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+Project Gutenberg's At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern, by Myrtle Reed
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern
+
+Author: Myrtle Reed
+
+Release Date: September 20, 2008 [EBook #26673]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AT THE SIGN OF THE JACK O'LANTERN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note: Underscore marks are used to mark passages that were
+originally in italics, _as in this phrase_. There are sections of several
+paragraphs that use this markup throughout the book.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+AT THE SIGN OF THE JACK O'LANTERN
+
+By
+MYRTLE REED
+
+Author of
+
+Lavender and Old Lace
+The Master's Violin
+A Spinner in the Sun
+Old Rose and Silver
+A Weaver of Dreams
+Flower of the Dusk
+Etc.
+
+New York
+GROSSET & DUNLAP
+Publishers
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Copyright, 1902
+
+BY
+MYRTLE REED
+
+By Myrtle Reed:
+
+A Weaver of Dreams          Sonnets to a Lover
+Old Rose and Silver         Master of the Vineyard
+Lavender and Old Lace       Flower of the Dusk
+The Master's Violin         At the Sign of the Jack-o'-Lantern
+Love Letters of a Musician  A Spinner in the Sun
+The Spinster Book           Later Love Letters of a Musician
+The Shadow of Victory       Love Affairs of Literary Men
+Myrtle Reed Year Book
+
+This edition is issued under arrangement with the publishers
+G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER                                   PAGE
+     I.  The End of the Honeymoon            1
+    II.  The Day Afterward                  18
+   III.  The First Caller                   35
+    IV.  Finances                           53
+     V.  Mrs. Smithers                      68
+    VI.  The Coming of Elaine               84
+   VII.  An Uninvited Guest                100
+  VIII.  More                              119
+    IX.  Another                           136
+     X.  Still More                        154
+    XI.  Mrs. Dodd's Third Husband         173
+   XII.  Her Gift to the World             191
+  XIII.  A Sensitive Soul                  210
+   XIV.  Mrs. Dodd's Fifth Fate            226
+    XV.  Treasure-Trove                    243
+   XVI.  Good Fortune                      264
+  XVII.  The Lady Elaine Knows Her Heart   282
+ XVIII.  Uncle Ebeneezer's Diary           299
+   XIX.  Various Departures                319
+    XX.  The Love of Another Elaine        338
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+The End of the Honeymoon
+
+
+It was certainly a queer house. Even through the blinding storm they could
+distinguish its eccentric outlines as they alighted from the stage.
+Dorothy laughed happily, heedless of the fact that her husband's umbrella
+was dripping down her neck. "It's a dear old place," she cried; "I love it
+already!"
+
+For an instant a flash of lightning turned the peculiar windows into
+sheets of flame, then all was dark again. Harlan's answer was drowned by a
+crash of thunder and the turning of the heavy wheels on the gravelled
+road.
+
+"Don't stop," shouted the driver; "I'll come up to-morrer for the money.
+Good luck to you--an' the Jack-o'-Lantern!"
+
+"What did he mean?" asked Dorothy, shaking out her wet skirts, when they
+were safely inside the door. "Who's got a Jack-o'-Lantern?"
+
+"You can search me," answered Harlan, concisely, fumbling for a match. "I
+suppose we've got it. Anyhow, we'll have a look at this sepulchral mansion
+presently."
+
+His deep voice echoed and re-echoed through the empty rooms, and Dorothy
+laughed; a little hysterically this time. Match after match sputtered and
+failed. "Couldn't have got much wetter if I'd been in swimming," he
+grumbled. "Here goes the last one."
+
+By the uncertain light they found a candle and Harlan drew a long breath
+of relief. "It would have been pleasant, wouldn't it?" he went on. "We
+could have sat on the stairs until morning, or broken our admirable necks
+in falling over strange furniture. The next thing is a fire. Wonder where
+my distinguished relative kept his wood?"
+
+Lighting another candle, he went off on a tour of investigation, leaving
+Dorothy alone.
+
+She could not repress a shiver as she glanced around the gloomy room. The
+bare loneliness of the place was accentuated by the depressing furniture,
+which belonged to the black walnut and haircloth period. On the
+marble-topped table, in the exact centre of the room, was a red plush
+album, flanked on one side by a hideous china vase, and on the other by a
+basket of wax flowers under a glass shade.
+
+Her home-coming! How often she had dreamed of it, never for a moment
+guessing that it might be like this! She had fancied a little house in a
+suburb, or a cosy apartment in the city, and a lump came into her throat
+as her air castle dissolved into utter ruin. She was one of those rare,
+unhappy women whose natures are so finely attuned to beauty that ugliness
+hurts like physical pain.
+
+She sat down on one of the slippery haircloth chairs, facing the mantel
+where the single candle threw its tiny light afar. Little by little the
+room crept into shadowy relief--the melodeon in the corner, the what-not,
+with its burden of incongruous ornaments, and even the easel bearing the
+crayon portrait of the former mistress of the house, becoming faintly
+visible.
+
+Presently, from above the mantel, appeared eyes. Dorothy felt them first,
+then looked up affrighted. From the darkness they gleamed upon her in a
+way that made her heart stand still. Human undoubtedly, but not in the
+least friendly, they were the eyes of one who bitterly resented the
+presence of an intruder. The light flickered, then flamed up once more and
+brought into view the features that belonged with the eyes.
+
+Dorothy would have screamed, had it not been for the lump in her throat. A
+step came nearer and nearer, from some distant part of the house,
+accompanied by a cheery, familiar whistle. Still the stern, malicious face
+held her spellbound, and even when Harlan came in with his load of wood,
+she could not turn away.
+
+"Now," he said, "we'll start a fire and hang ourselves up to dry."
+
+"What is it?" asked Dorothy, her lips scarcely moving.
+
+His eyes followed hers. "Uncle Ebeneezer's portrait," he answered. "Why,
+Dorothy Carr! I believe you're scared!"
+
+"I was scared," she admitted, reluctantly, after a brief silence, smiling
+a little at her own foolishness. "It's so dark and gloomy in here, and you
+were gone so long----"
+
+Her voice trailed off into an indistinct murmur, but she still shuddered
+in spite of herself.
+
+"Funny old place," commented Harlan, kneeling on the hearth and laying
+kindlings, log-cabin fashion, in the fireplace. "If an architect planned
+it, he must have gone crazy the week before he did it."
+
+"Or at the time. Don't, dear--wait a minute. Let's light our first fire
+together."
+
+He smiled as she slipped to her knees beside him, and his hand held hers
+while the blazing splinter set the pine kindling aflame. Quickly the whole
+room was aglow with light and warmth, in cheerful contrast to the stormy
+tumult outside.
+
+"Somebody said once," observed Harlan, as they drew their chairs close to
+the hearth, "that four feet on a fender are sufficient for happiness."
+
+"Depends altogether on the feet," rejoined Dorothy, quickly. "I wouldn't
+want Uncle Ebeneezer sitting here beside me--no disrespect intended to
+your relation, as such."
+
+"Poor old duck," said Harlan, kindly. "Life was never very good to him,
+and Death took away the only thing he ever loved.
+
+"Aunt Rebecca," he continued, feeling her unspoken question. "She died
+suddenly, when they had been married only three or four weeks."
+
+"Like us," whispered Dorothy, for the first time conscious of a tenderness
+toward the departed Mr. Judson, of Judson Centre.
+
+"It was four weeks ago to-day, wasn't it?" he mused, instinctively seeking
+her hand.
+
+"I thought you'd forgotten," she smiled back at him. "I feel like an old
+married woman, already."
+
+"You don't look it," he returned, gently. Few would have called her
+beautiful, but love brings beauty with it, and Harlan saw an exquisite
+loveliness in the deep, dark eyes, the brown hair that rippled and shone
+in the firelight, the smooth, creamy skin, and the sensitive mouth that
+betrayed every passing mood.
+
+"None the less, I am," she went on. "I've grown so used to seeing 'Mrs.
+James Harlan Carr' on my visiting cards that I've forgotten there ever was
+such a person as 'Miss Dorothy Locke,' who used to get letters, and go
+calling when she wasn't too busy, and have things sent to her when she had
+the money to buy them."
+
+"I hope--" Harlan stumbled awkwardly over the words--"I hope you'll never
+be sorry."
+
+"I haven't been yet," she laughed, "and it's four whole weeks. Come, let's
+go on an exploring expedition. I'm dry both inside and out, and most
+terribly hungry."
+
+Each took a candle and Harlan led the way, in and out of unexpected doors,
+queer, winding passages, and lonely, untenanted rooms. Originally, the
+house had been simple enough in structure, but wing after wing had been
+added until the first design, if it could be dignified by that name, had
+been wholly obscured. From each room branched a series of apartments--a
+sitting-room, surrounded by bedrooms, each of which contained two or
+sometimes three beds. A combined kitchen and dining-room was in every
+separate wing, with an outside door.
+
+"I wonder," cried Dorothy, "if we've come to an orphan asylum!"
+
+"Heaven knows what we've come to," muttered Harlan. "You know I never was
+here before."
+
+"Did Uncle Ebeneezer have a large family?"
+
+"Only Aunt Rebecca, who died very soon, as I told you. Mother was his only
+sister, and I her only child, so it wasn't on our side."
+
+"Perhaps," observed Dorothy, "Aunt Rebecca had relations."
+
+"One, two, three, four, five," counted Harlan. "There are five sets of
+apartments on this side, and three on the other. Let's go upstairs."
+
+From the low front door a series of low windows extended across the house
+on each side, abundantly lighting the two front rooms, which were
+separated by the wide hall. A high, narrow window in the lower hall,
+seemingly with no purpose whatever, began far above the low door and ended
+abruptly at the ceiling. In the upper hall, a similar window began at the
+floor and extended upward no higher than Harlan's knees. As Dorothy said,
+"one would have to lie down to look out of it," but it lighted the hall,
+which, after all, was the main thing.
+
+In each of the two front rooms, upstairs, was a single round window, too
+high for one to look out of without standing on a chair, though in both
+rooms there was plenty of side light. One wing on each side of the house
+had been carried up to the second story, and the arrangement of rooms was
+the same as below, outside stairways leading from the kitchens to the
+ground.
+
+"I never saw so many beds in my life," cried Dorothy.
+
+"Seems to be a perfect Bedlam," rejoined Harlan, making a poor attempt at
+a joke and laughing mirthlessly. In his heart he began to doubt the wisdom
+of marrying on six hundred dollars, an unexplored heirloom in Judson
+Centre, and an overweening desire to write books.
+
+For the first time, his temerity appeared to him in its proper colours. He
+had been a space writer and Dorothy the private secretary of a Personage,
+when they met, in the dreary basement dining-room of a New York
+boarding-house, and speedily fell in love. Shortly afterward, when Harlan
+received a letter which contained a key, and announced that Mr. Judson's
+house, fully furnished, had been bequeathed to his nephew, they had
+light-heartedly embarked upon matrimony with no fears for the future.
+
+Two hundred dollars had been spent upon a very modest honeymoon, and the
+three hundred and ninety-seven dollars and twenty-three cents remaining,
+as Harlan had accurately calculated, seemed pitifully small. Perplexity,
+doubt, and foreboding were plainly written on his face, when Dorothy
+turned to him.
+
+"Isn't it perfectly lovely," she asked, "for us to have this nice, quiet
+place all to ourselves, where you can write your book?"
+
+Woman-like, she had instantly touched the right chord, and the clouds
+vanished.
+
+"Yes," he cried, eagerly. "Oh, Dorothy, do you think I can really write
+it?"
+
+"Write it," she repeated; "why, you dear, funny goose, you can write a
+better book than anybody has ever written yet, and I know you can! By next
+week we'll be settled here and you can get down to work. I'll help you,
+too," she added, generously. "If you'll buy me a typewriter, I can copy
+the whole book for you."
+
+"Of course I'll buy you a typewriter. We'll send for it to-morrow. How
+much does a nice one cost?"
+
+"The kind I like," she explained, "costs a hundred dollars without the
+stand. I don't need the stand--we can find a table somewhere that will
+do."
+
+"Two hundred and ninety-seven dollars and twenty-three cents," breathed
+Harlan, unconsciously.
+
+"No, only a hundred dollars," corrected Dorothy. "I don't care to have it
+silver mounted."
+
+"I'd buy you a gold one if you wanted it," stammered Harlan, in some
+confusion.
+
+"Not now," she returned, serenely. "Wait till the book is done."
+
+Visions of fame and fortune appeared before his troubled eyes and set his
+soul alight with high ambition. The candle in his hand burned unsteadily
+and dripped tallow, unheeded. "Come," said Dorothy, gently, "let's go
+downstairs again."
+
+An open door revealed a tortuous stairway at the back of the house,
+descending mysteriously into cavernous gloom. "Let's go down here," she
+continued. "I love curly stairs."
+
+"These are kinky enough to please even your refined fancy," laughed
+Harlan. "It reminds me of travelling in the West, where you look out of
+the window and see your engine on the track beside you, going the other
+way."
+
+"This must be the kitchen," said Dorothy, when the stairs finally ceased.
+"Uncle Ebeneezer appears to have had a pronounced fancy for kitchens."
+
+"Here's another wing," added Harlan, opening the back door. "Sitting-room,
+bedroom, and--my soul and body! It's another kitchen!"
+
+"Any more beds?" queried Dorothy, peering into the darkness. "We can't
+keep house unless we can find more beds."
+
+"Only one more. I guess we've come down to bed rock at last."
+
+"In other words, the cradle," she observed, pulling a little old-fashioned
+trundle bed out into the light.
+
+"Oh, what a joke!" cried Harlan. "That's worth three dollars in the office
+of any funny paper in New York!"
+
+"Sell it," commanded Dorothy, inspired by the prospect of wealth, "and
+I'll give you fifty cents for your commission."
+
+Outside, the storm still raged and the old house shook and creaked in the
+blast. The rain swirled furiously against the windows, and a swift rush of
+hailstones beat a fierce tattoo on the roof. Built on the summit of a hill
+and with only a few trees near it, the Judson mansion was but poorly
+protected from the elements.
+
+None the less, there was a sense of warmth and comfort inside. "Let's
+build a fire in the kitchen," suggested Dorothy, "and then we'll try to
+find something to eat."
+
+"Which kitchen?" asked Harlan.
+
+"Any old kitchen. The one the back stairs end in, I guess. It seems to be
+the principal one of the set."
+
+Harlan brought more wood and Dorothy watched him build the fire with a
+sense that a god-like being was here put to base uses. Hampered in his
+log-cabin design by the limitations of the fire box, he handled the
+kindlings awkwardly, got a splinter into his thumb, said something under
+his breath which was not meant for his wife to hear, and powdered his
+linen with soot from the stove pipe. At length, however, a respectable
+fire was started.
+
+"Now," he asked, "what shall I do next?"
+
+"Wind all the clocks. I can't endure a dead clock. While you're doing it,
+I'll get out the remnants of our lunch and see what there is in the pantry
+that is still edible."
+
+In the lunch basket which the erratic ramifications of the road leading to
+Judson Centre had obliged them to carry, there was still, fortunately, a
+supply of sandwiches and fruit. A hasty search through the nearest pantry
+revealed jelly, marmalade, and pickles, a box of musty crackers and a
+canister of tea. When Harlan came back, Dorothy had the kitchen table set
+for two, with a lighted candle dispensing odorous good cheer from the
+centre of it, and the tea kettle singing merrily over the fire.
+
+"Seems like home, doesn't it?" he asked, pleasantly imbued with the
+realisation of the home-making quality in Dorothy. Certain rare women with
+this gift take their atmosphere with them wherever they go.
+
+"To-morrow," he went on, "I'll go into the village and buy more things to
+eat."
+
+"The ruling passion," she smiled. "It's--what's that!"
+
+Clear and high above the sound of the storm came an imperious "Me-ow!"
+
+"It's a cat," said Harlan. "You don't suppose the poor thing is shut up
+anywhere, do you?"
+
+"If it had been, we'd have found it. We've opened every door in the house,
+I'm sure. It must be outside."
+
+"Me-ow! Me-ow! Me-ow!" The voice was not pleading; it was rather a
+command, a challenge.
+
+"Kitty, kitty, kitty," she called. "Where are you, kitty?"
+
+Harlan opened the outside door, and in rushed a huge black cat, with the
+air of one returning home after a long absence.
+
+"Poor kitty," said Dorothy, kindly, stooping to stroke the sable visitor,
+who instinctively dodged the caress, and then scratched her hand.
+
+"The ugly brute!" she exclaimed. "Don't touch him, Harlan."
+
+Throughout the meal the cat sat at a respectful distance, with his
+greenish yellow eyes fixed unwaveringly upon them. He was entirely black,
+save for a white patch under his chin, which, in the half-light, carried
+with it an uncanny suggestion of a shirt front. Dorothy at length became
+restless under the calm scrutiny.
+
+"I don't like him," she said. "Put him out."
+
+"Thought you liked cats," remarked Harlan, reaching for another sandwich.
+
+"I do, but I don't like this one. Please put him out."
+
+"What, in all this storm? He'll get wet."
+
+"He wasn't wet when he came in," objected Dorothy. "He must have some
+warm, dry place of his own outside."
+
+"Come, kitty," said Harlan, pleasantly.
+
+"Kitty" merely blinked, and Harlan rose.
+
+"Come, kitty."
+
+With the characteristic independence of cats, the visitor yawned. The
+conversation evidently bored him.
+
+"Come, kitty," said Harlan, more firmly, with a low swoop of his arm. The
+cat arched his back, erected an enlarged tail, and hissed threateningly.
+In a dignified but effective manner, he eluded all attempts to capture
+him, even avoiding Dorothy and her broom.
+
+"There's something more or less imperial about him," she remarked, wiping
+her flushed cheeks, when they had finally decided not to put the cat out.
+"As long as he's adopted us, we'll have to keep him. What shall we name
+him?"
+
+"Claudius Tiberius," answered Harlan. "It suits him down to the ground."
+
+"His first name is certainly appropriate," laughed Dorothy, with a rueful
+glance at her scratched hand. Making the best of a bad bargain, she spread
+an old grey shawl, nicely folded, on the floor by the stove, and requested
+Claudius Tiberius to recline upon it, but he persistently ignored the
+invitation.
+
+"This is jolly enough," said Harlan. "A cosy little supper in our own
+house, with a gale blowing outside, the tea kettle singing over the fire,
+and a cat purring on the hearth."
+
+"Have you heard Claudius purr?" asked Dorothy, idly.
+
+"Come to think of it, I haven't. Perhaps something is wrong with his
+purrer. We'll fix him to-morrow."
+
+From a remote part of the house came twelve faint, silvery tones. The
+kitchen clock struck next, with short, quick strokes, followed immediately
+by a casual record of the hour from the clock on the mantel beneath Uncle
+Ebeneezer's portrait. Then the grandfather's clock in the hall boomed out
+twelve, solemn funereal chimes. Afterward, the silence seemed acute.
+
+"The end of the honeymoon," said Dorothy, a little sadly, with a quick,
+inquiring look at her husband.
+
+"The end of the honeymoon!" repeated Harlan, gathering her into his arms.
+"To-morrow, life begins!"
+
+Several hours later, Dorothy awoke from a dreamless sleep to wonder
+whether life was any different from a honeymoon, and if so, how and why.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+The Day Afterward
+
+
+By the pitiless light of early morning, the house was even uglier than at
+night. With an irreverence essentially modern, Dorothy decided, while she
+was dressing, to have all the furniture taken out into the back yard,
+where she could look it over at her leisure. She would make a bonfire of
+most of it, or, better yet, have it cut into wood for the fireplace. Thus
+Uncle Ebeneezer's cumbrous bequest might be quickly transformed into
+comfort.
+
+"And," thought Dorothy, "I'll take down that hideous portrait over the
+mantel before I'm a day older."
+
+But when she broached the subject to Harlan, she found him unresponsive
+and somewhat disinclined to interfere with the existing order of things.
+"We'll be here only for the Summer," he said, "so what's the use of
+monkeying with the furniture and burning up fifty or sixty beds? There's
+plenty of wood in the cellar."
+
+"I don't like the furniture," she pouted.
+
+"My dear," said Harlan, with patronising kindness, "as you grow older,
+you'll find lots of things on the planet which you don't like. Moreover,
+it'll be quite out of your power to cremate 'em, and it's just as well to
+begin adjusting yourself now."
+
+This bit of philosophy irritated Mrs. Carr unbearably. "Do you mean to
+say," she demanded, with rising temper, "that you won't do as I ask you
+to?"
+
+"Do you mean to say," inquired Harlan, wickedly, in exact imitation of her
+manner, "that you won't do as I ask you to? Four weeks ago yesterday, if I
+remember rightly, you promised to obey me!"
+
+"Don't remind me of what I'm ashamed of!" flashed Dorothy. "If I'd known
+what a brute you were, I'd never have married you! You may be sure of
+that!"
+
+Claudius Tiberius insinuated himself between Harlan's feet and rubbed
+against his trousers, leaving a thin film of black fur in his wake. Being
+fastidious about his personal appearance, Harlan kicked Claudius Tiberius
+vigorously, grabbed his hat and went out, slamming the door, and whistling
+with an exaggerated cheerfulness.
+
+"Brute!" The word rankled deeply as he went downhill with his hands in his
+pockets, whistling determinedly. So Dorothy was sorry she had married him!
+After all he'd done for her, too. Giving up a good position in New York,
+taking her half-way around the world on a honeymoon, and bringing her to a
+magnificent country residence in a fashionable locality for the Summer!
+
+Safely screened by the hill, he turned back to look at the "magnificent
+country residence," then swore softly under his breath, as, for the first
+time, he took in the full meaning of the eccentric architecture.
+
+Perched high upon the hill, with intervening shrubbery carefully cut down,
+the Judson mansion was not one to inspire confidence in its possessor.
+Outwardly, it was grey and weather-worn, with the shingles dropping off in
+places. At the sides, the rambling wings and outside stairways, branching
+off into space, conveyed the impression that the house had been recently
+subjected to a powerful influence of the centrifugal sort. But worst of
+all was the front elevation, with its two round windows, its narrow, long
+window in the centre, and the low windows on either side of the front
+door--the grinning, distorted semblance of a human face.
+
+The bare, uncurtained windows loomed up boldly in the searching sunlight,
+which spared nothing. The blue smoke rising from the kitchen chimney
+appeared strangely like a plume streaming out from the rear. Harlan noted,
+too, that the railing of the narrow porch extended almost entirely across
+the front of the house, and remembered, dimly, that they had found the
+steps at one side of the porch the night before. Not a single unpleasant
+detail was in any way hidden, and he clutched instinctively at a tree as
+he realised that the supports of the railing were cunningly arranged to
+look like huge teeth.
+
+"No wonder," he said to himself "that the stage driver called it the
+Jack-o'-Lantern! That's exactly what it is! Why didn't he paint it yellow
+and be done with it? The old devil!" The last disrespectful allusion, of
+course, being meant for Uncle Ebeneezer.
+
+"Poor Dorothy," he thought again. "I'll burn the whole thing, and she
+shall put every blamed crib into the purifying flames. It's mine, and I
+can do what I please with it. We'll go away to-morrow, we'll go----"
+
+Where could they go, with less than four hundred dollars? Especially when
+one hundred of it was promised for a typewriter? Harlan had parted with
+his managing editor on terms of great dignity, announcing that he had
+forsworn journalism and would hereafter devote himself to literature. The
+editor had remarked, somewhat cynically, that it was a better day for
+journalism than for literature, the fine, inner meaning of the retort not
+having been fully evident to Harlan until he was some three squares away
+from the office.
+
+Much chastened in spirit, and fully ready to accept his wife's estimate of
+him, he went on downhill into Judson Centre.
+
+It was the usual small town, the post-office, grocery, meat market, and
+general loafing-place being combined under one roof. Near by was the
+blacksmith shop, and across from it was the inevitable saloon. Far up in
+the hills was the Judson Centre Sanitarium, a worthy institution of some
+years standing, where every human ailment from tuberculosis to fits was
+more or less successfully treated.
+
+Upon the inmates of the sanitarium the inhabitants of Judson Centre lived,
+both materially and mentally. Few of them had ever been nearer to it than
+the back door, but tales of dark doings were widely prevalent throughout
+the community, and mothers were wont to frighten their young offspring
+into obedience with threats of the "san-tor-i-yum."
+
+"Now what do you reckon ails _him_?" asked the blacksmith of the
+stage-driver, as Harlan went into the village store.
+
+"Wouldn't reckon nothin' ailed him to look at him, would you?" queried the
+driver, in reply.
+
+Indeed, no one looking at Mr. Carr would have suspected him of an
+"ailment." He was tall and broad-shouldered and well set up, with clear
+grey eyes and a rosy, smooth-shaven, boyish face which had given him the
+nickname of "The Cherub" all along Newspaper Row. In his bearing there was
+a suggestion of boundless energy, which needed only proper direction to
+accomplish wonders.
+
+"You can't never tell," continued the driver, shifting his quid. "Now,
+I've took folks up there goin' on ten year now, an' some I've took up
+looked considerable more healthy than I be when I took 'em up. Comin'
+back, howsumever, it was different. One young feller rode up with me in
+the rain one night, a-singin' an' a-whistlin' to beat the band, an' when I
+took him back, a month or so arterward, he had a striped nurse on one side
+of him an' a doctor on t' other, an' was wearin' a shawl. Couldn't hardly
+set up, but he was a-tryin' to joke just the same. 'Hank,' says he, when
+we got a little way off from the place, 'my book of life has been edited
+by the librarians an' the entire appendix removed.' Them's his very words.
+'An',' says he, 'the time to have the appendix took out is before it does
+much of anythin' to your table of contents.'
+
+"The doctor shut him up then, an' I didn't hear no more, but I remembered
+the language, an' arterwards, when I got a chanst, I looked in the
+school-teacher's dictionary. It said as how the appendix was sunthin'
+appended or added to, but I couldn't get no more about it. I've hearn tell
+of a 'devil child' with a tail to it what was travellin' with the circus
+one year, an' I've surmised as how mebbe a tail had begun to grow on this
+young feller an' it was took off."
+
+"You don't say!" ejaculated the blacksmith.
+
+By reason of his professional connection with the sanitarium, Mr. Henry
+Blake was, in a sense, the oracle of Judson Centre, and he enjoyed his
+proud distinction to the full. Ordinarily, he was taciturn, but the
+present hour found him in a conversational mood.
+
+"He's married," he went on, returning to the original subject. "I took him
+an' his wife up to the Jack-o'-Lantern last night. Come in on the nine
+forty-seven from the Junction. Reckon they're goin' to stay a spell,
+'cause they've got trunks--one of a reasonable size, an' 'nother that
+looks like a dog-house. Box, too, that's got lead in it."
+
+"Books, maybe," suggested the blacksmith, with unexpected discernment.
+"Schoolteacher boarded to our house wunst an' she had most a car-load of
+'em. Educated folks has to have books to keep from losin' their
+education."
+
+"Don't take much stock in it myself," remarked the driver. "It spiles most
+folks. As soon as they get some, they begin to pine an' hanker for more. I
+knowed a feller wunst that begun with one book dropped on the road near
+the sanitarium, an' he never stopped till he was plum through college. An'
+a woman up there sent my darter a book wunst, an' I took it right back to
+her. 'My darter's got a book,' says I, 'an' she ain't a-needin' of no
+duplicates. Keep it,' says I, 'fer somebody that ain't got no book."
+
+"Do you reckon," asked the blacksmith, after a long silence, "that they're
+goin' to live in the Jack-o'-Lantern?"
+
+"I ain't a-sayin'," answered Mr. Blake, cautiously. "They're educated, an'
+there's no tellin' what educated folks is goin' to do. This young lady,
+now, that come up with him last night, she said it was 'a dear old place
+an' she loved it a'ready.' Them's her very words!"
+
+"Do tell!"
+
+"That's c'rrect, an' as I said before, when you're dealin' with educated
+folks, you're swimmin' in deep water with the shore clean out o' sight.
+Education was what ailed him." By a careless nod Mr. Blake indicated the
+Jack-o'-Lantern, which could be seen from the main thoroughfare of Judson
+Centre.
+
+"I've hearn," he went on, taking a fresh bite from his morning purchase of
+"plug," "that he had one hull room mighty nigh plum full o' nothin' but
+books, an' there was always more comin' by freight an' express an' through
+the post-office. It's all on account o' them books that he's made the
+front o' his house into what it is. My wife had a paper book wunst,
+a-tellin' 'How to Transfer a Hopeless Exterior,' with pictures of houses
+in it like they be here an' more arter they'd been transferred. You bet I
+burnt it while she was gone to sewin' circle, an' there ain't no book come
+into my house since."
+
+Mr. Blake spoke with the virtuous air of one who has protected his home
+from contamination. Indeed, as he had often said before, "you can't never
+tell what folks'll do when books gets a holt of 'em."
+
+"Do you reckon," asked the blacksmith, "that there'll be company?"
+
+"Company," snickered Mr. Blake, "oh, my Lord, yes! A little thing like
+death ain't never going to keep company away. Ain't you never hearn as how
+misery loves company? The more miserable you are the more company you'll
+have, an' vice versey, etcetery an' the same."
+
+"Hush!" warned the blacksmith, in a harsh whisper. "He's a-comin'!"
+
+"City feller," grumbled Mr. Blake, affecting not to see.
+
+"Good-morning," said Harlan, pleasantly, though not without an air of
+condescension. "Can you tell me where I can find the stage-driver?"
+
+"That's me," grunted Mr. Blake. "Be you wantin' anythin'?"
+
+"Only to pay you for taking us up to the house last night, and to arrange
+about our trunks. Can you deliver them this afternoon?"
+
+"I ain't a-runnin' of no livery, but I can take 'em up, if that's what
+you're wantin'."
+
+"Exactly," said Harlan, "and the box, too, if you will. And the things
+I've just ordered at the grocery--can you bring them, too?"
+
+Mr. Blake nodded helplessly, and the blacksmith gazed at Harlan,
+open-mouthed, as he started uphill. "Must sure have a ailment," he
+commented, "but I hear tell, Hank, that in the city they never carry
+nothin' round with 'em but perhaps an umbrell. Everythin' else they have
+'sent.'"
+
+"Reckon it's true enough. I took a ham wunst up to the sanitarium for a
+young sprig of a doctor that was too proud to carry it himself. He was
+goin' that way, too--walkin' up to save money--so I charged him for
+carryin' up the ham just what I'd have took both for. 'Pigs is high,' I
+told him, 'same price for one as for 'nother,' but he didn't pay no
+attention to it an' never raised no kick about the price. Thinkin' 'bout
+sunthin' else, most likely--most of 'em are."
+
+Harlan, most assuredly, was "thinkin' 'bout sunthin' else." In fact, he
+was possessed by portentous uneasiness. There was well-defined doubt in
+his mind regarding his reception at the Jack-o'-Lantern. Dorothy's parting
+words had been plain--almost to the point of rudeness, he reflected,
+unhappily, and he was not sure that "a brute" would be allowed in her
+presence again.
+
+The bare, uncurtained windows gave no sign of human occupancy. Perhaps she
+had left him! Then his reason came to the rescue--there was no way for her
+to go but downhill, and he would certainly have seen her had she taken
+that path.
+
+When he entered the yard, he smelled smoke, and ran wildly into the house.
+A hasty search through all the rooms revealed nothing--even Dorothy had
+disappeared. From the kitchen window, he saw her in the back yard, poking
+idly through a heap of smouldering rubbish with an old broomstick.
+
+"What are you doing?" he demanded, breathlessly, before she knew he was
+near her.
+
+Dorothy turned, disguising her sudden start by a toss of her head. "Oh,"
+she said, coolly, "it's you, is it?"
+
+Harlan bit his lips and his eyes laughed. "I say, Dorothy," he began,
+awkwardly; "I was rather a beast, wasn't I?"
+
+"Of course," she returned, in a small, unnatural voice, still poking
+through the ruins. "I told you so, didn't I?"
+
+"I didn't believe you at the time," Harlan went on, eager to make amends,
+"but I do now."
+
+"That's good." Mrs. Carr's tone was not at all reassuring.
+
+There was an awkward pause, then Harlan, putting aside his obstinate
+pride, said the simple sentence which men of all ages have found it
+hardest to say--perhaps because it is the sign of utter masculine
+abasement. "I'm sorry, dear, will you forgive me?"
+
+In a moment, she was in his arms. "It was partly my fault," she admitted,
+generously, from the depths of his coat collar. "I think there must be
+something in the atmosphere of the house. We never quarrelled before."
+
+"And we never will again," answered Harlan, confidently. "What have you
+been burning?"
+
+"It was a mattress," whispered Dorothy, much ashamed. "I tried to get a
+bed out, but it was too heavy."
+
+"You funny, funny girl! How did you ever get a mattress out, all alone?"
+
+"Dragged it to an upper window and dumped it," she explained, blushing,
+"then came down and dragged it some more. Claudius Tiberius didn't like to
+have me do it."
+
+"I don't wonder," laughed Harlan. "That is," he added hastily, "he
+couldn't have been pleased to see you doing it all by yourself. Anybody
+would love to see a mattress burn."
+
+"Shall we get some more? There are plenty."
+
+"Let's not take all our pleasure at once," he suggested, with rare tact.
+"One mattress a day--how'll that do?"
+
+"We'll have it at night," cried Dorothy, clapping her hands, "and when the
+mattresses are all gone, we'll do the beds and bureaus and the haircloth
+furniture in the parlour. Oh, I do so love a bonfire!"
+
+Harlan's heart grew strangely tender, for it had been this underlying
+childishness in her that he had loved the most. She was stirring the ashes
+now, with as much real pleasure as though she were five instead of
+twenty-five.
+
+As it happened, Harlan would have been saved a great deal of trouble if he
+had followed out her suggestion and burned all of the beds in the house
+except two or three, but the balance between foresight and retrospection
+has seldom been exact.
+
+"Beast of a smudge you're making," he commented, choking.
+
+"Get around to the other side, then. Why, Harlan, what's that?"
+
+"What's what?"
+
+She pointed to a small metal box in the midst of the ashes.
+
+"Poem on Spring, probably, put into the corner-stone by the builder of the
+mattress."
+
+"Don't be foolish," she said, with assumed severity. "Get me a pail of
+water."
+
+With two sticks they lifted it into the water and waited, impatiently
+enough, until they were sure it was cool. Then Dorothy, asserting her
+right of discovery, opened it with trembling fingers.
+
+"Why-ee!" she gasped.
+
+Upon a bed of wet cotton lay a large brooch, made wholly of clustered
+diamonds, and a coral necklace, somewhat injured by the fire.
+
+"Whose is it?" demanded Dorothy, when she recovered the faculty of
+speech.
+
+"I should say," returned Harlan, after due deliberation, "that it belonged
+to you."
+
+"After this," she said, slowly, her eyes wide with wonder, "we'll take
+everything apart before we burn it."
+
+Harlan was turning the brooch over in his hand and roughly estimating its
+value at two thousand dollars. "Here's something on the back," he said.
+"'R. from E., March 12, 1865.'"
+
+"Rebecca from Ebeneezer," cried Dorothy. "Oh, Harlan, it's ours! Don't you
+remember the letter said: 'my house and all its contents to my beloved
+nephew, James Harlan Carr'?"
+
+"I remember," said Harlan. But his conscience was uneasy, none the less.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+The First Caller
+
+
+As Mr. Blake had heard, there was "one hull room mighty nigh plum full o'
+nothin' but books"; a grievous waste, indeed, when one already "had a
+book." It was the front room, opposite the parlour, and every door and
+window in it could be securely bolted from the inside. If any one desired
+unbroken privacy, it could be had in the library as nowhere else in the
+house.
+
+The book-shelves were made of rough pine, unplaned, unpainted, and were
+scarcely a seemly setting for the treasure they bore. But in looking at
+the books, one perceived that their owner had been one who passed by the
+body in his eager search for the soul.
+
+Here were no fine editions, no luxurious, costly volumes in full levant.
+Illuminated pages, rubricated headings, and fine illustrations were
+conspicuous by their absence. For the most part, the books were simply but
+serviceably bound in plain cloth covers. Many a paper-covered book had
+been bound by its purchaser in pasteboard, flimsy enough in quality, yet
+further strengthened by cloth at the back. Cheap, pirated editions were so
+many that Harlan wondered whether his uncle had not been wholly without
+conscience in the matter of book-buying.
+
+Shelf after shelf stretched across the long wall, with its company of mute
+consolers whose master was no more. The fine flowering of the centuries,
+like a single precious drop of imperishable perfume, was hidden in this
+rude casket. The minds and hearts of the great, laid pitilessly bare, were
+here in this one room, shielded merely by pasteboard and cloth.
+
+Far up in the mountains, amid snow-clad steeps and rock-bound fastnesses,
+one finds, perchance, a shell. It is so small a thing that it can be held
+in the hollow of the hand; so frail that a slight pressure of the finger
+will crush it to atoms, yet, held to the ear, it brings the surge and
+sweep of that vast, primeval ocean which, in the inconceivably remote
+past, covered the peak. And so, to the eye of the mind, the small brown
+book, with its hundred printed pages, brings back the whole story of the
+world.
+
+A thin, piping voice, to which its fellows have paid no heed, after a time
+becomes silent, and, ceaselessly marching, the years pass on by. Yet that
+trembling old hand, quietly laid at last upon the turbulent heart, in the
+solitude of a garret has guided a pen, and the manuscript is left. Ragged,
+worn, blotted, spotted with candle drippings and endlessly interlined, why
+should these few sheets of paper be saved?
+
+Because, as it happens, the only record of the period is there--a record
+so significant that fifty years can be reconstructed, as an entire
+language was brought to light by a triple inscription upon a single stone.
+Thrown like the shell upon Time's ever-receding shore, it is,
+nevertheless, the means by which unborn thousands shall commune with him
+who wrote in his garret, see his whole life mirrored in his book, know his
+philosophy, and take home his truth. For by way of the printed page comes
+Immortality.
+
+There was no book in the library which had not been read many times. Some
+were falling apart, and others had been carefully sewn together and
+awkwardly rebound. Still open, on a rickety table in the corner, was that
+ponderous volume with an extremely limited circulation: _The Publishers'
+Trade List Annual_. Pencilled crosses here and there indicated books to be
+purchased, or at least sent on approval, to "customers known to the
+House."
+
+"Some day," said Dorothy, "when it's raining and we can't go out, we'll
+take down all these books, arrange them in something like order, and
+catalogue them."
+
+"How optimistic you are!" remarked Harlan. "Do you think it could be done
+in one day?"
+
+"Oh, well," returned Dorothy; "you know what I mean."
+
+Harlan paced restlessly back and forth, pausing now and then to look out
+of the window, where nothing much was to be seen except the orchard, at a
+little distance from the house, and Claudius Tiberius, sunning himself
+pleasantly upon the porch. Four weeks had been a pleasant vacation, but
+two weeks of comparative idleness, added to it, were too much for an
+active mind and body to endure. Three or four times he had tried to begin
+the book that was to bring fame and fortune, and as many times had failed.
+Hitherto Harlan's work had not been obliged to wait for inspiration, and
+it was not so easy as it had seemed the day he bade his managing editor
+farewell.
+
+"Somebody is coming," announced Dorothy, from the window.
+
+"Nonsense! Nobody ever comes here."
+
+"A precedent is about to be established, then. I feel it in my bones that
+we're going to have company."
+
+"Let's see." Harlan went to the window and looked over her shoulder. A
+little man in a huge silk hat was toiling up the hill, aided by a cane. He
+was bent and old, yet he moved with a certain briskness, and, as Dorothy
+had said, he was inevitably coming.
+
+"Who in thunder--" began Harlan.
+
+"Our first company," interrupted Dorothy, with her hand over his mouth.
+"The very first person who has called on us since we were married!"
+
+"Except Claudius Tiberius," amended Harlan. "Isn't a cat anybody?"
+
+"Claudius is. I beg his imperial pardon for forgetting him."
+
+The rusty bell-wire creaked, then a timid ring came from the rear depths
+of the house. "You let him in," said Dorothy, "and I'll go and fix my
+hair."
+
+"Am I right," queried the old gentleman, when Harlan opened the door, "in
+presuming that I am so fortunate as to address Mr. James Harlan Carr?"
+
+"My name is Carr," answered Harlan, politely. "Will you come in?"
+
+"Thank you," answered the visitor, in high staccato, oblivious of the fact
+that Claudius Tiberius had scooted in between his feet; "it will be my
+pleasure to claim your hospitality for a few brief moments.
+
+"I had hoped," he went on, as Harlan ushered him into the parlour, "to be
+able to make your acquaintance before this, but my multitudinous
+duties----"
+
+He fumbled in his pocket and produced a card, cut somewhat irregularly
+from a sheet of white cardboard, and bearing in tremulous autographic
+script: "Jeremiah Bradford, Counsellor at Law."
+
+"Oh," said Harlan, "it was you who wrote me the letter. I should have
+hunted you up when I first came, shouldn't I?"
+
+"Not at all," returned Mr. Bradford. "It is I who have been remiss. It is
+etiquette that the old residents should call first upon the newcomers.
+Many and varied duties in connection with the practice of my profession
+have hitherto--" His eyes sought the portrait over the mantel. "A most
+excellent likeness of your worthy uncle," he continued, irrelevantly, "a
+gentleman with whom, as I understand, you never had the pleasure and
+privilege of becoming acquainted."
+
+"I never met Uncle Ebeneezer," rejoined Harlan, "but mother told me a
+great deal about him and we had one or two pictures--daguerreotypes, I
+believe they were."
+
+"Undoubtedly, my dear sir. This portrait was painted from his very last
+daguerreotype by an artist of renown. It is a wonderful likeness. He was
+my Colonel--I served under him in the war. It was my desire to possess a
+portrait of him in uniform, but he would never consent, and would not
+allow anyone save myself to address him as Colonel. An eccentric, but very
+estimable gentleman."
+
+"I cannot understand," said Harlan, "why he should have left the house to
+me. I had never even seen him."
+
+"Perhaps," smiled Mr. Bradford, enigmatically, "that was his reason, or
+rather, perhaps I should say, if you had known your uncle more intimately
+and had visited him here, or, if he had had the privilege of knowing
+you--quite often, as you know, a personal acquaintance proves
+disappointing, though, of course, in this case----"
+
+The old gentleman was floundering helplessly when Harlan rescued him. "I
+want you to meet my wife, Mr. Bradford. If you will excuse me, I will call
+her."
+
+Left to himself, the visitor slipped back and forth uneasily upon his
+haircloth chair, and took occasion to observe Claudius Tiberius, who sat
+near by and regarded the guest unblinkingly. Hearing approaching
+footsteps, he took out his worn silk handkerchief, unfolded it, and wiped
+the cold perspiration from his legal brow. In his heart of hearts, he
+wished he had not come, but Dorothy's kindly greeting at once relieved him
+of all embarrassment.
+
+"We have been wondering," she said, brightly, "who would be the first to
+call upon us, and you have come at exactly the right time. New residents
+are always given two weeks, are they not, in which to get settled?"
+
+"Quite so, my dear madam, quite so, and I trust that you are by this time
+fully accustomed to your changed environment. Judson Centre, while
+possessing few metropolitan advantages, has distinct and peculiar
+recommendations of an individual character which endear the locality to
+those residing therein."
+
+"I think I shall like it here," said Dorothy. "At least I shall try to."
