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+Project Gutenberg's A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill, by Alice Hegan Rice
+
+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: A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill
+
+Author: Alice Hegan Rice
+
+
+Release Date: October, 2004  [EBook #6635]
+This file was first posted on January 7, 2003
+Last Updated: June 16, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A ROMANCE OF BILLY-GOAT HILL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Phil McLaury, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A ROMANCE OF BILLY-GOAT HILL
+
+By Alice Hegan Rice
+
+Author of Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch Lovey Mary, Sandy, Etc.
+
+With Illustrations By George Weight
+
+
+[Illustration: "Do you believe in love, Doctor?"]
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+"Do you believe in love, Doctor?"
+
+The Colonel leaned back upon his knees and glared at Morley
+
+There was a sharp report, a smothered groan, then a heavy fall
+
+She held it to the flame, and watched it burn to ashes on the hearth
+
+Maria began to cry, and forgot to jolt the Boarder
+
+Mrs. Sequin paused with her hand on the banister
+
+"It was a great wrong I did you, Don; can you forgive me?"
+
+"Tell me quick! How do you know about the shooting?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+It was springtime in Kentucky, gay, irresponsible, Southern springtime,
+that comes bursting impetuously through highways and byways, heedless of
+possible frosts and impossible fruitions. A glamour of tender new green
+enveloped the world, and the air was sweet with the odor of young and
+growing things. The brown river, streaked with green where the fresher
+currents of the creeks poured in, circled the base of a long hill that
+dominated the landscape from every direction.
+
+In spite of the fact that impertinent railroads were beginning to crawl
+about its feet, and the flotsam and jetsam of the adjacent city were
+gradually being deposited at its base, it nevertheless reared its
+granite shoulders proudly and defiantly against the sky.
+
+From the early days when the hill and rich surrounding farm lands
+had been granted to the old pioneer William Carsey, one generation of
+Carseys after another had lived in the stately old mansion that now
+stood like the last remaining fortress against the city's invasion.
+Sagging cornices and discolored walls had not dispelled the atmosphere
+of contentment that enveloped the place, an effect heightened by the
+wide front porch which ran straight across the face of it, like a
+broad, complacent smile. Some old houses, like old gallants, bear
+an unmistakable air of past prosperity, of past affairs. Romance has
+trailed her garments near them and the fragrance lingers.
+
+Thornwood, shabby and neglected, could still afford to drowse in the
+sunshine and smile over the past. It remembered the time when its
+hospitality was the boast of the countryside, when its stables held the
+best string of horses in the State; when its smokehouse, now groaning
+under a pile of lumber, sheltered shoulders of pork, and sides of bacon,
+and long lines of juicy, sugar-cured hams; when the cellar quartered
+battalions of cobwebby bottles that stood at attention on the low
+hanging shelves. It was a house ripe with experience and mellow with
+memories, a wise, old, sophisticated house, that had had its day, and
+enjoyed it, and now, through with ambitions, and through with striving,
+had settled down to a peaceful old age.
+
+On this particular Sunday afternoon Colonel Bob Carsey, the third of
+his name, sat on the porch in a weather-beaten mahogany rocker, making
+himself a mint julep. He was a stout, elderly gentleman, and, like the
+rocking chair, was weather-beaten, and of a slightly mahogany hue. His
+features, having long ago given up the struggle against encroaching
+flesh, were now merely slight indentures, and mild protuberances,
+with the exception of the eyes which still blazed away defiantly, like
+twinkling lights at the end of a passage. Across his feet with nose
+on paws lay a dog, and about him was scattered a profusion of fishing
+paraphernalia.
+
+The Colonel, carefully crushing the mint between his stubby fingers,
+stirred it with the sugar at the bottom of his tall glass; then, resting
+the concoction on the broad arm of the rocker, and without turning his
+head, lifted his voice in stentorian command:
+
+"Jimpson!"
+
+No answer. He turned his head slightly to the left, in the general
+direction of the negro cabins whose roofs could be seen through the
+trees, and sent another summons hurtling through the bushes:
+
+"Jimpson!"
+
+Again he waited, and again there was no response. The Colonel sighed
+resignedly, and spreading a large bordered handkerchief over his
+obliterated features, clasped his fat hands with some difficulty about
+his ample girth, and slept. When he awoke he began exactly where he had
+left off, only this time turning his head slightly to the right, and
+sending his command toward the kitchen wing.
+
+A door slammed somewhere in the distance, and presently a shuffling
+of feet was heard in the hall, and a small, alert old negro presented
+himself to his master with an air of cheerful conciliation.
+
+The Colonel did not turn his head; he gazed with an air of great injury
+at the tops of the locust trees, clasping his tumbler as it rested on
+the arm of the rocker.
+
+"Jimpson," he began, after the culprit had suffered his silence some
+minutes.
+
+"Now, Cunnel," began Jimpson nervously. He had evidently rehearsed this
+scene in the past.
+
+"Just answer my questions," insisted the Colonel. "_Is_ this my house?"
+
+"Yas, sir, but Carline, she--"
+
+"And are you my nigger?" persisted the Colonel plaintively.
+
+"Yas, sir; but you see, Carline--"
+
+"And haven't I, for twenty years," persisted the Colonel, "been taking a
+mint julep at half past two on Sunday afternoons?"
+
+"Yas, sir, I was a comin'--"
+
+"Then you don't regard it as an unreasonable request, that a gentleman
+should ask his own nigger, in his own house, to bring him a small piece
+of ice?" The Colonel's sense of injury was becoming so overpowering that
+the offender might have been crushed by contrition had not a laugh made
+them both look up.
+
+Standing in the doorway was a young girl in a short riding habit, and a
+small hat of red felt that was carelessly pinned to her bright, tumbled
+hair. Her eyes were dark, and round like those of a child, and they
+danced from object to object as if eager to miss none of the good things
+that the world had to offer. Joy of life and radiant youth seemed to
+flash from her face and figure.
+
+"What's the matter, Squire Daddy?" she asked, pausing on the threshold.
+"Mad again?" The Colonel's head twitched in her direction, but he held
+it stiff.
+
+"Well, please don't kill Uncle Jimpson 'til he finds my gloves. I don't
+know where I took them off."
+
+"Yas 'm, Miss Lady," Jimpson welcomed the diversion. "I'll find 'em jes
+as soon as I git yer Paw his ice."
+
+"Oh, Daddy'll wait, won't you, Dad? I'm in a hurry."
+
+For a moment Jimpson and the Colonel eyed each other, then the Colonel's
+gaze shifted.
+
+"I'll git de ice fer you on my way back," Jimpson whispered
+reassuringly. "I spec' dat chile _is_ in a hurry."
+
+The young lady in question gave no appearance of haste as she perched
+herself on the arm of her father's chair, and presented a boot-lace for
+him to tie.
+
+"Going fishing, Dad?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," said the Colonel, struggling to make a two-loop bow-knot. "Noah
+Wicker and I are going down below the mill dam. Want to come along?"
+
+"I can't. I'm going riding."
+
+"That's good. Who with?"
+
+"With Don Morley."
+
+The smile that had returned to the Colonel's face during this
+conversation contracted suddenly, leaving his mouth a round little
+button of disapprobation.
+
+"What in thunder is he doing up here anyhow; why don't he go on back to
+town where he belongs?"
+
+"Don?" Miss Lady pretended to effect a part in the few straggling hairs
+that adorned his forehead. "Why, he's staying over to the Wickers' while
+he looks around for a farm. Here's a gray hair, Daddy! I'd pull it out
+only there are two more on that other side now than there are on this."
+
+"Buying a farm, is he?" The Colonel waxed a deeper mahogany. "Well, this
+place is not for sale. I should think he could find something better to
+do with his time than hanging around here. For two weeks I haven't been
+able to sit on this porch for five minutes without having him under my
+feet! What's the sense of his coming so often?"
+
+Miss Lady caught him by the ears, and turned his irate face up to her
+own.
+
+"He comes to see me!" she announced, emphasizing each word with a nod.
+"He likes horses and dogs and me, and I like horses and dogs and him.
+But I like you, too, Daddy."
+
+The Colonel refused to be beguiled by such blandishments.
+
+"I'll speak to him when he comes. He needn't think just because he is a
+city fellow, he can take a daughter of mine racing all over the country
+on Sunday afternoon!"
+
+"Why, Dad, that's absurd! Don't you take me yourself almost every
+Sunday? And don't I go with Noah, and the Brooks boys whenever I like?"
+
+"Well, you can't go to-day."
+
+"But this is Donald's last day. He goes back to town to-night, and he
+may go abroad next week to stay ever and ever so long."
+
+The Colonel brought his fist down on his knees: "I don't care a hang
+where he goes. It's _you_ we are talking about. You've got to promise me
+not to go with him this afternoon."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Because," the Colonel argued feebly, "because it's Sunday."
+
+Miss Lady sat for a moment looking straight before her and there was a
+contraction of her lips that might have passed for a comic imitation of
+her father's had it not softened into a smile.
+
+"Suppose I won't promise?" she said.
+
+The Colonel's free hand gripped the arm of the chair, and he looked as
+if he had every intention in the world of being firm.
+
+"You see, if it is wrong for me to go riding on Sunday," went on Miss
+Lady, "it's wrong for you to go fishing. Suppose we both reform and stay
+at home?"
+
+The Colonel's eyes involuntarily flew to his cherished tackle, lying
+ready for action on the top step, then they came back with a snap to the
+top of a locust tree.
+
+Miss Lady squeezed his arm and laughed: "Of course you don't want to
+stay at home this glorious afternoon, neither do I! Now, that's settled.
+Here comes Noah; I'll go and fix your lunch."
+
+It was not by any means the first time the daughter of the house of
+Carsey had scored in a contest with her father. His subjection had begun
+on that morning now nearly twenty years ago, when she had been placed
+in his arms, a motherless bundle of helplessness without even a personal
+name to begin life with.
+
+That question of a name had baffled him. He had consulted all the
+neighbors, considered all the possibilities in the back of the
+dictionary, and even had recourse to the tombstones in the old cemetery,
+but the haunting fear that in days to come she might not like his
+choice, held him back from a final decision. In the meanwhile she was
+"The Little Lady," then "Lady," and finally through the negroes it got
+to be "Miss Lady." So the Colonel weakly compromised in the matter by
+deciding to wait until she was old enough to name herself. When that
+time arrived she stubbornly refused to exchange her nickname for a real
+one. A halfhearted effort was made to harness her up to "Elizabeth," but
+she flatly declined to answer to the appellation.
+
+She and Noah Wicker, the son of a neighboring farmer, had run wild on
+the big place, and it was Miss Lady who invariably got to the top of
+the peach tree first, or dared to wade the farthest into the stream.
+All through the summer days her little bare legs raced beside Noah's
+sturdier brown ones. She could handle a fishing rod as well as her
+father, could ride and drive and shoot, and was on terms of easy
+friendship with every neighbor who passed over the brow of Billy-goat
+Hill.
+
+The matter of education had been the first serious break in this idyllic
+existence. After romping through the country school, she had had several
+young and pretty governesses, all of whom had succumbed to the charms of
+neighboring country swains, and abandoned their young charge, to start
+establishments of their own. Then came wise counsel from without and
+after many tears she was sent to a boarding school in the city.
+
+The older teachers at Miss Gibbs' Select School for Young Ladies still
+recall their trials during the one year Miss Lady was enrolled. She was
+pretty, yes, and clever, and lovable, oh, yes! And at this point usually
+followed a number of stories of her generosity and impulsive kindness;
+"but," the conclusion always ran, "such a strange, wild little creature,
+so intolerant of convention, in dress, in education, in religion. Quite
+impossible in a young ladies' seminary."
+
+After one term of imprisonment Miss Lady escaped to the outdoor world
+again, and implored her devoted "Dad" to let her grow up in ignorance,
+protesting passionately that she did not want puffs on her head, and
+heels on her shoes, and whalebones about her waist. That she didn't care
+whether X plus Y equaled Z, or not, and that going to church and saying
+the same thing a dozen times, drove all ideas of religion out of her
+head. She would study at home, she declared, anything, everything he
+suggested, if only she could do it, in her own way, out of doors.
+
+So the sorely puzzled Colonel had procured her the necessary text-books,
+and she had plunged into her original method of self-education. She
+usually fought out her mathematical battles down by the river, using a
+stick on the sand for her calculations; history she studied in the
+fork of an old elm, declaiming the most dramatic episodes aloud, to the
+edification of the sparrows.
+
+In the long winter months her favorite haunt was a little unused room
+over the front hall, traditionally known as the library. Its only
+possible excuse for the name was its one piece of furniture, a battered
+secretary containing a small collection of musty volumes that did credit
+to the taste of some long-departed Carsey.
+
+Miss Lady had discovered the library in her paper-doll days, and had
+ruthlessly clipped small bonneted ladies with flounced skirts from
+magazines that dated back to the first year of publication. Later she
+had discovered that some of the ladies had jokes on their backs, or
+rather pieces of jokes, the rest of which she hunted up in the old
+magazines. It was an easy step from the magazines to the books, and in
+time she knew them all, from the little dog-eared copy of Horace in the
+upper left-hand corner, to the fat Don Quixote in the lower right.
+
+In this neglected little room, with its festoons of cobwebs, its musty
+smell and its sense of old, forgotten things and people, she would tuck
+herself away with a pocket full of apples, to study and read by the
+hour.
+
+The Colonel had done his part, and she was determined to do hers; for
+three years she kept sturdily at it, devouring the things she could
+understand, and blithely skipping those she could not, extracting
+meanwhile a vast amount of pleasure out of each passing day. For the
+thing that differentiated Miss Lady from the rest of her fellow kind was
+that she was usually glad. She liked to get up in the morning and to
+go to bed at night, a peculiarity in itself sufficiently great to
+individualize her. She greeted each new experience with enthusiasm and
+managed to extract the largest possible quota of happiness out of the
+smallest and most insignificant occasion.
+
+As she went singing through the hall, the Colonel tried to frown
+over his glasses, but he was only partially successful. She was too
+satisfying a sight with her shining hair and eyes, and lithe, supple
+figure, every motion of which bespoke that quick, unconscious freedom of
+body peculiar to children and those favored of the gods, who never grow
+old.
+
+The tall, awkward young man who had by this time arrived at the porch,
+followed the Colonel's gaze, and then, without speaking, sat down on the
+steps and clasped his hands about his knees. Noah Wicker's awkwardness,
+however manifest to others, was evidently a matter of small moment to
+him. He had apparently accepted the companionship of unmanageable arms
+and legs without question, and without embarrassment. His stubby blond
+hair rose straight from a high, broad forehead, and grew down in square
+patches in front of his ears. His eyes, small and steady, surveyed the
+world with profound indifference.
+
+When Miss Lady disappeared the Colonel turned upon him suddenly:
+
+"What about this rich young fellow over at your house? Who is he
+anyhow?"
+
+"Morley?" Noah crossed his knees deliberately. "Why, he's a
+brother-in-law of Mr. Sequin."
+
+"Not Basil Sequin, the president of the People's Bank! You don't say!"
+The Colonel paused for a moment to digest this fact, then he went on:
+"Hell-bent on farming I hear; wants your father to look around for a
+place."
+
+This not being in the form of a question, Noah conserved his energies.
+
+"Don't amount to a hill of beans, I'll warrant," continued the Colonel,
+with a watchful eye on Noah for denial or confirmation, but Noah was
+noncommittal. "When a fellow gets to be twenty-three years old and can't
+find anything better to do than to run around the country spending his
+money, and playing with the girls, there's a screw loose somewhere. What
+does he know about stock-farming?"
+
+"Says he's been reading up."
+
+"Fiddlesticks!" roared the Colonel. "You can't learn farming out of a
+book! What does he know about horses?"
+
+"Oh! He's on to horses all right," Noah grinned ambiguously. "You and I
+couldn't teach him anything about horses."
+
+"Can he shoot?"
+
+"Can't hit a barn door."
+
+The Colonel heaved a deep sigh, drained the last drops from his tumbler,
+then leaned forward, confidentially:
+
+"Noah Wicker, do you like that young chap?"
+
+"Like him?" Noah looked up in surprise. "Why, everybody likes Don
+Morley."
+
+"I don't," said the Colonel fiercely. "Here he comes now. I wish you'd
+look at that!"
+
+A headlong young man in model riding costume, astride a bob-tailed
+sorrel, rashly took a fence where gate there was none, and came
+cantering across the Colonel's favorite stretch of blue grass.
+
+"Awfully sorry to have cut across, Colonel!" he called out in tones that
+spoke little contrition. "Slipped my trolley as usual and got lost in
+the bullrushes. Hope I haven't kept Miss Lady waiting?"
+
+The Colonel rose and extended a hand of welcome. A true Kentuckian may
+commit murder and still be a gentleman, but to fail in hospitality is to
+forfeit even his own self-respect.
+
+"My daughter, Mr. Morley, will be out presently," he announced with
+great formality.
+
+"And how are you, Mike?" went on young Morley, stooping to pat the dog;
+"didn't mean to cut you, old fellow, 'pon my word I didn't."
+
+The dog, a shaggy beast, with small, plaintive eyes looking out from a
+fringe of wiry hair, expressed his appreciation of this attention with
+all the emotion a stump of tail would permit.
+
+"It's a bully day!" continued the visitor with enthusiasm, wiping his
+wrists and forehead, and tossing his hair back. "If I weren't going to
+town to-night I'd ask you to take me fishing, Colonel. Hello! What kind
+of a reel is that?"
+
+Now the article which had attracted attention happened to be an
+invention of the Colonel's, something he had been working on for a long
+time, so he could not resist explaining its unique qualities.
+
+"Well, I'll be hanged!" said Morley, turning it over and over
+admiringly. "If that isn't the cleverest thing I ever saw. This little
+screw regulates the slack, doesn't it? Does your legal mind get on to
+that, Wick?"
+
+"It was a great job to get that to fit," said the Colonel, nattered in
+spite of himself. "Took me the best part of a week to puzzle out that
+one point."
+
+"A week!" exclaimed Morley. "It would have taken me months! Oh! here
+she is!" and from the very ardent look that leapt into his face, and the
+alacrity with which he sprang up, it might have been doubted whether his
+mind had been wholly upon the matter under discussion.
+
+Miss Lady greeted him with almost boyish frankness, but there was an
+unmistakable flush under the smooth tan of her cheek that did not escape
+the vigilant eye of the Colonel.
+
+"Here you are, Dad! here you are, Noah!" she said, tossing a small
+package to each; "sandwiches and hard boiled eggs for two."
+
+"Put the salt in for the eggs?" asked the Colonel, having had experience
+with her lunches.
+
+"I believe I did. Open yours and see, Noah. Say, Daddy darling!" she
+swooped down upon him from the rear, slipping an arm about his neck as
+he knelt on the porch to collect his hooks and lines, "you are going to
+let me ride Prince, just this once, aren't you?"
+
+[Illustration: The Colonel leaned back upon his knees and glared at
+Morley.]
+
+The Colonel gasped, partly from strangulation, and partly from
+amazement.
+
+"Prince!" he cried. "Well, I reckon not! That colt's hardly broken to
+the saddle. He threw Jimpson last week."
+
+"Well, I'm not Jimpson. Please, Daddy, just this once."
+
+"If that's the little beast Wick was telling me about," said Morley, "we
+are certainly not going to trust you on him."
+
+The Colonel leaned back upon his knees where he knelt on the porch, and
+glared at Morley.
+
+"Who do you mean by we?"
+
+"The conservative party of which I, for once, am a member. From all I
+can hear of that colt, no girl could handle him."
+
+"You are absolutely mistaken, sir! I taught my daughter to straddle a
+horse before I taught her to walk. Handle him? Of course she can handle
+him! Jimpson!" he roared in conclusion, "put the side-saddle on Prince!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The Cane Run Road lay straight ahead, now white under the full light of
+the sun, now dappled with tiny dancing shadows from the interlaced twigs
+overhead, new clothed in their garb of green. White and purple violets
+peeped from the fence corners, and overhead the birds made busy in the
+branches.
+
+Two young people, flushed and smiling, drew rein and looked at each
+other. In the eyes of each was a challenge.
+
+"I'll race you to the mill!" cried Miss Lady, tugging at her bridle.
+"Don't start 'til I give the word. Now, go!"
+
+Off through the smiling, sunlit fields they dashed, too impetuous and
+young, and gloriously free, to waste a thought on that inexorable wheel
+of life, upon which sooner or later the most irresponsible must break
+their wings. On and on they went, neck to neck, the gallop breaking into
+a run. Down past the blacksmith's, past the old mill which was to have
+been the goal, through the long covered bridge, over the hill and out
+again on the level road where they still kept abreast.
+
+And close upon them, with head up and mane flying, came another steed,
+free, irresponsible, unbridled, invisible. It was Romance, pounding in
+their wake; Romance, whose hoof beats made their pulses dance in unison,
+whose breath upon their cheeks made them laugh for joy in the face of
+the wind.
+
+They were almost to the city now, having reached that slovenly suburb
+that had given its plebeian name to the once aristocratic neighborhood.
+Clouds of dust whirled in their wake, and stones flew right and left
+under the horses' hoofs; men in carts pulled their teams to the side
+of the road to let the mad pair pass; dogs dashed from dark doorways,
+barking furiously.
+
+Suddenly, just as they neared the railroad junction, the sharp whistle
+of an engine sent Prince plunging into the air. Donald rose in his
+stirrups and made a frantic clutch at the horse's head, but even as he
+missed it, he heard the clanging signal for an approaching train and saw
+the gates immediately in front of them descending. Instantly he flung
+himself out of the saddle, and sprang for Prince's head. The horse,
+almost under the nose of the engine, reared frantically, swerved, then
+came to a trembling stand, as Miss Lady deftly loosened her skirt from
+the pommel, and swung herself to the ground.
+
+In a second Don was beside her.
+
+"Are you hurt?" he cried, catching her arm with his free hand and
+looking anxiously into her face.
+
+"Not a bit. Who won?" she asked with a little catch in her voice.
+
+"Lord! You were plucky! If anything had happened to you!" his hand
+tightened on her wrist, and he drew in his breath sharply.
+
+The afternoon freight came lumbering by, and they stood close together
+with the hot breath of the engine in their faces. Her hair blew across
+his face and he could feel her body trembling against his shoulder.
+Neither of them seemed to be aware of the fact that he still held her
+hand, and that the horses were tugging at their respective bridles.
+
+As the train thundered past and the gates lifted, Miss Lady turned
+quickly and began to pin up her loosened hair.
+
+"Pretty narrow shave, Miss," commented a redheaded man with a flag,
+hurrying across the track, and joining an old apple-woman and two small
+boys who constituted an interested audience.
+
+"I seen you a-coming an' would 'a' let you through, only I'm
+a-substitutin' on this job, and wasn't in fer takin' no extry risks."
+
+"Here, boy!" cried Donald, "hold my horse. The girth's broken; I'll have
+to make another hole in the strap."
+
+The word "boy" being a generic term was promptly appropriated by each of
+the youngsters as applying to himself, and a fierce scramble ensued in
+which the larger was victorious.
+
+"Skeeter's it," announced the flagman, a self-constituted umpire. "Git
+out 'er the way there, Chick, and give the gent a chanct to see what
+he's a-doin'."
+
+Chick, a large-headed, small-bodied goblin of a boy, made an
+unintelligible, guttural sound in his throat and remained where he was,
+evidently considering it of paramount importance that _he_ should see
+what the gentleman was doing.
+
+It was with some difficulty that the new hole in the strap was made, and
+to secure the buckle more firmly Don gave it several sharp raps with the
+handle of his riding whip. At the last one the silver knob flew from the
+handle and rolled to the roadside.
+
+In an instant the small boys were after it, the older having deserted
+his post without compunction, when a question of booty was involved.
+They grappled together in the dust of the road, long before they reached
+the prize, and with arms and legs entwined rolled toward it.
+
+Chick was underneath when they arrived, but he loosened his clutch of
+Skeeter's throat, and darted forth a small, grimy hand that closed upon
+the treasure. In an instant Skeeter seized upon the clenched fist, and
+was wrenching it open, when a third party entered the fray.
+
+"The little one got it!" cried Miss Lady indignantly; "he got it first!
+Give it to him this minute!"
+
+"I be damned if I do!" shouted Skeeter, roused to fury by the combat.
+
+"I'll be damned if you don't," said Miss Lady, equally determined.
+
+The skirmish was fierce but short, and by the time Don got to them, Miss
+Lady had restored the spoils to the lawful victor, and was assisting the
+vanquished foe to wipe the dust from his eyes.
+
+"Well, partner," said Donald to Chick, "what have you got to say to the
+young lady for taking your part?"
+
+"He ain't got nothin' to say," said Skeeter glibly. "He's dumb. Nobody
+but me can't understand him. He says thank you, ma'am."
+
+Chick having uttered no sound, it was evident that Skeeter depended upon
+telepathy.
+
+"He's a ash-barrel baby," went on Skeeter, eager to impart information;
+"he ain't got no real folks, and he's been to the Juvenile Court twict;
+onct for hopping freights and onct fer me and him smashin' winders."
+
+All eyes were turned upon the hero, who immediately became absorbed in
+his whip-handle. He was small, and exceedingly thin, and exceedingly
+dirty. The most conspicuous things about him were his large, wistful
+eyes, and his broad smile that showed where his teeth were going to be.
+Across his narrow chest a ragged elbowless coat was hitched together
+by one button, while a pair of bare, spindling legs dwindled away
+respectively into a high black shoe, and a low-cut tan one, both of
+which were well ventilated at the heels.
+
+"I don't believe he's very bad," smiled Miss Lady, catching his chin in
+her hand and turning his face up to hers. "Are you, Chick?"
+
+He made a queer guttural sound in his throat but, his official
+interpreter being by this time absorbed in the horses, was unable to
+make himself understood.
+
+"It must be awful for a boy not to be able to ask questions!" she went
+on, looking down at him, then seeing something in his face that other
+people missed, she suddenly drew him to her and gave him a little
+motherly squeeze.
+
+The ride home was somewhat leisurely, for the accident, slight as it
+was, had sobered the riders, and there was, moreover, a subject under
+discussion that called for considerable earnest expostulation on one
+side, and much tantalizing evasion on the other.
+
+"It all depends upon you," Donald was saying, as they climbed the last
+hill. "Cropsie Decker starts for the coast to-morrow but the steamer
+doesn't sail for ten days. Shall I go or stay?"
+
+"But you were so mad about it two weeks ago, you could scarcely wait to
+start."
+
+"Lots of things can happen in two weeks. Shall I stay?"
+
+"What do your family think about it?"
+
+"My family? Oh, you mean my sister. She doesn't make a habit of losing
+sleep over my affairs. She'd probably say go. I am rather unpopular with
+her just now, because I don't approve of this affair between my niece
+Margery and Fred Dillingham. I fancy she'd be rather relieved to get me
+out of the way. In fact, everybody says go, except Doctor Queerington.
+He is a cousin of ours, used to be my English professor, up at the
+university. He has always harbored the illusion that I can write. Wants
+me to settle down some place in the country and go at it in earnest."
+
+"You don't mean John Jay Queerington, the author?" Miss Lady said
+eagerly. "Is he really your cousin? Daddy went to school to his father,
+and has told me so much about him, that without seeing him, I could
+write a book on the subject."
+
+"Great old chap in his way, an authority on heaven knows how many
+subjects, yet he scarcely makes enough money to take care of his
+children."
+
+"But think of the books he is giving to the world! He told Daddy he was
+on his thirteenth volume!"
+
+"Yes, he swims around most of the time in a sea of declensions,
+conjugations, and syntaxes, in Greek, Latin and English."
+
+"I think he's magnificent!" cried Miss Lady, trying to hold Prince down
+to a walk. "I adore people who do great things and amount to something."
+
+"All of which I suppose is meant to reflect on a poor devil who doesn't
+do things and doesn't amount to anything?"
+
+"I never said so."
+
+"See here," said Donald whimsically, "for two weeks you have been
+getting me _not_ to do things. When I think of all the things I have
+promised you, I can feel my hair turning white. Having polished me off
+on the don'ts, you aren't going to begin on the do's, are you?"
+
+"Indeed I am. Does Doctor Queerington really think you could be a
+writer?"
+
+"He has been after me about it ever since I was a youngster. I'm always
+scribbling at something, but there is nothing in it. Besides," he added
+with a smile, "I'm going to be a farmer."
+
+Miss Lady threw back her head and laughed:
+
+   "He wants to be a farmer
+     And with the farmers stand
+   The hay seed on his forehead
+     And a rake within his hand."
+
+"Oh! Don Morley, one minute it's the Orient, the next it's literature,
+and the next a farm; you don't know what you want!"
+
+"Yes, I do, too," he caught her bridle and brought the horses close
+together. "I know perfectly what I want, and so do you. Haven't I told
+you four times a day for two weeks?"
+
+She looked away to the far horizon where a bank of formidable clouds was
+forming:
+
+"Oh, we all think we want things one day and forget about them the
+next. Life is made up of desires that seem big and vital one minute,
+and little and absurd the next. I guess we get what's best for us in the
+end."
+
+"I haven't so far!" Don said fiercely. "I've gotten what was worst for
+me and I've made the worst of it."
+
+They had turned into the lane now and were walking their horses up to
+the stile where Jimpson was waiting to take them.
+
+"Don't put my mare up," directed Donald. "I've got to ride back to town
+to-night. There's rain in those clouds; I ought to be starting this
+minute."
+
+But his haste was evidently not imperative, for he followed Miss Lady
+through the narrow winding paths, between a tangle of shrubs and vines,
+into the old-fashioned flower garden. The spiraea was just putting out
+its long, feathery plumes of white, and the lilacs nodded white and
+purple in the breeze.
+
+"Here's the first wild rose!" cried Miss Lady, darting to a corner of
+the old stone wall; "the idea of its daring to come out so soon!"
+
+He took the frail little blossom and smiled at it half quizzically:
+"It's funny," he said awkwardly, "your giving me this. You know, it's
+what you made me think of, the first time I saw you,--a wild rose.
+Didn't she, Mike?"
+
+Mike, who had been dreaming all afternoon on the porch, had gotten up
+reluctantly as they passed and followed them. He had a slow, lopsided
+gait, and his tongue dangled from the side of his mouth. It was
+evidently a sacrifice for him to accompany them, but duty was duty.
+
+"You angel dog! Come here to your Missus!" commanded Miss Lady, as she
+and Donald dropped down in the old barrel-stave hammock, that had swung
+beneath the lilacs since the Colonel was a boy.
+
+But Mike ambled past her, and after snuggling up to Don with a great
+show of intimacy lay down at his feet.
+
+"I'm glad somebody loves me," Donald said.
+
+"It's your riding boots, Mike likes. He never had a chance to taste tan
+shoe polish before!"
+
+"What do you like me for?"
+
+"Me? Who said I did?"
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I like tan boots, too. Why didn't you tell me my hair had
+tumbled down again?"
+
+"Because you are so beautiful, with it like that, Miss Lady--"
+
+"Now, Don, if you begin again I shall go straight in the house. What did
+you mean by saying you had gotten what was worst for you, and you had
+made the worst of it?"
+
+"Oh, the way I've been brought up. You see my sister took me when I was
+a baby, and I guess I was an awful nuisance to her. She liked to travel,
+and kept it up a good while even after Margery was born. I grew up in
+hotels and on steamers and trains, going to school wherever we
+happened to be staying long enough; sometimes in France, sometimes in
+Switzerland, sometimes in America. I remember one Christmas when I was
+about six, we were in a hotel in Paris. My nurse put me to bed early so
+she could go out with her sweetheart, and told me there wasn't any Santa
+Claus, so I wouldn't stay awake watching for him. I hate that woman to
+this day! I can remember the big, lonesome room, and the red curtains,
+and the crystal chandelier and the way I cried because there wasn't any
+Santa Claus, and because I didn't have a sweetheart!"
+
+"Poor little chap! It was a mother you wanted."
+
+"Perhaps. Sister was good to me. But she didn't understand me; she never
+has. She has always given me too much of everything, advice included."
+
+"But since you have been grown, you've had lots of time to--to--take
+things into your own hands."
+
+"Well, I did for a while. I managed to squeeze through the university,
+then I went into the shops and had a bully time for five months, but it
+made no end of a row! Sister felt that after all she had done for me, I
+oughtn't to go dead against her wishes, and I guess she was right. Then
+I went into the bank and was beginning to get the hang of things, when
+she had a nervous collapse and was ordered to Egypt for the winter. My
+brother-in-law couldn't take her, so he sent me."
+
+"But you stayed longer than she did."
+
+"Yes, I played around on the Riviera for a while."
+
+"And you have been home, how long?"
+
+"Three months. Honestly, I meant to buckle down to something right
+off, but Cropsie Decker got this offer to go to the Orient for
+the _Herald-Post_, and asked me to go along. I was keen about it
+until--until I came down here."
+
+They were both silent for a while, watching a spider that was exploring
+Don's boot-lace.
+
+"It all seems so footless now. What I want is a house of my own, a home,
+I mean. I never had much of that sort of thing--I'm not quite sure I
+knew what a home was until I saw Thornwood."
+
+"Isn't it dear?" asked Miss Lady with a loving look over her shoulder at
+the old house silhouetted against the sky. "I could kiss every brick of
+it, I love it so."
+
+"I wish I didn't have to go back to town tonight!" burst out Donald
+inconsequentially. "I wish I never had to go back to it!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Oh, for lots of reasons. I'm a different fellow down here in the
+country, with things to do, and the right sort of things to think about,
+and--and you! You see," he smiled without looking up, "I'm not much good
+in town."
+
+"How do you mean?" asked Miss Lady, with disconcerting frankness.
+
+Donald shrugged his broad shoulders: "Oh! I don't know. I get into
+things before I know it. This Eastern trip, now; it sounded great when I
+said I'd go, Cropsie is a regular bird, the best fellow in the world to
+go on such a lark with, but--"
+
+Miss Lady shot a glance at the handsome, boyish, irresponsible face
+beside her.
+
+"Don't go, Don!" she whispered impulsively; "stay here and buy your
+farm!"
+
+"You mean it!" he demanded, seizing her hands. "You want me to stay?"
+
+The blood surged into her cheeks, but she did not withdraw her hands.
+Into her eager, luminous eyes had leapt the response that had been held
+in abeyance all afternoon.
+
+"If I stay," he pressed hotly, "if I settle down and behave myself, and
+make good, you'll promise me--"
+
+"Jimpson!" thundered a familiar voice from the road. "That
+good-for-nothing, lazy nigger, why don't he come help me with these
+things? Jimpson!"
+
+"I'll tell him, Dad!" called Miss Lady, springing from the hammock.
+
+"But wait!" pleaded Donald, "just a minute. I've got to beat that
+storm to town, and tell Decker the trip is off. But I'll be back in the
+morning! Perhaps to breakfast. Oh, my darling, I am so happy! Say you
+love me! Say it!"
+
+Old Mike stirred in his slumbers, then opened one eye. It was evidently
+time for him to take some action. When two young people are standing
+very close with clasped hands and love-lit eyes in the dim fragrance
+of an old garden, even a dog of a chaperon knows that it is time to
+interfere! With great presence of mind he discovered an imaginary
+squirrel in the hedge directly beside them, and set up such a furious
+barking that Miss Lady looked around and laughed. For a second she
+stood, her head thrown back, a teasing, half-shy, half-daring look on
+her face, then she dropped a swift kiss on the hand that clasped hers,
+and without a word went flying crimson-cheeked up the lilac-bordered
+path.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Donald Morley rode back to town through the coming storm, in that
+particular state of ecstasy that mortals are permitted to enjoy but once
+in a lifetime. Not that falling in love was a novel sensation; on the
+contrary a varied experience had made him agreeably familiar with all
+the symptoms. But this, he assured himself with passionate vehemence,
+was something altogether and absolutely different. Between now and that
+morning when he had idly ridden out to Wicker's in search of a farm, lay
+a sea as wide as Destiny!
+
+There in the country he had unexpectedly come upon his fate and with
+characteristic impetuosity had pursued and overtaken it. Other girls may
+have stirred his heart, but it had remained for a wild little pagan
+of the woods to stir his soul. He had laid bare to her the most secret
+places of his being, had confessed his sins, and received absolution.
+From this time on the frivolities of youth lay behind him, and ambition
+sat upon his brow. He would cut out the trip to the Orient, buy a farm
+and settle down to work as if he hadn't a penny in the world. Once the
+Colonel was made to recognize his worth, the gates of Paradise would be
+open!
+
+He thought of the home he would build for her, and the flowers
+that would encompass it, of the horses and dogs they would have and
+perhaps--The memory of her face as she clasped Chick in the road flashed
+over him, and he straightened his shoulders suddenly and smiled almost
+tremulously. Yes, he'd be worthy of her, from this time forward life
+should hold no higher privilege!
+
+It was after seven o'clock by the time he reached the Junction, and
+heavy mutterings of thunder could be heard in the west.
+
+"Does this street go through to the boulevard?" he asked of a man,
+pointing with his knobless whip.
+
+The lank person addressed removed his weight from the telegraph pole
+that had supported it and sauntered forward. As he did so Donald
+recognized the red-headed umpire of the afternoon.
+
+"No, sir, Captain," he said, "it do not. This here is Bean Alley. These
+city politicians has got their own way of running streets; they take a
+pencil you see and draw a line along the property of folks that can pay
+for streets. The balance of us sets in mud puddles." The man evidently
+found some difficulty in expressing himself without the assistance of
+profanity. There were blanks left between the words, which he supplied
+mentally with compressed lips and lifting of shaggy brows, that served
+as an effective substitute. His conversation printed would resemble
+these grammatical exercises, struggled with an early youth, in which
+"a----dog----attacked a----boy with a----stick."
+
+But his suppressed eloquence was lost upon his hearer, for Donald
+had become absorbed in a theatrical poster, which represented a
+preternaturally slim young lady, poised on a champagne bottle, coyly
+surveying an admiring world through the extended fingers of a small
+black gloved hand. It was "La Florine," whose charms he had heard
+recounted times without number by Mr. Cropsie Decker.
+
+This evening, the poster announced, "La Florine" would for the first
+time in any American city, perform her incomparable dance, "The Serpent
+of the Nile."
+
+Don had consulted his watch, and made a lightning calculation as to the
+time in which he could get a bite of supper and reach the Gayety, before
+he remembered that he was a reformed character. Then he sternly withdrew
+his gaze from the lady who peeped through her fingers in the dusk,
+and brought it back to the red-headed person, who had continued his
+conversation with unbroken volubility.
+
+"... and she says to me," he was concluding "'Mr. Flathers,' she says,
+'it's a privelege to help such as you. A man what's been in the gutter
+times without number, and bore the awful horrors of delirium tremins
+four times and still can feel the stirrings of Christianity in his
+bosom.'"
+
+Donald looked at him and laughed. Here was evidently a fellow sinner.
+
+"So you've straightened up, have you? How does it feel?"
+
+Mr. Flathers cast a sidelong glance upward as if to size up the handsome
+young gentleman on horseback.
+
+"Mighty depressin'," he confessed, "with a thirst that's been
+accumulatin' for weeks and weeks, and a sick wife, and a adobted child
+that ain't spoke a word for seven years. But I'm restin' on the Lord. He
+well pervide."
+
+"Oh, you'll get along!" said Don, feeling uncommonly lenient toward his
+fellow men. "Here's a dollar if that will help you out a bit."
+
+"It will," said Mr. Flathers reassuringly; "it undoubtedly will. I got
+much to be thankful for, I know that. Fer instance I never was a poor
+relation! That's more than lots of men kin say! The fact are, there
+ain't airy one in my whole family connection what's got any more 'n I
+have!"
+
+The shower that had been threatening began now in earnest, and Donald
+started toward town at a brisk canter, but before he had gone two
+squares the rain was driving in sheets across the street, and he was
+obliged to dismount and seek shelter in the doorway of an isolated
+building that stood at the end of the common. It was a double door with
+the upper parts in colored glass, on which was boldly lettered,
+
+The CANT-PASS-IT SALOON.
+
+In one of the windows a placard informed the famishing residents of
+Billy-goat Hill that their thirst might not be assuaged until after
+twelve o'clock on Sunday night.
+
+As Donald stood in the doorway, an automobile turned the corner and
+came to a stop, the lights from the lamps shining on the wet street, and
+throwing everything outside their radius into sudden darkness.
+
+A man got out of the machine and ran for shelter. He was coughing, and
+held his collar close about his throat.
+
+"Why, hello, Dillingham," said Morley, recognizing him. "How did you get
+out here?"
+
+"Joy-riding," said Dillingham with a curl of his lip. "Tried to make a
+short cut, and got marooned. What are you doing here?"
+
+"I've been out in the country for a couple of weeks. Got caught in the
+shower. What's the matter? Are you sick?"
+
+Dillingham was leaning against the door jamb, shivering. He was a short,
+sallow, delicate-looking young fellow with self-explanatory puffs under
+his somewhat prominent eyes.
+
+"Chilled to the bone," he chattered. "I've got to get something to warm
+me up. Is this a saloon?"
+
+"Yes, but it's closed. Won't be open until midnight."
+
+Mr. Dillingham made a sweeping condemnation of a city administration
+that would countenance such a proceeding, then set his wits to work to
+evade the law.
+
+"Whose joint is this, anyhow?" he asked, glancing up. "Sheeley's? Why,
+of course. I've been out here to prize fights. He lives somewhere around
+here. Ugh! but I'm cold. I'll be a corpse this time next week if I don't
+head off this chill. Let's look him up and get a drink."
+
+Donald hesitated to spring the news of his reformation upon one who was
+already in a weakened condition. He assured himself that he would refuse
+when the time came. In the meanwhile no reason presented itself for
+refusing to assist his friend in quest of a life-preserver.
+
+"Sheeley used to live in one of those shacks over there. It's letting up
+a bit, suppose we go over?" proposed Dillingham, shaking the water out
+of his cap.
+
+"Been out to the house to-day?" asked Donald as they splashed through
+the mud.
+
+"Just came from there. The truth is Margery and I have fixed things up
+at last. Any congratulations?"
+
+"To be sure," said Donald, extending a wet hand, but frowning into the
+darkness. "Have you told my sister?"
+
+"Mrs. Sequin?" Dillingham smiled with superior amusement. "I guess
+she didn't have to be told. I imagine she thought of it before we did.
+Rather keen on me, you know, from the start."
+
+Donald drew in his breath but said nothing. Had it not been true, how he
+would have enjoyed punching Dill's head!
+
+"You get off to the Orient this week, I suppose," went on Dillingham.
+"Lucky devil! Decker asked me to go along. If it hadn't been for the
+paternal grandparent I'd have gone in a minute, but he put his foot
+down. When do you sail?"
+
+"I've given up the trip. I'm going to buy a farm out near the Wickers',
+and get down to work."
+
+Dillingham whistled incredulously:
+
+"Yes, I see you doing it! You are counting on pulling off the Derby, I
+suppose?"
+
+"No, I'm not going to enter my horse."
+
+"What! Why Lickety-Split could win that race in a walk. All the crowd
+say you stand to win. Here, this is the shanty; at least it's where he
+used to live."
+
+A bright light streamed from the uncurtained window of a small cottage,
+revealing a family group within. A fat, smiling woman in curl papers,
+with a baby in her arms, and six youngsters in varying stages of Sabbath
+cleanliness, hung upon the words of a man who sat in a large, plush
+self-rocker, and read from a highly colored picture book. In the head
+of the family Dillingham recognized Richard Sheeley, ex-pugilist, and
+present proprietor of the Cant-Pass-It.
+
+"Well, if it ain't Mr. Dillingham!" exclaimed Sheeley, throwing open
+the door in answer to their knock. "Soaked through, ain't you? Little
+somethin' to warm you up? Sure. Just come in and wait 'til I git on my
+shoes and find an umbrella and I'll go over with you. Don't keep a drop
+here," he added in a whisper, behind a hand so large that he evidently
+regarded it as sound proof. "Missus won't stand fer it, 'count of the
+kids, eh?"
+
+"That's him, Ma, the one I was telling you about," Richard Sheeley,
+Jr.,--yclept "Skeeter"--tugged at his mother's sleeve, nodding his
+head at Donald, who was making love to the smallest and shyest of the
+daughters of the house.
+
+"She ain't as meek as she looks!" Mrs. Sheeley was saying, as she tried
+to get the child from behind her skirts. "She's got her popper's temper
+along with his smartness. They ain't either one of them got a grain of
+sense when they git mad. I never seen a child with such a temper, did
+you, Popper?"
+
+But Sheeley did not heed her; he was busy doing the honors to one he
+evidently considered an honored guest.
+
+"Sit right down here, Mr. Dillingham, lemme take the book out of the
+chair. I was just reading to the Missus and the kids a book Skeeter
+brought home from Sunday School, all about Dan'l and the lions' den.
+Tall tale that, Mr. Dillingham. About one of the raciest animal articles
+I ever come acrost."
+
+When they were ready to go, Mrs. Sheeley followed them anxiously to the
+door.
