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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Encore, by Margaret Deland
+
+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: An Encore
+
+Author: Margaret Deland
+
+Release Date: July 1, 2009 [EBook #29284]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ENCORE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow, Roberta Staehlin, Joseph Cooper
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: [See page 4
+
+WHEN ALFRED PRICE FELL IN LOVE WITH MISS LETTY MORRIS]
+
+
+
+
+    An Encore
+
+    BY
+
+    MARGARET DELAND
+
+
+    AUTHOR OF
+
+    "THE AWAKENING OF HELENA RICHIE"
+    "DR. LAVENDER'S PEOPLE"
+    "OLD CHESTER TALES"
+    ETC. ETC.
+
+
+    ILLUSTRATED BY
+    ALICE BARBER STEPHENS
+
+
+    NEW YORK AND LONDON
+    HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+    MCMVII
+
+
+
+
+    Copyright, 1904, 1907, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
+
+    _All rights reserved._
+    Published October, 1907.
+
+
+
+
+Illustrations
+
+
+    "WHEN ALFRED PRICE FELL IN LOVE WITH
+      MISS LETTY MORRIS"                      _Frontispiece_
+
+    "THE CAPTAIN AND CYRUS WERE AFRAID
+      OF GUSSIE"                              _Facing p_ 18
+
+    "THERE WAS A LITTLE SILENCE, AND THEN
+      DR. LAVENDER BEGAN"                          "     76
+
+
+
+
+An Encore
+
+
+According to Old Chester, to be romantic was just one shade less
+reprehensible than to put on airs. Captain Alfred Price, in all his
+seventy years, had never been guilty of putting on airs, but certainly
+he had something to answer for in the way of romance.
+
+However, in the days when we children used to see him pounding up the
+street from the post-office, reading, as he walked, a newspaper held at
+arm's-length in front of him, he was far enough from romance. He was
+seventy years old, he weighed over two hundred pounds, his big head was
+covered with a shock of grizzled red hair; his pleasures consisted in
+polishing his old sextant and playing on a small mouth-harmonicon. As to
+his vices, it was no secret that he kept a fat black bottle in the
+chimney-closet in his own room, and occasionally he swore strange oaths
+about his grandmother's nightcap. "He used to blaspheme," his
+daughter-in-law said; "but I said, 'Not in my presence, if you please!'
+So now he just says this foolish thing about a nightcap." Mrs. Drayton
+said that this reform would be one of the jewels in Mrs. Cyrus Price's
+crown; and added that she prayed that some day the Captain would give up
+tobacco and _rum_. "I am a poor, feeble creature," said Mrs. Drayton; "I
+cannot do much for my fellow-men in active mission-work,--but I give my
+prayers." However, neither Mrs. Drayton's prayers nor Mrs. Cyrus's
+active mission-work had done more than mitigate the blasphemy; the "rum"
+(which was good Monongahela whiskey) was still on hand; and as for
+tobacco, except when sleeping, eating, playing on his harmonicon, or
+dozing through one of Dr. Lavendar's sermons, the Captain smoked every
+moment, the ashes of his pipe or cigar falling unheeded on a vast and
+wrinkled expanse of waistcoat.
+
+No; he was not a romantic object. But we girls, watching him stump past
+the school-room window to the post-office, used to whisper to one
+another, "Just think! _he eloped._"
+
+There was romance for you!
+
+To be sure, the elopement had not quite come off, but except for the
+very end, it was all as perfect as a story. Indeed, the failure at the
+end made it all the better: angry parents, broken hearts--only, the
+worst of it was, the hearts did not stay broken! He went and married
+somebody else; and so did she. You would have supposed she would have
+died. I am sure, in her place, any one of us would have died. And yet,
+as Lydia Wright said, "How could a young lady die for a young gentleman
+with ashes all over his waistcoat?"
+
+But when Alfred Price fell in love with Miss Letty Morris, he was not
+indifferent to his waistcoat, nor did he weigh two hundred pounds. He
+was slender and ruddy-cheeked, with tossing red-brown curls. If he
+swore, it was not by his grandmother nor her nightcap; if he drank, it
+was hard cider (which can often accomplish as much as "rum"); if he
+smoked it was in secret, behind the stable. He wore a stock, and (on
+Sunday) a ruffled shirt; a high-waisted coat with two brass buttons
+behind, and very tight pantaloons. At that time he attended the Seminary
+for Youths in Upper Chester. Upper Chester was then, as in our time, the
+seat of learning in the township, the Female Academy being there, too.
+Both were boarding-schools, but the young people came home to spend
+Sunday; and their weekly returns, all together in the stage, were
+responsible for more than one Old Chester match....
+
+"The air," says Miss, sniffing genteelly as the coach jolts past the
+blossoming May orchards, "is most agreeably perfumed. And how fair is
+the prospect from this hill-top!"
+
+"Fair indeed!" responds her companion, staring boldly.
+
+Miss bridles and bites her lip.
+
+"_I_ was not observing the landscape," the young gentleman hastens to
+explain.
+
+In those days (Miss Letty was born in 1804, and was eighteen when she
+and the ruddy Alfred sat on the back seat of the coach)--in those days
+the conversation of Old Chester youth was more elegant than in our time.
+We, who went to Miss Bailey's school, were sad degenerates in the way of
+manners and language; at least so our elders told us. When Lydia Wright
+said, "Oh my, what an awful snow-storm!" dear Miss Ellen was displeased.
+"Lydia," said she, "is there anything 'awe'-inspiring in this display of
+the elements?"
+
+"No, 'm," faltered poor Lydia.
+
+"Then," said Miss Bailey, gravely, "your statement that the storm is
+'awful' is a falsehood. I do not suppose, my dear, that you
+intentionally told an untruth; it was an exaggeration. But an
+exaggeration, though not perhaps a falsehood, is unladylike, and should
+be avoided by persons of refinement." Just here the question arises:
+what would Miss Ellen (now in heaven) say if she could hear Lydia's
+Lydia, just home from college, remark-- But no: Miss Ellen's precepts
+shall protect these pages.
+
+But in the days when Letty Morris looked out of the coach window, and
+young Alfred murmured that the prospect was fair indeed, conversation
+was perfectly correct. And it was still decorous even when it got beyond
+the coach period and reached a point where Old Chester began to take
+notice. At first it was young Old Chester which giggled. Later old Old
+Chester made some comments; it was then that Alfred's mother mentioned
+the matter to Alfred's father. "He is young, and, of course, foolish,"
+Mrs. Price explained. And Mr. Price said that though folly was
+incidental to Alfred's years, it must be checked.
+
+"Just check it," said Mr. Price.
+
+Then Miss Letty's mother awoke to the situation, and said, "Fy, fy,
+Letitia! let me hear no more of this foolishness."
+
+So it was that these two young persons were plunged in grief. Oh,
+glorious grief of thwarted love! When they met now, they did not talk of
+the landscape. Their conversation, though no doubt as genteel as before,
+was all of broken hearts. But again Letty's mother found out, and went
+in wrath to call on Alfred's family. It was decided between them that
+the young man should be sent away from home. "To save him," says the
+father. "To protect my daughter," says Mrs. Morris.