+
+"A very commendable spirit," rejoined the old gentleman, warmly, "and
+rather remarkable in one so young."
+
+Mrs. Carr graciously acknowledged the compliment, and the guest flushed
+with pleasure. To perception less fine, there would have been food for
+unseemly mirth in his attire. Never in all her life before had Dorothy
+seen rough cow-hide boots, and grey striped trousers worn with a rusty and
+moth-eaten dress-coat in the middle of the afternoon. An immaculate
+expanse of shirt-front and a general air of extreme cleanliness went far
+toward redeeming the unfamiliar costume. The silk hat, with a bell-shaped
+crown and wide, rolling brim, belonged to a much earlier period, and had
+been brushed to look like new. Even Harlan noted that the ravelled edges
+of his linen had been carefully trimmed and the worn binding of the hat
+brim inked wherever necessary.
+
+His wrinkled old face was kindly, though somewhat sad. His weak blue eyes
+were sheltered by an enormous pair of spectacles, which he took off and
+wiped continually. He was smooth-shaven and his scanty hair was as white
+as the driven snow. Now, as he sat in Uncle Ebeneezer's parlour, he seemed
+utterly friendless and forlorn--a complete failure of that pitiful type
+which never for a moment guesses that it has failed.
+
+"It will be my delight," the old man was saying, his hollow cheeks faintly
+flushed, "to see that the elite of Judson Centre pay proper respect to you
+at an early date. If I were not most unfortunately a single gentleman, my
+wife would do herself the honour of calling upon you immediately and of
+tendering you some sort of hospitality approximately commensurate with
+your worth. As it is----"
+
+"As it is," said Harlan, taking up the wandering thread of the discourse,
+"that particular pleasure must be on our side. We both hope that you will
+come often, and informally."
+
+"It would be a solace to me," rejoined the old gentleman, tremulously, "to
+find the niece and nephew of my departed friend both congenial and
+companionable. He was my Colonel--I served under him in the war--and until
+the last, he allowed me to address him as Colonel--a privilege accorded to
+no one else. He very seldom left his own estate, but at his request I
+often spent an evening or a Sunday afternoon in his society, and after his
+untimely death, I feel the loss of his companionship very keenly. He was
+my Colonel--I----"
+
+"I should imagine so," said Harlan, kindly, "though, as I have told you, I
+never knew him at all."
+
+"A much-misunderstood gentleman," continued Mr. Bradford, carefully wiping
+his spectacles. "My grief is too recent, at present, to enable me to
+discourse freely of his many virtues, but at some future time I shall hope
+to make you acquainted with your benefactor. He was my Colonel, and in
+serving under him in the war, I had an unusual opportunity to know him as
+he really was. May I ask, without intruding upon your private affairs,
+whether or not it is your intention to reside here permanently?"
+
+"We have not made up our minds," responded Harlan. "We shall stay here
+this Summer, anyway, as I have some work to do which can be done only in a
+quiet place."
+
+"Quiet!" muttered the old gentleman, "quiet place! If I might venture to
+suggest, I should think you would find any other season more agreeable for
+prolonged mental effort. In Summer there are distractions----"
+
+"Yes," put in Dorothy, "in Summer, one wants to be outdoors, and I am
+going to keep chickens and a cow, but my husband hopes to have his book
+finished by September."
+
+"His book!" repeated Mr. Bradford, in genuine astonishment. "Am I actually
+addressing an author?"
+
+He beamed upon Harlan in a way which that modest youth found positively
+disconcerting.
+
+"A would-be author only," laughed Harlan, the colour mounting to his
+temples. "I've done newspaper work heretofore, and now I'm going to try
+something else."
+
+"My dear sir," said Mr. Bradford, rising, "I must really beg the privilege
+of clasping your hand. It is a great honour for Judson Centre to have an
+author residing in its midst!"
+
+Taking pity upon Harlan, Dorothy hastened to change the subject. "We hope
+it may be," she observed, lightly, "and I wonder, Mr. Bradford, if you
+could not give me some good advice?"
+
+"I shall be delighted, my dear madam. Any knowledge I may possess is
+trebly at your service, for the sake of the distinguished author whose
+wife you have the honour to be, for the sake of your departed relative,
+who was my friend, my Colonel, and last, but not least, for your own
+sake."
+
+"It is only about a maid," said Dorothy.
+
+"A ---- my dear madam, I beg your pardon?"
+
+"A maid," repeated Dorothy; "a servant."
+
+"Oh! A hired girl, or more accurately, in the parlance of Judson Centre,
+the help. Do I understand that it is your desire to become an employer of
+help?"
+
+"It is," answered Dorothy, somewhat awed by the solemnity of his tone, "if
+help is to be found. I thought you might know where I could get some
+one."
+
+"If I might be permitted to suggest," replied Mr. Bradford, after due
+deliberation, "I should unhesitatingly recommend Mrs. Sarah Smithers, who
+did for your uncle during the entire period of his residence here and
+whose privilege it was to close his eyes in his last sleep. She is at
+present without prospect of a situation, and I believe would be very ready
+to accept a new position, especially so desirable a position as this, in
+your service."
+
+"Thank you. Could you--could you send her to me?"
+
+"I shall do so, most assuredly, providing she is willing to come, and
+should she chance not to be agreeably disposed toward so pleasing a
+project, it will be my happiness to endeavour to persuade her." Drawing
+out a memorandum book and a pencil, the old gentleman made an entry upon a
+fresh page. "The multitudinous duties in connection with the practice of
+my profession," he began--"there, my dear madam, it is already attended
+to, since it is placed quite out of my power to forget."
+
+"I am greatly obliged," said Dorothy.
+
+"And now," continued the visitor, "I must go. I fear I have already
+outstayed the limitation of a formal visit, such as the first should be,
+and it is not my desire to intrude upon an author's time. Moreover, my own
+duties, slight and unimportant as they are in comparison, must ultimately
+press upon my attention."
+
+"Come again," said Harlan, kindly, following him to the door.
+
+"It will be my great pleasure," rejoined the guest, "not only on your own
+account, but because your personality reminds me of that of my departed
+friend. You favour him considerably, more particularly in the eyes, if I
+may be permitted to allude to details. I think I told you, did I not, that
+he was my Colonel and I was privileged to serve under him in the war?
+My--oh, I walked, did I not? I remember that it was my intention to come
+in a carriage, as being more suitable to a formal visit, but Mr. Blake had
+other engagements for his vehicle. Dear sir and madam, I bid you good
+afternoon."
+
+So saying, he went downhill, briskly enough, yet stumbling where the way
+was rough. They watched him until the bobbing, bell-shaped crown of the
+ancient head-gear was completely out of sight.
+
+"What a dear old man!" said Dorothy. "He's lonely and we must have him
+come up often."
+
+"Do you think," asked Harlan, "that I look like Uncle Ebeneezer?"
+
+"Indeed you don't!" cried Dorothy, "and that reminds me. I want to take
+that picture down."
+
+"To burn it?" inquired Harlan, slyly.
+
+"No, I wouldn't burn it," answered Dorothy, somewhat spitefully, "but
+there's no law against putting it in the attic, is there?"
+
+"Not that I know of. Can we reach it from a chair?"
+
+Together they mounted one of the haircloth monuments, slipping, as Dorothy
+said, until it was like walking on ice.
+
+"Now then," said Harlan, gaily, "come on down, Uncle! You're about to be
+moved into the attic!"
+
+The picture lunged forward, almost before they had touched it, the heavy
+gilt frame bruising Dorothy's cheek badly. In catching it, Harlan turned
+it completely around, then gave a low whistle of astonishment.
+
+Pasted securely to the back was a fearsome skull and cross-bones, made on
+wrapping paper with a brush and India ink. Below it, in great capitals,
+was the warning inscription: "LET MY PICTURE ALONE!"
+
+"What shall we do with it?" asked Harlan, endeavouring to laugh, though,
+as he afterward admitted, he "felt creepy." "Shall I take it up to the
+attic?"
+
+"No," answered Dorothy, in a small, unnatural voice, "leave it where it
+is."
+
+While Harlan was putting it back, Dorothy, trembling from head to foot,
+crept around to the back of the easel which bore Aunt Rebecca's portrait.
+She was not at all surprised to find, on the back of it, a notice to this
+effect: "ANYONE DARING TO MOVE MRS. JUDSON'S PICTURE WILL BE HAUNTED FOR
+LIFE BY US BOTH."
+
+"I don't doubt it," said Dorothy, somewhat viciously, when Harlan had
+joined her. "What kind of a woman do you suppose she could have been, to
+marry him? I'll bet she's glad she's dead!"
+
+Dorothy was still wiping blood from her face and might not have been
+wholly unprejudiced. Aunt Rebecca was a gentle, sweet-faced woman, if her
+portrait told the truth, possessed of all the virtues save self-assertion
+and dominated by habitual, unselfish kindness to others. She could not
+have been discourteous even to Claudius Tiberius, who at this moment was
+seated in state upon the sofa and purring industriously.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+Finances
+
+
+"I've ordered the typewriter," said Dorothy, brightly, "and some nice new
+note-paper, and a seal. I've just been reading about making virtue out of
+necessity, so I've ordered 'At the Sign of the Jack-o'-Lantern' put on our
+stationery, in gold, and a yellow pumpkin on the envelope flap, just above
+the seal. And I want you to make a funny sign-board to flap from a pole,
+the way they did in 'Rudder Grange.' If you could make a wooden
+Jack-o'-Lantern, we could have a candle inside it at night, and then the
+sign would be just like the house. We can get the paint and things down in
+the village. Won't it be cute? We're farmers, now, so we'll have to
+pretend we like it."
+
+Harlan repressed an exclamation, which could not have been wholly inspired
+by pleasure.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Dorothy, easily. "Don't you like the design for
+the note-paper? If you don't, you won't have to use it. Nobody's going to
+make you write letters on paper you don't like, so cheer up."
+
+"It isn't the paper," answered Harlan, miserably; "it's the typewriter."
+Up to the present moment, sustained by a false, but none the less
+determined pride, he had refrained from taking his wife into his
+confidence regarding his finances. With characteristic masculine
+short-sightedness, he had failed to perceive that every moment of delay
+made matters worse.
+
+"Might I inquire," asked Mrs. Carr, coolly, "what is wrong with the
+typewriter?"
+
+"Nothing at all," sighed Harlan, "except that we can't afford it." The
+whole bitter truth was out, now, and he turned away wretchedly, ashamed to
+meet her eyes.
+
+It seemed ages before she spoke. Then she said, in smooth, icy tones:
+"What was your object in offering to get it for me?"
+
+"I spoke impulsively," explained Harlan, forgetting that he had never
+suggested buying a typewriter. "I didn't stop to think. I'm sorry," he
+concluded, lamely.
+
+"I suppose you spoke impulsively," snapped Dorothy, "when you asked me to
+marry you. You're sorry for that, too, aren't you?"
+
+"Dorothy!"
+
+"You're not the only one who's sorry," she rejoined, her cheeks flushed
+and her eyes blazing. "I had no idea what an expense I was going to be!"
+
+"Dorothy!" cried Harlan, angrily; "you didn't think I was a millionaire,
+did you? Were you under the impression that I was an active branch of the
+United States Mint?"
+
+"No," she answered, huskily; "I merely thought I was marrying a gentleman
+instead of a loafer, and I beg your pardon for the mistake!" She slammed
+the door on the last word, and he heard her light feet pattering swiftly
+down the hall, little guessing that she was trying to gain the shelter of
+her own room before giving way to a tempest of sobs.
+
+Happy are they who can drown all pain, sorrow, and disappointment in a
+copious flood of tears. In an hour, at the most, Dorothy would be her
+sunny self again, penitent, and wholly ashamed of her undignified
+outburst. By to-morrow she would have forgotten it, but Harlan, made of
+sterner clay, would remember it for days.
+
+"Loafer!" The cruel word seemed written accusingly on every wall of the
+room. In a sudden flash of insight he perceived the truth of it--and it
+hurt.
+
+"Two months," bethought; "two months of besotted idleness. And I used to
+chase news from the Battery to the Bronx every day from eight to six!
+Murders, smallpox, East Side scraps, and Tammany Hall. Why in the
+hereafter can't they have a fire at the sanitarium, or something that I
+can wire in?"
+
+"The Temple of Healing," as Dorothy had christened it in a happier moment,
+stood on a distant hill, all but hidden now by trees and shrubbery. A
+column of smoke curled lazily upward against the blue, but there was no
+immediate prospect of a fire of the "news" variety.
+
+Harlan stood at the window for a long time, deeply troubled. The call of
+the city dinned relentlessly into his ears. Oh, for an hour in the midst
+of it, with the rumble and roar and clatter of ceaseless traffic, the
+hurrying, heedless throng rushing in every direction, the glare of the sun
+on the many-windowed cliffs, the fever of the struggle in his veins!
+
+And yet--was two months so long, when a fellow was just married, and
+hadn't had more than a day at a time off for six years? Since the "cub
+reporter" was first "licked into shape" in the office of _The Thunderer_,
+there had been plenty of work for him, year in and year out.
+
+"I wonder," he mused, "if the old man would take me back on my job?
+
+"I can see 'em in the office now," went on Harlan, mentally, "when I go
+back and tell 'em I want my place again. The old man will look up and say:
+'The hell you do! Thought you'd accepted a position on the literary
+circuit as manager of the nine muses! Better run along and look after 'em
+before they join the union.'
+
+"And the exchange man will yell at me not to slam the door as I go out,
+and I'll be pointed out to the newest kid as a horrible example of
+misdirected ambition. Brinkman will say: 'Sonny, there's a bloke that got
+too good for his job and now he's come back, willing to edit The Mother's
+Corner.'
+
+"It'd be about the same in the other offices, too," he thought. "'Sorry,
+nothing to-day, but there might be next month. Drop in again sometime
+after six weeks or so and meanwhile I'll let you know if anything turns
+up. Yes, I can remember your address. Don't slam the door as you go out.
+Most people seem to have been born in a barn.'
+
+"Besides," he continued to himself, fiercely, "what is there in it?
+They'll take your youth, all your strength and energy, and give you a
+measly living in exchange. They'll fill you with excitement till you're
+never good for anything else, any more than a cavalry horse is fitted to
+pull a vegetable wagon. Then, when you're old, they've got no use for
+you!"
+
+Before his mental vision, in pitiful array, came that unhappy procession
+of hacks that files, day in and day out, along Newspaper Row, drawn by
+every instinct to the arena that holds nothing for them but a meagre,
+uncertain pittance, dwindling slowly to charity.
+
+"That's where I'd be at the last of it," muttered Harlan, savagely, "with
+even the cubs offering me the price of a drink to get out. And
+Dorothy--good God! Where would Dorothy be?"
+
+He clenched his fists and marched up and down the room in utter despair.
+"Why," he breathed, "why wasn't I taught to do something honest, instead
+of being cursed with this itch to write? A carpenter, a bricklayer, a
+stone-mason,--any one of 'em has a better chance than I!"
+
+And yet, even then, Harlan saw clearly that save where some vast cathedral
+reared its unnumbered spires, the mason and the bricklayer were without
+significance; that even the builders were remembered only because of the
+great uses to which their buildings were put. "That, too, through print,"
+he murmured. "It all comes down to the printed page at last."
+
+On a table, near by, was a sheaf of rough copy paper, and six or eight
+carefully sharpened pencils--the dull, meaningless stone waiting for the
+flint that should strike it into flame. Day after day the table had stood
+by the window, without result, save in Harlan's uneasy conscience.
+
+"I'm only a tramp," he said, aloud, "and I've known it, all along."
+
+He sat down by the table and took up a pencil, but no words came.
+Remorsefully, he wrote to an acquaintance--a man who had a book published
+every year and filled in the intervening time with magazine work and
+newspaper specials. He sealed the letter and addressed it idly, then
+tossed it aside purposelessly.
+
+"Loafer!" The memory of it stung him like a lash, and, completely
+overwhelmed with shame, he hid his face in his hands.
+
+Suddenly, a pair of soft arms stole around his neck, a childish, tear-wet
+cheek was pressed close to his, and a sweet voice whispered, tenderly:
+"Dear, I'm sorry! I'm so sorry I can't live another minute unless you tell
+me you forgive me!"
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Am I really a loafer?" asked Harlan, half an hour later.
+
+"Indeed you're not," answered Dorothy, her trustful eyes looking straight
+into his; "you're absolutely the most adorable boy in the whole world, and
+it's me that knows it!"
+
+"As long as you know it," returned Harlan, seriously, "I don't care a hang
+what other people think."
+
+"Now, tell me," continued Dorothy, "how near are we to being broke?"
+
+Obediently, Harlan turned his pockets inside out and piled his worldly
+wealth on the table.
+
+"Three hundred and seventy-four dollars and sixteen cents," she said, when
+she had finished counting. "Why, we're almost rich, and a little while ago
+you tried to make me think we were poor!"
+
+"It's all I have, Dorothy--every blooming cent, except one dollar in the
+savings bank. Sort of a nest egg I had left," he explained.
+
+"Wait a minute," she said, reaching down into her collar and drawing up a
+loop of worn ribbon. "Straight front corset," she observed, flushing,
+"makes a nice pocket for almost everything." She drew up a chamois-skin
+bag, of an unprepossessing mouse colour, and emptied out a roll of bills.
+"Two hundred and twelve dollars," she said, proudly, "and eighty-three
+cents and four postage stamps in my purse.
+
+"I saved it," she continued, hastily, "for an emergency, and I wanted some
+silk stockings and a French embroidered corset and some handmade lingerie
+worse than you can ever know. Wasn't I a brave, heroic, noble woman?"
+
+"Indeed you were," he cried, "but, Dorothy, you know I can't touch your
+money!"
+
+"Why not?" she demanded.
+
+"Because--because--because it isn't right. Do you think I'm cad enough to
+live on a woman's earnings?"
+
+"Harlan," said Dorothy, kindly, "don't be a fool. You'll take my whole
+heart and soul and life--all that I have been and all that I'm going to
+be--and be glad to get it, and now you're balking at ten cents that I
+happened to have in my stocking when I took the fatal step."
+
+"Dear heart, don't. It's different--tremendously different. Can't you see
+that it is?"
+
+"Do you mean that I'm not worth as much as two hundred and twelve dollars
+and eighty-three cents and four postage stamps?"
+
+"Darling, you're worth more than all the rest of the world put together.
+Don't talk to me like that. But I can't touch your money, truly, dear, I
+can't; so don't ask me."
+
+"Idiot," cried Dorothy, with tears raining down her face, "don't you know
+I'd go with you if you had to grind an organ in the street, and collect
+the money for you in a tin cup till we got enough for a monkey? What kind
+of a dinky little silver-plated wedding present do you think I am, anyway?
+You----"
+
+The rest of it was sobbed out, incoherently enough, on his hitherto
+immaculate shirt-front. "You don't mind," she whispered, "if I cry down
+your neck, do you?"
+
+"If you're going to cry," he answered, his voice trembling, "this is the
+one place for you to do it, but I don't want you to cry."
+
+"I won't, then," she said, wiping her eyes on a wet and crumpled
+handkerchief. In a time astonishingly brief to one hitherto unfamiliar
+with the lachrymal function, her sobs had ceased.
+
+"You've made me cry nearly a quart since morning," she went on, with
+assumed severity, "and I hope you'll behave so well from now on that I'll
+never have to do it again. Look here."
+
+She led him to the window, where a pair of robins were building a nest in
+the boughs of a maple close by. "Do you see those birds?" she demanded,
+pointing at them with a dimpled, rosy forefinger.
+
+"Yes, what of it?"
+
+"Well, they're married, aren't they?"
+
+"I hope they are," laughed Harlan, "or at least engaged."
+
+"Who's bringing the straw and feathers for the nest?" she asked.
+
+"Both, apparently," he replied, unwillingly.
+
+"Why isn't she rocking herself on a bough, and keeping her nails nice, and
+fixing her feathers in the latest style, or perhaps going off to some fool
+bird club while he builds the nest by himself?"
+
+"Don't know."
+
+"Nor anybody else," she continued, with much satisfaction. "Now, if she
+happened to have two hundred and twelve feathers, of the proper size and
+shape to go into that nest, do you suppose he'd refuse to touch them, and
+make her cry because she brought them to him?"
+
+"Probably he wouldn't," admitted Harlan.
+
+There was a long silence, then Dorothy edged up closer to him. "Do you
+suppose," she queried, "that Mr. Robin thinks more of his wife than you do
+of yours?"
+
+"Indeed he doesn't!"
+
+"And still, he's letting her help him."
+
+"But----"
+
+"Now, listen, Harlan. We've got a house, with more than enough furniture
+to make it comfortable, though it's not the kind of furniture either of us
+particularly like. Instead of buying a typewriter, we'll rent one for
+three or four dollars a month until we have enough money to buy one. And
+I'm going to have a cow and some chickens and a garden, and I'm going to
+sell milk and butter and cream and fresh eggs and vegetables and chickens
+and fruit to the sanitarium, and----"
+
+"The sanitarium people must have plenty of those things."
+
+"But not the kind I'm going to raise, nor put up as I'm going to put it
+up, and we'll be raising most of our own living besides. You can write
+when you feel like it, and be helping me when you don't feel like it, and
+before we know it, we'll be rich. Oh, Harlan, I feel like Eve all alone in
+the Garden with Adam!"
+
+The prospect fired his imagination, for, in common with most men, a
+chicken-ranch had appealed strongly to Harlan ever since he could
+remember.
+
+"Well," he began, slowly, in the tone which was always a signal of
+surrender.
+
+"Won't it be lovely," she cried ecstatically, "to have our own bossy cow
+mooing in the barn, and our own chickens for Sunday dinner, and our own
+milk, and butter, and cream? And I'll drive the vegetable waggon and you
+can take the things in----"
+
+"I guess not," interrupted Harlan, firmly. "If you're going to do that
+sort of thing, you'll have people to do the work when I can't help you.
+The idea of my wife driving a vegetable cart!"
+
+"All right," answered Dorothy, submissively, wise enough to let small
+points settle themselves and have her own way in things that really
+mattered. "I've not forgotten that I promised to obey you."
+
+A gratified smile spread over Harlan's smooth, boyish face, and,
+half-fearfully, she reached into her sleeve for a handkerchief which she
+had hitherto carefully concealed.
+
+"That's not all," she smiled. "Look!"
+
+"Twenty-three dollars," he said. "Why, where did you get that?"
+
+"It was in my dresser. There was a false bottom in one of the small
+drawers, and I took it out and found this."
+
+"What in--" began Harlan.
+
+"It's a present to us from Uncle Ebeneezer," she cried, her eyes sparkling
+and her face aglow. "It's for a coop and chickens," she continued,
+executing an intricate dance step. "Oh, Harlan, aren't you awfully glad we
+came?"
+
+Seeing her pleasure he could not help being glad, but afterward, when he
+was alone, he began to wonder whether they had not inadvertently moved
+into a bank.
+
+"Might be worse places," he reflected, "for the poor and deserving to move
+into. Diamonds and money--what next?"
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+Mrs. Smithers
+
+
+The chickens were clucking peacefully in their corner of Uncle Ebeneezer's
+dooryard, and the newly acquired bossy cow mooed unhappily in her
+improvised stable. Harlan had christened the cow "Maud" because she
+insisted upon going into the garden, and though Dorothy had vigorously
+protested against putting Tennyson to such base uses, the name still held,
+out of sheer appropriateness.
+
+Harlan was engaged in that pleasant pastime known as "pottering." The
+instinct to drive nails, put up shelves, and to improve generally his
+local habitation is as firmly seated in the masculine nature as
+housewifely characteristics are ingrained in the feminine soul. Never
+before having had a home of his own, Harlan was enjoying it to the full.
+
+Early hours had been the rule at the Jack-o'-Lantern ever since the
+feathered sultan with his tribe of voluble wives had taken up his abode on
+the hilltop. Indeed, as Harlan said, they were obliged to sleep when the
+chickens did--if they slept at all. So it was not yet seven one morning
+when Dorothy went in from the chicken coop, singing softly to herself, and
+intent upon the particular hammer her husband wanted, never expecting to
+find Her in the kitchen.
+
+"I--I beg your pardon?" she stammered, inquiringly.
+
+A gaunt, aged, and preternaturally solemn female, swathed in crape, bent
+slightly forward in her chair, without making an effort to rise, and
+reached forth a black-gloved hand tightly grasping a letter, which was
+tremulously addressed to "Mrs. J. H. Carr."
+
+  "My dear Madam," Dorothy read.
+
+  "The multitudinous duties in connection with the practice of my
+  profession have unfortunately prevented me, until the present hour,
+  from interviewing Mrs. Sarah Smithers in regard to your requirements.
+  While she is naturally unwilling to commit herself entirely without a
+  more definite idea of what is expected of her, she is none the less
+  kindly disposed. May I hope, my dear madam, that at the first
+  opportunity you will apprise me of ensuing events in this connection,
+  and that in any event I may still faithfully serve you?
+
+  "With kindest personal remembrances and my polite salutations to the
+  distinguished author whose wife you have the honour to be, I am, my
+  dear madam,
+
+  "Yr. most respectful and obedient servant,
+
+                                                 "Jeremiah Bradford.
+
+"Oh," said Dorothy, "you're Sarah. I had almost given you up."
+
+"Begging your parding, Miss," rejoined Mrs. Smithers in a chilly tone of
+reproof, "but I take it it's better for us to begin callin' each other by
+our proper names. If we should get friendly, there'd be ample time to
+change. Your uncle, God rest 'is soul, allers called me 'Mis' Smithers.'"
+
+Somewhat startled at first, Mrs. Carr quickly recovered her equanimity.
+"Very well, Mrs. Smithers," she returned, lightly, reflecting that when in
+Rome one must follow Roman customs; "Do you understand all branches of
+general housework?"
+
+"If I didn't, I wouldn't be makin' no attempts in that direction," replied
+Mrs. Smithers, harshly. "I doesn't allow nobody to do wot I does no better
+than wot I does it."
+
+Dorothy smiled, for this was distinctly encouraging, from at least one
+point of view.
+
+"You wear a cap, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, mum, for dustin'. When I goes out I puts on my bonnet."
+
+"Can you do plain cooking?" inquired Dorothy, hastily, perceiving that she
+was treading upon dangerous ground.
+
+"Yes, mum. The more plain it is the better all around. Your uncle was
+never one to fill hisself with fancy dishes days and walk the floor with
+'em nights, that's wot 'e wasn't."
+
+"What wages do you have, Sa--Mrs. Smithers?"
+
+"I worked for your uncle for a dollar and a half a week, bein' as we'd
+knowed each other so long, and on account of 'im bein' easy to get along
+with and never makin' no trouble, but I wouldn't work for no woman for
+less 'n two dollars."
+
+"That is satisfactory to me," returned Dorothy, trying to be dignified. "I
+daresay we shall get on all right. Can you stay now?"
+
+"If you've finished," said Mrs. Smithers, ignoring the question, "there's
+a few things I'd like to ask. 'Ow did you get that bruise on your face?"
+
+"I--I ran into something," answered Dorothy, unwillingly, and taken quite
+by surprise.
+
+"Wot was it," demanded Mrs. Smithers. "Your 'usband's fist?"
+
+"No," replied Mrs. Carr, sternly, "it was a piece of furniture."
+
+"I've never knowed furniture," observed Mrs. Smithers, doubtfully, "to get
+up and 'it people in the face wot wasn't doin' nothink to it. If you
+disturb a rockin'-chair at night w'en it's restin' quiet, you'll get your
+ankle 'it, but I've never knowed no furniture to 'it people under the eye
+unless it 'ad been threw, that's wot I ain't.
+
+"I mind me of my youngest sister," Mrs. Smithers went on, her keen eyes
+uncomfortably fixed upon Dorothy. "'Er 'usband was one of these 'ere
+masterful men, 'e was, same as wot yours is, and w'en 'er didn't please
+'im, 'e 'd 'it 'er somethink orful. Many's the time I've gone there and
+found 'er with 'er poor face all cut up and the crockery broke bad. 'I
+dropped a cup' 'er'd say to me, 'and the pieces flew up and 'it me in the
+face.' 'Er face looked like a crazy quilt from 'aving dropped so many
+cups, and wunst, without thinkin' wot I might be doin' of, I gave 'er a
+chiny tea set for 'er Christmas present.
+
+"Wen I went to see 'er again, the tea set was all broke and 'er 'ad court
+plaster all over 'er face. The pieces must 'ave flew more 'n common from
+the tea set, cause 'er 'usband's 'ed was laid open somethink frightful and
+they'd 'ad in the doctor to take a seam in it. From that time on I never
+'eard of no more cups bein' dropped and 'er face looked quite human and
+peaceful like w'en 'e died. God rest 'is soul, 'e ain't a-breakin' no tea
+sets now by accident nor a-purpose neither. I was never one to interfere
+between man and wife, Miss Carr, but I want you to tell your 'usband that
+should 'e undertake to 'it me, 'e'll get a bucket of 'ot tea throwed in
+'is face."
+
+"It's not at all likely," answered Dorothy, biting her lip, "that such a
+thing will happen." She was swayed by two contradictory impulses--one to
+scream with laughter, the other to throw something at Mrs. Smithers.
+
+"'E's been at peace now six months come Tuesday," continued Mrs. Smithers,
+"and on account of 'is 'avin' broke the tea set, I don't feel no call to
+wear mourning for 'im more 'n a year, though folks thinks as 'ow it brands
+me as 'eartless for takin' it off inside of two. Sakes alive, wot's that?"
+she cried, drawing her sable skirts more closely about her as a dark
+shadow darted across the kitchen.
+
+"It's only the cat," answered Dorothy, reassuringly. "Come here,
+Claudius."
+
+Mrs. Smithers repressed an exclamation of horror as Claudius, purring
+pleasantly, came out into the sunlight, brandishing his plumed tail, and
+sat down on the edge of Dorothy's skirt, blinking his green eyes at the
+intruder.
+
+"'E's the very cat," said Mrs. Smithers, hoarsely, "wot your uncle killed
+the week afore 'e died!"
+
+"Before who died?" asked Dorothy, a chill creeping into her blood.
+
+"Your uncle," whispered Mrs. Smithers, her eyes still fixed upon Claudius
+Tiberius. "'E killed that very cat, 'e did, 'cause 'e couldn't never abide
+'im, and now 'e's come back!"
+
+"Nonsense!" cried Dorothy, trying to be severe. "If he killed the cat, it
+couldn't come back--you must know that."
+
+"I don't know w'y not, Miss. Anyhow, 'e killed the cat, that's wot 'e did,
+and I saw 'is dead body, and even buried 'im, on account of your uncle not
+bein' able to abide cats, and 'ere 'e is. Somebody 's dug 'im up, and 'e
+'s come to life again, thinkin' to 'aunt your uncle, and your uncle 'as
+follered 'im, that's wot 'e 'as, and there bein' nobody 'ere to 'aunt but
+us, 'e's a 'auntin' us and a-doin' it 'ard."
+
+"Mrs. Smithers," said Dorothy, rising, "I desire to hear no more of this
+nonsense. The cat happens to be somewhat similar to the dead one, that's
+all."
+
+"Begging your parding, Miss, for askin', but did you bring that there cat
+with you from the city?"
+
+Affecting not to hear, Dorothy went out, followed by Claudius Tiberius,
+who appeared anything but ghostly.
+
+"I knowed it," muttered Mrs. Smithers, gloomily, to herself. "'E was 'ere
+w'en 'er come, and 'e's the same cat. 'E's come back to 'aunt us, that's
+wot 'e 'as!"
+
+"Harlan," said Dorothy, half-way between smiles and tears, "she's come."
+
+Harlan dropped his saw and took up his hammer. "Who's come?" he asked.
+"From your tone, it might be Mrs. Satan, or somebody else from the
+infernal regions."
+
+"You're not far out of the way," rejoined Dorothy. "It's Sa--Mrs.
+Smithers."
+
+"Oh, our maid of all work?"
+
+"I don't know what she's made of," giggled Dorothy, hysterically. "She
+looks like a tombstone dressed in deep mourning, and carries with her the
+atmosphere of a graveyard. We have to call her 'Mrs. Smithers,' if we
+don't want her to call us by our first names, and she has two dollars a
+week. She says Claudius is a cat that uncle killed the week before he
+died, and she thinks you hit me and gave me this bruise on my cheek."
+
+"The old lizard," said Harlan, indignantly. "She sha'n't stay!"
+
+"Now don't be cross," interrupted Dorothy. "It's all in the family, for
+your uncle hit me, as you well know. Besides, we can't expect all the
+virtues for two dollars a week and I'm tired almost to death from trying
+to do the housework in this big house and take care of the chickens, too.
+We'll get on with her as best we can until we see a chance to do better."
+
+"Wise little woman," responded Harlan, admiringly. "Can she milk the
+cow?"
+
+"I don't know--I'll go in and ask her."
+
+"Excuse me, Miss," began Mrs. Smithers, before Dorothy had a chance to
+speak, "but am I to 'ave my old rooms?"
+
+"Which rooms were they?"
+
+"These 'ere, back of the kitchen. My own settin' room and bedroom and
+kitchen and pantry and my own private door outside. Your uncle was allers
+a great hand for bein' private and insistin' on other folks keepin'
+private, that 's wot 'e was, but God rest 'is soul, it didn't do the poor
+old gent much good."
+
+"Certainly," said Dorothy, "take your old rooms. And can you milk a cow?"
+
+Mrs. Smithers sighed. "I ain't never 'ad it put on me, Miss," she said,
+with the air of a martyr trying to make himself comfortable up against the
+stake, "not as a regler thing, I ain't, but wotever I'm asked to do in the
+line of duty whiles I'm dwellin' in this sufferin' and dyin' world, I aims
+to do the best wot I can, w'ether it's milkin' a cow, drownin' kittens, or
+buryin' a cat wot can't stay buried."
+
+"We have breakfast about half-past seven," went on Dorothy, quickly;
+"luncheon at noon and dinner at six."
+
+"Wot at six?" demanded Mrs. Smithers, pricking up her ears.
+
+"Dinner! Dinner at six."
+
+"Lord preserve us," said Mrs. Smithers, half to herself. "Your uncle
+allers 'ad 'is dinner at one o'clock, sharp, and 'e wouldn't like it to
+'ave such scandalous goin's on in 'is own 'ouse."
+
+"You're working for me," Dorothy reminded her sharply, "and not for my
+uncle."
+
+There was a long silence, during which Mrs. Smithers peered curiously at
+her young mistress over her steel-bowed spectacles. "I'm not so sure as
+you," she said. "On account of the cat 'avin come back from 'is grave, it
+wouldn't surprise me none to see your uncle settin' 'ere at any time in
+'is shroud, and a-askin' to 'ave mush and milk for 'is supper, the which
+'e was so powerful fond of that I was more 'n 'alf minded at the last
+minute to put some of it in 's coffin."
+
+"Mrs. Smithers," said Dorothy, severely, "I do not want to hear any more
+about dead people, or resurrected cats, or anything of that nature. What's
+gone is gone, and there's no use in continually referring to it."
+
+At this significant moment, Claudius Tiberius paraded somewhat
+ostentatiously through the kitchen and went outdoors.
+
+"You see, Miss?" asked Mrs. Smithers, with ill-concealed satisfaction.
+"Wot's gone ain't always gone for long, that's wot it ain't."
+
+Dorothy retreated, followed by a sepulchral laugh which grated on her
+nerves. "Upon my word, dear," she said to Harlan, "I don't know how we're
+going to stand having that woman in the house. She makes me feel as if I
+were an undertaker, a grave digger, and a cemetery, all rolled into one."
+
+"You're too imaginative," said Harlan, tenderly, stroking her soft cheek.
+He had not yet seen Mrs. Smithers.
+
+"Perhaps," Dorothy admitted, "when she gets that pyramid of crape off her
+head, she'll seem more nearly human. Do you suppose she expects to wear it
+in the house all the time?"
+
+"Miss Carr!"
+
+The gaunt black shadow appeared in the doorway of the kitchen and the
+high, harsh voice shrilled imperiously across the yard.
+
+"I'm coming," answered Dorothy, submissively, for in the tone there was
+that which instinctively impels obedience. "What is it?" she asked, when
+she entered the kitchen.
+
+"Nothink. I only wants to know wot it is you're layin' out to 'ave for
+your--luncheon, if that's wot you call it."
+
+"Poached eggs on toast, last night's cold potatoes warmed over, hot
+biscuits, jam, and tea."
+
+Mrs. Smithers's articulate response resembled a cluck more closely than
+anything else.
+
+"You can make biscuits, can't you?" went on Dorothy, hastily.
+
+"I 'ave," responded Mrs. Smithers, dryly. "Begging your parding, Miss, but
+is that there feller sawin' wood out by the chicken coop your 'usband?"
+
+"The gentleman in the yard," said Dorothy, icily, "is Mr. Carr."
+
+"Be n't you married to 'im?" cried Mrs. Smithers, dropping a fork. "I
+understood as 'ow you was, else I wouldn't 'ave come. I was never one
+to----"
+
+"I most assuredly _am_ married to him," answered Dorothy, with due
+emphasis on the verb.
+
+"Oh! 'E's the build of my youngest sister's poor dead 'usband; the one wot
+broke the tea set wot I give 'er over 'er poor 'ed. 'E can 'it powerful
+'ard, can't 'e?"
+
+Quite beyond speech, Dorothy went outdoors again, her head held high and a
+dangerous light in her eyes. To-morrow, or next week at the latest, should
+witness the forced departure of Mrs. Smithers. Mrs. Carr realised that the
+woman did not intend to be impertinent, and that the social forms of
+Judson Centre were not those of New York. Still, some things were
+unbearable.
+
+The luncheon that was set before them, however, went far toward atonement.
+With the best intentions in the world, Dorothy's cooking nearly always
+went wide of the mark, and Harlan welcomed the change with unmistakable
+pleasure.
+
+"I say, Dorothy," he whispered, as they rose from the table; "get on with
+her if you can. Anybody who can make such biscuits as these will go out of
+the house only over my dead body."
+
+The latter part of the speech was unfortunate. "My surroundings are so
+extremely cheerful," remarked Dorothy, "that I've decided to spend the
+afternoon in the library reading Poe. I've always wanted to do it and I
+don't believe I'll ever feel any creepier than I do this blessed minute."
+
+In spite of his laughing protest, she went into the library, locked the
+door, and curled up in Uncle Ebeneezer's easy chair with a well-thumbed
+volume of Poe, finding a two-dollar bill used in one place as a book mark.
+She read for some time, then took down another book, which opened of
+itself at "The Gold Bug."
+
+The pages were thickly strewn with marginal comments in the fine, small,
+shaky hand she had learned to associate with Uncle Ebeneezer. The
+paragraph about the skull, in the tree above the treasure, had evidently
+filled the last reader with unprecedented admiration, for on the margin
+was written twice, in ink: "A very, very pretty idea."
+
+She laughed aloud, for her thoughts since morning had been persistently
+directed toward things not of this world. "I'm glad I'm not
+superstitious," she thought, then jumped almost out of her chair at the
+sound of an ominous crash in the kitchen.
+
+"I won't go," she thought, settling back into her place. "I'll let that
+old monument alone just as much as I can."
+
+Upon the whole, it was just as well, for the "old monument" was on her
+bony knees, with her head and shoulders quite lost in the secret depths of
+the kitchen range. "I wonder," she was muttering, "where 'e could 'ave put
+it. It would 'ave been just like that old skinflint to 'ave 'id it in the
+stove!"
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+The Coming of Elaine
+
+
+There is no state of mental wretchedness akin to that which precedes the
+writing of a book. Harlan was moody and despairing, chiefly because he
+could not understand what it all meant. Something hung over him like a
+black cloud, completely obscuring his usual sunny cheerfulness.
+
+He burned with the desire to achieve, yet from the depths of his soul came
+only emptiness. Vague, purposeless aspirations, like disembodied spirits,
+haunted him by night and by day. Before his inner vision came unfamiliar
+scenes, detached fragments of conversation, the atmosphere, the feeling of
+an old romance, then, by a swift change, darkness from which there seemed
+no possible escape.
+
+A woman with golden hair, mounted upon a white horse, gay with scarlet and
+silver trappings--surely her name was Elaine? And the company of gallant
+knights who followed her as she set forth upon her quest--who were they,
+and from whence did they hail? The fool of the court, with his bauble and
+his cracked, meaningless laughter, danced in and out of the picture with
+impish glee. Behind it all was the sunset, such a sunset as was never seen
+on land or sea. Ribbons of splendid colour streamed from the horizon to
+the zenith and set the shields of the knights aglow with shimmering flame.
+Clashing cymbals sounded from afar, then, clear and high, a bugle call,
+the winding silvery notes growing fainter and fainter till they were lost
+in the purple silence of the hills. Elaine turned, smiling--was not her
+name Elaine? And then----
+
+Darkness fell and the picture was utterly wiped out. Harlan turned away
+with a sigh.
+
+To take the dead, dry bones of words, the tiny black things that march in
+set spaces across the page; to set each where it inevitably
+belongs--truly, it seems simple enough. But from the vast range of our
+written speech to select those which fittingly clothe the thought is quite
+another matter, and presupposes the thought. Even then, by necessity, the
+outcome is uncertain.
+
+Within the mind of the writer, the Book lives and breathes; a child of the
+brain, yearning for birth. At a white heat, after long waiting, the words
+come--merely a commentary, an index, a marginal note of that within.
+Reading afterward the written words, the fine invisible links, the colour
+and the music, are treacherously supplied by the imagination, which is at
+once the best friend and the worst enemy. How is one to know that only a
+small part of it has been written, that the best of it, far past writing,
+lingers still unborn?
+
+Long afterward, when the original picture has faded as though it had never
+been, one may read his printed work, and wonder, in abject self-abasement,
+by what miracle it was ever printed. He has trusted to some unknown
+psychology which strongly savours of the Black Art to reproduce in the
+minds of his readers the picture which was in his, and from which these
+fragmentary, marginal notes were traced. Only the words, the dead,
+meaningless words, stripped of all the fancy which once made them fair, to
+make for the thousands the wild, delirious bliss that the writer knew! To
+write with the tears falling upon the page, and afterward to read, in some
+particularly poignant and searching review, that "the book fails to
+convince!" Happy is he whose written pages reproduce but faintly the glow
+from whence they came. For "whoso with blood and tears would dig Art out
+of his soul, may lavish his golden prime in pursuit of emptiness, or,
+striking treasure, find only fairy gold, so that when his eyes are purged
+of the spell of morning, he sees his hands are full of withered leaves."
+
+A meadow-lark, rising from a distant field, dropped golden notes into the
+still, sunlit air, then vanished into the blue spaces beyond. A bough of
+apple bloom, its starry petals anchored only by invisible cobwebs, softly
+shook white fragrance into the grass. Then, like a vision straight from
+the golden city with the walls of pearl, came Elaine, the beautiful, her
+blue eyes laughing, and her scarlet lips parted in a smile.
+
+Harlan's heart sang within him. His trembling hands grasped feverishly at
+the sheaf of copy-paper which had waited for this, week in and week out.