+
+"It's a awful stormy night, Popper; you ain't going to stay, are you?"
+
+"Not long. I'll be back to finish the story. So long, kids!" He swung
+himself down the wooden steps, between his two well-groomed companions,
+looking back now and then at the bright, open doorway, where the smiling
+fat woman stood surrounded by half a dozen tow-headed children.
+
+Just as they reached the saloon, the storm, which had evidently only
+paused for breath, broke in all its fury. The thunder rolled nearer and
+flashes of lightning pierced the darkness.
+
+"Here! The side door!" shouted Sheeley.
+
+"Wait till I strike a match. I'll take the umbrella. Go right up-stairs,
+if you don't mind. I want you to see the improvements I been making.
+There ain't a saloon this side the city limits that's got the 'quipment
+for sparring matches mine has."
+
+"Get busy with some whisky in the meanwhile," reminded Dillingham
+sharply; "and I say, can't you make a fire somewhere? I'm chattering
+like an idiot."
+
+"Sure I can. There's a stove up there, and a bottle or two of extra fine
+liquor. Jes' step right up."
+
+Half way up the ill-lighted stairs they paused. Above the wind and the
+rain, a curious sound had come from below as if someone had stumbled
+against something.
+
+"Who is that?" Sheeley demanded sharply, leaning over the banister and
+peering down into the gloom.
+
+No answer came, but a draught of wind blew in from somewhere, swaying
+the gas-jet.
+
+"Oh! it's a window that's left open," said Sheeley. "That fool
+bartender! I'll just go down and fasten it."
+
+The lock proved stubborn, and it was with some difficulty that he forced
+it into place. Meanwhile the two young men had lit the gas in the large
+upper room and were inspecting the elevated stage where boxers were wont
+to engage surreptitiously in the noble art of self-defense.
+
+"Take yours straight I believe, Mr. Dillingham?" said Sheeley, rejoining
+them; "an' yer gentleman friend?"
+
+"Nothing for me," said Morley with unnecessary firmness. "I'll just wait
+a second until the storm lets up, then be off to town."
+
+"Do any boxing these days, Dick?" asked Dillingham, pouring himself a
+second drink of whisky, as he hovered over the newly kindled fire.
+
+"Oh! I don the mitts occasionally to gratify me friends. My long suit
+these days is faro; more money in it."
+
+Donald, standing at the window, staring out at the wild night, drummed
+impatiently on the pane.
+
+"Hurry up, Dill," he said. "I don't want to keep my mare standing so
+long in the rain."
+
+"Your mare be hanged," said Dillingham; "just wait ten minutes until I
+get thawed out, and I'll go with you."
+
+Donald had waited ten minutes for Dill before, but never with the
+present sense of responsibility, born of his new connection with the
+family. He knew that his only chance of getting him home was to humor
+him.
+
+How the wind whistled across the window! He wondered what Miss Lady
+was doing? Was she sitting by the table in the cozy living-room at
+Thornwood, with the lamplight on her hair? Was she at the harpsichord,
+singing to the Colonel? Was she standing, as he was standing, at the
+window, peering out into the wild night, and thinking,--and longing--?
+
+"What's the matter with a little game of poker?" asked Sheeley, lightly
+running a deck of cards up the length of his arm and reversing them with
+a deftness that spoke of long familiarity.
+
+"Great idea!" exclaimed Dillingham expansively. "Just pass that bottle,
+will you? What's that, Morley? Haven't got time? What in thunder's the
+matter with you to-night?"
+
+Donald retorted, with great dignity, that nothing in thunder was the
+matter with him, except that he wanted to get back to town.
+
+"Better not start with it storming like this," urged Sheeley, as a crash
+of thunder shook the windows. "It'll let up soon."
+
+"Tell you what I'll do!" said Dillingham, putting an arm across Donald's
+shoulder affectionately, and speaking a trifle unsteadily. "If you'll
+play a couple of games I'll go home with you--You ought to be willing to
+do that for a fellow that's going to be your uncle. I mean your nephew."
+
+"And you'll go the minute the rain lets up?"
+
+"Yes, if you'll play with us."
+
+Donald stood irresolute, watching Dillingham's thin, unsteady fingers
+shuffle the cards. He must get him home somehow, for Margery's sake.
+Dill never knew when to stop, he was good for the night unless somebody
+intervened.
+
+Sheeley caught his eye and nodded significantly.
+
+"All right!" said Donald, dropping into the vacant chair. "Only two
+games remember! No whisky, thanks. What's the ante?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+When Miss Lady had championed the cause of the oppressed that afternoon,
+she had unknowingly spoiled a criminal in the making. Chick Flathers,
+at the advanced age of eleven, had been so impressed by the injustice of
+social conditions that he had dedicated himself to a life of crime. He
+had already achieved two appearances in the Juvenile Court, and two days
+in the Detention Home. He was now fully decided to be a burglar.
+
+To be sure there were extenuating circumstances for Chick. It was
+unquestionably a handicap to have opened his eyes for the first time in
+an ash barrel, and in Mr. Flathers' ash barrel at that. The transfer in
+a patrol wagon to an incubator in the City Hospital had been the next
+move, hence back to Mr. Flathers' who, inasmuch as it was _his_ ash
+barrel, felt called upon by Providence to adopt the foundling.
+
+The next misfortune that befell him was in being dropped out of the
+window on his head, during one of Maria Flathers' absent-minded moments.
+This apparently did not affect his head, but in time it seriously
+affected his speech. The fact that he had so much to say, without
+being able to say it, resulted in a dammed-up current that sometimes
+overflowed in temper and viciousness. He talked a great deal, but nobody
+was able, or took the pains to try, to understand him. That is, not
+until Skeeter Sheeley gave him his nickname and became his official
+interpreter.
+
+Their friendship dated from a memorable day when Skeeter had for the
+first time heard of the incubator incident, and had promptly accosted
+the Flathers' foundling as "Chicken." The insult had been instantly
+resented in a battle so fierce and so bloody, that the details of it
+became historic in the annals of Billy-goat Hill. Chick, though of
+lighter weight, and feeble muscle, was armed with righteous indignation.
+He observed no rules, but fought with arms, legs, teeth and nails. The
+odds were against him however, and he had to be assisted from the field,
+a vanquished hero.
+
+From that time on, by one of those mysterious laws that govern boydom,
+the two were inseparable companions, waging open war on all adjoining
+neighborhoods, engaging in predatory expeditions in their own, and, when
+interest in life flagged, fighting each other.
+
+Skeeter interpreted all that Chick said, interpreted it freely, and
+with imagination, and Chick apparently considered himself honor bound
+to accept the interpretation and stand for it, no matter how far it came
+from expressing his meaning.
+
+Eleven years of wickedness had thus been swaggered through when Chick
+suddenly and unexpectedly fell in love. It was when the beautiful young
+lady at the railroad crossing had bent above him like a succoring angel,
+that he had been forced to change his classification of the human race.
+Hitherto it had been divided into grown people and children, henceforth
+it was divided into men and women!
+
+All that Sunday afternoon he went about in a dream. He could not get
+over the fact that she had taken his part, that she had put her arm
+around him, and smiled at him. Once or twice when nobody was looking, he
+put his very dirty hand on his cheek and felt the spot where her fingers
+had rested.
+
+But this new and tender emotion was not allowed to interfere with the
+special project that Chick had in mind. It was a project so colossal in
+its nature, that not even Skeeter was to be admitted to the secret. For
+six weeks Chick had been the victim of a gaming system, and to-night he
+was to take his revenge.
+
+At supper time Skeeter recognized a convention of civilization and
+repaired to the bosom of his family, but Chick being accountable to
+nobody, and recognizing no conventions, stole a couple of apples from a
+passing cart, and repaired to the dump heap to wait for the dark.
+
+He had not long to wait, for great black clouds were covering the sky,
+and he could no longer see the houses at the end of the alley. Carefully
+storing his apple cores in his pocket for future trades, he picked his
+way over the tin cans and debris, until he reached the Junction. Here he
+hesitated. It was there that he and Skeeter had tussled for the whip. It
+was here that the young lady had come to his rescue, and said she didn't
+believe he was so very bad. Gee! but she was a pretty young lady, and
+her hand was so soft, and her voice--
+
+Chick rammed his hands in his pockets and pulled his cap over his eyes.
+This was no way for a cove to be feeling when he had a job to do! With
+watchful eyes for passers-by, he slipped through an opening in the
+fence, and entered the switch-yard. When he emerged he staggered under
+the weight of a crowbar which he vainly tried to hide under his ragged
+jacket.
+
+Just at the intersection of Bean Alley and the switch-yard, where the
+dusk banked up densely in the corners, he stopped again. He was watching
+his chance to get across the wide common, undetected. Twice he started,
+and twice he shrank back and flattened himself against the wall as some
+one passed.
+
+If, to the casual observer, Chick was but a dirty, ragged little boy,
+undersized and underfed, and rather frightened, to himself at least he
+was a bold desperado, about to avenge himself for a wrong committed.
+
+Thunder muttered ominously, and a drop of rain fell on his face as he
+skirted the common, and reached the big, dark saloon at the cross-roads.
+Skirting the side wall, he crept to the rear, and felt for the open
+window which he had discovered earlier in the day. It was a low window
+and easy of access, and he lost no time in climbing in.
+
+The passage was in utter darkness, but he felt his way along the wall
+until he reached a door. Here he fumbled for the knob and opened it. A
+street lamp outside threw a dim, wavering light into the room, revealing
+the long bar with its shining fixtures. Chick put down his crowbar
+and tremblingly removed his coat. According to the moving pictures
+of criminals, that was the first move. Then he resolutely grasped his
+weapon and with thumping heart approached his enemy.
+
+It appeared a very innocent enemy as it stood there in the half light,
+announcing in printed letters across its face, that seven out of every
+ten persons who put a nickel in the slot, received a prize in money.
+But Chick knew that it lied! Had it not eaten up his nickels week
+after week? Had he not worked for it, fought for it, and bled for it,
+confidently believing that the prize would be his? And there it stood
+gorged with his precious nickels, mysterious and fascinating still, but
+treacherous through and through!
+
+In a blaze of wrath Chick dealt it a sounding blow with the crowbar,
+then crouched in terror for what might happen. There was no sound but
+the dash of rain against the windows, and the heavy rumble of thunder
+overhead. Once more Chick grasped his heavy weapon and began the attack
+in earnest. Blow followed blow, as fast as his small arms could swing
+the crowbar. Suddenly a spring seemed to snap, and out poured a stream
+of money that rolled about his feet, and off into the farthest corners
+of the room.
+
+Chick crouched on the floor, overcome by his exertions and the success
+of his venture. Wealth was within his reach, more wealth than he had
+ever dreamed of! Not unintelligible gold and silver, but dear, familiar
+nickels, whose purchasing power he knew. But no thought of appropriation
+crossed his mind as he knelt there, fingering the glittering pile. He
+was carefully counting out his rightful share, the eleven nickels that
+the slot machine had stolen from him, and his hesitation came from the
+fact that he was trying to select the shiniest ones!
+
+Having gotten what he came for, he once more shouldered his crowbar,
+and let himself out into the dark passage. Here he stopped in terror!
+Something was snorting and hissing without, something that sounded as if
+it _might_ be the Devil!
+
+In Chick's creed there was but one affirmation. He believed absolutely
+in the Devil. He knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was red,
+and cloven-footed and that his tail ended in a hard, sharp, spike, like
+Mammy Flathers' ice-pick. He also knew that when he breathed, it was in
+groans and hisses, such as he was hearing at the present moment. Chick's
+hair would have risen on his head, it wanted to, but it was not long
+enough.
+
+For a moment he stood breathless, then he drew a sigh of relief. It
+wasn't anything but an automobile after all! He tiptoed to a window
+and peered out. The lamps from the machine threw long lights across the
+shining wet street, but nothing else was visible.
+
+After a long while he heard voices at the side door. Somebody was coming
+into the saloon! He could hear the doorknob turning, and a key in the
+latch. He started back to the barroom, then remembering a little closet
+under the steps where he and Skeeter used to play, he felt along the
+wall. There it was! And just in time for him to stumble in and pull the
+door to, leaving enough crack to breathe through, in case his breath
+ever came back.
+
+The side door was flung open, and the sputter of a match was followed by
+the feeble light from a gas-jet at the end of the passage.
+
+"Here, I'll take the umbrella!" said a voice he dreaded next to the
+Devil's. It was Sheeley; he would go into the barroom, and discover the
+wreckage of the slot-machine! Chick was beginning to feel the handcuffs
+on his wrists, when he became aware of ascending footsteps overhead.
+What were they going up-stairs for? Was it a sparring match? Forgetting
+his precarious position he leaned forward to listen, upsetting a box on
+the shelf beside him.
+
+"Who's that?" came in Sheeley's fiercest tones from the stairway above,
+and Chick cowered back into the dark with chattering teeth. Then he
+heard him say something about the window, and followed the sound of his
+heavy footsteps down the stairs and up again.
+
+Now was his chance to escape while they were up-stairs. With utmost
+caution he pushed open the closet door, and on hands and knees began his
+perilous journey to the window. It was at that moment that he decided
+positively that he would not be a burglar. A plumber took fewer risks,
+and made more money. Once at the window he was unable to budge the
+lock. Standing on the sill, whimpering with fear, he wrestled with it
+frantically, bruising his fingers, and tearing his nails, but he could
+not move it. Then he tried the door but Sheeley had evidently locked it
+and taken out the key.
+
+A blinding flash of lightning sent him scurrying back to his
+hiding-place, where he sank on the floor, shivering and cringing. Nearer
+and nearer roared the thunder, and the wind seemed as anxious to get
+into the house as he was eager to get out of it. Gradually his arms and
+legs ceased jerking, his head relaxed against an empty box, he laid his
+hand against the cheek that had been patted and forgot his troubles in
+sleep.
+
+When he awoke he heard loud voices overhead. At first he supposed he was
+at home, and that the voice was only Mr. Flathers enjoying one of his
+periodical backslidings. But Dick Sheeley's voice recalled him; Dick
+was mad at somebody, and when Dick got mad he fought. Not a boy on
+Billy-goat Hill but would have faced death to see the ex-prizefighter
+in a row. It was a distinction that placed one at a bound in the front
+ranks of juvenile aristocracy.
+
+Chick crept from his hiding-place and listened. The voices grew louder
+and more excited. Drawn as by a magnet he slipped up the stairs step by
+step. At the top was an off-set in the hall, a corner in which he could
+hide, unseen from the open door beyond. There he lay on his stomach
+and wriggled forward until his eye was on a line with the crack in the
+half-open door.
+
+Three men were sitting around a card table, two of them with their backs
+to him; and Dick facing them with his jaw set and his teeth showing. All
+three were talking at once, and Dick was the most excited of the three.
+
+"You didn't have no ace of spades to show down! You discarded it. You
+know you did, you--cheat!" He had risen and was shaking his fist in the
+face of the thin young man.
+
+"It's a lie, you common cur!" cried the other wildly, but before the
+words were well out of his mouth, Sheeley's mighty right arm had shot
+out across the table and struck him in the face.
+
+"Sheeley! For God's sake, don't you see Dillingham's drunk?" protested
+the other young man whom Chick recognized as his friend of the
+afternoon.
+
+"Drunk or no drunk, he can't call me a liar!" yelled Sheeley, and the
+next instant Chick, with his heart pounding madly between him and the
+floor, was in his element. It was a fight! A real one, in which the hero
+of Billy-goat Hill held his own against two opponents.
+
+The tumblers and the whisky bottles went first, the liquor dripping
+from the table to floor; then a chair was overturned, and a window-pane
+shattered to the ground below.
+
+The thin young man hadn't sense to stop; again and again he flung his
+insults at the infuriated Sheeley, impatiently fighting off the efforts
+of his companion who sought to part them. Suddenly Chick saw him step
+back, while the others were grappling, and fumble in his rear pocket.
+He saw him steady himself against the door jamb, not four feet away,
+and raise a pistol. There was a sharp report, a smothered groan, then a
+heavy fall.
+
+The man with the pistol flung it through the broken window, then
+staggered to the table where he sank down with his head on his arms.
+
+What had happened in the corner, Chick could not tell, but in a few
+minutes _his_ young man came swiftly into his line of vision, and shook
+the limp figure half lying on the table.
+
+"Get up, Dill! For God's sake! Are you too drunk to crank up your
+machine? As soon as I can get that blood stopped I must go for a
+doctor."
+
+The dazed eyes of the drunken man looked at him in helpless terror!
+
+"I can't stay here!"
+
+[Illustration: There was a sharp report, a smothered groan, then a heavy
+fall.]
+
+"You've got to stay here! Can't you see you are in no fix to run a
+machine? Brace up, you idiot; we've got to _do_ something and do it
+quick. Go down and try to crank up. Here's the door key! I'll be there
+as soon as I can get the blood stopped!"
+
+The man at the table staggered to the door, passed through the hall, so
+close to Chick that he almost trod upon him, then went swaying down the
+stairs, steadying himself by wall and banister. Chick heard the side
+door slam, and the chug of the machine, then realized that it was
+turning the corner.
+
+The young man in the room rushed frantically to the window and leaned
+out, then he said something savage under his breath, and plunged out
+into the passage and headlong down the steps. Chick heard the side door
+bang again, and a moment later the gallop of a horse.
+
+Then everything was still, but the noisy beating of his heart that
+threatened to burst its confines. Through the crack he saw the table
+with its broken tumblers, and the whisky drip, dripping on the floor; he
+saw the chairs overturned, and the gas-jet flickering in the wind from
+the broken window.
+
+The thing he could not see was what lay in the corner, the huddled-up,
+blood-stained hulk of a something for which a smiling, fat woman and six
+tow-headed youngsters were waiting across the common. Chick crawled to
+the head of the stairs, and as he reached the top step his hand touched
+a hard object. He picked it up and held it to the light, and as he did
+so, the joy that often blossoms on the brink of tragedy was his for a
+moment. It was the riding whip whose handle he had fallen heir to that
+afternoon!
+
+Down the steps, through the door and out into the rain-soaked night he
+sped; across the common, through the switch-yard, and down the narrow,
+noisome darkness of Bean Alley. Over a ram-shackled fence, and up a
+dilapidated porch he clambered like a cat, until he reached the small
+loft in the Flathers' two-roomed mansion which he called home.
+
+Here the hardened criminal, the breaker of laws, and of slot machines,
+the would-be burglar, threw himself upon an old mattress, and with two
+grimy fists in his eyes sobbed out his heart to the rafters above.
+
+It was not repentance for his sins, neither was it terror of the secret
+that was locked behind his inarticulate lips, although both of them had
+a part. It was because a beautiful young lady had taken his part, and
+put her arms about him, and refused to believe that he was as bad as
+Skeeter Sheeley said he was.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+During the rest of the week the rainstorm, that had started all the
+trouble, continued to hover ominously, breaking forth day after day in
+fierce, petulant showers. Out at Thornwood the aspect was most dreary;
+the low-lying ground in front of the house was under water for a quarter
+of a mile, trees, limp and draggled, stood disconsolate in an unfamiliar
+lake, the bridge below the dam was washed away, and horses going to the
+creek for water were constantly being caught by the current, and having
+to be rescued by ropes. In the flower garden dirty-faced little blossoms
+lay in the mud, vines trailed across the paths, all the fragrance and
+color seemed to be soaked out of everything by those continuous, pelting
+showers.
+
+Within the house it was not much gayer. The front hall, with its steep,
+narrow stairway, and floor-covering of highly ornate landscape oilcloth,
+was in a perpetual twilight. An occasional glint from white woodwork, or
+the gold molding of a picture, strove in vain to dispel the gloom. The
+parlor, at the right of the hall, was sepulchral with its window cracks
+stuffed with paper, and the shutters securely closed. To be sure, the
+living-room on the other side of the hall did its best to look cheerful,
+but even that comfortable spot with its low ceiling and battered
+mahogany furniture, its high cupboards flanking the wide, stone
+fireplace, and its friendly litter of every-day necessities, was not
+equal to the occasion.
+
+One afternoon when the Colonel came in from the chicken yard where
+he and Uncle Jimpson had constituted themselves a salvage corps, he
+surprised Miss Lady sitting in the dusk on the floor before the empty
+fireplace, with suspicious traces of tears upon her face.
+
+"Make a light," blustered the Colonel; "you mustn't sit around in the
+dark like this, you know. Where's my pipe?"
+
+She sprang up and found the missing article, and with a great show of
+cheerfulness lit the lamp and held the match out for him to light his
+pipe.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked the Colonel; "sort of trembly, ain't you?"
+
+"Me? Watch me!" She held the match very straight and very tight, then
+as it wavered, blew it out and dropped it down his sleeve. "There's some
+mail over there on the table for you, Daddy dear. Noah brought it down
+from town in his buggy."
+
+She said it very carelessly, and even enumerated the contents as she
+handed it to him:
+
+"Two circulars, a letter from the seed man, the _Confederate Veteran_
+and the newspapers."
+
+"Nothing for you?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+Under his scrutiny Miss Lady's eyes fell, and she turned abruptly to the
+window, while the Colonel, mouth open, pipe in hand, watched her.
+
+He had never seen his girl like this in her life! What business had her
+lip to tremble in the middle of a sentence, or her eyes to brim with
+sudden tears, making her turn her back on her adoring Dad, and busy
+herself with the window curtain?
+
+Of course it is upsetting to have a friend, whom you have been seeing
+daily for a couple of weeks, get into trouble such as young Donald
+Morley had fallen into. It made even the Colonel feel bad, he didn't
+deny it. But what business had the kitten to be taking it all so to
+heart? Why was she called upon to champion this young stranger's cause
+so hotly, to resent every insinuation, and to contend! passionately that
+he would be able to explain everything? Morley had not explained. Three
+days had dragged past and nothing had been heard from him. Nothing
+probably would be heard from him! The Colonel wanted to feel victorious,
+but he did! not. Instead, he cast anxious and sympathetic glances at the
+back of his daughter's head, and surreptitiously wiped his small snub
+nose on the corner of his red-bordered handkerchief.
+
+He had a good mind to give up his trip to Virginia! To be sure, he
+had looked forward for months to celebrating Founders' Day at the old
+college. If it weren't for seeing all the old boys, he would stay at
+home. By George! the little girl came first; he would stay at home
+anyhow!
+
+"Those gloves," he burst out by way of breaking the news; "the thin ones
+I told you to mend. Well, you needn't mend them."
+
+"I haven't," said Miss Lady, "but I'll do it now."
+
+"Needn't mind. Won't need 'em. Fact is, I ain't going."
+
+"Yes you are," said Miss Lady, adding inconsequently, "Why not?"
+
+"Needed here at home. Roads washed out, everything out of fix. Decided
+to stay at home." Miss Lady wheeled from the window where she had been
+tracing the raindrops on the pane, and made a rush for him, establishing
+herself on his lap, as far as one could establish oneself on such a
+perpendicular surface.
+
+"You are not going to do anything of the kind. Uncle Jimpson is going to
+drive you in to town to catch the first train in the morning."
+
+"I ain't going," insisted the Colonel, shaking his head doggedly.
+
+"Yes you are. Where's your traveling bag?"
+
+"On the top shelf of the cupboard. But I'm not going." He said it
+firmly, but the next instant he asked, "Did Jimpson press my gray suit?"
+
+"Oh! Squire Daddy, I'm so sorry I forgot to tell him! I'll tell him
+now."
+
+"Too late!" the Colonel sighed in resignation; "no use talking any more
+about it."
+
+"Yes there is! Your enthusiasm's just gotten damp like everything else.
+I am going to tell Uncle Jimpson to make a little fire to cheer us up,
+then we'll all go to work to get you ready."
+
+It seemed to be a relief to her to bustle about and set things in
+motion. In a short while she had a cheerful blaze going on the hearth,
+and the curtains drawn against the dreary twilight without.
+
+The Colonel sat in the middle of the room, watching Uncle Jimpson and
+Aunt Caroline collect his scattered wardrobe, keeping a vigilant eye
+meanwhile upon Miss Lady. He simply did not intend to have her unhappy!
+It was preposterous! Altogether out of the question! His little girl
+crying around in corners where he couldn't see her? The idea of such a
+thing! If she must cry, what was the matter with his shoulder?
+
+"You ain't got but four hankchiefs in de wash, Cunnel," announced Aunt
+Caroline from her knees beside a large wicker basket. "Don't look lak
+dat's enough fer a white gem-man to start off on a trip wif."
+
+"Jimpson," the Colonel looked up reproachfully, "did you hear that? You
+have actually let me get down to four handkerchiefs."
+
+"And socks," continued Caroline, enjoying the opportunity of emphasizing
+the shortcomings of her lesser half, "'bout sebenteen, all singles. No
+two scarcely de same color."
+
+"Miss Lady, she been 'cumulatin' 'em to darn 'em," explained Jimpson,
+glad to shift responsibility. "She 'low she gwine to tak a day off some
+o' dese days, an' mend up ever'thing in de house."
+
+The Colonel glanced around: "Where is Miss Lady?"
+
+"Out in de hall, readin' de evenin' paper. Nebber did see dat chile tek
+so much notice ob de newspaper. Yas, sir, I'll call her."
+
+"Any later news of the shooting?" asked the Colonel casually, when she
+returned.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Dillingham was indicted and arraigned before the court. The
+case was passed until June first."
+
+"And Sheeley? What of his condition?"
+
+"The paper says he will lose his eye, but that he will probably get
+well."
+
+"And--and nothing has been heard of Morley?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+After supper, when all the preparations for the trip were completed, and
+the cheerful presence of Uncle Jimpson and Aunt Caroline removed, the
+Colonel and Miss Lady sat before the dying fire, and tried to make
+conversation. Outside wet branches swept the windows, and sudden gusts
+of rain beat against the panes.
+
+"Thirty years since I saw some of the old boys," the Colonel said,
+trying to warm up to his coming journey. "I'll miss old Professor
+Queerington, but John Jay will be there. We are planning to come home
+together. Fine man, he is, fine man!"
+
+"Who? Oh, yes, Doctor Queerington."
+
+"Just a little boy when I boarded at his father's. He can't be much over
+forty now. The smartest man the old college ever turned out! And just as
+good as he's smart. A little too much book learning maybe, and not any
+too much common sense, but there ain't many heads built to carry both.
+He's sound though, sound to the core, and that's saying a good deal
+these days. What's the matter? Sleepy?"
+
+"No, just the fidgets. Say, Daddy, what do you suppose they will do with
+Mr. Dillingham, if he is convicted?"
+
+"Penitentiary offense, I hear. But Noah says they'll get him off. Old
+General Dillingham has plenty of money, and friends at court. He'll take
+care of his grandson."
+
+"But if he is cleared," began Miss Lady, "that throws the guilt on--"
+
+"Now see here," interrupted the Colonel, "you stop bothering your little
+head about that trial. Go over there and play me a couple of good old
+tunes, and then we'll both trot to bed."
+
+Miss Lady's soft untrained voice began bravely enough. She described
+with feeling the charms of Annie Laurie, and was half way through Robin
+Adair before she faltered, started anew, stumbled again, then came to an
+ignominious halt.
+
+"Tut! tut!" said the Colonel fussily, getting himself out of his chair
+in an incredibly short time for so stout a gentleman. "This won't do,
+you know; this ain't right!"
+
+"It's that silly old piece!" said Miss Lady petulantly. "It always works
+on my feelings."
+
+"But it wouldn't make you cry like this. Come, tell me."
+
+"There's nothing to tell--that is--"
+
+"Well, never mind then. Just cry it out. That's right. Don't mind
+me. Just your old Dad." And with much fussing and petting and foolish
+assurances that he was her Daddy, he got her over to the sofa.
+Sitting on the floor with her arms across his knees, she wept with the
+abandonment of a child, while his short, stubby fingers tenderly stroked
+her shining hair. At last when the storm had subsided and she was able
+to look up, he took her face between his hands.
+
+"Out with it, kitten!" he demanded. "What's troubling you? Don Morley
+business?"
+
+She kissed his nearest hand.
+
+"Thought so. You--you got to like him pretty well, eh?"
+
+She nodded between her sobs.
+
+"Better 'n most anybody?" he asked it jealously, but unflinchingly.
+
+"Except you, Daddy." It was a faint whisper, but it was reassuring.
+
+"And what about him?" the Colonel continued.
+
+Another burst of tears, then a resolute effort at self-control.
+
+"He meant to do what's right. I know he did! He promised to give up
+drinking and gambling and go to work."
+
+"He made a good start!" The Colonel knocked the ashes from his pipe.
+"And after he got into the fracas, what in thunder did he run away
+for? Why didn't he stay and face it out? Any fool would know that if
+Dillingham is cleared, the suspicion would all be on him."
+
+"But, Daddy, we haven't heard his side yet. If I could just hear from
+him, or see him."
+
+"See him!" he exploded. "What in the name of the devil do you want to
+see him for? No siree! Not while Bob Carsey's got any buckshot left in
+his gun! Do you think there's any chance of his prowling 'round here
+while I'm gone? That settles it! I'll not budge an inch. Tell Jimpson!
+Tell Caroline! Unpack my things."
+
+"But, Daddy, wait! He is probably out at the coast by this time.
+Besides, he hasn't written or sent any word. How do we know that... that
+he wants to come back?"
+
+"He'll try it all right. I saw how things were going. I saw how he
+looked at you. The impudent young hound!"
+
+"Daddy! Please don't! You don't know him. He will explain everything
+when he writes, I know he will!"
+
+"But he won't write! He won't have the face to. The idea of his going
+straight off from my girl, and getting mixed up in a scrape like this!
+You've got to promise me never to speak to the young scoundrel again!"
+
+"But if he explains?"
+
+"Why hasn't he done so? Because he can't. Besides, I don't want him to.
+We are through with him from now on. Promise me never to have anything
+more to do with him."
+
+She hesitated, and the Colonel began to fling the things out of his bag
+in great agitation.
+
+"Please, Squire Daddy!" She caught his hands, and looked at him, and
+something in her pleading eyes and quivering lips was so reminiscent of
+another face he had loved, that he broke down completely and had to have
+recourse to one of his four clean handkerchiefs that were still in the
+bag.
+
+He was an old fool, he declared between violent blowings of his nose,
+and clearings of his throat. Was only doing what he thought was his
+duty. Didn't mean to make her unhappy. Didn't have sense enough to bring
+up a girl. Had tried to, though! Always would try. Only she mustn't be
+unhappy; he couldn't stand that. It would kill him if she dared to be
+unhappy!
+
+And Miss Lady with her arms about his neck, making futile dabs at his
+streaming eyes with her little wet knot of a handkerchief, passionately
+declared that she would promise him anything under the sun, that she was
+going to be happy, that she _was_ happy!
+
+"Not yet," said the Colonel, with much mopping of his brow; "but you
+will be! We'll straighten it out. Soon as I get back, I'll take the
+matter up. Sift it clean to the bottom. We'll give Morley every chance
+to square himself. But 'til then, you won't see him if you can help
+it, or read his letters, if he writes? You don't mind promising me that
+much, do you?"
+
+"I promise, Daddy."
+
+Oh! the promises made for a day, and kept through the years, what a lot
+of tangled lives they have to answer for!
+
+Miss Lady put the Colonel's things back in his bag, and stooped to kiss
+him good night.
+
+"Sure you don't mind my going?", he asked, studying her face. "I'll be
+back Saturday night."
+
+"All right. Good-by, I won't be up in the morning when you start. Have a
+good time, Daddy dear, and--and don't worry about me."
+
+He lit her candle for her and carried it to the steps where he kissed
+her again.
+
+"My little girl," he whispered.
+
+The house grew still. Out on the landing the tall clock ticked off the
+hours to midnight; the fire died to an ember; from the porch without
+came the drip, drip, drip of the gutter. Still the Colonel sat in his
+split-bottom chair, his little eyes like watch fires in the gloom,
+listening for the faintest sound of restlessness from the room above.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The sudden light of publicity that had fallen upon the Cant-Pass-It
+saloon sent a glow over that entire region of Billy-goat Hill. Everybody
+had something to talk about, and everybody talked, except Chick.
+
+Phineas Flathers appointed himself headquarters for information, and
+devoted himself exclusively to arguing about the matter. Myrtella, his
+twin sister, who for fifteen years had presided over innumerable cooking
+ranges throughout the city, almost lost her new place through her
+interest in the affair.
+
+The one subject upon which Myrtella Flathers considered herself a
+connoisseur was murder. In sundry third floors back, she had for years
+followed the current casualties with burning interest. Realism, romance,
+intrigue, adventure, she found them all, in these grim recitals of daily
+crime.
+
+Myrtella and Phineas Flathers had been cast into the sea of life at
+an early age to sink or swim as they saw fit. Myrtella had survived by
+combating the waves, while Phineas adopted the less arduous expedient of
+floating.
+
+To him work appeared a wholly artificial and abnormal action,
+self-imposed and unnecessary. The stage of life presented so many
+opportunities for him to exercise his histrionic ability, that the idea
+of settling down to a routine of labor seemed a waste of talent. With
+far-reaching discernment he had early perceived that a straight part was
+not for him.
+
+In casting about for a field that promised the widest opportunity
+for his talent, he discovered the Immanuel Church in the city. Here
+philanthropy burned with such zealous enthusiasm that the harvest was
+not sufficient for the laborers. Phineas saw his chance and grasped it.
+He became a Prodigal Son.
+
+From that time on his sole vocation was attending church. Three times a
+week, regardless of the inclemency of the weather, he unwound his long
+legs from the chair rungs in the Cant-Pass-It, carefully smoothed his
+red hair, and made his way to a front pew in the Immanuel Church.
+At intervals, calculated to a nicety, he fell from grace, and was
+reclaimed, passing from periods of grave backsliding into periods of
+great religious fervor. Meanwhile he followed the Scriptures literally
+and took no thought of the morrow. His reliance in Providence and the
+Ladies' Aid became, in time, absolute.
+
+Nor did Phineas Flathers' self-respect suffer in the least by this mode
+of living. In no sense did he consider himself an incumbent. Did he not
+three times a week give a masterly presentation of "our needy poor,"
+"our brother-in-misfortune"? Did he not freely offer up his family for
+each new church society to cut its wisdom teeth upon? Had Maria, his
+wife, not labored wearily through unintelligible tracts, and Chick, his
+adopted son, done penance in Sunday School, as often as three Sundays in
+succession? Considering all things, Phineas felt that the church got a
+great deal for its money.
+
+Myrtella Flathers, following another method, had for fifteen years
+fought every obstacle that crossed her path. She had left in her wake
+traditions of unexcelled cooking, and unparalleled cleanliness, together
+with a vanquished army of mistresses, housemaids, laundresses, and
+butlers. She belonged to the order of Cooks Militant, and she had long
+since won her spurs.
+
+Among the things which Myrtella in her sweeping condemnation of life in
+general disapproved, none loomed larger than her brother and his
+family. But the bond of blood, stronger than likes or dislikes, favor
+or prejudice, brought her back to him again and again, to share with him
+her substance, and to criticize his conduct.
+
+On this particular afternoon she had started out for Billy-goat Hill to
+hear about the shooting, and to break the news to the family, that she
+had gotten a new place. This happened with such regularity, that it
+would not have deserved attention, had not the astounding fact to be
+added that Myrtella was pleased. In her fifteen years of rebellious
+services she had never before approximated a place that gave
+satisfaction. To be sure there were dark and not-to-be-remembered
+instances where she had failed to give satisfaction herself, but usually
+it was the place, "the new place," with its varying code of musts
+and must-nots, that caused Myrtella to spend many of her days in the
+Intelligence Office, or on street-cars, or tramping through the streets
+in quest of that ever elusive "good home."
+
+She had started out on her pilgrimage in a fairly equable frame of mind,
+but before she got well under way, the wind had made her furious. It was
+a frisky March breeze that had gotten left behind and now wandered into
+May, bent on mischief.
+
+Myrtella tacked into it, like a sailing sloop, full rigged and all
+sails set, an angular, heavy-set person with a belligerent expression
+strangely at variance with the embarrassed, almost timid movements of
+her hands and feet. Short locks of straight black hair whipped across
+her face, her skirts, blown tightly back against her knees, bellied in
+the wind, while her wide-brimmed hat caught the full force of the blast,
+like a veritable top-sail.
+
+By the time she had taken three tacks to cross the common, and was ready
+to come about at the corner, there was a balloon jibe, that sent the
+sails all flapping against the mast, and left her in such a flurry
+of indignation, that she failed to see a string that stretched its
+insidious length, two inches above the pavement, from fence to curb.
+
+After her fall, instead of expiring of apoplexy, as might have been
+expected from her countenance, Myrtella picked herself up from the
+pavement and, peeping through a crack in the fence, smiled. It was an
+expression so unfamiliar to her features that they scarcely knew how to
+manage it.
+
+"I see you, Chick!" she said in a voice that strove to be gentle; "why
+don't you come on out here and speak to me?"
+
+Chick and Skeeter, recognized a significant bulge to the string bag
+which she carried, scrambled forth, the former skilfully evading her
+outstretched arm of welcome.
+
+"He says," interposed the ever-ready Skeeter, as his companion made
+queer noises in his throat, "that he never knowed it was you. He never
+went to trip you up. Honest to goodness! You ain't mad, are you?"
+
+"No, I ain't mad." Myrtella still smiled as she brushed the dust from
+her skirt. "Here's a orange I brought you, Chick. You ain't been sick,
+have you?"
+
+"Naw! He ain't been sick, but he took that bath you ast him to, and
+where's his nickel at?"
+
+Myrtella stood and watched the boys until the corner grocery swallowed
+them and their new nickel, then she sighed and turned into Bean Alley.
+
+There were no streets here, and an occasional rock or tin can were the
+only islands in a sea of mud. The Flathers' cottage, consisting of two
+rooms and a half attic, rested its weight against the cottage next it,
+with something of the blind reliance that Phineas Flathers rested upon
+the Church. On its other side it commanded an uninterrupted view of the
+Dump Heap, which was the background for all the juvenile social life of
+that section of Billy-goat Hill.
+
+Here ships were launched in mud puddles, flower gardens attempted in
+tin cans, and fierce wars waged between rival gangs; here embryo mothers
+played with stick and rag dolls, and aspirants for the circus performed
+acrobatic feats on the one bit of fence that had not tumbled down. And
+all this activity went on almost under the wheels of the dump carts that
+passed to and fro all day. Myrtella, picking her way through the mud,
+was just turning the corner of the Flathers' house when her eyes fell
+upon a broken window-pane stuffed with a woolen skirt which she had
+given to Maria to make over into trousers for Chick. She promptly jerked
+it out with a force that brought the glass with it, and by the time she
+reached the back door, her jaw was set and her brows knit.
+
+Considering the fact that the rear room was a composite kitchen,
+laundry, dining-room, pantry, coal house and cellar, the glances with
+which Myrtella swept the chamber and its one occupant, might have been
+a trifle less severe. It was a glance in which her individual abhorrence
+of dirt combined with her racial disapproval of "in-laws."
+
+In the one space in the room that was not preempted, Maria Flathers bent
+above a wash tub, feebly persuading black garments to become gray.
+That was all she asked of them. She was not ambitious. Ambition, like
+everything else, had been soaked out of her long ago by those hot,
+steaming suds that enveloped her the greater part of her waking hours,
+and left her physically, mentally, and morally limp. Her one strong
+instinct was motherhood; but five little Flathers, opening feeble
+eyes on their future environment, had become so discouraged that they
+promptly closed them again. It was as if they really could not stand the
+prospect of life in that home with Mr. and Mrs. Flathers for parents!
+
+Only Chick survived, the ash-barrel baby, who really was not theirs
+at all, but who having begun life in their back yard, continued as
+everything else continued when once established at the Flathers',
+for the simple reason that no one ever took the trouble to change the
+existing disorder of things.
+
+As Myrtella sailed wrathfully into port and docked at the door-step,
+Maria looked up with a gasp:
+
+"Law! Myrtella, you gimme a turn. I forgot this here was your afternoon
+off. I thought sure you was Sheeley's rent man."
+
+"Sheeley's?" repeated Myrtella, her curiosity getting the better of her
+temper, as she removed an old shoe and a flour sifter from the nearest
+chair and sat down.
+
+"Yes, he's our landlord, but he gits another man to collect. Guess you
+heard about his gittin' shot?"
+
+"Read every word that's been printed. Is he goin' to die?"
+
+"Not him. Ain't nothin' the matter with him 'ceptin' his eye is blowed
+out. My uncle, back home, got both his eyes--You, Chick!" this to an
+invisible presence that manifested itself only through a shower of
+pebbles that followed in the wake of a fleeing cat. "Go up to the
+saloon, Chick, and tell yer Pappy he'll have to come on home. Yer Aunt
+'Tella's here."
+
+"Don't look like he grows a inch a year," said Myrtella thoughtfully,
+watching him depart.
+
+"That there Mrs. Ivy's been after me agin to send him to the Widows and
+Orphans' Home. She says she can git him in, and they'll learn him to
+read and write."
+
+"Well, he ain't goin'! I guess as long as I'm a payin' the grocery
+bills, I got a right to say who'll eat the food! What's that you are
+hidin'?"
+
+Maria, who had been attempting to remove something surreptitiously from
+the table, looked apologetic.
+
+"It's one of them plaster casts, I'll be bound," Myrtella continued. "I
+might 'a' knowed you'd git the mate to the other one, and not a square
+inch of space in the house to set it on! What did you give fer it?"
+
+Mrs. Flathers withdrew her apron, and tenderly dusted the highly colored
+features of an Indian squaw, whose head-feathers reposed upon her arm.
+Then she placed it on a corner of the stove where its imposing dignity
+produced a momentary impression upon even the flinty Myrtella.
+
+"How much?" she demanded heartlessly.
+
+"A quarter down, and ten cents a week." Maria sighed. "'Twouldn't be no
+trouble at all if it wasn't for Phineas spending so much car-fare going
+to church and that bow-legged, onery rent-man, that comes sneakin' round
+here every week, acting like poor people just kep' money settin' 'round
+in jars waitin' fer the likes of him!"
+
+Maria's hatred of the rent man was the one emotion that seemed to be
+left in her withered bosom. To baffle him, to evade him, to anticipate
+his coming and be away from home, constituted the chief object of her
+existence.
+
+A bang of the gate announced the arrival of the head of the household,
+which was promptly followed by the strains of a hymn cheerfully whistled
+in rag-time.
+
+Phineas Flathers, after months of abstinence, had reached that period
+where he felt that not only his constitution, but his profession would
+profit by a temporary fall from grace. Solicitude for his moral welfare
+was beginning to flag at the Church; his regular attendance, his
+apparent absorption in the sermon, and his emotional execution of the
+hymns, all went to lift him from the class of interesting converts, to
+the deadly commonplace of regular members. Only that afternoon he had
+decided to revive interest in his case at any cost. He had just treated
+others, as he would have others treat him at the Cant-Pass-It, when he
+was summoned home to see his sister.
+
+He now presented himself in his own doorway, a hand on either side of
+the jamb, and bowed profoundly:
+
+"Miss Flathers! Pleased to meet you! I see you still continue to favor
+yourself in looks. Lost your place, I suppose?"
+
+"That's right, be insultin'!" Myrtella flared up haughtily; "throw it
+in my face that I'm hard to please, and ain't willin' to put up with any
+old place I come to."
+
+"Now I wouldn't put it that I was throwing it in yer face exactly,"
+began Phineas, anxious to propitiate.
+
+"Which means I'm a story-teller?" Myrtella squared herself for action.
+
+"Oh, come on along," coaxed Phineas; "no harm's meant. Go on an' tell us
+what you left fer."
+
+"Who said I'd left? Puttin' words in my mouth I never thought of
+utterin'! I ain't left, and what's more I ain't going to. I got a good
+place."
+
+Phineas whistled an aggravatingly attenuated note of surprise: "The lady
+you are working for must be a deef-mute."
+
+"She is. The same as you'll be some day. She's been dead three years."
+
+The triumph with which she made this announcement put a momentary
+quietus on Phineas, and enabled her to proceed:
+
+"It's a widower gentleman with three children that I'm cookin' for, and
+I ain't set eyes on one of 'em except at meal times since I hired to
+'em. Queerington's their names, out on College Street, right around the
+corner from the Immanuel Church. He's a teacher or something, one of
+them bookwormy men, whose head never pays no attention to what the
+rest of him is doing. 'Take charge,' said he, 'of everything, do the
+ordering, and cooking, and don't bother me with nothing.'"
+
+"But does he bother you?" put in Phineas astutely; "that's the real
+point."
+
+"Wasn't I just tellin' you that he didn't? He's been off on a trip to
+Virginia; gets home to-night. I've got the whole house in the pa'm of my
+hand, from cellar to attic. Miss Connie, she's the oldest, as flighty as
+a pidgeon and head so full of boys she don't pay no attention to another
+livin' thing. Then there's Miss Hattie, the second one, jes' at that
+spiteful thirteen age, but so busy peckin' on her sister, she ain't no
+time left for me--"
+
+"Thought you said there was three children," put in Maria mildly.