+
+But Alfred and Letty had something to say.... It was in December; there
+was a snow-storm--a storm which Lydia Wright would certainly have called
+"awful"; but it did not interfere with true love; these two children met
+in the graveyard to swear undying constancy. Alfred's lantern came
+twinkling through the flakes, as he threaded his way across the
+hill-side among the tombstones, and found Letty just inside the
+entrance, standing with her black serving-woman under a tulip-tree. The
+negress, chattering with cold and fright, kept plucking at the girl's
+pelisse to hurry her; but once Alfred was at her side, Letty was
+indifferent to storm and ghosts. As for Alfred, he was too cast down to
+think of them.
+
+"Letty, they will part us."
+
+"No, my dear Alfred, no!"
+
+"Yes. Yes, they will. Oh, if you were only mine!"
+
+Miss Letty sighed.
+
+"Will you be true to me, Letty? I am to go on a sailing-vessel to China,
+to be gone two years. Will you wait for me?"
+
+Letty gave a little cry; two years! Her black woman twitched her sleeve.
+
+"Miss Let, it's gittin' cole, honey."
+
+"(Don't, Flora.)--Alfred, _two years_! Oh, Alfred, that is an eternity.
+Why, I should be--I should be twenty!"
+
+The lantern, set on a tombstone beside them, blinked in a snowy gust.
+Alfred covered his face with his hands--he was shaken to his soul; the
+little, gay creature beside him thrilled at a sound from behind those
+hands.
+
+"Alfred,"--she said, faintly; then she hid her face against his arm; "my
+dear Alfred, I will, if you desire it--fly with you!"
+
+Alfred, with a gasp, lifted his head and stared at her. His slower mind
+had seen nothing but separation and despair; but the moment the word was
+said he was aflame. What! Would she? Could she? Adorable creature!
+
+"Miss Let, my feet done git cole--"
+
+"(Flora, be still!)--Yes, Alfred, yes. I am thine."
+
+The boy caught her in his arms. "But I am to be sent away on Monday! My
+angel, could you--fly, to-morrow?"
+
+And Letty, her face still hidden against his, shoulder, nodded.
+
+Then, while the shivering Flora stamped, and beat her arms, and the
+lantern flared and sizzled, Alfred made their plans, which were simple
+to the point of childishness. "My own!" he said, when it was all
+arranged; then he held the lantern up and looked into her face, blushing
+and determined, with snowflakes gleaming on the curls that pushed out
+from under her big hood. "You will meet me at the minister's?" he said,
+passionately. "You will not fail me?"
+
+"I will not fail you!" she said; and laughed joyously; but the young
+man's face was white.
+
+She kept her word; and with the assistance of Flora, romantic again when
+her feet were warm, all went as they planned. Clothes were packed,
+savings-banks opened, and a chaise abstracted from the Price stable.
+
+"It is my intention," said the youth, "to return to my father the value
+of the vehicle and nag, as soon as I can secure a position which will
+enable me to support my Letty in comfort and fashion."
+
+On the night of the elopement the two children met at the minister's
+house. (Yes, the very old Rectory to which we Old Chester children went
+every Saturday afternoon to Dr. Lavendar's Collect class. But of course
+there was no Dr. Lavendar there in those days).
+
+Well; Alfred requested this minister to pronounce them man and wife; but
+he coughed and poked the fire. "I am of age," Alfred insisted; "I am
+twenty-two." Then Mr. Smith said he must first go and put on his bands
+and surplice; and Alfred said, "If you please, sir." And off went Mr.
+Smith--_and sent a note to Alfred's father and Letty's mother_!
+
+We girls used to wonder what the lovers talked about while they waited
+for the return of the surpliced traitor. Ellen Dale always said they
+were foolish to wait. "Why didn't they go right off?" said Ellen. "If
+_I_ were going to elope, I shouldn't bother to get married. But, oh,
+think of how they felt when in walked those cruel parents!"
+
+The story was that they were torn weeping from each other's arms; that
+Letty was sent to bed for two days on bread and water; that Alfred was
+packed off to Philadelphia the very next morning, and sailed in less
+than a week. They did not see each other again.
+
+But the end of the story was not romantic at all. Letty, although she
+crept about for a while in deep disgrace, and brooded upon death--that
+interesting impossibility, so dear to youth--_married_, if you please!
+when she was twenty, somebody called North,--and went away to live. When
+Alfred came back, seven years later, he got married, too. He married a
+Miss Barkley. He used to go away on long voyages, so perhaps he wasn't
+really fond of her. We tried to think so, for we liked Captain Price.
+
+In our day Captain Price was a widower. He had given up the sea, and
+settled down to live in Old Chester; his son, Cyrus, lived with him, and
+his languid daughter-in-law--a young lady of dominant feebleness, who
+ruled the two men with that most powerful domestic rod, foolish
+weakness. This combination in a woman will cause a mountain (a masculine
+mountain) to fly from its firm base; while kindness, justice, and good
+sense leave it upon unshaken foundations of selfishness. Mrs. Cyrus was
+a Goliath of silliness; when billowing black clouds heaped themselves in
+the west on a hot afternoon, she turned pale with apprehension, and the
+Captain and Cyrus ran for four tumblers, into which they put the legs of
+her bed, where, cowering among the feathers, she lay cold with fear and
+perspiration. Every night the Captain screwed down all the windows on
+the lower floor; in the morning Cyrus pulled the screws out. Cyrus had a
+pretty taste in horseflesh, but Gussie cried so when he once bought a
+trotter that he had long ago resigned himself to a friendly beast of
+twenty-seven years, who could not go much out of a walk because he had
+string-halt in both hind legs.
+
+But one must not be too hard on Mrs. Cyrus. In the first place, she was
+not born in Old Chester. But, added to that, just think of her name! The
+effect of names upon character is not considered as it should be. If one
+is called Gussie for thirty years, it is almost impossible not to become
+gussie after a while. Mrs. Cyrus could not be Augusta; few women can;
+but it was easy to be gussie--irresponsible, silly, selfish. She had a
+vague, flat laugh, she ate a great deal of candy, and she was afraid
+of-- But one cannot catalogue Mrs. Cyrus's fears. They were as the sands
+of the sea for number. And these two men were governed by them. Only
+when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed will it be understood
+why a man loves a fool; but why he obeys her is obvious enough: Fear is
+the greatest power in the world; Gussie was afraid of thunder-storms, or
+what not; but the Captain and Cyrus were afraid of Gussie! A hint of
+tears in her pale eyes, and her husband would sigh with anxiety and
+Captain Price slip his pipe into his pocket and sneak out of the room.
+Doubtless Cyrus would often have been glad to follow him, but the old
+gentleman glared when his son showed a desire for his company.
+
+"Want to come and smoke with me? 'Your granny was Murray!'--you're
+sojering. You're first mate; you belong on the bridge in storms. I'm
+before the mast. Tend to your business!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was forty-eight years before Letty and Alfred saw each other
+again--or at least before persons calling themselves by those old names
+saw each other. Were they Letty and Alfred--this tousled, tangled,
+good-humored old man, ruddy and cowed, and this small, bright-eyed
+old lady, Mrs. North, led about by a devoted daughter? Certainly these
+two persons bore no resemblance to the boy and girl torn from each
+other's arms that cold December night. Alfred had been mild and slow;
+Captain Price (except when his daughter-in-law raised her finger) was a
+pleasant old roaring lion. Letty had been a gay, high-spirited little
+creature, not as retiring, perhaps, as a young female should be, and
+certainly self-willed; Mrs. North was completely under the thumb of her
+daughter Mary. Not that "under the thumb" means unhappiness; Mary North
+desired only her mother's welfare, and lived fiercely for that single
+purpose. From morning until night (and, indeed, until morning again, for
+she rose often from her bed to see that there was no draught from the
+crack of the open window), all through the twenty-four hours she was on
+duty.