+The pencil was ready to his hand, and the words fairly wrote themselves:
+
+_It came to pass that when the year was at the Spring, the Lady Elaine
+fared forth upon the Heart's Quest. She was mounted upon a snowy palfrey,
+whose trappings of scarlet and silver gleamed brightly in the sun. Her
+gown was of white satin, wondrously embroidered in fine gold thread, which
+was no less gold than her hair, falling in unchecked splendour about
+her._
+
+_Blue as sapphires were the eyes of Elaine, and her fair cheek was like
+that of an apple-blossom. Set like a rose upon pearl was the dewy,
+fragrant sweetness of her mouth, and her breath was like that of the rose
+itself. Her hands--but how shall I write of the flower-like hands of
+Elaine? They--_
+
+The door-bell pealed portentously through the house, echoing and
+re-echoing through the empty rooms. No answer. Presently it rang again,
+insistently, and Elaine, with her snowy palfrey, whisked suddenly out of
+sight.
+
+Gone, except for these few lines! Harlan stifled a groan and the bell rang
+once more.
+
+Heavens! Where was Dorothy? Where was Mrs. Smithers? Was there no one in
+the house but himself? Apparently not, for the bell rang determinedly, and
+with military precision.
+
+"March, march, forward march!" grumbled Harlan, as he ran downstairs, the
+one-two, one-two-three being registered meanwhile on the bell-wire.
+
+It was not a pleasant person who violently wrenched the door open, but in
+spite of his annoyance, Harlan could not be discourteous to a lady. She
+was tall, and slender, and pale, with blue eyes and yellow hair, and so
+very fragile that it seemed as though a passing zephyr might almost blow
+her away.
+
+"How do you do," she said, wearily. "I thought you were never coming."
+
+"I was busy," said Harlan, in extenuation. "Will you come in?" She was
+evidently a friend of Dorothy's, and, as such, demanded proper
+consideration.
+
+The invitation was needless, however, for even as he spoke, she brushed
+past him, and went into the parlour. "I'm so tired," she breathed. "I
+walked up that long hill."
+
+"You shouldn't have done it," returned Harlan, standing first on one foot
+and then on the other. "Couldn't you find the stage?"
+
+"I didn't look for it. I never had any ambition to go on the stage," she
+concluded, with a faint smile. "Where is Uncle Ebeneezer?"
+
+"No friend of Dorothy's," thought Harlan, shifting to the other foot.
+"Uncle Ebeneezer," he said, clearing his throat, "is at peace."
+
+"What do you mean?" demanded the girl, sinking into one of the haircloth
+chairs. "Where is Uncle Ebeneezer?"
+
+"Uncle Ebeneezer is dead," explained Harlan, somewhat tartly. Then, as he
+remembered the utter ruin of his work, he added, viciously, "never having
+known him intimately, I can't say just where he is."
+
+She leaned back in her chair, her face as white as death. Harlan thought
+she had fainted, when she relieved his mind by bursting into tears. He was
+more familiar with salt water, but, none the less, the situation was
+awkward.
+
+There were no signs of Dorothy, so Harlan, in an effort to be consoling,
+took the visitor's cold hands in his. "Don't," he said, kindly; "cheer up.
+You are among friends."
+
+"I have no friends," she answered, between sobs. "I lost the last when my
+dear mother died. She made me promise, during her last illness, that if
+anything happened to her, I would come to Uncle Ebeneezer. She said she
+had never imposed upon him and that he would gladly take care of me, for
+her sake. I was ill a long, long time, but as soon as I was able to, I
+came, and now--and now----"
+
+"Don't," said Harlan, again, awkwardly patting her hands, and deeply
+touched by the girl's distress. "We are your friends. You can stay here
+just as well as not. I am married and----"
+
+Upon his back, Harlan felt eyes. He turned quickly, and saw Dorothy
+standing in the door--quite a new Dorothy, indeed; very tall, and stately,
+and pale.
+
+Through sheer nervousness, Mr. Carr laughed--an unfortunate, high-pitched
+laugh with no mirth in it. "Let me present my wife," he said, sobering
+suddenly. "Mrs. Carr, Miss----"
+
+Here he coughed, and the guest, rising, filled the pause. "I am Elaine St.
+Clair," she explained, offering a white, tremulous hand which Dorothy did
+not seem to see. "It is very good of your husband to ask me to stay with
+you."
+
+"Very," replied Dorothy, in a tone altogether new to her husband. "He is
+always doing lovely things for people. And now, Harlan, if you will show
+Miss St. Clair to her room, I will speak with Mrs. Smithers about
+luncheon, which should be nearly ready by this time."
+
+"Thunder," said Harlan to himself, as Dorothy withdrew. "What in the devil
+do I know about 'her room'? Have you ever been here before?" he inquired
+of the guest.
+
+"Never in my life," answered Miss St. Clair, wiping her eyes.
+
+"Well," replied Harlan, confusedly, "just go on upstairs, then, and help
+yourself. There are plenty of rooms, and cribs to burn in every blamed one
+of 'em," he added, savagely, remembering the look in Dorothy's eyes.
+
+"Thank you," said Miss St. Clair, diffidently; "it is very kind of you to
+let me choose. Can some one bring my trunk up this afternoon?"
+
+"I'll attend to it," replied her host, brusquely.
+
+She trailed noiselessly upstairs, carrying her heavy suit case, and
+Harlan, not altogether happy at the prospect, went in search of Dorothy.
+At the kitchen door he paused, hearing voices within.
+
+"They've usually et by themselves," Mrs. Smithers was saying. "Is this a
+new one, or a friend of yours?"
+
+The sentence was utterly without meaning, either to Harlan or Dorothy, but
+the answer was given, as quick as a flash. "A friend, Mrs. Smithers--a
+very dear old friend of Mr. Carr's."
+
+"'Mr. Carr's,'" repeated Harlan, miserably, tiptoeing away to the library,
+where he sat down and wiped his forehead. "'A very dear old friend.'"
+Disconnectedly, and with pronounced emphasis, Harlan mentioned the place
+which is said to be paved with good intentions.
+
+The clock struck twelve, and it was just eleven when he had begun on _The
+Quest of the Lady Elaine_. "'One crowded hour of glorious life is
+worth'--what idiot said it was worth anything?" groaned Harlan, inwardly.
+"Anyway, I've had the crowded hour. 'Better fifty years of Europe than a
+cycle of Cathay'"--the line sang itself into his consciousness. "Europe be
+everlastingly condemned," he muttered. "Oh, how my head aches!"
+
+He leaned back in his chair, wondering where "Cathay" might be. It sounded
+like a nice, quiet place, with no "dear old friends" in it--a peaceful
+spot where people could write books if they wanted to. "Just why," he
+asked himself more than once, "was I inspired to grab the shaky paw of
+that human sponge? 'Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean'--oh, the
+devil! She must have a volume of Tennyson in her grip, and it's soaking
+through!"
+
+Mrs. Smithers came out into the hall, more sepulchral and grim-visaged
+than ever, and rang the bell for luncheon. To Harlan's fevered fancy, it
+sounded like a sexton tolling a bell for a funeral. Miss St. Clair, with
+the traces of tears practically removed, floated gracefully downstairs,
+and Harlan, coming out of the library with the furtive step of a wild
+beast from its lair, met her inopportunely at the foot of the stairs.
+
+She smiled at him in a timid, but friendly fashion, and at the precise
+moment, Dorothy appeared in the dining-room door.
+
+"Harlan, dear," she said, in her sweetest tones, "will you give our guest
+your arm and escort her out to luncheon? I have it all ready!"
+
+Miss St. Clair clutched timidly at Harlan's rigid coat sleeve, wondering
+what strange custom of the house would be evident next, and the fog was
+thick before Mr. Carr's eyes, when he took his accustomed seat at the head
+of the table. As a sign of devotion, he tried to step on Dorothy's foot
+under the table, after a pleasing habit of their courtship in the New York
+boarding-house, but he succeeded only in drawing an unconscious "ouch" and
+a vivid blush from Miss St. Clair, by which he impressed Dorothy more
+deeply than he could have hoped to do otherwise.
+
+"Have you come far, Miss St. Clair?" asked Dorothy, conventionally.
+
+"From New York," answered the guest, taking a plate of fried chicken from
+Harlan's shaky hand.
+
+"I know," said Dorothy sweetly. "We come from New York, too." Then she
+took a bold, daring plunge. "I have often heard my husband speak of you."
+
+"Of me, Mrs. Carr? Surely not! It must have been some other Elaine."
+
+"Perhaps," smiled Dorothy, shrugging her shoulders. "No doubt I am
+mistaken, but you may have heard of me?"
+
+"Indeed I haven't," Elaine assured her. "I never heard of you in my life
+before. Why should I?" A sudden and earnest crow under the window behind
+her startled her so that she dropped her knife. Harlan stooped for it at
+the same time she did and their heads bumped together smartly.
+
+"Our gentleman chicken," went on Dorothy, tactfully. "We call him 'Abdul
+Hamid.' You know the masculine nature is instinctively polygamous."
+
+Harlan cackled mirthlessly, wondering, subconsciously, how Abdul Hamid
+could have escaped from the coop. After that there was silence, save as
+Dorothy, in her most hospitable manner, occasionally urged the guest to
+have more of something. Throughout luncheon, she never once spoke to
+Harlan, nor took so much as a single glance at his red, unhappy face. Even
+his ears were scarlet, and the delicious fried chicken which he was eating
+might have been a section of rag carpet, for all he knew to the contrary.
+
+"And now, Miss St. Clair," said Dorothy, kindly, as they rose from the
+table, "I am sure you will wish to lie down and rest after your long
+journey. Which room did you choose?"
+
+"I looked at all of them," responded Elaine, touched to the heart by this
+unexpected kindness from strangers, "and finally chose the suite in the
+south wing. It's a nice large room, with such a darling little
+sitting-room attached, and such a dear work basket."
+
+Harlan nearly burst, for the description was of Dorothy's own particular
+sanctum.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Carr, very quietly; "I thought my husband would choose
+that room for you--dear Harlan is always so thoughtful! I will go up with
+you and take out a few of my things which have been unfortunately left
+there."
+
+Shortly afterward, Mr. Carr also climbed the stairs, his head swimming and
+his knees knocking together. Nervously, he turned over the few pages of
+his manuscript, then, hearing Dorothy coming, grabbed it and fled like a
+thief to the library on the first floor. In his panic he bolted the doors
+and windows of Uncle Ebeneezer's former retreat. It was unnecessary,
+however, for no one came near him.
+
+Throughout the long, sweet Spring afternoon, Miss St. Clair slept the
+dreamless sleep of utter exhaustion, Harlan worked fruitlessly at _The
+Quest of Lady Elaine_, and Dorothy busied herself about her household
+tasks, singing with forced cheerfulness whenever she was within hearing of
+the library.
+
+"I'll explain" thought Harlan, wretchedly. But after all what was there to
+explain, except that he had never seen Miss St. Clair before, never in all
+his life heard of her, never knew there was such a person, or had never
+met anybody who knew anything about her? "Besides," he continued to
+himself "even then, what excuse have I got for stroking a strange woman's
+hand and telling her I'm married?"
+
+As the afternoon wore on, he decided that it would be policy to ignore the
+whole matter. It was an unfortunate misunderstanding all around, which
+could not be cleared away by speech, unless Dorothy should ask him about
+it--which he was very certain she would not do. "She ought to trust me,"
+he said to himself, resentfully, forgetting the absolute openness of
+thought and deed upon which a woman's trust is founded. "I'll read her the
+book to-night," he thought, happily, "and that will please her."
+
+But it was fated not to. After dinner, which was much the same as
+luncheon, as far as conversation was concerned, Harlan invited Dorothy to
+come into the library.
+
+She followed him, obediently enough, and he closed the door.
+
+"Dearest," he began, with a grin which was meant to be cheerful and was
+merely ridiculous, "I've begun the book--I actually have! I've been
+working on it all day. Just listen!"
+
+Hurriedly possessing himself of the manuscript, he read it in an unnatural
+voice, down to the flower-like hands.
+
+"I don't see how you can say that, Harlan," interrupted Dorothy, coolly
+critical; "I particularly noticed her hands and they're not nice at all.
+They're red and rough and nearly the size of a policeman's."
+
+"Whose hands?" demanded Harlan, in genuine astonishment.
+
+"Why, Elaine's--Miss St. Clair's. If you're going to do a book about her,
+you might at least try to make it truthful."
+
+Mrs. Carr went out, closing the door carefully, but firmly. Then, for the
+first time, the whole wretched situation dawned upon the young and
+aspiring author.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+An Uninvited Guest
+
+
+Dorothy sat alone in her room, facing the first heartache of her married
+life. She repeatedly told herself that she was not jealous; that the
+primitive, unlovely emotion was far beneath such as she. But if Harlan had
+only told her, instead of leaving her to find out in this miserable way!
+It had never entered her head that the clear-eyed, clean-minded boy whom
+she had married, could have anything even remotely resembling a past, and
+here it was in her own house! Moreover, it had inspired a book, and she
+herself had been unable to get him to work at all.
+
+Just why women should be concerned in regard to old loves has never been
+wholly clear. One might as well fancy a clean slate, freshly and
+elaborately dedicated to noble composition, being bothered by the addition
+and subtraction which was once done upon its surface.
+
+With her own eyes she had seen Miss St. Clair weeping, while Harlan held
+her hands and explained that he was married. Undoubtedly Miss St. Clair
+accounted for various metropolitan delays and absences which she had
+joyously forgiven on the score of Harlan's "work." Bitterest of all was
+the thought that she must endure it--that the long years ahead of her
+offered no escape, no remedy, except the ignoble, painful one which she
+would not for a moment consider.
+
+A sudden flash of resentment stiffened her backbone, metaphorically
+speaking. In spite of Miss St. Clair, Harlan had married her, and it was
+Miss St. Clair who was weeping over the event, not Harlan. She had seen
+that the visitor made Harlan unhappy--very well, she would generously
+throw them together and make him painfully weary of her, for Love's
+certain destroyer is Satiety. Deep in Dorothy's consciousness was the
+abiding satisfaction that she had never once, as she put it to herself,
+"chased him." Never a note, never a telephone call, never a question as to
+his coming and going appeared now to trouble her. The ancient, primeval
+relation of the Seeker and the Sought had not for a single moment been
+altered through her.
+
+Meanwhile, Elaine had settled down peacefully enough. Having been regaled
+since infancy with tales of Uncle Ebeneezer's generous hospitality, it
+seemed only fitting and proper that his relatives should make her welcome,
+even though Elaine's mother had been only a second cousin of Mrs.
+Judson's. Elaine had been deeply touched by Harlan's solicitude and
+Dorothy's kindness, seeing in it nothing more than the manifestation of a
+beautiful spirit toward one who was helpless and ill.
+
+A modest wardrobe and a few hundred dollars, saved from the wreck of her
+mother's estate, and the household furniture in storage, represented
+Elaine's worldly goods. As too often happens in a material world, she had
+been trained to do nothing but sing a little, play a little, and paint
+unspeakably. She planned, vaguely, to stay where she was during the
+Summer, and in the Autumn, when she had quite recovered her former
+strength, to take her money and learn some method of self-support.
+
+Just now she was resting. A late breakfast, a walk through the country, a
+light luncheon, and a long nap accounted for Elaine's day until
+dinner-time. After dinner, for an hour, she exchanged commonplaces with
+the Carrs, then retired to her own room with a book from Uncle Ebeneezer's
+library. Even Dorothy was forced to admit that she made very little
+trouble.
+
+The train rumbled into the station--the very same train which had brought
+the Serpent into Paradise. Dorothy smiled a little at the idea of a snake
+travelling on a train unless it belonged to a circus, and wiped her eyes.
+Having mapped out her line of conduct, the rest was simple enough--to
+abide by it even to the smallest details, and patiently await results.
+
+When she went downstairs again she was outwardly quite herself, but
+altogether unprepared for the surprise that awaited her in the parlour.
+
+"Hello," cried a masculine voice, cheerily, as she entered the room. "I've
+never seen you before, have I?"
+
+"Not that I know of," replied Dorothy, startled, but not in the least
+afraid.
+
+The young man who rose to greet her was not at all unpleasant to look
+upon. He was taller than Harlan, smooth-shaven, had nice brown eyes, and a
+mop of curly brown hair which evidently annoyed him. Moreover, he was
+laughing, as much from sheer joy of living as anything else.
+
+"Which side of the house are you a relative of?" he asked.
+
+"The inside," returned Dorothy. "I keep house here."
+
+"You don't say so! What's become of Sally? Uncle shoo her off the lot?"
+
+"I don't know what you're talking about," answered Dorothy, with a
+fruitless effort to appear matronly and dignified. "If by 'uncle' you mean
+Uncle Ebeneezer, he's dead."
+
+"You don't tell me! Reaped at last, after all this delay! Then how did you
+come here?"
+
+"By train," responded Dorothy, enjoying the situation to the utmost.
+"Uncle Ebeneezer left the house and furniture to my husband."
+
+The young man sank into a chair and wiped the traces of deep emotion from
+his ruddy face. "Hully Gee!" he said, when he recovered speech. "I suppose
+that's French for 'Dick, chase yourself.'"
+
+"Perhaps not," suggested Mrs. Carr, strangely loath to have this breezy
+individual take his departure. "You might tell me who you are; don't you
+think so?"
+
+"Not a bad notion at all. I'm the Dick of the firm of 'Tom, Dick, and
+Harry,' you've doubtless heard about from your childhood. My other name is
+Chester, but few know it. I'm merely 'Dick' to everybody, yourself
+included, I trust," he added with an elaborate bow. "If you will sit down,
+and make yourself comfortable, I will now unfold to you the sad story of
+my life.
+
+"I was born of poor but honest parents about twenty-three years ago,
+according to the last official census. They brought me up until I reached
+the ripe age of twelve, then got tired of their job and went to heaven.
+Since then I've brought myself up. I've just taught a college all it can
+learn from me, and been put out. Prexy confided to me that I wasn't going
+to graduate, so I shook the classic dust from my weary feet and fled
+hither as to a harbour of refuge. I've always spent my Summers with Uncle
+Ebeneezer, because it was cheap for me and good for him, but I can't
+undertake to follow him up this Summer, not knowing exactly where he is,
+and not caring for a warm climate anyway."
+
+Inexpressibly shocked, Dorothy looked up to the portrait over the mantel
+half fearfully, but there was no change in the stern, malicious old face.
+
+"You're afraid of him, aren't you?" asked Dick, with a hearty laugh.
+
+"I always have been," admitted Dorothy. "He scared me the first time we
+came here--it was at night, and raining."
+
+"I've known him to scare people in broad daylight, and they weren't always
+women either. He used to be a pleasant old codger, but he got over it, and
+after he learned to swear readily, he was a pretty tough party to buck up
+against. It took nerve to stay here when uncle was in a bad mood, but most
+people have more nerve than they think they have. You haven't told me your
+name yet."
+
+"Mrs. Carr--Dorothy Carr."
+
+"Pretty name," remarked Dick, with evident admiration. "If you don't mind,
+I'll call you 'Dorothy' till the train goes back. It will be something for
+me to remember in the desert waste of my empty years to come."
+
+A friendly, hospitable impulse seized Mrs. Carr. "Why should you go?" she
+inquired, smiling. "If you've been in the habit of spending your Summers
+here, you needn't change on our account. We'd be glad to have you, I'm
+sure. A dear old friend of my husband's is already here."
+
+"Fine or superfine?"
+
+"Superfine," returned Dorothy, feeling very much as though the clock had
+been turned back twenty years or more and she was at a children's party
+again.
+
+"You can bet your sweet life I'll stay," said Dick, "and if I bother you
+at any time, just say so and I'll skate out, with no hard feelings on
+either side. You may need me when the rest of the bunch gets here."
+
+"The rest of--oh Harlan, come here a minute!"
+
+She had caught him as he was going into the library with his work,
+thinking that a change of environment might possibly produce an acceptable
+change in the current of his thoughts.
+
+"Dick," said Dorothy, when Harlan came to the door, "this is my husband.
+Mr. Chester, Mr. Carr."
+
+For days Harlan had not seen Dorothy with such rosy cheeks, such dancing
+eyes, nor half as many dimples. Bewildered, and not altogether pleased, he
+awkwardly extended his hand to Mr. Chester, with a conventional "how do
+you do?"
+
+Dick wrung the offered hand in a mighty grip which made Harlan wince. "I
+congratulate you, Mr. Carr," he said gallantly, "upon possessing the
+fairest ornament of her sex. Guess this letter is for you, isn't it? I
+found it in the post-office while the keeper was out, and just took it. If
+it doesn't belong here, I'll skip back with it."
+
+"Thanks," murmured Harlan, rubbing the injured hand with the other.
+"I--where did you come from?"
+
+"The station," explained Dick, pleasantly. "I never trace myself back of
+where I was last seen."
+
+"He's going to stay with us, Harlan," put in Dorothy, wickedly, "so you
+mustn't let us keep you away from your work. Come along, Dick, and I'll
+show you our cow."
+
+They went out, followed by a long, low whistle of astonishment from Harlan
+which Dorothy's acute ears did not miss. Presently Mr. Carr retreated into
+the library, and locked the door, but he did not work. The book was at a
+deadlock, half a paragraph beyond "the flower-like hands of Elaine," of
+which, indeed, the author had confessed his inability to write.
+
+"Dick," thought Harlan. "Mr. Chester. A young giant with a grip like an
+octopus. 'The fairest ornament of her sex.' Never, never heard of him
+before. Some old flame of Dorothy's, who has discovered her whereabouts
+and brazenly followed her, even on her honeymoon."
+
+And he, Harlan, was absolutely prevented from speaking of it by an unhappy
+chain of circumstances which put him in a false light! For the first time
+he fully perceived how a single thoughtless action may bind all one's
+future existence.
+
+"Just because I stroked the hand of a distressed damsel," muttered Harlan,
+"and told her I was married, I've got to sit and see a procession of my
+wife's old lovers marking time here all Summer!" In his fevered fancy, he
+already saw the Jack-o'-Lantern surrounded by Mrs. Carr's former admirers,
+heard them call her "Dorothy," and realised that there was not a single
+thing he could do.
+
+"Unless, of course," he added, mentally, "it gets too bad, and I have an
+excuse to order 'em out. And then, probably, Dorothy will tell Elaine to
+take her dolls and go home, and the poor thing's got nowhere to
+go--nowhere in the wide world.
+
+"How would Dorothy like to be a lonely orphan, with no husband, no
+friends, and no job? She wouldn't like it much, but women never have any
+sympathy for each other, nor for their husbands, either. I'd give twenty
+dollars this minute not to have stroked Elaine's hand, and fifty not to
+have had Dorothy see it, but there's no use in crying over spilt milk nor
+in regretting hands that have already been stroked."
+
+In search of diversion, he opened his letter, which was in answer to the
+one he had written some little time ago, inquiring minutely, of an
+acquaintance who was supposed to be successful, just what the prospects
+were for a beginner in the literary craft.
+
+"Dear Carr," the letter read. "Sorry not to have answered before, but I've
+been away and things got mixed up. Wouldn't advise anybody but an enemy to
+take up writing as a steady job, but if you feel the call, go in and win.
+You can make all the way from eight dollars a year, which was what I made
+when I first struck out, up to five thousand, which was what I averaged
+last year. I've always envied you fellows who could turn in your stuff and
+get paid for it the following Tuesday. In my line, you work like the devil
+this year for what you're going to get next, and live on the year after.
+
+"However, if you're bitten with it, there's no cure. You'll see magazine
+articles in stones and books in running brooks all the rest of your life.
+When you get your book done, I'll trot you around to my publisher, who
+enjoys the proud distinction of being an honest one, and if he likes your
+stuff, he'll take it, and if he doesn't, he'll turn you down so pleasantly
+that you'll feel as though he'd made you a present of something. If you
+think you've got genius, forget it, and remember that nothing takes the
+place of hard work. And, besides, it's a pretty blamed poor book that
+can't get itself printed these days.
+
+                                                     "Yours as usual,
+                                                                 "C. J."
+
+The communication was probably intended as encouragement, but the effect
+was depressing, and at the end of an hour, Harlan had written only two
+lines more in his book, neither of which pleased him.
+
+Meanwhile, Dick was renewing his old acquaintance with Mrs. Smithers, much
+to that lady's pleasure, though she characteristically endeavoured to
+conceal it. She belonged to a pious sect which held all mirth to be
+ungodly.
+
+"Sally," Dick was saying, "I've dreamed of your biscuits night and day
+since I ate the last one. Are we going to have 'em for lunch?"
+
+"No biscuits in this house to-day," grumbled the deity of the kitchen, in
+an attempt to be properly stern, "and as I've told you more than once, my
+name ain't 'Sally.' It's Mis' Smithers, that's wot it is, and I'll thank
+you to call me by it."
+
+"Between those who love," continued Dick, with a sidelong glance at
+Dorothy, who stood near by, appalled at his daring, "the best is none too
+good for common use. If my heart breaks the bonds of conventional
+restraint, and I call you by the name under which you always appear to me
+in my longing dreams, why should you not be gracious, and forgive me? Be
+kind to me, Sally, be just a little kind, and throw together a pan of
+those biscuits in your own inimitable style!"
+
+"Run along with you, you limb of Satan," cried Mrs. Smithers, brandishing
+a floury spoon.
+
+"Come along, Dorothy," said Dick, laying a huge but friendly paw upon Mrs.
+Carr's shoulder; "we're chased out." He put his head back into the
+kitchen, however, to file a parting petition for biscuits, which was
+unnecessary, for Mrs. Smithers had already found her rolling-pin and had
+begun to sift her flour.
+
+Outside, he duly admired Maud, who was chewing the cud of reflection under
+a tree, created a panic in the chicken yard by lifting Abdul Hamid
+ignominiously by the legs, to see how heavy he was, and chased Claudius
+Tiberius under the barn.
+
+"If that cat turns up missing some day," he said, "don't blame me. He
+looks so much like Uncle Ebeneezer that I can't stand for him."
+
+"There's something queer about Claudius, anyway," ventured Dorothy. "Mrs.
+Smithers says that uncle killed him the week before he died, and----"
+
+"Before who died?"
+
+"Claudius--no, before uncle died, and she buried him, and he's come to
+life again."
+
+"Uncle, or Claudius?"
+
+"Claudius, you goose," laughed Dorothy.
+
+"If I knew just how nearly related we were," remarked Dick, irrelevantly
+enough, "I believe I'd kiss you. You look so pretty with all your dimples
+hung out and your hair blowing in the wind."
+
+Dorothy glanced up, startled, and inclined to be angry, but it was
+impossible to take offence at such a mischievous youth as Dick was at that
+moment. "We're not related," she said, coolly, "except by marriage."
+
+"Well, that's near enough," returned Dick, who was never disposed to be
+unduly critical. "Your husband is only related to you by marriage. Don't
+be such a prude. Come to the waiting arms of your uncle, or cousin, or
+brother-in-law, or whatever it is that I happen to be."
+
+"Go and kiss your friend Sally in the kitchen," laughed Dorothy. "You have
+my permission." Dick made a wry face. "I don't hanker to do it," he said,
+"but if you want me to, I will. I suppose she isn't pleased with her place
+and you want to make it more homelike for her."
+
+"What relation were you to Uncle Ebeneezer?" queried Dorothy, curiously.
+
+"Uncle and I," sighed Dick, "were connected by the closest ties of blood
+and marriage. Nobody could be more related than we were. I was the only
+child of Aunt Rebecca's sister's husband's sister's husband's sister. Say,
+on the dead, if I ever bother you will you tell me so and invite me to
+skip?"
+
+"Of course I will."
+
+"Shake hands on it, then; that's a good fellow. And say, did you say there
+was another skirt stopping here?"
+
+"A--a what?"
+
+"Petticoat," explained Dick, patiently; "mulier, as the ancient dagoes had
+it. They've been getting mulier ever since, too. How old is she?"
+
+"Oh," answered Dorothy. "She's not more than twenty or twenty-one." Then,
+endeavouring to be just to Elaine, she added: "And a very pretty girl,
+too."
+
+"Lead me to her," exclaimed Dick ecstatically. "Already she is mine!"
+
+"You'll see her at luncheon. There's the bell, now."
+
+Mr. Chester was duly presented to Miss St. Clair, and from then on,
+appeared to be on his good behaviour. Elaine's delicate, fragile beauty
+appealed strongly to the susceptible Dick, and from the very beginning, he
+was afraid of her--a dangerous symptom, if he had only known it.
+
+Harlan, making the best of a bad bargain, devoted himself to his guests
+impartially, and, upon the whole, the luncheon went off very well, though
+the atmosphere was not wholly festive.
+
+Afterward, when they sat down in the parlour, there was an awkward pause
+which no one seemed inclined to relieve. At length Dorothy, mindful of her
+duty as hostess, asked Miss St. Clair if she would not play something.
+
+Willingly enough, Elaine went to the melodeon, which had not been opened
+since the Carrs came to live at the Jack-o'-Lantern, and lifted the lid.
+Immediately, however, she went off into hysterics, which were so violent
+that Harlan and Dorothy were obliged to assist her to her room.
+
+Dick strongly desired to carry Elaine upstairs, but was forbidden by the
+hampering conventionalities. So he lounged over to the melodeon, somewhat
+surprised to find that "It" was still there.
+
+"It" was a brown, wavy, false front of human hair, securely anchored to
+the keys underneath by a complicated system of loops of linen thread.
+Pinned to the top was a faded slip of paper on which Uncle Ebeneezer had
+written, long ago: "Mrs. Judson always kept her best false front in the
+melodeon. I do not desire to have it disturbed.--E. J."
+
+"His Nibs never could bear music," thought Dick, as he closed the
+instrument, little guessing that a vein of sentiment in Uncle Ebeneezer's
+hard nature had impelled him to keep the prosaic melodeon forever sacred
+to the slender, girlish fingers that had last brought music from its
+yellowed keys.
+
+From upstairs still came the sound of crying, which was not altogether to
+be wondered at, considering Miss St. Clair's weak, nervous condition.
+Harlan came down, scowling, and took back the brandy flask, moving none
+too hastily.
+
+"They don't like Elaine," murmured Dick to himself, vaguely troubled. "I
+wonder why--oh, I wonder why!"
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+More
+
+
+_Blue as sapphires were the eyes of Elaine, and her fair cheek was like
+that of an apple blossom. Set like a rose upon pearl was the dewy,
+fragrant sweetness of her mouth, and her breath was that of the rose
+itself. Her hands--but how shall I write of the flower-like hands of
+Elaine? They seemed all too frail to hold the reins of her palfrey, much
+less to guide him along the rocky road that lay before her._
+
+_Safely sheltered in a sunny valley was the Castle of Content, wherein
+Elaine's father reigned as Lord. Upon the hills close at hand were the
+orchards, which were now in bloom. A faint, unearthly sweetness came with
+every passing breeze, and was wafted through the open windows of the
+Castle, where, upon the upper floor, Elaine was wont to sit with her maids
+at the tapestry frames._
+
+_But, of late, a strange restlessness was upon her, and the wander-lust
+surged through her veins._
+
+_"My father," she said, "I am fain to leave the Castle of Content, and set
+out upon the Heart's Quest. Among the gallant knights of thy retinue,
+there is none whom I would wed, and it is seemly that I should set out to
+find my lord and master, for behold, father, as thou knowest, twenty years
+and more have passed over my head, and my beauty hath begun to fade."_
+
+_The Lord of the Castle of Content smiled in amusement, that Elaine, the
+beautiful, should fancy her charms were on the wane. But he was ever eager
+to gratify the slightest wish of this only child of his, and so he gave
+his ready consent._
+
+_"Indeed, Elaine," he answered, "and if thou choosest, thou shalt go, but
+these despised knights shall attend thee, and also our new fool, who hath
+come from afar to make merry in our court. His motley is of an unfamiliar
+pattern, his quips and jests savour not so much of antiquity, and his
+songs are pleasing. He shall lighten the rigours of thy journey and cheer
+thee when thou art sad."_
+
+_"But, father, I do not choose to have the fool."_
+
+_"Say no more, Elaine, for if thou goest, thou shall have the fool. It is
+most fitting that in thy retinue there shouldst be more than one to wear
+the cap and bells, and it is in my mind to consider this quest of thine
+somewhat more than mildly foolish. Unnumbered brave and faithful knights
+are at thy feet and yet thou canst not choose, but must needs fare onward
+in search of a stranger to be thy lord and master."_
+
+_Elaine raised her hand. "As thou wilt, father," she said, submissively.
+"Thou canst not understand the way of a maid. Bid thy fool to prepare
+himself quickly for a long journey, since we start at sunset."_
+
+_"But why at sunset, daughter? The way is long. Mayst not thy mission wait
+until sunrise?"_
+
+_"Nay, father, for it is my desire to sleep to-night upon the ground. The
+tapestried walls of my chamber stifle me and I would fain lie in the fresh
+air with only the green leaves for my canopy and the stars for my taper
+lights."_
+
+_"As thou wilt, Elaine, but my heart is sad at the prospect of losing
+thee. Thou art my only child, the image of thy dead mother, and my old
+eyes shall be misty for the sight of thee long before my gallant knights
+bring thee back again."_
+
+_"So shall I gain some hours, father," she answered. "Perhaps my sunset
+journeying shall bring my return a day nearer. Cross me not in this wish,
+father, for it is my fancy to go."_
+
+_So it was that the cavalcade was made ready and Elaine and her company
+left the Castle of Content at sunset. Two couriers rode at the head, to
+see that the way was clear, and with a silver bugle to warn travellers to
+stand aside until the Lady Elaine and her attendants had passed._
+
+_Upon a donkey, caparisoned in a most amusing manner, rode Le Jongleur,
+the new fool of whom the Lord of the Castle of Content had spoken. His
+motley, as has been said, was of an unfamiliar pattern, but was none the
+less striking, being made wholly of scarlet and gold. The Lady Elaine
+could not have guessed that it was assumed as a tribute to the trappings
+of her palfrey, for Le Jongleur's heart was most humble and loyal, though
+leaping now with the joy of serving the fair Lady Elaine._
+
+_The Lord of Content stood at the portal of the Castle to bid the retinue
+Godspeed, and as the cymbals crashed out a sounding farewell, he
+impatiently wiped away the mist, which already had clouded his vision.
+Long he waited, straining his eyes toward the distant cliffs, where, one
+by one, the company rode upward. The valley was in shadow, but the long
+light lay upon the hills, changing the crags to a wonder of purple and
+gold. To him, too, came the breath of apple bloom, but it brough no joy to
+his troubled heart._
+
+_What dangers lay in wait for Elaine as she fared forth upon her wild
+quest? What monsters haunted the primeval forests through which her path
+must lie? And where was the knight who should claim her innocent and
+maidenly heart? At this thought, the Lord of Content shuddered, then was
+quickly ashamed._
+
+_"I am as foolish," he muttered, "as he in motley, who rides at the side
+of Elaine. Surely my daughter, the child of a soldier, can make no
+unworthy choice."_
+
+_The cavalcade had reached the summit of the cliff, now, and at the brink,
+turned back. The cymbals and the bugles pealed forth another sounding
+farewell to the Lord of the Castle of Content, whom Elaine well knew was
+waiting in the shadow of the portal till her company should be entirely
+lost to sight._
+
+_The last light shone upon the wonderful mass of gold which rippled to her
+waist, unbound, from beneath her close-fitting scarlet cap, and gave her
+an unearthly beauty. Le Jongleur held aloft his bauble, making it to nod
+in merry fashion, but the Lord of Content did not see, his eyes being
+fixed upon Elaine. She waved her hand to him, but he could not answer, for
+his shoulders were shaking with grief, nor, indeed, across the merciless
+distance that lay between, could he guess at Elaine's whispered prayer:
+"Dear Heavenly Father, keep thou my earthly father safe and happy, till
+his child comes back again."_
+
+_Over the edge of the cliff and out upon a wide plain they fared. Ribbons
+of glorious colour streamed from the horizon to the zenith, and touched to
+flame the cymbals and the bugles and the trappings of the horses and the
+shields of the knights. Piercingly sweet, across the fields of blowing
+clover, came the even song of a feathered chorister, and_--what on earth
+was that noise?
+
+Harlan went to the window impatiently, like one wakened from a dream by a
+blind impulse of action.
+
+The village stage, piled high with trunks, was at his door, and from the
+cavernous depths of the vehicle, shrieks of juvenile terror echoed and
+re-echoed unceasingly. Mr. Blake, driving, merely waited in supreme
+unconcern.
+
+"What in the hereafter," muttered Harlan, savagely. "More old lovers of
+Dorothy's, I suppose, or else the--Good Lord, it's twins!"
+
+A child of four or five fell out of the stage, followed by another, who
+lit unerringly on top of the prostrate one. In the meteoric moment of the
+fall, Harlan had seen that the two must have discovered America at about
+the same time, for they were exactly alike, making due allowance for the
+slight difference made by masculine and feminine attire.
+
+An enormous doll, which to Harlan's troubled sight first appeared to be an
+infant in arms, was violently ejected from the stage and added to the
+human pile which was wriggling and weeping upon the gravelled walk. A cub
+of seven next leaped out, whistling shrilly, then came a querulous,
+wailing, feminine voice from the interior.
+
+"Willie," it whined, "how can you act so? Help your little brother and
+sister up and get Rebbie's doll."
+
+To this the lad paid no attention whatever, and the mother herself
+assorted the weeping pyramid on the walk. Harlan ran downstairs, feeling
+that the hour had come to defend his hearthstone from outsiders. Dick and
+Dorothy were already at the door.
+
+"Foundlings' Home," explained Dick, briefly, with a wink at Harlan.
+"They're late this year."
+
+Dorothy was speechless with amazement and despair. Before Harlan had begun
+to think connectedly, one of the twins had darted into the house and
+bumped its head on the library door, thereupon making the Jack-o'-Lantern
+hideous with much lamentation.
+
+The mother, apparently tired out, came in as though she had left something
+of great value there and had come to get it, pausing only to direct Harlan
+to pay the stage driver, and have her trunks taken into the rooms opening
+off the dining-room on the south side.
+
+Willie took a mouth-organ out of his pocket and rendered a hitherto
+unknown air upon it with inimitable vigour. In the midst of the confusion,
+Claudius Tiberius had the misfortune to appear, and, immediately
+perceiving his mistake, whisked under the sofa, from whence the other twin
+determinedly haled him, using the handle which Nature had evidently
+intended for that purpose.
+
+"Will you kindly tell me," demanded Mrs. Carr, when she could make herself
+heard, "what is the meaning of all this?"
+
+"I do not understand you," said the mother of the twins, coldly. "Were you
+addressing me?"
+
+"I was," returned Mrs. Carr, to Dick's manifest delight. "I desire to know
+why you have come to my house, uninvited, and made all this disturbance."
+
+"The idea!" exclaimed the woman, trembling with anger. "Will you please
+send for Mr. Judson?"
+
+"Mr. Judson," said Dorothy, icily, "has been dead for some time. This
+house is the property of my husband."
+
+"Indeed! And who may your husband be?" The tone of the question did not
+indicate even faint interest in the subject under discussion.
+
+Dorothy turned, but Harlan had long since beat an ignominious retreat,
+closely followed by Dick, whose idea, as audibly expressed, was that the
+women be allowed to "fight it out by themselves."
+
+"I can readily understand," went on Dorothy, with a supreme effort at
+self-control, "that you have made a mistake for which you are not in any
+sense to blame. You are tired from your journey, and you are quite welcome
+to stay until to-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow!" shrilled the woman. "I guess you don't know who I am! I am
+Mrs. Holmes, Rebecca Judson's own cousin, and I have spent the Summer here
+ever since Rebecca was married! I guess if Ebeneezer knew you were
+practically ordering his wife's own cousin out of his house, he'd rise
+from his grave to haunt you!"
+
+Dorothy fancied that Uncle Ebeneezer's portrait moved slightly. Aunt
+Rebecca still surveyed the room from the easel, gentle, sweet-faced, and
+saintly. There was no resemblance whatever between Aunt Rebecca and the
+sallow, hollow-cheeked, wide-eyed termagant, with a markedly receding
+chin, who stood before Mrs. Carr and defied her.
+
+"This is my husband's house," suggested Dorothy, pertinently.
+
+"Then let your husband do the talking," rejoined Mrs. Holmes,
+sarcastically. "If he was sure it was his, I guess he wouldn't have run
+away. I've always had my own rooms here, and I intend to go and come as I
+please, as I always have done. You can't make me believe that Ebeneezer
+gave my apartments to your husband, nor him either, and I wouldn't advise
+any of you to try it."
+
+Sounds of fearful panic came from the chicken yard, and Dorothy rushed
+out, swiftly laying avenging hands on the disturber of the peace. One of
+the twins was chasing Abdul Hamid around the coop with a lath, as he
+explained between sobs, "to make him lay." Mrs. Holmes bore down upon
+Dorothy before any permanent good had been done.
+
+"How dare you!" she cried. "How dare you lay hands on my child! Come,
+Ebbie, come to mamma. Bless his little heart, he shall chase the chickens
+if he wants to, so there, there. Don't cry, Ebbie. Mamma will get you
+another lath and you shall play with the chickens all the afternoon.
+There, there!"
+
+Harlan appeared at this juncture, and in a few quiet, well-chosen words
+told Mrs. Holmes that the chicken coop was his property, and that neither
+now nor at any other time should any one enter it without his express
+permission.
+
+"Upon my word," remarked Mrs. Holmes, still soothing the unhappy twin.
+"How high and mighty we are when we're living off our poor dead uncle's
+bounty! Telling his wife's own cousin what she's to do, and what she
+isn't! Upon my word!"
+
+So saying, Mrs. Holmes retired to the house, her pace hastened by howls
+from the other twin, who was in trouble with her older brother somewhere
+in her "apartment."
+
+Dorothy looked at Harlan, undecided whether to laugh or to cry. "Poor
+little woman," he said, softly; "don't you fret. We'll have them out of
+the house no later than to-morrow."
+
+"All of them?" asked Dorothy, eagerly, as Miss St. Clair strolled into the
+front yard.
+
+Harlan's brow clouded and he shifted uneasily from one foot to the other.
+"I don't know," he said, slowly, "whether I've got nerve enough to order a
+woman out of my house or not. Let's wait and see what happens."
+
+A sob choked Dorothy, and she ran swiftly into the house, fortunately
+meeting no one on her way to her room. Dick ventured out of the barn and
+came up to Harlan, who was plainly perplexed.
+
+"Very, very mild arrival," commented Mr. Chester, desiring to put his host
+at his ease. "I've never known 'em to come so peacefully as they have
+to-day. Usually there's more or less disturbance."
+
+"Disturbance," repeated Harlan. "Haven't we had a disturbance to-day?"
+
+"We have not," answered Dick, placidly. "Wait till young Ebeneezer and
+Rebecca get more accustomed to their surroundings, and then you'll have a
+Fourth of July every day, with Christmas, Thanksgiving, and St. Patrick's
+Day thrown in. Willie is the worst little terror that ever went unlicked,
+and the twins come next."
+
+"Perhaps you don't understand children," remarked Harlan, with a
+patronising air, and more from a desire to disagree with Dick than from
+anything else. "I've always liked them."
+
+"If you have," commented Dick, with a knowing chuckle, "you're in a fair
+way to get cured of it."
+
+"Tell me about these people," said Harlan, ignoring the speech, and
+dominated once more by healthy human curiosity. "Who are they and where do
+they come from?"
+
+"They're dwellers from the infernal regions," explained Dick, with an air
+of truthfulness, "and they came from there because the old Nick turned 'em
+out. They were upsetting things and giving the place a bad name. Mrs.