+
+"I did. You didn't think I lied, did you? Always ready to snatch up a
+person's words before they git 'em out of their mouth! The third one is
+a boy, Bertie they call him, sick and spin'ly, but a right nice little
+fellow. Where'd Chick go?"
+
+"He's settin' out there on the door-step. Did you hear 'bout our
+shootin'?"
+
+"Maria was tryin' to tell me, but she didn't seem to have nothin' clear
+to tell. Who do you think done it?"
+
+Phineas Flathers, balancing himself on the hind legs of his chair, with
+his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, was nothing loath to launch
+forth into a full recital of the affair, embellishing it with many a
+flourish as he went along. In the bosom of his family he was freed from
+those bonds of restraint that embarrassed his utterance when in more
+formal society. The amount of profanity that he could dispose of in the
+course of an ordinary conversation was little short of astounding. This
+being more than an ordinary conversation and his mood being mellow,
+called for an extra vocabulary. He graphically set forth the facts in
+the case, then gave his imagination full sway in accounting for them.
+He interpreted the whole affair as a clash between capital and labor,
+a conflict between the pampered aristocrat and the common man. The
+shooting was the result of a deep-laid plan: Dillingham and Morley had
+met by appointment, moved by what motive he did not make clear, to kill
+Sheeley, an honest laboring man. Hadn't the one on horseback, that they
+say was Mr. Morley, stopped him at the crossing, on the very afternoon
+of the shooting, and engaged him in conversation? Phineas assured his
+listeners that he trembled even now when he thought of the danger he had
+been in!
+
+"I'd seed him afore that day a ridin' with a pretty young lady, that
+most got her neck broke under a engine, but this time he was by hisself,
+a settin' there on his horse, as proud as a king and stirrin' me up
+about the rich folks not allowing us poor working classes to have no
+streets out here. I suspicioned somethin' right then; says I to myself,
+'he's got a handsome face but his mind is a well of corruption.' And
+when I heard he'd shot Sheeley ...Now what in thunder is the matter with
+you, Chick?"
+
+During this recital Chick had been sitting in the doorway, his knees
+drawn up to his chin, listening intently, but at this point he cried out
+in a sputter of protesting sounds.
+
+"It's the shootin', it's done got on his mind," explained Maria, winding
+her long thin hair into a yet tighter knot at the back of her head. "He
+takes on like that every time he hears us talkin' 'bout it, and nobody
+can't make out a word he's sayin'. Fer two or three days I couldn't
+scarcely git him to eat nothin'."
+
+"If your cooking ain't any better than it used to be I ain't surprised,"
+Myrtella said. "How bad was Sheeley shot, Phineas?"
+
+"Oh, he'll be laid up fer a month yit. They say the retinue of his eye
+was cracked right across the middle. But that ain't worryin' Sheeley.
+He's livin' in style at the hospital, all his bills paid, and the swells
+lookin' after him. I hear he ain't even goin' to prosecute. They've
+fixed him all right; besides he don't want to git that fly young gang
+down on his place. He's countin' on startin' up them sparrin' matches
+ag'in, as soon as the police quit noticin' him. Say, Sis, you don't
+happen to have a quarter 'bout you, do you?"
+
+The peculiar persuasiveness of Phineas' voice when he threw out these
+financial suggestions, was very insidious. In some subtle way he made
+the favor all on the side of the recipient; he gave the donor, as it
+were, a chance to acquire merit.
+
+But Myrtella wore the armor of experience. "No, I ain't!" she said,
+taking a firmer grasp on her bag. "I'm payin' the grocery man now, and
+buyin' clothes for Chick. What good does it do? I no more than git his
+hide covered than you go and sell the clothes offen his back. When are
+you goin' to git a job?"
+
+"Well, you might say I had one now. Leastwise I'm a followin' Scriptures
+and bearin' one another's burdens. Jires, the flagman, over to the
+Junction has been laid up with rheumatism and he don't want the boss to
+know it. He sets in his box and hires me to go out and flag the trains
+like he tells me to."
+
+"How many trains a day?"
+
+"Two ups, three downs and a couple of freights."
+
+"Should think you'd die of the exertion. How much do you get?"
+
+"Oh, it ain't so much. But I ain't a ambitious man. What's the use of
+me a-slavin' and a-hordin' when I ain't got a child to leave it to? If
+Claude had a lived, or McKinley, I might 'a' had somethin' to work for."
+
+"You mean you'd 'a' had somethin' to work for you. The Lord certainly
+done a good job when he changed His mind about letting them babies
+live."
+
+"They're having onions next door fer supper," said Maria feebly, by way
+of diverting an old discussion. "I ain't been able to git 'em off my
+mind all afternoon."
+
+Chick, who had been sent to the grocery to see what time it was, came
+back holding up five fingers.
+
+"Gee, I got to be hiking!" said Phineas. "The passenger train from
+Virginia's due at five sixteen. It won't git here before a quarter of
+six, but I'm always there on the minute. That's what Jires pays me fer,
+fer bein' regular and reliable. Jes' let me get a regular habit and
+a clock ain't in it with me. Why, if I was to come in late at church,
+they'd stop the service!"
+
+"Well, don't you be gittin' a regular habit of comin' 'round to the
+Queeringtons!" was Myrtella's parting shot as he rose unsteadily. "When
+I got anything to say to you I'll come here."
+
+"That's right!" assented Phineas cordially; "you jes' make yourself at
+home. My home is your home. Maria'll tell you that I says to her only
+last night, I says, 'Maria, you needn't feel so cut up 'bout askin'
+Myrtella fer the rent this month, because this is her home, too. There
+ain't a board in it but I'd share with her, she knows that.' You tell
+her all I said, Maria, don't you keep back nothin'. Farewell!" and with
+an affectionate glance and a wave of the hand Phineas departed.
+
+Now if he had followed the straight and narrow path, indicated by the
+rocks and tin cans, that led to the Junction, instead of the broad
+highway indicated by the plank walk that led to the Cant-Pass-It, the
+tragedy that hovered over Billy-goat Hill might have been averted.
+
+But he had left the saloon in the midst of a heated controversy with two
+Italians, concerning the supremacy of America over all other nations.
+The fact that his country had never been proud of him in no way deterred
+him from being very proud of his country. Until the dispute was properly
+ended he felt that the honor of the nation was at stake.
+
+His patriotic fervor ran so high that by the time he reached the
+crossing, the passenger train was already in sight. Jires, helpless and
+terrified at his post, was distractedly shouting directions from his
+little sentinel box.
+
+"Flathers! There's a washout down the road! We've got to hold up the
+passenger train. Get out the red flag! Quick man! Be ready to signal the
+engineer. Three times cross ways! The red flag, you fool! the RED FLAG!
+Oh, my God!"
+
+For Phineas Flathers, to whom all flags now looked red, white and blue,
+was standing at the crossing, joyously waving a white flag, while the
+engineer with his hand on the throttle, released the brakes, and sent
+his train thundering down the grade to destruction.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile Myrtella, having finished her visit in a grand finale of
+pyrotechnics, in which she displayed Phineas to his wife in a number
+of blazing lifelike portraits, took her departure. It was not the first
+time she had faced the alternative of paying the rent, or seeing her
+only relative turned into the street, nor was it the first time that,
+after giving innumerable pieces of her mind to Maria, she had followed
+them up with the rent.
+
+All the way home she discussed the matter audibly with herself, and was
+still muttering darkly when she reached the Queeringtons'. So absorbed
+was she in her own wrongs that she did not notice that the front door
+stood open, and figures were hurrying about in the hall.
+
+As she let herself into the side door, a white-faced young girl, with
+her hair brushed straight back into a long braid, rushed through the
+pantry.
+
+"What's the matter, Miss Hattie?"
+
+The girl steadied herself by the banister. "It's father!" she said
+with chattering teeth. "There's been an awful accident just below the
+Junction. They can't even bring him home. They are taking him to a place
+out there, a Colonel Carsey's. Colonel Carsey was killed. He was sitting
+right by father. Oh! Myrtella, I'm so afraid father's going to die!"
+
+Myrtella standing helplessly before the terror-stricken girl, could
+find no words of sympathy. In fact she appeared even more formidable and
+bristling than usual.
+
+"Well, he ain't dead yet," she said shortly, "and any how, there ain't
+no reason why you shouldn't have supper. Trouble always sets heavy on a
+empty stomach."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+The fatal accident which Phineas Flathers' misguided patriotism had
+precipitated, changed the course of many a life, but to none did it
+bring more far-reaching consequences than to the daughter of old Bob
+Carsey.
+
+Miss Lady could never clearly recall those first days after her father's
+death. They seemed to her a confused nightmare of strange doctors
+and nurses, of a strange man hovering between life and death in the
+guest-room bed, of strange people coming and going, or sitting in hushed
+groups on the stiff horsehair chairs in the hall, waiting for news. Two
+facts alone remained fixed in the whirling chaos of unrealities; her
+father was dead, and no letter had come from Donald Morley.
+
+Each day when the mail arrived she roused from her apathy, and with
+trembling fingers sorted out the letters, going over them again and
+again, and never finding the one she sought. Gradually beneath the
+poignant grief for her father, came the dull persistent pain of a first
+disillusion. The belief and loyalty with which she had started out to
+defend Donald began to weaken before his silence. In his trouble she had
+been ready to rush to him, to succor and forgive, but he had not called
+upon her. Now in her great need, she was calling to him, and he did not
+come. Suspicion began to crowd on the heels of doubt.
+
+Had he not acknowledged his instability? Had her father not seen it from
+the first? Was his desire to settle down in the country but one of the
+whims of which his life seemed made up? Perhaps she herself had
+only been a passing fancy, something wanted for the moment, but soon
+forgotten. At the end of a week her pride rushed to arms. Whatever
+reason he might offer now would come too late.
+
+The sudden plunge from irresponsible girlhood into this mysterious
+region of grief and doubt, where one must tread the thorny path alone,
+terrified and bewildered her. She did all the last sad, futile things
+one can do for the dead; then when all was over, fled from the confusion
+at Thornwood, and sought the silence of the woods. Here fierce outbursts
+of rebellious grief were followed by hours of apathy when she tramped
+for miles, seeing and hearing nothing, but urged on by an insistent
+desire to be in motion.
+
+It was at the end of one of these tramps that Noah Wicker found her late
+one evening, on the grass by the river, sobbing out her heart at the
+spot where the Colonel used to fish.
+
+Noah's words of comfort were as scarce as his other words, so he sat on
+a log near by and waited silently until she was ready to go home. At the
+stile, where he left her, he handed her a letter.
+
+"I got it at the station this noon," he said. "Thought I'd be over
+earlier, but didn't know if you wanted me."
+
+She did not hear him, the letter had come! Her fingers thrilled at its
+touch, and the warm blood surged to her heart. Without another thought
+for Noah, she sped up the walk to the house, where she locked herself
+into the living-room. Match after match sputtered and went out in her
+nervous fingers, before the lamp was lighted.
+
+He had written! He cared! He was coming! Over and over she whispered the
+words to herself. Then she looked at the postmark on the heavy envelope,
+and her heart sank. San Francisco! After all he was not coming back!
+
+Her eager finger was at the seal, when her eyes fell upon a briar-wood
+pipe that lay on the table beside a half-filled pouch of tobacco. In an
+instant she seemed to see a stubby brown hand reaching for it, the quick
+spurt of the match, the flare of light on an old weather-beaten face,
+then a deep-drawn breath of contentment as the Colonel settled back and
+held out his other hand to his little girl.
+
+And her last promise to him had been to do nothing until Donald's name
+should be cleared. She could keep her promise now, but could she after
+she had read Donald's letter? If the mere touch of it in her hand plead
+for him, what would the living words do?
+
+She looked hopelessly around the cheerful, homely room, every foot of
+which spoke to her of her father, and of his love for her. On the white
+door-frame were penciled the proud records he had made of her height
+on each successive birthday. On the walls were pictures of her he had
+treasured, from the time she was a round-eyed baby, to the present day.
+In the cupboard was a green box containing her first shoes, her little
+dresses, her first letter, her baby curls.
+
+Over the harpsichord was a portrait of the Colonel himself, painted
+before she was born. It represented a dashing, young sportsman,
+surrounded by his pack of hounds. Twenty years ago this gallant hunter
+had given up the chase, with many another joy, to minister to her
+baby needs, to share her joys and sorrows, and be father, mother,
+play-fellow, all in one.
+
+She clasped Donald Morley's letter tightly and closed her eyes. Never
+in her short life had she wanted to do anything so desperately as
+she wanted to read that letter, and yet the reading of it would mean
+breaking a promise to one whom she could never promise anything again.
+Her newly awakened love and her sense of justice pleaded hotly for
+Donald, but the empty room and her empty heart, and a passionate sense
+of loyalty to the dead, spoke mutely for her father.
+
+After all, nothing could justify those long days of silence, that
+failure on Donald's part to come to her in her trouble. Her father's
+judgment was probably right after all, and it was best she should put an
+end to the matter once and for all.
+
+Sobbing like a child, she kissed the letter again and again, and
+kneeling by the fire, held it to the flame, and watched it burn to ashes
+on the hearth.
+
+After that one dreary week followed another, with the same invasion
+of strangers, the same varying reports from the sick room. Gradually,
+however, the reports became more favorable, the tension eased, visitors
+became less frequent, and Thornwood began to settle down to its normal
+state.
+
+[Illustration: She held it to the flame, and watched it burn to ashes on
+the hearth]
+
+Owing to the nature of Doctor Queerington's injury, and the severe shock
+he had sustained, it was not thought best to move him to the city until
+he was stronger. The quiet country house was an excellent place for
+convalescence, and under the direction of his trained nurse he could be
+allowed to read and write, free from the annoyance that must beset him
+when once he returned home.
+
+This arrangement was listlessly agreed to by Miss Lady, who had no plans
+for the future, and dreaded another adjustment. She was singularly alone
+in the world, and too dazed for the present to know what her next step
+should be. The only thing of which she was certain, was that she would
+never leave Thornwood.
+
+On one of the first days that Doctor Queerington was allowed to sit up,
+she went in to see him. Her first impression in the darkened room was
+the kindly clasp of a hand, and a wonderful low voice that spoke words
+of comfort. Then gradually she saw the slender, over-serious face of a
+middle-aged man, with small eyes somewhat too close together, a broad
+intellectual forehead, and a firm, well-formed mouth that seemed a
+stranger to smiles.
+
+From that time on she found his room a refuge. He had been the unknown
+object of her admiration since she was a child, he was her father's
+friend, the last to be with him before his death, and he talked to her
+for hours about the great mysteries of life and death. He was the only
+person to whom she talked who never seemed to be in doubt.
+
+It was not the first time that the Doctor had proven a consoling
+presence in time of affliction. Where others conjectured, or evaded,
+he boldly affirmed. The universe to him was an open book, from which he
+enjoyed reading aloud.
+
+One morning, six weeks after the accident, Miss Lady came into his room
+with a handful of flowers and found him propped up in bed, his books
+about him, and a note in his hand.
+
+"I have a communication from my cousin, Mrs. Sequin," he said with the
+polite formality that was habitual to him. "It seems that she is going
+to honor me with a visit."
+
+"Mrs. Sequin?" Miss Lady wheeled so suddenly that she overturned the
+vase in which she was arranging the flowers. "Now see what I've done!
+I'll fix it, Miss Wuster; don't bother."
+
+It apparently required little self-control for the trained nurse to
+refrain from bothering. She was sitting with her heels firmly hooked
+under the rung of a straight-back chair, crocheting with passionate
+abandon. Filling hot-water bottles, taking temperatures, feeding
+patients, were mere interruptions to her real vocation of converting
+spools of linen thread into yards of linen lace.
+
+"She states her intention of coming to see me," the Doctor continued,
+"but I cannot decipher her hieroglyphics sufficiently to find out the
+time. Perhaps you can assist me."
+
+"Is this a D?" asked Miss Lady, looking over his shoulder.
+
+"I judge so; an adaptation of the Greek character. Why the art of
+handwriting should be considered obsolete, I am at a loss to--"
+
+"Oh, she says she is coming to-day," interrupted Miss Lady, "on the
+eleven train. I must go down and tell Uncle Jimpson to be at the
+station, and have Aunt Caroline put on another plate for dinner."
+
+"Then what are you going to do, my dear?"
+
+"I was going to the cemetery."
+
+"You would better come up here instead. In your mental state a person is
+very sensitive to environment. You should avoid everything that excites
+the emotions. I think you can trust me to know what is best for you just
+now?"
+
+"Indeed I can," Miss Lady said impulsively; "you have helped me more
+than anybody. Daddy would be so grateful if he knew."
+
+"He does know," announced the Doctor with the finality of one to whom
+all things have been revealed. "But we must not discuss these things
+now. Miss Wuster has just been reading me the account of young
+Dillingham's trial. Perhaps you have been following it?"
+
+"Yes," said Miss Lady without looking up.
+
+"It is a matter of especial interest to me," continued the Doctor;
+"especial regret I should say. Young Dillingham is engaged to be married
+to the daughter of my cousin whom I expect to-day, and the other young
+man involved, Donald Morley, is Mrs. Sequin's brother."
+
+"Well for the life of me," said Miss Wuster, counting stitches between
+her sentences, "I can't see how they got Mr. Dillingham off, unless it
+was the way Mr. Gooch said."
+
+"Who is Mr. Gooch?" asked Miss Lady of the Doctor.
+
+"The gentleman who came to see me yesterday. He is a lawyer and has
+followed the case closely. He does not scruple to affirm that the trial
+was a farce, one of those legal travesties that sometimes occur when a
+scion of a rich and influential family happens to transgress the law. It
+seems that the saloon-keeper, who was at first reasonably sure of what
+happened, suffered a strange lapse of memory when on the stand. Gooch
+thinks he was bought up, but Gooch is fallible where human motives are
+involved. His misanthropy invariably colors his judgment."
+
+"Well, nothing on earth can keep me from thinking that Mr. Dillingham
+did the shooting!" declared the nurse with violent partizanship. "Look
+at the way he sneaked home, and left the other young man to get a doctor
+and help move Sheeley to the hospital. Yes, sir, it's time for your
+medicine, just wait 'till I finish this spool and I'll go down and heat
+the water."
+
+"He--he oughtn't to have gone away?" said Miss Lady, looking at the
+Doctor interrogatively.
+
+"Donald, you mean? Certainly not, it was most ill-advised, probably some
+quixotic idea about not wanting to testify against his friend. If you
+knew the boy you would understand what a hot-headed, harum-scarum person
+he is. He was my pupil at one time and I grew quite fond of him. He has
+ability, undoubted ability, but he is a ship without a rudder; he has
+been drifting ever since he was born."
+
+"This acquittal of Mr. Dillingham puts the blame on--on him, doesn't
+it?"
+
+"Naturally. His absence at the trial was undoubtedly one of the
+strongest arguments in Dillingham's favor. Mr. Gooch tells me that the
+counsel for the defense took especial pains to throw suspicion upon
+Donald. The case has been confusing in the extreme, the absence of
+witnesses, the failure to establish the ownership of the pistol, the
+absurd complication about the slot machine and crowbar,--an absolute
+jumble of contradictory evidence. As for Donald Morley's being guilty,
+it's absurd! He is not the sort of man who runs away from punishment."
+
+Miss Lady's heart swelled with gratitude. Of course Donald Morley was
+nothing to her now. She had assured herself of that so continuously for
+two months that she was beginning to believe it. She knew that he was
+wild, reckless and unreliable, that he had failed her in her greatest
+need, and that she had put him out of her life forever. But it was good
+of the Doctor to take his part!
+
+"I know now what my father meant when he said you were the justest man
+he ever knew!" she said timidly, lifting a pair of shining eyes.
+
+"Unfortunately for Donald the Court does not share my opinion. It is not
+known even by the family as yet, but Mr. Gooch tells me that Donald has
+been indicted by the grand jury."
+
+"Indicted!"
+
+"Yes, he can never return to Kentucky without standing his trial. It is
+a serious affair for him, I fear."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+When in the course of the morning Uncle Jimpson started to the station
+to meet Mrs. Sequin, he did not have to direct the course of his steed.
+Had old John not known the way from experience, the inherited memory of
+his ancestors would have prompted him to turn twice to the right, once
+to the left, and pull up at a certain corner of the station platform.
+For the honor of being the Carseys' "station horse" had descended to him
+from his father Luke, whose father Mark had in the days of prosperity
+traveled in harness with Matthew, fulfilling that same important
+office. Thus John was, in a way, enjoying the distinction of apostolic
+succession.
+
+Arrived at the station Uncle Jimpson stepped jauntily around the
+post-office box and ostentatiously took out the Carseys' mail. It was a
+small act to take pride in, but in lieu of more important duties it had
+to serve. For the past six weeks the advent of city people at Thornwood
+had stirred up old ambitions in him. A new sprightliness was observable
+in his gait, a briskness in his speech, which Aunt Caroline did not
+hesitate to characterize as "taking on airs."
+
+The blood of a butler coursed through Uncle Jimpson's veins, a stately,
+ebony butler who had been wont to stand at the Thornwood door during
+the old days and hold a silver tray covered with boutonnieres, for the
+arriving guests. Uncle Jimpson had inherited this tray along with an
+ambition that was not above buttons. Year after year he had descended
+with the descending Carsey fortunes, passing from the house to the
+horses, then to the field, and finally becoming the man of all work, but
+never relinquishing that dream of his youth, to stand in livery in the
+halls of the rich, and exercise those talents with which Providence had
+blessed him.
+
+As he passed the compliments of the day with two farm hands, who were
+loading a wagon near by, his eye fell upon a strange object that stood
+in the door of the dining-room. It looked to Uncle Jimpson like pictures
+he had seen of lions, only it was small and white and barked remarkably
+like a dog.
+
+"Dat sure am a curious lookin' animal," he observed. "Hit must b'long to
+a show."
+
+One of the farm hands laughed and pointed with his thumb to the
+waiting-room. Uncle Jimpson tiptoed to the window and peered in. All
+that he could see was the back of a very imposing lady and the top of a
+large plumed hat.
+
+"Is--is she a-waitin' fer anybody?" he whispered, motioning anxiously
+with his soft hat.
+
+"Oh! no," said the nearest man; "she ain't waitin'; she's just enjoyin'
+the scenery on them railroad posters. She likes to set there, been doin'
+it for a half hour."
+
+Uncle Jimpson scraped the mud from his shoes, buttoned the one button
+that was left on his linen coat, and dropping his hat outside the door
+summoned courage to present himself.
+
+"'Scuse me, mam, but does dis heah happen to be Mrs. Sequm?"
+
+"It is," said the lady, haughtily.
+
+"Yas'm, dat's what I 'lowed. Dat's what I tole Carline--leastwise dat's
+what I'st gwine tell her. Ise Cunnel Carsey's coachman."
+
+Mrs. Sequin eyed him coldly through a silver lorgnette. "Didn't they
+understand that I was coming on the eleven train?"
+
+"Yes'm, dat's right. But you allays has to 'low fer dem narrow gauges.
+Dey has to run slow to keep from fallin' offen de track. Dat must have
+been de ten o'clock train you come on."
+
+"Not at all, I left the city at ten minutes of eleven."
+
+"Yas'm, dat was de ten train den. De leben train don't start 'til long
+about noon."
+
+"Preposterous!" said Mrs. Sequin, sweeping to her feet. "Take me to the
+carriage. Fanchonette! Where are you?"
+
+Uncle Jimpson apologetically dragged forward his left foot, upon the
+trouser hem of which the small dog had fastened her sharp little teeth.
+
+"Frightfully obstinate little beast," said Mrs. Sequin, "she won't let
+go until she gets ready. You needn't be afraid of her biting you. She
+couldn't be induced to bite a colored person."
+
+Uncle Jimpson, carrying the dog along on his foot, led the way, while
+Mrs. Sequin, with the cautious tread of a stout person used to the
+treacheries of oriental rugs on hardwood floors, followed. She was a
+woman of full figure and imposing presence, whose elaborate coiffure
+and attention to detail in dress, gave evidence that the world had its
+claims.
+
+At sight of the shabby, old, mud-covered buggy, and the decrepit
+apostolic John she paused.
+
+Jimpson all obsequious politeness, put a linen duster over the wheel,
+and with a gesture worthy of Chesterfield, handed her in.
+
+"I wish the top up," she commanded. "The glare is unspeakable."
+
+Uncle Jimpson, standing by the wheel, shuffled his feet in
+embarrassment: "Yas'm," he agreed, "I'll put it up effen you want me to.
+But it won't stay up. No, mam, it won't stay. Looks lak in de las' two
+or three years it got a way o' fallin' back. Cunnel 'lowed he was gwine
+to git it fixed onct or twict, but he ain't done it."
+
+Fanchonette just here became enraged at a bit of paper that was caught
+in the wheel, and gave vent to such a violent burst of temper that it
+required the undivided attention of her mistress to calm her.
+
+Uncle Jimpson, occupying the smallest possible portion of the seat, and
+with one leg hanging outside the buggy, rejoiced in the proximity of so
+much elegance. It gave him a feeling of prosperity and importance, and
+made him straighten his back, crook his elbow, and even adopt a more
+formal manner with old John. He deeply regretted that he had not put on
+a clean coat and as for the buggy, he was already planning a thorough
+cleaning of it before driving the stylish guest back in the afternoon.
+
+"Stop a moment!" commanded Mrs. Sequin peremptorily. "What a view! I had
+no idea there was such scenery anywhere around here!"
+
+"Yas'm, hits about de fines' sceneries in de world! You kin see from
+dem heights clean down to de bridge. All dis hill used to be our-alls. I
+'member hearin' how Mr. Rogers Clark done gib it to de Cunnel's gran'paw
+fer a lan' grant when de Injuns libed here!"
+
+"Who owns it now? Who owns the hilltop?"
+
+"I don't know, mam. We been sellin' off considerable."
+
+"Well, I must find out about that at once. I'll send an agent out
+to-morrow to look into the matter. Colonel Carsey left only one
+daughter, I believe, and she never married?"
+
+Uncle Jimpson jerked the reins and looked a bit nettled.
+
+"Not yit," he said, "but she ain't no old maid, Miss Lady ain't. Dere
+neber wuz a Carsey lady yit dat withered on de stalk; de trouble wif
+_dem_ is dey git picked too soon. Ez fer Miss Lady's ma, she wasn't but
+jes turned sebenteen when me an' de Cunnel went down to Alabama to marry
+her."
+
+"Who are Miss Carsey's relatives, her advisers?"
+
+"She ain't got none. She didn't hab a livin', breathin' soul but her
+paw, 'ceptin' me an' Carline, an' Carline's liable to drop off mos'
+anytime."
+
+"But who is going to live with her?"
+
+"I spec she gwine git married some day," Jimpson said hopefully, "all de
+boys been plumb 'stracted 'bout dat chile since she wuz a little girl.
+But she wuz so crazy 'bout her paw, she jes laff at 'em. Now de Cunnel's
+gone, she'll hab to git somebody else to make ober."
+
+"Well, I must find out about that hill," said Mrs. Sequin, turning for a
+last glimpse. "Whose old place is this we are coming to?"
+
+"Dis is our place, dis is Thornwood," said Uncle Jimpson, half in pride,
+half in apology, as he skirted the holes in the road. "It don't look lak
+itself. It's a terrible pretty place when it's fixed up."
+
+"Dreadfully run down," said Mrs. Sequin to herself, making a sweeping
+survey of the premises, "all this front lawn ought to be terraced and
+have granitoid walks and formal approaches. The house could be made
+quite imposing."
+
+They had turned in the long winding avenue, and were following the old
+gray wall that swept in a wide circle past the negro cabins, then toward
+the house.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Sequin pointed dramatically to the little porch of one of
+the cabins.
+
+"A Sheraton! Great heavens! Where did it come from? What is it doing
+there?"
+
+Uncle Jimpson, following the direction of her finger, looked surprised:
+"Dat ain't no sheraton, dat's a sideboard. Leastwise it wuz one 'fore
+I fixed it into a chicken coop. I took out de drawers and put on dem
+cross-pieces. Got forty de purtiest little chickens you eber seen!"
+
+"And the legs are curved and have knobs, haven't they?"
+
+"No, mam, dey ain't no more bow-legged dan most chickens. Do you raise
+chickens on your place?"
+
+"No, but we may when we get to the country. By the way, you don't happen
+to know of a good colored man around here, do you? One who understands
+horses, and would look well in livery?"
+
+Uncle Jimpson's eyes set in their sockets. Old John and the rattling
+buggy faded from his consciousness. In their place he saw himself on the
+box seat of a grand Victoria, in a double-breasted coat and high hat,
+lightly shaking the reins across the backs of two sleek thoroughbreds.
+It was even more alluring than his cherished dream of butlerhood!
+Already he felt his swelling chest strain against the gold buttons!
+
+But what about Miss Lady? Who was going to stay at Thornwood and take
+care of her? Domestic infelicities had rendered him callous to Aunt
+Caroline's claims, but Miss Lady, his "little Missis"?
+
+"No, mam," he said dejectedly as he assisted Mrs. Sequin to alight. "I
+can't say ez I do, not jes' at present. Sometime I might heah ob a good
+man, say 'bout my size an' build. You, Mike!"
+
+Mike had rushed at the small poodle with the apparent intention of
+swallowing her at a mouthful, but at Uncle Jimpson's stern reproof he
+snapped at a fly instead, and tried to give the impression that that was
+what he was after all along.
+
+"Ain't you 'shamed ob yourself?" Uncle Jimpson muttered. "Fussin' 'round
+here an' stickin' out yer lip at white folks? Come on 'round back where
+you b'longs. You an' me is corn-field niggers, dat's all we is!"
+
+And with that irritable dejection that often follows self-sacrifice,
+Uncle Jimpson limped away with the subdued Mike skulking at his heels.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+As Mrs. Basil Sequin swept up the broad steps at Thornwood, she
+congratulated herself upon a duty about to be accomplished. She had not
+foregone a bridge luncheon to make this tiresome trip to the country for
+purely altruistic reasons. She had come to prove to herself, and to
+her circle, the bond of friendship that existed between her and her
+distinguished cousin. Experience had taught her that an occasional
+reference to "my favorite cousin, John Jay Queerington, the author, you
+know," had its influence. "His is the only great intellect," she was
+fond of telling her husband, "to which I am related either by blood or
+marriage."
+
+Doctor Queerington's reputation was one of those local assumptions that
+might be described as prenatal rather than posthumous. It was what
+he was going to be, that made his name an awe-inspiring word in the
+community, more than what he was already. It was the conviction of his
+friends and colleagues that a tardy world would too late recognize his
+genius.
+
+After waiting impatiently for some one to respond to her vigorous use
+of the heavy knocker, Mrs. Sequin tucked Fanchonette under her arm and
+pushed open the door. The hall had doors to right and left, but before
+making further investigations she paused to examine minutely the tall
+mahogany clock, and the quaint silver candlesticks that stood on an old
+table at the foot of the steps.
+
+While bending to inspect the latter, she heard a door open, and
+looking up saw a pretty, slender girl in a short white petticoat and
+a sleeveless black dress lining, which displayed a pair of remarkably
+shapely arms.
+
+"Oh, I didn't know you had come!" exclaimed the young person, cordially
+extending a smiling welcome. "What a darling little dog! Is he a
+poodle?"
+
+"She is a French poodle," said Mrs. Sequin with a manner intended to
+impress this exceedingly casual person. "Where shall I find my cousin,
+Doctor Queerington?"
+
+"The front room up-stairs, on that side. I'd go up with you, only Miss
+Ferney Foster, our neighbor, is fitting this lining and she has to get
+back to her pickles. I wish we were born feathered like birds, don't
+you?"
+
+Mrs. Sequin, who had a masculine susceptibility to a pretty face, could
+not repress a smile.
+
+"I know this lining looks queer," went on the girl with an answering
+twinkle. "But it doesn't look any queerer than it feels. Miss Ferney
+doesn't know what's the matter, and neither do I. Would you mind taking
+a peep at it up there between the shoulders? I'll hold the doggie."
+
+To her surprise, Mrs. Sequin found herself removing her gloves, and
+adjusting a badly cut lining across a smooth white neck, while the girl
+before her, having shifted all responsibility, fell to making love to
+the poodle which she cuddled in her arms.
+
+"It's too tight here," said Mrs. Sequin, pinning and adjusting, "and too
+loose there. Have her take up the side seams to the place I have marked,
+and lengthen the shoulder seams at least an inch."
+
+"Thank you so much. It feels heavenly now. You go right up-stairs! You
+can take your things off in my room, if you like, just across the hall
+from the Doctor's." And without further ceremony the young hostess went
+tripping down the hall, leaving Mrs. Sequin to ascend the stairs alone.
+
+Ascending was one of Mrs. Sequin's chief accomplishments. Twenty-five
+years' experience on the social ladder had made her exceedingly
+surefooted. Her reward now was in sitting on the top rung and dictating
+arbitrarily to all those below. She had acquired a passion for
+dictating, for arranging, and setting in order. The crooked seams
+which she had just pinned straight gave her a satisfaction that almost
+counteracted her annoyance at the informality of her reception.
+
+Once established at the Doctor's bedside, with the nurse detailed to
+exercise Fanchonette in the yard below, she gave herself up to the
+pleasure of recounting at length her troubles of the past few months.
+She enjoyed talking, as a prima donna enjoys singing: she loved to hear
+the cadences of her own voice, and to watch the gestures of her jeweled
+hands.
+
+"It's an unspeakable relief," she assured the Doctor, "to actually see
+with my own eyes that you aren't a mangled cripple from the terrible
+wreck! You can't imagine how frightfully anxious I've been, but then
+this whole spring has been a veritable nightmare. Donald and Lee
+Dillingham both involved in this unspeakable scrape, Margery on the
+verge of nervous prostration, you perhaps fatally injured, and Basil
+Sequin too engrossed in his own affairs to give mine a moment's
+consideration."
+
+"Basil has grave responsibilities as president of the People's Bank,
+Katherine," said the Doctor, keeping his fingers between the leaves of
+the massive volume which he had regretfully closed at her entrance. "I,
+for one, owe him a debt of gratitude for relieving me of all financial
+anxiety. Besides you are always thoroughly capable of taking the reins
+in a family crisis."
+
+"Yes, but it's telling on me. I notice it in bridge. I am not the player
+I was a year ago. This trial of Lee Dillingham's has been a hideous
+strain. Of course, if he had been convicted, I should have compelled
+Margery to break her engagement, and that would have complicated things
+frightfully. You know his grandfather, the old general, is the largest
+stockholder in the People's Bank, and Basil insists that he must not be
+offended. That was one reason why I was so anxious to keep Don out of
+the way. Even if Lee was guilty, Don couldn't appear against him when
+he was engaged to Margery. The only possible course was to hush up
+the entire affair with as little publicity as possible. Thank heaven,
+General Dillingham has gotten Lee off, and I am beginning to breathe
+again."
+
+"And you have heard nothing from Donald?"
+
+"No, indeed, and I hope I won't for the present. I wrote immediately
+after the shooting to every place I could possibly think of his going,
+and implored him, if he had a grain of gratitude for me, or affection
+for Margery, that he would keep away, and not even let his whereabouts
+be known until this wretched affair had blown over. I can nearly always
+appeal to Don on the score of gratitude. I must say for him that, like
+the rest of the Morley men, he sows his wild oats like a gentleman. You
+remember Uncle Curtis? They said at the club he was a frightful drinker,
+and yet not a woman of his family ever saw him intoxicated. Then look
+at Grandfather Morley!" Mrs. Sequin was mounted on a favorite hobby.
+She had a large and varied collection of family skeletons, some of rare
+antiquity, which she delighted in exhibiting. She could recount the
+details of the unfortunate matrimonial alliances on both sides of the
+family for generations back, and was even more infallible in the matter
+of birth dates than the family Bible. If a relative by any chance got
+a trifle confused, and acknowledged to thirty-nine next June instead of
+last June, Mrs. Sequin pounced upon the error like a cat on a mouse. She
+could prove to him immediately that he was born the spring that Uncle
+Lem Miller died, and that was the same year that Grandmother Weller
+married the second time, therefore he _was_ thirty-nine _last_ June.
+
+"Donald ought to return at once," declared Doctor Queerington, when she
+paused for breath; "if he is guilty, he ought to take his punishment; if
+innocent, as I believe, he ought to be vindicated."
+
+"Well, we can't find him," said Mrs. Sequin with resigned cheerfulness.
+"He is probably in the Orient with Cropsie Decker. What a magnificent
+bed this is! Do you suppose I could buy it? Country people nearly always
+prefer new furniture."
+
+The suggestion of a smile hovered over the Doctor's thin lips:
+"Thornwood's possessions, I imagine, are not for sale."
+
+"I suppose the extraordinary young person I met in the front hall was
+Miss Carsey? What sort of a girl is she, anyhow?"
+
+"Miss Lady?" The Doctor shifted his pillow. "An extremely nice girl,
+I believe. Exceedingly sympathetic and attentive to all my wants, and
+receptive to a remarkable degree. She has been reading to me daily, and
+I find rather an unusual mind, undisciplined of course, but original and
+interesting."
+
+"But what amazing manners the child has! She greeted me in her bare
+arms, and asked me to fit a dress for her when she had never seen me
+before in her life. But she certainly is pretty! I haven't seen as
+pretty a creature for years."
+
+"Indeed!" said the Doctor, adjusting his eyeglasses. "I had not observed
+it, especially. A fine, frank countenance, with dark eyes--yes, I
+believe I did notice that she had chestnut eyes of unusual clearness; I
+remember I did notice that."
+
+"What is she going to do? Who is going to stay with her?" asked Mrs.
+Sequin. "Fancy a girl like that buried here in the country! Properly
+dressed, and toned down a bit, she'd make a sensation. I shouldn't at
+all mind asking her in to spend a few days with me sometime. You know
+I adore young people, and poor Margery, like all the other last year
+debutantes, is simply done for. Hasn't a spark of enthusiasm for
+anything. I hope you have not forgotten the fact that your Constance
+ought to come out this winter?"
+
+"My dear Katherine," said the Doctor with an air of enforced patience,
+"you do not seem to realize that my time and mind are engrossed in far
+greater things than society. I hope in the next year to complete the
+fifth and last volume of my 'History of the Norman Influence on English
+Literature and Language.' If I have been able to give my children very
+little of my time and attention, it is only because of my desire to
+leave them something of far greater worth--a name that I trust will
+stand among those of the foremost English scholars of my day."
+
+Mrs. Sequin soothed her irritation by studying her highly polished
+nails. "Of course, that will be an advantage to them. But what on
+earth's to become of them in the meanwhile? Heaven knows what Hattie
+will develop into if she isn't taken in hand. She refuses to have
+trimming on her underclothes now, and wears boy's shoes. As for
+Constance! I've quite despaired of getting hold of her. She's simply
+running wild, making no social connections whatever. What they really
+need, Cousin John, is a mother."
+
+"I must try to look after them more," the Doctor said, somewhat
+helplessly. "Have you seen them recently?"
+
+"I came by there this morning. They were all well, I suppose; Connie was
+at the Ivy's as usual, and Hattie at school. What a savage creature your
+new cook, Myrtella, is. I believe she is an anarchist! She opened the
+door only a crack, and when I asked her how the young ladies were, she
+said she was sure she didn't know, that she hadn't asked them."
+
+"And Bertie, did you see Bertie?"
+
+"Yes, he was with her. Had a dirty piece of dough in his hands which he
+said was going to be a cake. I must say she seems good to Bertie, but I
+would not tolerate her impertinence for a moment."
+
+"Myrtella carries concealed virtues," said the Doctor. "She is an
+excellent cook, and a good manager. Her only faults, apparently, are
+faults of the disposition."
+
+"From which Heaven defend me! What on earth is that noise? It sounds as
+if some one were kicking the door."
+
+"Please open!" called a voice from without, and as Mrs. Sequin complied,
+Miss Lady came in, carrying a large luncheon tray gaily decorated with
+flowers from the garden.
+
+"'Blest be those feasts with simple plenty crowned,'" quoted the Doctor.
+"You see how they spoil me, Katherine?"
+
+"I don't believe he could be spoiled, do you, Mrs. Sequin?" Miss Lady
+asked, as she fixed his eggs. "Is there anything else, Doctor?"
+
+"Don't run away," Mrs. Sequin said, following her movements with
+frank admiration. "Come here and sit down, I want to talk to you. I've
+discovered the ideal site for my new house, and I want to ask you about
+it. You know the western crest of this hill overlooking the river; did
+that belong to your father?"
+
+"It all used to be ours, long before it was ever called Billy-goat
+Hill."
+
+"The name _is_ a handicap," said the Doctor. "You might modify it,
+Katherine, by calling your prospective mansion 'Angora Heights.'"
+
+"The very thing," said Mrs. Sequin, eager to seize upon any suggestion
+that emanated from the Queerington intellect. "But who does the ground
+belong to?"
+
+"It belongs to Mr. Wicker, now."
+
+"Wicker?" repeated Mrs. Sequin. "Where have I heard that name? Why,
+Cousin John, wasn't that the man Don stayed with, when he was looking
+for a farm? How we laughed over that absurd notion of his farming!"
+
+"I did not laugh at it," said the Doctor. "I encouraged him. It seemed
+to me the most excellent idea!"
+
+"But you did not allow for Don's fickleness. Of course he's a darling
+fellow but he has had as many hobbies as he has had sweethearts."
+
+"I allowed for his character, which may yet strike root in the proper
+soil," the Doctor said with dignity; then turning to Miss Lady, who had
+risen and was standing by the bed, her hands tightly clasped and her
+eyes fixed on his, he explained: "We are speaking of the young brother
+of Mrs. Sequin; I was telling you about him this morning. Why, child!"
+For Miss Lady had suddenly dropped her face in her hands and made a rush
+for the door.
+
+"It's the shock of her father's death," explained Mrs. Sequin, who
+prided herself on divining motives. "I was like that for weeks when my
+last dog was run over. The most casual thing would upset me. I lost two
+games of cards one afternoon because somebody merely mentioned an ice
+wagon."
+
+The Doctor's long, slender fingers drummed absently on the bedspread.
+Presently he broke in quite irrelevantly on Mrs. Sequin's steady flow
+of talk: "I said chestnut brown, Katherine, they are more of a hazel, I
+should say, a deep hazel with considerable fire."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The long, summer months dragged their length for Miss Lady, months of
+heartache and rebellion, of loneliness and tears. Then came a day when,
+without apparent reason, the shadows lifted. She was tramping across the
+river flats, with Mike at her heels, when once again she heard the world
+singing, and before she knew it an answering song sprang to her lips.
+
+Uncle Jimpson, plowing near by, looked up and smiled:
+
+"Dat's right, Honey; sounds lak ole times to hear you singin' ag'in.
+I was jus' settin' here steddyin' how good I'd feel ef de Cunnel could
+come a stompin' 'long an' gimme one of his 'fore-de-war cussin's fer
+bein' lazy."
+
+"Oh, Uncle Jimpson, if he could! It seems so long since he left us. I
+have just been over to Miss Ferney's, but she wasn't there. I want to
+get her to come and stay with me until I know what I am going to do.
+They expect to take the Doctor home to-morrow."
+
+"Yas'm, Carline was tellin' me. Looks to me lak he's been well enough to
+go fer some time." Uncle Jimpson scratched his head wisely.
+
+"I don't know what's to become of us," said Miss Lady ruefully twisting
+Mike's ears. "They say unless I sell the rest of Thornwood, we won't
+have money enough to live on. But I won't sell another acre. I'll teach
+school first."
+
+Uncle Jimpson was scandalized: "Now, Miss Lady, chile, don't you git dem
+notions in your head. Dem's ole maid notions, you ain't no ole maid
+yit! Why don't you git married, and git a kerridge, an' I'll dribe an'
+Carline'll cook an' tak' care de chillun."
+
+"I'm _never_ going to marry, Uncle Jimpson," Miss Lady declared, with
+the passionate assurance of youth. "And I am never going to leave
+Thornwood. If you see Miss Ferney going down the road, ask her to stop
+by a minute. Come on, Mike, we are late now."
+
+And they were late, five minutes, by the open-faced watch that lay in
+the Doctor's hand as they entered the garden. He was sitting in his
+wheel-chair with his books and manuscripts on a table at his elbow, and
+he lifted an expectant face toward the gate as she entered.
+
+It was strange what two months at Thornwood had done for the Doctor. He
+had been brought there unconscious, a serious, middle-aged professor,
+who had run in the same groove for twenty years. The same surroundings,
+the same people, the same monotonous, daily routine had rendered him
+as rusty and faded as the text-books he lived with. Nothing short of a
+collision could have jolted him out of his rut, and the collision had
+arrived.
+
+The sudden change from the grim realism of a lecture platform, with its
+bleak blackboard and creaking chalk, to the romance of an old flower
+garden where blossoms flirted with each other across the borders, and
+birds made love in every bough, was enough to freshen the spirit of
+even a John Jay Queerington. His cosmic conscience, which usually worked
+overtime, striving to solve problems which Nature had given up,
+seemed to be asleep. His fine, serious face relaxed somewhat from its
+austerity, and as the days passed he read less and observed more.