+
+[Illustration: THE CAPTAIN AND CYRUS WERE AFRAID OF GUSSIE]
+
+When this excellent daughter appeared in Old Chester and said she was
+going to hire a house, and bring her mother back to end her days in the
+home of her girlhood, Old Chester displayed a friendly interest; when
+she decided upon a house on Main Street, directly opposite Captain
+Price's, it began to recall the romance of that thwarted elopement.
+
+"Do you suppose she knows that story about old Alfred Price and her
+mother?" said Old Chester; and it looked sidewise at Miss North with
+polite curiosity. This was not altogether because of her mother's
+romantic past, but because of her own manners and clothes. With painful
+exactness, Miss North endeavored to follow the fashion; but she looked
+as if articles of clothing had been thrown at her and some had stuck.
+As to her manners, Old Chester was divided; Mrs. David Baily said, with
+delicate disgust, that they were bad; but Mrs. Barkley said, that the
+trouble was she hadn't any manners; and as for Dr. Lavendar, he insisted
+that she was just shy. But, as Mrs. Drayton said, that was like Dr.
+Lavendar, always making excuses for wrong-doing! "Which," said Mrs.
+Drayton, "is a strange thing for a minister to do. For my part, I cannot
+understand impoliteness in a _Christian_ female. But we must not judge,"
+Mrs. Drayton ended, with what Willy King called her "holy look." Without
+wishing to "judge," it may be said that, in the matter of manners, Miss
+Mary North, palpitatingly anxious to be polite, told the truth; and as
+everybody knows, truthfulness and agreeable manners are often divorced
+on the ground of incompatibility. Miss North said things that other
+people only thought. When Mrs. Willy King remarked that, though she did
+not pretend to be a good house-keeper, she had the backs of her pictures
+dusted every other day, Miss North, her chin trembling with shyness,
+said, with a panting smile:
+
+"That's not good house-keeping; it's foolish waste of time." And when
+Neddy Dilworth's wife confessed coquettishly, that one would hardly take
+her to be a year or two older than her husband, would one? Mary North
+exclaimed, in utter astonishment: "is that all? Why, you look twelve
+years older!" Of course such truthfulness was far from genteel,--though
+Old Chester was not as displeased as you might have supposed.
+
+While Miss North, timorous and sincere (and determined to be polite),
+was putting the house in order before sending for her mother, Old
+Chester invited her to tea, and asked her many questions about Letty and
+the late Mr. North. But nobody asked whether she knew that her opposite
+neighbor, Captain Price, might have been her father--at least that was
+the way Miss Ellen's girls expressed it. Captain Price himself did not
+enlighten the daughter he did not have; but he went rolling across the
+street, and pulling off his big shabby felt hat, stood at the foot of
+the steps, and roared out: "Morning! Anything I can do for you?" Miss
+North, indoors, hanging window-curtains, her mouth full of tacks, shook
+her head. Then she removed the tacks and came to the front door.
+
+"Do you smoke, sir?"
+
+Captain Price removed his pipe from his mouth and looked at it. "Why! I
+believe I do, sometimes," he said.
+
+"I inquired," said Miss North, smiling tremulously, her hands gripped
+hard together, "because, if you do, I will ask you to desist when
+passing our windows."
+
+Captain Price was so dumfounded that for a moment words failed him. Then
+he said, meekly, "Does your mother object to tobacco smoke, ma'am?"
+
+"It is injurious to all ladies' throats," Miss North explained, her
+voice quivering and determined.
+
+"Does your mother resemble you, madam?" said Captain Price, slowly.
+
+"Oh no! my mother is pretty. She has my eyes, but that's all."
+
+"I didn't mean in looks," said the old man; "she did not look in the
+least like you; not in the least! I mean in her views?"
+
+"Her views? I don't think my mother has any particular views," Miss
+North answered, hesitatingly; "I spare her all thought," she ended, and
+her thin face bloomed suddenly with love.
+
+Old Chester rocked with the Captain's report of his call; and Mrs. Cyrus
+told her husband that she only wished this lady would stop his father's
+smoking.
+
+"Just look at his ashes," said Gussie; "I put saucers round everywhere
+to catch 'em, but he shakes 'em off anywhere--right on the carpet! And
+if you say anything, he just says, 'Oh, they'll keep the moths away!' I
+worry so for fear he'll set the house on fire."
+
+Mrs. Cyrus was so moved by Miss North's active mission-work that the
+very next day she wandered across the street to call. "I hope I'm not
+interrupting you," she began, "but I thought I'd just--"
+
+"Yes; you are," said Miss North; "but never mind; stay, if you want to."
+She tried to smile, but she looked at the duster which she had put down
+upon Mrs. Cyrus's entrance.
+
+Gussie wavered as to whether to take offence, but decided not to--at
+least not until she could make the remark which was buzzing in her small
+mind. It seemed strange, she said, that Mrs. North should come, not only
+to Old Chester, but right across the street from Captain Price!
+
+"Why?" said Mary North, briefly.
+
+"_Why?_" said Mrs. Cyrus, with faint animation. "Gracious! is it
+possible that you don't know about your mother and my father-in-law?"
+
+"Your father-in-law?--my mother?"
+
+"Why, you know," said Mrs. Cyrus, with her light cackle, "your mother
+was a little romantic when she was young. No doubt she has conquered it
+by this time. But she tried to elope with my father-in-law."
+
+"What!"
+
+"Oh, bygones should be bygones," Mrs. Cyrus said, soothingly; "forgive
+and forget, you know. I have no doubt she is perfectly--well, perfectly
+correct, now. If there's anything I can do to assist you, ma'am, I'll
+send my husband over"; and then she lounged away, leaving poor Mary
+North silent with indignation. But that night at tea Gussie said that
+she thought strong-minded ladies were very unladylike; "they say she's
+strong-minded," she added, languidly.
+
+"Lady!" said the Captain. "She's a man-o'-war's-man in petticoats."
+
+Gussie giggled.
+
+"She's as flat as a lath," the Captain declared; "if it hadn't been for
+her face, I wouldn't have known whether she was coming bow or stern on."
+
+"I think," said Mrs. Cyrus, "that that woman has some motive in bringing
+her mother back here; and _right across the street_, too!"
+
+"What motive?" said Cyrus, mildly curious.
+
+But Augusta waited for conjugal privacy to explain herself: "Cyrus, I
+worry so, because I'm sure that woman thinks she can catch your father
+again. Oh, just listen to that harmonicon down-stairs! It sets my teeth
+on edge!"
+
+Then Cyrus, the silent, servile first mate, broke out: "Gussie, you're a
+fool!"
+
+And Augusta cried all night, and showed herself at the breakfast-table
+lantern-jawed and sunken-eyed; and her father-in-law judged it wise to
+sprinkle his cigar ashes behind the stable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The day that Mrs. North arrived in Old Chester, Mrs. Cyrus commanded the
+situation; she saw the daughter get out of the stage, and hurry into the
+house for a chair so that the mother might descend more easily. She also
+saw a little, white-haired old lady take that opportunity to leap
+nimbly, and quite unaided, from the swinging step.
+
+"Now, mother!" expostulated Mary North, chair in hand, and breathless,
+"you might have broken your limb! Here, take my arm."