+Holmes says she's Aunt Rebecca's cousin, but nobody knows whether she is
+or not. She's come here every Summer since Aunt Rebecca died, and poor old
+uncle couldn't help himself. He hinted more than once that he'd enjoy her
+absence if she could be moved to make herself scarce, but it had no more
+effect than a snowflake would in the place she came from. The most he
+could do was to build a wing on the house with a separate kitchen and
+dining-room in it, and take his own meals in the library, with the door
+bolted.
+
+"Willie is a Winter product and Judson Centre isn't a pleasant place in
+the cold months, but the twins were born here, five years ago this Summer.
+They came in the night, but didn't make any more trouble then than they
+have every day since."
+
+"What would you do?" asked Harlan, after a thoughtful silence, "if you
+were in my place?"
+
+"I'd be tickled to death because a kind Providence had married me to
+Dorothy instead of to Mrs. Holmes. Poor old Holmes is in his well-earned
+grave."
+
+With great dignity, Harlan walked into the house, but Dick, occupied with
+his own thoughts, did not guess that his host was offended.
+
+After the first excitement was over, comparative peace settled down upon
+the Jack-o'-Lantern. Mrs. Holmes decided the question of where she should
+eat, by setting four more places at the table when Mrs. Smithers's back
+was turned. Dorothy did not appear at luncheon, and Mrs. Smithers
+performed her duties with such pronounced ungraciousness that Elaine felt
+as though something was about to explode.
+
+A long sleep, born of nervous exhaustion, came at last to Dorothy's
+relief. When she awoke, it was night and the darkness dazed her at first.
+She sat up and rubbed her eyes, wondering whether she had been dead, or
+merely ill.
+
+There was not a sound in the Jack-o'-Lantern, and the events of the day
+seemed like some hideous nightmare which waking had put to rout. She
+bathed her face in cool water, then went to look out of the window.
+
+A lantern moved back and forth under the trees in the orchard, and a tall,
+dark figure, armed with a spade, accompanied it. "It's Harlan," thought
+Dorothy. "I'll go down and see what he's burying."
+
+But it was only Mrs. Smithers, who appeared much startled when she saw her
+mistress at her side.
+
+"What are you doing?" demanded Dorothy, seeing that Mrs. Smithers had dug
+a hole at least a foot and a half each way.
+
+"Just a-satisfyin' myself," explained the handmaiden, with a note of
+triumph in her voice, "about that there cat. 'Ere's where I buried 'im,
+and 'ere's where there ain't no signs of 'is dead body. 'E's come back to
+'aunt us, that's wot 'e 'as, and your uncle'll be the next."
+
+"Don't be so foolish," snapped Dorothy. "You've forgotten the place,
+that's all, and I don't wish to hear any more of this nonsense."
+
+"'Oo was it?" asked Mrs. Smithers, "as come out of a warm bed at midnight
+to see as if folks wot was diggin' for cats found anythink? 'T warn't me,
+Miss, that's wot it warn't, and I take it that them as follers is as
+nonsensical as them wot digs. Anyhow, Miss, 'ere's where 'e was buried,
+and 'ere's where 'e ain't now. You can think wot you likes, that's wot you
+can."
+
+Claudius Tiberius suddenly materialised out of the surrounding darkness,
+and after sniffing at the edge of the hole, jumped in to investigate.
+
+"You see that, Miss?" quavered Mrs. Smithers. "'E knows where 'e's been,
+and 'e knows where 'e ain't now."
+
+"Mrs. Smithers," said Dorothy, sternly, "will you kindly fill up that hole
+and come into the house and go to bed? I don't want to be kept awake all
+night."
+
+"You don't need to be kept awake, Miss," said Mrs. Smithers, slowly
+filling up the hole. "The worst is 'ere already and wot's comin' is comin'
+anyway, and besides," she added, as an afterthought, "there ain't a
+blessed one of 'em come 'ere at night since your uncle fixed over the
+house."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Another
+
+
+For the first time in her life, Mrs. Carr fully comprehended the
+sensations of a wild animal caught in a trap. In her present painful
+predicament, she was absolutely helpless, and she realised it. It was
+Harlan's house, as he had said, but so powerful and penetrating was the
+personality of the dead man that she felt as though it was still largely
+the property of Uncle Ebeneezer.
+
+The portrait in the parlour gave her no light upon the subject, though she
+studied it earnestly. The face was that of an old man, soured and
+embittered by what Life had brought him, who seemed now to have a
+peculiarly malignant aspect. Dorothy fancied, in certain morbid moments,
+that Uncle Ebeneezer, from some safe place, was keenly relishing the whole
+situation.
+
+Upon her soul, too, lay heavily that ancient Law of the House, which
+demands unfailing courtesy to the stranger within our gates. Just why the
+eating of our bread and salt by some undesired guest should exert any
+particular charm of immunity, has long been an open question, but the Law
+remains.
+
+She felt, dimly, that the end was not yet--that still other strangers were
+coming to the Jack-o'-Lantern for indefinite periods. She saw, now, why
+wing after wing had been added to the house, but could not understand the
+odd arrangement of the front windows. Through some inner sense of loyalty
+to Uncle Ebeneezer, she forebore to question either Mrs. Smithers or
+Dick--two people who could probably have given her some light on the
+subject. She had gathered, however, from hints dropped here and there, as
+well as from the overpowering evidence of recent events, that a horde of
+relatives swarmed each Summer at the queer house on the hilltop and
+remained until late Autumn.
+
+Harlan said nothing, and nowadays Dorothy saw very little of him. Most of
+the time he was at work in the library, or else taking long, solitary
+rambles through the surrounding country. At meals he was moody and
+taciturn, his book obliterating all else from his mind.
+
+He doubtless knew, subconsciously, that his house was disturbed by alien
+elements, but he dwelt too securely in the upper regions to be troubled by
+the obvious fact. Once in the library, with every door securely bolted, he
+could afford to laugh at the tumult outside, if, indeed, he should ever
+become aware of its existence. The children might make the very air vocal
+with their howls, Elaine might have hysterics, Mrs. Smithers render hymns
+in a cracked, squeaky voice, and Dick whistle eternally, but Harlan was in
+a strange new country, with a beautiful lady, a company of gallant
+knights, and a jester.
+
+The rest was all unreal. He seemed to see people through a veil, to hear
+what they said without fully comprehending it, and to walk through his
+daily life blindly, without any sort of emotion. Worst of all, Dorothy
+herself seemed detached and dream-like. He saw that her face was white and
+her eyes sad, but it affected him not at all. He had yet to learn that in
+this, as in everything else, a price must inevitably be paid, and that the
+sudden change of all his loved realities to hazy visions was the terrible
+penalty of his craft.
+
+Yet there was compensation, which is also inevitable. To him, the book was
+vital, reaching down into the very heart of the world. Fancy took his
+work, and, to the eyes of its creator, made it passing fair. At times he
+would sit for an hour or more, nibbling at the end of his pencil, only
+negatively conscious, like one who stares fixedly at a blank wall.
+Presently, Elaine and her company would come back again, and he would go
+on with them, writing down only what he saw and felt.
+
+Chapter after chapter was written and tossed feverishly aside. The words
+beat in his pulses like music, each one with its own particular
+significance. In return for his personal effacement came moments of
+supremest joy, when his whole world was aflame with light, and colour, and
+sound, and his physical body fairly shook with ecstasy.
+
+Little did he know that the Cup was in his hands, and that he was draining
+it to the very dregs of bitterness. For this temporary intoxication, he
+must pay in every hour of his life to come. Henceforward he was set apart
+from his fellows, painfully isolated, eternally alone. He should have
+friends, but only for the hour. The stranger in the street should be the
+same to him as one he had known for many years, and he should be equally
+ready, at any moment, to cast either aside. With a quick, merciless
+insight, like the knife of a surgeon used without an anaesthetic, he should
+explore the inmost recesses of every personality with which he came in
+contact, involuntarily, and find himself interested only as some new trait
+or capacity was revealed. Calm and emotionless, urged by some hidden
+power, he should try each individual to see of what he was made; observing
+the man under all possible circumstances, and at times enmeshing new
+circumstances about him. He should sacrifice himself continually if by so
+doing he could find the deep roots of the other man's selfishness, and,
+conversely, be utterly selfish if necessary to discover the other's power
+of self-sacrifice.
+
+Unknowingly, he had ceased to be a man and had become a ferret. It was no
+light payment exacted in return for the pleasure of writing about Elaine.
+He had the ability to live in any place or century he pleased, but he had
+paid for it by putting his present reality upon precisely the same
+footing. Detachment was his continually. Henceforth he was a spectator
+merely, without any particular concern in what passed before his eyes.
+Some people he should know at a glance, others in a week, a month, or a
+year. Across the emptiness between them, some one should clasp his hand,
+yet share no more his inner life than one who lies beside a dreamer and
+thinks thus to know where the other wanders on the strange trails of
+sleep.
+
+In the dregs of the Cup lay the potential power to cast off his present
+life as a mollusk leaves his shell, and as completely forget it. For Love,
+and Death, and Pain are only symbols to him who is enslaved by the pen.
+Moreover, he suffers always the pangs of an unsatisfied hunger, the
+exquisite torture of an unappeased and unappeasable thirst, for something
+which, like a will-o'-the-wisp, hovers ever above and beyond him, past the
+power of words to interpret or express.
+
+It is often reproachfully said that one "makes copy" of himself and his
+friends--that nothing is too intimately sacred to be seized upon and
+dissected in print. Not so long ago, it was said that a certain man was
+"botanising on his mother's grave," a pardonable confusion, perhaps, of
+facts and realities. The bitter truth is that the writer lives his
+books--and not much else. From title to colophon, he escapes no pang,
+misses no joy. The life of the book is his from beginning to end. At the
+close of it, he has lived what his dream people have lived and borne the
+sorrows of half a dozen entire lifetimes, mercilessly concentrated into
+the few short months of writing.
+
+One by one, his former pleasures vanish. Even the divine consolation of
+books is partly if not wholly gone. Behind the printed page, he sees ever
+the machinery of composition, the preparation for climax, the repetition
+in its proper place, the introduction and interweaving of major and minor,
+of theme and contrast. For the fine, glowing fancy of the other man has
+not appeared in his book, and to the eye of the fellow-craftsman only the
+mechanism is there. Mask-like, the author stands behind his Punch-and-Judy
+box, twitching the strings that move his marionettes, heedless of the fact
+that in his audience there must be a few who know him surely for what he
+is.
+
+If only the transfiguring might of the Vision could be put into print,
+there would be little in the world save books. Happily heedless of the
+mockery of it all, Harlan laboured on, destined fully to sense his entire
+payment much later, suffer vicariously for a few hours on account of it,
+then to forget.
+
+Dorothy, meanwhile, was learning a hard lesson. Harlan's changeless
+preoccupation hurt her cruelly, but, woman-like, she considered it a
+manifestation of genius and endeavoured to be proud accordingly. It had
+not occurred to her that there could ever be anything in Harlan's thought
+into which she was not privileged to go. She had thought of marriage as a
+sort of miraculous welding of two individualities into one, and was
+perceiving that it changed nothing very much; that souls went on their way
+unaltered. She saw, too, that there was no one in the wide world who could
+share her every mood and tense, that ultimately each one of us lives and
+dies alone, within the sanctuary of his own inner self, cheered only by
+some passing mood of friend or stranger, which chances to chime with his.
+
+It was Dick who, blindly enough, helped her over many a hard place, and
+quickened her sense of humour into something upon which she might securely
+lean. He was too young and too much occupied with the obvious to look
+further, but he felt that Dorothy was troubled, and that it was his duty,
+as a man and a gentleman, to cheer her up.
+
+Privately, he considered Harlan an amiable kind of a fool, who shut
+himself up needlessly in a musty library when he might be outdoors, or
+talking with a charming woman, or both. When he discovered that Harlan had
+hitherto earned his living by writing and hoped to continue doing it, he
+looked upon his host with profound pity. Books, to Dick, were among the
+things which kept life from being wholly pleasant and agreeable. He had
+gone through college because otherwise he would have been separated from
+his friends, and because a small legacy from a distant relative, who had
+considerately died at an opportune moment, enabled him to pay for his
+tuition and his despised books.
+
+"I was never a pig, though," he explained to Dorothy, in a confidential
+moment. "There was one chump in our class who wanted to know all there was
+in the book, and made himself sick trying to cram it in. All of a sudden,
+he graduated. He left college feet first, three on a side, with the class
+walking slow behind him. I never was like that. I was sort of an epicure
+when it came to knowledge, tasting delicately here and there, and never
+greedy. Why, as far back as when I was studying algebra, I nobly refused
+to learn the binomial theorem. I just read it through once, hastily, like
+taking one sniff at a violet, and then let it alone. The other fellows
+fairly gorged themselves with it, but I didn't--I had too much sense."
+
+When Mr. Chester had been there a week, he gave Dorothy two worn and
+crumpled two-dollar bills.
+
+"What's this?" she asked, curiously. "Where did you find it?"
+
+"'Find it' is good," laughed Dick. "I earned it, my dear lady, in hard and
+uncongenial toil. It's my week's board."
+
+"You're not going to pay any board here. You're a guest."
+
+"Not on your life. You don't suppose I'm going to sponge my keep off
+anybody, do you? I paid Uncle Ebeneezer board right straight along and
+there's no reason why I shouldn't pay you. You can put that away in your
+sock, or wherever it is that women keep money, or else I take the next
+train. If you don't want to lose me, you have to accept four plunks every
+Monday. I've got lots of four plunks," he added, with a winning smile.
+
+"Very well," said Dorothy, quite certain that she could not spare Dick.
+"If it will make you feel any better about staying, I'll take it."
+
+He had quickly made friends with Elaine, and the three made a more
+harmonious group than might have been expected under the circumstances.
+With returning strength and health, Miss St. Clair began to take more of
+an interest in her surroundings. She gathered the white clover blossoms in
+which Dorothy tied up her pats of sweet butter, picked berries in the
+garden, skimmed the milk, helped churn, and fed the chickens.
+
+Dick took entire charge of the cow, thus relieving Mrs. Smithers of an
+uncongenial task and winning her heartfelt gratitude. She repaid him with
+unnumbered biscuits of his favourite kind and with many a savoury "snack"
+between meals. He also helped Dorothy in many other ways. It was Dick who
+collected the eggs every morning and took them to the sanitarium, along
+with such other produce as might be ready for the market. He secured
+astonishing prices for the things he sold, and set it down to man's
+superior business ability when questioned by his hostess. Dorothy never
+guessed that most of the money came out of his own pocket, and was charged
+up, in the ragged memorandum book which he carried, to "Elaine's board."
+
+Miss St. Clair had never thought of offering compensation, and no one
+suggested it to her, but Dick privately determined to make good the
+deficiency, sure that a woman married to "a writing chump" would soon be
+in need of ready money if not actually starving at the time. That people
+should pay for what Harlan wrote seemed well-nigh incredible. Besides,
+though Dick had never read that "love is an insane desire on the part of a
+man to pay a woman's board bill for life," he took a definite satisfaction
+out of this secret expenditure, which he did not stop to analyse.
+
+He brought back full price for everything he took to the "repair-shop," as
+he had irreverently christened the sanitarium, though he seldom sold much.
+On the other side of the hill he had a small but select graveyard where he
+buried such unsalable articles as he could not eat. His appetite was
+capricious, and Dorothy had frequently observed that when he came back
+from the long walk to the sanitarium, he ate nothing at all.
+
+He established a furniture factory under a spreading apple tree at a
+respectable distance from the house, and began to remodel the black-walnut
+relics which were evidence of his kinsman's poor taste. He took many a bed
+apart, scraped off the disfiguring varnish, sandpapered and oiled the
+wood, and put it together in new and beautiful forms. He made several
+tables, a cabinet, a bench, half a dozen chairs, a set of hanging shelves,
+and even aspired to a desk, which, owing to the limitations of the
+material, was not wholly successful.
+
+Dorothy and Elaine sat in rocking-chairs under the tree and encouraged him
+while he worked. One of them embroidered a simple design upon a burlap
+curtain while the other read aloud, and together they planned a shapely
+remodelling of the Jack-o'-Lantern. Fortunately, the woodwork was plain,
+and the ceilings not too high.
+
+"I think," said Elaine, "that the big living room with the casement
+windows will be perfectly beautiful. You couldn't have anything lovelier
+than this dull walnut with the yellow walls."
+
+Whatever Mrs. Carr's thoughts might be, this simple sentence was usually
+sufficient to turn the current into more pleasant channels. She had
+planned to have needless partitions taken out, and make the whole lower
+floor into one room, with only a dining-room, kitchen, and pantry back of
+it. She would take up the unsightly carpets, over which impossible plants
+wandered persistently, and have them woven into rag rugs, with green and
+brown and yellow borders. The floor was to be stained brown and the pine
+woodwork a soft, old green. Yellow walls and white net curtains, with the
+beautiful furniture Dick was making, completed a very charming picture in
+the eyes of a woman who loved her home.
+
+Outspeeding it in her fancy was the finer, truer living which she believed
+lay beyond. Some day she and Harlan, alone once more, with the cobwebs of
+estrangement swept away, should begin a new and happier honeymoon in the
+transformed house. When the book was done--ah, when the book was done! But
+he was not reading any part of it to her now and would not let her begin
+copying it on the typewriter.
+
+"I'll do it myself, when I'm ready," he said, coldly. "I can use a
+typewriter just as well as you can."
+
+Dorothy sighed, unconsciously, for the woman's part is always to wait
+patiently while men achieve, and she who has learned to wait patiently,
+and be happy meanwhile, has learned the finest art of all--the art of
+life.
+
+"Now," said Dick, "that's a peach of a table, if I do say it as
+shouldn't."
+
+They readily agreed with him, for it was low and massive, built on simple,
+dignified lines, and beautifully finished. The headboards of three
+ponderous walnut beds and the supporting columns of a hideous sideboard
+had gone into its composition, thus illustrating, as Dorothy said, that
+ugliness may be changed to beauty by one who knows how and is willing to
+work for it.
+
+The noon train whistled shrilly in the distance, and Dorothy started out
+of her chair. "She's afraid," laughed Dick, instantly comprehending.
+"She's afraid somebody is coming on it."
+
+"More twins?" queried Elaine, from the depths of her rocker. "Surely there
+can't be any more twins?"
+
+"I don't know," answered Dorothy, vaguely troubled. "Someway, I feel as
+though something terrible were going to happen."
+
+Nothing happened, however, until after luncheon, just as she had begun to
+breathe peacefully again. Willie saw the procession first and ran back
+with gleeful shouts to make the announcement. So it was that the entire
+household, including Harlan, formed a reception committee on the front
+porch.
+
+Up the hill, drawn by two straining horses, came what appeared at first to
+be a pyramid of furniture, but later resolved itself into the component
+parts of a more ponderous bed than the ingenuity of man had yet contrived.
+It was made of black walnut, and was at least three times as heavy as any
+of those in the Jack-o'-Lantern. On the top of the mass was perched a
+little old man in a skull cap, a slippered foot in a scarlet sock airily
+waving at one side. A bright green coil closely clutched in his withered
+hands was the bed cord appertaining to the bed--a sainted possession from
+which its owner sternly refused to part.
+
+"By Jove!" shouted Dick; "it's Uncle Israel and his crib!"
+
+Paying no heed to the assembled group, Uncle Israel dismounted nimbly
+enough, and directed the men to take his bed upstairs, which they did,
+while Harlan and Dorothy stood by helplessly. Here, under his profane and
+involved direction, the structure was finally set in place, even to the
+patchwork quilt, fearfully and wonderfully made, which surmounted it all.
+
+Financial settlement was waved aside by Uncle Israel as a matter in which
+he was not interested, and it was Dick who counted out two dimes and a
+nickel to secure peace. A supplementary procession appeared with a small,
+weather-beaten trunk, a folding bath-cabinet, and a huge case which, from
+Uncle Israel's perturbation, evidently contained numerous fragile articles
+of great value.
+
+"Tell Ebeneezer," wheezed the newcomer, "that I have arrived."
+
+"Ebeneezer," replied Dick, in wicked imitation of the old man's asthmatic
+speech, "has been dead for some time."
+
+"Then," creaked Uncle Israel, waving a tremulous, bony hand suggestively
+toward the door, "kindly leave me alone with my grief."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Still More
+
+
+Uncle Israel, whose other name was Skiles, adjusted himself to his grief
+in short order. The sounds which issued from his room were not those
+commonly associated with mourning. Dick, fully accustomed to various
+noises, explained them for the edification of the Carrs, who at present
+were sorely in need of edification.
+
+"That's the bath cabinet," remarked Mr. Chester, with the air of a
+connoisseur. "He's setting it up near enough to the door so that if
+anybody should come in unexpectedly while it's working, the whole thing
+will be tipped over and the house set on fire. Uncle Israel won't have any
+lock or bolt on his door for fear he should die in the night. He relies
+wholly on the bath cabinet and moral suasion. Nobody knocks on doors here,
+anyway--just goes in.
+
+"That's his trunk. He keeps it under the window. The bed is set up first,
+then the bath cabinet, then the trunk, and last, but not least, the
+medicine chest. He keeps his entire pharmacopoeia on a table at the head
+of his bed, with a candle and matches, so that if he feels badly in the
+night, the proper remedy is instantly at hand. He prepares some of his
+medicines himself, but he isn't bigoted about it. He buys the rest at
+wholesale, and I'll eat my hat if he hasn't got a full-sized bottle of
+every patent medicine that's on sale anywhere in the United States."
+
+"How old," asked Harlan, speaking for the first time, "is Uncle Israel?"
+
+"Something over ninety, I believe," returned Dick. "I've lost my book of
+vital statistics, so I don't know, exactly."
+
+"How long," inquired Dorothy, with a forced smile, "does Uncle Israel
+stay?"
+
+"Lord bless you, my dear lady, Uncle Israel stays all Summer. Hello--there
+are some more!"
+
+A private conveyance of uncertain age and purposes drew up before the
+door. From it dismounted a very slender young man of medium height, whose
+long auburn hair hung over his coat-collar and at times partially obscured
+his soulful grey eyes. It resembled the mane of a lion, except in colour.
+He carried a small black valise, and a roll of manuscript tied with a
+badly soiled ribbon.
+
+An old lady followed, stepping cautiously, but still finding opportunity
+to scrutinise the group in the doorway, peering sharply over her
+gold-bowed spectacles. It was she who paid the driver, and even before the
+two reached the house, it was evident that they were not on speaking
+terms.
+
+The young man offered Mr. Chester a thin, tremulous hand which lay on
+Dick's broad palm in a nerveless, clammy fashion. "Pray," he said, in a
+high, squeaky voice, "convey my greetings to dear Uncle Ebeneezer, and
+inform him that I have arrived."
+
+"I am at present holding no communication with Uncle Ebeneezer," explained
+Dick. "The wires are down."
+
+"Where is Ebeneezer?" demanded the old lady.
+
+"Dead," answered Dorothy, wearily; "dead, dead. He's been dead a long
+time. This is our house--he left it to my husband and me."
+
+"Don't let that disturb you a mite," said the old lady, cheerfully. "I
+like your looks a whole lot, an' I'd just as soon stay with you as with
+Ebeneezer. I dunno but I'd ruther."
+
+She must have been well past sixty, but her scanty hair was as yet
+untouched with grey. She wore it parted in the middle, after an ancient
+fashion, and twisted at the back into a tight little knob, from which the
+ends of a wire hairpin protruded threateningly. Dorothy reflected,
+unhappily, that the whole thing was done up almost tight enough to play a
+tune on.
+
+For the rest, her attire was neat, though careless. One had always the
+delusion that part or all of it was on the point of coming off.
+
+The young man was wiping his weak eyes upon a voluminous silk handkerchief
+which had evidently seen long service since its last washing. "Dear Uncle
+Ebeneezer," he breathed, running his long, bony fingers through his hair.
+"I cannot tell you how heavily this blow falls upon me. Dear Uncle
+Ebeneezer was a distinguished patron of the arts. Our country needs more
+men like him, men with fine appreciation, vowed to the service of the
+Ideal. If you will pardon me, I will now retire to my apartment and remain
+there a short time in seclusion."
+
+So saying, he ran lightly upstairs, as one who was thoroughly at home.
+
+"Who in--" began Harlan.
+
+"Mr. Harold Vernon Perkins, poet," said Dick. "He's got his rhyming
+dictionary and all his odes with him."
+
+"Without knowing," said Dorothy, "I should have thought his name was
+Harold or Arthur or Paul. He looks it."
+
+"It wa'n't my fault," interjected the old lady, "that he come. I didn't
+even sense that he was on the same train as me till I hired the carriage
+at the junction an' he clim' in. He said he might as well come along as we
+was both goin' to the same place, an' it would save him walkin', an' not
+cost me no more than 't would anyway."
+
+While she was speaking, she had taken off her outer layer of drapery and
+her bonnet. "I'll just put these things in my room, my dear," she said to
+Dorothy, "an' then I'll come back an' talk to you. I like your looks
+first-rate."
+
+"Who in--," said Harlan, again, as the old lady vanished into one of the
+lower wings.
+
+"Mrs. Belinda something," answered Dick. "I don't know who she's married
+to now. She's had bad luck with her husbands."
+
+Mrs. Carr, deeply troubled, was leaning against the wall in the hall, and
+Dick patted her hand soothingly. "Don't you fret," he said, cheerily; "I'm
+here to see you through."
+
+"That being the case," remarked Harlan, with a certain acidity in his
+tone, "I'll go back to my work."
+
+The old lady appeared again as Harlan slammed the library door, and
+suggested that Dick should go away.
+
+"Polite hint," commented Mr. Chester, not at all disturbed. "See you
+later." He went out, whistling, with his cap on the back of his head and
+his hands in his pockets.
+
+"I reckon you're a new relative, be n't you?" asked the lady guest, eyeing
+Dorothy closely. "I disremember seein' you before."
+
+"I am Mrs. Carr," repeated Dorothy, mechanically. "My husband, Harlan
+Carr, is Uncle Ebeneezer's nephew, and the house was left to him."
+
+"Do tell!" ejaculated the other. "I wouldn't have thought it of Ebeneezer.
+I'm Belinda Dodd, relict of Benjamin Dodd, deceased. How many are there
+here, my dear?"
+
+"Miss St. Clair, Mr. Chester, Mrs. Holmes and her three children, Uncle
+Israel Skiles, and you two, besides Mr. Carr, Mrs. Smithers, and myself."
+
+"Is that all?" asked the visitor, in evident surprise.
+
+"All!" repeated Dorothy. "Isn't that enough?"
+
+"Lord love you, my dear, it's plain to be seen that you ain't never been
+here before. Only them few an' so late in the season, too. Why, there's
+Cousin Si Martin, an' his wife, an' their eight children, some of the
+children bein' married an' havin' other children, an' Sister-in-law Fanny
+Wood with her invalid husband, her second husband, that is, an' Rebecca's
+Uncle James's third wife with her two daughters, an' Rebecca's sister's
+second husband with his new wife an' their little boy, an' Uncle Jason an'
+his stepson, the one that has fits, an' Cousin Sally Simmons an' her
+daughter, an' the four little Riley children an' their Aunt Lucretia, an'
+Step-cousin Betsey Skiles with her two nieces, though I misdoubt their
+comin' this year. The youngest niece had typhoid fever here last Summer
+for eight weeks, an' Betsey thinks the location ain't healthy, in spite of
+it's bein' so near the sanitarium. She was threatenin' to get the health
+department or somethin' after Ebeneezer an' have the drinkin' water looked
+into, so's they didn't part on the pleasantest terms, but in the main
+we've all got along well together.
+
+"If Betsey knowed Ebeneezer was dead, she wouldn't hesitate none about
+comin', typhoid or no typhoid. Mebbe it was her fault some, for Ebeneezer
+wa'n't to blame for his drinkin' water no more 'n I'd be. Our minister
+used to say that there was no discipline for the soul like livin' with
+folks, year in an' year out hand-runnin', an' Betsey is naturally that
+kind. Ebeneezer always lived plain, but we're all simple folks, not carin'
+much for style, so we never minded it. The air's good up here an' I dunno
+any better place to spend the Summer. My gracious! You be n't sick, be
+you?"
+
+"I don't know what to do," murmured Dorothy, her white lips scarcely
+moving; "I don't know what to do."
+
+"Well, now," responded Mrs. Dodd, "I can see that I've upset you some.
+Perhaps you're one of them people that don't like to have other folks
+around you. I've heard of such, comin' from the city. Why, I knew a woman
+that lived in the city, an' she said she didn't know the name of the woman
+next door to her after livin' there over eight months,--an' their windows
+lookin' right into each other, too."
+
+"I hate people!" cried Dorothy, in a passion of anger. "I don't want
+anybody here but my husband and Mrs. Smithers!"
+
+"Set quiet, my dear, an' make your mind easy. I'm sure Ebeneezer never
+intended his death to make any difference in my spendin' the Summer here,
+especially when I'm fresh from another bereavement, but if you're in
+earnest about closin' your doors on your poor dead aunt's relations, why
+I'll see what I can do."
+
+"Oh, if you could!" Dorothy almost screamed the words. "If you can keep
+any more people from coming here, I'll bless you for ever."
+
+"Poor child, I can see that you're considerable upset. Just get me the pen
+an' ink an' some paper an' envelopes an' I'll set down right now an' write
+to the connection an' tell 'em that Ebeneezer's dead an' bein' of unsound
+mind at the last has willed the house to strangers who refuse to open
+their doors to the blood relations of poor dead Rebecca. That's all I can
+do an' I can't promise that it'll work. Ebeneezer writ several times to us
+all that he didn't feel like havin' no more company, but Rebecca's
+relatives was all of a forgivin' disposition an' never laid it up against
+him. We all kep' on a-comin' just the same."
+
+"Tell them," cried Dorothy her eyes unusually bright and her cheeks
+burning, "that we've got smallpox here, or diphtheria, or a lunatic
+asylum, or anything you like. Tell them there's a big dog in the yard that
+won't let anybody open the gate. Tell them anything!"
+
+"Just you leave it all to me, my dear," said Mrs. Dodd, soothingly. "On
+account of the connection bein' so differently constituted, I'll have to
+tell 'em all different. Disease would keep away some an' fetch others.
+Betsey Skiles, now, she feels to turn her hand to nursin' an' I've knowed
+her to go miles in the dead of Winter to set up with a stranger that had
+some disease she wa'n't familiar with. Dogs would bring others an' only
+scare a few. Just you leave it all to me. There ain't never no use in
+borrerin' trouble an' givin' up your peace of mind as security, 'cause you
+don't never get the security back. I've been married enough to know that
+there's plenty of trouble in life besides what's looked for, an' it'll get
+in, without your holdin' open the door an' spreadin' a mat out with
+'Welcome' on it. Did Ebeneezer leave any property?"
+
+"Only the house and furniture," answered Dorothy, feeling that the whole
+burden of the world had been suddenly shifted to her young shoulders.
+
+"Rebecca had a big diamond pin," said Mrs. Dodd, after a brief silence,
+"that she allers said was to be mine when she got through with it.
+Ebeneezer give it to her for a weddin' present. You ain't seen it layin'
+around, have you?"
+
+"No, I haven't seen it 'laying around,'" retorted Dorothy, conscious that
+she was juggling with the truth.
+
+"Well," continued Mrs. Dodd, easily, nibbling her pen holder, "when it
+comes to light, just remember that it's mine. I don't doubt it'll turn up
+sometime. An' now, my dear, I'll just begin on them letters. Cousin Si
+Martin's folks are a-packin' an' expectin' to get here next week. I
+suppose you're willin' to furnish the stamps?"
+
+"Willing!" cried Dorothy, "I should say yes!"
+
+Mrs. Dodd toiled long at her self-imposed task, and, having finished it,
+went out into the kitchen, where for an hour or more she exchanged
+mortuary gossip with Mrs. Smithers, every detail of the conversation being
+keenly relished by both ladies.
+
+At dinner-time, eleven people sat down to partake of the excellent repast
+furnished by Mrs. Smithers under the stimulus of pleasant talk. Harlan was
+at the head, with Miss St. Clair on his right and Mrs. Dodd on his left.
+Next to Miss St. Clair was the poet, whose deep sorrow did not interfere
+with his appetite. The twins were next to him, then Mrs. Holmes, then
+Willie, then Dorothy, at the foot of the table. On her right was Dick, the
+space between Dick and Mrs. Dodd being occupied by Uncle Israel.
+
+To a careless observer, it might have seemed that Uncle Israel had more
+than his share of the table, but such in reality was not the case. His
+plate was flanked by a goodly array of medicine bottles, and cups and
+bowls of predigested and patent food. Uncle Israel, as Dick concisely
+expressed it, was "pie for the cranks."
+
+"My third husband," remarked Mrs. Dodd, pleasantly, well aware that she
+was touching her neighbour's sorest spot, "was terribly afflicted with
+stomach trouble."
+
+"The only stomach trouble I've ever had," commented Mr. Chester, airily
+spearing another biscuit with his fork, "was in getting enough to put into
+it."
+
+"Have a care, young man," wheezed Uncle Israel, warningly. "There ain't
+nothin' so bad for the system as hot bread."
+
+"It would be bad for my system," resumed Dick, "not to be able to get
+it."
+
+"My third husband," continued Mrs. Dodd, disregarding the interruption,
+"wouldn't have no bread in the house at all. He et these little straw
+mattresses, same as you've got, so constant that he finally died from the
+tic doleroo. Will you please pass me them biscuits, Mis' Carr?"
+
+Mrs. Dodd was obliged to rise and reach past Uncle Israel, who declined to
+be contaminated by passing the plate, before she attained her desired
+biscuit.
+
+"Next time, Aunt Belinda," said Dick, "I'll throw you one. Suffering
+Moses, what new dope is that?"
+
+A powerful and peculiarly penetrating odour filled the room. Presently it
+became evident that Uncle Israel had uncorked a fresh bottle of medicine.
+Miss St. Clair coughed and hastily excused herself.
+
+"It's time for me to take my pain-killer," murmured Uncle Israel, pouring
+out a tablespoonful of a thick, brown mixture. "This here cured a
+Congressman in less 'n half a bottle of a gnawin' pain in his vitals. I
+ain't never took none of it yet, but I aim to now."
+
+The vapour of it had already made the twins cry and brought tears to Mrs.
+Dodd's eyes, but Uncle Israel took it clear and smacked his lips over it
+enjoyably. "It seems to be a searchin' medicine," he commented, after an
+interval of silence. "I don't misdoubt that it'll locate that pain that
+was movin' up and down my back all night last night."
+
+Uncle Israel's wizened old face, with its fringe of white whisker, beamed
+with the joy of a scientist who has made a new and important discovery. He
+had a long, hooked nose, and was painfully near-sighted, but refused to
+wear glasses. Just now he sniffed inquiringly at the open bottle of
+medicine. "Yes," he said, nodding his bald head sagely, "I don't misdoubt
+this here can locate it."
+
+"I don't, either," said Harlan, grimly, putting his handkerchief to his
+nose. "Will you excuse me, Dorothy?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Mrs. Holmes took the weeping twins away from the table, and Willie, his
+mentor gone, began to eat happily with his fingers. The poet rose and drew
+a roll of manuscript from his coat pocket.
+
+"This afternoon," he said, clearing his throat, "I employed my spare
+moments in composing an ode to the memory of our sainted relative, under
+whose hospitable roof we are all now so pleasantly gathered. I will read
+it to you."
+
+Mrs. Dodd hastily left the table, muttering indistinctly, and Dick
+followed her. Willie slipped from his chair, crawled under the table, and
+by stealthily sticking a pin into Uncle Israel's ankle, produced a violent
+disturbance, during which the pain-killer was badly spilled. When the air
+finally cleared, there was no one in the room but the poet, who sadly
+rolled up his manuscript.
+
+"I will read it at breakfast," he thought. "I will give them all the
+pleasure of hearing it. Art is for the many, not for the few. I must use
+it to elevate humanity to the Ideal."
+
+He went back to his own room to add some final reverent touches to the
+masterpiece, and to meditate upon the delicate blonde beauty of Miss St.
+Clair.
+
+From Mrs. Dodd, meanwhile, Dick had gathered the pleasing purport of her
+voluminous correspondence, and insisted on posting all the letters that
+very night, though morning would have done just as well. When he had gone
+downhill on his errand of mercy, whistling cheerily as was his wont, Mrs.
+Dodd went into her own room and locked the door, immediately beginning a
+careful search of the entire apartment.
+
+She scrutinised the walls closely, and rapped softly here and there,
+listening intently for a hollow sound. Standing on a chair, she felt all
+along the mouldings and window-casings, taking unto herself much dust in
+the process. She spent half an hour in the stuffy closet, investigating
+the shelves and recesses, then she got down on her rheumatic old knees and
+crept laboriously over the carpet, systematically taking it breadth by
+breadth, and paying special attention to that section of it which was
+under the bed.
+
+"When you've found where anythin' ain't," she said to herself, "you've
+gone a long way toward findin' where 't is. It's just like Ebeneezer to
+have hid it."
+
+She took down the pictures, which were mainly family portraits, life-size,
+presented to the master of the house by devoted relatives, and rapidly
+unframed them. In one of them she found a sealed envelope, which she
+eagerly tore open. Inside was a personal communication which, though
+brief, was very much to the point.
+
+"Dear Cousin Belinda," it read, "I hope you're taking pleasure in your
+hunt. I have kept my word to you and in this very room, somewhere, is a
+sum of money which represents my estimate of your worth, as nearly as
+sordid coin can hope to do. It is all in cash, for greater convenience in
+handling. I trust you will not spend it all in one store, and that you
+will, out of your abundance, be generous to the poor. It might be well to
+use a part of it in making a visit to New York. When you find this, I
+shall be out in the cemetery all by myself, and very comfortable.
+
+                                              "Yours, Ebeneezer Judson."
+
+"I knowed it," she said to herself, excitedly. "Ebeneezer was a hard man,
+but he always kep' his word. Dear me! What makes me so trembly!"
+
+She removed all the bedclothes and pounded the pillows and mattress in
+vain, then turned her attention to the furniture. It was almost one
+o'clock when Mrs. Dodd finally retired, worn in body and jaded in spirit,
+but still far from discouraged.
+
+"Ebeneezer must have mistook the room," she said to herself, "but how
+could he unless his mind was failin'? I've had this now, goin' on ten
+year."
+
+In the night she dreamed of finding money in the bureau, and got up to see
+if by chance she had not received mysterious guidance from an unknown
+source. There was money in the bureau, sure enough, but it was only two
+worn copper cents wrapped in many thicknesses of old newspaper, and she
+went unsuspiciously back to bed.
+
+"He's mistook the room," she breathed, drowsily, as she sank into troubled
+slumber, "an' to-morrer I'll have it changed. It's just as well I've
+scared them others off, if so be I have."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+Mrs. Dodd's Third Husband
+
+
+Insidiously, a single idea took possession of the entire household. Mrs.
+Smithers kept a spade near at hand and systematically dug, as opportunity
+offered. Dorothy became accustomed to an odorous lantern which stood near
+the back door in the daytime and bobbed about among the shrubbery at
+night.
+
+There was definite method in the madness of Mrs. Smithers, however, for
+she had once seen the departed Mr. Judson going out to the orchard with a
+tin box under his arm and her own spade but partially concealed under his
+long overcoat. When he came back, he was smiling, which was so unusual
+that she forgot all about the box, and did not observe whether or not he
+had brought it back with him. Long afterward, however, the incident
+assumed greater significance.
+
+"If I'd 'ave 'ad the sense to 'ave gone out there the next day," she
+muttered, "and 'ave seen where 'e 'ad dug, I might be a rich woman now,
+that's wot I might. 'E was a clever one, 'e was, and 'e's 'id it. The old
+skinflint wasn't doin' no work, 'e wasn't, and 'e lived on 'ere from year
+to year, a-payin' 'is bills like a Christian gent, and it stands to reason
+there's money 'id somewheres. Findin' is keepin', and it's for me to keep
+my 'ead shut and a sharp lookout. Them Carrs don't suspect nothink."
+
+She was only half right, however. Harlan, lost in his book, was heedless
+of everything that went on around him, but Mrs. Dodd's reference to the
+diamond pin, and her own recollection of the money she had found in the
+bureau drawer, began to work stealthily upon Dorothy's mind, surrounded,
+as she was, by people who were continually thinking of the same thing.
+
+Then, too, their funds were getting low. There was little to send to the
+sanitarium now, for eleven people, as students of domestic economics have
+often observed, eat more than one or two. Dick was also affected by the
+current financial depression, and at length conceived the idea that Uncle
+Ebeneezer's worldly goods were somewhere on the premises.
+
+Mrs. Holmes spent a great deal of time in the attic, while the care-free
+children, utterly beyond control, rioted madly through the house. Dorothy
+discovered Mr. Perkins, the poet, half-way up the parlour chimney, and sat
+down to see what he would do when he came out and found her there. He had
+seemed somewhat embarrassed when he wiped the soot from his face, but had
+quickly explained that he was writing a poem on chimney-swallows and had
+come to a point where original research was essential.
+
+Even Elaine, not knowing what she sought, began to investigate, idly
+enough, the furniture and hangings in her room, and Mrs. Dodd, eagerly
+seizing opportunities, was forever keen on the scent. Uncle Israel, owing
+to the poor state of his health, was one of the last to be affected by the
+surrounding atmosphere, but when he caught the idea, he made up for lost
+time.
+
+He was up with the chickens, and invariably took a long afternoon nap, so
+that, during the night, there was bound to be a wakeful interval.
+Ordinarily, he took a sleeping potion to tide him over till morning, but
+soon decided that a little mild exercise with some pleasant purpose
+animating it, would be far better for his nerves.
+
+Mrs. Dodd was awakened one night by the feeling that some one was in her
+room. A vague, mysterious Presence gradually made itself known. At first
+she was frightened, then the Presence wheezed, and reassured her. Across
+the path of moonlight that lay on her floor, Uncle Israel moved
+cautiously.
+
+He was clad in a piebald dressing-gown which had been so patched with
+various materials that the original fabric was uncertain. An old-fashioned
+nightcap was on his head, the tassel bobbing freakishly in the back, and
+he wore carpet slippers.
+
+Mrs. Dodd sat up in bed, keenly relishing the situation. When he opened a
+bureau drawer, she screamed out: "What are you looking for?"
+
+Uncle Israel started violently. "Money," he answered, in a shrill whisper,
+taken altogether by surprise.
+
+"Then," said Mrs. Dodd, kindly, "I'll get right up and help you!"
+
+"Don't, Belinda," pleaded the old man. "You'll wake up everybody. I am
+a-walkin' in my sleep, I guess. I was a-dreamin' of money that I was to
+find and give to you, and I suppose that's why I've come to your room. You
+lay still, Belinda, and don't tell nobody. I am a-goin' right away."
+
+Before she could answer in a way that seemed suitable, he was gone, and
+the next day he renewed his explanations. "I dunno, Belinda, how I ever
+come to be a-walkin' in my sleep. I ain't never done such a thing since I
+was a child, and then only wunst. How dretful it would have been if I had
+gone into any other room and mebbe have been shot or have scared some
+young and unprotected female into fits. To think of me, with my
+untarnished reputation, and at my age, a-doin' such a thing! You don't
+reckon it was my new pain-killer, do you?"