+
+His observations, before long, resulted in a discovery; he, who was
+so weary of the cultivated hothouse species of femininity, had chanced
+quite by accident upon a rare, unclassified wild-flower, that piqued
+his curiosity and enlisted his interest. For two months he had depended
+almost entirely upon his young hostess for companionship, and the
+fact that the large box of books he had ordered from the city remained
+unopened, gave evidence that the Doctor had not been bored.
+
+During the hours when he was not engrossed in verifying statistics, and
+appending references to those voluminous and still accumulating notes
+for the fifth volume of his great work, he devoted himself to sorting
+and arranging the odds and ends of facts and fancies that he found
+stored away in Miss Lady's brain. Under ordinary circumstances he would
+have dismissed a pupil to whom clearness and accuracy were strangers,
+and whose attention wandered with every passing butterfly. In the
+classroom he not only demanded but practised order and system. He
+arrived at his conclusions by as methodical a series of mental actions
+as he arrived at his desk every morning at twenty-nine minutes to nine.
+But these were not ordinary circumstances.
+
+The impetuous young person who listened to him with such rapt admiration
+and respect, when she listened at all, had no method or system whatever.
+She simply waited for the hint, the flash that revealed the vision, then
+she joyously and fearlessly leaped to her conclusion.
+
+The fact that amazed him was not that she frequently landed before he
+did, but that she landed at all!
+
+As for Miss Lady herself, she was finding the Doctor's interest and
+companionship a welcome solace in her loneliness. The well of his
+knowledge seemed to her fathomless, and she never tired of hanging over
+the brink and looking down, often seeing stars in the darkness that she
+never saw in the day.
+
+When this last lesson was finished, the Doctor closed the book
+reluctantly:
+
+"I have given you the merest outline for future work," he said. "The
+rest remains with you. Have you decided yet what you are going to do?"
+
+"No, I'll do whatever you tell me, Doctor. Only I do hope it won't be to
+teach school,--the very thought of teaching makes me shrivel."
+
+"It is not altogether beyond the range of possibility that you will
+marry," said the Doctor, tracing parallelograms on the arm of the chair.
+"Such things do happen, you know."
+
+Miss Lady, sitting with her elbows on the table and her chin on her
+palms, flashed a strange, questioning glance at him.
+
+"Do you believe in love, Doctor?"
+
+"Why, of course, you foolish girl, in all its manifestations, filial,
+paternal, marital. Assuredly I do."
+
+"But I mean that other kind, the kind that makes a little heaven for a
+man and woman here on earth, that answers all their longings, so that
+nothing else matters, just so they have each other. I read about it in
+novels and in poetry, but I don't see it. The married people I know take
+each other as much for granted as they do their hands and feet. That's
+not what love means to me."
+
+The Doctor smiled indulgently. "Wait until you have passed the
+sentimental age before you give your verdict! Most young ladies imagine
+that because love does not arrive, full panoplied on a snow-white steed,
+that it is not love. You, probably, like the rest, have read too many
+romantic novels. When you come to know life better you will realize that
+moral equality and intellectual affinity promise a much safer union than
+a violent romantic attachment."
+
+She regarded him as earnestly as if he had been the fount of all wisdom.
+
+"How long does it usually last?" she asked.
+
+"Last?" he repeated.
+
+"The sentimental age. I suppose a girl ought to get through it by the
+time she is twenty. But I never do things on time. I didn't even know
+I was sentimental until you told me. I have learned a great many things
+since you came."
+
+"There were some things you did not need to learn," said the Doctor
+quietly. "Kindness and sympathy, and rare understanding. I shall always
+look back with pleasure to these quiet weeks spent under your father's
+roof. They have given me the only chance I have had in years for
+undisturbed writing on the History that will stand for my life work. I
+must confess that I dread my return home. The noise and confusion, the
+constant invasion of my privacy, the demands upon my time, appal me.
+Very few realize the magnitude of my work, and the necessity it lays
+upon me for isolating myself. You have been singularly sympathetic and
+helpful in that respect."
+
+"But think what your being here has meant to me! You came into my life
+just when everything else seemed to drop out. You explained things to
+me, and gave me something to do. You can't begin to know how you have
+helped me."
+
+"I have only tried to direct and suggest," the Doctor said; "in short to
+take the place--"
+
+"Of a father," finished Miss Lady enthusiastically.
+
+The Doctor tapped his foot impatiently. After all her father was a much
+older man than he: the distance, at that moment, between forty and sixty
+seemed infinitely greater than that between forty and twenty.
+
+"You see," Miss Lady went on, unconsciously, "you have taken Daddy's
+place in so many ways that I have been depending on you for everything.
+It makes me awfully lonesome when I think of your leaving. Down here you
+have just belonged to Miss Wuster and me, and once you get back to town
+you will be the famous Doctor Queerington again and belong to everybody.
+I shan't dare write to you for fear I spell a word wrong."
+
+"Indeed, I shall expect a weekly letter reporting the progress of your
+studies, and I shall come to see you from time to time and help you with
+your plans for the future."
+
+"Yes, but it won't be the same. We will sit in the parlor, and you'll
+be company, and I shall be afraid of you. I am always afraid of you the
+minute I get out of your sight."
+
+"What nonsense! I never criticize anything but your pronunciation, and
+an occasional exaggeration of statement. If I have seemed severe--"
+
+"You haven't! You've been an angel! When I think of all the time you
+have taken from your writing to help me, I am ashamed for letting you do
+it."
+
+"You must not think," said the Doctor slowly, "that I have been wholly
+disinterested. I have found you singularly helpful to me. I think I may
+say that you stimulate me and refresh me more than any one I know."
+
+"_I_ do? Oh! Doctor! That's about the nicest thing I ever had said to
+me."
+
+He was not prepared for the radiant face of gratitude that was lifted to
+his, nor for the proximity of her glowing eyes which gave him no further
+reason for doubting their exact hue.
+
+"Yes," he said with slight embarrassment, "your mind interests me
+exceedingly. It is not complex, nor subtle, but remarkably intuitive.
+You have imagination and humor, and great receptivity."
+
+Miss Lady wore the absorbed look people usually wear when their
+characteristics are undergoing vivisection; she could not have been more
+fascinated had she been viewing her face for the first time in a mirror.
+
+"This little volume now," the Doctor continued, picking up an elementary
+treatise on evolution; "I am particularly anxious to see what effect it
+will have on a fresh, unsophisticated mind. Make notes as you read, and
+we will discuss it when you have finished."
+
+"And you won't forget to send me the copy of Mrs. Browning?"
+
+"No, I seldom forget. But I may not send it. Science is better for
+you just now than poetry. What is that blossom you are so carefully
+cherishing?"
+
+Miss Lady's eyes fell, and the color leapt to her face.
+
+"This? Just a wild rose I found over there by the wall. I thought they
+had stopped blooming weeks ago."
+
+The Doctor took it in his hand and examined it minutely: "It is the
+_Rosa Blanda_," he said, "five cleft sepals that terminate in a tube.
+Pliny tells us that in ancient days the warriors used the petals of this
+rose to garnish their choicest meats. Who is that quaint person coming
+over the stile?"
+
+"It's Miss Ferney. What a nuisance, on our last day! But I forgot, I
+asked her to come. If she stays very long, just tell a little fib, won't
+you, and say you need me for something?"
+
+"It will not be a fib," said the Doctor quietly, "I do need you."
+
+Miss Lady met her caller at the front porch and relieved her of the jar
+she was carrying.
+
+"It's pickles," said Miss Ferney, a withered little woman whose small,
+nibbling face suggested a squirrel's. "I thought having company you
+might need 'em. Don't know though. City people may be too aristocratic
+to eat country pickles."
+
+"The idea, Miss Ferney! Don't you sell them in the city all the time?"
+
+"Yes, under labels. City people lay stress on labels. When I was a
+child, I wasn't allowed to eat things that was labeled. I hear he's
+going?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Your Doctor. Don't see how you've ever stood him so long."
+
+"Oh! you don't know Doctor Queerington! It's been a great privilege to
+have him here, He is a very distinguished man, Miss Ferney, and so kind
+and good!"
+
+"Good or bad, they are all the same to me. Just as soon have a fly under
+my mosquito bar as a man buzzing around in my house. When's he going?"
+
+"To-morrow. Will that be too soon for you to come over?"
+
+"No, I'm ready to come. Sis 'Lizzie will be sure to try some of those
+new-fangled receipts and spoil a bushel or two of cucumbers, but I
+said I'd come and I will. What is this Jimpson is telling me about your
+taking the examinations for the county school?"
+
+Miss Lady sighed: "I may have to teach; I don't know."
+
+"Sell off some more land. You don't need a hundred acres."
+
+"We've sold too much already! It will be the house next. I am determined
+to hold on to Thornwood if the roof tumbles in on my head!"
+
+"I know how you feel," said Miss Ferney whose sentiments ran to real
+estate. "I've been saving every nickel I made for nearly twenty years to
+buy back our place. From all the talk we heard last spring, Sis Lizzie
+rather allowed you was going to get married."
+
+"Well, I am not."
+
+"I am glad of it. Folks are keen enough to believe in every beau a girl
+has 'til she's thirty. After that they don't believe in any of them. Sis
+was misled by what they told her over at the Wickers'."
+
+"What did they tell her?" asked Miss Lady, training a rebellious moon
+vine up the trellis.
+
+"Oh, they told her about that young city fellow you was rampaging all
+over the country with last spring. Mrs. Wicker said he hadn't a thought
+in his head but you. That he wore her plumb out telling her about you,
+just as if she hadn't help raise you on a bottle!"
+
+Miss Lady still found the vine absorbing, but she took time to say over
+her shoulder:
+
+"Tell your sister and Mrs. Wicker that that young man has gone to
+China."
+
+"Well, nobody could wish him further! I hope he will stay. You are too
+nice a girl to get married. What do women want to marry for anyway? Look
+at me! Forty years single and not one minute of it spent in wishing I
+was married! I glory in my independence, I glory in my freedom."
+
+Miss Ferney was allowed to glory undisturbed, for Miss Lady, leaning
+against the railing of the porch, had apparently forgotten her
+existence.
+
+"You just make up your mind to take that school job, and lead a useful,
+independent life. I know a teacher in Shelby County that's had the same
+school for fifteen years, ever since she was a plump, pretty girl, and
+she's thin as I am now, and gray as a rat. Kept that same position and
+done well all these years."
+
+Miss Lady wheeled suddenly and flung out her arms:
+
+"If you don't hush this minute, Miss Ferney, I'll run off and join the
+circus! I'd lots rather stand on one toe in fluffy, spangled skirts, and
+jump through a hoop than teach school!"
+
+Miss Ferney looked scandalized: "You don't seem right well," she said as
+if in excuse for such flippancy. "I do believe you've got a fever. I'm
+going straight home and mix you up a tonic."
+
+Miss Lady sat for some time on the steps with her eyes on the distant
+river. Up the hillside the treetops rippled in the breeze, and down
+in the valley the winding stream danced in the shallows or loitered
+in brown pools to whisper secrets to the low-hanging boughs. The world
+seemed to her not only very beautiful, but very lonesome, and the vow
+of eternal celibacy, made to Uncle Jimpson, loomed large and terrible in
+the presence of Miss Ferney.
+
+"Oh, here you are," said the nurse, coming around the house; "the Doctor
+has been refusing to lie down until you come out to the garden. He says
+he needs you for something. Deliver me from convalescents!"
+
+Miss Lady laughed and ran down the path to the garden, where the Doctor
+greeted her with his rarest smile. The rest of the morning they pored
+over manuscripts, sorting notes, and making corrections, she happy
+in having even a tiny share in his great work, and he finding her
+enthusiasm and interest a welcome condiment to stir his jaded appetite
+for his task. Meanwhile, a bedraggled little rose languished unnoticed
+beneath the manuscript of "The History of Norman Influence on English
+Language and Literature."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+For three hundred and sixty-five days Myrtella Flathers held undisputed
+sway in the house of Queerington. The Doctor's semi-invalidism, after
+his return from Thornwood, threw all responsibility upon her, and while
+she permitted him to wear the crown, it was she who wielded the scepter.
+Never had the house been in such immaculate order, nor the young
+Queeringtons appeared in such presentable garments, and never had the
+front door been slammed so persistently in the face of unwelcome guests.
+
+For the Queerington family tree was afflicted with too many branches.
+There were little dry twigs of maidenly cousins, knotted and dwarfed
+stumps of half-gone uncles and aunts, vigorous, demanding shoots of
+nephews and niece's, all of whom had hitherto imposed upon the Doctor's
+slender income, and his too generous hospitality.
+
+Myrtella objected to the inroads these invaders made on his time
+and strength, and she also objected to the extra work their presence
+entailed upon her. In short, she felt that the family tree needed
+pruning, and she set herself right heartily to the job. By persistent
+discourtesy she managed to lop off one relative after another, until she
+gained for the Doctor a privacy hitherto undreamed of.
+
+"There ain't a hour in the day that I ain't headin' off somebody!" she
+triumphantly announced one day to the cook from next door. "When I come
+here you'd 'a' thought it was a railroad station, people comin' and
+goin' with satchels; and bells a-ringin', and trunks being dragged over
+the carpets. Dirt from the top of the house to the bottom; Miss Hattie
+with her petticoats hanging down below her dress; and all the neighbor
+children racing in and out, and actually takin' the mattress off
+Bertie's bed to coast down the stairs on!"
+
+"In the name of St. Patrick!" sympathized Norah, the visitor; "and their
+pa not doin' nothin' with 'em at all?"
+
+"Who said he wasn't?" blazed Myrtella instantly. "You'll be hintin'
+around next that I was talkin' about the Doctor behind his back. You're
+fixin' to lose me my place, that's what you are doin'."
+
+"Not me! It's braggin' on you I was not over a week ago, sayin' what a
+fine, nice cook you was, and how grand and clean it was over here."
+
+"Of course," said Myrtella haughtily, "I may not be workin' fer a lady
+that's so smart she wouldn't even know her own kitchen if she met it
+walkin' up the street. I may not work in a house where they pull down
+the shades and burn red lamps in the day time to keep from showin' the
+dirt under the sofa. We don't keep two servants and not have enough to
+feed 'em, but _I'm_ satisfied. At least fer the present. The day will
+come when I won't have to be in service to no one. I'm puttin' by each
+week, and the time ain't distant when I'll be settin' at the head of my
+own boardin'-house table, an' it will be 'Miss Flathers,' if you please!
+You, Bertie!" this to a frail-looking little boy in the back yard. "You
+git up off the grass this minute! Fixin' to catch the croup and have me
+up with you all night, like I was last week."
+
+"Sure 'n I might find a worse place than Mrs. Ivy's," continued
+Norah. "A bit of blarney, and frish flowers every day in front of her
+photygraph, and things right for Mr. Gerald, is all she wants. The last
+place I worked,--Mrs. Sequin's, bad luck to her!... It was a party or a
+dinner between me and me rest ivery night of the week! Sorra a bit did
+I care for the whole kit of 'em, barring Mr. Don Morley, as fine a young
+gentleman as ever set foot in sole leather!"
+
+"Him that shot Dick Sheeley and run away?"
+
+"Him they laid it on," said Norah with indignant emphasis. "It was that
+good-for-nothin' Mr. Lee Dillingham done it, and Mrs. Sequin a-movin'
+heaven to marry Miss Margery off to him. I seen how they was tryin' to
+keep Mr. Don from comin' home and hearin' the tales they was tellin'. He
+is worth the whole bunch of 'em tied in a knot; a gentleman inside and
+out, and his hand in his pocket ivery time you served him. Ain't that
+somebody a-callin' ye down the back stairs?"
+
+"Let 'em call," said Myrtella, to whom these comparisons of past
+places were replete with interest. "It's just Miss Hattie; if she's got
+anything worth sayin', she can come down and say it."
+
+It was evidently worth saying, for a moment later, a thin,
+sharp-featured girl of fourteen thrust her head in at the door.
+
+"Myrtella, I told you I wanted that white dress fixed. I am going to
+wear it this afternoon."
+
+"It's too early to wear summer clothes," Myrtella announced, continuing
+her ironing. "I never sewed the buttons on a purpose, so 's you couldn't
+wear it."
+
+"Well I _will_ wear it! I am going right straight up stairs and pin it
+on."
+
+As the door slammed, Myrtella turned a beaming face on Norah:
+
+"It ain't hemmed!" she said with satisfaction.
+
+Norah shrugged her shoulders:
+
+"It would be a cold day that'd see anybody makin' me do the cookin' and
+nursin', and sewin' for a family of four, for five dollars a week!"
+
+Myrtella glared at her across the ironing board:
+
+"Who said anybody was makin' me? I'm paid to do the cookin' and
+housework in this house, and if I see fit to light in and boss things
+'round a bit, it's my own business. Thank the Lord, I got manners enough
+to attend to it! How much coffee did you come over here to borrow?"
+
+"A cupful will do, 'til the morning. I'll bring it back before
+breakfast."
+
+"Put it in this jar when you do. I keep what you pay back separate from
+ours, so's I can lend it to you again. We ain't used to chicory."
+
+Norah coughed deprecatingly behind her hand:
+
+"Sure you might make allowance fer a lady as busy as Mrs. Ivy. She can't
+get her mind down to ordn'ary things."
+
+"Stop her settin' on club boards, and meetin' on committees, and tryin'
+to regulate the nation, and she might remember to order the groceries.
+What's she workin' on now?"
+
+"A begger man. It was readin' Scriptures to him she was when I come
+away, and him a-settin' there, right pitiful, a-tellin' her how he'd
+lost all he had in the flood. A religious talkin' man if I ever heard
+one."
+
+"Red-headed?" inquired Myrtella, arresting a hot iron in mid air.
+
+"He was."
+
+"When she gits done with him, you send him over here," Myrtella brought
+the iron down on the board with a thud. "If there is one person in the
+world I'm layin' for it's a red-headed flood-sufferer."
+
+Norah on her way out encountered another visitor and turned back to
+announce him:
+
+"Git on to what Bertie has drawed out here! The craziest, dirtiest kid!
+Puts me in mind of a egg on a couple of toothpicks!"
+
+Myrtella, peering over her shoulder, suddenly scrambled down the steps.
+
+"It's Chick!" she cried, beaming upon him. "How long you been here,
+Chick?"
+
+"And who's Chick?" asked Norah, instantly curious. "You seem to set a
+great store by him! What ails the child? What's he pointin' at our house
+for? Ain't he got a tongue in his head?"
+
+"He has, though not so long as some folks. Chick! Bertie! Come in here!"
+and without ceremony Myrtella swept them into the kitchen and slammed
+the door in Norah's face.
+
+Once within her stronghold, she first embraced Chick, then dragged him
+forcibly to the sink, and subjected him to a vigorous scrubbing. Both
+actions apparently bored him acutely, for he turned his soap-dimmed eyes
+enviously upon the smaller boy who pranced about in transports of joy.
+
+"We'll skate on the pavement!" Bertie was crying excitedly. "You can
+have one skate, and I'll have the other and we'll see who can beat."
+
+"You won't do nothin' of the kind!" quoth Fate at the faucet. "I ain't
+goin' to have you racin' 'round and gettin' het up and takin' cold.
+Besides, you ain't big enough to keep up with Chick!" Then seeing the
+disappointment her ultimatum had caused, she added, "if it wasn't for
+you stickin' every thing up, I might make you some candy."
+
+"Oh, 'Tella! will you? 'Lasses candy? Ask him if he likes 'lasses
+candy."
+
+Violent nods of affirmation from the steam-enveloped victim.
+
+Myrtella had started with the simple ambition to wash Chick's face, but
+the boundary line had proved troublesome. Whether she sharply defined
+it, or attempted artistic effects in chiaroscuro the result was equally
+unsatisfactory. Myrtella was nothing if not thorough; before she
+finished with Chick, he was standing with his feet in a bucket, as clean
+and wet and naked as a fish.
+
+All this consumed time, and both boys were growing impatient, when a
+peculiar noise from outside attracted their attention. To Chick, only,
+the sound seemed to be familiar, for he laughed and wagged his head and
+pointed to the yard.
+
+"It sounds like hiccoughs!" said Bertie, his head on one side.
+
+Myrtella's mouth closed like a trap. "I'll hiccough him!" she breathed
+mysteriously, and leaving the children to watch the candy, she went out
+on the porch and closed the door behind her.
+
+Bertie, in his short kilts, with his feet curled up in a chair, watched
+Chick with absorbed interest as he donned his ragged, dirty trousers.
+A pair of purple suspenders that had once belonged to Mr. Flathers,
+excited his special admiration.
+
+"Say, Chick, have you got a partner?"
+
+Chick nodded.
+
+"You couldn't be partners with me, too, could you?"
+
+A violent shake of the head.
+
+"I didn't think you could with two fellows at once." Bertie contemplated
+the boiling candy thoughtfully. "I could get lots of partners if I
+wasn't always sick. If you ever don't have the one you have got, could
+you take me, Chick?"
+
+Chick looked him over critically, stood him up and measured heights and
+even felt his arm for muscle. Then he made a remark that while lacking
+lucidity was nevertheless conclusive.
+
+"But I'm going to get bigger," urged Bertie.
+
+"And I've got a music box, and a water pistol, and some marbles--"
+
+At this Chick promptly produced a handful of marbles from his own
+pocket, and signified, by many whispers and hisses, that he was
+engaged in a wholesale and retail trade along that line, and open to
+negotiations.
+
+Bertie made a hurried trip to the nursery and returned with a neat blue
+bag from which he poured treasures of agate and crystal.
+
+Chick lost all interest in the candy. His professional reputation was at
+stake. Never could he face the gang on Billy-goat Hill, if he failed to
+fleece this lamb that Providence had so clearly thrust in his way.
+
+Meanwhile Myrtella was exercising an elder sister's prerogative on the
+back steps, and bestowing upon her brother what she modestly called a
+piece of her mind.
+
+For Phineas, in one of his periodical backslidings, had slid too far.
+His ambition to excel as a regenerate had carried him out of the quiet
+pastures of the Immanuel flock, into the more exhilarating battle-field
+of the Salvation Army. Lured by the prospect of recounting his
+experiences on a street corner to the accompaniment of an accordion, he
+had forsaken the safe shelter of the Ladies' Aid, and sought new worlds
+to conquer.
+
+The experiment had not been a success. He was now, at the end of a
+year, going from door to door, ragged and unkempt, playing the small
+and uninteresting role of flood-sufferer. But Phineas' spirit soared
+blithely above his circumstances. He even encouraged Myrtella in her
+tirade against him, spurring her on to fresh effort, as the monks of
+old! courted flagellation.
+
+"That's right, Sis!" he urged, "you git it all out of your system. I
+says to the lady next door, I says, what I need is a dressing down from
+my good sister. She'll give me gussie, says I, then she'll light in an'
+help me. That's her way, I says, there ain't a more generous person on
+this terrestrial globe. I 'lowed maybe she'd be moved to follow your
+example, but she wasn't. She handed me out a line of Sunday school talk
+fer more 'n a hour, then she didn't give me nothin' but this here Bible,
+an' me a starvin' man! I've ate a little of everything in my day, but
+I'm skeered to risk my digestion on Deuteronomies and Psa'ms!"
+
+"Well, you needn't come beggin' 'round here, and trackin' in the mud,"
+announced Myrtella firmly. "I'm done with you! You had just as good a
+chance to get on as me. I never ast favors of nobody; I went to work
+an' hustled. What's more, I ain't goin' to stop 'til I get to be
+a boardin'-house keeper. And what'll you be? A lazy, drunken,
+good-for-nothin' sponge."
+
+Phineas, toying with his hat, suddenly sniffed the air and smiled.
+
+"Molasses candy!" he exclaimed joyfully. "I couldn't git on to what was
+making me feel so good. Say, Sis, you must 'a' knowed I was a-comin'."
+
+Myrtella stood in rigid disapproval on the top step and surveyed her
+next of kin with such chilling contempt that he decided to change his
+tactics.
+
+"Honest, now, Sis, I never come to beg for nothin'. What I really come
+for was to tell you 'bout our good luck."
+
+This move was so adroit that it caught Myrtella unawares, and elicited
+a faint show of curiosity. "We never knowed it 'til last week," Phineas
+proceeded mysteriously, "an' we ain't mentioned it to nobody 'til we git
+a parlor fitted up an' a sign painted."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Fer see-ances! There's been a Dago doctor, calls himself Professor
+King, hangin' 'round the Hill, an' the minute he lays eyes on Maria
+Flathers he seen she was a mejium. He give her four lessons fer a
+dollar, an' she begin to hear raps an' bells ringin' the fifth settin'.
+Last night she begin to move the furniture."
+
+"She must 'a' been in a trance!" exclaimed Myrtella. "I been knowin'
+Maria about fourteen years an' I never heard of her movin' the
+furniture. She can go to more pains to scrub around a table leg than any
+one I ever knowed."
+
+But in spite of her scoffing, Myrtella was impressed. For many years
+she had considered a visit to a spiritualist, or clairvoyant, one of her
+wildest and most extravagant dissipations. The possibility of having a
+medium in the family was a luxury not to be lightly dismissed.
+
+"Where'd you git the money fer the lessons?" she demanded suddenly.
+
+Phineas hesitated and was lost.
+
+"You spent Chick's! He's as ragged as a scarecrow. Looks like he don't
+get enough food to push his ribs out. I ketch you spendin' the money I
+give him on sperrits, livin' or dead, an' I'll never give you another
+cent!"
+
+"Now, Sis, hold on! You didn't lemme finish. I'm thinkin' some
+of running a undertaker's business, along in conjunction with the
+see-ances. We could keep tab on the customers then, and build up a good
+trade. All on earth we need is just a little capital, an' we'd be a
+self-supportin' couple inside a week."
+
+So convincing were Phineas' arguments, that in the end Myrtella
+consented to act as _deus ex machina_ for the new psychical venture, on
+condition that Chick should be properly clothed, and fed, and made to go
+to school.
+
+This agreement having been arrived at, Myrtella reached for her broom,
+and began such a vigorous attack on the steps, that Flathers was forced
+to conclude that his presence could be cheerfully dispensed with. He
+gathered himself up, slapped his hat on the side of his head, tucked his
+Bible under his arm, and made a sweeping bow.
+
+"Fare thee well, my own true love. Bring the money Saturday night, an'
+Maria'll wind up the sperrits an' let 'em manifest fer you, free of
+charge. Sorry I can't wait fer that molasses candy to git done. You
+might send me some by Chick. Adiew!"
+
+Myrtella stood, broom in hand, and watched the loose-jointed figure
+slouch down the pavement and out the back gate. He was cheerfully
+whistling the doxology, and his face wore the rapt expression of one
+whose thoughts are not on earthly things. She sighed and shook her head.
+
+"Front door bell's ringing," called Bertie, "so's the telephone, and
+Father's gone out and says you can clean his study. There's the bell
+again."
+
+"I expect it's Mr. Gooch inviting himself to supper. I ain't goin' to
+let him in. Give me that there plate to pour the candy in."
+
+"Look, 'Telia, what Chick traded me!"
+
+Myrtella cast a side glance at Bertie's extended palm, and promptly
+rescinded the deal.
+
+"Ain't you ashamed of yourself, Chick Flathers! Tradin' a little
+fellow's fine marbles fer them comman allies? It's cheatin', that's what
+it is, it's stealin'! Ain't you ashamed?"
+
+Chick _was_ ashamed and had the grace to show it. His contrition would
+probably not have developed except through exposure, but standing before
+Myrtella's accusing glance, and the surprised, hurt look in Bertie's
+eyes, his hardened conscience was pricked, and his lip began to tremble.
+
+With a fierce gesture of protection Myrtella pulled him to her:
+
+"Don't, Chick! Don't cry! I wasn't meanin' to scold you. You ain't had
+a chance like other boys. You never had no playthings, you never had
+nothin'. You was a poor little abandoned child ever since you was born.
+Oh! God, I'm a wicked woman! I ain't fit to live on the earth!"
+
+This amazing outburst so stunned the two small boys, that they stood
+looking at her in open-eyed astonishment. For some moments she swayed to
+and fro with her apron over her head, then savagely dried her eyes, and,
+bidding them follow her, stalked up the back stairs with broom and dust
+pan.
+
+Doctor Queerington's study was at the top of the house, where by means
+of closing the doors and windows, and stuffing his ears with cotton, he
+was able to shut out that material world to which he preferred to remain
+a stranger. The room was filled from floor to ceiling with books, and it
+was one of the crosses of Myrtella's life that behind the visible rows
+of volumes, stood other rows, forming a sort of submerged library beyond
+the reach of her cloth and duster.
+
+In no room in the house did she feel her importance more fully than in
+this inner shrine. She had calculated with mathematical precision the
+exact position of each of the Doctor's desk utensils, she knew the
+divinity that hedged about a manuscript, and the inviolable nature of
+bookmarks.
+
+When Bertie began fingering the inkstand, she pounced upon him.
+
+"Don't you dare touch a thing, either one of you! When the Doctor told
+me to take charge of his things, I took it. There ain't ever been a word
+of complaint since I come here, and I ain't goin' to have one at this
+here late date. There's the Doctor now comin' up the steps; I'll finish
+up here later. Get away from there, Chick!"
+
+But Chick had made a discovery. On the Doctor's desk, smiling out from
+a porcelain frame, he had found his divinity! It was the beautiful young
+lady who had once taken his part in a fight with Skeeter Sheeley over
+a whip handle; it was the young lady who always smiled at him when she
+rode by Billy-goat Hill; it was she who had changed his life ambition
+from grand larceny to plumbing! Heedless of warning he snatched at the
+picture, and as he did so it slipped from his fingers and the frame
+shattered on the floor.
+
+Doctor Queerington, at the doorway, took in the situation at a glance.
+He looked quickly from Myrtella's horrified face to the cringing figure
+of the strange child, then he smiled reassuringly.
+
+"There is no serious harm done," he said in a quiet, pleasant voice;
+"the frame can be easily replaced, and as for the photograph--" he
+paused and smiled again, then he drew Bertie's hand into his; "Myrtella,
+I shall no longer have need of a photograph of that young lady. She has
+consented to come herself and take charge of us all."
+
+Myrtella stood as one petrified; her massive figure with its upraised
+duster was silhoueted against the light, like a statue of the goddess of
+war. At last she found voice:
+
+"To take charge?" she gasped. "Do you mean she's comin' to be Mis'
+Squeerington?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Well, I give notice," announced Myrtella with all the dignity of
+offended majesty, and shoving Chick before her, she slammed the door
+upon the astonished Doctor and stalked haughtily down the stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+"A bride who doesn't see her duty, should be _made_ to see it," declared
+Mrs. Sequin to Mrs. Ivy in her most impressive manner. "Something is
+naturally expected of the wife of John Jay Queerington. I told her
+expressly that Friday was her day, I even telephoned to remind her,
+and here it is four o'clock, and people beginning to come, and she off
+playing tennis!"
+
+They were waiting in the twilight of the Queerington parlor, that plain,
+stiff, old maid of a parlor that had sprung completely furnished from
+the brain of a decorator some two decades before and never blinked an
+eyelid since. It was a room with which no one had ever taken liberties.
+Hattie had once petulantly remarked that her father would as soon have
+moved a tooth from his lower to his upper jaw, as to have moved an
+ornament or picture from the parlor to the second floor.
+
+Mrs. Ivy, the lady addressed, smiled tolerantly. It was one of Mrs.
+Ivy's most irritating characteristics that she was always tolerant of
+other people's annoyances. She was blond and plump, and wore a modified
+toga and a crystallized smile.
+
+"Ah! Mrs. Sequin," she purred, "our little bride is a child of Nature.
+Sweetness and light! We must not expect too much of her at first. My
+Gerald says she's like a wild little waterfall dancing in the sun,
+undammed by conventions. Gerald phrases things so perfectly."
+
+"Well, I've had enough of trying to manage a waterfall!" Mrs. Sequin
+said grimly. "Cousin John asked me to take her in hand, and I must say
+I am finding her difficult. Perfectly sweet and good natured, you
+know, but she goes right on her own way. She has decided that she likes
+Connie's friends better than the Doctor's, that her hair doesn't feel
+right arranged the way it should be, that she isn't going to wear
+dresses made by fashionable dressmakers because they are uncomfortable.
+She actually told me she liked to be a few minutes out of style!"
+
+"But isn't she right?" murmured Mrs. Ivy. "God has given her a graceful,
+symmetrical body, shouldn't she clothe it in flowing robes that do not
+confine or--"
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Mrs. Ivy, don't you dare start her on dress reform!
+Her one chance for social success is her beauty. She simply terrifies me
+the way she says right out the first thing that comes into her mind. It
+will take me months to teach her the first lesson in society, that the
+most immodest thing in the world is the naked truth."
+
+"What I hope to rouse in the dear girl," said Mrs. Ivy with a superior
+smile, "is a sense of responsibility toward her fellowmen. I have
+already proposed her name for the Anti-Tobacco League and Miss Snell,
+our corresponding secretary of the Foreign Missionary Society, has
+promised to meet me here at five. It is these young, ardent souls that
+must take up the banner of reform when it drops from the hands of us
+veterans."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Sequin, turning a handsome, bored profile to her
+companion, "I shall never get over the absurdity of the marriage!"
+
+"Ah!" said Mrs. Ivy, laying a plump white hand on Mrs. Sequin's arm,
+"cosmic forces brought them together! The thing we seek is seeking us.
+She was young, inexperienced, adrift in the world; he was ill, lonely,
+and with three motherless children. She told me that through the past
+year, the Doctor's letters were all that sustained her."
+
+"Of course they did! Cousin John's letters sustain everybody. Especially
+if you haven't heard his lectures. Of course he does repeat himself."
+
+"As for her youth," went on Mrs. Ivy. "What if she is a mere rosebud as
+yet? She'll unfold; we'll help her to unfold, you and I, won't we?"
+
+Meanwhile the bride had slipped in the side entrance and was making
+frantic haste in the room above to exchange a tennis costume for a new
+house-dress.
+
+Connie Queerington was assisting, but Connie's assistance was generally
+a hindrance. She was an exceedingly voluble, blond young person, with
+blue eyes that enjoyed nothing more than their own reflection.
+
+"I'll never get it hooked if you don't hold still," she was saying.
+"Every time you laugh you pop it open."
+
+"Fifteen--love, thirty--love, forty--love, game!" rehearsed Miss Lady,
+practising a newly acquired serve with a vigorous stroke of her racket.
+"I could play all day and all night! Do you think I'll ever get to be a
+good player?"
+
+"Of course, if you just won't get so excited and hit the balls before
+they bounce. Gerald Ivy says your overhand play is great. He's mad about
+you, anyhow. I'd give both my little fingers to have him look at me as
+he did at you to-day."
+
+"Silly!" laughed Miss Lady. "There goes the button off my slipper. Do
+you suppose any one will notice if I pin the strap?"
+
+"Nobody but Myrtella. Sit on your foot if she comes around. If you don't
+hurry Cousin Katherine will have nervous prostration."
+
+"I don't see why you have to treat reception day like judgment day,"
+complained Miss Lady. "Who else is down stairs?"
+
+"Only Mrs. Ivy now. She is the one who held your hand and called you a
+sunbeam. Gerald's mother, you know. Hat can't abide her; says she's a
+pussy-cat. Of course Mr. Gooch will be here for supper."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Mr. Gooch."
+
+"A friend of the Doctor's?"
+
+"No, indeed. He isn't anybody's friend. He bores us all to extinction."
+
+"Well, what's he coming for?"
+
+"I don't know. He always comes on Friday. He came in here once to get
+out of the rain, and Mother asked him to stay to tea. That was ten years
+ago and he has been back nearly every Friday since."
+
+"Do you have company like this all the time?" asked Miss Lady somewhat
+breathlessly.
+
+"This is nothing!" exclaimed Connie dramatically. "Before Myrtella came
+I never knew what it was to sleep in my own bed, and I had to eat the
+legs of chickens until I felt like a centipede. There! You are all
+right; come along. Don't forget to tell Father about the party!"
+
+Miss Lady had been married two weeks, but she was still circling wildly
+in a vortex of new experiences that excited and bewildered her. Through
+a long, lonely winter she had fought out her problems at the little
+country school, relying implicitly upon Doctor Queerington's friendship
+and guidance. His weekly letters, couched in paragraphs of technical
+perfection, seemed to her oracles of wisdom and beauty. Then the amazing
+and unbelievable thing had happened! He, the great Doctor Queerington,
+her father's friend, her friend, the man whom she respected more than
+any one else in the world, had chosen her, a young, inexperienced girl
+to be his wife!
+
+To one who was quite sure that she was through with illusions for ever,
+and who flattered herself that the sentimental age was safely behind
+her, the honor of a life-long companionship with a man like Doctor
+Queerington was almost overwhelming. She wanted passionately to be of
+use in the world, to make her life count for something. The opportunity
+of being of service to the Doctor, of helping him complete the great
+work that absorbed him, of ministering to his physical needs, and
+bringing joy into his life, assumed the character of a sacred privilege.
+
+If haunting doubts and vague unsatisfied longings possessed her at
+times, she attributed them to that dear but unreal glamour of romance
+that the Doctor had taught her must be expected to play for a while
+about the dawn of youth, but which fades away in the noon of maturity.
+And so not being skilled in the science of self-analysis, she fearlessly
+put her hand into the Doctor's, and promised to obey with a frank sense
+of relief at the shifted responsibility.
+
+The new life into which she entered proved different in every respect
+from what she had expected. The Doctor's time, scheduled to the minute,
+admitted of no interruptions, however helpful from her. In fact, he
+seemed to regard her as a cherished luxury which he had no time to
+enjoy. The children accepted her according to their respective natures,
+Connie as a chum, Hattie as an arch enemy, and Bertie as an idol.
+
+Hattie was fourteen, and had solved all the problems of the universe.
+She firmly upheld Aristotle and scornfully dismissed Plato from the
+world of philosophy. She disapproved of boys, of society, of second
+marriages, and she had four desperately intimate friends, all of whom
+were going to be authoresses. According to her observations she was the
+one person in the universe, excepting her father, who adhered to the
+truth. Hence her mission in life was to struggle single-handed against
+other people's inaccuracies.
+
+Miss Lady found refuge from Hattie's caustic comments in Bertie's
+immediate devotion. He had won her heart on the night of her arrival,
+when he had gone to sleep in her lap with a last injunction, that she
+"must stay with them always, until God sent for her."
+
+Whatever ideas Miss Lady had cherished of taking charge of the domestic
+affairs were promptly discouraged by Myrtella, who had graciously
+consented to give the new mistress a month's trial, threatening that at
+the first interference she would abandon her to her fate.
+
+Their first meeting was auspicious. Myrtella on returning from her
+afternoon out, had heard a wild commotion in the nursery and hastened up
+to investigate. Bertie's introduction was breathless:
+
+"It's the new mother, 'Tella, and Chick's here, and we are playing
+bear, and we've broken the bed-springs, and she knows heaps and heaps of
+stories, and she knows Chick!"
+
+Myrtella, who had steeled herself for mortal combat, was not prepared
+for a foe who sat in the middle of the nursery bed, laughing behind a
+tumbled shock of shining brown hair.
+
+"Oh! this is Myrtella, isn't it?" asked the bear, shaking back her mane
+and smiling with engaging frankness. "Bertie says you are Chick's aunt,
+and Chick's an old friend of mine, isn't it funny?"
+
+"Where'd you ever know Chick?" demanded Myrtella with instant suspicion.
+
+"We both live on Billy-goat Hill. We always wave to each other when I
+pass by, don't we, Chick?"
+
+Chick, who was partially under the bed, still in his character
+of intrepid hunter, acknowledged the fact with such a torrent of
+enthusiastic incoherence that Myrtella interrupted sternly:
+
+"Come out here this minute. It's time for you to be going on home
+anyhow. First thing I know I'll be getting complained at for having you
+hanging around so much. And look at your hands, Bertie Queerington!
+You are going to get put in the bath-tub right off, that's what you are
+going to get!"
+
+"I'll bathe him," said Miss Lady eagerly.
+
+"No," said Myrtella firmly, "there can't nobody but me manage him."
+
+But in spite of the ferocity of Myrtella's aspect, there was a softened
+gleam in her eye that showed that the new mistress had begun by giving
+satisfaction.
+
+The first few days after her arrival, Miss Lady spent in the dim parlor
+receiving callers. All the Doctor's relatives having survived
+their spasms of indignation over his marriage, united in a prompt
+determination to train up his young wife in the way she should go.
+Advice as various as it was profuse, was showered upon her. At first she
+was amused; then she was inexpressibly bored; at last she was desperate.
+She was not used to being indoors all day, she was not used to spending
+her time with elderly ladies who talked of moral obligations, and social
+demands, and civic consciences. The duties of her married life which had
+promised such interesting responsibilities, and wonderful opportunities
+for aiding the Doctor in his great work, seemed to be shrinking into the
+dull task of keeping herself and the children out of his way, preserving
+a tomb-like silence in the house, and entertaining an endless round of
+callers.
+
+Even this would have been bearable if the Doctor could only have taken
+time from his soul-absorbing work to listen at the end of the day, with
+amused tenderness, to all her little experiences, if he had discussed
+with her the best way of handling the children, laughed with her over
+her struggles with Myrtella, and encouraged those affectionate words and
+caresses that were so much a part of her nature.
+
+If he could have done this, Miss Lady would have soon found satisfaction
+in lavishing her affection upon him. It was her bent to be passionately
+attached to those about her, and she was not one to stand still in a
+mental or emotional imprisonment.
+
+But the Doctor was struggling through the most nerve-wrecking month of
+the year at the university. The beginning of a new term, the adjustment
+of classes, the enrolment of new pupils, all made a heavy drain on his
+weakened constitution. He was in no condition in the evenings to give
+out anything more, even to a young and devoted bride who was quite ready
+to relinquish any other pleasure to burn incense at the shrine of his
+learning.
+
+The homesickness that had hung over her since the day she had turned her
+back on Thornwood would have enveloped her completely had it not
+been for Connie. Connie was but a year her junior, and was thoroughly
+disapproved by the family connection. She enjoyed the reputation of
+being frivolous and vain, and wholly lacking in reverence to her elders.
+
+Connie's friends and amusements proved the line of least resistance
+along which Miss Lady raced to freedom. The tennis court served as a
+joyful substitute for the drab dreariness of the new home, and the
+free and easy companionship of Connie's friends a happy relief from the
+elderly feminines that invaded it.
+
+The Doctor was still the majestic pivot, round which her thoughts swung,
+but the circle was growing wider and wider. The difference in their
+ages, which at first to her inexperience had seemed such a trifling
+consideration, proved more serious as time went on.
+
+She was eager for life, keen for pleasure, plastic, susceptible. Each
+new experience was to her an epoch, while to the Doctor, whose habits
+and opinions were fixed for eternity, it was usually but a fresh
+interruption to his work.
+
+It was not that he failed to appreciate her. The light that came into
+his serious eyes whenever she was near, the unfailing courtesy and
+gentleness with which he spoke to her, the absolute freedom he allowed
+her, and the flattering appeal he made to her intellect, calmed whatever
+doubts might have risen in her mind.
+
+Of her own feelings she dared not stop to think. Life was all so
+strange, so different from what she had expected. The flashes of doubt
+and perplexity that came in the pauses between Connie's closely planned
+festivities, she attributed to homesickness.
+
+It was late when her last caller departed, and as she ran lightly up to
+the Doctor's study, she realized with a little sense of disappointment
+that she had not seen him since breakfast. Even now she paused at the
+door, for fear she would interrupt some flight of the muse. But on
+peeping in she found his big armchair drawn up to the window, and the
+top of a head appearing above its back. Tiptoeing cautiously forward
+she clapped her hands over his eyes and dropped a kiss on his upturned
+forehead.
+
+In an instant a strange, belligerent little gentleman had sprung to his
+feet and was confronting her with features that resembled those of a
+magnified and outraged bumblebee.
+
+"I am so sorry!" stammered Miss Lady in laughing chagrin, "I--I thought
+you were the Doctor!"
+
+"Even so," admitted the stranger rather firmly, standing with chin
+lifted and nostrils dilated, "even so. You seem to have forgotten the
+fact that Doctor Queerington is now a benedict!"
+
+"Yes, but you don't understand. I am--"
+
+"A friend of Constance' no doubt. But under the circumstances you will
+permit me to say that such conduct is ill-advised. I should not mention
+it were I not a friend of the family--"
+
+"Oh! You are Mr. Gooch?"
+
+"I am. And I have the pleasure of addressing--"
+
+"Why, I'm Mrs. Queerington," said Miss Lady, blushing furiously.
+
+Mr. Gooch sank back into the chair and looked at her indignantly.
+
+"Impossible!" he exploded. "They did not tell me--in fact I was
+not prepared--May I ask you not to mention my mistake to the girls?