+
+Meekly, after her moment of freedom, the little lady put her hand on
+that gaunt arm, and tripped up the path and into the house, where, alas!
+Augusta Price lost sight of them. Yet even she, with all her disapproval
+of strong-minded ladies, must have admired the tenderness of the
+man-o'-war's-man. Miss North put her mother into a big chair, and
+hurried to bring a dish of curds.
+
+"I'm not hungry," protested Mrs. North.
+
+"Never mind. It will do you good."
+
+With a sigh the little old lady ate the curds, looking about her with
+curious eyes. "Why, we're right across the street from the old Price
+house!" she said.
+
+"Did you know them, mother?" demanded Miss North.
+
+"Dear me, yes," said Mrs. North, twinkling; "why, I'd forgotten all
+about it, but the eldest boy-- Now, what was his name? Al--something.
+Alfred--Albert; no, Alfred. He was a beau of mine."
+
+"Mother! I don't think it's refined to use such a word."
+
+"Well, he wanted me to elope with him," Mrs. North said, gayly; "if that
+isn't being a beau, I don't know what is. I haven't thought of it for
+years."
+
+"If you've finished your curds you must lie down," said Miss North.
+
+"Oh, I'll just look about--"
+
+"No; you are tired. You must lie down."
+
+"Who is that stout old gentleman going into the Price house?" Mrs. North
+said, lingering at the window.
+
+"Oh, that's your Alfred Price," her daughter answered; and added, that
+she hoped her mother would be pleased with the house. "We have boarded
+so long, I think you'll enjoy a home of your own."
+
+"Indeed I shall!" cried Mrs. North, her eyes snapping with delight.
+"Mary, I'll wash the breakfast dishes, as my mother used to do!"
+
+"Oh no," Mary North protested; "it would tire you. I mean to take every
+care from your mind."
+
+"But," Mrs. North pleaded, "you have so much to do; and--"
+
+"Never mind about me," said the daughter, earnestly; "you are my first
+consideration."
+
+"I know it, my dear," said Mrs. North, meekly. And when Old Chester came
+to make its call, one of the first things she said was that her Mary
+was such a good daughter. Miss North, her anxious face red with
+determination, bore out the assertion by constantly interrupting the
+conversation to bring a footstool, or shut a window, or put a shawl over
+her mother's knees. "My mother's limb troubles her," she explained to
+visitors (in point of modesty, Mary North did not leave her mother a leg
+to stand on); then she added, breathlessly, with her tremulous smile,
+that she wished they would please not talk too much. "Conversation tires
+her," she explained. At which the little, pretty old lady opened and
+closed her hands, and protested that she was not tired at all. But the
+callers departed. As the door closed behind them, Mrs. North was ready
+to cry.
+
+"Now, Mary, really!" she began.
+
+"Mother, I don't care! I don't like to say a thing like that, though
+I'm sure I always try to speak politely. But it's the truth, and to save
+you I would tell the truth no matter how painful it was to do so."
+
+"But I enjoy seeing people, and--"
+
+"It is bad for you to be tired," Mary said, her thin face quivering
+still with the effort she had made; "and they sha'n't tire you while I
+am here to protect you." And her protection never flagged. When Captain
+Price called, she asked him to please converse in a low tone, as noise
+was bad for her mother. "He had been here a good while before I came
+in," she defended herself to Mrs. North, afterwards; "and I'm sure I
+spoke politely."
+
+The fact was, the day the Captain came, Miss North was out. Her mother
+had seen him pounding up the street, and hurrying to the door, called
+out, gayly, in her little, old, piping voice, "Alfred--Alfred Price!"
+
+The Captain turned and looked at her. There was just one moment's pause;
+perhaps he tried to bridge the years, and to believe that it was Letty
+who spoke to him--Letty, whom he had last seen that wintry night, pale
+and weeping, in the slender green sheath of a fur-trimmed pelisse. If
+so, he gave it up; this plump, white-haired, bright-eyed old lady, in a
+wide-spreading, rustling black silk dress, was not Letty. She was Mrs.
+North.
+
+The Captain came across the street, waving his newspaper, and saying,
+"So you've cast anchor in the old port, ma'am?"
+
+"My daughter is not at home; do come in," she said, smiling and nodding.
+Captain Price hesitated; then he put his pipe in his pocket and
+followed her into the parlor. "Sit down," she cried, gayly. "Well,
+_Alfred_!"
+
+"Well--_Mrs. North_!" he said; and then they both laughed, and she began
+to ask questions: Who was dead? Who had so and so married? "There are
+not many of us left," she said. "The two Ferris girls and Theophilus
+Morrison and Johnny Gordon--he came to see me yesterday. And Matty
+Dilworth; she was younger than I--oh, by ten years. She married the
+oldest Barkley boy, didn't she? I hear he didn't turn out well. You
+married his sister, didn't you? Was it the oldest girl or the second
+sister?"
+
+"It was the second--Jane. Yes, poor Jane. I lost her in 'forty-five."
+
+"You have children?" she said, sympathetically.
+
+"I've got a boy," he said; "but he's married."
+
+"My girl has never married; she's a good daughter,"--Mrs. North broke
+off with a nervous laugh; "here she is, now!"
+
+Mary North, who had suddenly appeared in the doorway, gave a questioning
+sniff, and the Captain's hand sought his guilty pocket; but Miss North
+only said: "How do you do, sir? Now, mother, don't talk too much and get
+tired." She stopped and tried to smile, but the painful color came into
+her face. "And--if you please, Captain Price, will you speak in a low
+tone? Large, noisy persons exhaust the oxygen in the air, and--"
+
+"_Mary!_" cried poor Mrs. North; but the Captain, clutching his old felt
+hat, began to hoist himself up from the sofa, scattering ashes about as
+he did so. Mary North compressed her lips.
+
+"I tell my daughter-in-law they'll keep the moths away," the old
+gentleman said, sheepishly.
+
+"I use camphor," said Miss North, "Flora must bring a dust-pan."
+
+"Flora?" Alfred Price said. "Now, what's my association with that name?"
+
+"She was our old cook," Mrs. North explained; "this Flora is her
+daughter. But you never saw old Flora?"
+
+"Why, yes, I did," the old man said, slowly. "Yes. I remember Flora.
+Well, good-bye,--Mrs. North."
+
+"Good-bye, Alfred. Come again," she said, cheerfully.
+
+"Mother, here's your beef tea," said a brief voice.
+
+Alfred Price fled. He met his son just as he was entering his own
+house, and burst into a confidence: "Cy, my boy, come aft and splice
+the main-brace. Cyrus, what a female! She knocked me higher than
+Gilroy's kite. And her mother was as sweet a girl as you ever saw!" He
+drew his son into a little, low-browed, dingy room at the end of the
+hall. Its grimy untidiness matched the old Captain's clothes, but it was
+his one spot of refuge in his own house; here he could scatter his
+tobacco ashes almost unrebuked, and play on his harmonicon without
+seeing Gussie wince and draw in her breath; for Mrs. Cyrus rarely
+entered the "cabin." "I worry so about its disorderliness that I won't
+go in," she used to say, in a resigned way. And the Captain accepted her
+decision with resignation of his own. "Crafts of your bottom can't
+navigate in these waters," he agreed, earnestly; and, indeed, the room
+was so cluttered with his belongings that voluminous hoop-skirts could
+not get steerageway. "He has so much rubbish," Gussie complained; but it
+was precious rubbish to the old man. His chest was behind the door; a
+blow-fish, stuffed and varnished, hung from the ceiling; two colored
+prints of the "Barque _Letty M._, 800 tons," decorated the walls; his
+sextant, polished daily by his big, clumsy hands, hung over the
+mantel-piece, on which were many dusty treasures--the mahogany spoke of
+an old steering-wheel; a whale's tooth; two Chinese wrestlers, in ivory;
+a fan of spreading white coral; a conch-shell, its beautiful red lip
+serving to hold a loose bunch of cigars. In the chimney-breast was a
+little door, and the Captain, pulling his son into the room after that
+call upon Mrs. North, fumbled in his pocket for the key. "Here," he
+said; "(as the Governor of North Carolina said to the Governor of South
+Carolina)--Cyrus, she handed round _beef tea_!"