+
+"I don't misdoubt it had sunthin' to do with payin'," returned Mrs. Dodd,
+greatly pleased with her own poor joke, "an', as you say, it might have
+been dretful. But I am a friend to you, Israel, an' I don't 'low to make
+your misfortune public, but, by workin' private, help you overcome it."
+
+"What air you a-layin' out to do?" demanded Uncle Israel, fearfully.
+
+"I ain't rightly made up my mind as yet, Israel," she answered, pleasantly
+enough, "but I don't intend to have it happen to you again. Sunthin' can
+surely be done that'll cure you of it."
+
+"Don't, Belinda," wheezed her victim; "I don't think I'll ever have it
+again."
+
+"Don't you fret about it, Israel, 'cause you ain't goin' to have it no
+more. I'll attend to it. It 's a most distressin' disease an' must be took
+early, but I think I know how to fix it."
+
+During her various investigations, she had found a huge bunch of keys
+beneath a pile of rubbish on the floor of a closet in an unoccupied room.
+It was altogether possible, as she told herself, that one of these keys
+should fit the somnambulist's door.
+
+While Uncle Israel was brewing a fresh supply of medicine on the kitchen
+stove, she found, as she had suspected that one of them did fit, and
+thereafter, every night, when Uncle Israel had retired, she locked him in,
+letting him out shortly after seven each morning. When he remonstrated
+with her, she replied, triumphantly, that it was necessary--otherwise he
+would never have known that the door was locked.
+
+On her first visit to "town" she made it her business to call upon Lawyer
+Bradford and inquire as to Mr. Judson's last will and testament. She
+learned that it did not concern her at all, and was to be probated, in
+accordance with the dead man's instructions, at the Fall term of court.
+
+"Then, as yet," she said, with a gleam of satisfaction in her small, beady
+eyes, "they ain't holdin' the house legal. Any of us has the same right to
+stay as them Carrs."
+
+"That's as you look at it," returned Mr. Bradford, squirming uneasily in
+his chair.
+
+Try as she might, she could extract no further information, but she at
+least had a bit of knowledge to work on. She went back, earnestly desiring
+quiet, that she might study the problem without hindrance, but,
+unfortunately for her purpose, the interior of the Jack-o'-Lantern
+resembled pandemonium let loose.
+
+Willie was sliding down the railing part of the time, and at frequent
+intervals coasting downstairs on Mrs. Smithers's tea tray, vocally
+expressing his pleasure with each trip. The twins, seated in front of the
+library door, were pounding furiously on a milk-pan, which had not been
+empty when they dragged it into the hall, but was now. Mrs. Smithers was
+singing: "We have our trials here below, Oh, Glory, Hallelujah," and a
+sickening odour from a fresh concoction of Uncle Israel's permeated the
+premises. Having irreverently detached the false front from the keys of
+the melodeon, Mr. Perkins was playing a sad, funereal composition of his
+own, with all the power of the instrument turned loose on it. Upstairs,
+Dick was whistling, with shrill and maddening persistence, and Dorothy,
+quite helpless, sat miserably on the porch with her fingers in her ears.
+
+Harlan burst out of the library, just as Mrs. Dodd came up the walk, his
+temper not improved by stumbling over the twins and the milk-pan, and
+above their united wails loudly censured Dorothy for the noise and
+confusion. "How in the devil do you expect me to work?" he demanded,
+irritably. "If you can't keep the house quiet, I'll go back to New York!"
+
+Too crushed in spirit to reply, Dorothy said nothing, and Harlan whisked
+back into the library again, barely escaping Mrs. Dodd.
+
+"Poor child," she said to Dorothy; "you look plum beat out."
+
+"I am," confessed Mrs. Carr, the quick tears coming to her eyes.
+
+"There, there, my dear, rest easy. I reckon this is the first time you've
+been married, ain't it?"
+
+"Yes," returned Dorothy, forcing a pitiful little smile.
+
+"I thought so. Now, when you're as used to it as I be, you won't take it
+so hard. You may think men folks is all different, but there's a dretful
+sameness to 'em after they've been through a marriage ceremony. Marriage
+is just like findin' a new penny on the walk. When you first see it, it's
+all shiny an' a'most like gold, an' it tickles you a'most to pieces to
+think you're gettin' it, but after you've picked it up you see that what
+you've got is half wild Indian, or mebbe more--I ain't never been in no
+mint. You may depend upon it, my dear, there's two sides to all of us, an'
+before marriage, you see the wreath--afterwards a savage.
+
+"I've had seven of 'em," she continued, "an' I know. My father give me a
+cemetery lot for a weddin' present, with a noble grey marble monumint in
+it shaped like a octagon--leastways that's what a school-teacher what
+boarded with us said it was, but I call it a eight-sided piece. I'm
+speakin' of my first marriage now, my dear. My father never give me no
+weddin' present but the once. An' I can't never marry again, 'cause
+there's a husband lyin' now on seven sides of the monumint an' only one
+place left for me. I was told once that I could have further husbands
+cremationed an' set around the lot in vases, but I don't take to no such
+heathenish custom as that.
+
+"So I've got to go through my declinin' years without no suitable
+companion an' I call it hard, when one's so used to marryin' as what I
+be."
+
+"If they're all savages," suggested Dorothy, "why did you keep on
+marrying?"
+
+"Because I hadn't no other way to get my livin' an' I was kinder in the
+habit of it. There's some little variety, even in savages, an' it's human
+natur' to keep on a-hopin.' I've had 'em stingy an' generous, drunk an'
+sober, peaceful an' disturbin'. After the first few times, I learned to
+take real pleasure out'n their queer notions. When you've learned to enjoy
+seein' your husband make a fool of himself an' have got enough
+self-control not to tell him he's doin' it, nor to let him see where your
+pleasure lies, you've got marryin' down to a fine point.
+
+"The third time, it was, I got a food crank, an' let me tell you right
+now, my dear, them's the worst kind. A man what's queer about his food is
+goin' to be queerer about a'most everything else. Give me any man that can
+eat three square meals a day an' enjoy 'em, an' I'll undertake to live
+with him peaceful, but I don't go to the altar again with no food crank,
+if I know it.
+
+"It was partly my own fault, too, as I see later. I'd seen him a-carryin'
+a passel of health food around in his pocket an' a-nibblin' at it, but I
+supposed it was because the poor creeter had never had no one to cook
+proper for him, an' I took a lot of pleasure out of thinkin' how tickled
+he'd be when I made him one of my chicken pies.
+
+"After we was married, we took a honeymoon to his folks, an' I'll tell you
+right now, my dear, that if there was more honeymoons took beforehand to
+each other's folks, there'd be less marryin' done than what there is. They
+was all a-eatin' hay an' straw an' oats just like the dumb creeters they
+disdained, an' a-carryin' wheat an' corn around in their pockets to piece
+out with between greens.
+
+"So the day we got home, never knowin' what I was a-stirrin' up for
+myself, I turned in an' made a chicken an' oyster pie, an' it couldn't be
+beat, not if I do say it as shouldn't. The crust was as soft an' flaky an'
+brown an' crisp at the edges as any I ever turned out, an' the inside was
+all chicken an' oysters well-nigh smothered in a thick, creamy yellow
+gravy.
+
+"Well, sir, I brung in that pie, an' I set it on the table, an' I chirped
+out that dinner was ready, an' he come, an'--my dear! You never saw such
+goins'-on in all your born days! Considerin' that not eatin' animals makes
+people's dispositions mild an' pleasant, it was sunthin' terrible, an' me
+all the time as innercent as a lamb!
+
+"I can't begin to tell you the things my new-made husband said to me. If
+chickens an' oysters was human, I'll bet they'd have sued him for slander.
+He said that oysters was 'the scavengers of the sea'--yes'm, them's his
+very words, an' that chickens was even worse. He went on to tell me how
+they et worms an' potato bugs an' beetles an' goodness knows what else,
+an' that he wa'n't goin' to turn the temple of his body into no
+slaughter-house. He asked me if I desired to eat dead animals, an' when he
+insisted on an answer, I told him I certainly shouldn't care to eat 'em
+less'n they _was_ dead, and from then on it was worse 'n ever.
+
+"He said that no dead animal was goin' to be interred in the insides of
+him or his lawful wife, an' he was goin' to see to it. It come out then
+that he'd never tasted meat an' hadn't rightly sensed what he was
+missin'.
+
+"Well, my dear, some women would have took the wrong tack an' would have
+argyfied with him. There's never no use in argyfyin' with a husband, an'
+never no need to, 'cause if you're set on it, there's all the rest of the
+world to choose from. When he'd talked himself hoarse an' was beginnin' to
+calm down again, I took the floor.
+
+"'Say no more,' says I, calm an' collected-like. 'This here is your house
+an' the things you're accustomed to eatin' can be cooked in it, no matter
+what they be. If I don't know how to put the slops together, I reckon I
+can learn, not being a plum idjit. If you want baked chicken feed and
+boiled hay, I'm here to bake 'em and boil 'em for you. All you have to do
+is to speak once in a polite manner and it'll be done. I must insist on
+the politeness, howsumever,' says I. 'I don't propose to live with any man
+what gets the notion a woman ceases to be a lady when she marries him. A
+creeter that thinks so poor of himself as that ain't fit to be my
+husband,' says I, 'nor no other decent woman's.'
+
+"At that he apologised some, an' when a husband apologises, my dear, it's
+the same as if he'd et dirt at your feet. 'The least said the soonest
+mended,' says I, an' after that, he never had nothin' to complain of.
+
+"But I knowed what his poor, cranky system needed, an' I knowed how to get
+it into him, especially as he'd never tasted meat in all his life. From
+that time on, he never saw no meat on our table, nor no chickens, nor sea
+scavengers, nor nothin', but all day, while he was gone, I was busy with
+my soup pot, a-makin' condensed extracts of meat for flavourin' vegetables
+an' sauces an' so on.
+
+"He took mightily to my cookin' an' frequently said he'd never et such
+exquisite victuals. I'd make cream soups for him, an' in every one,
+there'd be over a cupful of solid meat jelly, as rich as the juice you
+find in the pan when you cook a first-class roast of beef. I'd stew
+potatoes in veal stock, and cook rice slow in water that had had a chicken
+boiled to rags in it. Once I put a cupful of raw beef juice in a can of
+tomatoes I was cookin' and he et a'most all of 'em.
+
+"As he kep' on havin' more confidence in me, I kep' on usin' more an'
+more, an' a-usin' oyster liquor for flavourin' in most everything durin'
+the R months. Once he found nearly a bushel of clam-shells out behind the
+house an' wanted to know what they was an' what they was doin' there. I
+told him the fish man had give 'em to me for a border for my flower beds,
+which was true. I'd only paid for the clams--there wa'n't nothin' said
+about the shells--an' the juice from them clams livened up his soup an'
+vegetables for over a week. There wa'n't no day that he didn't have the
+vital elements of from one to four pounds of meat put in his food, an' all
+the time, he was gettin' happier an' healthier an' more peaceful to live
+with. When he died, he was as mild as a spring lamb with mint sauce on
+it.
+
+"Now, my dear, some women would have told him what they was doin', either
+after he got to likin' the cookin' or when he was on his death-bed an'
+couldn't help himself, but I never did. I own that it took self-control
+not to do it, but I'd learned my lesson from havin' been married twicet
+before an' never havin' fit any to speak of. I had to take my pleasure
+from seein' him eat a bowl of rice that had a whole chicken in it,
+exceptin' only the bones and fibres of its mortal frame, an' a-lappin' up
+mebbe a pint of tomato soup that was founded on eight nice pork chops. I'm
+a-tellin' you all this merely to show you my point. Every day, Henry was
+makin' a blame fool of himself without knowin' it. He'd prattle by the
+hour of slaughter-houses an' human cemeteries an' all the time he'd be
+honin' for his next meal.
+
+"He used to say as how it was dretful wicked to kill the dumb animals for
+food, an' I allers said that there was nothin' to hinder his buyin' as
+many as he could afford to an' savin' their lives by pennin' 'em up in the
+back yard, an' a-feedin' 'em the things they liked best to eat till they
+died of old age or sunthin'. I told him they was all vegetarians, the same
+as he was, an' they could live together peaceful an' happy. I even pointed
+out that it was his duty to do it, an' that if all believers would do the
+same, the dread slaughter-houses would soon be a thing of the past, but I
+ain't never seen no food crank yet that's advanced that far in his
+humanity.
+
+"I never told him a single word about it, nor even hinted it to him, nor
+told nobody else, though I often felt wicked to think I was keepin' so
+much pleasure to myself, but my time is comin'.
+
+"When I'm dead an' have gone to heaven, the first thing I'm goin' to do is
+to hunt up Henry. They say there ain't no marriage nor givin' in marriage
+up there, but I reckon there's seven men there that'll at least recognise
+their wife when they see her a-comin' in. I'm goin' to pick up my skirts
+an' take off my glasses, so's I'll be all ready to skedaddle, for I expect
+to leave my rheumatiz behind me, my dear, when I go to heaven--leastways,
+no place will be heaven for me that's got rheumatiz in it--an' then I'm
+goin' to say: 'Henry, in all the four years you was livin' with me, you
+was eatin' meat, an' you never knowed it. You're nothin' but a human
+cemetery.' Oh, my dear, it's worth while dyin' when you know you're goin'
+to have pleasure like that at the other end!"
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+Her Gift to the World
+
+
+"I regret, my dear madam," said Lawyer Bradford, twisting uneasily in his
+chair, "that I can offer you no encouragement whatsoever. The will is
+clear and explicit in every detail, and there are no grounds for a
+contest. I am, perhaps, trespassing upon the wishes of my client in giving
+you this information, but if you are remaining here with the hope of
+pecuniary profit, you are remaining here unnecessarily."
+
+He rose as though to indicate that the interview was at an end, but Mrs.
+Holmes was not to be put away in that fashion. Her eyes were blazing and
+her weak chin trembled with anger.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me," she demanded, "that Ebeneezer voluntarily died
+without making some sort of provision for me and my helpless little
+children?"
+
+"Your distinguished relation," answered Mr. Bradford, slowly, "certainly
+died voluntarily. He announced the date of his death some weeks before it
+actually occurred, and superintended the making of his own coffin. He
+wrote out minute directions for his obsequies, had his grave dug, and his
+shroud made, burned his papers, rearranged his books, made his will--and
+was found dead in his bed on the morning of the day set for his departure.
+A methodical person," muttered the old man, half to himself; "a most
+methodical and systematic person."
+
+Mrs. Holmes shuddered. She was not ordinarily a superstitious woman, but
+there was something uncanny in this open partnership with Death.
+
+"There was a diamond pin," she suggested, moodily, "worth, I should think,
+some fifteen or sixteen hundred dollars. Ebeneezer gave it to dear Rebecca
+on their wedding day, and she always said it was to be mine. Have you any
+idea where it is?"
+
+Mr. Bradford fidgeted. "If it was intended for you," he said, finally, "it
+will be given to you at the proper time, or you will be directed to its
+location. Mrs. Judson died, did she not, about three weeks after their
+marriage?"
+
+"Yes," snapped Mrs. Holmes, readily perceiving the line of his thought,
+"and I saw her twice in those three weeks. Both times she spoke of the
+pin, which she wore constantly, and said that if anything happened to her,
+she wanted me to have it, but that old miser hung on to it."
+
+"Madam," said Mr. Bradford, a faint flush mounting to his temples as he
+opened the office door, "you are speaking of my Colonel, under whom I
+served in the war. He was my best friend, and though he is dead, it is
+still my privilege to protect him. I bid you good afternoon!"
+
+She did not perceive until long afterward that she had practically been
+ejected from the legal presence. Even then, she was so intent upon the
+point at issue that she was not offended, as at another time she certainly
+would have been.
+
+"He's lying," she said to herself, "they're all lying. There's money
+hidden in that house, and I know it, and what's more, I'm going to have
+it!"
+
+She had searched her own rooms on the night of her arrival, but found
+nothing, and the attic, so far, had yielded her naught save discouragement
+and dust. "To think," she continued, mentally, "that after two of my
+children were born here and named for them, that we are left in this way!
+I call it a shame, a disgrace, an outrage!"
+
+Her anger swiftly cooled, however, as she went into the house, and her
+fond sight rested upon her darlings. Willie had a ball and had already
+broken two of the front windows. The small Rebecca was under the sofa,
+tempering the pleasure of life for Claudius Tiberius, while young
+Ebeneezer, having found a knife somewhere, was diligently scratching the
+melodeon.
+
+"Just look," said Mrs. Holmes, in delighted awe, as Dorothy entered the
+room. "Don't make any noise, or you will disturb Ebbie. He is such a
+sensitive child that the sound of a strange voice will upset him. Did you
+ever see anything like those figures he is drawing on the melodeon? I
+believe he's going to be an artist!"
+
+Crushed as she was in spirit by her uncongenial surroundings, Dorothy
+still had enough temper left to be furiously angry. In these latter days,
+however, she had gained largely in self-control, and now only bit her lips
+without answering.
+
+But Mrs. Holmes would not have heard her, even if she had replied. A
+sudden yowl from the distressed Claudius impelled Dorothy to move the sofa
+and rescue him.
+
+"How cruel you are!" commented Mrs. Holmes. "The idea of taking Rebbie's
+plaything away from her! Give it back this instant!"
+
+Mrs. Carr put the cat out and returned with a defiant expression on her
+face, which roused Mrs. Holmes to action. "Willie," she commanded, "go out
+and get the kitty for your little sister. There, there, Rebbie, darling,
+don't cry any more! Brother has gone to get the kitty. Don't cry!"
+
+But "brother" had not gone. "Chase it yourself," he remarked, coolly. "I'm
+going out to the barn."
+
+"Dear Willie's individuality is developing every day," Mrs. Holmes went
+on, smoothly. "There, there, Rebbie, don't cry any more. Go and tell Mrs.
+Smithers to give you a big piece of bread with lots of butter and jam on
+it. Tell her mamma said so. Run along, that's a nice little girl."
+
+Rude squares, triangles, and circles appeared as by magic on the shining
+surface of the melodeon, the young artist being not at all disturbed by
+the confusion about him.
+
+"I am blessed in my children," Mrs. Holmes went on, happily. "I often
+wonder what I have done that I should have so perfect a boy as Willie for
+my very own. Everybody admires him so that I dwell in constant fear of
+kidnappers."
+
+"I wouldn't worry," said Dorothy, with ill-concealed sarcasm. "Anybody who
+took him would bring him back inside of two hours."
+
+"I try to think so," returned the mother, with a deep sigh. "Willie's
+indomitable will is my deepest comfort. He gets it from my side of the
+family. None of the children take after their father at all. Ebbie was a
+little like his father's folks at first, but I soon got it out of him and
+made him altogether like my people. I do not think anybody could keep
+Willie away from me except by superior physical force. He absolutely
+adores his mother, as my other children do. You never saw such beautiful
+sentiment as they have. The other day, now, when I went away and left
+Rebbie alone in my apartment, she took down my best hat and put it on. The
+poor little thing wanted to be near her mother. Is it not touching?"
+
+"It is indeed," Dorothy assented, dryly.
+
+"My children have never been punished," continued Mrs. Holmes, now
+auspiciously launched upon her favourite theme. "It has never been
+necessary. I rule them entirely through love, and they are so accustomed
+to my methods that they bitterly resent any interference by outsiders.
+Why, just before we came here, Ebbie, young as he is, put out the left eye
+of a woman who tried to take his dog away from him. He did it with his
+little fist and with apparently no effort at all. Is it not wonderful to
+see such strength and power of direction in one so young? The woman was in
+the hospital when we came away, and I trust by this time, she has learned
+not to interfere with Ebbie. No one is allowed to interfere with my
+children."
+
+"Apparently not," remarked Mrs. Carr, somewhat cynically.
+
+"It is beautiful to be a mother--the most beautiful thing on earth! Just
+think how much I have done for the world!" Her sallow face glowed with the
+conscious virtue bestowed by one of the animal functions upon those who
+have performed it.
+
+"In what way?" queried Mrs. Carr, wholly missing the point.
+
+"Why, in raising Willie and Ebbie and Rebbie! No public service can for a
+moment be compared with that! All other things sink into insignificance
+beside the glorious gift of maternity. Look at Willie--a form that a
+sculptor might dream of for a lifetime and never hope to imitate--a head
+that already has inspired great artists! The gentleman who took Willie's
+last tintype said that he had never seen such perfect lines, and insisted
+on taking several for fear something should happen to Willie. He wanted to
+keep some of them for himself--it was pathetic, the way he pleaded, but I
+made him sell me all of them. Willie is mine and I have the first right to
+his tintypes. And a lady once painted Willie at his play in black and
+white and sent it to one of the popular weeklies. I have no doubt they
+gave her a fortune for it, but it never occurred to her to give us
+anything more than one copy of the paper."
+
+"Which paper was it?"
+
+"One of the so-called comic weeklies. You know they publish superb
+artistic things. I think they are doing a wonderful work in educating the
+masses to a true appreciation of art. One of the wonderful parts of it was
+that Willie knew all about it and was not in the least conceited. Any
+other child would have been set up at being a model for a great artist,
+but Willie was not affected at all. He has so much character!"
+
+At this point the small Rebecca entered, dragging her doll by one arm, and
+munching a thick slice of bread, thinly coated with molasses.
+
+"I distinctly said jam," remarked Mrs. Holmes. "Servants are so heedless.
+I do not know that molasses is good for Rebbie. What would you think, Mrs.
+Carr?"
+
+"I don't think it will hurt her if she doesn't get too much of it."
+
+"There's no danger of her getting too much of it. Mrs. Smithers is too
+stingy for that. Why, only yesterday, Willie told me that she refused to
+let him dip his dry bread in the cream, and gave him a cup of plain milk
+instead. Willie knows when his system needs cream and I want him to have
+all the nourishment he can get. The idea that she should think she knew
+more about it than Willie! She was properly punished for it, however. I
+myself saw Willie throw a stick of stove wood at her and hit her foolish
+head with it. I think Willie is going to be a soldier, a commander of an
+army. He has so much executive ability and never misses what he aims at.
+
+"Rebbie, don't chew on that side, darling; remember your loose tooth is
+there. Mamma doesn't want it to come out."
+
+"Why?" asked Dorothy, with a gleam of interest.
+
+"Because I can't bear to have her little baby teeth come out and make her
+grow up! I want to keep her just as she is. I have all my children's
+teeth, and some day I am going to have them set into a beautiful bracelet.
+Look at that! How generous and unselfish of Rebbie! She is trying to share
+her bread with her doll. I believe Rebbie is going to be a philanthropist,
+or a college-settlement worker. See, she is trying to give the doll the
+molasses--the very best part of it. Did you ever see such a beautiful
+spirit in one so young?"
+
+Before Mrs. Carr could answer, young Ebeneezer had finished his wood
+carving and had grabbed his protesting twin by the hair.
+
+"There, there, Rebbie," soothed the mother, "don't cry. Brother was only
+loving little sister. Be careful, Ebbie. You can take hold of sister's
+hair, but not too hard. They love each other so," she went on. "Ebbie is
+really sentimental about Rebbie. He loves to touch and stroke her glorious
+blonde hair. Did you ever see such hair as Rebbie's?"
+
+It came into Mrs. Carr's mind that "Rebbie's" hair looked more like a
+plate of cold-slaw than anything else, but she was too wise to put the
+thought into words.
+
+Willie slid down the railing and landed in the hall with a loud whoop of
+glee. "How beautiful to hear the sounds of childish mirth," said Mrs.
+Holmes. "How----"
+
+From upstairs came a cry of "Help! Help!"
+
+Muffled though the voice was, it plainly issued from Uncle Israel's room,
+and under the impression that the bath cabinet had finally set the house
+on fire, Mrs. Carr ran hastily upstairs, followed closely by Mrs. Holmes,
+who was flanked at the rear by the grinning Willie and the interested
+twins.
+
+From a confused heap of bedding, Uncle Israel's scarlet ankles waved
+frantically. "Help! Help!" he cried again, his voice being almost wholly
+deadened by the pillows, which had fallen on him after the collapse.
+
+Dorothy helped the trembling old man to his feet. He took a copious
+draught from the pain-killer, then sat down on his trunk, much perturbed.
+
+Investigation proved that the bed cord had been cut in a dozen places by
+some one working underneath, and that the entire structure had instantly
+caved in when Uncle Israel had crept up to the summit of his bed and lain
+down to take his afternoon nap. When questioned, Willie proudly admitted
+that he had done it.
+
+"Go down and ask Mrs. Smithers for the clothes-line," commanded Dorothy,
+sternly.
+
+"I won't," said Willie, smartly, putting his hands in his pockets.
+
+"You had better go yourself, Mrs. Carr," suggested Mrs. Holmes. "Willie is
+tired. He has played hard all day and needs rest. He must not on any
+account over-exert himself, and, besides, I never allow any one else to
+send my children on errands. They obey me and me alone."
+
+"Go yourself," said Willie, having gathered encouragement from the
+maternal source.
+
+"I'll go," wheezed Uncle Israel. "I can't sleep in no other bed.
+Ebeneezer's beds is all terrible drafty, and I took two colds at once
+sleepin' in one of 'em when I knowed better 'n to try it." He tottered out
+of the room, the very picture of wretchedness.
+
+"Was it not clever of Willie?" whispered Mrs. Holmes, admiringly, to
+Dorothy. "So much ingenuity--such a fine sense of humor!"
+
+"If he were my child," snapped Dorothy, at last losing her admirable
+control of a tempestuous temper, "he'd be soundly thrashed at least three
+times a week!"
+
+"I do not doubt it," replied Mrs. Holmes, contemptuously. "These married
+old maids, who have no children of their own, are always wholly out of
+sympathy with a child's nature."
+
+"When I was young," retorted Mrs. Carr, "children were not allowed to rule
+the entire household. There was a current superstition to the effect that
+older people had some rights."
+
+"And yet," Mrs. Holmes continued, meditatively, "as the editor of _The
+Ladies' Own_ so pertinently asks, what is a house for if not to bring up a
+child in? The purpose of architecture is defeated, where there are no
+children."
+
+Uncle Israel, accompanied by Dick, hobbled into the room with the
+clothes-line. Mrs. Holmes discreetly retired, followed by her offspring,
+and, late in the afternoon, when Dorothy and Dick were well-nigh fagged
+out, the structure was in place again. Tremulously the exhausted owner lay
+down upon it, and asked that his supper be sent to his room.
+
+By skilful manoeuvring with Mrs. Smithers, Dick compelled the
+proud-spirited Willie to take up Uncle Israel's tray and wait for it.
+"I'll tell my mother," whimpered the sorrowful one.
+
+"I hope you will," replied Dick, significantly; but for some reason of his
+own, Willie neglected to mention it.
+
+At dinner-time, Mr. Perkins drew a rolled manuscript, tied with a black
+ribbon, from his breast pocket, and, without preliminary, proceeded to
+read as follows:
+
+TO THE MEMORY OF EBENEEZER JUDSON
+
+                  A face we loved has vanished,
+                    A voice we adored is now still,
+                  There is no longer any music
+                    In the tinkling rill.
+
+                  His hat is empty of his head,
+                    His snuff-box has no sneezer,
+                  His cane is idle in the hall
+                    For gone is Ebeneezer.
+
+                  Within the house we miss him,
+                    Let fall the sorrowing tear,
+                  Yet shall we gather as was our wont
+                    Year after sunny year.
+
+                  He took such joy in all his friends
+                    That he would have it so;
+                  He left his house to relatives
+                    But none of us need go.
+
+                  In fact, we're all related,
+                    Sister, friend, and brother;
+                  And in this hour of our grief
+                    We must console each other.
+
+                  He would not like to have us sad,
+                    Our smiles were once his pleasure
+                  And though we cannot smile at him,
+                    His memory is our treasure.
+
+When he had finished, there was a solemn silence, which was at last
+relieved by Mrs. Dodd. "Poetry broke out in my first husband's family,"
+she said, "but with sulphur an' molasses an' quinine an' plenty of
+wet-sheet packs it was finally cured."
+
+"You do not understand," said the poet, indulgently. "Your aura is not
+harmonious with mine."
+
+"Your--what?" demanded Mrs. Dodd, pricking up her ears.
+
+"My aura," explained Mr. Perkins, flushing faintly. "Each individuality
+gives out a spiritual vapour, like a cloud, which surrounds one. These are
+all in different colours, and the colours change with the thoughts we
+think. Black and purple are the gloomy, morose colours; deep blue and the
+paler shades show a sombre outlook on life; green is more cheerful, though
+still serious; yellow and orange show ambition and envy, and red and white
+are emblematic of all the virtues--red of the noble, martial qualities of
+man and white of the angelic disposition of woman," he concluded, with a
+meaning glance at Elaine, who had been much interested all along.
+
+"What perfectly lovely ideas," she said, in a tone which made Dick's blood
+boil. "Are they original with you, Mr. Perkins?"
+
+The poet cleared his throat. "I cannot say that they are wholly original
+with me," he admitted, reluctantly, "though of course I have modified and
+amplified them to accord with my own individuality. They are doing
+wonderful things now in the psychological laboratories. They have a system
+of tubes so finely constructed that by breathing into one of them a
+person's mental state is actually expressed. An angry person, breathing
+into one of these finely organised tubes, makes a decided change in the
+colour of the vapour."
+
+"Humph!" snorted Mrs. Dodd, pushing back her chair briskly. "I've been
+married seven times, an' I never had to breathe into no tube to let any of
+my husbands know when I was mad!"
+
+The poet crimsoned, but otherwise ignored the comment. "If you will come
+into the parlour just as twilight is falling," he said to the others, "I
+will gladly recite my ode on Spring."
+
+Subdued thanks came from the company, though Harlan excused himself on the
+score of his work, and Mrs. Holmes was obliged to put the twins to bed.
+When twilight fell, no one was at the rendezvous but Elaine and the poet.
+
+"It is just as well," he said, in a low tone. "There are several under
+dear Uncle Ebeneezer's roof who are afflicted with an inharmonious aura.
+With yours only am I in full accord. It is a great pleasure to an artist
+to feel such beautiful sympathy with his work. Shall I say it now?"
+
+"If you will," murmured Elaine, deeply honoured by acquaintance with a
+real poet.
+
+Mr. Perkins drew his chair close to hers, leaned over with an air of
+loving confidence, and began:
+
+                Spring, oh Spring, dear, gentle Spring,
+                My poet's garland do I bring
+                To lay upon thy shining hair
+                Where rests a wreath of flowers so fair.
+                There is a music in the brook
+                Which answers to thy tender look
+                And in thy eyes there is a spell
+                Of soft enchantment too sweet to tell.
+                My heart to thine shall ever turn
+                For thou hast made my soul to burn
+                With rapture far beyond----
+
+Elaine screamed, and in a twinkling was on her chair with her skirts
+gathered about her. It was only Claudius Tiberius, dressed in Rebecca's
+doll's clothes, scooting madly toward the front door, but it served
+effectually to break up the entertainment.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+A Sensitive Soul
+
+
+Uncle Israel was securely locked in for the night, and was correspondingly
+restless. He felt like a caged animal, and sleep, though earnestly wooed,
+failed to come to his relief. A powerful draught of his usual sleeping
+potion had been like so much water, as far as effect was concerned.
+
+At length he got up, his lifelong habit of cautious movement asserting
+itself even here, and with tremulous, withered hands, lighted his candle.
+Then he put on his piebald dressing-gown and his carpet slippers, and sat
+on the declivity of his bed, blinking at the light, as wide awake as any
+owl.
+
+Presently it came to him that he had not as yet made a thorough search of
+his own apartment, so he began at the foundation, so to speak, and crawled
+painfully over the carpet, paying special attention to the edges. Next, he
+fingered the baseboards carefully, rapping here and there, as though he
+expected some significant sound to penetrate his deafness. Rising, he went
+over the wall systematically, and at length, with the aid of a chair,
+reached up to the picture-moulding. He had gone nearly around the room,
+without any definite idea of what he was searching for, when his
+questioning fingers touched a small, metallic object.
+
+A smile of childlike pleasure transfigured Uncle Israel's wizened old
+face. Trembling, he slipped down from the chair, falling over the bath
+cabinet in his descent, and tried the key in the lock. It fitted, and the
+old man fairly chuckled.
+
+"Wait till I tell Belinda," he muttered, delightedly. Then a crafty second
+thought suggested that it might be wiser to keep "Belinda" in the dark,
+lest she might in some way gain possession of the duplicate key.
+
+"Lor'," he thought, "but how I pity them husbands of her'n. Bet their
+graves felt good when they got into 'em, the hull seven graves. What with
+sneerin' at medicines and things a person eats, it must have been awful,
+not to mention stealin' of keys and a-lockin' 'em in nights. S'pose the
+house had got afire, where'd I be now?" Grasping his treasure closely,
+Uncle Israel blew out his candle and tottered to bed, thereafter sleeping
+the sleep of the just.
+
+Mrs. Dodd detected subdued animation in his demeanour when he appeared at
+breakfast the following morning, and wondered what had occurred.
+
+"You look 's if sunthin' pleasant had happened, Israel," she began in a
+sprightly manner.
+
+"Sunthin' pleasant has happened," he returned, applying himself to his
+imitation coffee with renewed vigour. "I disremember when I've felt so
+good about anythin' before."
+
+"Something pleasant happens every day," put in Elaine. The country air had
+made roses bloom on her pale cheeks. Her blue eyes had new light in them,
+and her golden hair fairly shone. She was far more beautiful than the sad,
+frail young woman who had come to the Jack-o'-Lantern not so many weeks
+before.
+
+"How optimistic you are!" sighed Mr. Perkins, who was eating Mrs.
+Smithers's crisp, hot rolls with a very unpoetic appetite. "To me, the
+world grows worse every day. It is only a few noble souls devoted to the
+Ideal and holding their heads steadfastly above the mire of commercialism
+that keep our so-called civilisation from becoming an absolute hotbed of
+greed--yes, a hotbed of greed," he repeated, the words sounding
+unexpectedly well.
+
+"Your aura seems to have a purple tinge this morning," commented Dorothy,
+slyly.
+
+"What's a aura, ma?" demanded Willie, with an unusual thirst for
+knowledge.
+
+"Something that goes with a soft person, Willie, dear," responded Mrs.
+Holmes, quite audibly. "You know there are some people who have no
+backbone at all, like the jelly-fish we saw at the seashore the year
+before dear papa died."
+
+"I've knowed folks," continued Mrs. Dodd, taking up the wandering thread
+of the discourse, "what was so soft when they was little that their mas
+had to carry 'em around in a pail for fear they'd slop over and spile the
+carpet."
+
+"And when they grew up, too," Dick ventured.
+
+"Some people," said Harlan, in a polite attempt to change the
+conversation, "never grow up at all. Their minds remain at a fixed point.
+We all know them."
+
+"Yes," sighed Mrs. Dodd, looking straight at the poet, "we all know
+them."
+
+At this juncture the sensitive Mr. Perkins rose and begged to be excused.
+It was the small Ebeneezer who observed that he took a buttered roll with
+him, and gratuitously gave the information to the rest of the company.
+
+Elaine flushed painfully, and presently excused herself, following the
+crestfallen Mr. Perkins to the orchard, where, entirely unsuspected by the
+others, they had a trysting-place. At intervals, they met, safely screened
+by the friendly trees, and communed upon the old, idyllic subject of
+poetry, especially as represented by the unpublished works of Harold
+Vernon Perkins.
+
+"I cannot tell you, Mr. Perkins," Elaine began, "how deeply I appreciate
+your fine, uncommercial attitude. As you say, the world is sordid, and it
+needs men like you."
+
+The soulful one ran his long, bony fingers through his mane of auburn
+hair, and assented with a pleased grunt. "There are few, Miss St. Clair,"
+he said, "who have your fine discernment. It is almost ideal."
+
+"Yet it seems too bad," she went on, "that the world-wide appreciation of
+your artistic devotion should not take some tangible form. Dollars may be
+vulgar and sordid, as you say, but still, in our primitive era, they are
+our only expression of value. I have even heard it said," she went on,
+rapidly, "that the amount of wealth honestly acquired by any individual
+was, after all, only the measure of his usefulness to his race."
+
+"Miss St. Clair!" exclaimed the poet, deeply shocked; "do I understand
+that you are actually advising me to sell a poem?"
+
+"Far from it, Mr. Perkins," Elaine reassured him. "I was only thinking
+that by having your work printed in a volume, or perhaps in the pages of a
+magazine, you could reach a wider audience, and thus accomplish your ideal
+of uplifting the multitude."
+
+"I am pained," breathed the poet; "inexpressibly pained."
+
+"Then I am sorry," answered Elaine. "I was only trying to help."
+
+"To think," continued Mr. Perkins, bitterly, "of the soiled fingers of a
+labouring man, a printer, actually touching these fancies that even I
+hesitate to pen! Once I saw the fair white page of a book that had been
+through that painful experience. You never would have known it, my dear
+Miss St. Clair--it was actually filthy!"
+
+"I see," murmured Elaine, duly impressed, "but are there not more
+favourable conditions?"
+
+"I have thought there might be," returned the poet, after a significant
+silence, "indeed, I have prayed there might be. In some little nook among
+the pines, where the brook for ever sings and the petals of the apple
+blossoms glide away to fairyland upon its shining surface, while
+butterflies float lazily here and there, if reverent hands might put the
+flowering of my genius into a modest little book--I should be tempted,
+yes, sorely tempted."
+
+"Dear Mr. Perkins," cried Elaine, ecstatically clapping her hands, "how
+perfectly glorious that would be! To think how much sweetness and beauty
+would go into the book, if that were done!"
+
+"Additionally," corrected Mr. Perkins, with a slight flush.
+
+"Yes, of course I mean additionally. One could smell the apple blossoms
+through the printed page. Oh, Mr. Perkins, if I only had the means, how
+gladly would I devote my all to this wonderful, uplifting work!"
+
+The poet glanced around furtively, then drew closer to Elaine. "I may tell
+you," he murmured, "in strict confidence, something which my lips have
+never breathed before, with the assurance that it will be as though
+unsaid, may I not?"
+
+"Indeed you may!"
+
+"Then," whispered Mr. Perkins, "I am living in that hope. My dear Uncle
+Ebeneezer, though now departed, was a distinguished patron of the arts.
+Many a time have I read him my work, assured of his deep, though
+unexpressed sympathy, and, lulled by the rhythm of our spoken speech, he
+has passed without a jar from my dreamland to his own. I know he would
+never speak of it to any one--dear Uncle Ebeneezer was too finely grained
+for that--but still I feel assured that somewhere within the walls of that
+sorely afflicted house, a sum of--of money--has been placed, in the hope
+that I might find it and carry out this beautiful work."
+
+"Have you hunted?" demanded Elaine, her eyes wide with wonder.
+
+"No--not hunted. I beg you, do not use so coarse a word. It jars upon my
+poet's soul with almost physical pain."
+
+"I beg your pardon," returned Elaine, "but----"
+
+"Sometimes," interrupted the poet, in a low tone, "when I have felt
+especially near to Uncle Ebeneezer's spirit, I have barely glanced in
+secret places where I have felt he might expect me to look for it, but, so
+far, I have been wholly unsuccessful, though I know that I plainly read
+his thought."
+
+"Some word--some clue--did he give you none?"
+
+"None whatever, except that once or twice he said that he would see that I
+was suitably provided for. He intimated that he intended me to have a sum
+apportioned to my deserts."
+
+"Which would be a generous one; but now--Oh, Mr. Perkins, how can I help
+you?"
+
+"You have never suspected, have you," asked Mr. Perkins, colouring to his
+temples, "that the room you now occupy might once have been my own? Have
+no poet's dreams, lingering in the untenanted spaces, claimed your
+beauteous spirit in sleep?"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Perkins, have I your room? I will so gladly give it up--I----"
+
+The poet raised his hand. "No. The place where you have walked is holy
+ground. Not for the world would I dispossess you, but----"
+
+A meaning look did the rest. "I see," said Elaine, quickly guessing his
+thought, "you want to hunt in my room. Oh, Mr. Perkins, I have
+thoughtlessly pained you again. Can you ever forgive me?"
+
+"My thoughts," breathed Mr. Perkins, "are perhaps too finely phrased for
+modern speech. I would not trespass upon the place you have made your own,
+but----"
+
+There was a brief silence, then Elaine understood. "I see," she said,
+submissively, "I will hunt myself. I mean, I will glance about in the hope
+that the spirit of Uncle Ebeneezer may make plain to me what you seek.
+And----"
+
+"And," interjected the poet, quite practical for the moment, "whatever you
+find is mine, for it was once my room. It is only on account of Uncle
+Ebeneezer's fine nature and his constant devotion to the Ideal that he did
+not give it to me direct. He knew it would pain me if he did so. You will
+remember?"
+
+"I will remember. You need not fear to trust me."
+
+"Then let us shake hands upon our compact." For a moment, Elaine's warm,
+rosy hand rested in the clammy, nerveless palm of Harold Vernon Perkins.
+"Last night," he sighed, "I could not sleep. I was distressed by noises
+which appeared to emanate from the apartment of Mr. Skiles. Did you hear
+nothing?"
+
+"Nothing," returned Elaine; "I sleep very soundly."
+
+"The privilege of unpoetic souls," commented Mr. Perkins. "But, as usual,
+my restlessness was not without definite and beautiful result. In the
+still watches of the night, I achieved a--poem."
+
+"Read it," cried Elaine, rapturously. "Oh, if I might hear it!"
+
+Thus encouraged, Mr. Perkins drew a roll from his breast pocket. A fresh
+blue ribbon held it in cylindrical form, and the drooping ends waved in
+careless, artistic fashion.
+
+"As you might expect, if you knew about such things," he began, clearing
+his throat, and all unconscious of the rapid approach of Mr. Chester, "it
+is upon sleep. It is done in the sonnet form, a very beautiful measure
+which I have made my own. I will read it now.
+
+                            "SONNET ON SLEEP
+
+          "O Sleep, that fillst the human breast with peace,
+            When night's dim curtains swing from out the West,
+            In what way, in what manner, could we rest
+          Were thy beneficent offices to cease?
+          O Sleep, thou art indeed the snowy fleece
+            Upon Day's lamb. A welcome guest
+            That comest alike to palace and to nest
+          And givest the cares of life a glad release.
+          O Sleep, I beg thee, rest upon my eyes,
+            For I am weary, worn, and sad,--indeed,
+            Of thy great mercies have I piteous need
+          So come and lead me off to Paradise."
+
+His voice broke at the end, not so much from the intrinsic beauty of the
+lines as from perceiving Mr. Chester close at hand, grinning like the
+fabled pussy-cat of Cheshire, except that he did not fade away, leaving
+only the grin.
+
+Elaine felt the alien presence and looked around. Woman-like, she quickly
+grasped the situation.
+
+"I have been having a rare treat, Mr. Chester," she said, in her smoothest
+tones. "Mr. Perkins has very kindly been reading to me his beautiful
+_Sonnet on Sleep_, composed during a period of wakefulness last night. Did
+you hear it? Is it not a most unusual sonnet?"
+
+"It is, indeed," answered Dick, dryly. "I never before had the privilege
+of hearing one that contained only twelve lines. Dante and Petrarch and
+Shakespeare and all those other ducks put fourteen lines in every blamed
+sonnet, for good measure."
+
+Hurt to the quick, the sensitive poet walked away.
+
+"How can you speak so!" cried Elaine, angrily. "Is not Mr. Perkins
+privileged to create a form?"