+Constance, as you doubtless have discovered, is very silly, given to
+making great capital out of nothing. We will not mention it."
+
+"Ah!" said the Doctor in the doorway with his arms full of books. "How
+are you, my dear? How are you, Mr. Gooch? What is this conspiracy of
+silence?"
+
+"It is only against the girls," laughed Miss Lady. "We'll take him in,
+won't we, Mr. Gooch?"
+
+The Doctor listened with tolerant amusement as Miss Lady gave a dramatic
+account of the double mistake, but Mr. Gooch failed to smile.
+
+All through supper that evening Miss Lady tried in vain to propitiate
+the guest. His manner showed only too plainly that he regarded her as an
+intrusion in the family which he had seen fit to adopt. It was not until
+the pudding arrived that his mood mellowed. Myrtella's cooking was so
+eminently to his taste that he was willing to put up with a great deal
+for the privilege of enjoying it. Moreover, laughter always improved
+his digestion and the young person at the head of the table was proving
+amusing.
+
+"Mr. Gooch is waiting for more coffee," announced Hattie, interrupting
+an animated account Miss Lady was giving of her first day at the country
+school.
+
+"Let her finish the story," said the Doctor to whom food was immaterial.
+He was indulging in the unusual luxury of loitering at the table after
+the meal was finished, a habit seldom tolerated in the Queerington
+household.
+
+"But there isn't time," insisted Hattie. "Connie is having a party
+to-night."
+
+"A party?" The Doctor's brows lifted.
+
+"Yes," broke in Connie. "Miss Lady said she didn't think you'd mind,
+and she persuaded Myrtella to let us dance in here. You won't mind the
+noise, just this one night, will you, Father?"
+
+The Doctor considered the matter gravely. After all, his reading would
+be interrupted by Mr. Gooch, so he might as well assent. He seldom
+objected to any plan that did not interfere with his own actions. His
+absorption in the race precluded an interest in mere family matters.
+
+"They are not pressing you into service, I hope?" he asked, glancing at
+Miss Lady.
+
+"Indeed we are!" cried Connie. "She's going to play for us to dance,
+when she isn't dancing herself. Of course we want her with us."
+
+"You forget, Constance, that there are other claims upon her. Mr. Gooch
+and I would like to have her with us in the study."
+
+Miss Lady looked up in pleased surprise.
+
+"That settles it, Connie," she said; "you girls can play for yourselves.
+Come on and go to bed, Kiddie," and with Bertie at her heels, the new
+mistress of Queerington raced down the hall.
+
+For ten years Doctor Queerington and Mr. Gooch had played pinochle every
+Friday evening. The Doctor did not especially enjoy it, except as one of
+those incidents that grows acceptable by long repetition. He was a born
+routinist, regarding a well-regulated world as a place where everything
+ran in the same grooves to eternity. One of his chief sources of
+satisfaction in regard to his second marriage was that it promised not
+to interfere with those established laws which regulated his day, from
+the prompt breakfast at 7:15 to the long hours with his books in the
+evening. In short, Doctor Queerington was a sort of well-regulated human
+clock, announcing his opinions as irrevocably as the striker announces
+the hours, and ticking along so monotonously between times that one
+almost forgot he was there.
+
+If the Friday evening game was to him merely a habit, to Mr. Gooch it
+was an occasion. Having once seated himself, and glanced around to
+make sure his hand was not reflected in a mirror, he spread his cards
+gingerly in his palm with only the corners visible, squared his jaw and
+proceeded with solemnity to observe the full rigor of the game. There
+was no trifling with points, or replaying of tricks. The marriage of
+kings and queens was solemnized without rejoicing, and even the parade
+of a royal sequence brought no flush of triumph to his cheek, but moved
+him only to chronicle it in small, precise figures in a red morocco
+note-book which he always brought with him for the purpose.
+
+When Miss Lady came up to the study, after giving Bertie two encores to
+"Jack the Giant Killer," she found the men silently absorbed in their
+game. Sitting on a hassock at the Doctor's side, she tried to follow the
+detailed explanation that he gave during each deal. But the jargon
+of "declarations," and "sequences," and "common marriages" soon grew
+wearisome, and she found herself idly studying the Doctor's fine,
+serious face, and listening for his low, flexible voice which
+unconsciously softened when he spoke to her.
+
+In spite of the fact that the study was very warm these sultry September
+evenings, and the Doctor's mental strides much too long for her to keep
+pace, she nevertheless looked eagerly forward to the hours spent there.
+If at times she failed to follow his elucidations, or grew sleepy
+reading aloud from some well-thumbed classic, it was not because her
+admiration and respect for her husband were lessening. In fact, he was
+always at his best at this time, surrounded by the books he knew and
+loved, and expanding under the approbation of his one appreciative
+listener. Here he reigned, a feudal lord, safe guarded in his castle of
+books against that strange and formidable enemy, the World.
+
+"Four aces, and pinocle," announced Mr. Gooch with grim satisfaction.
+
+Miss Lady rose restlessly and went to the window in the alcove. From
+the parlor below came the strains of a waltz and snatches of laughter;
+overhead the stars loomed big and white in the summer night. She thought
+how strange and lonesome it must be out at Thornwood with the lights all
+out and the windows nailed up. The little night things were singing in
+the garden by this time, and the cool breezes were beginning to stir
+the treetops. She wondered how Mike was getting along without her, and
+a lump rose in her throat. She swallowed resolutely, and smiled
+confidently up at the stars. Her married life was not in the least what
+she had expected, but it would all work out for the best. To be sure,
+nobody seemed to need her, nothing was required of her, but she would
+make a place for herself, she _must_ make a place for herself. Perhaps
+if she had something to do besides playing with Connie and her friends
+all day, she would get over this feeling of uselessness, and this
+haunting homesickness for the hills and valleys, for her horses and
+dogs, and the old brick house among the trees.
+
+Suddenly she caught her breath and listened:
+
+"He's coming home," Mr. Gooch was saying in the room behind her. "At
+least, they've sent for him. Young Decker, who has just gotten back,
+says Morley will come on a stretcher rather than have people believe
+that he shot a man, then ran away. They had never heard a word of the
+indictment."
+
+"As I expected," the Doctor said, shuffling the cards. "When does he
+return?"
+
+"When he's able to travel, I suppose. Decker left him down with a fever
+in a hospital in Singapore. He's done for himself, I am afraid."
+
+"Very probably," said the Doctor. "Poor Donald! It's your lead."
+
+Miss Lady slipped behind the curtain, and steadied herself by the window
+sill. Why had her heart almost stopped beating? Why was it beating now
+as if it would strangle her? Why did the thought of Donald Morley lying
+ill and friendless in a foreign hospital rouse every desire in her to go
+to him at once at any cost? Waves of surprise and shame surged over her.
+She heard nothing, saw nothing, save the fact that something she thought
+was dead had come to life. She was wakening from a long numb sleep, and
+the wakening was terrifying. What irremediable catastrophe had happened
+between now and that supreme moment when she had stood under the lilacs
+in the twilight with Donald Morley's arms about her, his breath on her
+cheek, and his passionate plea: "Oh, if you only knew how I need you!
+I'll be anything under heaven for your sake if you'll only stand by me!"
+
+"My game," said the Doctor. "Fortune has favored me. What became of
+Miss Lady? The call of the young people down-stairs grew too strong, I
+presume."
+
+Mr. Gooch, in a very bad humor over the loss of the last game, sullenly
+packed his deck of cards in the case with the red morocco note-book and
+made ready to take his departure. The Doctor automatically placed the
+card table against the wall, arranged the chairs at their prefer angles,
+straightened a book on his desk, and turned out the lights, leaving
+a slim white figure with trembling hands and terror-stricken eyes,
+cowering in the starlight behind the swaying curtains.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+It was always an occasion of significance when Mr. and Mrs. Basil Sequin
+found time in their busy lives to discuss a family matter. There was
+no particular lack of interest on either side, it was simply that their
+hours did not happen to fit. When he was not at his club, she was at
+hers; when she was dining at home, he was detained at a directors'
+meeting; when he went North to a Bankers' Convention, she went South to
+attend a bridge tournament. So it was small wonder the butler, removing
+the breakfast things, should have looked puzzled when Mr. and Mrs.
+Sequin remained at table in earnest conversation.
+
+Mr. Sequin was a thin, stooped man, prematurely old at fifty. The
+harassed, driven expression that was so habitual to his face had plowed
+furrows that no lighter mood could now erase. His present mood, however,
+was not a light one. He sat with his hand shading his eyes, and scowled
+gloomily at the tablecloth.
+
+"I told you a month ago," he was saying, "that you'd have to cut some of
+the expenses on the new house. We've already gone twenty thousand over
+the original estimate. There isn't a month now that our accounts are
+not overdrawn. Nothing has been said directly, but it is known on the
+street. Nothing will be said, as long as it is understood that I am to
+have the management of the Dillingham estate at the general's death,
+but if this estrangement should continue between Margery and Lee
+Dillingham--"
+
+"Now, Basil!" Mrs. Sequin cried dramatically, "don't for mercy's sake
+take a nervous-prostration patient seriously. Margery is nothing but a
+bunch of notions, and Cropsie Decker has gotten her all stirred up about
+the injustice that has been done to Don. I won't even let her talk to
+me about it, it's all so silly. What possible difference can it make who
+did the shooting? The boys are well out of the scrape and it's almost
+forgotten by this time. Young people who are engaged have to have
+something to quarrel over; this won't amount to a row of pins. I am
+going right on making preparations for an early spring wedding. By the
+way, you know the bow window in the drawing-room? Well, I am having it
+made four feet wider so they can be married there facing the loggia,
+like this!"
+
+Mrs. Sequin's two plump fingers did duty for the bride and groom, but
+Mr. Sequin was not interested.
+
+"I should not be surprised if Decker cabled Donald to come home. He's
+in a great state of indignation over the fact that the blame was put on
+Don. You see, it is all a fresh issue with them."
+
+"I'd be perfectly furious with Don," declared Mrs. Sequin, "if he came
+back and got into a quarrel with Lee. Margery will be sure to take his
+part; she's always so silly about Don. If she were well enough I'd
+be tempted to rush the wedding through before Christmas. But then, we
+couldn't have it in the new house, and I have practically built that
+first floor for the wedding. Everything depends on our having it there."
+
+"Everything depends on our having it somewhere!" said Mr. Sequin grimly.
+
+"Mrs. Queerington's cook, madam, wishes to speak to you," announced the
+butler at the pantry door.
+
+"Tell her to wait," said Mrs. Sequin without turning her head. "What did
+you decide about the decorator's estimates, Basil?"
+
+"Decide? What time have I to be considering decorations? Why can't you
+attend to it?"
+
+"Why, indeed? I only have to attend to the alterations on the bow
+window, look at the new sketches for the garage, have a shampoo and
+massage, lunch at the Weldems', take Fanchonette to the veterinary, be
+fitted at three, and go to the Bartrums' at five. By all means, I'll
+attend to it. I'll give the order to Lefferan; he handles the most
+exclusive designs."
+
+"That's what we want," said Mr. Sequin, rising; "the most exclusive and
+the most expensive. Our credit is good for a few months yet. Have the
+small car at the bank at 6:30. I will not be home for dinner."
+
+Mrs. Sequin sighed as he slammed the front door. There was no use
+denying the fact that men were trying, even the best of them. Hadn't
+Cousin John Queerington, that paragon of perfection, toppled on his
+pedestal at the smile of an unsophisticated little country girl? And
+there was Basil, recognized as a veritable wizard of finance, waiting
+until the new house was almost completed, then getting panicky about the
+cost. And now Donald, whom she thought safely anchored on the other side
+of the world, threatening to come home at the most inopportune time and
+create no end of trouble!
+
+"Excuse me, madam," said the butler, "but she says she ain't going to
+wait another minute."
+
+"Jenkins!" Mrs. Sequin raised her brows disapprovingly. "Send that
+odious woman up to Miss Margery's room; I will see her there."
+
+The room above the dining-room was one of those pink-and-white jumbles
+that convention prescribes for debutantes. Garlands of pink roses
+festooned the paper, tied at intervals by enormous pink bows. Pink bows
+and ruffles smothered the dresser and sewing table, and pink and white
+cushions filled the window seat. Cotillion favors, old dance cards,
+theater programs, were pinned to the heavy pink and white curtains that
+shut out the sunlight. Among the lace pillows of the brass bed lay a
+languid, pale-faced girl, who stared up at the rose-entwined ceiling, as
+a prisoner might stare at her bars.
+
+"Close the door, Myrtella," Mrs. Sequin said as they entered. "I am
+mortally afraid of drafts. Good morning, Margery. Where is your blue
+hat? I told Miss Lady to send up for it, because I am going to take her
+to the Bartrums' this afternoon and I simply could not have her appear
+in that ridiculous little hat she wears all the time."
+
+The girl in the bed turned a fretful face toward her mother:
+
+"Why, Miss Lady promised to spend the afternoon with me. I've been
+looking forward to it for days."
+
+"Yes, I know, dear, but I told her you weren't quite so well, and that
+she could come to-morrow. You see, she really can't afford to miss the
+Bartrums' tea; it's the first entertainment this fall and everybody will
+be there. I know you think Mrs. Bartrum a little gay, but you can't deny
+she runs that younger set."
+
+Margery Sequin clasped her thin white hands tensely, and resumed her
+study of the vine-covered ceiling.
+
+"Here's the hat," said Mrs. Sequin, handing a large hat box to Myrtella,
+then noting her offended expression she added by way of propitiation: "I
+don't know how they would get along without you at the Doctor's. I hear
+that the new mistress doesn't know a saucepan from a skillet."
+
+"She ain't no fool," returned Myrtella instantly on the defensive.
+
+"Of course not, just young and careless. I dare say she doesn't even
+order the groceries, does she?"
+
+"No, mam."
+
+"Nor plan for the meals?"
+
+"No, mam."
+
+"And you attend to everything just as if she weren't there? It's really
+too funny, isn't it, Margery? Tell Mrs. Queerington that I'll send the
+motor for her at five; and do see that she is properly hooked up."
+
+Myrtella succeeded in getting herself and the box silently out of the
+room, but the butler passing her on the back stairs was startled by a
+verbal shower that was not in the least intended for him. It was as if
+a watering cart had suddenly and unexpectedly turned on its supply
+regardless of its surroundings.
+
+At five o'clock Miss Lady, very radiant and apparently in high spirits,
+presented herself at the Sequins'.
+
+"May I come in just for a minute?" she asked at Margery's door. "I've
+brought you some chrysanthemums. Uncle Jimpson brought them in from
+Thornwood this morning. It's too bad you aren't so well."
+
+Margery turned admiring eyes on the bright face above her.
+
+"I'm no worse," she said, "just disappointed. I thought I was going to
+have you all to myself this afternoon."
+
+"But I didn't know you could have me! I'll run in and tell your mother."
+
+Mrs. Sequin, who was being insinuated into a very tight gown by the
+sheer physical prowess of her maid, exclaimed with satisfaction as Miss
+Lady entered:
+
+"There, I knew it! The hat makes the costume. You are perfect! Now,
+remember the people I want you to be especially nice to, Mrs. Gibbs,
+Mrs. Marchmont--"
+
+"The silly old woman that paints her face and wears the pearls like
+moth balls? She drove around yesterday to tell me the name of her
+hairdresser. It's always the people that haven't any hair that want to
+have it dressed."
+
+"Miss Lady! She is Mrs. Leslie Marchmont, the most sought after woman in
+town!"
+
+"I don't care, her horses look as if they had been fed on corn stalks."
+
+"But you mustn't say such things! You must cultivate discretion. If you
+want me to introduce you to the right people--"
+
+"But they may not be the right people for me! Some of them are lovely,
+but I can't stand the affected ones, nor the ones that patronize me."
+
+"But they won't patronize you if you are a little more reserved. There's
+no earthly reason for your telling them that you keep only one servant,
+and saying that you come from Billy-goat Hill. It's a horrid name given
+our beautiful hillside, by horrid people. You see, you really must
+cultivate more caution. You are,--what shall I say? too frank, too
+natural."
+
+Miss Lady laughed. "I haven't the least idea how to go about being
+unnatural, but, thank heaven, I don't have to learn to-day! Margery is
+feeling better and is going to let me stay with her."
+
+"That's absurd! You are all ready to go, and I want Mrs. Bartrum to see
+you for the first time just as you look now. Where are your gloves?"
+
+"I forgot them, but it doesn't matter, I'm not going."
+
+"I'll send Jenkins for them at once."
+
+Miss Lady's cheek flushed and she looked at Mrs. Sequin in perplexity,
+then her brow cleared.
+
+"You are afraid I'll stay too long and wear Margery out? I promise to go
+the minute she looks tired. You can trust her with me, can't you?"
+
+"But she has her nurse, there's no earthly reason--"
+
+"Except that she wants me to stay. You'll feel happier, too, knowing
+that she isn't lonely."
+
+"But don't you want to go to the tea?"
+
+"Oh, I did a little. But I think that was because you and Connie and
+Margery said I looked nice. I'm awfully squeezed and uncomfortable; I
+wonder if Margery can't lend me a dressing sacque?"
+
+Thus it was that Mrs. Sequin went off to the Bartrums' in a very bad
+humor, leaving the two girls chattering together in the pink boudoir,
+with the nurse banished to the lower regions.
+
+"Don't you want some fresh air?" asked Miss Lady, when she had stood the
+heat as long as she could.
+
+"You may open the door," said Margery, "we never leave the window up on
+account of drafts."
+
+"But I can wrap you up, and put the screen up. There! You can't take
+cold with all that on. It's the kind of day that makes me want to be on
+a horse, galloping through the woods with the wind in my face."
+
+Margery watched Miss Lady's quick motion as she opened all the windows
+behind the ruffled curtains, and let in a current of fresh invigorating
+air.
+
+"How young you are!" she said. "Years and years younger than I feel. I
+can't realize you are married and have three step-children."
+
+"Neither can I," said Miss Lady. "I'm always forgetting it. Wouldn't you
+like to sit up for a while?"
+
+"Oh! I can't. I have to lie perfectly quiet."
+
+"Who said so?"
+
+"Everybody does who has nervous prostration. The doctors say that my
+nerves are nothing but quivering wires. I suppose I went too hard last
+winter, but of course I couldn't drop out in the middle of my first
+season."
+
+"I don't believe it would hurt you a bit to sit up. If I fix that big
+rocker will you try it?"
+
+"But I haven't sat up for six weeks. When I try it in bed I have such
+tingly sensations."
+
+"That's because your legs are straight out. Let's try it in the chair,
+with them hanging down."
+
+"I'll try it, but I know I can't stand it. There! Thank you so much! You
+wouldn't think that a year ago I was as strong as you are! Why, between
+October and March I went to over a hundred and fifty entertainments,
+besides the theaters and opera."
+
+"Good heavens!" cried Miss Lady aghast.
+
+"Of course, about New Year's, I began to wobble, but mother had me
+take massage and electricity and kept me going until Lent. After that
+I collapsed until summer. Then we went to White Sulphur, where the
+Dillinghams have a cottage, I had to lie down every afternoon, but I was
+always able to be up for the dances."
+
+The nurse coming in with a long flower box, paused in surprise at the
+sight of her patient sitting up, then discreetly tiptoed out again.
+
+"Somebody has sent you some flowers!" cried Miss Lady excitedly. "How
+nice! Shall I open the box?"
+
+"Just as you like. They are probably from Lee. He sends them now instead
+of coming."
+
+"But there may be a note," said Miss Lady, searching in the tissue
+paper.
+
+Margery shook her head wearily; the little animation that had flushed
+her face, died out leaving it wan and listless.
+
+"I suppose you think this is a queer way for an engaged girl to talk,"
+she said presently, with a nervous catch in her voice. "The truth is Lee
+and I have quarreled over my uncle, Donald Morley. I will never forgive
+him for the way he has treated Don; never!"
+
+"You will if you love him," said Miss Lady.
+
+"But I'm not sure that I do!" burst out Margery. "I oughtn't to say
+it! I shan't say it again, but I shall die if I don't talk to somebody.
+Mother won't listen to a word. She says it's nerves. But the truth is,
+Miss Lady, I've never been sure; that's what's making me ill!"
+
+"Have you told him?"
+
+"Yes, and he laughs at me. He may be right, they all may be right. When
+I get well I may laugh at myself. But just now it seems so terrible for
+the preparations to be going on while I'm lying here, night after night,
+fighting down the doubts, trying to persuade myself, trying to be sure.
+How can you tell when you are in love? How do you know?"
+
+Miss Lady's hand that had been softly stroking the girl's thin white
+fingers, paused; her eyes sought the open window, and she drew a short
+breath.
+
+"Know?" she repeated as if to herself. "How do you know when you are
+cold, when you are hungry, when you're tired, when you're lonesome? How
+do you know that you want air when you are smothering? Everything about
+you tells you, your heart, your mind, your body, your soul. You can't
+help knowing!"
+
+"But suppose I don't feel like that! And suppose I should, some day,
+for some one else! Oh! Miss Lady tell me what to do! Everybody else is
+rushing me on, telling me not to worry, not to be afraid. But you
+are not like the others, you consider something more than the outside
+advantages to be gained. Tell me, what would you do in my place?"
+
+"I'd wait for the real one to come," cried Miss Lady, turning upon her
+almost fiercely, "I'd wait, if it was forever! They have no right to
+persuade you. You either love or you don't love and no power on earth
+can make it different. You can laugh at sentiment and pretend you don't
+believe in it, you can tell yourself a thousand times that you are doing
+the sensible thing. You can blind yourself utterly to the truth for a
+time. But some day you've got to realize that the only real thing in
+life is love, and that you are powerless to make it live or die."
+
+After that they sat a long time in silence, until Miss Lady rose
+abruptly and, making some excuse, took a hurried departure. She was
+frightened at what she had said, at what she had thought. She was
+terrified at this strange, new self, that spoke out of a strange, new
+experience, and set at naught all her carefully acquired opinions. It
+was not until she reached home after a brisk walk through the crisp air,
+that the turmoil in her brain subsided.
+
+On the hall table, beside a well-worn copy of Shelley, lay the Doctor's
+gloves and soft gray hat. She seized the gloves impulsively and laid
+them against her cheek.
+
+"Dear, dear Doctor!" she whispered almost fiercely. "So good, and kind,
+and--and wonderful!"
+
+Suddenly she was aware of some one watching her covertly through the
+crack of the dining-room door.
+
+"Myrtella!" she cried. "Is that you?"
+
+"Yes'm, if you please," came in strange, meek accents. "I'd like to
+speak with you."
+
+It was so entirely out of the course of human events for Myrtella to
+assume humility, that Miss Lady looked at her in amazement.
+
+"I can't say," began Myrtella, still half behind the door, "that I
+like the way things is run in this house. I'm thinkin' some of givin'
+notice."
+
+"Why, Myrtella!" cried Miss Lady in dismay. "I'm afraid the work is too
+heavy. We might get--"
+
+"Needn't mind finishing, Mis' Squeerington, you was goin' to say a house
+girl. If you think I'd share my room with any Dutch or Irish biddy, I
+must say you're mighty mistaken! Besides, ain't I givin' satisfaction?
+Ain't I doin' the work to suit you?"
+
+"Of course you are, but I thought you--"
+
+"Was gettin' old, I suppose, and couldn't do as much work as I used to.
+I look feeble, don't I?"
+
+Miss Lady glanced at the massive figure with brawny arms akimbo, and
+smiled.
+
+"Well, what's the trouble then?" she asked kindly. "Why do you want to
+leave?"
+
+Myrtella's eyes shifted as she rubbed some imaginary dust from the door:
+
+"I ain't used to working fer a lady that don't take no holt. It don't
+seem natural, and it leaves folks room to talk."
+
+"But I thought you wanted to have full charge and run things just as you
+have done in the past."
+
+"Well, it don't look right fer you not to be givin' me no orders, nor
+rowin' the grocery man, nor lightin' into nobody. If folks didn't know
+better they'd think you wasn't used to bein' a lady!"
+
+Miss Lady bit her lip to keep from laughing. "I'll be only too glad to
+keep house, only I don't know much about it. Aunt Caroline and Uncle
+Jimpson did everything out home, and you've done everything here."
+
+"Well, I ain't goin' to no longer," said Myrtella firmly. "If you want
+to light in and learn, I'll learn you. But I ain't going to stay except
+on one condition, you got to take a holt of everything! You got to lock
+things up and give me out what I need. You got to order all the meals
+and tell me what you want done every mornin'. I ain't goin' to have
+people throwin' it in my face that I work for a lady that don't know a
+skillet from a saucepan!"
+
+"You're right, Myrtella," said Miss Lady, her face grown suddenly grave.
+"I don't wonder you are ashamed of me. Perhaps some good hard work will
+brush the cobwebs out of my brain. When shall I take charge of things,
+to-morrow?"
+
+"As you say," said Myrtella meekly; then with a sudden flare, "though it
+does look like I might be trusted one more day to finish up the general
+cleaning and git after the ashman for not emptyin' them barrels."
+
+"Friday, then?"
+
+"Friday," said Myrtella as one who signed her own death warrant, and the
+young mistress gazing absently out of the window little guessed that a
+powerful usurper was voluntarily abdicating a throne in order that the
+rightful owner might come into her own.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The red lamps were all lighted in Mrs. Ivy's small parlor, and the
+disordered tea-table and general confusion of the overcrowded room, gave
+evidence that one of her frequent "at homes" had been brought to an end.
+
+It might have been inferred that the hostess had also been brought to
+an end, to judge from her closed eyes and clasped hands, and the effort
+with which she inhaled her breath and the violence with which she
+exhaled it. The maid, clearing away the tea things, viewed her with
+apprehension.
+
+"Excuse me, ma'm, but will you be havin' the hot-water bag?" she asked
+when she could endure the strain no longer.
+
+Mrs. Ivy opened one reluctant eye and condescended to recall her spirit
+to the material world.
+
+"Norah, how could you?" she asked plaintively. "Haven't I begged you
+never to disturb my meditation?"
+
+"Yis, ma'm, but this, you might say, was worse than usual. Me mother's
+twin sister died of the asthmy."
+
+"Never speak to me when you see me entering into the silence. I was
+denying fatigue; now I shall have to begin all over!"
+
+It was evidently difficult for Mrs. Ivy to again tranquilize her spirit.
+Her eyes roved fondly about the room, resting first upon one cherished
+object then upon another. Autographed photographs lined the walls,
+autographed volumes littered the tables. Above her head two small
+bronze censers sent wreaths of incense curling about a vast testimonial,
+acknowledging her valiant service in behalf of the anti-tobacco crusade.
+Flanking this were badges of divers shape and size, representing
+societies to which she belonged. In the cabinet at her left were still
+more disturbing treasures such as Gerald's first pair of shoes, and
+the gavel that the last president of the Federated Sisterhood had used
+before she had, as Mrs. Ivy was fond of saying, "been called upon to
+hand in her resignation by the Board of Death."
+
+Before the error of fatigue had been entirely erased from her mental
+state, her eyes fell upon a pamphlet, and she immediately became
+absorbed in its contents. It set forth the need for a Home for Crippled
+Animals, and by the time she reached the second page she was framing a
+motion to be presented to her club on the morrow. Mrs. Ivy was greatly
+addicted to motions; in fact, it was one of her missions in life
+continually to move that things should be other than they were, without
+in any way supplying the motive power to change them.
+
+While thus engaged she was interrupted by a belated caller. He was a
+short, heavy-set young man, with a square prominent jaw, and a twinkle
+in his eye.
+
+"_Mister_ Decker!" exclaimed Mrs. Ivy, swimming toward him. "After all
+these months in those wonderful Eastern lands! I can almost catch the
+odor of sandalwood about you!"
+
+"It's dope," said Decker, with an easy laugh. "Chinese dope. I've had
+these clothes cleaned twice, and I can't get rid of it. Had them on one
+night in an opium den in Hankow. Funny how that smell stays with you."
+
+"An opium den?" repeated Mrs. Ivy, lifting a protesting hand. "And is no
+effort being made to stamp out such iniquities in China? Might not some
+concerted action on the part of the women's clubs in all the Christian
+countries create a public sentiment against them?"
+
+Decker bit his lip as he stooped to pick up the leaflet she had dropped.
+
+"Gerald's here I suppose?"
+
+"Of course! How thoughtless of me not to explain that I always insist
+upon the dear lad resting between four and five. He inherits delicate
+lungs from his father, and an emotional, artistic temperament from me.
+Then both of his maternal grandparents had heart trouble."
+
+"Still hammers away at his music, I suppose?" Decker asked, minutely
+inspecting the photograph of a meek-looking female who appeared totally
+unable to live up to the bold, aggressive signature with which she had
+signed herself.
+
+"Dear Miss Snell," Mrs. Ivy explained, "corresponding secretary of the
+A. T. L. A. If you had _only_ come sooner you could have met her. What
+were you asking? Oh, yes! about Gerald's music. Why, you could no more
+imagine Gerald without music, than you could think of a bird without
+wings. He would simply perish without a piano. When we are abroad we
+rent one if we are only going to be in a place ten days. His Papa can't
+understand this, but then Mr. Ivy is not musical, poor dear; he really
+doesn't know a fugue from a fantasie."
+
+"Neither do I," said Decker. "Do the Queeringtons still live next door?"
+
+"Yes. You know our beloved Doctor has married again."
+
+"What! Good old Syllogism Queerington! you don't mean it! I wonder if he
+knows her first name? He taught me four years up at the University and
+never could remember mine."
+
+"Oh! here's my boy! Are you feeling better, dear?" Mrs. Ivy turned
+expectant eyes to the door where a lean, loosely put together young
+man was just entering. He had the slouching gait that indicates relaxed
+ambitions as well as relaxed muscles, and his hands were deep in his
+pockets as if they were at home there.
+
+"Hello, Decker, glad to see you," he drawled languidly. "Wish you'd stir
+the fire, Mater dear; it's beastly cold in here."
+
+"I'll do it," said Decker shortly.
+
+Gerald Ivy dropped gracefully on the sofa, and became absorbed in
+examining his nails. He was rather a handsome if anemic youth, with the
+general air of one who has weighed the world and found it wanting. His
+eyes, large and brown and effective, swept the room restlessly. They
+were accomplished eyes, being capable of expressing more emotions in a
+moment than Gerald had felt in a lifetime.
+
+As he idly turned the leaves of a magazine, he asked Decker how long he
+had been back in America.
+
+"A couple of months, but I've only been in town two weeks. Sorry to hear
+you are under the weather."
+
+"Oh! I'm a ruin," said Gerald; "a dilapidated, romantic ruin.
+Something's gone wrong in the belfry to-day. Is my face swollen, Mater?"
+
+Mrs. Ivy bent over him in instant solicitude.
+
+"I do believe it _is_ swollen, darling; just here. Look, Mr. Decker,
+doesn't it seem a trifle fuller than the other side?"
+
+Cropsie Decker's eye, not being trained by years of maternal solicitude,
+failed to distinguish any difference.
+
+"No matter," said Gerald gloomily; "if it isn't then it's something
+else. What's the news, Decker?"
+
+"The only news for me is this idiotic talk that has been allowed to go
+the rounds about Don Morley. That is what I came to see you about. What
+does Dillingham have to say about it?"
+
+"Oh, you know Dill; he side-steps. The whole thing has blown over here
+months ago; the subject is as extinct as the dodo."
+
+"Well, it won't be extinct long! I've cabled Don to come home, and I
+bet he'll stir things up. There's nothing to hold him now that Margery
+Sequin's broken her engagement."
+
+"So sad!" murmured Mrs. Ivy. "I hope young Mr. Dillingham won't do
+anything desperate. To think of his cup of happiness being dashed from
+his lips--"
+
+The two young men looked at each other and laughed.
+
+"Don't worry about Dill, Mater. He has more than one cup to fall back
+on. It is old man Sequin that may do something desperate. I hear they
+have made no end of a row, but Margery holds her own."
+
+"They say on the street," said Decker, "that Mr. Sequin has been
+counting on the Dillinghams' money to reinforce the bank. He's been
+going it pretty heavy the last two years."
+
+"One cannot live by bread alone," quoted Mrs. Ivy; "our friends have
+been living the material life, they have forgotten that they are but
+stewards, and as stewards will be held accountable for the way they
+use their wealth. Mrs. Sequin makes absolutely no effort to advance
+the progress of the world. She has refused from the first to join the
+A.T.L.A. and she is not even a member of the Woman's Club."
+
+"Well, I hope Mr. Sequin hasn't been playing with Don Morley's money,"
+said Decker, resuming the subject from which Mrs. Ivy had flown off at
+a tangent. "Donald has always left everything to him, and doesn't know
+anything more about his investments than I do. All he is concerned with
+is spending his income, and that keeps him busy."
+
+At this moment Norah appeared with fresh tea and cakes, making her way
+with some difficulty through the labyrinth of red lamps, small tables,
+foot-stools and marble-crowned pedestals that crowded the room.
+
+"Ah!" cried Mrs. Ivy, "here are some of the little cakes, Gerald,
+that you love. You will try one, won't you? We have the greatest time
+tempting his appetite, Mr. Decker. He can only eat what he likes. I have
+always contended with his father that there was some physical cause for
+his craving sweets. I never refused them to him when he was a child.
+But from the time he was born he has never really lived on food, he has
+lived on music."
+
+Gerald, at the moment regaling himself with his second cake, gave
+evidence that he did not rely solely on the sustaining power of music.
+
+"And now, will you excuse me, dear Mr. Decker?" asked Mrs. Ivy,
+gathering her lavender skirts about her. "I am a very, very busy woman,
+and my desk claims much of my time. You will come to us again, won't
+you? Gerald's friends, you know, are my friends. _Good_-by." And with a
+tender pressure of the hand, and a lingering look she was gone.
+
+Gerald waited until the door was closed, then produced cigarettes which
+he proffered to Decker.
+
+"Mater's last hobby is tobacco," he smiled indulgently. "She is going
+to abolish it from the universe. Do you remember how Doctor Queerington
+used to hold forth on the subject at the university?"
+
+"By the way, your mother tells me he has married again. I don't know
+why, but that tickles me. Was she a widow?"
+
+Gerald with his elbows on the arms of his chair and holding his teacup
+with both hands just below the level of his eyes, looked suddenly
+gloomy.
+
+"No," he said. "I wish to Heaven she was one!"
+
+"What's the matter with Old Syllogism? I always thought he was a rather
+good sort."
+
+"I'm not thinking about him!" Gerald said impatiently. "I am thinking of
+the girl. She can't be much older than I am and the most exquisite thing
+you ever beheld. Her coloring is absolutely luminous. She ought to be
+painted by Besnard or La Touche or some of those French chaps that make
+a specialty of light. She positively radiates!"
+
+"How did she ever happen to marry the Doctor?"
+
+"Heaven knows! He captured her in the woods somewhere. I don't suppose
+she had ever seen a man before. Jove! You ought to see her play tennis,
+and to hear her laugh. She's a perfect wonder, as free and easy as one
+of the boys, but straight as a die. Doesn't give a flip for money or
+clothes, or society. Did you ever hear of a really pretty girl being
+like that?"
+
+"I hope Doctor Queerington likes her as well as you do."
+
+"Heavens, man! everybody likes her; you can't help it. But nobody
+understands her. You see they look on her as a child; they haven't the
+faintest conception of what she is going through."
+
+"And you think you have?"
+
+"I know it. She's trying to adjust herself, and she can't. She's finding
+out her mistake and making a game fight to hide it. When she first came
+she went in for everything. She had never played tennis or golf, and she
+got more fun out of learning than anybody I ever saw. Then suddenly she
+stopped. Some old desiccated relative told the Doctor it didn't look
+well for his wife to be running around with the young people, and that
+settled it. She gave up like an angel, and she's not the kind that likes
+to give up either. Now her days are devoted to the heavy domestic, and
+her evenings to improving her mind in the Doctor's stuffy old study."
+
+"Talking to the Doctor," confessed Decker, "always affected me like
+looking at Niagara Falls; grand, and imposing and awe-inspiring, but a
+little goes a long way. How is she standing it?"
+
+"Getting thinner and paler and prettier every day. She's a country
+girl, you know, used to horses, and outdoor exercise. She must have been
+beastly homesick, but she's game through and through. It was awfully
+hard for her to bluff at first. That's because she is so honest. But she
+has had to learn. No woman, good or bad, can get through life without
+learning to bluff, only it comes harder for the good ones. What's that
+confounded racket in the street?"
+
+They rose and went to the window, Gerald looking over the shoulder of
+his shorter companion.
+
+A superannuated gray mule hitched to a heavy cart had come to a
+standstill in the middle of the street, and a group of excited negroes
+were vainly trying to induce him to move on. With one ear cocked
+forward, and his forefeet firmly planted, the decrepit animal dumbly
+made his declaration of independence, taking the blows that rained upon
+his back with the dogged heroism of one who has resolved to die rather
+than surrender.
+
+"By Jupiter, if those coons aren't fixing to build a fire under him!"
+exclaimed Decker. "They'd rather fool with a balking mule than eat
+watermelon! Let's go out to see the sport."
+
+When Decker reached the porch, having left Gerald at the hall mirror,
+inspecting his face with minute solicitude, a new figure had appeared on
+the scene. It was a girl dressed in white, standing in the Queeringtons'
+yard, and as he looked he saw her suddenly dart out of the gate and into
+the street as if she had been shot from a cannon.
+
+"Stop pulling his head like that!" she demanded. "Don't you dare to
+strike him again. Take that fire away!"
+
+The negroes fell back somewhat astonished, and the driver arrested his
+whip in the air.
+
+"I'll show you how to make him go," she went on; "put mud in his mouth.
+Yes, mud, a big lump of mud. There, that'll do; make it into a ball, and
+put it in. Yes, you can! Oh, dear! Give it to me!"
+
+She seized the mule's lower jaw with her thumb and forefinger, and with
+a deft movement succeeded in getting the unwelcome substance between the
+animal's teeth.
+
+The mule evinced surprise, then curiosity. His fore feet relaxed, his
+eye lost its fire, and when a gentle pressure fell upon his halter, he
+was too engrossed in the new sensation to resist it.
+
+"Bravo, Miss Lady!" called Gerald, sauntering forward to meet her. "I
+told you you were irresistible. What did you whisper in his ear?"
+
+"Lots of things!" she said, accepting his immaculate handkerchief
+to wipe the mud from her hands, "but of course the mud helped. Uncle
+Jimpson taught me that trick. He says a mule has room in his head for
+only one thought at a time, and all you have to do is to change his
+balking thought for some other and he'll go."
+
+"I hope you will never have to put mud in my mouth," said Gerald,
+looking at her with no attempt to conceal his admiration. "Can't you
+come over and see mother for a bit? She'd love to give you a cup of
+tea."
+
+"I don't like tea in the afternoon; it spoils my supper."
+
+"Well, then, come over to see me. There's a friend of mine I want you to
+meet. I've been telling him about you."
+
+"I can't. I'm drawing pictures for Bertie. He'll be disappointed."
+
+"So will I. So will Decker."
+
+"Decker?" Miss Lady flashed a glance at him. "You don't mean Cropsie
+Decker?"
+
+"Yes, I do; the special correspondent for the _Herald-Post_. Is that
+sufficient inducement?"
+
+Miss Lady looked at him rather strangely. "I'll come," she said after a
+moment's hesitation.
+
+They did not return to the parlor but to the music-room, a large room
+on the opposite side of the hall, which Mrs. Ivy, a firm believer in
+the psychological effect of color, had fitted out in blue to induce a
+contemplative mood in the occupants. On the mantel and tables were the
+same miscellaneous collection of bric-a-brac that characterized the
+parlor. Several pictures of Gerald adorned the walls, the most imposing
+of which presented him seated at the piano, with his mother standing
+beside him, a rapt expression on her elevated profile.
+
+Miss Lady flitted about from object to object, asking questions, not
+waiting for answers, seeing everything, commenting on everything while
+the two young men stood side by side on the hearth rug and watched her.
+She was like a humming-bird afraid to light.
+
+"Please, Mrs. Queerington," Gerald begged at last. "You know you don't
+care for those old kodaks. I'll show them to you another time. I want
+you to talk to Decker. Sit down here in this big chair and I'll sit at
+your feet, where I belong, and Cropsie'll sit anywhere he likes and tell
+us about his adventures."
+
+"But where's your mother? I thought you said she was serving tea?"
+
+"She'll be down directly. Now, tell us a story, Decker. A man can't
+wander around the Orient for a year without having something exciting
+happen to him."
+
+"I'm afraid I haven't an experiencing nature," said Decker, smiling.
+"You ought to have Morley here. He's the fellow that went over with me,
+Mrs. Queerington. I'll back him against the field for having adventures.
+You remember that big fire last year in Tokyo? Don was the first Johnny
+on the spot, doing the noble hero act, dragging out women and children
+and gallantly fighting the flames, while I lay up in bed at the Imperial
+Hotel and fought mosquitoes! He was in a collision at sea, just off the
+coast of Korea, got mixed up in a Chinese uprising in Nanking and
+was arrested for a spy while taking pictures of the fortifications at
+Miyajima. If I had half his luck I'd be the highest priced man in the
+syndicate."
+
+"I don't know that I particularly envy him his luck in the incident
+that happened here just before he left," said Gerald, lighting a fresh
+cigarette.
+
+"It was nothing to his discredit," said Decker hotly. "He happened to be
+a witness when that fool Dillingham got into a shooting scrape, and he
+left town because he did not want to testify against the man his niece
+was going to marry. He didn't consider the consequences, he never does.
+It was a toss up when I met him in 'Frisco whether he would come home,
+or go on."
+
+"Didn't he know he was indicted?" asked Gerald.
+
+"Certainly not. Neither of us knew it until I got home and found people
+talking about 'Poor Donald Morley,' and acting as if he were a refugee
+from justice. Two or three letters came from Mrs. Sequin, but she was
+so busy urging Don to stay away that she hadn't time to write anything
+else. We did get one old home paper, somewhere in Java, with an account
+of the trial. That was the first intimation Don had that Dillingham was
+throwing off on him. Even then he could scarcely believe it; there's
+nothing in him to understand a man like Lee Dillingham."
+
+"But he was with him,--that night at the saloon," ventured Miss Lady,
+sitting up very straight and listening very intently.
+
+Gerald smiled skeptically. "He went in out of the rain, my dear lady;
+that's what he wrote home, I understand; and he didn't indulge in
+a single drink. Rather a strain on the imagination in the light of
+subsequent events."
+
+"See here, Ivy," said Decker, rising and standing before the fire with
+his square jaw thrust out, and the twinkle gone from his eye. "I happen
+to know this story from beginning to end, and we both know Don Morley.
+He's as full of faults as a porcupine is of quills, but he's neither a
+liar nor a coward. If he says he was sober that night I'd stake my life
+he was."
+
+There was an uncomfortable pause during which Gerald tenderly felt his
+afflicted face, and Decker glared at the chandelier.
+
+"He ought to have stayed to explain," said Miss Lady, not daring to look
+up; "a man's first duty is to himself and--and to those who care for
+him."
+
+"That was the trouble," said Decker slowly. "It seems that the one
+person Don cared most about wouldn't listen to an explanation. He wrote
+her full particulars, and asked her to telegraph him if he should go or
+stay. When I met him in 'Frisco he had been waiting for that wire for
+three days, and he was nearly off his head. I got him on the steamer
+almost by main force. We laid over ten days in Honolulu, and he got the
+notion that a letter would be waiting for him in Yokohama, and that he
+would take the next steamer home. All the way across I heard about that
+girl from the time the Chino brought our coffee in the morning until we
+went below again for the night. He all but said his prayers to her; cut
+out everything to drink; even refused to play a friendly game of poker.
+Why, I've tramped so many decks to the tune of that girl's charms that I
+could write a book about her."
+
+"What is her name?" asked Gerald greatly interested.
+
+"Heavens, I don't know! She was a wood nymth, a dryad, a jewel, a
+flower, I could keep it up indefinitely. He had a new one for her every
+day. When we reached Japan, he couldn't wait for the steamer to dock but
+went ashore in the pilot boat, and made a bee line for Cook's. There was
+nothing there. It was like that at every port we touched. Each time
+he would get his hopes up to fever heat, and each time he'd be
+disappointed. I never saw such perseverance and belief. He made excuse
+after excuse for her. He was too proud to write again, and he got leaner
+and leaner and more and more homesick. You know that collision I spoke
+of? Well, he got in that by waiting over a steamer at Nagasaki in the
+hope of getting a letter before he left Japan."
+
+"What happened next?" asked Gerald; "did another planet swim into his
+ken?"
+
+"Hardly. The smash came just before I left him, a couple of months ago.