+
+But Cyrus was to receive still further enlightenment on the subject of
+his opposite neighbor:
+
+"She called him in. I heard her, with my own ears! 'Alfred,' she said,
+'come in.' Cyrus, she has designs; oh, I worry so about it! He ought to
+be protected. He is very old, and, of course, foolish. You ought to
+check it at once."
+
+"Gussie, I don't like you to talk that way about my father," Cyrus
+began.
+
+"You'll like it less later on. He'll go and see her to-morrow."
+
+"Why shouldn't he go and see her to-morrow?" Cyrus said, and added a
+modest bad word; which made Gussie cry. And yet, in spite of what his
+wife called his "blasphemy," Cyrus began to be vaguely uncomfortable
+whenever he saw his father put his pipe in his pocket and go across the
+street. And as the winter brightened into spring, the Captain went quite
+often. So, for that matter, did other old friends of Mrs. North's
+generation, who by-and-by began to smile at one another, and say, "Well,
+Alfred and Letty are great friends!" For, because Captain Price lived
+right across the street, he went most of all. At least, that was what
+Miss North said to herself with obvious common-sense--until Mrs. Cyrus
+put her on the right track....
+
+"What!" gasped Mary North. "But it's impossible!"
+
+"It would be very unbecoming, considering their years," said Gussie;
+"but I worry so, because, you know, nothing is impossible when people
+are foolish; and of course, at their age, they are apt to be foolish."
+
+So the seed was dropped. Certainly he did come very often. Certainly her
+mother seemed very glad to see him. Certainly they had very long talks.
+Mary North shivered with apprehension. But it was not until a week later
+that this miserable suspicion grew strong enough to find words. It was
+after tea, and the two ladies were sitting before a little fire. Mary
+North had wrapped a shawl about her mother, and given her a footstool,
+and pushed her chair nearer the fire, and then pulled it away, and
+opened and shut the parlor door three times to regulate the draught.
+Then she sat down in the corner of the sofa, exhausted but alert.
+
+"If there's anything you want, mother, you'll be sure and tell me?"
+
+"Yes, my dear."
+
+"I think I'd better put another shawl over your limbs?"
+
+"Oh no, indeed!"
+
+"Mother, are you _sure_ you don't feel a draught?"
+
+"No, Mary; and it wouldn't hurt me if I did!"
+
+"I was only trying to make you comfortable--"
+
+"I know that, my dear; you are a very good daughter. Mary, I think it
+would be nice if I made a cake. So many people call, and--"
+
+"I'll make it to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, I'll make it myself," Mrs. North protested, eagerly; "I'd really
+enjoy--"
+
+"Mother! Tire yourself out in the kitchen? No, indeed! Flora and I will
+see to it."
+
+Mrs. North sighed.
+
+Her daughter sighed too; then suddenly burst out: "Old Captain Price
+comes here pretty often."
+
+Mrs. North nodded pleasantly. "That daughter-in-law doesn't half take
+care of him. His clothes are dreadfully shabby. There was a button off
+his coat to-day. And she's a foolish creature."
+
+"Foolish? she's an unladylike person!" cried Miss North, with so much
+feeling that her mother looked at her in mild astonishment. "And coarse,
+too," said Mary North; "I think married ladies are apt to be coarse.
+From association with men, I suppose."
+
+"What has she done?" demanded Mrs. North, much interested.
+
+"She hinted that he--that you--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"That he came here to--to see you."
+
+"Well, who else would he come to see? Not you!" said her mother.
+
+"She hinted that he might want to--to marry you."
+
+"Well--upon my word! I knew she was a ridiculous creature, but
+really--!"
+
+Mary's face softened with relief. "Of course she is foolish; but--"
+
+"Poor Alfred! What has he ever done to have such a daughter-in-law?
+Mary, the Lord gives us our children; but _Somebody Else_ gives us our
+in-laws!"
+
+"Mother!" said Mary North, horrified, "you do say such things! But
+really he oughtn't to come so often. People will begin to notice it; and
+then they'll talk. I'll--I'll take you away from Old Chester rather than
+have him bother you."
+
+"Mary, you are just as foolish as his daughter-in-law," said Mrs.
+North, impatiently.
+
+And, somehow, poor Mary North's heart sank.
+
+Nor was she the only perturbed person in town that night. Mrs. Cyrus had
+a headache, so it was necessary for Cyrus to hold her hand and assure
+her that Willy King said a headache did not mean brain-fever.
+
+"Willy King doesn't know everything. If he had headaches like mine, he
+wouldn't be so sure. I am always worrying about things, and I believe my
+brain can't stand it. And now I've got your father to worry about!"
+
+"Better try and sleep, Gussie. I'll put some Kaliston on your head."
+
+"Kaliston! Kaliston won't keep me from worrying. Oh, listen to that
+harmonicon!"
+
+"Gussie, I'm sure he isn't thinking of Mrs. North."
+
+"Mrs. North is thinking of him, which is a great deal more dangerous.
+Cyrus, you _must_ ask Dr. Lavendar to interfere."
+
+As this was at least the twentieth assault upon poor Cyrus's
+common-sense, the citadel trembled.
+
+"Do you wish me to go into brain-fever before your eyes, just from
+worry?" Gussie demanded. "You _must_ go!"
+
+"Well, maybe, perhaps, to-morrow--"
+
+"To-night--to-night," said Augusta, faintly.
+
+And Cyrus surrendered.
+
+"Look under the bed before you go," Gussie murmured.
+
+Cyrus looked. "Nobody there," he said, reassuringly; and went on tiptoe
+out of the darkened, cologne-scented room. But as he passed along the
+hall, and saw his father in his little cabin of a room, smoking
+placidly, and polishing his sextant with loving hands, Cyrus's heart
+reproached him.
+
+"How's her head, Cy?" the Captain called out.
+
+"Oh, better, I guess," Cyrus said. ("I'll be hanged if I speak to Dr.
+Lavendar!")
+
+"That's good," said the Captain, beginning to hoist himself up out of
+his chair. "Going out? Hold hard, and I'll go 'long. I want to call on
+Mrs. North."
+
+Cyrus stiffened. "Cold night, sir," he remonstrated.
+
+"'Your granny was Murray, and wore a black nightcap!'" said the Captain;
+"you are getting delicate in your old age, Cy." He got up, and plunged
+into his coat, and tramped out, slamming the door heartily behind
+him--for which, later, poor Cyrus got the credit. "Where you bound?"
+
+"Oh--down-street," said Cyrus, vaguely.