+
+"To create a form, yes," returned Dick, easily, "but not to monkey with an
+old one. There's a difference."
+
+Elaine would have followed the injured one had not Dick interfered. He
+caught her hand quickly, a new and unaccountable lump in his throat
+suddenly choking his utterance. "I say, Elaine," he said, huskily, "you're
+not thinking of hooking up with that red-furred lobster, are you?"
+
+"I do not know," responded Elaine, with icy dignity, "what your uncouth
+language may mean, but I tolerate no interference whatever with my
+personal affairs." In a moment she was gone, and Dick watched the slender,
+pink-clad figure returning to the house with ill-concealed emotion.
+
+All Summer, so far, he and Elaine had been good friends. They had laughed
+and joked and worked together in a care-free, happy-go-lucky fashion. The
+arrival of Mr. Perkins and his sudden admiration of Elaine had
+crystallised the situation. Dick knew now what caused the violent antics
+of his heart--a peaceful and well-behaved organ which had never before
+been so disturbed by a woman.
+
+"I've got it," said Dick, to himself, deeply shamed. "Moonlight, poetry,
+mit-holding, and all the rest of it. Never having had it before, it's
+going hard with me. Why in the devil wasn't I taught to write doggerel
+when I was in college? A fellow don't stand any show nowadays unless he's
+a pocket edition of Byron."
+
+He went on through the orchard at a run, instinctively healing a troubled
+mind by wearying the body. At the outer edge of it, he paused.
+
+Suspended by a singularly strong bit of twine, a small, grinning skull
+hung from the lower branch of an apple tree, far out on the limb. "Cat's
+skull," thought Dick. "Wonder who hung it up there?"
+
+He lingered, idly, for a moment or two, then observed that a small patch
+of grass directly underneath it was of that season's growth. His curiosity
+fully awake, he determined to dig a bit, though he had dug fruitlessly in
+many places since he came to the Jack-o'-Lantern.
+
+"Uncle couldn't do anything conventional," he said to himself, "and I'm
+pretty sure he wouldn't want any of his relations to have his money. Here
+goes, just for luck!"
+
+He went back to the barn for the spade, which already had fresh earth on
+it--the evidence of an early morning excavation privately made by Mrs.
+Smithers in a spot where she had dreamed gold was hidden. He went off to
+the orchard with it, whistling, his progress being furtively watched with
+great interest by the sour-faced handmaiden in the kitchen.
+
+Back in the orchard again, he worked feverishly, possessed by a pleasant
+thrill of excitement, somewhat similar to that conceivably enlivening the
+humdrum existence of Captain Kidd. Dick was far from surprised when his
+spade struck something hard, and, his hands trembling with eagerness, he
+lifted out a tin box of the kind commonly used for private papers.
+
+It was locked, but a twist of his muscular hands sufficed to break it
+open. Then he saw that it was a spring lock, and that, with grim,
+characteristic humour, Uncle Ebeneezer had placed the key inside the box.
+There were papers there--and money, the coins and bills being loosely
+scattered about, and the papers firmly sealed in an envelope addressed "To
+Whom it May Concern."
+
+Dick counted the coins and smoothed out the bills, more puzzled than he
+had ever been in his life. He was tempted to open the envelope, but
+refrained, not at all sure that he was among those whom it concerned. For
+the space of half an hour he stood there, frowning, then he laughed.
+
+"I'll just put it back," he said to himself. "It's not for me to monkey
+with Uncle Ebeneezer's purposes."
+
+He buried the box in its old place, and even cut a bit of sod from a
+distant part of the orchard to hide the traces of his work. When all was
+smooth again, he went back to the barn, swinging the spade carelessly but
+no longer whistling.
+
+"The old devil," he muttered, with keen appreciation. "The wise old
+devil!"
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+Mrs. Dodd's Fifth Fate
+
+
+_Morning lay fair upon the land, and yet the Lady Elaine was weary. Like a
+drooping lily she swayed in her saddle, sick at heart and cast down.
+Earnestly her company of gallant knights strove to cheer her, but in vain.
+Even the merry quips of the fool in motley, who still rode at her side,
+brought no smile to her beautiful face._
+
+_Presently, he became silent, his heart deeply troubled because of her. An
+hour passed so, and no word was spoken, then, timidly enough, he ventured
+another jest._
+
+_The Lady Elaine turned. "Say no more, fool," she commanded, "but get out
+thy writing tablet and compose me a poem. I would fain hear something sad
+and tender in place of this endless folly."_
+
+_Le Jongleur bowed. "And the subject, Princess?"_
+
+_Elaine laughed bitterly. "Myself," she cried. "Why not? Myself, Elaine,
+and this foolish quest of mine!"_
+
+_Then, for a space, there was silence upon the road, since the fool, with
+his writing tablet, had dropped back to the rear of the company, and the
+gallant knights, perceiving the mood of their mistress, spoke not._
+
+_At noon, when the white sun trembled at the zenith, Le Jongleur urged his
+donkey forward, and presented to Elaine a glorious rose which he had found
+blooming at the wayside._
+
+_"The poem is finished, your highness," he breathed, doffing his cap, "but
+'tis all unworthy, so I bring thee this rose also, that something in my
+offering may of a certainty be sweet."_
+
+_He would have put the scroll into her hand, but she swerved her palfrey
+aside. "Read it," she said, impatiently; "I have no mind to try my wits
+with thy poor scrawls."_
+
+_So, with his voice trembling, and overwhelmed with self-consciousness,
+the fool read as follows:_
+
+               The vineyards, purple with their bloom,
+                 Elaine, hast thou forgotten?
+               The maidens in thy lonely room,
+               Thy tapestry on silent loom--
+                   But hush! Where is Elaine?
+                 Elaine, hast thou forgotten?
+
+               Thy castle in the valley lies,
+                 Elaine, hast thou forgotten?
+               Where swift the homing swallow flies
+               And in the sunset daylight dies--
+                   But hush! Where is Elaine?
+                 Elaine, hast thou forgotten?
+
+               Night comes at last on dreamy wings,
+                 Elaine, hast thou forgotten?
+               'Mid gleaming clouds the pale moon swings,
+               Thy taper light a faint star brings,
+                   But hush! Where is Elaine?
+                 Elaine, hast thou forgotten?
+
+Harlan had never written any poetry before, but it had always seemed easy.
+Now, as he read the verses over again, he was tremendously satisfied with
+his achievement. Unconsciously, he had modelled it upon an exquisite
+little bit by some one else, which had once been reprinted beneath a
+"story" of his own when he was on the paper. He read it aloud, to see how
+it sounded, and was more pleased than ever with the swing of the verse and
+the music of the words. "It's pretty close to art," he said to himself,
+"if it isn't the real thing."
+
+Just then the luncheon bell rang, and he went out to the midday
+"gab-fest," as he inwardly characterised it. The meal proceeded to dessert
+without any unusual disturbance, then the diminutive Ebeneezer threw the
+remnants of his cup of milk into his mother's face, and was carried off,
+howling, to be spanked. Like many other mothers, Mrs. Holmes resented her
+children's conduct when it incommoded her, but not otherwise, and though
+milk baths are said to be fine for the complexion, she was not altogether
+pleased with the manner of application.
+
+Amid the vocal pyrotechnics from the Holmes apartments, Harlan escaped
+into the library, but his poem was gone. He searched for it vainly, then
+sat down to write it over before he should forget it. This done, he went
+on with Elaine and her adventures, and presently forgot all about the lost
+page.
+
+"Don't that do your heart good?" inquired Mrs. Dodd, of Dorothy, inclining
+her head toward Mrs. Holmes's door.
+
+"Be it ever so humble," sang Dick, strolling out of the room, "there's no
+place like Holmes's."
+
+Mrs. Carr admitted that her ears were not yet so calloused but that the
+sound gave her distinct pleasure.
+
+"If that there little limb of Satan had have throwed his milk in anybody
+else's face," went on Mrs. Dodd, "all she'd have said would have been:
+'Ebbie, don't spill your nice milk. That's naughty.'"
+
+Her imitation of the fond mother's tone and manner was so wickedly exact
+that Dorothy laughed heartily. The others had fled to a more quiet spot,
+except Willie and Rebecca, who were fighting for a place at the keyhole of
+their mother's door. Finally, Willie gained possession of the keyhole, and
+the ingenious Rebecca, lying flat on her small stomach, peered under the
+door, and obtained a pleasing view of what was going on inside.
+
+"Listen at that!" cried Mrs. Dodd, her countenance fairly beaming with
+innocent pleasure. "I'm gettin' most as much good out of it as I would
+from goin' to the circus. Reckon it's a slipper, for it sounds just like
+little Jimmie Young's weepin' did the night I come home from my fifth
+honeymoon.
+
+"That's the only time," she went on, reminiscently, "as I was ever a
+step-ma to children what wasn't growed up. You'd think a woman as had been
+married four times afore would have knowed better 'n to get her fool head
+into a noose like that, but there seems to be only one way for folks to
+learn things, an' that's by their own experience. If we could only use
+other folks' experience, this here world would be heaven in about three
+generations, but we're so constituted that we never believe fire 'll burn
+till we poke our own fingers into it to see. Other folks' scars don't go
+no ways at all toward convincin' us.
+
+"You read lots of novels about the sorrers of step-children, but I ain't
+never come up with no epic as yet portrayin' the sufferin's of a step-ma.
+If I had a talent like your husband's got, I'll be blest if I wouldn't do
+it. What I went through with them children aged me ten years in less 'n
+three.
+
+"It was like this," she prattled on. "I'd never seen a one of 'em, they
+livin' far away from their pa, as was necessary if their pa was to get any
+peace an' happiness out 'n life, an' that lyin' creeter I married told me
+there was only three. My dear, there was eight, an' sixteen ordinary young
+ones couldn't have been no worse.
+
+"Our courtin' was done mainly in the cemetery. I'd just laid my fourth
+away in his proper place an' had the letterin' all cut nice on his side of
+the monumint, an' I was doin' the plantin' on the grave when I met my
+fate--my fifth fate, I'm speakin' of now. I allers aimed to do right by my
+husbands when they was dead no less 'n when they was livin', an' I allers
+planted each one's favourite flower on his last restin'-place, an' planted
+it thick, so 's when the last trump sounded an' they all riz up, there
+wouldn't be no one of 'em that could accuse me of bein' partial.
+
+"Some of the flowers was funny for a graveyard. One of 'em loved
+sunflowers, an' when blossomin'-time come, you could see a spot of light
+in my lot clear from the gate when you went in, an' on sunny days even
+from quite a piece outside.
+
+"Geraniums was on the next grave, red an' pink together, as William loved
+to see 'em, an' most fittin' an' appropriate. He was a queer-lookin' man,
+William was, all bald except for a little fringe of red hair around his
+head, an' his bald spot gettin' as pink as anythin' when he got mad. I
+never could abide red an' pink together, so I did my best not to rile him;
+but la sakes, my dear, red-haired folks is that touchy that you never can
+tell what's goin' to rile 'em an' what ain't. Some innercent little remark
+is as likely to set 'em off as anythin' else. All the time it's like
+carryin' a light into a fireworks place. Drop it once an' the air 'll be
+full of sky-rockets, roman candles, pinwheels, an' set pieces till you're
+that dazed you don't know where you're livin'. Don't never take no
+red-haired one, my dear, if you're anyways set on peace. I never took but
+one, but that was enough to set me dead against the breed.
+
+"Well, as I was a-sayin', James begun to woo me in the cemetery. Whenever
+you see a man in a cemetery, my dear, you can take it for granted that
+he's a new-made widower. After the first week or two, he ain't got no time
+to go to no grave, he's so busy lookin' out for the next one. When I see
+James a-waterin' an' a-weedin' on the next lot to mine, therefore, I
+knowed his sorrer was new, even though the band of crape on his hat was
+rusty an' old.
+
+"Bein' fellow-mourners, in a way, we struck up kind of a melancholy
+friendship, an' finally got to borrerin' water from each other's
+sprinklin' cans an' exchangin' flower seeds an' slips, an' even hull
+plants. That old deceiver told me it was his first wife that was a-lyin'
+there, an' showed me her name on the monumint. She was buried in her own
+folks' lot, an' I never knowed till it was too late that his own lot was
+plum full of wives, an' this here was a annex, so to speak. I dunno how I
+come to be so took in, but anyways, when James's grief had subsided
+somewhat, we decided to travel on the remainin' stretch through this vale
+of tears together.
+
+"He told me he had a beautiful home in Taylorville, but was a-livin' where
+he was so 's to be near the cemetery an' where he could look after dear
+Annie's grave. The sentiment made me think all the more of him, so 's I
+didn't hesitate, an' was even willin' to be married with one of my old
+rings, to save the expense of a new one. James allers was thrifty, an' the
+way he put it, it sounded quite reasonable, so 's that's how it comes, my
+dear, that in spite of havin' had seven husbands, I've only got six
+weddin'-rings.
+
+"I put each one on when its own proper anniversary comes around an' wear
+it till the next one, when I change again, though for one of the rings it
+makes only one day, because the fourth and seventh times I was married so
+near together. That sounds queer, my dear, but if you think it over,
+you'll see what I mean. It's fortunate, too, in a way, 'cause I found out
+by accident years afterward that my fourth weddin'-ring come out of a
+pawn-shop, an' I never took much joy out of wearin' it. Bein' just alike,
+I wore another one mostly, even when Samuel was alive, but he never
+noticed. Besides, I reckon 't wouldn't make no difference, for a man
+that'll go to a pawn-shop for a weddin'-ring ain't one to make a row about
+his wife's changin' it. When I spoke sharp to him about it, he snickered,
+an' said it was appropriate enough, though to this day I've never figured
+out precisely just what the old serpent meant by it.
+
+"Well, as I was sayin', my dear, the minister married us in good an'
+proper form, an' I must say that, though I've had all kinds of ceremonies,
+I take to the 'Piscopal one the most, in spite of havin' been brought up
+Methodis', an' hereafter I'll be married by it if the occasion should
+arise--an' we drove over to Taylorville.
+
+"The roads was dretful, but bein' experienced in marriage, I could see
+that it wasn't that that was makin' James drop the whip, an' pull back on
+the lines when he wanted the horses to go faster, an' not hear things I
+was a-sayin' to him. Finally, I says, very distinct: 'James, dear, how
+many children did you say you had?'
+
+"'Eight,' says he, clearin' his throat proud and haughty like.
+
+"'You're lyin',' says I, 'an' you know you're lyin'. You allers told me
+you had three.'
+
+"'I was speakin' of those by my first wife,' says he. 'My other wives all
+left one apiece. Ain't I never told you about 'em? I thought I had,' he
+went on, speakin' quick, 'but if I haven't, it 's because your beauty has
+made me forget all the pain an' sorrer of the past.'
+
+"With that he clicked to the horses so sudden that I was near threw out of
+the rig, but it wasn't half so bad as the other jolt he'd just give me.
+For a long time I didn't say nothin', an' there's nothin' that makes a man
+so uneasy as a woman that don't say nothin', my dear, so you just write
+that down in your little book, an' remember it. It'll come in handy long
+before you're through with your first marriage an' have begun on your
+second. Havin' been through four, I was well skilled in keepin' my mouth
+shut, an' I never said a word till we drove into the yard of the most
+disconsolate-lookin' premises I ever seen since I was took to the
+poorhouse on a visit.
+
+"'James,' says I, cool but firm, 'is this your magnificent residence?'
+
+"'It is,' says he, very soft, 'an' it is here that I welcome my bride.
+Have you ever seen anythin' like this view?'
+
+"'No,' says I, 'I never have'; an' it was gospel truth I was speakin',
+too, for never before had I been to a place where the pigsty was in
+front.
+
+"'It is a wonderful view,' says I, sarcastic like, 'but before I linger to
+admire it more, I would love to look upon the scenery inside the house.'
+
+"When we went in, I thought I was either dreamin' or had got to Bedlam.
+The seven youngest children was raisin' particular Cain, an' the oldest, a
+pretty little girl of thirteen, was doin' her best to quiet 'em. There was
+six others besides what had been accounted for, but I soon found that they
+belonged to a neighbour, an' was just visitin' to relieve the monotony.
+
+"The woman James had left takin' care of 'em had been gone two weeks an'
+more, with a month's wages still comin' to her, which James never felt
+called on to pay, on account of her havin' left without notice. James was
+dretful thrifty. The youngest one was puttin' the cat into the
+water-pitcher, an' as soon as I found out what his name was, I called him
+sharp by it an' told him to quit. He put his tongue out at me as sassy as
+you please, an' says: 'I won't.'
+
+"Well, my dear, I didn't wait to hear no more, but I opened my satchel an'
+took out one of my slippers an' give that child a lickin' that he'll
+remember when he's a grandparent. 'Hereafter,' says I, 'when I tell you to
+do anythin', you'll do it. I'll speak kind the first time an' firm the
+second, and the third time the whole thing will be illustrated so plain
+that nobody can't misunderstand it. Your pa has took me into a confidence
+game,' says I, speakin' to all the children, 'but I was never one to draw
+back from what I'd put my hand to, an' I aim to do right by you if you do
+right by me. You mind,' says I, 'an' you won't have no trouble; an' the
+same thing,' says I to James, 'applies to you.'
+
+"I felt sorry for all those poor little motherless things, with a liar for
+a pa, an' all the time I lived there, I tried to make up to 'em what I
+could, but step-mas have their sorrers, my dear, that's what they do, an'
+I ain't never seen no piece about it in the paper yet, either.
+
+"If you'll excuse me now, my dear, I'll go to my room. It's just come to
+my mind now that this here is one of my anniversaries, an' I'll have to
+look up the facts in my family Bible, an' change my ring."
+
+At dinner-time the chastised and chastened twin appeared in freshly
+starched raiment. His eyes were swollen and his face flushed, but
+otherwise his recent painful experience had remarkably improved him. He
+said "please" and "thank you," and did not even resent it when Willie
+slyly dropped a small piece of watermelon down his neck.
+
+"This afternoon," said Elaine, "Mr. Perkins composed a beautiful poem. I
+know it is beautiful, though I have not yet heard it. I do not wish to be
+selfish in my pleasure, so I will ask him to read it to us all."
+
+The poet's face suddenly became the colour of his hair. He dropped his
+napkin, and swiftly whispered to Elaine, while he was picking it up, that
+she herself was the subject of the poem.
+
+"How perfectly charming," said Elaine, clearly. "Did you hear, Mrs. Carr?
+Poor little, insignificant me has actually inspired a great poem. Oh, do
+read it, Mr. Perkins? We are all dying to hear it!"
+
+Fairly cornered, the poet muttered that he had lost it--some other
+time--wait until to-morrow--and so on.
+
+"No need to wait," said Dick, with an ironical smile. "It was lost, but
+now is found. I came upon it myself, blowing around unheeded under the
+library window, quite like a common bit of paper."
+
+Mr. Perkins was transfixed with amazement, for his cherished poem was at
+that minute in his breast pocket. He clutched at it spasmodically, to be
+sure it was still safe.
+
+Very different emotions possessed Harlan, who choked on his food. He
+instinctively guessed the worst, and saw his home in lurid ruin about him,
+but was powerless to avert the catastrophe.
+
+"Read it, Dick," said Mrs. Dodd, kindly. "We are all a-perishin' to hear
+it. I can't eat another bite until I do. I reckon it'll sound like a
+valentine," she concluded, with a malicious glance at Mr. Perkins.
+
+"I have taken the liberty," chuckled Dick, "of changing a word or two
+occasionally, to make better sense of it, and of leaving out some lines
+altogether. Every one is privileged to vary an established form." Without
+further preliminary, he read the improved version.
+
+                 "The little doggie sheds his coat,
+                   Elaine, have you forgotten?
+                 What is it goes around a button?
+                 I thought you knew that simple thing,
+                 But ideas in your head take wing.
+                   Elaine, have you forgotten?
+                 The answer is a goat.
+
+                 "How much is three times humpty-steen?
+                   Elaine, have you forgotten?
+                 Why does a chicken cross the road?
+                 Who carries home a toper's load?
+                   You are so very stupid, dear!
+                     Elaine, have you forgotten?
+
+                 "You think a mop of scarlet hair
+                 And pale green eyes----"
+
+"That will do," said Miss St. Clair, crisply. "Mr. Perkins, may I ask as a
+favour that you will not speak to me again?" She marched out with her head
+high, and Mr. Perkins, wholly unstrung, buried his face in his napkin.
+
+Harlan laughed--a loud, ringing laugh, such as Dorothy had not heard from
+him for months, and striding around the table, he grasped Dick's hand in
+tremendous relief.
+
+"Let me have it," he cried, eagerly. "Give me all of it!"
+
+"Sure," said Dick, readily, passing over both sheets of paper.
+
+Harlan went into the library with the composition, and presently, when
+Dick was walking around the house and saw bits of torn paper fluttering
+out of the open window, a light broke through his usual density.
+
+"Whew!" he said to himself. "I'll be darned! I'll be everlastingly darned!
+Idiot!" he continued, savagely. "Oh, if I could only kick myself! Poor
+Dorothy! I wonder if she knows!"
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+Treasure-Trove
+
+
+The August moon swung high in the heavens, and the crickets chirped
+unbearably. The luminous dew lay heavily upon the surrounding fields, and
+now and then a stray breeze, amid the overhanging branches of the trees
+that lined the roadway, aroused in the consciousness of the single
+wayfarer a feeling closely akin to panic. When he reached the summit of
+the hill, he was trembling violently.
+
+In the dooryard of the Jack-o'-Lantern, he paused. It was dark, save for a
+single round window. In an upper front room a night-lamp, turned low, gave
+one leering eye to the grotesque exterior of the house.
+
+With his heart thumping loudly, Mr. Bradford leaned against a tree and
+divested himself of his shoes. From a package under his arm, he took out a
+pair of soft felt slippers, the paper rattling loudly as he did so. He put
+them on, hesitated, then went cautiously up the walk.
+
+"In all my seventy-eight years," he thought, "I have never done anything
+like this. If I had not promised the Colonel--but a promise to a dying man
+is sacred, especially when he is one's best friend."
+
+The sound of the key in the lock seemed almost like an explosion of
+dynamite. Mr. Bradford wiped the cold perspiration from his forehead,
+turned the door slowly upon its squeaky hinges, and went in, feeling like
+a burglar.
+
+"I am not a burglar," he thought, his hands shaking. "I have come to give,
+not to take away."
+
+Fearfully, he tiptoed into the parlour, expecting at any moment to arouse
+the house. Feeling his way carefully along the wall, and guided by the
+moonlight which streamed in at the side windows, he came to the wing
+occupied by Mrs. Holmes and her exuberant offspring. Here he stooped,
+awkwardly, and slipped a sealed and addressed letter under the door,
+heaving a sigh of relief as he got away without having wakened any one.
+
+The sounds which came from Mrs. Dodd's room were reassuringly suggestive
+of sleep. Hastily, he slipped another letter under her door, then made his
+way cautiously to the kitchen. The missive intended for Mrs. Smithers was
+left on the door-mat outside, for, as Mr. Bradford well knew, the ears of
+the handmaiden were uncomfortably keen.
+
+At the foot of the stairs he hesitated again, but by the time he reached
+the top, his heart had ceased to beat audibly. He tiptoed down the
+corridor to Uncle Israel's room, then, further on, to Dick's. The letter
+intended for Mr. Perkins was slipped under Elaine's door, Mr. Bradford not
+being aware that the poet had changed his room. Having safely accomplished
+his last errand, the tension relaxed, and he went downstairs with more
+assurance, his pace being unduly hastened by a subdued howl from one of
+the twins.
+
+Bidding himself be calm, he got to the front door, and drew a long breath
+of relief as he closed it noiselessly. There was a light in Mrs. Holmes's
+room now, and Mr. Bradford did not wish to linger. He gathered up his
+shoes and fairly ran downhill, arriving at his office much shaken in mind
+and body, nearly two hours after he had started.
+
+"I do not know," he said to himself, "why the Colonel should have been so
+particular as to dates and hours, but he knew his own business best."
+Then, further in accordance with his instructions, he burned a number of
+letters which could not be delivered personally.
+
+If Mr. Bradford could have seen the company which met at the breakfast
+table the following morning, he would have been amply repaid for his
+supreme effort of the night before, had he been blessed with any sense of
+humour at all. The Carrs were untroubled, and Elaine appeared as usual,
+except for her haughty indifference to Mr. Perkins. She thought he had
+written a letter to himself and slipped it under her door, in order to
+compel her to speak to him, but she had tactfully avoided that difficulty
+by leaving it on his own threshold. Dick's eyes were dancing and at
+intervals his mirth bubbled over, needlessly, as every one else appeared
+to think.
+
+"I doesn't know wot folks finds to laugh at," remarked Mrs. Smithers, as
+she brought in the coffee; "that's wot I doesn't. It's a solemn time, I
+take it, when the sheeted spectres of the dead walks abroad by night,
+that's wot it is. It's time for folks to be thinkin' about their immortal
+souls."
+
+This enigmatical utterance produced a startling effect. Mr. Perkins turned
+a pale green and hastily excused himself, his breakfast wholly untouched.
+Mrs. Holmes dropped her fork and recovered it in evident confusion. Mrs.
+Dodd's face was a bright scarlet and appeared about to burst, but she kept
+her lips compressed into a thin, tight line. Uncle Israel nodded over his
+predigested food. "Just so," he mumbled; "a solemn time."
+
+Eagerly watching for an opportunity, Mrs. Holmes dived into the barn, and
+emerged, cautiously, with the spade concealed under her skirts. She
+carried it into her own apartment and hid it under Willie's bed. Mrs.
+Smithers went to look for it a little later, and, discovering that it was
+unaccountably missing, excavated her own private spade from beneath the
+hay. During the afternoon, the poet was observed lashing the fire-shovel
+to the other end of a decrepit rake. Uncle Israel, after a fruitless
+search of the premises, actually went to town and came back with a bulky
+and awkward parcel, which he hid in the shrubbery.
+
+Meanwhile, Willie had gone whimpering to Mrs. Dodd, who was in serious
+trouble of her own. "I'm afraid," he admitted, when closely questioned.
+
+"Afraid of what?" demanded his counsellor, sharply.
+
+"I'm afraid of ma," sobbed Willie. "She's a-goin' to bury me. She's got
+the spade hid under my bed now."
+
+Sudden emotion completely changed Mrs. Dodd's countenance. "There, there,
+Willie," she said, stroking him kindly. "Where is your ma?"
+
+"She's out in the orchard with Ebbie and Rebbie."
+
+"Well now, deary, don't you say nothin' at all to your ma, an' we'll fool
+her. The idea of buryin' a nice little boy like you! You just go an' get
+me that spade an' I'll hide it in my room. Then, when your ma asks for it,
+you don't know nothin' about it. See?"
+
+Willie's troubled face brightened, and presently the implement was under
+Mrs. Dodd's own bed, and her door locked. Much relieved in his mind and
+cherishing kindly sentiments toward his benefactor, Willie slid down the
+banisters, unrebuked, the rest of the afternoon.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Dodd sat on the porch and meditated. "I'd never have
+thought," she said to herself, "that Ebeneezer would intend that Holmes
+woman to have any of it, but you never can tell what folks'll do when
+their minds gets to failin' at the end. Ebeneezer's mind must have failed
+dretful, for I know he didn't make no promise to her, same as he did to
+me, an' if she don't suspect nothin', what did she go an' get the spade
+for? Dretful likely hand it is, for spirit writin'."
+
+Looking about furtively to make sure that she was not observed, Mrs. Dodd
+drew out of the mysterious recesses of her garments, the crumpled
+communication of the night before. It was dated, "Heaven, August 12th,"
+and the penmanship was Uncle Ebeneezer's to the life.
+
+"Dear Belinda," it read. "I find myself at the last moment obliged to
+change my plans. If you will go to the orchard at exactly twelve o'clock
+on the night of August 13th, you will find there what you seek. Go
+straight ahead to the ninth row of apple trees, then seven trees to the
+left. A cat's skull hangs from the lower branch, if it hasn't blown down
+or been taken away. Dig here and you will find a tin box containing what I
+have always meant you to have.
+
+"I charge you by all you hold sacred to obey these directions in every
+particular, and unless you want to lose it all, to say nothing about it to
+any one who may be in the house.
+
+"I am sorry to put you to this inconvenience, but the limitations of the
+spirit world cannot well be explained to mortals. I hope you will make a
+wise use of the money and not spend it all on clothes, as women are apt to
+do.
+
+"In conclusion, let me say that I am very happy in heaven, though it is
+considerably more quiet than any place I ever lived in before. I have met
+a great many friends here, but no relatives except my wife. Farewell, as I
+shall probably never see you again.
+
+"Yours,
+
+                                                      "Ebeneezer Judson.
+
+"P.S. All of your previous husbands are here, in the sunny section set
+aside for martyrs. None of them give you a good reputation.
+
+                                                                 "E. J."
+
+"Don't it beat all," muttered Mrs. Dodd to herself, excitedly. "Here was
+Ebeneezer at my door last night, an' I never knowed it. Sakes alive, if I
+had knowed it, I wouldn't have slep' like I did. Here comes that Holmes
+hussy. Wonder what she knows!"
+
+"Do you believe in spirits, Mrs. Dodd?" inquired Mrs. Holmes, in a
+careless tone that did not deceive her listener.
+
+"Depends," returned the other, with an evident distaste for the subject.
+
+"Do you believe spirits can walk?"
+
+"I ain't never seen no spirits walk, but I've seen folks try to walk that
+was full of spirits, and there wa'n't no visible improvement in their
+steppin'." This was a pleasant allusion to the departed Mr. Holmes, who
+was currently said to have "drunk hisself to death."
+
+A scarlet flush, which mounted to the roots of Mrs. Holmes's hair,
+indicated that the shot had told, and Mrs. Dodd went to her own room,
+where she carefully locked herself in. She was determined to sit upon her
+precious spade until midnight, if it were necessary, to keep it.
+
+Mrs. Smithers was sitting up in bed with the cold perspiration oozing from
+every pore, when the kitchen clock struck twelve sharp, quick strokes. The
+other clocks in the house took up the echo and made merry with it. The
+grandfather's clock in the hall was the last to strike, and the twelve
+deep-toned notes boomed a solemn warning which, to more than one quaking
+listener, bore a strong suggestion of another world--an uncanny world at
+that.
+
+"Guess I'll go along," said Dick to himself, yawning and stretching. "I
+might just as well see the fun."
+
+Mrs. Smithers, with her private spade and her odorous lantern, was at the
+spot first, closely seconded by Mrs. Dodd, in a voluminous garment of red
+flannel which had seen all of its best days and not a few of its worst.
+Trembling from head to foot, came Mrs. Holmes, carrying a pair of shears,
+which she had snatched up at the last moment when she discovered the spade
+was missing. Mr. Perkins, fully garbed, appeared with his improvised
+shovel. Uncle Israel, in his piebald dressing-gown, tottered along in the
+rear, bearing his spade, still unwrapped, his bedroom candle, and a box of
+matches. Dick surveyed the scene from a safe, shadowy distance, and on a
+branch near the skull, Claudius Tiberius was stretched at full length,
+purring with a loud, resonant purr which could be heard from afar.
+
+After the first shock of surprise, which was especially keen on the part
+of Mrs. Dodd, when she saw Uncle Israel in the company, Mrs. Smithers
+broke the silence.
+
+"It's nothink more nor a wild-goose chase," she said, resentfully.
+"A-gettin' us all out'n our beds at this time o' night! It's a sufferin'
+and dyin' shame, that's wot it is, and if sperrits was like other folks,
+'t wouldn't 'ave happened."
+
+"Sarah," said Mrs. Dodd, firmly, "keep your mouth shut. Israel, will you
+dig?"
+
+"We'll all dig," said Mrs. Holmes, in the voice of authority, and
+thereafter the dirt flew briskly enough, accompanied by the laboured
+breathing of perspiring humanity.
+
+It was Uncle Israel's spade that first touched the box, and, with a cry of
+delight, he stooped for it, as did everybody else. By sheer force of
+muscle, Mrs. Dodd got it away from him.
+
+"This wrangle," sighed Mr. Perkins, "is both unseemly and sordid. Let us
+all agree to abide by dear Uncle Ebeneezer's last bequests."
+
+"There won't be no desire not to abide by 'em," snorted Mrs. Smithers,
+"wot with cats as can't stay buried and sheeted spectres of the dead
+a-walkin' through the house by night!"
+
+By this time, Mrs. Dodd had the box open, and a cry of astonishment broke
+from her lips. Several heads were badly bumped in the effort to peep into
+the box, and an unprotected sneeze from Uncle Israel added to the general
+unpleasantness.
+
+"You can all go away," cried Mrs. Dodd, shrilly. "There's two one-dollar
+bills here, two quarters, an' two nickels an' eight pennies. 'T aint
+nothin' to be fit over."
+
+"But the letter," suggested Mr. Perkins, hopefully. "Is there not a letter
+from dear Uncle Ebeneezer? Let us gather around the box in a reverent
+spirit and listen to dear Uncle Ebeneezer's last words."
+
+"You can read 'em," snapped Mrs. Holmes, "if you're set on hearing."
+
+Uncle Israel wheezed so loudly that for the moment he drowned the deep
+purr of Claudius Tiberius. When quiet was restored, Mr. Perkins broke the
+seal of the envelope and unfolded the communication within. Uncle Israel
+held the dripping candle on one side and Mrs. Smithers the smoking lantern
+on the other, while near by, Dick watched the midnight assembly with an
+unholy glee which, in spite of his efforts, nearly became audible.
+
+"How beautiful," said Mr. Perkins, "to think that dear Uncle Ebeneezer's
+last words should be given to us in this unexpected but original way."
+
+"Shut up," said Mrs. Smithers, emphatically, "and read them last words.
+I'm gettin' the pneumony now, that's wot I am."
+
+"You're the only one," chirped Mrs. Dodd, hysterically. "The money in this
+here box is all old." It was, indeed. Mr. Judson seemed to have purposely
+chosen ragged bills and coins worn smooth.
+
+"'Dear Relations,'" began Mr. Perkins. "'As every one of you have at one
+time or another routed me out of bed to let you in when you have come to
+my house on the night train, and always uninvited----'"
+
+"I never did," interrupted Mrs. Holmes. "I always came in the daytime."
+
+"Nobody ain't come at night," explained Mrs. Smithers, "since 'e fixed the
+'ouse over into a face. One female fainted dead away when 'er started up
+the hill and see it a-winkin' at 'er, yes sir, that's wot 'er did!"
+
+"'It seems only fitting and appropriate,'" continued Mr. Perkins, "'that
+you should all see how it seems.'" The poet wiped his massive brow with
+his soiled handkerchief. "Dear uncle!" he commented.
+
+"Yes," wheezed Uncle Israel, "'dear uncle!' Damn his stingy old soul," he
+added, with uncalled-for emphasis.
+
+"It gives me pleasure to explain in this fashion my disposal of my
+estate," the reader went on, huskily.
+
+"Of all the connection on both sides, there is only one that has never
+been to see me, unless I've forgotten some, and that is my beloved nephew,
+James Harlan Carr."
+
+"Him," creaked Uncle Israel. "Him, as never see Ebeneezer."
+
+"He has never," continued the poet, with difficulty, "rung my door bell at
+night, nor eaten me out of house and home, nor written begging letters--"
+this phrase was well-nigh inaudible--"nor had fits on me----"
+
+Here there was a pause and all eyes were fastened upon Uncle Israel.
+
+"'T wa'n't a fit!" he screamed. "It was a involuntary spasm brought on by
+takin' two searchin' medicines too near together. 'T wa'n't a fit!"
+
+"Nor children----"
+
+"The idea!" snapped Mrs. Holmes. "Poor little Ebbie and Rebbie had to be
+born somewhere."
+
+"Nor paralysis----"
+
+"That was Cousin Si Martin," said Mrs. Dodd, half to herself. "He was took
+bad with it in the night."
+
+"He has never come to spend Christmas with me and remained until the
+ensuing dog days, nor sent me a crayon portrait of himself"--Mr. Perkins
+faltered here, but nobly went on--"nor had typhoid fever, nor finished up
+his tuberculosis, nor cut teeth, nor set the house on fire with a bath
+cabinet----"
+
+At this juncture Uncle Israel was so overcome with violent emotion that it
+was some time before the reading could proceed.
+
+"Never having come into any kind of relations with my dear nephew, James
+Harlan Carr," continued Mr. Perkins, in troubled tones, "I have shown my
+gratitude in this humble way. To him I give the house and all my
+furniture, my books and personal effects of every kind, my farm in Hill
+County, two thousand acres, all improved and clear of incumbrance, except
+blooded stock,----"
+
+"I never knowed 'e 'ad no farm," interrupted Mrs. Smithers.
+
+"And the ten thousand and eighty-four dollars in the City Bank which at
+this writing is there to my credit, but will be duly transferred, and my
+dear Rebecca's diamond pin to be given to my beloved nephew's wife when he
+marries. It is all in my will, which my dear friend Jeremiah Bradford has,
+and which he will read at the proper time to those concerned."
+
+"The old snake!" shrieked Mrs. Holmes.
+
+"Further," went on the poet, almost past speech by this time, "I direct
+that the remainder of my estate, which is here in this box, shall be
+divided as follows:
+
+"Eight cents each to that loafer, Si Martin, his lazy wife, and their
+eight badly brought-up children, with instructions to be generous to any
+additions to said children through matrimony or natural causes; Fanny Wood
+and that poor, white-livered creature she married, thereby proving her own
+idiocy if it needed proof; Uncle James's cross-eyed third wife and her two
+silly daughters; Rebecca's sister's scoundrelly second husband, with his
+foolish wife and their little boy with a face like a pug dog; Uncle Jason,
+who has needed a bath ever since I knew him--I want he should spend his
+legacy for soap--and his epileptic stepson, whose name I forget, though he
+lived with me five years hand-running; lying Sally Simmons and her
+half-witted daughter; that old hen, Belinda Dodd; that skunk, Harold
+Vernon Perkins, who never did a stroke of honest work in his life till he
+began to dig for this box; monkey-faced Lucretia and the four thieving
+little Riley children, who are likely to get into prison when they grow
+up; that human undertaker's waggon, Betsey Skiles, and her two impudent
+nieces; that grand old perambulating drug store, Israel Skiles; that
+Holmes fool with the three reprints of her ugliness--eight cents apiece,
+and may you get all possible good out of it.
+
+"Dick Chester, however, having always paid his board, and tried to be a
+help to me in several small ways, and in spite of having lived with me
+eight Summers or more without having been asked to do so, gets two
+thousand two hundred and fifty dollars which is deposited for him in the
+savings department of the Metropolitan Bank, plus the three hundred and
+seventy dollars he paid me for board without my asking him for it. Sarah
+Smithers, being in the main a good woman, though sharp-tongued at times,
+and having been faithful all the time my house has been full of lowdown
+cusses too lazy to work for their living, gets twelve hundred and fifty
+dollars which is in the same bank as Dick's. The rest of you take your
+eight cents apiece and be damned. You can get the money changed at the
+store. If any have been left out, it is my desire that those remembered
+should divide with the unfortunate.
+
+"If you had not all claimed to be Rebecca's relatives, you would have been
+kicked out of my house years ago, but since writing this, I have seen
+Rebecca and made it right with her. It was not her desire that I should be
+imposed upon.
+
+"Get out of my house, every one of you, before noon to-morrow, and the
+devil has my sincere sympathy when you go to live with him and make hell
+what you have made my house ever since Rebecca's death. GET OUT!!!
+
+                                                     "Ebeneezer Judson."
+
+The letter was badly written and incoherent, yet there could be no doubt
+of its meaning, nor of the state of mind in which it had been penned. For
+a moment, there was a tense silence, then Mrs. Dodd tittered
+hysterically.
+
+"We thought diamonds was goin' to be trumps," she observed, "an' it turned
+out to be spades."
+
+Uncle Israel wheezed again and Mrs. Smithers smacked her lips with intense
+satisfaction. Mrs. Holmes was pale with anger, and, under cover of the
+night, Dick sneaked back to his room, shame-faced, yet happy. Claudius
+Tiberius still purred, sticking his claws into the bark with every
+evidence of pleasure.
+
+"I do not know," said Mr. Perkins, sadly, running his fingers through his
+mane, "whether we are obliged to take as final these vagaries of a dying
+man. Dear Uncle Ebeneezer could not have been sane when he penned this
+cruel letter. I do not believe it was his desire to have any of us go away
+before the usual time." Under cover of these forgiving sentiments, he
+pocketed all the money in the box.
+
+"Me neither," said Mrs. Dodd. "Anyhow, I'm goin' to stay. No sheeted
+spectre can't scare me away from a place I've always stayed in Summers,
+'specially," she added, sarcastically, "when I'm remembered in the will."
+
+Mrs. Smithers clucked disagreeably and went back to the house. Uncle
+Israel looked after her with dismay. "Do you suppose," he queried, in
+falsetto, "that she'll tell the Carrs?"
+
+"Hush, Israel," replied Mrs. Dodd. "She can't tell them Carrs about our
+diggin' all night in the orchard, 'cause she was here herself. They didn't
+get no spirit communication an' they won't suspect nothin'. We'll just
+stay where we be an' go on 's if nothin' had happened."
+
+Indeed, this seemed the wisest plan, and, shivering with the cold, the
+baffled ones filed back to the Jack-o'-Lantern. "How did you get out,
+Israel?" whispered Mrs. Dodd, as they approached the house.
+
+The old man snickered. It was the only moment of the evening he had
+thoroughly enjoyed. "The same spirit that give me the letter, Belinda," he
+returned, pleasantly, "also give me a key. You didn't think I had no
+flyin' machine, did you?"
+
+"Humph" grunted Mrs. Dodd. "Spirits don't carry no keys!"
+
+At the threshold they paused, the sensitive poet quite unstrung by the
+night's adventure. From the depths of the Jack-o'-Lantern came a shrill,
+infantile cry.
+
+"Is that Ebbie," asked Mrs. Dodd, "or Rebbie?"
+
+Mrs. Holmes turned upon her with suppressed fury. "Don't you ever dare to
+allude to my children in that manner again," she commanded, hoarsely.
+
+"What is their names?" quavered Uncle Israel, lighting his candle.
+
+"Their names," returned Mrs. Holmes, with a vast accession of dignity,
+"are Gladys Gwendolen and Algernon Paul! Good night!"
+
+Just before dawn, a sheeted spectre appeared at the side of Sarah
+Smither's bed, and swore the trembling woman to secrecy. It was long past
+sunrise before the frightened handmaiden came to her senses enough to
+recall that the voice of the apparition had been strangely like Mrs.
+Dodd's.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+Good Fortune
+
+
+The next morning, Harlan and Dorothy ate breakfast by themselves. There
+was suppressed excitement in the manner of Mrs. Smithers, who by this time
+had quite recovered from her fright, and, as they readily saw, not wholly
+of an unpleasant kind. From time to time she tittered audibly--a thing
+which had never happened before.
+
+"It's just as if a tombstone should giggle," remarked Harlan. His tone was
+low, but unfortunately, it carried well.
+
+"Tombstone or not, just as you like," responded Mrs. Smithers, as she came
+in with the bacon. "I'd be careful 'ow I spoke disrespectfully of
+tombstones if I was in your places, that's wot I would. Tombstones is kind
+to some and cussed to others, that's wot they are, and if you don't like
+the monument wot's at present in your kitchen, you know wot you can do."