+We were at Raffles Hotel in Singapore having tea with some French girls
+from the steamer. Our purser happened along and gave Don a letter which
+I recognized as being from Mrs. Sequin. He read the first sheet, then
+looked up in a wild sort of way, and asked if we'd mind excusing him as
+he had something he wanted to see to before the steamer sailed. At five
+o'clock he'd never shown up, and I had to hustle our bags ashore and
+start out to look for him. He'd been awfully seedy for a couple of
+months and when he got left I knew something serious had happened. I
+found him late that night in the foreign hospital out of his head with
+a fever. It seems the letter had told him that his girl was going to
+be married, and half beside himself he had gotten into a rikisha, and
+ridden for hours in the tropical sun, trying to face the fact. Of course
+in the run-down state he was in, it put him out of business, and by the
+time he got back to Raffles', he didn't know who he was, nor where he
+was. I stayed with him until the _Herald-Post_ sent for me to come
+home. Maybe you don't think I hated to leave the old chap, in that
+God-forsaken country, lying flat on his back, staring at the ceiling,
+with all his illusions smashed."
+
+"Did he want to come with you?" asked Gerald.
+
+"He didn't want anything. He had wanted one thing so long there was no
+more want left in him. I tried to get him to let me engage passage for
+him on the next home-bound steamer. But he said he doubted if he'd ever
+come back, that as soon as he was able to travel he would go on around
+the world, and that it didn't make much difference where he landed."
+
+"Quite a tragic little romance," Gerald said. "What a lot of mischief
+you women have to answer for, Mrs. Q.!"
+
+But Miss Lady did not hear him, she was still leaning forward absorbed
+in Decker's narrative.
+
+"If he comes home, in answer to your cable, when can he get here?" she
+asked.
+
+"Not before Christmas I should say."
+
+"If I were Lee Dillingham I should go South for the winter," Gerald
+said, going to the piano and striking a few random chords.
+
+After Cropsie Decker left, Miss Lady sat very quiet in the big chair,
+while Gerald played to her. It was well that only the kindly old bust of
+Liszt looked down on her tense white face, and clasped hands.
+
+For over two months she had been fighting a specter, never daring to
+lift her eyes to it, but fighting it blindly, passionately, unceasingly.
+She had denied its existence, refuted every memory, filled her life to
+the brim with other interests, other affections, and here suddenly she
+had met it face to face, and it was no longer horrible, but a beautiful,
+radiant vision, a thing to be buried in her innermost being, a sacred,
+solemn thing, not to be looked at, or dwelt upon, but no longer to be
+denied.
+
+The stormy, insistent strains of the "Appassionata" filled the room,
+surging through every fiber of her, lifting and abasing her by turns.
+How could she get hold of herself while Gerald played like that? She was
+sinking in a great sea of emotion and the music swept about her like a
+mighty gale, shutting out everything in the world but Donald Morley. He
+had not failed her, it was she who had failed him. He was coming home,
+and it was too late. She would have to meet him face to face, to see
+all that he had suffered in his eyes and speak no word. Surely she might
+give him this one hour, just while the music lasted; give it to him and
+to herself for the lifetime together they had missed.
+
+She did not know when the music stopped, she did not know when Gerald
+came back to the hassock at her feet. He had evidently been there some
+time when she was aware of his elbow on the arm of her chair, and his
+head buried in it.
+
+"Gerald!" she said, starting up; "what's the matter?"
+
+"Everything. Is that your trouble?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that you are unhappy," he said, catching her hand.
+
+She sprang to her feet and snapped on the electric lights.
+
+"Do I look as if I were unhappy?" she demanded, flashing on him her
+old, bright smile. "It was the music, and the twilight, and the way you
+played. That sonata ought never to be played except in a crowded room
+with all the lights on."
+
+"It wasn't the music," Gerald persisted; "you know it wasn't.
+Something's troubling you, and something is troubling me. May I tell you
+what is the matter with me, Miss Lady?"
+
+He was looking at her very intently across the table, and Miss Lady for
+the first time recognized the danger signals in his eyes.
+
+"Let me guess!" she cried, her wits springing to her rescue. "I think I
+know. I thought so when I first came in. It's mumps!"
+
+Gerald's hand flew instinctively to his face, and his eyes sought the
+mirror. Miss Lady, in applying to Gerald Ivy, Uncle Jimpson's remedy for
+a balking mule, had averted a disaster.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Time was an abstraction of which the inhabitants of Bean Alley took
+little notice. The arbitrary division of one's life into weeks and days
+and hours seemed, on the whole, useless. There was but one day for the
+men, and that was pay day, and one for the women, and that was rent day.
+As for the children, every day was theirs, just as it should be in every
+corner of the world.
+
+On this particular fall afternoon, just outside Phineas Flathers'
+cottage, a lively game was in progress. It was a game known in Bean
+Alley as "Sockabout," and it had to do with caps or battered hats laid
+in a row, and with a small rubber ball that was thrown into them from
+a distance. Like many other apparently simple diversions, Sockabout had
+its complexities. In fact, the rules admitted of so many interpretations
+that an umpire was indispensable.
+
+Under ordinary circumstances Chick Flathers would have scorned so
+passive a role as umpire, but to-day he was handicapped. In the first
+place he had no cap to contribute to the row on the ground, and in the
+second he was burdened with a very large and wriggly bundle, which gave
+evidence of marked disfavor the moment he ceased to jolt it violently on
+his knees.
+
+In the midst of an unusually fierce altercation, in which four boys
+contended for the same cap, Skeeter Sheeley's voice rose above the
+clamor.
+
+"It's our turn! Umpire says so, didn't you, Chick? Aw, you did, too! I
+kin understand you better 'n you kin understand yourself. 'Course it's
+ours. Stop shovin' me, Gussie McGlory, I'll swat yer in the jaw in a
+minute! Look out, Chick! Look out fer the kid!"
+
+The youngest resident of Bean Alley was probably saved from premature
+death by the timely appearance of two ladies at the far end of the
+street.
+
+Chick, recognizing the younger one, started joyfully to meet her, but at
+sight of her companion he stopped short. For two years he had regarded
+that plump, smiling, elderly lady as his arch enemy. She was after him.
+She wanted to put him in something that sounded like "The Willows Awful
+Home." Once she had almost gotten him, but Aunt 'Tella interposed. He
+was not afraid of the truant officer, nor of the cop, although they were
+generally after him, too, but he had horrible nightmares in which he saw
+himself being dragged into captivity by this bland lady in the purple
+dress, who always smiled.
+
+Just as he was seeking a hiding-place sufficiently large to accommodate
+himself and his charge, he was summoned home. Considerable commotion was
+apparent in the crowded kitchen and Mr. Flathers was moving about with
+an alacrity unusual to him.
+
+"Git off your shoes and stockings, Chick, and turn your coat inside out.
+Here, I'll hold the baby; yer Mammy's nursing the other one. Shove that
+beer can under the stove, and hide that there cuckoo clock."
+
+Chick followed instructions with the air of one who understood the
+situation. It was not the first time he had prepared hurriedly for
+visitors.
+
+"They're stopping at Jireses'," reported Mr. Flathers from the window.
+"Here, take this kid and set out there on the door-step. Don't you dare
+budge till they've saw you and spoke to you."
+
+Chick resumed his position on the door-step with a heavy heart. The line
+of battle had been pushed south, and he was completely out of the firing
+line.
+
+His bare feet and legs were cold in the biting November air, and he had
+jolted the baby until he felt there were no more jolts left in him. It
+was, moreover, a terrifying business to sit there and calmly wait his
+fate.
+
+"Them's them!" announced Skeeter Sheeley, racing down the alley. "They
+give Mr. Jires some oranges. If they give you one, you goin' to gimme
+half?"
+
+Chick was too miserable to answer. The bars of an institution seemed to
+be already closing upon him.
+
+Mrs. Ivy, holding her skirts very high and picking her way gingerly
+around the frozen puddles, was the first to reach him.
+
+"Ah! Here's our good little friend Rick, or Dick, is it? And this is the
+sweet little baby sister that God sent you."
+
+"Naw it ain't," said Skeeter; "that there's a boy, an' it ain't no kin
+to him. Its paw's in the pen, an' its maw's up fer ninety days, an' its
+jes' boardin' at his house."
+
+"The case that was reported for the Home," said Mrs. Ivy, turning with a
+significant nod to her companion who had just come up.
+
+At the word "home" Chick shuddered. It was the most terrible word in the
+English language to him.
+
+"What's the matter with your thumb, old fellow?" Miss Lady asked, seeing
+his frightened look. "Come here, Skeeter, and tell me what he says."
+
+She relieved Chick of the young person whose parents were not in a
+position to minister to his wants, and sat on the door-step between the
+two boys, listening with flattering attention to a detailed description
+of each hero's wounds and scars and how they had been received.
+
+Mrs. Ivy, meanwhile, a veritable spider in the midst of a web
+of institutions, was warily planning to ensnare every helpless,
+poverty-stricken fly that came her way. To her, the web was not made
+for the fly, but the fly for the web; supplying flies was her chief
+occupation.
+
+Standing just inside the kitchen door with her skirts still gathered
+carefully about her, she viewed her surroundings with mournful sympathy.
+
+"The fact are," Phineas was saying as he held his coat together at the
+collar, in a pretended effort to conceal his lack of a shirt, "that we
+ain't been prosperin' since you was last here. Looks like the hand of
+the Lord--"
+
+"Ah, Mr. Flathers," remonstrated Mrs. Ivy, with a finger on her lip,
+"never forget that whom He loveth He chasteneth."
+
+"I don't, Mrs. Ivy, I don't. I keep that in mind. If it wasn't fer that,
+Mrs. Ivy, I declare I don't know what I would do. Now you comin' to-day
+was a answer to prayer! I just ast that some way would be pervided 'fore
+the rent man come back at six o'clock. I didn't say in my prayer _what_
+way, I just said _a_ way, that _a_ way would be pervided. And when I
+seen you and the young lady turnin' in the alley, I sez to Maria, 'never
+try to shake my faith no more, the clouds has been lifted!'"
+
+Mrs. Ivy, who was much more given to dispensing morals than money,
+shifted her position.
+
+"Mr. Flathers," she said, looking at him with what she conceived to be a
+searching glance, "do you ever drink?"
+
+Assuring himself that Chick had gotten the can quite out of sight,
+Phineas looked at her reproachfully:
+
+"Me? Why, Mrs. Ivy, I thought everybody knowed that since I joined the
+Church--of course I ain't denying that there _was_ a time when I knowed
+the taste of liquor. There ain't no good denying that, and, besides
+confession is good fer me, it humbles my spirit, Mrs. Ivy, it keeps me
+from being a publican."
+
+"And tobacco?" queried Mrs. Ivy. "Liquor and tobacco go hand in hand,
+they are twin evils. Are you addicted to the use of tobacco?"
+
+"Not me!" said Phineas, truthfully for once. "I ain't soiled my lips
+with a seegar for over twenty years, and you couldn't git me to chew if
+you chloroformed me. Ef liquor is the drink, terbaccer is the food of
+the devil, as I see it." Mrs. Ivy beamed upon him, as she opened the
+silver bag at her belt. "I shall report your case at our next meeting,"
+she said with enthusiasm. "I shall quote your very words. And now I
+am going to pin this little badge on you, this little white badge that
+tells the world you belong to the Anti-Tobacco League. You have the
+honor of wearing what few of our greatest statesmen can wear! You have
+proven that a humble laborer can lead the way to Reform."
+
+Miss Lady appeared at this point with the Boarder, who like most
+individuals of his class, complained continuously of the quantity and
+quality of his food.
+
+"You find us in a bad way, Mis' Squeerington," Phineas said, offering
+her a bottomless chair with the air of a Christian martyr. "If my sister
+Myrtella knowed the half of what we was passin' through she wouldn't
+continue to steel her heart against us."
+
+"Myrtella's heart's all right," said Miss Lady cheerfully; "she takes
+care of Chick, doesn't she?"
+
+"She does, mam, in a way. But there's heavy expenses on a pore man with
+a family. Mrs. Flathers now ain't been able to have a see-ance since
+before the baby come. She did give one trance settin' yesterday, but
+she says she don't know what's got into her, she feels so sort of weak
+like!"
+
+"How long has she been taking care of this other baby?" Miss Lady asked.
+
+"Most ever since ours come. The Juvenile Court was looking round fer
+some one to nurse him till his maw got out of the jail hospital. I sez
+to Maria, 'Here's a chanct to do a good Christian act an' earn a honest
+penny. We'll take it in an' treat it like our own, sez I, an' the Lord
+will not fergit us, sez I!"
+
+The Boarder, taking advantage of this assurance of hospitality, set up
+such a peremptory demand for food, that Miss Lady was compelled to walk
+the floor with him.
+
+"Where is Mrs. Flathers?" she asked in despair. "Can't we give him a
+bottle or something?"
+
+Maria, more limp, and inanimate than usual, came out of the dim interior
+of the adjoining room, carrying a yet more limp and inanimate bundle
+which she exchanged with Miss Lady for hers, and silently retired into
+the inner room where she was followed by Mrs. Ivy.
+
+"An' this here is ours!" exclaimed Phineas, bending with sudden
+enthusiasm over the child in Miss Lady's arms, and tenderly lifting the
+shawl from the weazened face and tiny claw-like hands. "This here is
+Loreny. There ain't nary one of the rest of 'em lived over two weeks,
+an' this here one is goin' on four. Kinder looks like we're goin' to
+keep her with us, don't it?"
+
+Miss Lady could find no answer. The white lips and the blue circles
+about the small, sunken eyes, bespoke the same disinclination to risk
+life under such circumstances as had been shown by all the other little
+Flatherses.
+
+"Course she ain't like that other baby," Phineas went on with genuine
+earnestness, "but then he's a boy, an' eats more. She's goin' to git fat
+an' pretty, ain't you, Loreny?"
+
+He put his coarse brown thumb into the little hand which closed about it
+and clung to it, and sat watching her, unmindful of his visitor.
+
+"She don't look what you'd call strong," he went on, anxiously, "but you
+wouldn't say she was sick, would you?"
+
+"I am afraid I should," Miss Lady said gravely; "she looks very sick to
+me."
+
+"She does? Then I'd better git the doctor," Phineas rose hurriedly,
+then sat down again. "But he never done the others no good. Maria always
+contended it was him that killed 'em. Ain't there somethin' we kin do?
+Don't you know somethin'?"
+
+"Yes, I think I do, only you may not be willing to do it."
+
+"You try me. I'll do anything you say, Miss. If the Lord will only spare
+her--"
+
+"It's not the Lord that's taking her," Miss Lady cried impatiently,
+"it's you that are sending her, Mr. Flathers. Can't you see that you are
+killing your baby?"
+
+He looked at her in amazed horror.
+
+"Yes, you are!" went on Miss Lady fiercely, "you are selling her food
+to another baby; you are letting her mother work so hard that she can
+scarcely nourish herself. Just look at Mrs. Flathers! Anybody can see
+that if she had better food and less to do she'd be a different person."
+
+"Oh, Maria was real pretty onct," Phineas said somewhat resentfully,
+"but when a man marries one of them slim little blondes he never knows
+what he's gittin'. They sort of shrink up on yer an' git faded an'
+stringy."
+
+"Yes, but think what she got," said Miss Lady determined to press the
+matter home. "Myrtella says you were a strong, handsome young man, who
+could have turned your hand to almost anything, and look at you now! A
+broken-down loafer, sitting around the saloons, talking religion while
+your baby starves. I don't wonder Myrtella is ashamed of you, I am
+ashamed of you, and if this poor little girl ever lives to grow up, she
+will be ashamed of you, too!"
+
+"No, no," cried Phineas brokenly, his head in his hands, "she won't
+be that--if the Lord,--I mean if she lives, I'll be a better man, Mis'
+Squeerington, indeed I will. Nobody ever will know in the world how much
+I want children of my own. That's why I 'dopted Chick--that's one reason
+I took in this new one. Seemed like as if my baby went--"
+
+"We'll try to keep her," Miss Lady said with a rush of sympathy. "I'll
+do everything I can but you must help, Mr. Flathers. You are willing to
+do your part, aren't you?"
+
+His emotions, used to responding to false stimulants, being now appealed
+to by the one genuine feeling in him, threatened to become uncontrolled.
+
+"There, there!" Miss Lady said, "if you really want to save her, I think
+there's a way."
+
+"Not a Orphan's Home?" asked Phineas, lifting one eye from the baby's
+petticoat where his head had been buried.
+
+"No, a clean home of her own. There's no reason why you shouldn't go to
+work, Mr. Flathers, and support your family decently. I'll take Chick
+home with me. Myrtella will be glad to have him for a little visit. Mrs.
+Ivy is going to send the other baby to the Foundling's Home. Then you'll
+only have to look after Mrs. Flathers and the baby; you surely can do
+that, can't you?"
+
+"Yes 'm, I kin do that. 'Course any man kin do that. But I been out of a
+regular job so long, you'd sorter help me find something to start on?"
+
+"I'll get you something to do, if you will only stick to it. Perhaps
+Mrs. Sequin can give you work at her new house. She gave our old colored
+man, Uncle Jimpson, a place."
+
+"Jes' so it ain't garden work, nor gittin' up coal, nor nothin' that
+brings on rheumatism."
+
+"Have you rheumatism?"
+
+"No, mam, Praise God! I have escaped this far by bein' kereful. You know
+what it means, Mis' Squeerington, when a man with a family gits down
+with the rheumatism. There's Jires, now--"
+
+"Yes, and Mr. Jires does more for his family lying flat on his back than
+you do for yours, up and walking around! You're not fooling me one bit,
+Mr. Flathers, and there's no use trying to fool yourself. You either
+mean seriously to go to work or you don't. Which is it?"
+
+Phineas Flathers' strong impulse was to flee the scene. He saw his
+liberty vanishing before the awful prospect held out by this pretty
+young lady who could be so sympathetic one moment and so stern the next.
+But the tiny claw-like fingers of Loreny held him fast. He looked at his
+imprisoned thumb and smiled tenderly. Then he faced Miss Lady squarely
+for the first time.
+
+"You help me git a job, Miss, an' I'll promise to take keer of this here
+baby."
+
+"What you need," came the murmur of Mrs. Ivy's voice from the next room,
+where she was taking leave of Maria Flathers, "is more beauty in your
+home, something to uplift you and inspire you. I am going to send you
+one of our traveling art galleries, you may keep the pictures a whole
+week, long enough to learn the titles and the names of the painters.
+Just think what it will mean to lift your tired eyes to a beautiful,
+serene Madonna! And couldn't you have more color in your home? We find
+color so stimulating. Scarlet geraniums for instance. Wouldn't you like
+some scarlet geraniums?"
+
+"I dunno where we'd put 'em at," Maria said wearily, shifting the weight
+of the Boarder to her other arm. Then her face hardened suddenly, and
+she wheeled into the kitchen.
+
+"Flathers," she said, "it's him coming round the house now. He said he'd
+be back before six, an' wouldn't stand no foolin'. What you goin' to do,
+Flathers?"
+
+Before Miss Lady and Mrs. Ivy could make their exit, the way was blocked
+by a heavy-set, muscular, one-eyed man who placed a hand on either side
+of the door jamb and unnecessarily announced that there he was. Frantic
+efforts on the part of Phineas to signify to the newcomer by winks
+and gestures, that the presence of guests would prevent his talking
+business, were without effect.
+
+"You ladies'll have to excuse me," said the intruder cheerfully, "but
+I can't fool with this bunch no longer. It's pay, or git out, this time
+and no mistake."
+
+Maria began to cry, and forgot to jolt the Boarder, and the Boarder who
+insisted upon being jolted every instant he was not sleeping or eating,
+began to cry also. Whereupon Loreny, who had been laid upon the kitchen
+table, heard the noise and felt called upon to add her voice to the
+chorus.
+
+By this time Chick and his colleagues, scenting excitement from afar,
+had followed its trail and now presented themselves breathless and
+interested to await developments. "Puttin' out" was not a particular
+novelty in Bean Alley, but the presence of guests added a picturesque
+feature.
+
+"If you can wait a week longer," said Phineas with some attempt at
+dignity, "I'll be in a position to settle up to date. I'm expectin' to
+git a job--"
+
+At this the rent man threw back his head and laughed, and the youngsters
+back of him laughed, and even the Boarder stopped crying a moment to see
+what had happened.
+
+"But he really is," insisted Miss Lady, coming to Phineas' assistance.
+"He's going to work the first of the week. Surely you can wait a week
+longer."
+
+"I can, Miss!" said the man in the door, gallantly. "I been waiting a
+week longer on Flathers for more'n two months. There ain't absolutely no
+use in arguing the matter further. It's pay up, or git out, _to-day_."
+
+"Well, if this ain't the limit!" said Phineas, with the air of one who
+had reached it many times before, but never such a limitless limit as
+this.
+
+"But if we pay this month's rent for him, can't you let him make up
+the back rent later?" argued Miss Lady, trying to comfort Maria who
+threatened to become hysterical.
+
+"When you've known Flathers as long as I have, you won't talk about him
+paying up."
+
+"But you can't put them out like this, with that little baby and no
+place to go!"
+
+"There's the Charity Organization, and the Alms House," suggested Mrs.
+Ivy, wiping her eyes through sympathy.
+
+"I'd hate to drive 'em to that," said the man doggedly, "but I got my
+own family to consider, and I ain't what I once was, since I lost my
+eye."
+
+"Poor man," sighed Mrs. Ivy; "how fortunate It was the left one! How did
+it happen?"
+
+"Shot out," said the man, nothing loath to enter into particulars. "In
+a scrap between a pair of young swells that was hangin' round my place.
+Shot out in cold blood when I wasn't lookin'."
+
+"But, my good man, didn't you prosecute?" asked Mrs. Ivy. "You know we
+have a Legal Aid Society for just such cases as yours."
+
+[Illustration: Maria began to cry, and forgot to jolt the Boarder]
+
+"Yes'm, but one of the young gentlemen skipped the country, lit out fer
+foreign parts, took to the tall timber, as you might say."
+
+"But he was not the one who did the shooting, was he?" asked Miss Lady,
+a sudden bright spot on either cheek, and the steady determination in
+her eye that had been Flathers' undoing.
+
+"I ain't never been able to say which one done it," said the man,
+faltering under her steady gaze.
+
+"Perhaps it was worth your while not to say?"
+
+The man shot a quick glance of suspicion at her, then his eye came back
+to Phineas.
+
+"Of course, I don't want to push him into the Poor House, and if he
+expects to get work--"
+
+"I do, Dick," said Phineas fervently. "Monday morning I put my
+shoulder-blade to the wheel somewhere."
+
+"Well, if the ladies'll stand for this month," said the man, evidently
+anxious to get away, "I'll wait a week longer on the back rent."
+
+Miss Lady was preoccupied and silent on the way home. The world
+sometimes seemed desperately sordid, and human nature a baffling
+proposition.
+
+At her gate Mrs. Ivy halted suddenly: "Do you know," she said, "it has
+just occurred to me! I shouldn't be one bit surprised if that horrid
+one-eyed man was the very one Mr. Morley shot!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+Christmas night on Billy-goat Hill, and twinkling lights, beginning with
+candles set in bottles in the humblest cottages in Bean Alley, dotted
+the hillside here and there, until they all seemed to converge at one
+brilliant spot on the summit, where a veritable halo of light hung above
+the hilltop.
+
+For Angora Heights was having a house-warming, and never since old Bob
+Carsey brought home his young bride from Alabama, had such preparations
+been known for a social function. All the carriages in the neighborhood
+had been pressed into service, and a half dozen motors had been sent out
+from town to convey the guests from the station to the house.
+
+Within the mansion everything was magnificently new. Period rooms,
+carried out with conscientious accuracy, opened into each other through
+arcaded doorways. Massive gilt mirrors accentuated the wide spaces of
+the hall, and repeated the lights of innumerable chandeliers. If a stray
+memory or an old association had by any chance crept into the Christmas
+ball, it would have found no familiar object on which to dwell. The
+atmosphere was as formal and impersonal as that of a museum.
+
+In the middle of the drawing-room, like a general issuing last orders
+before a battle, stood Mrs. Sequin, her ample figure encased in an
+armor of glistening black spangles, and her elaborately puffed coiffure
+surmounted by an incipient helmet of blazing gems.
+
+"Pull those portieres back a trifle," she commanded, "and lower
+that window from the top. Has Jimpson gone to the station for the
+Queeringtons?"
+
+"Yes, madam, half an hour ago," answered the maid.
+
+"The moment he returns tell him that he is to take the small wagon and
+go back to the station at ten o'clock. The caterer has just 'phoned that
+he is sending the extra ices out on the last train, but that he
+cannot send another waiter. Jenkins, leaving the way he did, has upset
+everything. I suppose it is too late to get anybody now; the special car
+gets here at nine. What is that noise? It sounds like some one singing
+in the dining-room."
+
+"It's the new furnace man, madam, that Mrs. Queerington sent. It looks
+like he can't keep himself quiet."
+
+"I'll quiet him!" said Mrs. Sequin, who was as near irritation as full
+dress would permit.
+
+Phineas Flathers, having replenished the fire, was pausing a moment to
+admire himself in the Dutch mirror above the mantel when Mrs. Sequin
+startled him by inquiring peremptorily if he was the new man.
+
+"I am," said Phineas with pronounced deference, "_the_ new man and
+_a_ new man. Regenerated, born again, mam, the spirit of evil having
+departed from me."
+
+Mrs. Sequin gasped. "What is your name?"
+
+"Flathers, mam."
+
+"Dreadful! I will call you Benson."
+
+"Benson it is. Better men than me have changed their names. There was
+Saul now, Saul of Tarsus--"
+
+"Turn the drafts off in the furnace and don't come up-stairs again on
+any account. But no,--wait a moment." Mrs. Sequin's keen eye swept him
+from head to foot. "Have you ever had any experience in serving?"
+
+Phineas, whose only claim to serving was that "they also serve who only
+stand and wait," dropped his eyes.
+
+"Only the communion, mam, and the collection. But I ain't above lending
+a hand, mam. You'd do as much for me. I was just saying to the lady in
+the kitchen, that anybody was fortunate to work for a person with as
+generous a face as yours."
+
+"Clean yourself up, and put on Jenkins' coat, and if another waiter
+is absolutely necessary, they can call on you," directed Mrs. Sequin
+hurriedly, then calling to the maid, "Has Miss Margery come down yet?"
+
+"She's in the library, mam."
+
+Margery, pale and listless, turned from the window as her mother
+entered.
+
+"I was just watching for Miss Lady," she said; "it will be rather
+amusing to see her and Connie at their first big party."
+
+"I hope she won't wear that childish dress she was married in. It is
+all right for Connie to affect white muslin and blue ribbons, but Cousin
+John's wife ought to wear something that makes her look older. Why,
+with that short gown, and the way she wears her hair, she looks like a
+schoolgirl!"
+
+"She looks very beautiful."
+
+"Of course she does, but what good does it do her? Here at the end of
+four months she has made practically no headway. Not that she didn't
+have every opportunity! People were quite ready to take her up, but she
+simply wouldn't let them. What can you expect of a person who says that
+bridge and boned gowns make her back ache? She hasn't an idea in her
+head beyond the Doctor, the children and a lot of paupers. I must say
+I am terribly disappointed in her. But then I ought to be used to
+disappointments by this time. What will she be when she's middle-aged?"
+
+"She'll never be middle-aged," Margery smiled; "she'll go on being young
+and making people around her feel young. Father says she is the only
+person he knows who makes him forget his age. By the way, where is
+Father?"
+
+"Delayed in town as usual. He'll probably motor out when the evening is
+half over and be too tired to be polite. I've never seen him so upset.
+Of course it's your broken engagement. He says we may have to close the
+house, now that we've gotten into it, and go abroad to reduce expenses,
+but of course that's ridiculous! That reminds me, did the Hortons send
+regrets?"
+
+"She did," said Margery absently.
+
+"Oh, dear, that means he'll be here! He's so horribly fastidious, he's
+sure to make remarks about my putting an Italian loggia on a Louis XVI
+drawing-room. It does seem that with all the time and money we've spent
+on this place--Isn't that the carriage?"
+
+"Yes, I hear Miss Lady laughing."
+
+As the front door swung open two bundled-up figures hurried into the
+hall, bringing a gust of youth and merriment along with the keen night
+air.
+
+"I hope we are the first guests," cried Miss Lady, shaking a scarf from
+her head, "because we have had an accident. We both fell down. Connie
+slipped on the step and I sat down on top of her. There was an awful rip
+and we don't know whose it is! I'm afraid to take my coat off!"
+
+"But where is the Doctor?" cried Mrs. Sequin in dismay.
+
+"Father would love to have come," began Connie glibly, but Miss Lady
+broke in: "I don't think he really wanted to come, Mrs. Sequin. He said
+he would be ever so much happier up in his study, playing pinocle, than
+sitting out here in a straight-back gilt chair eating ice cream. Perhaps
+you think I oughtn't to have come without him?"
+
+"Nonsense!" exclaimed Mrs. Sequin. "I get perfectly exasperated when
+Cousin John does this way. There were at least a half dozen people I'd
+promised to introduce to him. If he had no consideration for me he ought
+to have for you. He has been keeping you at home entirely too much. He
+forgets that you are twenty years his junior; he expects you to act as
+if you were forty."
+
+"No, he doesn't," protested Miss Lady loyally; "the Doctor never expects
+anything of anybody that isn't right. He urged me to come, didn't he,
+Connie?"
+
+But Connie was absorbed in a trailing flounce that hung limply about her
+feet.
+
+"Look!" she cried tragically; "it's torn clear across the front. What
+shall I do?"
+
+"Margery's gowns would all be too long for you," said Mrs. Sequin,
+viewing the rent through her lorgnette, "perhaps Marie can do something
+with this."
+
+"I won't wear it all tacked up!" cried Connie on the verge of tears;
+"I'll go home first--"
+
+"No, you won't," said Miss Lady; "this is your first grown-up party and
+you've been counting on it for weeks. You are going to change dresses
+with me. I don't mind a bit being hiked up a little, and, besides,
+nobody's going to notice me."
+
+"That's perfectly absurd!" exclaimed Mrs. Sequin indignantly; "you
+_must_ remember who you are, and that everybody is noticing you. Why
+can't _you_ wear one of Margery's dresses, and let Connie have yours?"
+
+"All right, I'll wear anything you say. Don't you dare cry, Connie! I'll
+never forgive you if you make your nose red. Listen! The musicians are
+tuning up! May I have the first waltz, madam?" and seizing Mrs. Sequin
+by her plump gloved hands, she danced that august person down the long
+hall.
+
+"Let me go, you ridiculous child," laughed Mrs. Sequin, hurrying her
+up the steps; "the motors are coming up the hill now. Make her look as
+pretty as you can, Marie, and hurry!"
+
+At a distance the brilliant, moving lights of automobiles and the dimmer
+ones of carriages could be seen approaching, and very soon under the
+blaze of the porch lights, hurrying figures in furs, rustling satin, and
+soft velvets were being ushered formally into the big reception hall.
+
+Mrs. Sequin, mounted on her highest social stilts, stood with Margery in
+the alcove, so carefully planned for another occasion. A ball to be
+sure was a poor substitute for a wedding, but Mrs. Sequin was not one to
+waste her energies on vain regret. The ball was going to be a success;
+already the rooms were filling rapidly with the people Mrs. Sequin most
+desired to see. Old Mrs. Marchmont had risen from a sick bed to drive
+out from town and bare her ancient bones in honor of the occasion. Mrs.
+Bartrum had taken possession of the most becoming corner in the library
+and was holding gay court there; the young people were thronging from
+one room to another; everybody was laughing and chatting and exclaiming
+over the charms of the new house. In fact the complacency of the hostess
+over her achievement was only surpassed by the curiosity of the guests
+who were confirming with their own eyes the wild rumors which had been
+current of the Sequins' extravagance.
+
+Mr. Horton, the local architect who had not been considered of
+sufficient renown to make the plans for the house, wandered from room to
+room on a quiet tour of inspection. Mrs. Sequin's fears of his judgment
+were not without cause, for Mr. Horton was one of those critics whose
+advice one always ignores but whose approval one ardently desires. He
+was a trim, immaculate person with short, pointed beard, and narrow,
+critical eyes that always seemed to be taking measurements. Passing from
+the Dutch dining-room, with its blue tile, and old pewter, he paused in
+the doorway of the drawing-room where the dancing had already begun. His
+glance, taking in everything from the gilded fluting of the panels to
+the bronze heads on the upright lines of the marble mantels, rested at
+last upon an object which evidently gave his critical taste complete
+satisfaction.
+
+A young girl had paused near him and was eagerly watching the dancers.
+She presented a harmony in green and gold, from her shining hair caught
+in a loose coil low on her neck, to her small gold slippers that tapped
+time to the music. The clinging gown of pale green that fell in loose
+lines from her shoulders was veiled in deep-toned lace, revealing her
+round white throat and long shapely arms, bare from shoulder to finger
+tips. Horton smiled unconsciously as he watched her eager, responsive
+face, and felt the suppressed vitality in every movement of her slender
+body.
+
+"Who is she?" he asked of Cropsie Decker, who stood near.
+
+"Who's who?"
+
+"That radiant young thing in green. She doesn't belong in a ballroom,
+she belongs in a forest with ivy leaves in her hair. By Jove, look at
+the lines of her, and the freedom of her movements. I haven't seen such
+arms in years!"
+
+Cropsie followed his glance: "Oh, that's the new Mrs. Queerington,--the
+wife of John Jay, you know."
+
+"But I mean the young girl going through the door there, with the
+wonderful hair, and the profile?"
+
+"That's Mrs. Queerington. Isn't she a stunner? Everybody's talking about
+her to-night. I'll introduce you if you like."
+
+Horton followed him around the outer edge of the dancers, still
+confident that Cropsie had made a mistake. But when he was duly
+presented there was no longer room for doubt.
+
+"I hope I'm not too late to claim a dance," he said. "I always make it
+a point to dance but once during an evening, and that with the most
+beautiful woman on the floor. I hope you aren't going to let these young
+sharks cut me out of my dance?"
+
+Miss Lady lifted a pair of sparkling, excited eyes to his. From the
+moment when she had appeared, half timidly in her borrowed feathers
+and taken refuge under Mrs. Sequin's experienced wing, she had been the
+sensation of the evening. Adroitly conveyed from one group to another
+she had left enthusiasm in her wake. She was evidently enjoying to the
+utmost the novelty of receiving homage from one black-coated courtier
+after another, and of hearing delightful things about herself. The only
+apparent drawback to her pleasure was when she was compelled to say as
+she did now:
+
+"Thank you ever so much, but I'm not dancing."
+
+"Not dancing?" repeated Mr. Horton, not unmindful of the whiteness of
+her shoulders against the dark marble of a neighboring pedestal,--'"Why
+not?"
+
+"The Doctor and I have given up dancing."
+
+"Oh, so he doesn't allow you to dance?"
+
+"Allow me?" she lifted her level brows, smiling. "He simply doesn't care
+for it."
+
+"And you don't care for it either?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I do, I care for it too much. That's why I'm not dancing."
+
+"But you _are_ dancing. You've been dancing ever since you came in. I've
+watched you. Mightn't you just as well be dancing with me, as dancing by
+yourself?"
+
+She laughed and shook her head, but her foot continued to pat the time,
+and her eyes followed the swaying couples that swung past.
+
+"What's the Doctor's objection?" Mr. Horton urged.
+
+"He thinks it's undignified for married women to dance, and I guess I
+do, too, only--" Miss Lady sighed,--"you see, I keep forgetting that I
+_am_ a married woman!"
+
+"You certainly make other people want to forget it," then his eyes
+dropped before the childlike candor of her gaze. "Come now, Mrs.
+Queerington, aren't you taking matrimony a little seriously?"
+
+ "Perhaps I am, but I'm new, you know, and I've an awful lot to
+learn."
+
+"Hasn't it ever occurred to you that the Doctor might have something to
+learn?"
+
+"No," she said brightly, "he knows everything. I sometimes wish he
+didn't. I'd be proud if I could teach him even _that_ much!" and she
+measured off the amount on the tip of her little finger.
+
+"Perhaps he isn't as good a pupil as you are. You should take him to see
+'Harnessing a Husband,' at the Ardmore this week."
+
+"A play? I'd love to go to the theater just once."
+
+"You've never been? How extraordinary! Come with Mrs. Horton and me on
+Friday night and let us share your first thrill."
+
+"May I?" Miss Lady began eagerly, then checking herself, "I'm afraid the
+Doctor doesn't care much about the modern stage. He used to enjoy
+seeing the great actors, but he says the plays they put on now bore him
+fearfully. Mayn't we come to call sometime instead?"
+
+"As you like," said Mr. Horton, shrugging, "but I hope you realize that
+you are spoiling that learned husband of yours. Instead of adapting
+yourself to him, make him adapt himself to you. Come now, isn't it about
+time for you to reform? Why not begin by finishing this dance with me?"
+
+Still she laughed and shook her head. "It isn't that I don't want to!
+I'd rather dance than do anything in the world--except ride horseback."
+
+"I might have known you were a horsewoman. Do you ride much?"
+
+"Not now."
+
+"The Doctor doesn't care for it, I suppose?"
+
+She flashed a questioning glance at him, then she looked away:
+
+"No," she said, "he doesn't care for it."
+
+Cropsie Decker, who had been hovering in her vicinity, now came up and
+claimed the next number.
+
+"There's a bully little corner in the conservatory where we can sit out
+this waltz. You won't mind if I carry her off, Mr. Horton?"
+
+"Not if she takes to heart some of the wise things I've been telling
+her," said Horton, looking at her through his narrow eyes and pulling at
+his small, fair mustache. "Au revoir, Madame Beaux Yeux!"
+
+Miss Lady did not move from the spot where he left her. Out under the
+palms in the hall, the orchestra was beginning one of Strauss' most
+distracting waltzes; her fingers tapped the time. Suddenly she held out
+her hand to Cropsie.
+
+"I can't stand it another minute! I've got to dance once if I never
+dance again!"
+
+Every eye in the ballroom followed the slender figure, as it circled
+in and out among the throng. Miss Lady danced with the grace and
+abandonment of a child. She had given herself utterly to the joy of
+the moment. She was letting herself go for the first time since her
+marriage, following the glad impulse of her heart, and dancing as a
+Bacchante might have danced alone on a moonlight night in some forest
+glade.
+
+When at last the music stopped Cropsie drew her into the conservatory.
+
+"Here, come around this palm, quick! They'll all be after you for the
+next dance. Gerald Ivy is charging around now looking for you, and so is
+Mr. Horton. Sit there in the window and cool off!"
+
+She sank laughing and breathless on the window sill. All the
+exhilaration of the dance was in her eyes, her lips were parted, her
+cheeks flushed, and a strand of loosened hair fell across her shoulder.
+
+It was at this moment that wheels sounded on the driveway below, caused
+her to lean idly out to see who was coming. A wagon stopped at the side
+entrance, and a man alighted. Uncle Jimpson's voice was heard asking a
+question, then came the other man's voice, in quick, incisive answer.
+
+Miss Lady, sitting motionless, looking down, turned suddenly from
+the window. The color had left her face and her hand trembled visibly
+against the curtain.
+
+"What's the matter?" cried Cropsie; "are you ill? Did you dance too
+long?"
+
+"It's nothing, I'm all right. That is I will be--"
+
+"Can't I get you some water, or an ice, or call Mrs. Sequin?"
+
+"No, no, please! It's nothing. I'll slip off to the dressing-room until
+I feel better. I can go through here up the side stairs."
+
+"Wait, I'll go with you. You are as white as if you'd seen a ghost!"
+
+But before he could join her she had disappeared into mysterious regions
+where he dared not follow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+During the course of that Christmas night, there was one member of the
+Sequin household who failed to thrill with the holiday spirit, and whose
+depression steadily increased as the evening wore on. The great occasion
+of which Uncle Jimpson had dreamed all his life, had at last arisen,
+and instead of being allowed to rise with it, and prove his indisputable
+right to butlerhood, he had been detailed to drive back and forth to the
+station over that same humdrum Cane Run Road that he and Old John had
+helped to wear away for the past quarter of a century!
+
+To be sure, a neat depot wagon and a spirited young sorrel had replaced
+the ancient buggy and the apostolic nag, but these fell far short of
+Uncle Jimpson's dreams. A coach and four at that moment would not have
+compensated him for the fact that a complaisant, red-headed furnaceman,
+a "po' white trash" arrived but yesterday, was being allowed to pass the
+tray that by all rights of precedence belonged to him.
+
+Waiting impatiently at the station for the train that was to bring the
+elusive ices which he had been pursuing all evening, he at last had the
+satisfaction of seeing the small engine crawl out of the darkness, and
+come to a wheezing halt.
+
+So engrossed were the conductor and brakeman and Uncle Jimpson in safely
+depositing the freezers on the platform, that no one noticed a passenger
+who had alighted. In fact, it was not until Uncle Jimpson heard Mrs.
+Sequin's name that he paused from his labor and looked up.
+
+The stranger was a young, well-built man, wearing a long, shaggy
+overcoat, and a cap of a foreign cut that excited the immediate envy of
+the brake-man. The bag and the suit case which he carried were covered
+with foreign labels, and he had the air of a person who is suddenly
+dropped down in a strange place and doesn't quite know what to do with
+himself.
+
+"You say you want to git up to Mrs. Sequin's to-night?" Uncle Jimpson
+eyed the bags suspiciously. "'Scuse me, sir, but you ain't sellin'
+nothin', is you?"
+
+The laugh that greeted this was so spontaneous, that Uncle Jimpson
+hastened to apologize: "I nebber thought you wuz, only we wasn't lookin'
+fer no railroad company, an' I 'lowed you didn't look lak you wuz comin'
+to de party."
+
+"What party?" asked the man, his look of amusement giving place to one
+of dismay.
+
+"Our-alls party. We's havin' a ball an' a house-warmin'. You must be
+comin' fum a long ways off not to be hearin' 'bout hit!"
+
+"You mean the Sequins are having a party, tonight?"
+
+ "Yas, sir."
+
+"But aren't they expecting me? Didn't they get my telegram?"
+
+"I dunno, sir. Dey nebber said nothin' to me."
+
+The stranger stood with feet apart, watch in hand, and a grim expression
+on the only part of his face visible between his cap and his upturned
+collar.
+
+"What time is the next train back to town?"
+
+"Dey ain't none, 'ceptin' de special, what's hired to take de party back
+to town. Dat goes 'bout two o'clock."
+
+"I'll wait for it," said the stranger, flinging his bag against the
+waiting-room door and beginning to pace restlessly up and down the
+snow-covered platform.
+
+But this did not meet with Uncle Jimpson's ideas of hospitality.
+
+"Dey nebber knowed you wuz comin'," he argued. "I jes know dey didn't.
+But dat won't hinder 'em fum bein' powerful glad to see you. Better git
+in, Boss, an' lemme dribe you up dere."
+
+"No, there is evidently more room for me in town!"
+
+"Room! Why, Mister, we could take keer of all de Presidents of de
+Nunited States at one time! 'Sides, hit don't look right to leave you
+a stompin' round here in de cold fer three or four hours by yourself.
+You'd git powerful lonesome."
+
+"I'm used to being lonesome. Haven't been anything else for a year."
+
+"But dis heah is different," urged the old darkey, scratching his
+head; "dis heah is Christmas night. Tain't natchul fer folks not to
+git together an' laugh an' be happy an' fergit dere quarrels an' dere
+troubles an' jollify deyselves. You know you ain't gwine be happy
+stompin' round here in de dark by your loneself; you know dat ain't no
+way to spend Christmas, Boss!"
+
+The stranger continued to stare into the darkness for a moment, then
+he laughed, that same sudden, infectious, boyish laugh that had greeted
+Uncle Jimpson's suggestion that he was an agent.
+
+"You're right!" he exclaimed; "this is no time to nurse a grouch.
+Perhaps they didn't get the telegram. I'll risk it. Is there a side door
+you could slip me in?"
+
+"Yas, sir! We got four side doors, 'sides de back one. Ain't nuffin we
+ain't got. You git right in de wagon, an' I'll hist de bags in. 'Tain't
+de way I'd like to kerry you up to de mansion, straddlin' a ice-cream
+freezer wid de snow in yer face, but I'll git you dere!"
+
+Uncle Jimpson, sure of an audience for at least twenty minutes, forgot
+his wrongs and laid himself out to make the most of his opportunity.
+
+It was very cold and the horse's hoofs beat hard on the frozen ground.
+Beyond the wavering circle of light from the swaying lantern all was
+dark and mysterious.
+
+"I certainly is glad dem freezers come," said Uncle Jimpson, tucking in
+the lap robe; "I shore would hate to go back widout 'em. De Cunnel
+used to say dat was what niggers was born fer, to git what you sent 'em
+after."
+
+"Who is the Colonel?" asked the stranger with a quick glance of
+recognition at the old negro.
+
+"Cunnel Bob Carsey. My old marster. He's dead now, an' Mrs. Sequin she's
+done borrowed me fer a while."
+
+"When did he die?"
+
+"A year ago las' May."
+
+The man in the foreign cap pulled it further over his eyes and resumed
+his scrutiny of the road.
+
+"Al dis heah hill used to b'long to us," Uncle Jimpson continued;
+"long before de Sequinses ever wuz born. I spec' you've heard tell of
+Thornwood?"