+
+"Sealed orders?" said the Captain, with never a bit of curiosity in his
+big, kind voice; and Cyrus felt as small as he was. But when he left the
+old man at Mrs. North's door, he was uneasy again. Maybe Gussie was
+right! Women are keener about those things than men. And his uneasiness
+actually carried him to Dr. Lavendar's study, where he tried to appear
+at ease by patting Danny.
+
+"What's the matter with you, Cyrus?" said Dr. Lavendar, looking at him
+over his spectacles. (Dr. Lavendar, in his wicked old heart, always
+wanted to call this young man Cipher; but, so far, grace had been given
+him to withstand temptation.) "What's wrong?" he said.
+
+And Cyrus, somehow, told his troubles.
+
+At first Dr. Lavendar chuckled; then he frowned. "Gussie put you up to
+this, Cy--_rus_?" he said.
+
+"Well, my wife's a woman," Cyrus began, "and they're keener on such
+matters than men; and she said, perhaps you would--would--"
+
+"_What?_" Dr. Lavendar rapped on the table with the bowl of his pipe, so
+loudly that Danny opened one eye. "Would what?"
+
+"Well," Cyrus stammered, "you know, Dr. Lavendar, as Gussie says,
+'there's no fo--'"
+
+"You needn't finish it," Dr. Lavendar interrupted, dryly; "I've heard it
+before. Gussie didn't say anything about a young fool, did she?" Then
+he eyed Cyrus. "Or a middle-aged one? I've seen middle-aged fools that
+could beat us old fellows hollow."
+
+"Oh, but Mrs. North is far beyond middle age," said Cyrus, earnestly.
+
+Dr. Lavendar shook his head. "Well, well!" he said. "To think that
+Alfred Price should have such a-- And yet he is as sensible a man as I
+know!"
+
+"Until now," Cyrus amended. "But Gussie thought you'd better caution
+him. We don't want him, at his time of life, to make a mistake."
+
+"It's much more to the point that I should caution you not to make a
+mistake," said Dr. Lavendar; and then he rapped on the table again,
+sharply. "The Captain has no such idea--unless Gussie has given it to
+him. Cyrus, my advice to you is to go home and tell your wife not to be
+a goose. I'll tell her, if you want me to?"
+
+"Oh no, no!" said Cyrus, very much frightened. "I'm afraid you'd hurt
+her feelings."
+
+"I'm afraid I should," said Dr. Lavendar, grimly.
+
+"She's so sensitive," Cyrus tried to excuse her; "you can't think how
+sensitive she is, and timid. I never knew anybody so timid! Why, she
+makes me look under the bed every night, for fear there's somebody
+there!"
+
+"Well, next time, tell her 'two men and a dog'; that will take her mind
+off your father." It must be confessed that Dr. Lavendar was out of
+temper--a sad fault in one of his age, as Mrs. Drayton often said; but
+his irritability was so marked that Cyrus finally slunk off,
+uncomforted, and afraid to meet Gussie's eye, even under its bandage of
+a cologne-scented handkerchief.
+
+However, he had to meet it, and he tried to make the best of his own
+humiliation by saying that Dr. Lavendar was shocked at the idea of the
+Captain being interested in Mrs. North. "He said father had been, until
+now, as sensible a man as he knew, and he didn't believe he would think
+of such a dreadful thing. And neither do I, Gussie, honestly," Cyrus
+said.
+
+"But Mrs. North isn't sensible," Gussie protested, "and she'll--"
+
+"Dr. Lavendar said 'there was no fool like a middle-aged fool,'" Cyrus
+agreed.
+
+"Middle-aged! She's as old as Methuselah!"
+
+"That's what I told him," said Cyrus.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By the end of April Old Chester smiled. How could it help it? Gussie
+worried so that she took frequent occasion to point out possibilities;
+and after the first gasp of incredulity, one could hear a faint echo of
+the giggles of forty-eight years before. Mary North heard it, and her
+heart burned within her.
+
+"It's got to stop," she said to herself, passionately; "I must speak to
+his son."
+
+But her throat was dry at the thought. It seemed as if it would kill her
+to speak to a man on such a subject, even to as little of a man as
+Cyrus. But, poor, shy tigress! to save her mother, what would she not
+do? In her pain and fright she said to Mrs. North that if that old man
+kept on making her uncomfortable and conspicuous, they would leave Old
+Chester!
+
+Mrs. North twinkled with amusement when Mary, in her strained and
+quivering voice, began, but her jaw dropped at those last words; Mary
+was capable of carrying her off at a day's notice! The little old lady
+trembled with distressed reassurances--but Captain Price continued to
+call.
+
+And that was how it came about that this devoted daughter, after days of
+exasperation and nights of anxiety, reached a point of tense
+determination. She would go and see the man's son, and say ... That
+afternoon, as she stood before the swinging glass on her high bureau,
+tying her bonnet-strings, she tried to think what she would say. She
+hoped God would give her words--polite words; "for I _must_ be polite,"
+she reminded herself desperately. When she started across the street her
+paisley shawl had slipped from one shoulder, so that the point dragged
+on the flagstones; she had split her right glove up the back, and her
+bonnet was jolted over sidewise; but the thick Chantilly veil hid the
+quiver of her chin.
+
+Gussie met her with effusion, and Mary, striving to be polite, smiled
+painfully, and said:
+
+"I don't want to see you; I want to see your husband."
+
+Gussie tossed her head; but she made haste to call Cyrus, who came
+shambling along the hall from the cabin. The parlor was dark, for though
+it was a day of sunshine and merry May wind, Gussie kept the shutters
+bowed--but Cyrus could see the pale intensity of his visitor's face.
+There was a moment's silence, broken by a distant harmonicon.
+
+"Mr. Price," said Mary North, with pale, courageous lips, "you must
+stop your father."
+
+Cyrus opened his weak mouth to ask an explanation, but Gussie rushed in.
+
+"You are quite right, ma'am. Cyrus worries so about it (of course we
+know what you refer to). And Cyrus says it ought to be checked
+immediately, to save the old gentleman!"
+
+"You must stop him," said Mary North, "for my mother's sake."
+
+"Well--" Cyrus began.
+
+"Have you cautioned your mother?" Gussie demanded.
+
+"Yes," Miss North said, briefly. To talk to this woman of her mother
+made her wince, but it had to be done. "Will you speak to your father,
+Mr. Price?"
+
+"Well, I--"
+
+"Of course he will!" Gussie broke in; "Cyrus, he is in the cabin now."
+
+"Well, to-morrow I--" Cyrus got up and sidled towards the door. "Anyhow,
+I don't believe he's thinking of such a thing."
+
+"Miss North," said Gussie, rising, "_I_ will do it."
+
+"What, _now_?" faltered Mary North.
+
+"Now," said Mrs. Cyrus, firmly.
+
+"Oh," said Miss North, "I--I think I will go home. Gentlemen, when they
+are crossed, speak so--so earnestly."
+
+Gussie nodded. The joy of action and of combat entered suddenly into her
+little soul; she never looked less vulgar than at that moment. Cyrus had
+disappeared.
+
+Mary North, white and trembling, hurried out. A wheezing strain
+from the harmonicon followed her into the May sunshine, then ended,
+abruptly--Mrs. Price had begun! On her own door-step Miss North stopped
+and listened, holding her breath for an outburst.... It came: a roar of
+laughter. Then silence. Mary North stood, motionless, in her own parlor;
+her shawl, hanging from one elbow, trailed behind her; her other glove
+had split; her bonnet was blown back and over one ear; her heart was
+pounding in her throat. She was perfectly aware that she had done an
+unheard-of thing. "But," she said, aloud, "I'd do it again. I'd do
+anything to protect her. But I hope I was polite?" Then she thought how
+courageous Mrs. Cyrus was. "She's as brave as a lion!" said Mary North.