+
+After breakfast, she beckoned Dorothy into the kitchen, and "gave
+notice."
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Smithers," cried Dorothy, almost moved to tears, "please don't
+leave me in the lurch! What should I do without you, with all these people
+on my hands? Don't think of such a thing as leaving me!"
+
+"Miss Carr," said Mrs. Smithers, solemnly, with one long bony finger laid
+alongside of her hooked nose, "'t ain't necessary for you to run no Summer
+hotel, that's what it ain't. These 'ere all be relations of your uncle's
+wife and none of his'n except by marriage. Wot's more, your uncle don't
+want 'em 'ere, that's wot 'e don't."
+
+Mrs. Smithers's tone was so confident that for the moment Dorothy was
+startled, remembering yesterday's vague allusion to "sheeted spectres of
+the dead."
+
+"What do you mean?" she demanded.
+
+"Miss Carr," returned Mrs. Smithers, with due dignity, "ever since I come
+'ere, I've been invited to shut my 'ead whenever I opened it about that
+there cat or your uncle or anythink, as you well knows. I was never one
+wot was fond of 'avin' my 'ead shut up."
+
+"Go on," said Dorothy, her curiosity fully alive, "and tell me what you
+mean."
+
+"You gives me your solemn oath, Miss, that you won't tell me to shut my
+'ead?" queried Mrs. Smithers.
+
+"Of course," returned Dorothy, trying to be practical, though the
+atmosphere was sepulchral enough.
+
+"Well, then, you knows wot I told you about that there cat. 'E was kilt by
+your uncle, that's wot 'e was, and your uncle couldn't never abide cats.
+'E was that feared of 'em 'e couldn't even bury 'em when they was kilt,
+and one of my duties, Miss, as long as I lived with 'im, was buryin' of
+cats, and until this one, I never come up with one wot couldn't stay
+buried, that's wot I 'aven't.
+
+"'E 'ated 'em like poison, that's wot 'e did. The week afore your uncle
+died, he kilt this 'ere cat wot's chasin' the chickens now, and I buried
+'im with my own hands, but could 'e stay buried? 'E could not. No sooner
+is your uncle dead and gone than this 'ere cat comes back, and it's the
+truth, Miss Carr, for where 'e was buried, there ain't no sign of a cat
+now. Wot's worse, this 'ere cat looks per-cisely like your uncle, green
+eyes, white shirt front, black tie and all. It's enough to give a body the
+shivers to see 'im a-settin' on the kitchen floor lappin' up 'is mush and
+milk, the which your uncle was so powerful fond of.
+
+"Wot's more," continued Mrs. Smithers, in tones of awe, "I'll a'most bet
+my immortal soul that if you'll dig in the cemetery where your uncle was
+buried good and proper, you won't find nothin' but the empty coffin and
+maybe 'is grave clothes. Your uncle's been livin' with us all along in
+that there cat," she added, triumphantly. "It's 'is punishment, for 'e
+couldn't never abide 'em, that's wot 'e couldn't."
+
+Mrs. Carr opened her mouth to speak, then, remembering her promise, took
+refuge in flight.
+
+"'Er's scared," muttered Mrs. Smithers, "and no wonder. Wot with cats as
+can't stay buried, writin' letters and deliverin' 'em in the dead of
+night, and a purrin' like mad while blamed fools digs for eight cents,
+most folks would be scared, I take it, that's wot they would."
+
+Dorothy was pale when she went into the library where Harlan was at work.
+He frowned at the interruption and Dorothy smiled back at him--it seemed
+so normal and sane.
+
+"What is it, Dorothy?" he asked, not unkindly.
+
+"Oh--just Mrs. Smithers's nonsense. She's upset me."
+
+"What about, dear?" Harlan put his work aside readily enough now.
+
+"Oh, the same old story about the cat and Uncle Ebeneezer. And I'm
+afraid----"
+
+"Afraid of what?"
+
+"I know it's foolish, but I'm afraid she's going to dig in the cemetery to
+see if Uncle Ebeneezer is still there. She thinks he's in the cat."
+
+For the moment, Harlan thought Dorothy had suddenly lost her reason, then
+he laughed heartily.
+
+"Don't worry," he said, "she won't do anything of the kind, and, besides,
+what if she did? It's a free country, isn't it?"
+
+"And--there's another thing, Harlan." For days she had dreaded to speak of
+it, but now it could be put off no longer.
+
+"It's--it's money," she went on, unwillingly. "I'm afraid I haven't
+managed very well, or else it's cost so much for everything, but
+we're--we're almost broke, Harlan," she concluded, bravely, trying to
+smile.
+
+Harlan put his hands in his pockets and began to walk back and forth. "If
+I can only finish the book," he said, at length, "I think we'll be all
+right, but I can't leave it now. There's only two more chapters to write,
+and then----"
+
+"And then," cried Dorothy, her beautiful belief in him transfiguring her
+face, "then we'll be rich, won't we?"
+
+"I am already rich," returned Harlan, "when you have such faith in me as
+that."
+
+For a moment the shimmering veil of estrangement which so long had hung
+between them, seemed to part, and reveal soul to soul. As swiftly the mood
+changed and Dorothy felt it first, like a chill mist in the air. Neither
+dreamed that with the writing of the first paragraph in the book, the
+spell had claimed one of them for ever--that cobweb after cobweb, of
+gossamer fineness, should make a fabric never to be broken; that on one
+side of it should stand a man who had exchanged his dreams for realities
+and his realities for dreams, and on the other, a woman, blindly hurt,
+eternally straining to see beyond the veil.
+
+"What can we do?" asked Harlan, unwontedly practical for the nonce.
+
+"I don't know," said Dorothy. "There are the diamonds, you know, that we
+found. I don't care for any diamonds, except the one you gave me. If we
+could sell those----"
+
+"Dorothy, don't. I don't believe they're ours, and if they were, they
+shouldn't be sold. You should keep them."
+
+"My engagement ring, then," suggested Dorothy, her lips trembling. "That's
+ours."
+
+"Don't be foolish," said Harlan, a little roughly. "I'll finish this and
+then we'll see what's to be done."
+
+Feeling her dismissal, Dorothy went out, and, all unknowingly, straight
+into the sunshine.
+
+Elaine was coming downstairs, fresh and sweet as the morning itself. "Am I
+too late to have any breakfast, Mrs. Carr?" she asked, gaily. "I know I
+don't deserve any."
+
+"Of course you shall have breakfast. I'll see to it."
+
+Elaine took her place at the table and Dorothy, reluctant to put further
+strain on the frail bond that anchored Mrs. Smithers to her service,
+brought in the breakfast herself.
+
+"You're so good to me," said the girl, gratefully, as Dorothy poured out a
+cup of steaming coffee. "To think how beautiful you've been to me, when I
+never saw either one of you in my whole life, till I came here ill and
+broken-hearted! See what you've made of me--see how well and strong I
+am!"
+
+Swiftly, Dorothy bent and kissed Elaine, a strange, shadowy cloud for ever
+lifted from her heart. She had not known how heavy it was nor how charged
+with foreboding, until it was gone.
+
+"I want to do something for you," Elaine went on, laughing to hide the
+mist in her eyes, "and I've just thought what I can do. My mother had some
+beautiful old mahogany furniture, just loads of it, and some wonderful
+laces, and I'm going to divide with you."
+
+"No, you're not," returned Dorothy, warmly. She felt that Elaine had
+already given her enough.
+
+"It isn't meant for payment, Mrs. Carr," the girl went on, her big blue
+eyes fixed upon Dorothy, "but you're to take it from me just as I've taken
+this lovely Summer from you. You took in a stranger, weak and helpless and
+half-crazed with grief, and you've made her into a happy woman again."
+
+Before Dorothy could answer, Dick lounged in, frankly sleepy. "Second call
+in the dining car?" he asked, taking Mrs. Dodd's place, across the table
+from Elaine.
+
+"Third call," returned Dorothy, brightly, "and, if you don't mind, I'll
+leave you two to wait on yourselves." She went upstairs, her heart light,
+not so much from reality as from prescience. "How true it is," she
+thought, "that if you only wait and do the best you can, things all work
+out straight again. I've had to learn it, but I know it now."
+
+"Bully bunch, the Carrs," remarked Dick, pushing his cup to Elaine.
+
+"They're lovely," she answered, with conviction.
+
+The sun streamed brightly into the dining-room of the Jack-o'-Lantern and
+changed its hideousness into cheer. Seeing Elaine across from him,
+gracefully pouring his coffee, affected Dick strangely. Since the day
+before, he had seen clearly something which he must do.
+
+"I say, Elaine," he began, awkwardly. "That beast of a poem I read the
+other day----"
+
+Her face paled, ever so slightly. "Yes?"
+
+"Well, Perkins didn't write it, you know," Dick went on, hastily. "I did
+it myself. Or, rather I found it, blowing around, outside, just as I said,
+and I fixed it."
+
+At length he became restless under the calm scrutiny of Elaine's clear
+eyes. "I beg your pardon," he continued.
+
+"Did you think," she asked, "that it was nice to make fun of a lady in
+that way?"
+
+"I didn't think," returned Dick, truthfully. "I never thought for a minute
+that it was making fun of you, but only of that--that pup, Perkins," he
+concluded, viciously.
+
+"Under the circumstances," said Elaine, ignoring the epithet, "the silence
+of Mr. Perkins has been very noble. I shall tell him so."
+
+"Do," answered Dick, with difficulty. "He's ambling up to the
+lunch-counter now." Mr. Chester went out by way of the window, swallowing
+hard.
+
+"I have just been told," said Miss St. Clair to the poet, "that
+the--er--poem was not written by you, and I apologise for what I said."
+
+Mr. Perkins bowed in acknowledgment. "It is a small matter," he said,
+wearily, running his fingers through his hair. It was, indeed, compared
+with deep sorrow of a penetrating kind, and a sleepless night, but Elaine
+did not relish the comment.
+
+"Were--were you restless in the night?" she asked, conventionally.
+
+"I was. I did not sleep at all until after four o'clock, and then only for
+a few moments."
+
+"I'm sorry. Did--did you write anything?"
+
+"I began an epic," answered the poet, touched, for the moment, by this
+unexpected sympathy. "An epic in blank verse, on 'Disappointment.'"
+
+"I'm sure it's beautiful," continued Elaine, coldly. "And that reminds me.
+I have hunted through my room, in every possible place, and found
+nothing."
+
+A flood of painful emotion overwhelmed the poet, and he buried his face in
+his hands. In a flash, Elaine was violently angry, though she could not
+have told why. She marched out of the dining-room and slammed the door.
+"Delicate, sensitive soul," she said to herself, scornfully. "Wants people
+to hunt for money he thinks may be hidden in his room, and yet is so far
+above sordidness that he can't hear it spoken of!"
+
+Seeing Mr. Chester pacing back and forth moodily at some distance from the
+house, Elaine rushed out to him. "Dick," she cried, "he _is_ a lobster!"
+
+Dick's clouded face brightened. "Is he?" he asked, eagerly, knowing
+instinctively whom she meant. "Elaine, you're a brick!" They shook hands
+in token of absolute agreement upon one subject at least, and the girl's
+right hand hurt her for some little time afterward.
+
+Left to himself, Mr. Perkins mused upon the dread prospect before him. For
+years he had calculated upon a generous proportion of his Uncle
+Ebeneezer's estate, and had even borrowed money upon the strength of his
+expectations. These debts now loomed up inconveniently.
+
+The vulgar, commercial people from whom Mr. Perkins had borrowed filthy
+coin were quite capable of speaking of the matter, and in an unpleasant
+manner at that. The fine soul of Mr. Perkins shrank from the ordeal. He
+had that particular disdain of commercialism which is inseparable from the
+incapable and unsuccessful, and yet, if the light of his genius were to
+illuminate a desolate world, Mr. Perkins must have money.
+
+He might even have to degrade himself by coarse toil--and hitherto, he had
+been too proud to work. The thought was terrible. Pegasus hitched to the
+plough was nothing compared with the prospect of Mr. Perkins being obliged
+to earn three or four dollars a week in some humble, common capacity.
+
+Then a bright idea came to his rescue. "Mr. Carr," he thought, "the
+gentleman who is now entertaining me--he is doing my own kind of work,
+though of course it is less fine in quality. Perhaps he would like the
+opportunity of going down to posterity as the humble Maecenas of a new
+Horace."
+
+Borne to the library in the rush of this attractive idea, Mr. Perkins
+opened the door, which Harlan had forgotten to lock, and without in any
+way announcing himself, broke in on Harlan's chapter.
+
+"What do you mean?" demanded the irate author. "What business have you
+butting in here like this? Get out!"
+
+"I--" stammered Mr. Perkins.
+
+"Get out!" thundered Harlan. It sounded strangely like the last phrase of
+"dear Uncle Ebeneezer's last communication," and, trembling, the
+disconsolate poet obeyed. He fled to his own room as a storm-tossed ship
+to its last harbour, and renewed the composition of his epic on
+"Disappointment," for which, by this time, he had additional material.
+
+Harlan went back to his work, but the mood was gone. The living, radiant
+picture had wholly vanished, and in its place was a heap of dead, dry,
+meaningless words. "Did I write it?" asked Harlan, of himself, "and if so,
+why?"
+
+Like the mocking fantasy of a dream as seen in the instant of waking,
+Elaine and her company had gone, as if to return no more. Only two
+chapters were yet to be written, and he knew, vaguely, what Elaine was
+about to do when he left her, but his pen had lost the trick of writing.
+
+Deeply troubled, Harlan went to the window, where the outer world still
+had the curious appearance of unreality. It was as though a sheet of glass
+were between him and the life of the rest of the world. He could see
+through it clearly, but the barrier was there, and must always be there.
+Upon the edge of this glass, the light of life should break and resolve
+itself into prismatic colours, of which he should see one at a time, now
+and then more, and often a clear, pitiless view of the world should give
+him no colour at all.
+
+Presently Lawyer Bradford came up the hill, dressed for a formal call. In
+a flash it brought back to Harlan the day the old man had first come to
+the Jack-o'-Lantern, when Dorothy was a happy girl with a care-free boy
+for a husband. How much had happened since, and how old and grey the world
+had grown!
+
+"I desire to see the distinguished author, Mr. Carr," the thin, piping
+voice was saying at the door, "upon a matter of immediate and personal
+importance. And Mrs. Carr also, if she is at leisure. Privacy is
+absolutely essential."
+
+"Come into the library," said Harlan, from the doorway. Another
+interruption made no difference now. Dorothy soon followed, much mystified
+by the way in which Mrs. Smithers had summoned her.
+
+Remembering the inopportune intrusion of Mr. Perkins, Harlan locked the
+door. "Now, Mr. Bradford," he said, easily, "what is it?"
+
+"I should have told you before," began the old lawyer, "had not the bonds
+of silence been laid upon me by one whom we all revere and who is now past
+carrying out his own desires. The house is yours, as my letters of an
+earlier date apprised you, and the will is to be probated at the Fall term
+of court.
+
+"Your uncle," went on Mr. Bradford, unwillingly, "was a great sufferer
+from--from relations," he added, lowering his voice to a shrill whisper,
+"and he has chosen to revenge himself for his sufferings in his own way.
+Of this I am not at liberty to speak, though no definite silence was
+required of me later than yesterday.
+
+"There is, however, a farm of two thousand acres, all improved, which is
+still to come to you, and a sum of money amounting to something over ten
+thousand dollars, in the bank to your credit. The multitudinous duties in
+connection with the practice of my profession have prevented me from
+making myself familiar with the exact amount.
+
+"And," he went on, looking at Dorothy, "there is a very beautiful diamond
+pin, the gift of my lamented friend to his lovely young wife upon the day
+of the solemnisation of their nuptials, which was to be given to the wife
+of Mr. Judson's nephew when he should marry. It is sewn in a mattress in
+the room at the end of the north wing."
+
+The earth whirled beneath Dorothy's feet. At first, she had not fully
+comprehended what Mr. Bradford was saying, but now she realised that they
+had passed from pinching poverty to affluence--at least it seemed so to
+her. Harlan was not so readily confused, but none the less, he, too, was
+dazed. Neither of them could speak.
+
+"I should be grateful," the old man was saying, "if you would ask Mr.
+Richard Chester and Mrs. Sarah Smithers to come to my office at their
+earliest convenience. I will not trespass upon their valuable time at
+present."
+
+There was a long silence, during which Mr. Bradford cleared his throat,
+and wiped his glasses several times. "The farm has always been held in my
+name," he continued, "to protect our lamented friend and benefactor from
+additional disturbance. If--if the relations had known, his life would
+have been even less peaceful than it was. A further farm, valued at twelve
+thousand dollars, and also held in my name, is my friend's last gift to
+me, as I discovered by opening a personal letter which was to be kept
+sealed until this morning. I did not open it until late in the morning,
+not wishing to show unseemly eagerness to pry into my friend's affairs. I
+am too much affected to speak of it--I feel his loss too keenly. He was my
+Colonel--I served under him in the war."
+
+A mist filled the old man's eyes and he fumbled for the door-knob. Harlan
+found it for him, turned the key, and opened the door. Mrs. Dodd, Mrs.
+Holmes, Mrs. Smithers, and the suffering poet were all in the hall, their
+attitudes plainly indicating that they had been listening at the door, but
+something in Mr. Bradford's face made them huddle back into the corner,
+ashamed.
+
+Feeling his way with his cane, he went to the parlour door, where he stood
+for a moment at the threshold, his streaming eyes fixed upon the portrait
+over the mantel. The simple dignity of his grief forbade a word from any
+one. At length he straightened himself, brought his trembling hand to his
+forehead in a feeble military salute, and, wiping his eyes, tottered off
+downhill.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+The Lady Elaine knows her Heart
+
+
+_It was on a dark and stormy midnight, when the thunders boomed and the
+dread fury of the lightnings scarred the overhanging cliffs, that the Lady
+Elaine at last came to know her heart._
+
+_She was in a cave, safe from all but the noise of the storm. A cheery
+fire blazed at her door, and her bed within was made soft with pine boughs
+and skins. For weeks they had journeyed here and there, yet there had been
+no knight in whose face Elaine could find what she sought._
+
+_As she lay on her couch, she reflected upon the faithful wayfarers who
+had travelled with her, who had ever been gentle and courtly, saving her
+from all annoyance and all harm. Yet above them all, there was one who,
+from the time of their starting, had kept vigilant guard. He was the
+humblest of them all, but it was he who made her rest in shady places by
+the wayside when she herself scarce knew that she was weary; had given her
+cool spring water in a cup cunningly woven of leaves before she had
+realised her thirst; had brought her berries and strange, luscious fruits
+before she had thought of hunger; and who had cheered her, many a time,
+when no one else had guessed that she was sad._
+
+_Outside, he was guarding her now, all heedless of the rain. She could see
+him dimly in the shadow, then, all at once, more clearly in the firelight.
+His head was bowed and his arms folded, yet in the strong lines of his
+body there was no hint of weariness. Well did the Lady Elaine know that
+until Dawn spun her web of enchantment upon the mysterious loom of the
+East, he would march sleeplessly before her door, replenishing the fire,
+listening now and then for her deep breathing, and, upon the morrow, gaily
+tell her of his dreams._
+
+_Dreams they were, indeed, but not the dreams of sleep. Upon these
+midnight marchings, her sentinel gave his wandering fancy free rein. And
+because of the dumb pain in his heart, these fancies were all the merrier;
+more golden with the sun of laughter, more gemmed with the pearl of
+tears._
+
+_Proud-hearted, yet strangely homesick, the Lady Elaine was restless this
+night. "I must go back," she thought, "to the Castle of Content, where my
+dear father would fain have his child again. And yet I dread to go back
+with my errand undone, my quest unrewarded._
+
+_"What is it," thought Elaine, in sudden self-searching, "that I seek?
+What must this man be, to whom I would surrender the keeping of my heart?
+What do I ask that is so hard to find?_
+
+_"Am I seeking for a god? Nay, surely not, but only for a man. Valorous he
+must be, indeed, but not in the lists--'tis not a soldier, for I have seen
+them by the hundred since I left my home in the valley. 'Tis not a model
+for the tapestry weaver that my heart would have, for I have seen the most
+beautiful youths of my country since I came forth upon my quest._
+
+_"Some one, perchance," mused the Lady Elaine, "whose beauty my eyes alone
+should perceive, whose valour only I should guess before there was need to
+test it. Some one great of heart and clean of mind, in whose eyes there
+should never be that which makes a woman ashamed. Some one fine-fibred and
+strong-souled, not above tenderness when a maid was tired. One who should
+make a shield of his love, to keep her not only from the great hurts but
+from the little ones as well, and yet with whom she might fare onward,
+shoulder to shoulder, as God meant mates should fare._
+
+_"Surely 'tis not so unusual, this thing that I ask--only an honest man
+with human faults and human virtues, transfigured by a great love. And why
+is it that in this quest of mine, I have found him not?"_
+
+_"Princess," said a voice at her doorway, "thou art surely still awake.
+The storm is lessening and there is naught to fear. I pray thee, try to
+sleep. And if there is aught I can do for thee, thou knowest thou hast
+only to speak."_
+
+_From the warm darkness where she lay, Elaine saw his face with the
+firelight upon it, and all at once she knew._
+
+_"There is naught," she answered, with what he thought was coldness. "I
+bid thee leave me and take thine own rest."_
+
+_"As thou wilt," he responded, submissively, but though the sound was now
+faint and far away, she still could hear him walking back and forth,
+keeping his unremitting guard._
+
+_So it was that at last Love came to the Lady Elaine. She had dreamed of
+some fair stranger, into whose eyes she should look and instantly know him
+for her lord, never guessing that her lord had gone with her when she left
+the Castle of Content. There was none of those leaps of the heart of which
+one of the maids at the Castle had read from the books while the others
+worked at the tapestry frames. It was nothing new, but only a light upon
+something which had always been, and which, because of her own blindness,
+she had not seen._
+
+_All through this foolish journey, Love had ridden beside the Lady Elaine,
+asking nothing but the privilege of serving her; demanding only the right
+to give, to sacrifice, to shield. And at last she knew._
+
+_The doubting in her heart was for ever stilled and in its place was a
+great peace. There was an unspeakable tenderness and a measureless
+compassion, so wide and so deep that it sheltered all the world. For,
+strangely enough, the love of the many comes first through the love of the
+one._
+
+_The Lady Elaine did not need to ask whether he loved her, for,
+unerringly, she knew. Mated past all power of change, they two were one
+henceforward, though seas should roll between. Mated through suffering as
+well, for, in this new bond, as the Lady Elaine dimly perceived, there was
+great possibility of hurt. Yet there was no end or no beginning; it simply
+was, and at last she knew._
+
+_At length, she slept. When she awoke the morning was fair upon the
+mountains, but still he paced back and forth before her door. Rising, she
+bathed her face in the cool water he had brought her, braided her glorious
+golden hair, changed her soiled habit for a fresh robe of white satin
+traced with gold, donned her red embroidered slippers, and stepped out
+into the sunrise, shading her eyes with her hand until they grew
+accustomed to the dawn._
+
+_"Good morrow, Princess," he said. "We----"_
+
+_Of a sudden, he stopped and fled like a wild thing into the forest, for
+by her eyes, he saw what was in her heart, and his hot words, struggling
+for utterance, choked him. "At last," he breathed, with his clenched hands
+on his breast; "at last--but no, 'tis another dream of mine that I dare
+not believe."_
+
+_His senses reeled, for love comes not to a man as to a woman, but rather
+with the sound of trumpets and the glare of white light. The cloistered
+peace that fills her soul rests seldom upon him, and instead he is stirred
+with high ambition and spurred on to glorious achievement. For to her,
+love is the end of life; to him it is the means._
+
+_The knights thought it but another caprice when the Lady Elaine gave
+orders to return to the Castle of Content, at once, and by the shortest
+way--all save one of them. With his heart rioting madly through his
+breast, he knew, but he did not dare to look at Elaine. He was as one long
+blinded, who suddenly sees the sun._
+
+_So it was that though he still served her, he rode no longer by her side,
+and Elaine, hurt at first, at length understood, and smiled because of her
+understanding. All the way back, the Lady Elaine sang little songs to
+herself, and, the while she rode upon her palfrey, touched her zither into
+gentle harmonies. After many days, they came within sight of the Castle of
+Content._
+
+_As before, it was sunset, and the long light lay upon the hills, while
+the valley was in shadow. Purple were the  vineyards, heavy with their
+clustered treasure, over which the tiny weavers had made their lace, and
+purple, too, were the many-spired cliffs, behind which the sunset shone._
+
+_A courier, riding swiftly in advance, had apprised the Lord of the Castle
+of Content of the return of the Lady Elaine, and the maids from the
+tapestry room, and the keeper of the wine-cellar, and the stable-boys, and
+the candle-makers, and the light-bearers all rushed out, heedless of their
+manners, for, one and all, they loved the Lady Elaine, and were eager to
+behold their beautiful mistress again._
+
+_But the Lord of the Castle of Content, speaking somewhat sternly, ordered
+them one and all back to their places, and, shamefacedly, they obeyed. "I
+would not be selfish," he muttered to himself, "but surely, Elaine is
+mine, and the first gleam of her beauty belongs of right to these misty
+old eyes of mine, that have long strained across the dark for the first
+hint of her coming. Of a truth her quest has been long."_
+
+_So it came to pass that when the company reached the road that led down
+into the valley, the Lord of the Castle of Content was on the portico
+alone, though he could not have known that behind every shuttered window
+of the Castle, a humble servitor of Elaine's was waiting anxiously for her
+coming._
+
+_As before, Elaine rode at the head, waving her hand to her father, while
+the cymbals and the bugles crashed out a welcome. She could not see, but
+she guessed that he was there, and in return he waved a tremulous hand at
+her, though well he knew that in the fast gathering twilight, the child of
+his heart could not see the one who awaited her._
+
+_One by one, as they came in single file down the precipice, the old man
+counted them, much astonished to see that there was no new member of the
+company--that as many were coming back as had gone away. For the moment
+his heart was glad, then he reproached himself bitterly for his
+selfishness, and was truthfully most tender toward Elaine, because she had
+failed upon her quest._
+
+_The light gleamed capriciously upon the bauble of the fool, which he
+still carried, though now it hung downward from his saddle, foolishly
+enough. "A most merry fool," said the Lord of Content to himself. "I was
+wise to insist upon his accompanying this wayward child of mine."_
+
+_Wayward she might be, yet her father's eyes were dim when she came down
+into the valley, where there was no light save the evening star, a taper
+light at an upper window of the Castle, and her illumined face._
+
+_"How hast thou fared upon thy quest, Elaine?" he asked in trembling
+tones, when at last she released herself from his eager embrace. He
+dreaded to hear her make known her disappointment, yet his sorrow was all
+for her, and not in the least for himself._
+
+_"I have found him, father," she said, the gladness in her voice betraying
+itself as surely as the music in a stream when Spring sets it free again,
+"and, forsooth, he rode with me all the time."_
+
+_"Which knight hast thou chosen, Elaine?" he asked, a little sadly._
+
+_"No knight at all, dear father. I have found my knight in stranger guise
+than in armour and shield. He bears no lance, save for those who would
+injure me." And then, she beckoned to the fool._
+
+_"He is here, my father," she went on, her great love making her all
+unconscious of the shame she should feel._
+
+_"Elaine!" thundered her father, while the fool hung his head, "hast thou
+taken leave of thy senses? Of a truth, this is a sorry jest thou hast
+chosen to greet me with on thy return."_
+
+_"Father," said Elaine, made bold by the silent pressure of the hand that
+secretly clasped hers, "'tis no jest. If thou art pained, indeed I am
+sorry, but if thou choosest to banish me, then this night will I go gladly
+with him I have chosen to be my lord. The true heart which Heaven has sent
+for me beats beneath his motley, and with him I must go. Dear father,"
+cried Elaine, piteously, "do not send us away!"_
+
+_The stern eyes of the Lord of the Castle of Content were fixed upon the
+fool, and in the gathering darkness they gleamed like live coals. "And
+thou," he said, scornfully; "what hast thou to say?"_
+
+_"Only this," answered the fool; "that the Princess has spoken truly. We
+are mated by a higher law than that of thy land or mine, and 'tis this law
+that we must obey. If thou sayest the word, we will set forth to my
+country this very night, though we are both weary with much journeying."_
+
+_"Thy land," said the Lord of the Castle, with measureless contempt, "and
+what land hast thou? Even the six feet of ground thou needest for a grave
+must be given thee at the last, unless, perchance, thou hast a handful of
+stolen earth hidden somewhere among thy other jewels!"_
+
+_"Your lordship," cried the fool, with a clear ring in his voice, "thou
+shall not speak so to the man who is to wed thy daughter. I had not
+thought to tell even her till after the priests had made us one, but for
+our own protection, I am stung into speech._
+
+_"Know then, that I am no fool, but a Prince of the House of Bernard. My
+acres and my vineyards cover five times the space of this little realm of
+thine. Chests of gold and jewels I have, storehouses overflowing with
+grain and fine fabrics, three castles and a royal retinue. Of a truth,
+thou art blind since thou canst see naught but the raiment. May not a
+Prince wear motley if he chooses, thus to find a maid who will love him
+for himself alone?"_
+
+_"Prince Bernard," muttered the Lord of Content, "the son of my old
+friend, whom I have long dreamed in secret shouldst wed my dear daughter
+Elaine! Your Highness, I beg you to forgive me, and to take my hand."_
+
+_But Prince Bernard did not hear, nor see the outstretched hand, for
+Elaine was in his arms for the first time, her sweet lips close on his.
+"My Prince, oh my Prince," she murmured, when at length he set her free;
+"my eyes could not see, but my heart knew!"_
+
+_So ended the Quest of the Lady Elaine._
+
+With a sigh, Harlan wrote the last words and pushed the paper from him,
+staring blankly at the wall and seeing nothing. His labour was at an end,
+all save the final copying, and the painstaking daily revision which would
+take weeks longer. The exaltation he had expected to be conscious of was
+utterly absent; instead of it, he had a sense of loss, of change.
+
+His surroundings seemed hopelessly sordid and ugly, now that the glow was
+gone. All unknowingly, when Harlan pencilled: "The End," in fanciful
+letters at the bottom of the last page, he had had practically his last
+joy of his book. The torturing process of revision was to take all the
+life out of it. Sentences born of surging emotion would seem vapid and
+foolish when subjected to the cold, critical eye of his reason, yet he
+knew, dimly, that he must not change it too much.
+
+"I'll let it get cool," he thought, "before I do anything more to it."
+
+Yet, now, it was difficult to stop working. The rented typewriter, with
+its enticing bank of keys, was close at hand. A thousand sheets of paper
+and a box of carbon waited in the drawer of Uncle Ebeneezer's desk. His
+worn _Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases_ was at his elbow. And they
+were poor. Then Harlan laughed, for they were no longer poor, and he had
+wholly forgotten it.
+
+There was a step upon the porch outside, then Dorothy came into the hall.
+She paused outside the library door for a moment, ostensibly to tie her
+shoe, but in reality to listen. A wave of remorseful tenderness
+overwhelmed Harlan and he unlocked the door. "Come in," he said, smiling.
+"You needn't be afraid to come in any more. The book is all done."
+
+"O Harlan, is it truly done?" There was no gladness in her voice, only
+relief. Doubt was in every intonation of her sentence; incredulity in
+every line of her body.
+
+With this pitiless new insight of his, Harlan saw how she had felt for
+these last weeks and became very tenderly anxious not to hurt her; to
+shield his transformed self from her quick understanding.
+
+"Really," he answered. "Have I been a beast, Dorothy?"
+
+The question was so like the boy she used to know that her heart leaped
+wildly, then became portentously still.
+
+"Rather," she admitted, grudgingly, from the shelter of his arms.
+
+"I'm sorry. If you say so, I'll burn it. Nothing is coming between you and
+me." The words sounded hollow and meaningless, as he knew they were.
+
+She put her hand over his mouth. "You won't do any such thing," she said.
+Dorothy had learned the bitterness of the woman's part, to stand by,
+utterly lonely, and dream, and wait, while men achieve.
+
+"Can I read it now?" she asked, timidly.
+
+"You couldn't make it out, Dorothy. When it's all done, and every word is
+just as I want it, I'll read it to you. That will be better, won't it?"
+
+"Can Dick come, too?" She asked the question thoughtlessly, then flushed
+as Harlan took her face between his hands.
+
+"Dorothy, did you know Dick before we were married?"
+
+"Why, Harlan! I never saw him in all my life till the day he came here.
+Did you think I had?"
+
+Harlan only grunted, but she understood, and, in return, asked her
+question. "Did you write the book about Elaine?" she began, half ashamed.
+
+"Dear little idiot," said Harlan, softly. "I'd begun the book before she
+came or before I knew she was coming. I never saw her till she came to
+live with us. You're foolish, dearest, don't you think you are?"
+
+He was swiftly perceiving the necessity of creating a new harmony to take
+the place of that old one, now so strangely lost.
+
+"There are two of us," returned Dorothy, with conviction, wiping her
+eyes.
+
+"I wish you'd ask me things," said Harlan, a little later. "I'm no mind
+reader. And, besides, the seventh son of a seventh son, born with a caul,
+and having three trances regularly every day after meals, never could hope
+to understand a woman unless she was willing to help him out a little,
+occasionally."
+
+Which, after all, was more or less true.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+Uncle Ebeneezer's Diary
+
+
+Harlan had taken his work upstairs, that the ceaseless clatter of the
+typewriter might not add to the confusion which normally prevailed in the
+Jack-o'-Lantern. Thus it happened that Dorothy was able to begin her
+long-cherished project of dusting, rearranging, and cataloguing the
+books.
+
+There is a fine spiritual essence which exhales from the covers of a book.
+Shall one touch a copy of Shakespeare with other than reverent hands, or
+take up his Boswell without a smile? Through the worn covers and broken
+binding the master-spirit still speaks, no less than through the centuries
+which lie between. The man who had the wishing carpet, upon which he sat
+and wished and was thence immediately transported to the ends of the
+earth, was not possessed of a finer magic than one who takes his Boswell
+in his hands and then, for a golden quarter of an hour, lives in a bygone
+London with Doctor Johnson.
+
+When the book-lover enters his library, no matter what storm and tumult
+may be in his heart, he has come to the inmost chamber of Peace. The
+indescribable, musty odour which breathes from the printed page is
+fragrant incense to him who loves his books. In unseemly caskets his
+treasures may be hidden, yet, when the cover is reverently lifted, the
+jewels shine with no fading light. The old, immortal beauty is still
+there, for any one who seeks it in the right way.
+
+Dorothy had two willing assistants in Dick and Elaine. One morning,
+immediately after breakfast, the three went to the library and locked the
+door. Outside, the twins rioted unheeded and the perennially joyous Willie
+capered unceasingly. Mr. Perkins, gloomy and morose, wrote reams of poetry
+in his own room, distressed beyond measure by the rumble of the
+typewriter, but too much cast down to demand that it be stopped.
+
+Mrs. Dodd and Mrs. Holmes, closely united through misfortune, were
+well-nigh inseparable now, while Mrs. Smithers, still sepulchral, sang
+continually in a loud, cracked voice, never by any chance happening upon
+the right note. As Dorothy said, when there are only eight tones in the
+octave, it would seem that sometime, somewhere, a warbler must coincide
+for a brief interval with the tune, but as Dick further commented,
+industry and patience can do wonders when rightly exercised.
+
+Uncle Israel's midnight excursion to the orchard had given him a fresh
+attack of a familiar and distressing ailment to which he always alluded as
+"the brown kittys." Fortunately, however, the cure for asthma and
+bronchitis was contained in the same quart bottle, and needed only to be
+heated in order to work upon both diseases simultaneously.
+
+Elaine rolled up the sleeves of her white shirt-waist, and turned in her
+collar, thereby producing an effect which Dick privately considered
+distractingly pretty. Dorothy was enveloped from head to foot in a
+voluminous blue gingham apron, and a dust cap, airily poised upon her
+smooth brown hair, completed a most becoming costume. Dick, having duly
+obtained permission, took off his coat and put on his hat, after which the
+library force was ready for action.
+
+"First," said Dorothy, "we'll take down all the books." It sounded simple,
+but it took a good share of the day to do it, and the clouds of dust
+disturbed by the process produced sneezes which put Uncle Israel's feeble
+efforts to shame. When dusting the shelves, after they were empty, Elaine
+came upon a panel in the wall which slid back.
+
+"Here's a secret drawer!" she cried, in wild delight. "How perfectly
+lovely! Do you suppose there's anything in it?"
+
+Dorothy instantly thought of money and diamonds, but the concealed
+treasure proved to be merely a book. It was a respectable volume, however,
+at least as far as size was concerned, for Elaine and Dorothy together
+could scarcely lift it.
+
+It was a leather-bound ledger, of the most ponderous kind, and was
+fastened with a lock and key. The key, of course, was missing, but Dick
+soon pried open the fastening.
+
+All but the last few pages in the book were covered with fine writing, in
+ink which was brown and faded, but still legible. It was Uncle Ebeneezer's
+penmanship throughout, except for a few entries at the beginning, in a
+fine, flowing feminine hand, which Dorothy instantly knew was Aunt
+Rebecca's.
+
+"On the night of our wedding," the book began, "we begin this record of
+our lives, for until to-day we have not truly lived." This was signed by
+both. Then, in the woman's hand, was written a description of her
+wedding-gown, which was a simple white muslin, made by herself. Her
+ornaments were set down briefly--only a wreath of roses in her hair, a
+string of coral beads, and the diamond brooch which was at that moment in
+Dorothy's jewel-box.
+
+For three weeks there were alternate entries, then suddenly, without date,
+were two words so badly written as to be scarcely readable: "She died."
+For days thereafter was only this: "I cannot write." These simple words
+were the key to a world of pain, for the pages were blistered with a man's
+hot tears.
+
+Then came this: "She would want me to go on writing it, so I will, though
+I have no heart for it."
+
+From thence onward the book proceeded without interruption, a minute and
+faithful record of the man's inner life. Long extracts copied from books
+filled page after page of this strange diary, interspersed with records of
+business transactions, of letters received and answered, of wages paid,
+and of the visits of Jeremiah Bradford.
+
+"We talked long to-night upon the immortality of the soul," one entry ran.
+"Jeremiah does not believe it, but I must--or die."
+
+Dick soon lost interest in the book, and finding solitary toil at the
+shelves uncongenial, went out, whistling. Elaine and Dorothy read on
+together, scarcely noting his absence.
+
+The book had begun in the Spring. Early in June was chronicled the arrival
+of "a woman calling herself Cousin Elmira, blood relation of my Rebecca.
+Was not aware my Rebecca had a blood relation named Elmira, but there is
+much in the world that I do not know."
+
+According to the diary, Cousin Elmira had remained six weeks and had
+greatly distressed her unwilling host. "Women are peculiar," Uncle
+Ebeneezer had written, "all being possessed of the devil, except my
+sainted Rebecca, who was an angel if there ever was one.
+
+"Cousin Elmira is a curious woman. To-day she desired to know what had
+become of my Rebecca's wedding garments, her linen sheets and
+table-cloths. Answered that I did not know, and immediately put a lock
+upon the chest containing them. Have always been truthful up to now, but
+Rebecca would not desire to have any blood relation handling her sheets.
+Of this I am sure.
+
+"Aug. 9. To-day came Cousin Silas Martin and his wife to spend their
+honeymoon. Much grieved to hear of Rebecca's death. Said she had invited
+them to spend their honeymoon with her when they married. Did not know of
+this, but our happiness was of such short duration that my Rebecca did not
+have time to tell me of all her wishes. Company is very hard to bear, but
+I would do much for my Rebecca.
+
+"Aug. 10. This world can never be perfect under any circumstances, and
+trials are the common lot of humanity. We must all endeavour to bear up
+under affliction. Sarah Smithers is a good woman, most faithful, and does
+not talk a great deal, considering her sex. Not intending any reflection
+upon my Rebecca, whose sweet voice I could never hear too often.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Aug. 20. Came Uncle Israel Skiles with a bad cough. Thinks the air of
+Judson Centre must be considered healthy as they are to build a sanitarium
+here. Did not know of the sanitarium.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Aug. 22. Came Cousin Betsey Skiles to look after Uncle Israel. Uncle
+Israel not desiring to be looked after has produced some disturbance in my
+house.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Aug. 23. Cousin Betsey Skiles and Cousin Jane Wood, the latter arriving
+unexpectedly this morning, have fought, and Cousin Jane has gone away
+again. Had never met Cousin Jane Wood.
+
+"Aug. 24. Was set upon by Cousin Silas Martin, demanding to know whether
+his wife was to be insulted by Cousin Betsey Skiles. Answered that I did
+not know.
+
+"Aug. 25. Was obliged to settle a dispute between Sarah Smithers and
+Cousin Betsey Skiles. Decided in favour of S. S., thereby angering B. S.
+Uncle Israel accidentally spilled his tonic on Cousin Betsey's clean
+apron. Much disturbance in my house.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Aug. 28. Cousin Silas Martin and wife went away, telling me they could no
+longer live with Cousin Betsey Skiles. B. S. is unpleasant, but has her
+virtues.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Sept. 5. Uncle Israel thinks air of Judson Centre is now too chilly for
+his cough. Does not like his bed, considering it drafty. Says Sarah
+Smithers does not give him nourishing food.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Sept. 8. Uncle Israel has gone.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Sept. 10. Cousin Betsey Skiles has gone to continue looking after Uncle
+Israel. Sarah Smithers and myself now alone in peace.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+All that Winter, the writing was of books, interspersed with occasional
+business details. In the Spring, the influx of blood relations began again
+and continued until Fall. The diary revealed the gradual transformation of
+a sunny disposition into a dark one, of a man with gregarious instincts
+into a wild beast asking only for solitude. Additions to the house were
+chronicled from time to time, with now and then a pathetic comment upon
+the futility of the additions.
+
+Once there was this item: "Would go away for ever were it not that this
+was my Rebecca's home. Where we had hoped to be so happy, there is now a
+great emptiness and unnumbered Relations. How shall I endure Relations?
+Still they are all of her blood, though the most gentle blood does seem to
+take strange turns."
+
+Again: "Do not think my Rebecca would desire to have all her kin visit her
+at once. Still, would do anything for my Rebecca. Have ordered five more
+beds."
+
+As the years went by, the bitterness became more and more apparent. Long
+before the end, the record was frankly profane, and saddest of all was the
+evidence that under the stress of annoyance the great love for "my
+Rebecca" was slowly, but surely, becoming tainted. From simple profanity,
+Uncle Ebeneezer descended into blasphemous comment, modified at times by
+remorseful tenderness toward the dead.
+
+"To-day," he wrote, "under pressure of my questioning, Sister-in-law Fanny
+Wood admitted that Rebecca had never invited her to come and see her.
+Asked Sister-in-law why she was here. Responded that Rebecca would have
+asked her if she had lived. Perhaps others have surmised the same. Fear of
+late I may have been unjust to my Rebecca."
+
+Later on, "my Rebecca" was mentioned but rarely. She became "my dear
+companion," "my wife," or "my partner." The building of wings and the
+purchase of additional beds by this time had become a permanent feature,
+though, as the writer admitted, it was "a roundabout way."
+
+"The easiest way would be to turn all out. Forgetting my duty to the
+memory of my dear companion, and sore pressed by many annoyances, did turn
+out Cousin Betsey Skiles, who forgave me for it without being so
+requested, and remained.