+
+"Yes. Who lives there now?"
+
+"Nobody. When de Cunnel died, my young Miss didn't hab nobody to take
+keer ob her, nor no money to run de place, no nothin' 'ceptin' jus' me
+an' Carline. Dey wasn't nothin' left fer her to do but git married."
+
+A long pause followed during which the traveler watched the distorted
+shadow of the trotting horse as it shambled along the road.
+
+"'Course," the old darkey broke out presently, "Doctor Queerington is a
+powerful smart gemman, an' he teks keer ob her jes' lak she wuz one ob
+his own chillun. An' she's gittin' broke into de shafts, but hit's
+gwine hard wid her. 'Tain't natchul to hitch a young filly up to a old
+kerriage horse an' spec' her to keep step. She sorter holdin' back all
+de time, kinder 'fraid to let loose an' carry on same as she use to."
+
+They were going through the covered bridge now and the rattle of the
+wheels on the loose boards made conversation difficult.
+
+"Wuz you eber homesick, Boss?" asked Uncle Jimpson inconsequently.
+
+"Rather," said the stranger emphatically. "I was born homesick."
+
+"Well, dat's what ails my young Miss an' dat's whut's de matter wid me
+an' Carline an' Mike. Ain't none ob us used to libin' in other folks'
+houses an' mixin' up wid other folkses families. 'Course hit's mighty
+fine to be rich an' put on airs, but hit's lonesome. 'Fore hit got so
+cold, me an' Carline'd go down home most ebery night an' set round de
+quarters, listenin' to de frogs an' de crickets, an' I'd say,' Carline,
+don't you mind de time dat Miss Lady fell head fust into de barrel ob
+sorghum? An' de time she made de chickens drunk often egg-nog?' Nebber
+wus nobody in de world lak dat chile, up to ever mischievousness dat
+ever wuz concocted, but jus' so sweet an' coaxin' dat de Cunnel nebber
+knowed how to punish her."
+
+The stranger took out a meerschaum pipe, started to light a match,
+evidently forgot his intention, and looked absently ahead into the
+darkness.
+
+"Dis is Thornwood!" said Uncle Jimpson eagerly, pointing with his whip
+up a long avenue of trees; "you can't see de house 'cause dey ain't no
+lights in de winders. De Cunnel's paw set dem trees out de same year
+he bought Carline. Lord, I certainly wuz gone on dat yaller gal! But
+I didn't know nothin' 'bout courtin'. Carline she wuz better qualified
+though, an' she made me ast Old Miss ef I couldn't hab her fer my wife.
+We didn't need no Bible nor preacher, nor sech foolishness in dem days.
+But when Old Miss wuz willin' we jus' dress up an' walk ober de place
+an' tell all de niggers we wuz married. Umph, umph! But I wuz proud
+dat day! I had on a bran' new pair ob pants dat cost two-hundred an'
+sixty-fo' dollars in Confederate money! When Mr. Abe Lincum set us
+niggers free, dey made us git married all ober agin wid a preacher an' a
+Bible, but I never seed no diffunce."
+
+"Does Mrs.--Mrs. Queerington ever come back to Thornwood?" asked the
+stranger, stumbling over the name as if it were very hard for him to
+say.
+
+"Yas, sir, she comes jes' lak me an' Carline, an' wanders roun' de house
+an' de garden, an' sets in de ole barrel hammock, studyin' to herself."
+
+"And Mike,--what became of him?"
+
+Uncle Jimpson looked at him in surprise, "How'd you know about Mike,
+Mister?"
+
+"Didn't you speak of him a while ago; wasn't he the dog?"
+
+"Yas, sir. He's our dog. He's stayin' wif Miss Ferney Foster what libes
+down beyond de blacksmith's on de other side de pike. He don't lak it no
+better'n we do; he's homesick, too."
+
+They had reached a pretentious white gateway, and Uncle Jimpson,
+recalled to a sense of his duties, drew himself up from his slouching
+posture, crooked his elbow and rounded the curve as if he had been
+driving a tally-ho. Through the bare trees above them blazed the
+magnificent proportions of Angora Heights, with its pretentious assembly
+of stables, garage and servants' quarters in the rear.
+
+"Ye gods!" exclaimed the stranger under his breath; "is this all of it?"
+
+"Naw, _sir_!" Uncle Jimpson denied emphatically; "if hit wuz daytime you
+could see de Ramparts an' de Estanade. Over dere is de Lygoon. 'Tain't
+nothin' shore 'nuff but our ole pond where we uster ketch bullfrogs, but
+Mrs. Sequin she tole me to call hit de Lygoon. You see dem carvins ober
+de door? Dat figger goin' up dat Egyptions stairway is John Dark. Didn't
+you nebber heah 'bout John Dark? He wuz a woman what fit a battle onct."
+
+"Cut around to the side there, out of the way of the motors," directed
+the stranger, who seemed much more concerned in making a quiet entrance
+into the mansion than in studying its architectural features. "Here's
+something to put in the toe of your Christmas stocking, and another for
+Caroline. Hurry up!"
+
+He vaulted lightly over the wheel and turned to take his bag. As he
+did so the light from the conservatory window above fell full upon his
+upturned face.
+
+"Fore de Lawd!" cried Uncle Jimpson, a broad grin splitting his face
+almost in two. "I might 'a' knowed dat de only gemman in de world what
+tipped lak dat wuz Mr. Don Morley!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+It is really a very difficult thing to snub Christmas. You may relegate
+it to the class of nuisances, and turn your back on Santa Claus, and
+vote the whole institution a gigantic bore, but before the day is over
+it usually gets the better of you, as it did of Donald Morley, arriving
+unannounced and unwelcomed at the side door of the Sequin mansion.
+
+It had gotten the better of him the year before when he had risen in the
+gray dawn of an Indian day and stoically made his way to the banks
+of the Ganges. It had proclaimed itself above the Vedic hymns of the
+twice-born Brahmins, standing knee-deep in the sacred river; it had
+dogged his footsteps among the ash-smeared fakirs, and jewel-hung cows;
+it had even haunted the burning-ghat where he had stood and watched
+human bodies burning on their pyres.
+
+Eighteen months of wandering had made him sick of the casual; of the
+steamer acquaintances formed at one port and dropped at the next; of the
+unfamiliar sights and incomprehensible languages and the horde of alien
+yellow faces. He was weary unto death of the freedom of the high seas,
+and longed fervently for a strong anchor, and a quiet harbor.
+
+When Cropsie Decker's explosive epistle had arrived telling him of
+his indictment, of Margery's broken engagement, of Lee Dillingham's
+treachery, his first thought was not of his wrongs, but of the fact that
+they would necessitate his going home.
+
+He did not stop to realize that going home meant but one thing to him.
+He even tried to persuade himself that seeing Miss Lady in the role of
+a happy, complaisant wife would cure him of his insatiable longing for
+her. From the time he heard of her marriage he had striven desperately
+to put her out of his mind, using every means but one to accomplish
+his purpose. Through all his resentment and bitterness of heart, he had
+never returned to his old life. Those promises made to her in the full
+ardor of his boyish passion, he had kept with the hopeless loyalty that
+one keeps the garments of the dead.
+
+Now that he had been indicted for a crime of which he was wholly
+innocent, his first desire was to know if she still believed in him.
+To be sure, there were strong reasons why she should not: his own
+confession of his shortcomings; the unfortunate complication in the
+Dillingham affair; his subsequent disappearance. It was but natural that
+she should have been brought to see the folly of pinning her faith to
+such an unstable proposition as himself. His first agonized protest
+against her marriage had given place to a stoical acceptance of the
+fact. He was paying the price many a man has paid for the follies of his
+youth, and he was ready to pay without a protest, if only she could be
+made to understand the truth.
+
+All that was best in him demanded justice from her, the justice he had
+pleaded for in that long letter sent from San Francisco. Going home for
+him meant not only a trial by jury and a verdict of guilty or innocent.
+It meant far more. He would know from her own lips whether she had ever
+received his letter, and whether or not she believed in him. On her
+decision rested his faith in human nature and in God.
+
+The sudden decision to return to America had been reached one night in
+Port Said, where he had just joined an exploring expedition bound for
+the Valley of the Kings. He cancelled his engagement, took passage on a
+little Russian steamer that was bound for Alexandria, and too impatient
+to wait for a liner from that port shipped on a freight boat for Naples.
+The passage across the Atlantic had been a tempestuous one, and he had
+landed in New York two days overdue, with no time to notify the family
+of his arrival.
+
+And now after eighteen months of exile in foreign lands he was actually
+home again! That is if this resplendent, unfamiliar abode, full of music
+and lights and strange servants, could be called home. However, it was
+the nearest approach to one he could claim, and the fact that the fatted
+calf had not been killed for him, and that the law waited for him around
+the corner, did not prevent his pulse quickening and his lips smiling as
+he took the side steps two at a time, and entered the rear hall.
+
+An officious, red-headed man stood in the pantry door with a napkin
+over his arm, issuing peremptory orders and regulating the outcoming and
+ingoing waiters. "Are you the butler?" asked Donald.
+
+"Not yet," said the man, dropping one eyelid and assuming a confidential
+air; "I can see she's after me, though. She got on to my style the
+minute she seen me handle a tray of glasses. 'Flathers,' she sez, 'you
+keep things movin' back there in the pantry, and do keep a eye on John.'
+John's the butler. He's a drinkin' man, God be praised, and I'm layin'
+fer his job. Are you a chauffeur?"
+
+"No," said Donald good humoredly. "I'm a prodigal brother. Where have I
+seen you before?"
+
+"Can't say. If a person sees me once they never fergit me. It's me
+golden glow. Come, boys! Hurry up! Hurry up with them cakes there. Git
+them extry freezers unpacked. Git a move on yer."
+
+"Take this card in to Mrs. Sequin," said Donald, "and ask her if she can
+spare a moment to see a caller in the rear entry."
+
+Phineas glanced suspiciously from the card to the stranger, then he
+decided that he would not question the matter.
+
+A moment later, Mrs. Sequin with her glittering draperies gathered about
+her, and an expression of great perturbation on her features, made her
+high-heeled way through the pantry.
+
+"Donald! My dear boy!" she exclaimed effusively, presenting her cheek
+with the caution of one who hopes the kiss will be light. "What on earth
+are you doing here? We had no idea you were in America. How thin
+you are! I've been in a perfect agony about you. Not those champagne
+glasses, John; the larger ones. That tiresome butler! He has been tipsy
+all day. Now, what about yourself, Donald? It is dreadfully unwise for
+you to be here; you know of course of--of the indictment?"
+
+"That's why I'm here. But how is everybody? How are Brother Basil and
+little old Margery? Where's my saddle mare?"
+
+"I'll tell you everything to-morrow, Don. You must want to go to
+your room now. Flathers take this gentleman's bags up to the East
+guest-room,--no, that's occupied. You won't mind going up another
+flight, just for to-night, dear?"
+
+"Oh, tuck me in anywhere, just so there's a bath handy."
+
+"All the bedrooms have baths," said Mrs. Sequin absently, with her
+eye on the befuddled butler who was trying to uncork a bottle with a
+screwdriver, "Let Flathers--I mean Benson--do that, John, and you
+take these bags. So sorry I can't go up with you myself, Don, but the
+cotillion is just beginning, and I have to see to the favors."
+
+"That's right, don't bother about me, I'll get into some decent togs and
+be down again in a little while."
+
+Mrs. Sequin paused with her hand on the banister, then she leaned
+forward solicitously:
+
+"I wouldn't take the trouble to dress and come down again, Don. It's
+late and you must be dead tired. You go to bed. I'll understand."
+
+Donald, standing a few steps above her, shot a questioning glance at
+her, then he, too, understood.
+
+"Oh, all right," he said, biting his lip; "I believe I won't come down.
+You might send Marge up, after the people leave, just to say 'Hello.'"
+
+"Of course, we'll both be up. Nothing could hold her if she knew you
+were here. But it is better that nobody should know. I was careful not
+to mention your name before the servants. You can have a nice little
+visit with us, and get away again without any one being the wiser. It is
+so lovely you got here in time for Christmas! _Good_ night." She came up
+two steps and presented her other cheek for a kiss.
+
+[Illustration: Mrs. Sequin paused with her hand on the bannister.]
+
+The delinquent John, meanwhile, was performing acrobatic feats with the
+bags, getting them so mixed up with his own legs and the stair steps
+that Donald snatched them from him, and, eliciting a vague direction
+concerning the room he was to occupy, went up to find it alone.
+
+He felt something of the hot rebellion and resentment that he had
+experienced on another Christmas night in the long ago, when the
+cross-eyed French nurse had put him to bed at five o'clock and left
+him alone in the big hotel in Paris. Then he had cried himself to
+sleep because there wasn't any Santa Claus and because he didn't have a
+sweetheart. But the consolations of six are denied to twenty-five.
+
+On the second floor he followed directions and turned to the right. The
+dressing-rooms were deserted, the maids having taken their seats on the
+steps to peep at the dancers below. He, too, paused, and looked down at
+the gaily whirling throng. There was his old familiar world, the fellows
+he had been through college with, the girls he had flirted with, the
+very music he had danced to, times without numbers. And he was as much
+out of it all as if he had died of the fever in that gray old hospital
+in Singapore? Ah, if he only had!
+
+He turned abruptly and started up the second flight of stairs, and as he
+did so something rose precipitately from the steps, and fluttered ahead
+of him.
+
+He looked up and as he did so chaos broke loose within him. There at the
+top, in the subdued light from the upper hall, startled, uncertain,
+off her guard stood Miss Lady, not the pretty, harum-scarum girl of his
+dreams, but a beautiful, wistful woman with trembling lips and startled
+eyes, who held out her hands to him in involuntary welcome.
+
+He lost his head completely. All the blood in his body rushed to his
+throat. Something sang through every fiber of him.
+
+"Miss Lady!" he cried, catching the hands she extended in both of his,
+then as she drew back from his too ardent look, he remembered. "I beg
+your pardon of course it's Mrs. Queerington, now."
+
+"Not to you, Don. When did you come? Are you well again? Didn't any one
+know you were coming? Have the others seen you?"
+
+She poured forth her questions eagerly, as if she feared another pause.
+She was making a desperate effort to appear easy, but her eagerness
+betrayed her. She repeated that she had no idea he was in America, and
+took refuge in a general assurance that everybody would be so glad to
+have him home again.
+
+Donald, lean and tanned, stood silent, watching her searchingly. His
+deep-set eyes were clearer and steadier than of old, but they were no
+longer the eyes of a boy. He was like a mariner whose ship has been
+wrecked. He had nothing worse to dread and nothing to hope for. He
+simply desired to see the rock on which his life craft had smashed.
+
+Miss Lady continued to ask questions, but she evidently did not always
+heed the answers as she asked some of them twice over. It was not until
+Donald's trouble was touched upon that her mood steadied and she lost
+her self-consciousness.
+
+"Of course you must stand the trial," she said, and her voice rang with
+the old assurance; "you must fight the whole matter out once for all,
+and prove your innocence."
+
+"Oh, the Court will prove that all right, but what does it matter? If
+people were willing to damn me without hearing, to believe that I had
+shot a man's eye out, then run away to escape the punishment--Bah! it's
+sickening."
+
+"But everybody doesn't believe it. The Doctor doesn't, nor Margery, nor
+Cropsie Decker, nor I. Hundreds of your friends are ready to stand by
+you. Don't listen to what anybody else says, but stay and fight it out."
+
+He looked up suddenly. "Did you ever get that letter I wrote you before
+I sailed from 'Frisco?"
+
+He hadn't meant to blurt it out like that, the question that had
+tortured him so long, but her sympathy and friendliness had unnerved
+him.
+
+Leaning forward with all his soul in his eyes, he watched the color
+mount steadily from her throat to her cheeks, then to her brow. He heard
+her draw a sharp, quivering breath as one who walks on a precipice, then
+she faced him steadily.
+
+"Yes, Donald," she said, meeting his gaze unflinchingly, "I got it."
+
+He dropped his head on his hand where it rested on the banister, and
+they stood for a moment in silence save for the strains of music that
+came up from below. Then he straightened his shoulders.
+
+"That's all. I had to make sure, you know. And you didn't believe in
+me?"
+
+Across her face quivered the desire for speech, and the necessity for
+silence.
+
+"I do believe in you, Don," she said earnestly. "I believe in you with
+all my heart and soul. And we are going to be your friends; you'll let
+us, the Doctor and me?"
+
+He took the hand she offered, but he said nothing, and after she was
+gone he went into his room, and flinging himself across the bed, buried
+his face in the pillows.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+The new year began inauspiciously at the Queerington's. In the first
+place Bertie woke up with the chickenpox and was banished to the
+nursery. Then the Doctor followed his annual custom of going over his
+business affairs, with the usual result that he found his accounts
+greatly overdrawn. This fact was solemnly communicated to each member of
+the family in turn together with admonitions in regard to the future. By
+lunch time Hattie had been sent to her room for impertinently suggesting
+that her father spent more on his books than she did on her clothes, and
+Connie was sulking over a reduced allowance.
+
+"Of course," the Doctor explained to Miss Lady as he sank exhausted into
+his invalid chair which had been pressed into service again during
+the past few weeks, "I have no doubt but that Basil Sequin can arrange
+things for me. He always has in the past, but he seems very pressed of
+late, very harassed. I hardly like to approach him so soon again for a
+loan."
+
+"Couldn't we rent a smaller house, and have less company?" suggested
+Miss Lady.
+
+The Doctor shook his head. "It would be very difficult for me to adjust
+myself to new surroundings. The conditions here for my work are fairly
+satisfactory. The Ivy's piano, to be sure, is a constant annoyance, but
+by using cotton in my ears I obviate that nuisance. It is particularly
+unfortunate that this complication about money should come just at
+the most critical point of my work. Unless Basil Sequin can make some
+arrangement, I shall be seriously embarrassed."
+
+"I'll tell you what we can do," cried Miss Lady brightly, just as if she
+had not been trying to get herself up to the point of making the offer
+for a week. "We can sell off another bit of Thornwood. Since the Sequins
+built out there ever so many people have asked about ground."
+
+"No," said the Doctor, the lines of care deepening in his fine, grave
+face. "There is little left now but the house and farm. Your sentiment
+regarding the place is such that I cannot permit the sacrifice. The
+matter will doubtless adjust itself. I shall take some private pupils
+at the university and perhaps arrange an extra course of lectures. The
+exigencies of the past two years have been exceptional."
+
+"But you are already working yourself to death," protested Miss Lady.
+"Doctor Wyeth said last week that you could not stand the strain. The
+rest of us ought to do something; we must do something!"
+
+"You are doing something, my dear. You are relieving me of innumerable
+burdens in regard to the house and the children. You are proving of
+great assistance to me in my work, not only by your reading aloud,
+but by the unfailing sympathy and understanding you give me. Whatever
+success shall crown my life work will be in a measure due to you."
+
+She was sitting on a hassock at his feet, and she looked up at him with
+strange, dumb eyes. His frail body and towering ambition, his loveless
+life that knew not what it missed, roused in her a pity almost maternal.
+A fierce resentment rose within her against herself, for not loving him
+as she knew a husband should be loved. If he had only won her with his
+heart instead of his head!
+
+The door bell rang and Miss Lady glanced up apprehensively.
+
+"It was the pickle woman," announced Myrtella, coming in a moment later
+from the hall. "I sent her about her business."
+
+"Not Miss Ferney!" cried Miss Lady, springing up and rushing out to call
+her.
+
+Miss Ferney Foster with much difficulty was persuaded to return and sit
+on the edge of a hall chair. On New Year's in the past she had always
+made a formal call at Thornwood and presented the Colonel with a sample
+of her best wares. The Colonel in turn had invariably sent down cellar
+for one of the cobwebbiest bottles on the swinging shelf and bestowed
+it upon her with great gallantry. The indignity of having been refused
+admittance at the house of the Colonel's daughter was almost more than
+she could bear.
+
+"Now, tell me about everybody out home," demanded Miss Lady eagerly.
+"Begin at the bottom of the hill and go right straight up."
+
+"I don't know much news," Miss Ferney said, plucking at the fingers of
+her cotton gloves. "I been sewing up to the Sequins' all week."
+
+"Mercy! How grand we are getting!"
+
+"Just hemming table clothes and napkins. I can't say I think much of
+their new place. It's kind of skimpy."
+
+"Why, Miss Ferney! It is the biggest house I was even in!"
+
+"I ain't talking 'bout the size. I'm talking 'bout the fixings.
+There ain't a single carpet that fits the floor by two feet, and the
+wallpaper's patched in every room but one. As for the dining-room! Well,
+I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes! They
+haven't got a picture, or a tidy, or a curtain, or a lamberkin, of any
+kind. 'Spose I oughtn't to tell it on 'em, but the day I was there they
+didn't even have a tablecloth!"
+
+Miss Lady laughed in spite of herself, and Bertie heard her and got out
+of bed to call over the banisters that if they were telling jokes to
+please come up there.
+
+"You know that young man that used to be out to the Wickers'?" asked
+Miss Ferney on the way up. "Well, he's Mrs. Sequin's brother. He's
+giving 'em considerable trouble."
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"They want him to go 'way somewheres, and he won't do it. The servant
+girl told me that him and his sister had been having it up and down, and
+that Miss Margery took his side."
+
+"Is he going to stay?" Miss Lady paused and her fingers gripped the
+banister.
+
+"I dunno. I guess if he gits mad enough he'll run off to China like he
+did before. Ain't that somebody calling you?"
+
+It was Connie who had run up to say that a young man was at the front
+door who looked like a tombstone with a blond pompadour.
+
+"Noah Wicker!" exclaimed Miss Lady. "I forgot that I told him I would
+try to get him into Mr. Gooch's law office the first of the year. Wasn't
+it like him to arrive the first day? You go down, Connie, that's a
+darling, and entertain him 'til I come. I'll be there directly."
+
+But "directly" proved an elastic term, for after Miss Ferney had left,
+and four different persons had been assured over the telephone that
+all invitations were being declined on account of the Doctor's
+indisposition, Miss Lady found Hattie still sulking in her room, and
+spent a half hour in restoring peace to that troubled bosom.
+
+Meanwhile Myrtella came up to announce with elation that a waterpipe
+had burst in the cellar. Few things roused such joy in Myrtella as the
+bursting of a waterpipe. It was an act of insubordination on the part of
+the pipe, with which she deeply sympathized.
+
+"And it's Mr. Gooch's night for supper, and if that man in the parlor
+stays, too, the ice cream won't go 'round," she declared, with evident
+satisfaction in the cumulative tragedy.
+
+By the time the knots were untied, Miss Lady had forgotten all about
+Noah Wicker, and it was only when Connie came in declaring indignantly
+that she wouldn't talk to the stupid fellow another minute, that she
+remembered.
+
+"You poor dear child!" she cried, giving her a repentant squeeze. "I am
+sorry. Hattie, would you mind going down and entertaining him a second,
+'til I change my dress?"
+
+"I would," said Hattie firmly.
+
+Of course Noah stayed to dinner, and Miss Lady regarded it as an act
+of Providence that he and Mr. Gooch should have thus immediately been
+thrown together.
+
+But when Mr. Gooch arrived he was concerned with much more important
+affairs. He brought the astounding news that Donald Morley had returned
+home and, against the advice of his family and his lawyers, decided to
+stand his trial for the shooting of Dick Sheeley!
+
+"It is perfectly preposterous!" Mr. Gooch exploded, "to voluntarily put
+himself in the clutches of the law in a complicated case like this! He
+could have lived elsewhere for a few years. Even if he is innocent, the
+evidence is all against him. I have argued with him for two days. His
+sister tells me that she has worked on him for a week. He will listen to
+nobody."
+
+"Quite right," said the Doctor emphatically. "The establishment of his
+good name should be his primary consideration. 'The purest treasure
+mortal times afford is spotless reputation.' I am more gratified than
+I can say that Donald is taking this course. He is justifying my
+persistent belief in his integrity. Once cleared by a jury the ghost of
+that unfortunate affair will, I trust, be laid forever."
+
+"It is not so certain that he will be cleared," Mr. Gooch said, taking
+his accustomed seat at the table, with a solicitous eye on the door
+where Myrtella would appear with the soup. "I shall do my best for him,
+but I have my doubts."
+
+"You say he has been here a week?" the Doctor asked. "Strange he has not
+been in to see us. He was always fond of the children, and professed a
+certain regard, I believe, for me. I want him to meet Mrs. Queerington."
+
+There was a pause, during which Noah Wicker turned a surprised glance
+upon the hostess.
+
+"I know Mr. Morley," she said steadily, while the color mounted to her
+cheeks. "I knew him when he was with Noah at the farm."
+
+"Indeed," said the Doctor. "I must have forgotten your mentioning it. I
+am afraid, Mr. Wicker, we've been neglecting you to-night in our concern
+over Donald's problems. But it is a subject in which you are doubtless
+equally interested?"
+
+Noah started to reply, but realizing that the company was looking at
+him, forgot what he was going to say and bowed instead.
+
+At this juncture the thing of all others that Miss Lady dreaded,
+occurred. Donald Morley was announced by Myrtella in tones whose accents
+implied that nothing could now prevent the ice cream from giving out.
+
+"Well, well!" cried the Doctor, rising and greeting him with
+outstretched hand, "a hearty welcome home. You know everybody here, I
+believe? Even Mrs. Queerington tells me she has met you. And this is
+Hattie. I am quite sure you were not prepared to see her so tall."
+
+Donald, retaining Hattie's hand, made the round of greetings.
+
+"Where are Connie and Bert?"
+
+"Connie is dressing for a party, and poor old Bert is struggling with
+the chickenpox," Miss Lady managed to say as she busied herself with the
+coffee cups.
+
+"And now tell us about yourself," said the Doctor, drawing a chair for
+Donald beside his own. "You will pardon my cushions, but I am still
+something of an invalid, and the little lady at the end of the table
+insists upon spoiling me. You knew, of course, of my accident, some two
+years ago?"
+
+"Not until I got home," Donald said without looking up. "I hope you've
+gotten well again?"
+
+"Oh, no, I shall never be well. The physicians assured me of that from
+the first, but they also said that with care and proper conservation of
+my energies I would probably live to a ripe old age. I do not suppose
+you have ever had to resist the temptation to overwork, Donald?"
+
+Donald smiled and puckered his brow.
+
+"He has plenty of work cut out for him now!" growled Mr. Gooch, whose
+mind having been temporarily diverted by the salad now rushed back to
+the trial.
+
+"Work for an admirable cause," said the Doctor. "Mr. Gooch has just
+been telling us of your decision, Donald, and I cannot express my
+gratification at your course of action."
+
+"Thank you, Doctor! That's the first encouragement I've had. My family
+seem to think I am a lunatic, and even my lawyer, here, is taking the
+case under protest."
+
+"The value of a good name," began the Doctor, then remembering that he
+had delivered himself at length on that subject earlier in the evening,
+he broke off by inquiring if Donald had been doing any writing during
+his absence.
+
+"Oh! yes, I am always scribbling. It doesn't amount to anything though."
+
+"Yes, it does, too!" declared Hattie, to whom Cousin Don had always been
+a hero. "Mr. Decker told Gerald Ivy that you did all the best things in
+the articles he sent home for the syndicate."
+
+"I suspected it!" said the Doctor. "I thought I recognized your humorous
+view-point in that first article on China. I remarked to my wife at the
+time that you had visualized the scene, for the reader, exactly as you
+had seen it."
+
+"But I didn't!" said Donald. "I wrote that story a month before we
+reached China. Decker hit on the idea of getting all the articles
+written while we were crossing the Pacific, so we wouldn't have to
+bother about them after we landed. We used to get up on the boat-deck
+and turn them off like hot cakes. That's all foolishness about my doing
+the best parts. Why, Decker is a wonder! He 's reducing the thing to a
+science; he doesn't even need a pen or a pencil; just plenty of guide
+books, a paper of pins, and a pair of scissors. Lapboard literature,
+he calls it. He spent most of his time trimming my effusions down to
+measurements."
+
+"That is because you indulged your imagination. It is a drug in the
+journalistic market, but it is invaluable elsewhere. Why not try
+something for the magazines? Choose a congenial theme and give your
+fancy full rein. It will be interesting to see what comes of it."
+
+Connie's entrance here interrupted further conversation. She had
+neglected no detail of her toilet, and the result was a pink and white
+confection ready for conquest.
+
+"We thought you were never coming to see us, Cousin Don," she said, half
+pouting, and giving a side glance at Noah Wicker. "You 've been home a
+whole week!"
+
+"Heavens, Connie! I didn't expect to find you so grown up. How long have
+you been out?"
+
+"I 've never been in," she said, releasing her hand and smiling
+consciously. "Aren't you coming to the Bartrums' party to-night?"
+
+"No, I'm not in a mood for parties these days."
+
+"But I 've never had a chance to dance with you since you taught me to
+waltz."
+
+"Horrible deprivation! Can you still do the cake walk I taught you?"
+
+"Yes, and so can Miss Lady! Isn't it funny? She says it 's the one the
+darkeys dance at the picnics up at Thornwood! Come on, Miss Lady; let 's
+show them!"
+
+"Constance, Constance!" remonstrated the Doctor gently, as the girl
+seized Miss Lady's hands and tried to draw her to her feet. "You see,
+Donald, the children forget that Mrs. Queerington is anything but a
+play-fellow, and sometimes--" he rose and laid a hand on her shoulder,
+"sometimes she forgets, too."
+
+Donald pushed back his chair abruptly.
+
+"I think I'll come to the party, Connie, after all. I'll run up to
+Decker's room at the hotel and change my togs. You will save me a waltz
+or two?"
+
+"All of them, if you like! It's going to be the jolliest dance of the
+season, everybody says so. Change your mind, Miss Lady, and come! I
+don't see how you can hesitate when you remember the time you had at the
+Sequins'! Gerald is coming for me; we can all go down together."
+
+Miss Lady needed only the spark of Connie's enthusiasm to start all the
+forbidden fires in her. Her eyes flew to the Doctor's face.
+
+He smiled as he caught her eager look. "Go with them, my dear, if you
+like. It is quite a natural instinct, I believe, to celebrate the first
+night of the New Year."
+
+"But you, will you take me? Just this once, Doctor?"
+
+"No, no. My party days are over. Donald here will take my place, will
+you not, Donald?"
+
+But Miss Lady gave him no chance to answer. That mad insistent clamor
+within her for joy, for life, for love, could not be trusted for a
+moment. She was afraid of herself!
+
+"I'll stay home," she said, with a brave attempt at gaiety, conscious
+of Donald's critical eyes upon her. "We will have a pinochle tournament,
+and Noah and I will beat the home team on its own ground. Won't we,
+Noah?"
+
+But Noah did not hear her; he was absorbed in watching Connie who stood
+on tiptoe, pinning a flower in Don Morley's buttonhole.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+For the next month little else was talked about but Donald Morley's
+trial. The truth of the matter sustained a compound fracture every time
+the subject was discussed. In some quarters it was confidently asserted
+that the fugitive from justice had been captured the moment he landed
+in America, and was allowed his liberty only under a heavy bond. Others
+contended that a guilty conscience had driven him to confession.
+
+Meanwhile his friends were either exasperated at his folly in reviving
+the old scandal, or quixotically enthusiastic over his demand for
+justice. Mrs. Sequin bitterly opposed his action until she found that
+the Bartrums, Dr. Queerington, and other influential friends upheld him,
+then she decided to suspend her judgment until the trial was over. Of
+course if he was going to be a hero, she wanted to be his loving sister,
+but if he was going to be convicted, she would have nothing more to do
+with him. He had gone directly against her advice in coming home, and
+she observed with ominous certainty that "he would see."
+
+Donald threw himself into the work before him with grim determination.
+He spent hours daily in Mr. Gooch's stuffy office going over transcript
+of testimony in the Dillingham trial; he made a number of visits to
+Billy-goat Hill, recalling every detail of the shooting. On the first
+visit he had sought out Sheeley, confident of being able to jog his
+memory, concerning his part in the affray, but to his dismay he found
+that Sheeley had already been summoned to the office of the prosecuting
+attorney. In every direction he turned he encountered the octopus of the
+law.
+
+Mr. Gooch gave him little encouragement. He wheezed, and whined, and
+contested every suggestion. His client appeared to him a foolhardy boy
+who had gotten well out of an ugly scrape, and did not have sense enough
+to stay out. So strongly did he feel this that he felt called upon to
+express it at great length, on every possible occasion.
+
+Donald would sit before him with arms folded, and jaws set, waiting
+impatiently for these harangues to cease. He had employed him because
+he was the family lawyer, and because he was a friend of Doctor
+Queerington's. At the end of the first week he realized that he had made
+a mistake, and confided the fact to Noah Wicker.
+
+Noah, having successfully worked through the law course at the
+university, was now, by the persistent efforts of Miss Lady, occupying a
+dark corner of Mr. Gooch's outer office. Here, with feet hooked under
+a rung of a stool, and fingers grasping his pompadour, he doggedly
+wrestled with the cases he heard in court, laboriously puzzling out
+obscure points by the aid of the Statute and the Code.
+
+Donald soon fell into the habit of discussing his approaching trial
+with him, at such times as Mr. Gooch was absent. He found Noah's calm,
+impersonal point of view a relief after the skeptical, disapproving
+attitude of the older attorney.
+
+During these days Donald spent as little time as possible at Angora
+Heights. The family skeletons that had always lurked in the Sequin
+closets, seemed to revel in their commodious new quarters. It is a
+melancholy fact that the more closets one acquires, the more skeletons
+there are to occupy them!
+
+Mrs. Sequin's existence, if restless in town, was trebly so in the
+country. Between catching trains and receiving and speeding guests,
+engaging and dismissing servants, and agonizing over the non-essentials,
+she dwelt in the vortex of a whirlwind that disturbed everything in its
+wake.
+
+Between her and Margery the gulf was widening. Having declared her
+independence, the girl went further, and entered a training class in
+the kindergarten, an act which caused a rupture that threatened to be
+serious, until the head of the family for once asserted his authority,
+and unexpectedly sided with his daughter.
+
+Basil Sequin during these days had little time to bestow upon family
+matters. He rose at six o'clock, drank three cups of black coffee,
+devoured the newspapers, and was on the way to the office before his
+gardener was out of bed. Before and after banking hours he had committee
+meetings, and special appointments, snatching a few minutes for luncheon
+at the nearest restaurant.
+
+Donald had had but one chance to talk with him since his return, and
+that was one evening when he was summoned to his den. He found him
+pacing restlessly up and down the room, his hands thrust deep in his
+pockets.
+
+"You've decided to stand the trial, I hear?" Mr. Sequin asked abruptly.
+
+"Yes, I had to get the matter cleared up. It is all so idiotic, my being
+indicted! I don't anticipate any trouble."
+
+"You can't tell," said Mr. Sequin, "but I didn't send for you to discuss
+the trial. It's business I want to talk about. Do you know how much
+stock you own in the People's Bank?"
+
+"No, I can't say that I do exactly."
+
+"Well, it's time you were finding out. How would you like to take charge
+of your own affairs from now on?"
+
+Donald looked at him in undisguised surprise. Heretofore the only time
+that money matters had been discussed between them was when he had been
+guilty of some extra extravagance. This sudden change of tactics on the
+part of his brother-in-law was disconcerting.
+
+"Why, I shouldn't like it at all, unless it would relieve you," he said.
+
+"It isn't that. One bother more or less doesn't matter. The point is,
+I want you to act for yourself. The result of this trial is by no means
+certain; you may need considerable ready money before you get through
+with it. Why don't you sell your bank stock, and make some better paying
+investments on your own hook?"
+
+"Why, I thought the bank stock--" began Donald, but Mr. Sequin wheeled
+upon him impatiently.
+
+"Do you want my advice or not?"
+
+"Of course I want it."
+
+"Very well. Listen to me. Almost every dollar you have is tied up in the
+People's Bank. Go down to-morrow morning to a broker, Gilson's the best
+man, tell him that you must have a big sum of money at once. In order to
+get it you are willing to sacrifice every share of your People's stock.
+Tell him not to put it on the market, but to sell it in small blocks
+to different people, and not to stick at the price. Make him understand
+that it has to do with your trial, and caution him particularly not to
+let me know of the transaction."
+
+"But I don't understand," said Donald, watching with troubled eyes
+the stooped figure that continued to pace up and down the room like an
+animal in a cage.
+
+"I didn't offer to explain. I offered to advise," Mr. Sequin snarled.
+"There are complications that couldn't be made clear to you in a month!
+I'll ask you not to refer to this matter again to me or to any one else.
+I have a lot of papers to look over now, so I'll say good night."
+
+Donald rose from where he had been sitting at the table.
+
+"Of course you know what is best," he said irresolutely. "And I know
+I've got no business shifting my responsibilities on you. By the way,
+can't I help you with some of this stuff? You look about done for
+to-night."
+
+"Done for?" Mr. Sequin smiled ironically, and ran his fingers through
+his scant gray hair. "Why, Don, I'd change places with any old corpse
+to-night, just for a chance to lie down in a quiet corner and stop
+thinking! No, there's nothing you can do. There's nothing anybody can
+do. Good night; close the door as you go out, and leave word downstairs
+if I am called over the 'phone to say I am not here."
+
+All things considered it is small wonder that Donald passed as little
+time as possible at Angora Heights. The time he was not occupied with
+his trial hung heavy on his hands. Distrustful of his friends, sensitive
+to criticism, and dreading the humiliating ordeal to come, he spent one
+of the most wretched months of his life. He tried to write, but fancy
+fled before the glare of the actual. The only place where he found
+temporary peace was under the roof of the grim-looking house in College
+Street.
+
+From the first Doctor Queerington had championed his cause, and urged
+upon him his hospitality. To be sure the Doctor's hospitality usually
+began and ended with his welcome, after which he would take himself off
+to the study, and leave his guest to the care of the family.
+
+At such times Miss Lady invariably went with him. In fact, Donald had
+never seen her alone since the night of his arrival, and the very
+fact that she seldom remained down-stairs in the evenings, made his
+conscience lighter about lingering in her vicinity.
+
+Mrs. Ivy was the first to comment on his frequent visits. She confided
+to Mrs. Sequin that she was afraid he was getting interested in Connie
+Queerington, and that somebody ought to tell him that Connie had been in
+love with dear Gerald for years and years. An impartial observer might
+have expressed a less confident opinion concerning the object of Miss
+Connie's affections.
+
+Noah Wicker, for instance, while not exactly an impartial observer, had
+arrived at quite a different conclusion.
+
+"You watch the way she looks at Don," he said darkly to Miss Lady on one
+occasion.
+
+Miss Lady laughed, "Oh! Connie's like the Last Duchess, she likes
+whate'er she looks on, and her looks go everywhere."
+
+"Yes, but this is different. Has she ever said anything to you about
+him?"
+
+"Mercy, yes, Connie talks to be about all the boys."
+
+"Does she talk about me?" Noah's eyes were as wistful as a dog's.
+
+For a second Miss Lady hesitated, then she compromised with truth and
+said, "yes." She did not add that Connie was particularly voluble on the
+subject of his hair, and the creak of his boots and his apparent genius
+for ubiquity.
+
+"Do you know what I'd do if I were you, Noah?" she said. "I'd have me a
+new suit of clothes made."
+
+"Why, these are new!"
+
+"Yes, I know, but they don't fit. And get some shoes that don't creak,
+and--and you won't mind my telling you, Noah? Pompadours went out of
+style six years ago."
+
+Noah gloomily shook his head. "It's not my clothes. It's not clothes
+that make Don Morley. By the way, aren't you two friends, any more?"
+
+Miss Lady faced the question unflinchingly. "Yes, we are friends. Is he
+going to win out?"
+
+"With Miss Connie?"
+
+"No, you foolish boy. In his trial."
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"What will happen if he loses?"
+
+"The case will be appealed."
+
+"And if he loses in the Court of Appeals?"
+
+"It's up to Gooch to see that he doesn't lose. I only wish I was as
+certain of a few other things as I am of Donald Morley's innocence!"
+
+One afternoon, a few days before the trial, Donald after oscillating
+between the hotel and his club and finding each equally intolerable,
+jumped on the car and went out to the Queeringtons. It was a cold, raw
+day, with a fine mist filling the air, and even the dull formality of
+the drab parlor seemed a relief from the gloom without.
+
+Miss Lady started up from the piano as he entered, but Connie pulled her
+back:
+
+"You shan't run off and leave us, shall she, Cousin Don? She was just
+going to play for Mr. Wicker to sing. Did you know he could sing?"
+
+"Oh, yes. Wick's the Original Warbler. Do you remember our serenades on
+the Cane Run Road, Wick?"
+
+"Yes," said Noah glumly.
+
+"I forgot that you and Mr. Wicker used to know each other," Connie said
+curiously. "Why the Cane Run Road runs by Thornwood, doesn't it?"
+
+"Yes," said Don calmly, seizing the conversation and shoving it out
+of shoal water. "Go ahead, Wick, and sing something; we'll join in the
+chorus."
+
+But when the time for the chorus came Donald had forgotten his promise.
+He was leaning back in a corner of the sofa, his hand shading his eyes,
+watching Miss Lady, and wondering what trick of fate had driven her to
+marry John Jay Queerington. There was no man in the world whose moral
+worth he admired more, but Miss Lady seemed as out of place in his life
+as a darting, quivering humming-bird in a museum of natural history. He
+noticed the faint shadows about her eyes, and the wistful droop of her
+lips. If he could only set her free! A mad desire seized him to see her
+once more joyously on the wing with all her old buoyancy and daring. And
+yet she had walked open eyed into her cage, and he had yet to see the
+tiniest flutter of her wings against the bars.
+
+On that first night of his home-coming surely he had read a welcome in
+her eyes! But never since by word or gesture had he reason to think that
+she remembered. She was gracious and elusive, and she talked to him as
+she talked to Decker and Gerald Ivy, only she looked at them when she
+talked, and she never even looked at him.
+
+Yet she _had_ cared! He had only to recall the flashing revelation of
+her eyes that night in the garden to know for one transcendent moment,
+at least, she was his. It was the look that had sustained his faith in
+her through all those weary months of silence, making him cling to the
+belief, until he heard the truth from her own lips, that she had failed
+to get his letter. It was the remembrance of that look and what it had
+promised that rushed upon him now as he watched her.
+
+All the reckless impulse of his boyhood, the long years of unrestraint,
+surged over him, urging him on to wake in her some answer to his fierce,
+insistent demand. She should remember the way he had loved her, she
+should know the way he loved her now. If there was any heart left in her
+she must respond in some way to his imperative need.
+
+But her eyes kept steadily on the key-board, and her fingers
+unfalteringly followed the notes. Could he have known how the tears
+burned under her lashes, and how cold her fingers were on the keys;
+could he have guessed how she sat there under his steady gaze, with
+tense muscles and quivering nerves, calculating the minutes that must
+elapse before Noah's interminable verses would end, and she could
+escape, he might have had compassion on her.
+
+"Sing, Cousin Don!" demanded Connie; "you are leaving it all to Mr.
+Wicker and me, while you sit there looking exactly as if you had lost
+your last friend."
+
+"No, only my illusions, Connie."
+
+"Where did you lose them?"
+
+"In Singapore. All but one. I hung on to it clear around the world, only
+to lose it on Christmas night when I got home. Don't you feel sorry for
+me?"
+
+"Not a bit," said Connie saucily. "I couldn't feel sorry for anybody
+as good looking as you are,--could you, Mr. Wicker? Where did Miss Lady
+go?"
+
+"She said she was going to lie down, that her head ached," said Noah.
+
+"I know what's the matter," said Connie; "she tries to keep us from
+seeing it, but she's all broken up over selling Thornwood."
+
+"Thornwood!" cried Donald; "she hasn't sold it?"
+
+"No, but it's been put up for sale. She'd die at the stake for Father.
+He doesn't even know about it."
+
+"But surely there is some other way." Connie shrugged her shoulders. "I
+am sure I don't know. Hattie's given up music and French, and we've put
+Bertie in the public school, and I haven't had but one party dress this
+winter. But a girl doesn't have to depend on clothes to have a good
+time, does she, Mr. Wicker?"
+
+That night Donald sat up late, turning things over in his mind. Once the
+trial was over he must go away, where he could not see Miss Lady or hear
+of her. He must plunge into some business that would absorb his time and
+attention. But before he went he must make an investment and make it
+at once. In order to do so, he would follow Basil Sequin's advice, and
+offer his bank stock for sale in the morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+There was anxiety in the drab house in College Street. The second day of
+Donald Morley's trial had come and no decision had been reached.
+Every ring of the telephone, every opening of the front door brought a
+hurrying of feet through the hall, and an eager demand to know if there
+was any news.
+
+"I'll never get my lessons!" exclaimed Hattie petulantly, collecting her
+scattered belongings after one of these rushes to the door. "I wish to
+Heaven one of my fingers was a lead pencil!"
+
+"Why don't you wish your tongue was one, Hat, then you wouldn't have to
+sharpen it," suggested Connie.