+Yet, had Miss North been able to stand at the Captain's door, she would
+have witnessed cowardice....
+
+"Gussie, I wouldn't cry. Confound that female, coming over and stirring
+you up! Now don't, Gussie! Why, I never thought of--Gussie, I wouldn't
+cry--"
+
+"I have worried almost to death. Pro-promise!"
+
+"Oh, your granny was Mur-- Gussie, my dear, now _don't_."
+
+"Dr. Lavendar said you'd always been so sensible; he said he didn't see
+how you could think of such a dreadful thing."
+
+"What! Lavendar? I'll thank Lavendar to mind his business!" Captain
+Price forgot Gussie; he spoke "earnestly." "Dog-gone these people that
+pry into-- Oh, now, Gussie, _don't_!"
+
+"I've worried so awfully," said Mrs. Cyrus. "Everybody is talking about
+you. And Dr. Lavendar is so--so angry about it; and now the daughter has
+charged on me as though it is my fault! Of course, she is queer, but--"
+
+"Queer? she's queer as Dick's hatband! Why do you listen to her? Gussie,
+such an idea never entered my head--or Mrs. North's either."
+
+"Oh yes, it has! Her daughter said that she had had to speak to her--"
+
+Captain Price, dumfounded, forgot his fear and burst out: "You're a pack
+of fools, the whole caboodle! I swear I--"
+
+"Oh, don't blaspheme!" said Gussie, faintly, and staggered a little, so
+that all the Captain's terror returned. _If she fainted!_
+
+"Hi, there, Cyrus! Come aft, will you? Gussie's getting white around the
+gills--Cyrus!"
+
+Cyrus came, running, and between them they got the swooning Gussie to
+her room; Afterwards, when Cyrus tiptoed down-stairs, he found the
+Captain at the cabin door. The old man beckoned mysteriously.
+
+"Cy, my boy, come in here"--he hunted about in his pocket for the key of
+the cupboard--"Cyrus, I'll tell you what happened; that female across
+the street came in, and told poor Gussie some cock-and-bull story about
+her mother and me!" The Captain chuckled, and picked up his harmonicon.
+"It scared the life out of Gussie," he said; then, with sudden angry
+gravity,--"these people that poke their noses into other's people's
+business ought to be thrashed. Well, I'm going over to see Mrs. North."
+And off he stumped, leaving Cyrus staring after him, open-mouthed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If Mary North had been at home, she would have met him with all the
+agonized courage of shyness and a good conscience. But she had fled out
+of the house, and down along the River Road, to be alone and regain her
+self-control.
+
+The Captain, however, was not seeking Miss North. He opened the front
+door, and advancing to the foot of the stairs, called up: "Ahoy, there!
+Mrs. North!"
+
+Mrs. North came trotting out to answer the summons. "Why, Alfred!" she
+exclaimed, looking over the banisters, "when did you come in? I didn't
+hear the bell ring. I'll come right down."
+
+"It didn't ring; I walked in," said the Captain. And Mrs. North came
+down-stairs, perhaps a little stiffly, but as pretty an old lady as you
+ever saw. Her white curls lay against faintly pink cheeks, and her lace
+cap had a pink bow on it. But she looked anxious and uncomfortable.
+
+("Oh," she was saying to herself, "I do hope Mary's out!)--Well,
+Alfred?" she said; but her voice was frightened.
+
+The Captain stumped along in front of her into the parlor, and motioned
+her to a seat. "Mrs. North," he said, his face red, his eye hard, "some
+jack-donkeys have been poking their noses (of course they're females)
+into our affairs; and--"
+
+"Oh, Alfred, isn't it horrid in them?" said the old lady.
+
+"Darn 'em!" said the Captain.
+
+"It makes me mad!" cried Mrs. North; then her spirit wavered. "Mary is
+so foolish; she says she'll--she'll take me away from Old Chester. I
+laughed at first, it was so foolish. But when she said that--oh _dear_!"
+
+"Well, but, my dear madam, say you won't go. Ain't you skipper?"
+
+"No, I'm not," she said, dolefully. "Mary brought me here, and she'll
+take me away, if she thinks it best. Best for _me_, you know. Mary is a
+good daughter, Alfred. I don't want you to think she isn't. But she's
+foolish. Unmarried women are apt to be foolish."
+
+The Captain thought of Gussie, and sighed. "Well," he said, with the
+simple candor of the sea, "I guess there ain't much difference in 'em,
+married or unmarried."
+
+"It's the interference makes me mad," Mrs. North declared, hotly.
+
+"Damn the whole crew!" said the Captain; and the old lady laughed
+delightedly.
+
+"Thank you, Alfred!"
+
+"My daughter-in-law is crying her eyes out," the Captain sighed.
+
+"Tck!" said Mrs. North; "Alfred, you have no sense. Let her cry. It's
+good for her!"
+
+"Oh no," said the Captain, shocked.
+
+"You're a perfect slave to her," cried Mrs. North.
+
+"No more than you are to your daughter," Captain Price defended himself;
+and Mrs. North sighed.
+
+"We are just real foolish, Alfred, to listen to 'em. As if we didn't
+know what was good for us."
+
+"People have interfered with us a good deal, first and last," the
+Captain said, grimly.
+
+The faint color in Mrs. North's cheeks suddenly deepened. "So they
+have," she said.
+
+The Captain shook his head in a discouraged way; he took his pipe out of
+his pocket and looked at it absent-mindedly. "I suppose I can stay at
+home, and let 'em get over it?"
+
+"Stay at home? Why, you'd far better--"
+
+"What?" said the Captain.
+
+"Come oftener!" cried the old lady. "Let 'em get over it by getting used
+to it."
+
+Captain Price looked doubtful. "But how about your daughter?"
+
+Mrs. North quailed. "I forgot Mary," she admitted.
+
+"I don't bother you, coming to see you, do I?" the Captain said,
+anxiously.
+
+"Why, Alfred, I love to see you. If our children would just let us
+alone!"
+
+"First it was our parents," said Captain Price. He frowned heavily.
+"According to other people, first we were too young to have sense; and
+now we're too old." He took out his worn old pouch, plugged some shag
+into his pipe, and struck a match under the mantel-piece. He sighed,
+with deep discouragement.
+
+Mrs. North sighed too. Neither of them spoke for a moment; then the
+little old lady drew a quick breath and flashed a look at him; opened
+her lips; closed them with a snap; then regarded the toe of her slipper
+fixedly. The color flooded up to her soft white hair.
+
+The Captain, staring hopelessly, suddenly blinked; then his honest red
+face slowly broadened into beaming astonishment and satisfaction. "_Mrs.
+North_--"
+
+"Captain Price!" she parried, breathlessly.
+
+"So long as our affectionate children have suggested it!"
+
+"Suggested--what?"
+
+"Let's give 'em something to cry about!"
+
+"Alfred!"
+
+"Look here: we are two old fools; so they say, anyway. Let's live up to
+their opinion. I'll get a house for Cyrus and Gussie--and your girl can
+live with 'em, if she wants to!" The Captain's bitterness showed then.
