pricked his ears.

"I don't believe we're here at all, Red Rufus," she whispered again. "We're just dreaming—at least, I am. I s'pose you're only in my dream. If I was really here, I'd be frightened to death, prob'ly, but if it's just a dream, I think it's lovely. Let's go on. I never had a dream like this—it seems so real, doesn't it, Rufus?"

They went on aimlessly up the road. Quaint little night sounds began now to make themselves heard: now and then a drowsy twitter from the sleeping nests, now and then a distant owl hoot. A sudden gust of honeysuckle, so strong that it was like a friendly, fragrant body flung against her, halted her for a moment, and while she paused, sniffing ecstatically, the low murmur of voices caught her ear.

The honeysuckle ran riot over an old stone wall, followed an arching gateway at the foot of a winding path that led to a lighted house on a knoll above, and flung screening tendrils over an entwined pair that paused just inside the gate. The girl's white, loose sleeves fell back from her round arms as she flung them up about her tall lover's neck; his dark head bent low over hers, their lips met, and they hung entranced in the bowery archway.

For a moment Caroline watched them with frank curiosity. Then something woke and stirred in her, faint and vague, but alive now, and she turned away her eyes, blushing hot in the cool moonlight.

The soft tones of their good-night died into broken whispers; parted from his white lady, he started on for a few, irresolute steps, then flung about suddenly and walked back toward the house, after a low, happy protest. The cooing of some drowsy pigeons in the stable on the other side of the road carried on the lovers' language long after they were out of earshot, and confused itself with them in Caroline's mind.

She wandered on, intoxicated with the mild, spacious night, the dewy freedom of the fields, the delicious pressure of the warm, velvet air against her body. Red Rufus purred as he went, rejoicing with his vagabond comrade. Just how or when she began to know that she was not asleep, just why the knowledge did not alarm her, it would be hard to say. But when the truth came to her, the friendly, powdered stars had been above her long enough to accustom her to their winking; the tiny, tentative noises of the night had sounded in her ears till they comforted and reassured her; the vast and empty field stretches meant only freedom and exhilaration. In a sudden delirium of joy she slipped between the bars of a rolling meadow and ran at full speed down its long, grassy slope, her nightgown streaming behind her, her slender, childish legs white as ivory against the greenish-black all around her. Beside her bounded the great cat with shining, gemlike eyes. They rolled down the last reaches of the slope, and all the Milky Way wondered at them, but never a sound broke the solemn quiet of the night: the ecstasy was noiseless.



Her face buried in sweet clover, she panted, prone on the grass.

"Let's go right on, Rufus, and run away, and do just as we please!" she whispered to the nestling cat. "If I can't do like the boys do, I don't want to stay home—the fellows laugh at me! I'd rather be whipped than sent to bed like a girl. I won't be a young lady—I won't!"

Rufus purred approvingly.

"If I only had some trousers!" she mourned, softly; "a boy can do anything!"

Across the quiet night there cut a thin, shrill cry: a little, fretful pipe that brought instantly before the mind some hushed, white room with a shaded light and a tiny basket bed. Caroline sat up and stared about her: such cries did not come from open fields. Hardly a stone's throw from her there was a small knoll, and behind it what might have been a large, projecting boulder suddenly flashed into red light and showed itself for a dormer window; a cottage had evidently hidden behind the little hill. Curiously Caroline approached it and walked softly up the knoll.

Almost on the top she paused and peered into the unshaded window. These householders had no fear of peeping neighbors, for only the moon and the night moths found them out, and the simple bedroom was framed like some old naive interior, realistic with the tremendous realism of the Great Artist.

The high, old-fashioned footboard of the bed faced the dormer window, and Caroline could see only the upper portion of the woman's figure as she leaned over a small crib beside her, her heavy dark hair falling across her cheek, and lifted up with careful slowness the tiny creature that wailed in it. Beside her, as he supported himself anxiously on his elbow, the broad chest and shoulders of her young husband rose above the screening footboard. The mother gazed hungrily at the doll-like, writhing object, passed her hand over its downy forehead, smiled with relief into its opening eyes, and gave it her breast.

Instantly the wail ceased. A slow, placid smile—and yet, not quite a smile—it was rather an elemental content, a gratified drifting into the warm current of the stream of this world's being—spread over the woman's face; the man's long arm wrapped around his wealth, at once protecting and defiant; his head flung back against the world, while his eyes studied humbly the mystery that he grasped. The night lamp behind them threw a halo around the mother and her child, and the great trinity of all times and all faiths gleamed immortal upon the canvas of the simple room—its only spectator a child.