+
+"Trains to Judson Centre," he wrote, at one time, "have been most
+grievously changed. One arrives just after breakfast, the other at three
+in the morning. Do not understand why this is, and anticipate new trouble
+from it."
+
+The entries farther on were full of "trouble," being minute and intimate
+portrayals of the emotions of one roused from sleep at three in the
+morning to admit undesired guests, interlarded with pardonable profanity.
+"Seems that house might be altered in some way, but do not know. Will
+consult with Jeremiah."
+
+After this came the record of an interview with the village carpenter, and
+rough sketches of proposed alterations. "Putting in new window in middle
+and making two upper windows round instead of square, with new
+porch-railing and two new narrow windows downstairs will do it. House
+fortunately planned by original architect for such alteration. Taking down
+curtains and keeping lights in windows nights should have some effect,
+though much doubt whether anything would affect Relations."
+
+Soon afterward the oppressed one chronicled with great glee how a lone
+female, arriving on the night train, was found half-dead from fright by
+the roadside in the morning. "House _is_ fearsome," wrote Uncle Ebeneezer,
+with evident relish. "Have been to Jeremiah's of an evening and,
+returning, found it wonderful to behold."
+
+Presently, Dorothy came to an intimate analysis of some of the uninvited
+ones at present under her roof. The poet was given a full page of scathing
+comment, illustrated by rude caricatures, which were so suggestive that
+even Elaine thoroughly enjoyed them.
+
+Pleased with his contribution to literature, Uncle Ebeneezer had written a
+long and keenly comprehensive essay upon each relation. These bits of
+vivid portraiture were numbered in this way: "Relation Number 8, Miss
+Betsey Skiles, Claiming to be Cousin." At the end of this series was a
+very beautiful tribute to "My Dearly Beloved Nephew, James Harlan Carr,
+Who Has Never Come to See Me."
+
+Frequently, thereafter, came pathetic references to "Dear Nephew James,"
+"Unknown Recipient of an Old Man's Gratitude," "Discerning and Admirable
+James," and so on.
+
+One entry ran as follows: "Have been approached this season by each
+Relation present in regard to disposal of my estate. Will fix surprise for
+all Relations before leaving to join my wife. Shall leave money to every
+one, though perhaps not as much as each expects. Jeremiah advises me to
+leave something to each. Laws are such, I believe, that no one remembered
+can claim more. Desire to be just, but strongly incline to dear Nephew
+James."
+
+On the last page of all was a significant paragraph. "Dreamed of seeing my
+Rebecca once more, who told me we should be together again April 7th.
+Shall make all arrangements for leaving on that day, and prepare Surprises
+spoken of. Shall be very quiet in my grave with no Relations at hand, but
+should like to hear and see effect of Surprise. Jeremiah will attend."
+
+The last lines were written on April sixth. "To-morrow I shall join my
+loved Rebecca and leave all Relations here to fight by themselves. Do not
+fear Death, but shudder at Relations. Relations keep life from being
+pleasant. Did not know my Rebecca was possessed of such numbers nor of
+such kinds, but forgive her all. Shall see her to-morrow."
+
+Then, on the line below, in a hand that did not falter, was written: "The
+End."
+
+Dorothy wiped her eyes on a corner of Elaine's apron, for Uncle Ebeneezer
+had been found dead in his bed on the morning of April seventh. "Elaine,"
+she said, "what would you do?"
+
+"Do?" repeated Elaine. "I'd strike one blow for poor old Uncle Ebeneezer!
+I'd order every single one of them out of the house to-morrow!"
+
+"To-night!" cried Dorothy, fired with high resolve. "I'll do it this very
+night! Poor old Uncle Ebeneezer! Our sufferings have been nothing,
+compared to his."
+
+"Are you going to tell Mr. Carr?" asked Elaine, wonderingly.
+
+"Tell him nothing," rejoined Dorothy, with spirit. "He's got some old fogy
+notions about your house being a sacred spot where everybody in creation
+can impose on you if they want to, just because it is your house. I
+suppose he got it by being related to poor old uncle."
+
+"Do I have to go, too?" queried Elaine, rubbing her soft cheek against
+Dorothy's.
+
+"Not much," answered Mrs. Carr, with a sisterly embrace. "You'll stay, and
+Dick 'll stay, and that old tombstone in the kitchen will stay, and so
+will Claudius Tiberius, but the rest--MOVE!"
+
+Consequently, Elaine looked forward to the dinner-hour with mixed
+anticipations. Mr. Perkins, Uncle Israel, Mrs. Dodd, and Mrs. Holmes each
+found a note under their plates when they sat down. Uncle Israel's face
+relaxed into an expression of childlike joy when he found the envelope
+addressed to him. "Valentine, I reckon," he said, "or mebbe it's sunthin'
+from Santa Claus."
+
+"Queer acting for Santa Claus," snorted Mrs. Holmes, who had swiftly torn
+open her note. "Here we are, all ordered away from what's been our home
+for years, by some upstart relations who never saw poor, dear uncle. Are
+you going to keep boarders?" she asked, insolently, turning to Dorothy.
+
+"No longer," returned that young woman, imperturbably. "I have done it
+just as long as I intend to."
+
+Harlan was gazing curiously at Dorothy, but she avoided his eyes, and
+continued to eat as though nothing had happened. Dick, guessing rightly,
+choked, and had to be excused. Elaine's cheeks were flushed and her eyes
+sparkled, the flush deepening when Mrs. Dodd inquired where _her_
+valentine was. Mr. Perkins was openly dejected, and Mrs. Dodd, receiving
+no answer to her question, compressed her thin lips into a forced
+silence.
+
+But Uncle Israel was moved to protesting speech. "'T is queer doin's for
+Santa Claus," he mumbled, pouring out a double dose of his nerve tonic.
+"'T ain't such a thing as he'd do, even if he was drunk. Turnin' a poor
+old man outdoor, what ain't got no place to go exceptin' to Betsey's, an'
+nobody can't live with Betsey. She's all the time mad at herself on
+account of bein' obliged to live with such a woman as she be. Summers I've
+allers stayed here an' never made no trouble. I've cooked my own food an'
+brought most of it, an' provided all my own medicines, an' even took my
+bed with me, goin' an' comin'. Ebeneezer's beds is all terrible drafty--I
+took two colds to once sleepin' in one of 'em--an' at my time of life 't
+ain't proper to change beds. Sleepin' in a drafty bed would undo all the
+good of bein' near the sanitarium. Most likely I'll have a fever or
+sunthin' now an' die."
+
+"Shut up, Israel," said Mrs. Dodd, abruptly. "You ain't goin' to die. It
+wouldn't surprise me none if you had to be shot on the Day of Judgment
+before you could be resurrected. Folks past ninety-five that's pickled in
+patent medicine from the inside out, ain't goin' to die of no fever."
+
+"Ninety-six, Belinda," said the old man, proudly. "I'll be ninety-six next
+week, an' I'm as young as I ever was."
+
+"Then," rejoined Mrs. Dodd, tartly, "what you want to look out for is
+measles an' chicken-pox, to say nothin' of croup."
+
+"Come, Gladys Gwendolen and Algernon Paul," interrupted Mrs. Holmes, in a
+high key; "we must go and pack now, to go away from dear uncle's. Dear
+uncle is dead, you know, and can't help his dear ones being ordered out of
+his house by upstarts."
+
+"What's a upstart, ma?" inquired Willie.
+
+"People who turn their dead uncle's relations out of his house in order to
+take boarders," returned Mrs. Holmes, clearly.
+
+"Mis' Carr," said Mrs. Dodd, sliding up into Dick's vacant place, "have I
+understood that you want me to go away to-morrow?"
+
+"Everybody is going away to-morrow," returned Dorothy, coldly.
+
+"After all I've done for you?" persisted Mrs. Dodd.
+
+"What have you done for me?" parried Dorothy, with a pleading look at
+Elaine.
+
+"Kep' the others away," returned Mrs. Dodd, significantly.
+
+"Uncle Ebeneezer does not want any of you here," said Dorothy, after a
+painful silence. The impression made by the diary was so vividly present
+with her that she felt as though she were delivering an actual message.
+
+Much to her surprise, Mrs. Dodd paled and left the room hastily. Uncle
+Israel tottered after her, leaving his predigested food untouched on his
+plate and his imitation coffee steaming malodorously in his cup. Mr.
+Perkins bowed his head upon his hands for a moment; then, with a sigh,
+lightly dropped out of the open window. The name of Uncle Ebeneezer seemed
+to be one to conjure with.
+
+"Dorothy," said Harlan, "might an obedient husband modestly inquire what
+you have done?"
+
+"Elaine and I found Uncle Ebeneezer's diary to-day," explained Dorothy,
+"and the poor old soul was nagged all his life by relatives. So, in
+gratitude for what he's done for us, I've turned 'em out. I know he'd like
+to have me do it."
+
+Harlan left his place and came to Dorothy, where, bending over her chair,
+he kissed her tenderly. "Good girl," he said, patting her shoulder. "Why
+in thunder didn't you do it months ago?"
+
+"Isn't that just like a man?" asked Dorothy, gazing after his retreating
+figure.
+
+"I don't know," answered Elaine, with a pretty blush, "but I guess it
+is."
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+Various Departures
+
+
+"Algernon Paul," called Mrs. Holmes, shrilly, "let the kitty alone!"
+
+Every one else on the premises heard the command, but "Algernon Paul,"
+perhaps because he was not yet fully accustomed to his new name, continued
+forcing Claudius Tiberius to walk about on his fore feet, the rest of him
+being held uncomfortably in the air by the guiding influence.
+
+"Algernon!" The voice was so close this time that the cat was freed by his
+persecutor's violent start. Seeing that it was only his mother, Algernon
+Paul attempted to recover his treasure again, and was badly scratched by
+that selfsame treasure. Whereupon Mrs. Holmes soundly cuffed Claudius
+Tiberius "for scratching dear little Ebbie, I mean Algernon Paul," and
+received a bite or two on her own account.
+
+"Come, Ebbie, dear," she continued, "we are going now. We have been driven
+away from dear uncle's. Where is sister?"
+
+"Sister" was discovered in the forbidden Paradise of the chicken-coop, and
+dragged out, howling. Willie, not desiring to leave "dear uncle's," was
+forcibly retrieved by Dick from the roof of the barn.
+
+Mr. Harold Vernon Perkins had silently disappeared in the night, but no
+one feared foul play. "He'll be waitin' at the train, I reckon," said Mrs.
+Dodd, "an' most likely composin' a poem on 'Departure' or else breathin'
+into a tube to see if he's mad."
+
+She had taken her dismissal very calmly after the first shock. "A woman
+what's been married seven times, same as I be," she explained to Dorothy,
+"gets used to bein' moved around from place to place. My sixth husband had
+the movin' habit terrible. No sooner would we get settled nice an'
+comfortable in a place, an' I got enough acquainted to borrow sugar an'
+tea an' molasses from my new neighbours, than Thomas would decide to move,
+an' more 'n likely, it'd be to some new town where there was a great
+openin' in some new business that he'd never tried his hand at yet.
+
+"My dear, I've been the wife of a undertaker, a livery-stable keeper, a
+patent medicine man, a grocer, a butcher, a farmer, an' a justice of the
+peace, all in one an' the same marriage. Seems 's if there wa'n't no
+business Thomas couldn't feel to turn his hand to, an' he knowed how they
+all ought to be run. If anybody was makin' a failure of anythin', Thomas
+knowed just why it was failin' an' I must say he ought to know, too, for I
+never see no more steady failer than Thomas.
+
+"They say a rollin' stone never gets no moss on it, but it gets worn
+terrible smooth, an' by the time I 'd moved to eight or ten different
+towns an' got as many as 'leven houses all fixed up, the corners was all
+broke off 'n me as well as off 'n the furniture. My third husband left me
+well provided with furniture, but when I went to my seventh altar, I
+didn't have nothin' left but a soap box an' half a red blanket, on account
+of havin' moved around so much.
+
+"I got so's I'd never unpack all the things in any one place, but keep 'em
+in their dry-goods boxes an' barrels nice an' handy to go on again. When
+the movin' fit come on Thomas, I was always in such light marchin' order
+that I could go on a day's notice, an' that's the way we usually went. I
+told him once it'd be easier an' cheaper to fit up a prairie schooner such
+as they used to cross the plains in, an' then when we wanted to move, all
+we'd have to do would be to put a dipper of water on the fire an' tell the
+mules to get ap, but it riled him so terrible that I never said nothin'
+about it again, though all through my sixth marriage, it seemed a dretful
+likely notion.
+
+"A woman with much marryin' experience soon learns not to rile a husband
+when 't ain't necessary. Sometimes I think the poor creeters has enough to
+contend with outside without bein' obliged to fight at home, though it
+does beat all, my dear, what a terrible exertion 't is for most men to
+earn a livin'. None of my husbands was ever obliged to fight at home an' I
+take great comfort thinkin' how peaceful they all was when they was livin'
+with me, an' how peaceful they all be now, though I think it's more 'n
+likely that Thomas is a-sufferin' because he can't move no more at
+present."
+
+Her monologue was interrupted by the arrival of the stage, which Harlan
+had gladly ordered. Mrs. Holmes and the children climbed into it without
+vouchsafing a word to anybody, but Mrs. Dodd shook hands all around and
+would have kissed both Dorothy and Elaine had they not dodged the caress.
+
+"Remember, my dear," said Mrs. Dodd to Dorothy; "I don't bear you no
+grudge, though I never was turned out of no place before. It's all in a
+lifetime, the same as marryin', and if I should ever marry again an' have
+a home of my own to invite you to, you an' your husband'll be welcome to
+come and stay with me as long as I've stayed with you, or longer, if you
+felt 'twas pleasant, an' I'd try to make it so."
+
+The kindly speech made Dorothy very much ashamed of herself, though she
+did not know exactly why, and Gladys Gwendolen, with a cherubic smile,
+leaned out of the stage window and waved a chubby hand, saying: "Bye bye!"
+Mrs. Holmes alone seemed hard and unforgiving, as she sat sternly upright,
+looking neither to the right nor the left.
+
+"Rather unusual, isn't it?" whispered Elaine, as the ponderous vehicle
+turned into the yard, "to see so many of one's friends going on the stage
+at once?"
+
+"Not at all," chuckled Dick. "Everybody goes on the stage when they leave
+the Carrs."
+
+"Good bye, Belinda," yelled Uncle Israel, putting his flannel bandaged
+head out of one of the round upper windows. He had climbed up on a chair
+to do it. "I don't reckon I'll ever hear from you again exceptin' where
+Lazarus heard from the rich man!"
+
+"Don't let that trouble you, Israel," shrieked Mrs. Dodd, piercingly. "I
+take it the rich man was diggin' for eight cents in Satan's orchard, an'
+didn't have no time to look up his friends."
+
+The rejoinder seemed not to affect Uncle Israel, but it sent Dick into a
+spasm of merriment from which he recovered only when Harlan pounded him on
+the back.
+
+"Come on," said Harlan, "it's not time to laugh yet. We've got to pack
+Uncle Israel's bed."
+
+Uncle Israel was going on the afternoon train, and in another direction.
+He sat on his trunk and issued minute instructions, occasionally having
+the whole thing taken apart to be put together in a different kind of a
+parcel. As an especial favour, Dick was allowed to crate the bath cabinet,
+though as a rule, no profane hands were permitted to touch this instrument
+of health. Uncle Israel himself arranged his bottles, and boxes, and
+powders; a hand-satchel containing his medicines for the journey and the
+night.
+
+"I reckon," he said, "if I take a double dose of my pain-killer, this
+noon, an' a double dose of my nerve tonic just before I get on the cars, I
+c'n get along with these few remedies till I get to Betsey's, where I'll
+have to take a full course of treatment to pay for all this travellin'.
+The pain-killer bottle an' the nerve tonic bottle is both dretful heavy,
+in spite of bein' only half full."
+
+"How would it do," suggested Harlan, kindly, "to pour the nerve tonic into
+the pain-killer, and then you'd have only one bottle to carry. You mix
+them inside, anyway."
+
+"You seem real intelligent, nephew," quavered Uncle Israel. "I never
+knowed I had no such smart relations. As you say, I mix 'em in my system
+anyway, an' it can't do no harm to do it in the bottle first."
+
+No sooner said than done, but, strangely enough, the mixture turned a
+vivid emerald green, and had such a peculiarly vile odour that even Uncle
+Israel refused to have anything further to do with it.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder but what you'd done me a real service, nephew,"
+continued Uncle Israel. "Here I've been takin' this, month after month,
+an' never suspectin' what it was doin' in my insides. I've suspicioned for
+some time that the pain-killer wan't doin' me no good, an' I've been goin'
+to try Doctor Jones's Squaw Remedy, anyhow. I shouldn't wonder if my whole
+insides was green instead of red as they orter be. The next time I go to
+the City, I'm goin' to take this here compound to the healin' emporium
+where I bought it, an' ask 'em what there is in it that paints folk's
+insides. 'Tain't nothin' more 'n green paint."
+
+The patient was so interested in this new development that he demanded a
+paint-brush and experimented on the porch railing, where it seemed,
+indeed, to be "green paint." In getting a nearer view, he touched his nose
+to it and acquired a bright green spot on the tip of that highly useful
+organ. Desiring to test it by every sense, he next put his ear down to the
+railing, as though he expected to hear the elements of the compound
+rushing together explosively.
+
+"My hearin' is bad," he explained. "I wish you'd listen to this here a
+minute or two, nephew, an' see if you don't hear sunthin'." But Harlan,
+with his handkerchief pressed tightly to his nose, politely declined.
+
+"I don't feel," continued Uncle Israel, tottering into the house, "as
+though a poor, sick man with green insides instead of red orter be turned
+out. Judson Centre is a terrible healthy place, or the sanitarium wouldn't
+have been built here, an' travellin' on the cars would shake me up
+considerable. I feel as though I was goin' to be took bad, an' as if I
+ought not to go. If somebody'll set up my bed, I'll just lay down on it
+an' die now. Ebeneezer would be willin' for me to die in his house, I
+know, for he's often said it'd be a reel pleasure to him to pay my funeral
+expenses if I c'd only make up my mind to claim 'em, an'," went on the old
+man pitifully, "I feel to claim 'em now. Set up my bed," he wheezed, "an'
+let me die. I'm bein' took bad."
+
+He was swiftly reasoning himself into abject helplessness when Dick came
+valiantly to the rescue. "I'll tell you what, Uncle Israel," he said, "if
+you're going to be sick, and of course you know whether you are or not,
+we'll just get a carriage and take you over to the sanitarium. I'll pay
+your board there for a week, myself, and by that time we'll know just
+what's the matter with you."
+
+The patient brightened amazingly at the mention of the sanitarium, and was
+more than willing to go. "I've took all kinds of treatment," he creaked,
+"but I ain't never been to no sanitarium, an' I misdoubt whether they've
+ever had anybody with green insides.
+
+"I reckon," he added, proudly, "that that wanderin' pain in my spine'll
+stump 'em some to know what it is. Even in the big store where they keep
+all kinds of medicines, there couldn't nobody tell me. I know what disease
+'tis, but I won't tell nobody. A man knows his own system best an' I
+reckon them smart doctors up at the sanitarium 'll be scratchin' their
+heads over such a complicated case as I be. Send my bed on to Betsey's but
+write on it that it ain't to be set up till I come. 'Twouldn't be worth
+while settin' it up at the sanitarium for a week, an' I'm minded to try a
+medical bed, anyways. I ain't never had none. Get the carriage, quick, for
+I feel an ailment comin' on me powerful hard every minute."
+
+"Suppose," said Harlan, in a swift aside, "that they refuse to take the
+patient? What shall we do then?"
+
+"We won't discuss that," answered Dick, in a low tone. "My plan is to
+leave the patient, drive away swiftly, and, an hour or so later, walk back
+and settle with the head of the repair shop for a week's mending in
+advance."
+
+Harlan laughed gleefully, at which Uncle Israel pricked up his ears. "I'm
+in on the bill," he continued; "we'll go halves on the mending."
+
+"Laughin'" said Uncle Israel, scornfully, "at your poor old uncle what
+ain't goin' to live much longer. If your insides was all turned green, you
+wouldn't be laughin'--you'd be thinkin' about your immortal souls."
+
+It was late afternoon when the bed was finally dumped on the side track to
+await the arrival of the freight train, being securely covered with a
+canvas tarpaulin to keep it from the night dew and stray, malicious germs,
+seeking that which they might devour. Uncle Israel insisted upon
+overseeing this job himself, so that he did not reach the sanitarium until
+almost nightfall. Dick and Harlan were driving, and they shamelessly left
+the patient at the door of the Temple of Healing, with his crated bath
+cabinet, his few personal belongings, and his medicines.
+
+Turning back at the foot of the hill, they saw that the wanderer had been
+taken in, though the bath cabinet still remained outside.
+
+"Mean trick to play on a respectable institution," observed Dick, lashing
+the horses into a gallop, "but I'll go over in the morning and square it
+with 'em."
+
+"I'll go with you," volunteered Harlan. "It's just as well to have two of
+us, for we won't be popular. The survivor can take back the farewell
+message to the wife and family of the other."
+
+He meant it for a jest, but even in the gathering darkness, he could see
+the dull red mounting to Dick's temples. "I'll be darned," thought Harlan,
+seeing the whole situation instantly. Then, moved by a brotherly impulse,
+he said, cheerfully: "Go in and win, old man. Good luck to you!"
+
+"Thanks," muttered Dick, huskily, "but it's no use. She won't look at me.
+She wants a nice lady-like poet, that's what she wants."
+
+"No, she doesn't," returned Harlan, with deep conviction. "I don't claim
+to be a specialist, but when a man and a poet are entered for the
+matrimonial handicap, I'll put my money on the man, every time."
+
+Dick swiftly changed the subject, and began to speculate on probable
+happenings at the sanitarium. They left the conveyance in the village,
+from whence it had been taken, and walked uphill.
+
+Lights gleamed from every window of the Jack-o'-Lantern, but the eccentric
+face of the house had, for the first time, a friendly aspect. Warmth and
+cheer were in the blinking eyes and the grinning mouth, though, as Dick
+said, it seemed impossible that "no pumpkin seeds were left inside."
+
+Those who do not believe in personal influence should go into a house
+which uninvited and undesired guests have regretfully left. Every alien
+element had gone from the house on the hill, yet the very walls were still
+vocal with discord. One expected, every moment, to hear Uncle Israel's
+wheeze, the shrill, spiteful comment of Mrs. Holmes, or a howl from one of
+the twins.
+
+"What shall we do," asked Harlan, "to celebrate the day of emancipation?"
+
+"I know," answered Dorothy, with a little laugh. "We'll burn a bed."
+
+"Whose bed?" queried Dick.
+
+"Mr. Perkins's bed," responded Elaine, readily. The tone of her voice sent
+a warm glow to Dick's heart, and he went to work at the heavy walnut
+structure with more gladness than exercise of that particular kind had
+ever given him before.
+
+Harlan rummaged through the cellar and found a bottle of Uncle Ebeneezer's
+old port, which, for some occult reason, had hitherto escaped. Mrs.
+Smithers, moved to joyful song, did herself proud in the matter of fried
+chicken and flaky biscuit. Dorothy had taken all the leaves out of the
+table, so that now it was cosily set for four, and placed a battered old
+brass candlestick, with a tallow candle in it, in the centre.
+
+"Seems like living, doesn't it?" asked Harlan. Until now, he had not known
+how surely though secretly distressed he had been by Aunt Rebecca's
+persistent kin. Claudius Tiberius apparently felt the prevailing
+cheerfulness, and purred vigorously, in Elaine's lap.
+
+Afterward, they made a fire in the parlour, even though the night was so
+warm that they were obliged to have all the windows open, and, inspired by
+the portrait of Uncle Ebeneezer, discussed the peculiarities of his
+self-invited guests.
+
+The sacrificial flame arising from the poet's bed directed the
+conversation to Mr. Perkins and his gift of song. Dick, though feeling
+more deeply upon the subject than any of the rest, was wise enough not to
+say too much.
+
+"I found something under his mattress," remarked Dick, when the
+conversation flagged, "while I was taking his blooming crib apart to chop
+it up. I guess it must be a poem."
+
+He drew a sorely flattened roll from his pocket, and slipped off the
+crumpled blue ribbon. It was, indeed, a poem, entitled "Farewell."
+
+"I thought he might have been polite enough to say good bye," said
+Dorothy. "Perhaps it was easier to write it."
+
+"Read it," cried Elaine, her eyes dancing. "Please do!"
+
+So Dick read as follows:
+
+                All happy times must reach an end
+                  Sometime, someday, somewhere,
+                A great soul seldom has a friend
+                  Anyway or anywhere.
+                But one devoted to the Ideal
+                  Must pass these things all by,
+                His eyes fixed ever on his Art,
+                  Which lives, though he must die.
+
+                Amid the tide of cruel greed
+                  Which laps upon our shore,
+                No one takes thought of the poet's need
+                  Nor how his griefs may pour
+                Upon his poor, devoted head
+                  And his sad, troubled heart;
+                But all these things each one must take,
+                  Who gives his life to Art.
+
+                His crust of bread, his tick of straw
+                  His enemies deny,
+                And at the last his patron saint
+                  Will even pass him by;
+                The wide world is his resting place,
+                  All o'er it he may roam,
+                And none will take the poet in,
+                  Or offer him a home.
+
+                The tears of sorrow blind him now,
+                  Misunderstood is he,
+                But thus great souls have always been,
+                  And always they will be;
+                His eyes fixed ever on the Ideal
+                  Will be there till he die,
+                To-night he goes, but leaves a poem
+                  To say good bye, good bye!
+
+"Poor Mr. Perkins," commented Dorothy, softly.
+
+"Yes," mimicked Harlan, "poor Mr. Perkins. I don't see but what he'll have
+to work now, like any plain, ordinary mortal, with no 'gift'."
+
+"What is the Ideal, anyway?" queried Elaine, looking thoughtfully into the
+embers of the poet's bedstead.
+
+"That's easy," answered Dick, not without evident feeling. "It's whatever
+Mr. Perkins happens to be doing, or trying to do. He fixes it for the rest
+of us."
+
+"I think," suggested Dorothy, after a momentary silence, "that the Ideal
+consists in minding your own business and gently, but firmly, assisting
+others to mind theirs."
+
+All unknowingly, Dorothy had expressed the dominant idea of the dead
+master of the house. She fancied that the pictured face over the mantel
+was about to smile at her. Dorothy and Uncle Ebeneezer understood each
+other now, and she no longer wished to have the portrait moved.
+
+Before they separated for the night, Dick told them all about the midnight
+gathering in the orchard, which he had witnessed from afar, and which the
+others enjoyed beyond his expectations.
+
+"That's what uncle meant," said Elaine, "by 'fixing a surprise for
+relations.'" "I don't blame him," observed Harlan, "not a blooming bit. I
+wish the poor old duck could have been here to see it. Why wasn't I in on
+it?" he demanded of Dick, somewhat resentfully. "When anything like that
+was going on, why didn't you take me in?"
+
+"It wasn't for me to interfere with his doings," protested Dick, "but I do
+wish you could have seen Uncle Israel."
+
+At the recollection he went off into a spasm of merriment which bid fair
+to prove fatal. The rest laughed with him, not knowing just what it was
+about, such was the infectious quality of Dick's mirth.
+
+"They've all gone," laughed Elaine, happily, taking her bedroom candle
+from Dorothy's hand, "they've all gone, every single one, and now we're
+going to have some good times."
+
+Dick watched her as she went upstairs, the candlelight shining tenderly
+upon her sweet face, and thus betrayed himself to Dorothy, who had
+suspected for some time that he loved Elaine.
+
+"Oh Lord!" grumbled Dick to himself, when he was safely in his own room.
+"Everybody knows it now, except her. I'll bet even Sis Smithers and the
+cat are dead next to me. I might as well tell her to-morrow as any time,
+the result will be just the same. Better do it and have it over with. The
+cat'll tell her if nobody else does."
+
+But that night, strangely enough, Claudius Tiberius disappeared, to be
+seen or heard of no more.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+The Love of Another Elaine
+
+
+When Dick and Harlan ventured up to the sanitarium, they were confronted
+by the astonishing fact that Uncle Israel was, indeed, ill. Later
+developements proved that he was in a measure personally responsible for
+his condition, since he had, surreptitiously, in the night, mixed two or
+three medicines of his own brewing with the liberal dose of a different
+drug which the night nurse gave him, in accordance with her instructions.
+
+Far from being unconscious, however, Uncle Israel was even now raging
+violently against further restraint, and demanding to be sent home before
+he was "murdered."
+
+"He's being killed with kindness," whispered Dick, "like the man who was
+run over by an ambulance."
+
+Harlan arranged for Uncle Israel to stay until he was quite healed of this
+last complication, and then wrote out the address of Cousin Betsey Skiles,
+with which Dick was fortunately familiar. "And," added Dick, "if he's
+troublesome, crate him and send him by freight. We don't want to see him
+again."
+
+Less than a week later, Uncle Israel and his bed were safely installed at
+Cousin Betsey's, and he was able to write twelve pages of foolscap, fully
+expressing his opinion of Harlan and Dick and the sanitarium staff, and
+Uncle Ebeneezer, and the rest of the world in general, conveying it by
+registered mail to "J. H. Car & Familey." The composition revealed an
+astonishing command of English, particularly in the way of vituperation.
+Had Uncle Israel known more profanity, he undoubtedly would have
+incorporated it in the text.
+
+"It reminds me," said Elaine, who was permitted to read it, "of a little
+coloured boy we used to know. A playmate quarrelled with him and began to
+call him names, using all the big words he had ever heard, regardless of
+their meaning. When his vocabulary was exhausted, our little friend asked,
+quietly: 'Is you froo?' 'Yes,' returned the other, 'I's froo.' 'Well
+then,' said the master of the situation, calmly, turning on his heel, 'all
+those things what you called me, you is.'"
+
+"That's right," laughed Dick. "All those things Uncle Israel has called
+us, he is, but it makes him a pretty tough old customer."
+
+A blessed peace had descended upon the house and its occupants. Harlan's
+work was swiftly nearing completion, and in another day or two, he would
+be ready to read the neatly typed pages to the members of his household.
+Dorothy could scarcely wait to hear it, and stole many a secret glance at
+the manuscript when Harlan was out of the house. Lover-like, she expected
+great things from it, and she saw the world of readers, literally, at her
+husband's feet. So great was her faith in him that she never for an
+instant suspected that there might possibly be difficulty at the
+start--that any publisher could be wary of this masterpiece by an
+unknown.
+
+The Carrs had planned to remain where they were until the book was
+finished, then to take the precious manuscript, and go forth to conquer
+the City. Afterward, perhaps, a second honeymoon journey, for both were
+sorely in need of rest and recreation.
+
+Elaine was going with them, and Dorothy was to interview the Personage
+whose private secretary she had once been, and see if that position or one
+fully as desirable could not be found for her friend. Also, Elaine was to
+make her home with the Carrs. "I won't let you live in a New York boarding
+house," said Dorothy warmly, "as long as we've any kind of a roof over our
+heads."
+
+Dick had discovered that, as he expressed it, he must "quit fooling and
+get a job." Hitherto, Mr. Chester had preferred care-free idleness to any
+kind of toil, and a modest sum, carefully hoarded, represented to Dick
+only freedom to do as he pleased until it gave out. Then he began to
+consider work again, but as he seldom did the same kind of work twice, he
+was not particularly proficient in any one line.
+
+Still, Dick had no false ideas about labour. At college he had canvassed
+for subscription books, solicited life and fire insurance, swept walks,
+shovelled snow, carried out ashes, and even handled trunks for the express
+company, all with the same cheerful equanimity. His small but certain
+income sufficed for his tuition and other necessary expenses, but for
+board at Uncle Ebeneezer's and a few small luxuries, he was obliged to
+work.
+
+Just now, unwonted ambition fired his soul. "It's funny," he mused,
+"what's come over me. I never hankered to work, even in my wildest
+moments, and yet I pine for it this minute--even street-sweeping would be
+welcome, though that sort of thing isn't going to be much in my line from
+now on. With the start uncle's given me, I can surely get along all right,
+and, anyhow, I've got two hands, two feet, and one head, all good of their
+kind, so there's no call to worry."
+
+Worrying had never been among Dick's accomplishments, but he was restless,
+and eager for something to do. He plunged into furniture-making with
+renewed energy, inspired by the presence of Elaine, who with her book or
+embroidery sat in her low rocker under the apple tree and watched him at
+his work.
+
+Quite often she read aloud, sometimes a paragraph, now and then an entire
+chapter, to which Dick submitted pleasantly. He loved the smooth, soft
+cadence of Elaine's low voice, whether she read or spoke, so, in a way, it
+did not matter. But, one day, when she had read uninterruptedly for over
+an hour, Dick was seized with a violent fit of coughing.
+
+"I say," he began, when the paroxysm had ceased; "you like books, don't
+you?"
+
+"Indeed I do--don't you?"
+
+"Er--yes, of course, but say--aren't you tired of reading?"
+
+"Not at all. You needn't worry about me. When I'm tired, I'll stop."
+
+She was pleased with his kindly thought for her comfort, and thereafter
+read a great deal by way of reward. As for Dick, he burned the midnight
+candle over many a book which he found inexpressibly dull, and skilfully
+led the conversation to it the next day. Soon, even Harlan was impressed
+by his wide knowledge of literature, though no one noted that about books
+not in Uncle Ebeneezer's library, Dick knew nothing at all.
+
+Dorothy spent much of her time in her own room, thus forcing Dick and
+Elaine to depend upon each other for society. Quite often she was lonely,
+and longed for their cheery chatter, but sternly reminded herself that she
+was being sacrificed in a good cause. She built many an air castle for
+them as well as for herself, furnishing both, impartially, with Elaine's
+old mahogany and the simple furniture Dick was making out of Uncle
+Ebeneezer's relics.
+
+By this time the Jack-o'-Lantern was nearly stripped of everything which
+might prove useful, and they were burning the rest of it in the fireplace
+at night. "Varnished hardwood," as Dick said, "makes a peach of a blaze."
+
+Meanwhile Harlan was labouring steadfastly at his manuscript. The glowing
+fancy from which the book had sprung was quite gone. Still, as he cut,
+rearranged, changed, interlined, reconstructed and polished, he was not
+wholly unsatisfied with his work. "It may not be very good," he said to
+himself, "but it's the best I can do--now. The next will be better, I'm
+sure." He knew, even then, that there would be a "next one," for the
+eternal thirst which knows no quenching had seized upon his inmost soul.
+
+Hereafter, by an inexplicably swift reversion, he should see all life as
+literature, and literature as life. Friends and acquaintances should all
+be, in his inmost consciousness, ephemeral. And Dorothy--dearly as he
+loved her, was separated from him as by a veil.
+
+Still, as he worked, he came gradually to a better adjustment, and was
+very tenderly anxious that Dorothy should see no change in him. He had not
+yet reached the point, however, where he would give it all up for the sake
+of finding things real again, if only for an hour.
+
+Day after day, his work went on. Sometimes he would spend an hour
+searching for a single word, rightly to express his meaning. Page after
+page was re-copied upon the typewriter, for, with the nice conscience of a
+good workman, Harlan desired a perfect manuscript, at least in mechanical
+details.
+
+Finally, he came to the last page and printed "The End" in capitals with
+deep satisfaction. "When it's sandpapered," he said to himself, "and the
+dust blown off, I suppose it will be done."
+
+The "sandpapering" took a week longer. At the end of that time, Harlan
+concluded that any manuscript was done when the writer had read it
+carefully a dozen times without making a single change in it. On a
+Saturday night, just as the hall clock was booming eleven, he pushed it
+aside, and sat staring blankly at the wall for a long time.
+
+"I don't know what I've got," he thought, "but I've certainly got two
+hundred and fifty pages of typed manuscript. It should be good for
+something--even at space rates."
+
+After dinner, Sunday, he told them that the book was ready, and they all
+went out into the orchard. Dick was resigned, Elaine pleasantly excited,
+Dorothy eager and aflame with triumphant pride, Harlan self-conscious,
+and, in a way, ashamed.
+
+As he read, however, he forgot everything else. The mere sound of the
+words came with caressing music to his ears. At times his voice wavered
+and his hands trembled, but he kept on, until it grew so dark that he
+could no longer see.
+
+They went into the house silently, and Dick touched a match to the fire
+already laid in the fireplace, while Dorothy lighted the candles and the
+reading lamp. The afterglow faded and the moon rose, yet still they rode
+with Elaine and her company, through mountain passes and over blossoming
+fields, past many dangers and strange happenings, and ever away from the
+Castle of Content.
+
+Harlan's deep, vibrant voice, now stern, now tender, gave new meaning to
+his work. His secret belief in it gave it a beauty which no one else would
+ever see. Dorothy, listening so intently that it was almost pain, never
+took her eyes from his face. In that hour, if Harlan could have known it,
+her woman's soul was kneeling before his, naked and unashamed.
+
+Dick privately considered the whole thing more or less of a nuisance, but
+the candlelight touched Elaine's golden hair lovingly, and the glow from
+the fire seemed to rest caressingly upon her face. All along, he saw a
+clear resemblance between his Elaine and the lady of the book, also, more
+keenly, a closer likeness between himself and the fool who rode at her
+side.
+
+When Harlan came to the song which the fool had written, and which he had
+so shamelessly revised and read aloud at the table, Dick seriously
+considered a private and permanent departure, like the nocturnal vanishing
+of Mr. Perkins, without even a poem for farewell.
+
+Elaine, lost in the story, was heedless of her surroundings. It was only
+at the last chapter that she became conscious of self at all. Then,
+suddenly, in her turn, she perceived a parallel, and quivered painfully
+with a new emotion.
+
+_"Some one, perchance," mused the Lady Elaine, "whose beauty my eyes alone
+should perceive, whose valour only I should guess before there was need to
+test it. Some one great of heart and clean of mind, in whose eyes there
+should never be that which makes a woman ashamed. Some one fine-fibred and
+strong-souled, not above tenderness when a maid was tired. One who should
+make a shield of his love, to keep her not only from the great hurts but
+from the little ones as well, and yet with whom she might fare onward,
+shoulder to shoulder, as God meant mates should fare."_
+
+Like the other Elaine, she saw who had served her secretly, asking for no
+recognition; who had always kept watch over her so unobtrusively and
+quietly that she never guessed it till now. Like many another woman,
+Elaine had dreamed of her Prince as a paragon of beauty and perfection,
+with unconscious vanity deeming such an one her true mate. Now her
+story-book lover had gone for ever, and in his place was Dick;
+sunny-hearted, mischievous, whistling, clear-eyed Dick, who had laughed
+and joked with her all Summer, and now--must never know.
+
+In a fierce agony of shame, she wondered if he had already guessed her
+secret--if she had betrayed it to him before she was conscious of it
+herself; if that was why he had been so kind. Harlan was reading the last
+page, and Elaine shaded her face with her hand, determined, at all costs,
+to avoid Dick, and to go away to-morrow, somewhere, anywhere.
+
+_But Prince Bernard did not hear_, read Harlan, _nor see the outstretched
+hand, for Elaine was in his arms for the first time, her sweet lips close
+on his. "My Prince, Oh, my Prince," she murmured, when at length he set
+her free; "my eyes did not see but my heart knew!"_
+
+_So ended the Quest of the Lady Elaine._
+
+The last page of the manuscript fluttered, face downward, upon the table,
+and Dorothy wiped her eyes. Elaine's mouth was parched, but she staggered
+to her feet, knowing that she must say some conventional words of
+congratulation to Harlan, then go to her own room.
+
+Blindly, she put out her hand, trying to speak; then, for a single
+illuminating instant, her eyes looked into Dick's.
+
+With a little cry, Elaine fled from the room, overwhelmed with shame. In a
+twinkling, she was out of the house, and flying toward the orchard as fast
+as her light feet would carry her, her heart beating wildly in her
+breast.
+
+By the sure instinct of a lover, Dick knew that his hour had come. He
+dropped out of the window and overtook her just as she reached her little
+rocking-chair, which, damp with the Autumn dew, was still under the apple
+tree.
+
+"Elaine!" cried Dick, crushing her into his arms, all the joy of youth and
+love in his voice. "Elaine! My Elaine!"
+
+"The audience," remarked Harlan, in an unnatural tone, "appears to have
+gone. Only my faithful wife stands by me."
+
+"Oh, Harlan," answered Dorothy, with a swift rush of feeling, "you'll
+never know till your dying day how proud and happy I am. It's the very
+beautifullest book that anybody ever wrote, and I'm so glad! Mrs.
+Shakespeare could never have been half as pleased as I am! I----," but the
+rest was lost, for Dorothy was in his arms, crying her heart out for sheer
+joy.
+
+"There, there," said Harlan, patting her shoulders awkwardly, and rubbing
+his rough cheek against her tear-wet face; "it wasn't meant to make
+anybody cry."
+
+"Why can't I cry if I want to?" demanded Dorothy, resentfully, between
+sobs. Harlan's voice was far from even and his own eyes were misty as he
+answered: "Because you are my own darling girl and I love you, that's
+why."
+
+They sat hand in hand for a long time, looking into the embers of the
+dying fire, in the depths of that wedded silence which has no need of
+words. The portraits of Uncle Ebeneezer and Aunt Rebecca seemed fully in
+accord, and, though mute, eloquent with understanding.
+
+"He'd be so proud," whispered Dorothy, looking up at the stern face over
+the mantel, "if he knew what you had done here in his house. He loved
+books, and now, because of his kindness, you can always write them. You'll
+never have to go back on the paper again."
+
+Harlan smiled reminiscently, for the hurrying, ceaseless grind of the
+newspaper office was, indeed, a thing of the past. The dim, quiet room was
+his, not the battle-ground of the street. Still, as he knew, the smell of
+printer's ink in his nostrils would be like the sound of a bugle to an old
+cavalry horse, and even now, he would not quite trust himself to walk down
+Newspaper Row.
+
+"I love Uncle Ebeneezer and Aunt Rebecca," went on Dorothy, happily. "I
+love everybody. I've love enough to-night to spare some for the whole
+world."
+
+"Dear little saint," said Harlan, softly, "I believe you have."
+
+The clock struck ten and the fire died down. A candle flickered in its
+socket, then went out. The chill Autumn mist was rising, and through it
+the new moon gleamed faintly, like veiled pearl.
+
+"I wonder," said Harlan, "where the rest of the audience is? If everybody
+who reads the book is going to disappear suddenly and mysteriously, I
+won't be the popular author that I pine to be."
+
+"Hush," responded Dorothy; "I think they are coming now. I'll go and let
+them in."
+
+Only a single candle was burning in the hall, and when Dorothy opened the
+door, it went out suddenly, but in that brief instant, she had seen their
+glorified faces and understood it all. The library door was open, and the
+dimly lighted room seemed like a haven of refuge to Elaine, radiantly
+self-conscious, and blushing with sweet shame.
+
+"Hello," said Dick, awkwardly, with a tremendous effort to appear natural,
+"we've just been out to get a breath of fresh air."
+
+It had taken them two hours, but Dorothy was too wise to say anything. She
+only laughed--a happy, tender, musical little laugh. Then she impulsively
+kissed them both, pushed Elaine gently into the library, and went back
+into the parlour to tell Harlan.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern, by Myrtle Reed
+
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