+
+"She could live here," murmured Mrs. North.
+
+"What do you say?"
+
+The little old lady laughed excitedly, and shook her head; the tears
+stood in her eyes.
+
+"Do you want to leave Old Chester?" the Captain demanded.
+
+"You know I don't," she said, sighing.
+
+"She'd take you away to-morrow," he threatened, "if she knew I had--I
+had--"
+
+"She sha'n't know it."
+
+"Well, then, we've got to get spliced to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, Alfred, no! I don't believe Dr. Lavendar would--"
+
+"I'll have no dealings with Lavendar," the Captain said, with sudden
+stiffness; "he's like all the rest of 'em. I'll get a license in Upper
+Chester, and we'll go to some parson there."
+
+Mrs. North's eyes snapped. "Oh, no, no!" she protested; but in another
+minute they were shaking hands on it.
+
+"Cyrus and Gussie can go and live by themselves," said the Captain,
+joyously, "and I'll get that hold cleaned out; she's kept the ports shut
+ever since she married Cyrus."
+
+"And I'll make a cake! And I'll take care of your clothes; you really
+are dreadfully shabby"; she turned him round to the light, and brushed
+off some ashes. The Captain beamed. "Poor Alfred! and there's a button
+gone! that daughter-in-law of yours can't sew any more than a cat (and
+she _is_ a cat!). But I love to mend. Mary has saved me all that. She's
+such a good daughter--poor Mary. But she's unmarried, poor child."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+However, it was not to-morrow. It was two or three days later that Dr.
+Lavendar and Danny, jogging along behind Goliath under the buttonwoods
+on the road to Upper Chester, were somewhat inconvenienced by the dust
+of a buggy that crawled up and down the hills just a little ahead. The
+hood of this buggy was up, upon which fact--it being a May morning of
+rollicking wind and sunshine--Dr. Lavendar speculated to his companion:
+"Daniel, the man in that vehicle is either blind and deaf, or else he
+has something on his conscience; in either case he won't mind our dust,
+so we'll cut in ahead at the watering-trough. G'on, Goliath!"
+
+But Goliath had views of his own about the watering-trough, and instead
+of passing the hooded buggy, which had stopped there, he insisted upon
+drawing up beside it. "Now, look here," Dr. Lavendar remonstrated, "you
+know you're not thirsty." But Goliath plunged his nose down into the
+cool depths of the great iron caldron, into which, from a hollow log,
+ran a musical drip of water. Dr. Lavendar and Danny, awaiting his
+pleasure, could hear a murmur of voices from the depths of the eccentric
+vehicle which put up a hood on such a day; when suddenly Dr. Lavendar's
+eye fell on the hind legs of the other horse. "That's Cipher's trotter,"
+he said to himself, and leaning out, cried: "Hi! Cy?" At which the other
+horse was drawn in with a jerk, and Captain Price's agitated face
+peered out from under the hood.
+
+"Where! Where's Cyrus?" Then he caught sight of Dr. Lavendar. "'_The
+devil and Tom Walker!_'" said the Captain, with a groan. The buggy
+backed erratically.
+
+"Look out!" said Dr. Lavendar--but the wheels locked.
+
+Of course there was nothing for Dr. Lavendar to do but get out and take
+Goliath by the head, grumbling, as he did so, that Cyrus "shouldn't own
+such a spirited beast."
+
+"I am somewhat hurried," said Captain Price, stiffly.
+
+The old minister looked at him over his spectacles; then he glanced at
+the small, embarrassed figure shrinking into the depths of the buggy.
+
+("Hullo, hullo, hullo!" he said, softly. "Well, Gussie's done it.)
+You'd better back a little, Captain," he advised.
+
+"I can manage," said the Captain.
+
+"I didn't say 'go back,'" Dr. Lavendar said, mildly.
+
+"Oh!" murmured a small voice from within the buggy.
+
+"I expect you need me, don't you, Alfred?" said Dr. Lavendar.
+
+"What?" said the Captain, frowning.
+
+"Captain," said Dr. Lavendar, simply, "if I can be of any service to you
+and Mrs. North, I shall be glad."
+
+Captain Price looked at him. "Now, look here, Lavendar, we're going to
+do it this time, if all the parsons in--well, in the church, try to stop
+us!"
+
+"I'm not going to try to stop you."
+
+"But Gussie said you said--"
+
+"Alfred, at your time of life, are you beginning to quote Gussie?"
+
+"But she said you said it would be--"
+
+"Captain Price, I do not express my opinion of your conduct to your
+daughter-in-law. You ought to have sense enough to know that."
+
+"Well, why did you talk to her about it?"
+
+"I didn't talk to her about it. But," said Dr. Lavendar, thrusting out
+his lower lip, "I should like to."
+
+"We were going to hunt up a parson in Upper Chester," said the Captain,
+sheepishly.
+
+Dr. Lavendar looked about, up and down the silent, shady road, then
+through the bordering elder-berries into an orchard. "If you have your
+license," he said, "I have my prayer-book. Let's go into the orchard.
+There are two men working there we can get for witnesses--Danny isn't
+quite enough, I suppose."
+
+[Illustration: THERE WAS A LITTLE SILENCE, AND THEN DR. LAVENDER BEGAN]
+
+The Captain turned to Mrs. North. "What do you say, ma'am?" he said. She
+nodded, and gathered up her skirts to get out of the buggy. The two old
+men led their horses to the side of the road and hitched them to the
+rail fence; then the Captain helped Mrs. North through the elder-bushes,
+and shouted out to the men ploughing at the other side of the orchard.
+They came--big, kindly young fellows, and stood gaping at the three old
+people standing under the apple-tree in the sunshine. Dr. Lavendar
+explained that they were to be witnesses, and the boys took off their
+hats.
+
+There was a little silence, and then, in the white shadows and perfume
+of the orchard, with its sunshine, and drift of petals falling in the
+gay wind, Dr. Lavendar began.... When he came to "Let no man put
+asunder--" Captain Price growled in his grizzled red beard, "Nor woman,
+either!" But only Mrs. North smiled.
+
+When it was over, Captain Price drew a deep breath of relief. "Well,
+this time we made a sure thing of it, Mrs. North!"
+
+"_Mrs. North?_" said Dr. Lavendar; and then he did chuckle.
+
+"Oh--" said Captain Price, and roared at the joke.
+
+"You'll have to call me Letty," said the pretty old lady, smiling and
+blushing.
+
+"Oh," said the Captain; then he hesitated. "Well, now, if you don't
+mind, I--I guess I won't call you Letty. I'll call you Letitia."
+
+"Call me anything you want to," said Mrs. Price, gayly.
+
+Then they all shook hands with one another and with the witnesses, who
+found something left in their palms that gave them great satisfaction,
+and went back to climb into their respective buggies.
+
+"We have shore leave," the Captain explained; "we won't go back to Old
+Chester for a few days. You may tell 'em, Lavendar."
+
+"Oh, may I?" said Dr. Lavender, blankly. "Well, good-bye, and good
+luck!"
+
+He watched the other buggy tug on ahead, and then he leaned down to
+catch Danny by the scruff of the neck.
+
+"Well, Daniel," he said, "'_if at first you don't succeed_'--"
+
+And Danny was pulled into the buggy.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+    Transcriber's Note:
+
+    Both Lavender and Lavendar have been retained as they appear
+    in the original publication.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of An Encore, by Margaret Deland
+
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