+
+"I bet Miss Lady had my pencil," went on Hattie, ignoring Connie's
+comment. "She's never owned a pair of scissors, or a pencil, or a
+shoe-buttoner since she's been here. And look at those letters on the
+mantel! She'll never think about mailing them."
+
+"What are they doing with black borders?"
+
+"She bought a job lot of paper the other day, all colors and sizes,
+trying to be economical. She uses the mourning ones to pay the bills."
+
+"Yes, and I'll have to be putting little pink love letters in big blue
+envelopes all winter. Say, Hat, do you suppose it would be all right if
+I called up Mr. Wicker to ask him how the trial is going?"
+
+"Of course not. We'll hear as soon as there is anything to hear. I wish
+you'd hush talking and let me study."
+
+Connie heroically refrained from speech for five minutes, then she
+announced:
+
+"Do you know, I don't believe Miss Lady likes him!"
+
+"Who? Mr. Wicker?"
+
+"No, you silly,--Don."
+
+"When did you stop saying Cousin Don, pray?"
+
+"Oh, ages ago. She's always so quiet when he comes, and she goes
+up-stairs the first chance she gets. I think she's changed a lot since
+she first came, don't you?"
+
+"Well, I guess you'd change, too, if you had married a sick man with
+three children, as poor as poverty, and a cook as cross as Myrtella."
+
+"But she has Myrtella eating out of her hand. Imagine my marrying a man
+as old as Father!"
+
+"If I had to marry, I'd rather marry Father than anybody else. But I've
+never seen the man yet that I'd be willing to marry."
+
+"Oh, I have! I know ten right now that I'd marry in a minute."
+
+"Connie Queerington! Who are the others beside Gerald and Cousin Don?"
+
+"Guess."
+
+"Noah Wicker?"
+
+Connie laughed. "Mr. Wicker is not as bad as he was. He must have taken
+chloroform and had his pompadour cut. Don says he is awfully clever."
+
+"Anybody could be clever who took a whole day to compose each speech.
+I'll tell you what's the matter with Miss Lady; she is worrying herself
+sick over Father. Did she tell you what Doctor Wyeth told her?"
+
+"That Father would have to give up his classes, and get away some where?
+But of course he can't do it."
+
+"But he can! Miss Lady has rented Thornwood from the man who bought it,
+and we are all to go out there this spring."
+
+"Heavens! That means frogs and crickets and whippoorwills, and a
+lonesome time for me."
+
+"But think of Father!" said Hattie with her most virtuous air. "If it's
+perfectly quiet, perhaps he can finish his book."
+
+"No, he won't," said Connie petulantly. "He may finish himself, but
+he'll never finish that book; he keeps on thinking of more to say, just
+like Mr. Melcher does when he prays. If it weren't for that stupid old
+book he might get well. Was that the telephone?"
+
+It proved to be the side-door bell, which was rung by an old woman
+who had lost her husband and her front teeth, and was engaged in the
+precarious occupation of selling shoe-strings. She was one of the
+numerous proteges, who began to call on Miss Lady soon after breakfast,
+and kept up their visits through the day, to the exasperation of
+Myrtella Flathers, who spent her time devising means to rid the back
+hall of these incumbrances.
+
+In this instance strategy was not required, for she was bidden to send
+the woman away. Such an unusual proceeding aroused her curiosity and
+she returned to the dining-room to peep through the door at her young
+mistress, who had been sitting motionless since breakfast with her
+elbows on the table, and her hands locked under her chin. It was evident
+that something was wrong, and Myrtella became so concerned that she at
+last decided to take action. The panacea she applied to all ailments,
+moral or physical, was a counter-irritant.
+
+"Mis' Squeerington!" she ventured finally. "I hope you ain't fergot
+that it's Saturday mornin' an' you'd orter row the grocery man. He's
+a cortion, that's what he is, a-sendin' us Mis' Ivy's ribs, an' Mis'
+Logan's liver. It ain't a decent way to treat a old customer, an' he
+orter be told so. There never was a grocery man that was born into the
+world that didn't have to be rowed! They expect it, they look fer it,
+an' when they don't get it they feel it."
+
+"I can't 'row' people, Myrtella; I don't know how," said Miss Lady
+listlessly.
+
+"I'll learn you. You've picked up a lot more already than anybody would
+'a' supposed you would when you first come. But one thing you ain't
+learned. When a lady goes to smilin' over the telephone, an' tellin' the
+butcher that she don't know one cut from another but she'll trust him to
+send her a nice piece, you kin count on it she's goin' to git a gristle.
+Compliments an' smiles may git some things, but it takes rowin' an'
+back-talk to git a good beefsteak!"
+
+"I think I'll send you to the grocery to-day, Myrtella,--it--it may
+rain."
+
+"It ain't goin' to rain before noon," Myrtella said authoritatively,
+in a tone that indicated her intention of stopping it immediately if it
+showed any intention of doing so. "It'll do you good to git out and walk
+a spell."
+
+Miss Lady shook her head.
+
+"Well, then you better let me send Bertie down here, he's makin' a awful
+racket in the nursery an' his pa'll be after him soon."
+
+Bertie was induced to abandon a life of adventure on the footboard of
+his bed, by the suggestion that Miss Lady had something to tell him in
+the dining-room. He came tearing through the hall shouting, "Extras," at
+the top of his voice.
+
+"Bertie, darling! Please don't," cried Miss Lady roused from her apathy.
+"Remember it's Saturday and Father's home."
+
+"I wish he wasn't," said Bertie. "I hate a tiptoe house! When can I call
+extras?"
+
+"When we get up to Thornwood. You and I will play all over the hills,
+and I'll teach you to be a real country boy."
+
+"And can Chick be there, too?"
+
+"Yes, and perhaps by that time Chick will have been to the hospital and
+can talk like other boys."
+
+Bertie was standing on the back of her chair by this time, apparently
+trying to strangle her.
+
+"And can we slide down the ice-house like you used to do? And will Uncle
+Jimpson call up the doodle-bugs out of the ground like he did when you
+was a little girl?"
+
+"Listen!" cried Miss Lady suddenly starting up. "What is that?"
+
+From the far end of the street came the sound, "Wuxtry! Here's your
+Wuxtry! All about--"
+
+"It's just the newsboy I was being like," said Bertie. "What's the
+matter? What makes you shake so, Miss Lady?"
+
+Myrtella thrust her head in the door. "Here comes that there Mrs. Ivy
+running 'cross the yard. She's good fer a hour."
+
+But Mrs. Ivy did not seem to be good for anything by the time Miss Lady
+reached her. She was half reclining on a haircloth sofa in the front
+hall with a bottle of smelling salts to her nose and a newspaper in her
+hand.
+
+"Oh, my _dear_!" she managed to gasp. "Such a frightful shock! So
+utterly unexpected!"
+
+"Do you mean Don?" Miss Lady's lips scarcely moved as she asked the
+question.
+
+"No, the bank! I was all alone in the house when I heard the boys
+calling the extras--Ah! my poor weak heart!"
+
+"Brandy?" suggested Miss Lady anxiously.
+
+Mrs. Ivy raised feeble but protesting eyes: "Never! The Angel of Death
+shall never find me with the odor of liquor on my lips. Could you send
+for some nitroglycerin?"
+
+By the time Mrs. Ivy was revived, Connie and Hattie had joined the group
+in the hall, and the latter was reading aloud in awe-struck tones the
+account of the People's Bank failure. The age and reputation of the
+institution and the prominence of Basil Sequin as a local financier gave
+the subject grave significance.
+
+"And to think that I should be involved!" wailed Mrs. Ivy. "I've only
+been treasurer of the W. A. Board for six weeks and this was my first
+investment! They told me to use my judgment, and I did the best I could!
+Only last Thursday I went to see Mr. Gilson the broker, you know, about
+investing the money we're collecting for building the Parish House. He
+said I had come at the right moment as he had just gotten hold of some
+of the People's Bank stock, 'gilt edged,' he called it, and I remember
+just what I said to him, I said, 'Mr. Gilson, I simply let Providence
+lead me, and it led me to your door!' and I bought it!" sobbed Mrs. Ivy;
+"forty shares!"
+
+"I suppose Father's lost awfully," said Hattie, sitting round eyed and
+anxious on the steps.
+
+"And all the Sequins, and Don," added Connie.
+
+"It says that all the stockholders and most of the depositors stand
+to lose heavily," said Miss Lady, scanning the paper; "I must tell the
+Doctor at once."
+
+She sped up the steps and knocked breathlessly at his study door. It was
+only at the second knock that she was bidden to enter.
+
+The Doctor sat at his desk in a long, gray dressing-gown, with a rug
+across his knees: around him were ranged several straight-backed chairs
+on which were spread hundreds of pages of closely written manuscript. At
+his elbow on a stand was an immense dictionary, from which he lifted a
+pair of absorbed and preoccupied eyes.
+
+"Doctor!" Miss Lady burst out impetuously, "the Bank has failed--the
+paper says--"
+
+"If you please!" the Doctor raised an imploring hand; "don't tell me
+now. The news will keep and I am in a most critical stage of my summary.
+Today's work is important, very important. Kindly close the door."
+
+Miss Lady stood in the hall without and stared at the drab-colored
+wallpaper. A fierce anger rose in her, not against the Doctor, but
+against that vampire work which was sucking all the vitality and
+sympathy and understanding out of him. She was eager to bear his
+burdens; she was willing to fight his battles; but it was hard to take
+his side single-handed against herself. She wanted love, and affection
+and sympathy, and she wanted a manly shoulder to weep on when the way
+became too hard. But the Doctor's slanting, scholarly shoulder afforded
+no resting-place for a world-weary head.
+
+"Mis' Squeerington!" called Myrtella from the lower floor. "The grocery
+man didn't have no beets, and his new potatoes is hard as rocks, an' if
+I was you I'd go over to Smithers jes' to spite him out fer a spell.
+And I fergot to tell you that that there Mr. Wicker called you up a hour
+ago, an' sez the case was lost. I don't know what he meant. I hope he
+ain't lost it 'round here. Next thing I hear they'll be sayin' I took
+it!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+It is a depressing law of life that worries invariably hunt in packs.
+If it were just a matter of one yelping little annoyance that barked at
+your heels, you could frighten it away with a laugh; but when a ravenous
+horde gets on your trail with the grim determination of running you to
+earth, it is quite a different matter.
+
+Donald Morley, pacing the terrace at Angora Heights on a certain dark
+night in March, felt the breath of the pursuing pack close upon him. The
+failure to win his case had been a serious blow not only to his pride,
+but to his faith in his fellow man. He had gone into the trial with the
+assured confidence of an innocent man who is still young enough to
+rely absolutely upon the justice of the law. In spite of the array
+of damaging evidence presented by the prosecuting attorney, and the
+opinionated egotism of Mr. Gooch which rendered him unpopular with judge
+and jury, Donald's victory was almost assured, when the rumor of the
+People's Bank failure swept the court room. In the instant wave of
+suspicion that rose against Basil Sequin, Donald's cause was lost. Half
+the men on the jury were directly, or indirectly, involved. The case was
+summarily disposed of and the smaller matter swallowed up in the larger.
+
+Humiliated and chagrined as Donald was over his own position, he was
+equally concerned about the bank. The papers were full of disturbing
+innuendoes; people avoided speaking of it in his presence; distrust and
+suspicion lurked around the corners.
+
+Donald paused at the end of the terrace and looked up at the dark
+massive pile of masonry above him. In every leering gargoyle and carved
+coping, he read the ruin of some humble home.
+
+At the first hint of impending trouble, Mrs. Sequin had taken Margery
+and fled to Europe, leaving Mr. Sequin fighting with his back to the
+wall to meet the difficulties into which her extravagance had plunged
+him. "I have no fear for Basil," she assured her friends on leaving.
+"He'll straighten things out. Of course he'll be talked about, clever
+people always are, and the directors have been rather nasty. But he'll
+control the situation yet, you'll see."
+
+And Mrs. Sequin's confidence was being justified. Basil Sequin was
+controlling the situation. He had emerged from the ruin with his
+finances less affected than his reputation.
+
+Each time that Donald turned at the end of the long terrace, his eyes
+involuntarily sought a light that gleamed far below through the bare
+trunks of the trees. It was the light from Thornwood that once more
+threw its familiar beams across the Cane Run Road and up the gentle
+slope of Billy-goat Hill. He rested his arms on the balustrade and stood
+looking out into the night. There was a softness in the air, a smell of
+upturned earth, a faint whispering among the newly budded treetops that
+hinted of things about to be revealed.
+
+Suddenly there was a strange fluttering in the air above him, a
+tremulous, expectant thrill. Looking up he saw a flock of birds,
+wheeling and circling above him, making ready to light. Night after
+night they had traveled, over forests and across dark rivers, valiantly
+beating their frail wings against the gale, one purpose urging them on,
+straight as an arrow through the silent air,--the longing to find their
+old haunts under the friendly shelter of the Hill, and there to keep
+their love trysts in the place called home.
+
+Donald's throat contracted sharply. Never in those tumultuous days in
+Japan, nor in those desperate ones in Singapore had he wanted Miss Lady
+as he wanted her now. It was not her youth or her beauty that he
+was thinking of; it was the firm confident clasp of her hand, the
+unfaltering courage of her eyes, her words, "I do believe in you, Don,
+with all my heart and soul." He was like a starving man who must have
+bread even if it belongs to another. Before he knew it he was plunging
+down the footpath to the road.
+
+Connie would be his excuse, although he had been rather
+conscience-stricken about Connie of late. She had developed a taste for
+exploring that beguiling land of Flirtation where the boundary lines
+have never been defined, and dangers are known to lurk beyond the
+borders. As an old and experienced adventurer he felt that he had
+already accompanied her too far.
+
+As he reached Thornwood's big colonial gateway, he found some one
+alighting from a buggy.
+
+"Hello, Wick!" he said. "Wait, I'll open it for you. I thought you were
+staying in town!" Noah removed a pair of unmistakably new tan gloves and
+opened the gate for himself.
+
+"I am staying in town," he said distantly "Are you coming in here?"
+
+"Yes, I think I will drop in for a little while, unless you have an
+engagement?"
+
+Noah's pause was even longer than usual. "No," he drawled presently. "I
+can't say I have. Will you get in?"
+
+Donald could not suppress a smile as he got in beside him, and noticed
+the grandeur of his toilet.
+
+"You are getting awfully dressy these days, old chap. Who's the girl?"
+
+"You know who it is."
+
+"You surely don't mean Connie Queerington! Now, Wick, you want to go
+slow and not trifle with that girl. The first thing you know she will be
+falling in love with you.",
+
+Noah's lip stiffened. "If you would leave her alone perhaps she might."
+
+"What am I doing?"
+
+"The same thing you've always done. Going with a girl just long enough
+to spoil her for every other fellow, then going off and forgetting all
+about her."
+
+Donald looked in amazement at the angry face beside him.
+
+"What in thunder do you mean by that, Wick?"
+
+"What I say. I guess it hasn't been so long ago that we've both
+forgotten another instance."
+
+"See here, Wick," said Donald, his anger rising, "you'd better drop
+this. You don't know what you are talking about."
+
+"I know you spoiled my chances once and you are not going to spoil them
+again. You've got to leave Miss Connie alone. You've got to promise
+me--"
+
+"I promise you nothing."
+
+They had reached the hitching block and Donald got out of the buggy and,
+not waiting for his companion, went up the walk to the house. The peace
+of the old place wrapped him round like the folds of a warm garment He
+forgot Noah, and the pursuing troubles; he forgot everything except that
+Thornwood, with all its memories and traditions, was for the present
+his, held in sacred trust until that time when he could give it back to
+the one who loved it best.
+
+"Why, it's Cousin Don!" cried Connie who had heard the wheels and
+come to investigate. "I never was so glad to see anybody in my life. I
+thought it was Mr. Wicker!"
+
+"Cheer up! He's hitching his horse at the block now."
+
+"How tiresome! I thought we left him in town yesterday. I don't believe
+you are a bit glad to have us for a neighbor. Why didn't you come over
+last night? I haven't seen you for four days!"
+
+"You haven't missed anything, Connie. I've been down and out."
+
+"Everybody has! It's too stupid for words. Since the trial and the bank
+failure I haven't been able to get a smile out of anybody! I hope the
+Turtle won't be grumpy."
+
+"Who is the Turtle?"
+
+"Mr. Wicker. Hat calls him that, because he never lets go 'til it
+thunders. Aren't you coming in the parlor?"
+
+"No, I'll give Wick the field to-night. I want to see your Father on
+business."
+
+"That sounds interesting!" said Connie audaciously. "You might have
+spoken to me first!"
+
+The Doctor was preparing to go up to bed when Donald entered the
+sitting-room, but he put down his candle and greeted him warmly.
+
+"A phenix rising from his ashes!" he said. "I am glad to see that you
+have survived the trials of the past ten days. It is very kind of you
+to come over in the midst of your trouble to welcome us to our new
+quarters. You are not going to leave us, my dear?" this to Miss Lady who
+had risen at Donald's entrance.
+
+"I was going to get your beef-tea."
+
+"Oh, to be sure. I can't begin to tell you, Donald, how much I regret
+the decision in your case. How did it happen?"
+
+Donald, whose hungry eyes were devouring every familiar detail of the
+homely fire-lit room, shrugged his shoulders. "Eleven jury-men were for
+acquittal, I am told, and the twelfth, a fellow named Jock Hibben talked
+them over."
+
+"Jock Hibben? I know the man. A radical Socialist who has been giving
+us some trouble at the university. Quite an orator, I believe, but a
+fanatic. You have made a motion for a new trial?"
+
+"It has been refused."
+
+"Indeed! And you appeal it, of course?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The decision is bound to be reversed," the Doctor assured him, "and the
+second trial will go in your favor. I have never doubted the ultimate
+outcome. What is that scratching noise?"
+
+Miss Lady, who was just entering, paused to listen, then she suddenly
+set the cup she carried on the table, and flung open the door.
+
+A long, shaggy, disheveled dog, with small, sad eyes, and a stub of a
+tail, hurled himself upon her, and began rapturously to lick her hands.
+
+"It's Mike," she cried joyously, sitting on the floor and gathering her
+muddy visitor into her arms. "I knew he'd find out we were home. Oh! you
+blessed, blessed dog!"
+
+Mike, unable to restrain his transports, made a mad tour of the room,
+upsetting the stack of manuscript that the Doctor had neatly arranged on
+a stand beside him. On his second round he discovered the visitor whom
+he sniffed with increasing excitement.
+
+Donald raised a forefinger, and tapped his knee. In an instant Mike
+remembered. Lifting his fore-paws, and dropping his head upon them, he
+answered the call to prayer.
+
+Two pairs of eyes met involuntarily, and the owners smiled.
+
+"Do put him out, my dear," urged the Doctor, who had stooped to pick up
+the scattered sheets of his manuscript. "This is the last volume of my
+series, Donald. You remember I was collecting data for it when you were
+at the university. I had expected to publish it this spring, but it will
+have to be postponed now."
+
+Donald winced. "On account of the bank failure, I suppose?"
+
+"Well, yes. Basil advises a curtailment of all expenditure for the
+present. However, it may be just as well to publish in the fall. That
+will give me three more months on the revision."
+
+"I hope you were not seriously involved, Doctor?"
+
+"No, no, I imagine not," said the Doctor vaguely as he made a marginal
+correction on one of the sheets. "Basil and I have been so much occupied
+that we have scarcely had a chance to discuss the matter. He said I
+might possibly lose something, but that he would protect my interests. I
+trust you are not one of the losers?"
+
+"No," Donald said shortly, "I lost nothing." Then after a pause during
+which he stared at the floor, he looked up. "Doctor, I want to consult
+you about something. Your standards of right and wrong seem to me a bit
+surer than most people's. I'm in trouble and I want your advice."
+
+He was looking at the Doctor as he spoke, but he was acutely conscious
+of the slender figure that stood with her back to them before the open
+fire.
+
+"You see," he said, plunging into his subject, "a week before the bank
+failed I found that I might need a lot of ready money before I got
+through with the trial. So I sold all my People's Bank stock."
+
+"That was fortunate."
+
+"But, Doctor! Don't you see? At the time I sold the shares they weren't
+worth the paper they were printed on!"
+
+"But you were ignorant of this."
+
+"Of course; but does that alter the fact that I took money for stock
+that was worthless?"
+
+The Doctor rubbed his hands together thoughtfully. For once he was not
+prepared to give an immediate answer to a question concerning a moral
+issue.
+
+"On the spur of the moment I should advise you to refund the money, but
+I do not know if such advice is wise. The fact is, neither you nor I are
+sufficiently versed in financial matters to know what is customary in
+such cases. What does your brother-in-law advise?"
+
+"I have had no conversation with him since the bank failed. He stays in
+town nearly every night, and you can imagine what his days are."
+
+"Well, I should put the matter before him, explain my scruples, and then
+act unquestioningly on his advice. It has been my rule in life, when my
+own judgment did not suffice, to consult the highest available authority
+upon that given subject and abide by it. Basil Sequin, in spite of this
+unfortunate failure, is undoubtedly our ablest financier. I can only bid
+you do as I have done; leave everything entirely to him."
+
+"I shouldn't!" cried Miss Lady, wheeling about with a return of her old,
+childlike, impetuous manner; "I shouldn't leave it to anybody. I'd buy
+back the stock, every share of it. I wouldn't keep money for which I'd
+given nothing! You ought to see Miss Ferney Foster! She bought bank
+stock only last week; gave all the money she'd made on her pickles for
+ten years, and when she found the bank had failed, she went out of her
+head. I've been there to-day and she didn't know me."
+
+"Who sold her the stock?"
+
+"A broker named Gilson."
+
+"It was my stock," Donald cried "Of course she's got to be paid back!
+And all the rest of them. I'll buy back every share of it, if it takes
+my last dollar!"
+
+"Will it take all you have?" Miss Lady scanned his face anxiously.
+
+"Yes, and more. I made an investment with some of the money before I
+knew the bank was in trouble; then there's the double liability law. It
+wouldn't matter so much if it weren't for the trial."
+
+"Your sister, of course, will be ready to help you. Or has she, too,
+lost?"
+
+"No," said Donald, his lips tightening, "she hasn't lost. She's had no
+stock in the bank for a year. But I shan't call upon her."
+
+"Because she opposed your course so violently? Oh, I see. A point of
+honor on which I quite agree with you. But you are not going under,
+Donald. We will see to that. I am not a wealthy man, as you know. There
+have been times recently when the future looked very dark. But this
+little lady has steered us into calmer waters. If you should, in the
+course of the next few months, be in need of a reasonable sum, I am
+happy to say we will be in a position to accommodate you."
+
+Donald gripped his hand. "I shan't call on you, Doctor. But once I'm
+through with this accursed trial, I'll try to justify your belief in
+me."
+
+The tall clock in the hall gave a preliminary wheeze, then hiccoughed
+nine times violently. The Doctor carefully arranged his voluminous
+papers in a shabby, brown portfolio, and rose with an effort.
+
+"You will excuse me now if I bid you good night? My physician has become
+rather arbitrary in regulating my hours. Keep up your courage, my boy;
+that courage that 'scorns to bend to mean devices for a sordid end.' I
+admire the course you have taken, I admire you. Good night to you both."
+
+They watched him go, with his tall, stooped figure, and his fine,
+serious eyes that saw life only through the stultifying medium of books.
+Then they looked at each other.
+
+"I'll call Connie," Miss Lady said, moving to the door.
+
+"Just a minute, please."
+
+She came back reluctantly, and stood with her hands clasped on the back
+of a chair, breathing quickly.
+
+"Do you remember," Donald asked, standing in front of her and speaking
+in a low, tense voice, "the last time we stood in this room, and
+the promises I made you? Well, I've kept them. I've fought like the
+devil,--You don't know what it means, you can't know. But I've kept
+them. Now I want to tell you that I've got to break over. You are right
+about the bank-stock money. It's not mine. I'll pay it back to-morrow.
+But more money has to come from somewhere to carry on the trial. There's
+only one chance I can think of. I've got to enter Lickety Split for the
+Derby."
+
+"No, you haven't! There are other ways. You must go to work."
+
+"Work!" he broke out fiercely. "Haven't I been trying to get a position
+ever since I came home? Who wants to tie up to me until this cursed case
+is decided? I have been trying to write, but my things come back faster
+than I can send them out. What am I good for? A game at billiards,
+_sixty_ miles an hour in a motor car, a lark with any idler that happens
+in the club. Bah! I'm sick of having people patronize me because I am
+not in the game, because I've never earned a penny, except by gambling,
+in my life!"
+
+"But that's all behind you, Don! You've got the rest of your life to
+live differently. When the case is decided--"
+
+"Yes, and suppose it goes against me? It did before, it may again. Talk
+about justice and truth! I've failed to find them. I've had enough of
+this glorious thing called life; I'm ready to quit."
+
+"You can't quit, Don!" She said it softly, with the firelight flushing
+her eager, solicitous face. "Don't you suppose we all want to quit
+sometimes? We've just got to take a fresh grip on our courage and fight
+it out. I'm in trouble myself, to-night, Don. Will you help me?"
+
+His eyes flew to hers as he half knelt on the chair before her.
+
+"I've sold Thornwood," she went on, her lips trembling. "I can hardly
+speak of it, even yet. I feel like a traitor to Daddy, to all the
+Carseys who ever lived here, to myself! You know what the place means
+to me. I believe I should die if I ever saw any one else living here! I
+don't know who bought it, I don't want to know. All I know is that I've
+been perfectly wretched every hour since I signed the paper, until just
+now when the Doctor offered to lend you the money. Oh! Don, if I thought
+selling Thornwood meant that we could help clear your name, there'd
+never be another instant of regret! You'll let us help you?"
+
+He put up his hand as if to ward off a blow: "Don't," he said harshly.
+"I can't take your help. I can't even take your friendship, or the
+Doctor's. Don't you see that I'm going through hell? Don't you know that
+I love you?"
+
+The color left her face, and her eyes wavered a moment, then steadied.
+
+"You must never say that again, Don! You must try not to think of it.
+I'll forgive you because I want you to forgive me for something. You
+know the letter you sent me from San Francisco? I burned it, unopened,
+right there where you are standing now. It was a cowardly thing to do,
+even though I thought you were in the wrong. If I had known the truth
+I never would have kept silent all those months. It was a great wrong I
+did you, Don; can you forgive me?"
+
+He studied her face, as if he would by sheer intensity probe those
+luminous eyes that said everything and nothing. At last his head
+dropped.
+
+"I was a fool ever to think you cared," he said brokenly; "I knew I
+wasn't good enough for you. I knew it from the first, but I tried. Shall
+I keep on trying for your sake?"
+
+"No, Don, not for mine. For your own, and for the sake of the girl
+you'll some day make your wife. But I want you to remember that I shall
+feel responsible for whatever happens to you. If you give up the fight
+and go back to the old life, I shall know it was because I failed
+you; if you succeed, as I believe you will, I shall be happy always in
+knowing that I had a little part in it. Shall we say good night?"
+
+[Illustration: "It was a great wrong I did you Don, can you forgive
+me?"]
+
+He took the hand she offered him and one of those silences followed
+which once having passed between a man and woman, is remembered above
+all spoken words, a silence in which all barriers fall away, and soul
+speaks to soul. It was like a great harmony quivering with beautiful
+things unsaid.
+
+He left her standing in the firelight, her eyes shining strangely in her
+otherwise passive face. He closed the door resolutely on the light
+and warmth of the homelike, cheery room, and passing out to the road,
+miserably turned his steps toward the empty grandeur of the big house
+whose turreted and gabled roof broke the sky-line at the top of the
+Hill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+In two of the gloomiest and dirtiest little rooms in the dirtiest
+and gloomiest of little streets that dangle at loose ends from the
+courthouse yard, Mr. Gooch had his office. It was a small dark place
+that suggested nothing so much as an overflowing scrap-basket. Papers
+littered the table, and spilled out of every pigeon-hole of the old
+secretary; papers lay in stacks along the book-shelves, and bulged from
+fat envelopes on the mantel-shelf. Over and above and under all lay the
+undisturbed dust of months.
+
+In the corner which was reduced to perpetual twilight by the proximity
+of the jail wall adjoining, Noah Wicker sat on his high stool, and by
+the assistance of a solitary swinging light, excavated lumps of legal
+lore from the mines of wisdom about him. To one who had not seen
+Noah since his first days of attorneyship, he presented an unfamiliar
+appearance. His feet, still hooked awkwardly under the rung of the
+stool, were shod in patent leather shoes of a style so pronounced that
+they rendered him slightly pigeon-toed. His clothes were of the most
+approved cut, and his hosiery reflected the hue of his tie.
+
+His hair, only, was reminiscent of the country youth who had emerged
+from the law school a short time before, in store clothes and creaking
+boots. A front lock that has been assiduously urged to stand up for many
+years, is not inclined to sit down at the first whim of its owner. It
+has reached an age of independence, and is inclined to insist upon its
+rights.
+
+Noah, alone in the office one spring day, surreptitiously took from his
+desk a small object, which he held in the palm of his broad hand, and
+studied minutely. When the rays from the swinging electric happened to
+strike it, it sent spots of light dancing on the grimy ceiling. For
+Noah was becoming anxious about his pompadour and could not refrain from
+examining it at frequent intervals. Every expedient had been resorted to
+from surgery to soap, but the stubbly blond lock defied him. It seemed
+the last barrier that rose between him and cosmopolitan life.
+
+A light step on the stairs sent the mirror into the desk, and brought a
+look of absorbed concentration to his expansive brow.
+
+"Is Mr. Gooch here?" asked Connie Queerington, thrusting a plumed hat
+into his range of vision.
+
+Noah disengaged himself from the stool and came forward eagerly, but
+paused when he found that she was not alone.
+
+"Come on in, Gerald," she said hospitably. "You know Mr. Wicker, don't
+you? At any rate he knows you. I've told him reams about you, haven't I,
+Mr. Wicker?"
+
+Noah bowed gravely, and after bringing forward chairs, retired to his
+desk, in a state of outward calm and inward wrath.
+
+Gerald Ivy daintily dusted the chair with his handkerchief, and sat
+down, nursing one silk-clad ankle across his knee, in order not to
+expose more of his garments than was necessary to the grime of Mr.
+Gooch's abode.
+
+"What a nuisance he isn't here!" said Connie. "I could leave Father's
+message but I left word for Hat to meet me here. What time do you have
+to go, Gerald?"
+
+"Four o'clock," said Gerald, then glancing at the clock, "it's only
+three-thirty now."
+
+"The clock is slow," announced Noah unexpectedly from his corner.
+
+Gerald leisurely removed his gloves. "What does half an hour matter
+when I can spend it with you? I was just going to meet Mater at the jail
+where she has been pinning rosebuds on repentant bosoms. Come, tell me
+all about yourself!" He leaned forward with elbows on his knees, and
+hands clasped, dropping his voice to a confidential tone, and bringing
+the whole battery of his glances to play upon her.
+
+"Why should I?" asked Connie archly. "You haven't been near me since I
+went to the country."
+
+"What was the use? You couldn't expect me to compete with a hero, who is
+making such a grandstand play as Morley. Giving himself up for an act he
+says he didn't commit, refunding money when he doesn't have to, going to
+work as a scrub reporter when he has lived like a lord all his life!
+I don't see how the theatrical managers have overlooked him! He is the
+stuff matinee idols are made of. He's turned the heads of half the girls
+in town!"
+
+"He's turned mine all right," said Connie complacently. "I'm crazy about
+him. And he isn't doing all those things for effect either. He is not
+that kind. Is he, Mr. Wicker?"
+
+Noah, thus suddenly appealed to, was compelled to answer truthfully that
+he was not. But he did so with a protesting jerk of the elbow, that sent
+an ink-bottle flying to the floor.
+
+Gerald took advantage of the mishap to get Connie over to the window.
+
+"It's beastly lonesome without you," he whispered. "When are you coming
+home?"
+
+"Heaven knows!" said Connie, putting her hands behind her for
+safe-keeping. "Now that somebody else has rented the College Street
+house, and Miss Lady has sold Thornwood, I don't know what's to become
+of us."
+
+"Don't you miss me a little bit?" asked Gerald, playing with the silver
+purse on her wrist.
+
+"Of course I do, silly. Is my hat on straight? I wish I had a mirror."
+
+Noah kneeling on the floor, mopping up the ink, reached toward the desk,
+and then paused.
+
+"I'll be your mirror!" said Gerald, presenting his eyes in a way that
+only a very near-sighted person could have taken advantage of.
+
+"City Hall clock's striking four," said Noah grimly.
+
+But Noah's desire to have Connie to himself was not to be gratified. No
+sooner had Gerald gone, than Hattie arrived, very slim and angular, and
+carrying a prodigious stack of school-books.
+
+"What was the sense of my meeting you here?" she demanded of Connie,
+wasting no time on amenities. "You've made me miss the four-two train,
+and come out of my way. What did you want with me?"
+
+"I wanted to use your mileage book, dear," said Connie sweetly. "How
+long do you suppose it will be, Mr. Wicker, before Mr. Gooch comes in?"
+
+"Any minute now," said Noah, smoothing down his hair with an inky
+finger. "I--I think the clock is a little fast." Then as Connie laughed,
+he jerked up the top of his desk and disappeared behind it.
+
+"Stuffy old place!" said Connie, wandering about the room. "If Mr. Gooch
+wasn't so stingy he'd have it cleaned up."
+
+"I wouldn't call a man stingy who had given a library to the law
+school," Hattie objected.
+
+"Yes, and he's spent the rest of his life saving every penny to pay
+himself back for it. He has eaten fifty-two suppers a year at our house
+for ten years, that's five hundred and twenty suppers, and he's never
+even treated us to a chocolate sundae!"
+
+"I don't think it's stingy to be economical," Hattie said with her most
+superior air.
+
+Noah, who was facing the open door, suddenly began making strange
+gestures, and violent appeals for silence, but the girls were off on an
+old argument and did not see him.
+
+"Besides," Connie was saying conclusively, "he cheats at cards; you know
+he does."
+
+"Only at solitaire. I don't see any reason why he shouldn't cheat
+himself if he wants to. He's all right, even if he is queer, and I think
+you ought to be ashamed of yourself to talk about him the way you do!"
+
+"How do you do, Harriet?" said Mr. Gooch dryly, entering from the outer
+room and not glancing at Connie. "A message from your father?"
+
+Connie slipped the note into Hattie's hand and took refuge with Noah
+behind the desk top.
+
+"Did he hear?" she whispered hysterically. Then not waiting for a reply
+she pounced upon an object in the desk. "Is that a mirror?"
+
+Noah shamefacedly produced it.
+
+"Hold it for me," she commanded. "Not so far off. Like that!"
+
+Standing there behind the desk holding his little mirror for her to
+powder her nose seemed to Noah the apotheosis of romance.
+
+"Too much?" she asked, tilting her face for inspection. "And is my hat
+right? I want to look my best, because you know I _may_ meet Donald
+Morley on the steps."
+
+She was evidently not disappointed, for Noah, standing at the window
+waiting to catch the last flutter of her feather as she passed up the
+street, had to wait five agonizing minutes, at the end of which Don
+spoke to him from the door.
+
+"Hello, Wick. Is Mr. Gooch here?"
+
+"He was a minute ago."
+
+"Is he coming back?"
+
+"I don't know, I'm sure."
+
+Noah made the answers in a tone that discouraged further conversation,
+and Donald after a sharp glance at him, shrugged his shoulders and
+picked up a book. He had not long to wait before Mr. Gooch returned.
+
+"I've been telephoning all over town for you," said the lawyer testily.
+"Is this rumor true that you have bought back your bank stock?"
+
+"It is. It was the only honest thing I could do."
+
+"Not at all," complained Mr. Gooch, who became passionately attached
+to the contrary opinion the moment he ascertained yours. "It was a most
+quixotic, a most reckless course to take. I suppose you know of the
+double liability?"
+
+"Yes, I know," Donald flung out impatiently.
+
+"You are singularly fortunate, Mr. Morley, to be able to indulge these
+magnanimous whims. Your resources I presume--"
+
+"My resources consist in a piece of real estate and a couple of race
+horses. That's about all that's left."
+
+"The real estate?" Mr. Gooch looked encouraged. "City property?"
+
+"No, it's a farm."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"On the Cane Run Road."
+
+Noah's head appeared above the desk for the first time during the
+conversation and he looked surprised, as if he had made a discovery.
+
+"Adjoining your sister's property, I judge?" continued Mr. Gooch.
+"That's good, very good. It ought to bring about--?"
+
+"It's not for sale," said Donald shortly.
+
+Mr. Gooch, who had emerged to the rim of his shell, promptly went in
+again.
+
+"You see, Mr. Gooch," said Donald, leaning forward and speaking
+earnestly, "when you took this case I had no need to think of the
+financial end of it. I wanted to get the affair straight, and I didn't
+care a hang what it would cost. Since then things have changed. I think
+it's only fair to tell you that after I sell my horses and settle things
+up, there won't be more than a thousand dollars left. Will that cover
+your fee?"
+
+Mr. Gooch was visibly offended. "It is not my custom, sir, to name a
+sum in advance. There's a great deal of work on this case, of a very
+annoying nature. We might try to come under the amount stipulated, and
+in a pinch of course you could sell the real estate."
+
+"No," said Donald, "I shall not sell it. And I've got to know to-day
+what your terms will be. I've got work with the _Herald-Post_ as
+temporary correspondent at the Capitol. I'm going up there to-morrow,
+and will probably stay on until my case is called. I'd like to have your
+definite answer at once."
+
+"Well, I didn't want the case in the beginning," said Mr. Gooch. "It's
+the sort of thing I don't care for. I might be able to finish it for a
+thousand dollars, but I don't know that I'd care to commit myself."
+
+"Very well," said Donald, rising with spirit. "That means that I'll have
+to get another lawyer."
+
+"You'll be making a mistake," said Mr. Gooch, twisting his small
+features into a hard knot, and watching Donald closely. "It's a great
+risk to change lawyers in the middle of a case. There's a great deal at
+stake. You oughtn't to stand back on a question of money at a critical
+time like this."
+
+"Good Lord, man! I'm not standing back on a question of money! I'd put
+up all I had if it was a million. Do you suppose I would have taken a
+job in Frankfort for ten dollars a week if I had any money?"
+
+"But you still hold property!"
+
+"I do, Mr. Gooch, and for reasons you could never understand I shall
+continue to hold it. Good day."
+
+"Stop a minute!" Noah Wicker unfolded himself in sections, and got to
+his feet.
+
+"Suppose you let me take your case."
+
+Donald and Mr. Gooch looked at him with equal amazement.
+
+"I haven't had much experience," Noah went on slowly and grimly. "I
+didn't even know a reputable lawyer could throw a case over in the
+middle when a client lost his money. I've got a lot to learn. But I do
+know this case from end to end, and I know you, Don Morley. If I can't
+clear you with or without money, I'd better give up the practice of law
+right here and now. Do you think you'd be willing to trust me?"
+
+Donald hesitated for a moment, glancing from Noah's honest, homely face
+to Mr. Gooch's sneering one, then he jumped to a decision.
+
+"It's a go, Wick! And the fee--"
+
+Noah extended a hand, the breadth of whose palm has already been
+commented upon.
+
+"The fee be damned," he drawled.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+Donald Morley packed his few belongings and went on his small mission
+for the _Herald-Post_ with a determination worthy of a larger cause. The
+remuneration was less than he had been in the habit of paying his stable
+boy, but failure to secure a position, together with a depleted bank
+account, had chastened his spirit, and he was ready to grasp at anything
+that would give him a chance to justify the belief of his friends.
+
+When he first arrived at the sleepy little town where the state
+transacted its business, he took two rooms at the hotel. Later he moved
+to a boarding-house, and by the end of the third week he was in a small,
+bare room in an office building, eating his breakfasts at the depot,
+his luncheons at a restaurant, and his dinners at the hotel. For in his
+determination to square himself with the world he had managed to dispose
+of nearly all he had, excepting a thousand dollars which he had secretly
+deposited to Noah's account.
+
+At first poverty was a somewhat diverting novelty; it served to keep
+his mind off those pursuing terrors that had filled his horizon. For
+the first time in life he was economizing for a purpose. But to make the
+usual expenditure of a day extend over a week requires forethought and
+judgment, neither of which qualities Donald possessed. He had counted
+on augmenting the small sum received from the _Herald-Post_ by writing
+feature articles for other papers, but his efforts had met with small
+success. In vain he arranged his article after the exact plan laid down
+by Cropsie Decker. He clipped, pasted and pinned, looked up statistics,
+verified statements and ruthlessly weeded out every little vagrant fancy
+that dared intrude on the solemn company of facts. But his efforts when
+finished bore the same relation to Cropsie's that a pile of bricks does
+to a house.
+
+Only once had he set Cropsie and his lapboard literature aside,
+and followed his own impulse. It was after his first call at the
+Queeringtons', when the Doctor had advised him to choose a congenial
+theme and let his fancy have full rein. A word of encouragement was all
+he needed to begin a series of tales that had burned for utterance ever
+since he left India. They were the adventures related to him by his
+Mohammedan bearer, Khalil Samad, who had sat on his heels many a night
+before the young sahib's fire, and spun yarns of marvelous variety.
+Donald had only to close his eyes to see the keen, subtle face
+surmounted by its huge white turban, and to hear the torrent of
+picturesque broken English that poured from the lips of one of the few
+Mohammedans in India who could curse the various natives in their own
+vernacular from the Khyber Pass to Trichinopoli.
+
+But the story of Khalil's adventures having been launched into unknown
+waters, had not yet been heard from, and Donald patiently returned to
+his feature articles, holding himself down to the actual and being bored
+as only a person with a creative imagination can be bored by the naked,
+unadorned truth.
+
+His one consolation these days was in the fact that Miss Lady would not
+have to give up Thornwood. Through an agent he had leased the place to
+the Queeringtons for the next two years at an absurdly low sum, and
+the thought of her in the midst of her beloved surroundings went far to
+reconcile him to the meagerness of his own.
+
+His dingy little room boasted only an iron bed and washstand, the
+rest of the floor space being principally occupied by his imposing
+brass-bound steamer-trunk covered with foreign labels. On the dusty
+shelf over the washstand stood an incongruous array of silver-mounted,
+monogramed toilet articles; around the wall ran a dado of shoes,
+while from the gas-pipe depended a heavy bunch of neckties. The chief
+inconvenience in being poor, Donald had decided, was in not knowing what
+to do with one's things.
+
+It was not only his things, however, that he found difficulty in
+disposing of. For a given number of hours a day a man can hold himself
+down to the task of sitting at a small deal table, covering yellow
+tablets with words that will probably never be read, but after too long
+a stretch nature is apt to rebel. At such times Donald raged like a pent
+lion. His mind involuntarily flew to the possibility of this confinement
+being but a foretaste of the other that waited for him should the
+rehearing not be granted. From the beginning he had refused to consider
+the possibility of conviction; he was innocent, he would be cleared. But
+as the days dragged on, a shadow began to dog his steps and to sit on
+the foot of his bed by night, grinning at him through bars of iron.
+
+Had there been a friend to whom he could turn during these days he might
+have been spared some of the hours of anguish he endured, but his pride
+was cut to the quick, and he shrank from seeing any one who knew him
+or his family. Cropsie Decker could have helped him, but Cropsie was in
+Mexico. To Noah Wicker he had ceased to be an individual, he had
+become a client, a first client, and personalities were swamped in
+abstractions. The only place where he could have found sympathy and
+understanding was at Thornwood, the hospitable door of which he had
+resolutely closed with his own hand. If he thought the depths of
+loneliness had been sounded out there in the Orient, he had now to learn
+that it is only in one's own country, among one's own people, that the
+plummet strikes bottom.
+
+The day before the case was to be presented Noah came up from the city,
+and once again they went over every tiresome, familiar detail. By the
+time evening arrived Donald was in a state of black dejection. Half a
+dozen sleepless nights, and the return of several articles did not tend
+to brighten the situation, and when Noah accepted an invitation from the
+Judge to dine with him, Donald felt that he had been abandoned to his
+fate.
+
+Twilight was closing in, the kind that has no beginning and no end, a
+damp, gray saturating twilight that smothers the soul in a fog of gloom
+and relaxes all the moral fibers. Donald went to his small window and
+looked out. The street below was deserted, save for an occasional shabby
+surrey, splashing through the mud on its way to the station. At long
+intervals an umbrella bobbed past, and once a drove of cattle lumbered
+by, driven by a boy astride a mule. Donald jerked down the shade
+savagely, and lit the single gas-jet.
+
+In a magazine which he picked up was a graphic article on child labor in
+the mines, giving pictures of ragged, emaciated children who spent their
+lives underground, breathing foul air and becoming dwarfed in body and
+soul. He flung the book from him and dropped his head upon his arms.
+Life seemed a great, inexorable machine, setting at naught human
+aspiration, human endeavor. What was the good of fighting it? What was
+the sense in believing in a divine order, in such infernal chaos?
+
+Unable to stand his own company any longer, he seized his hat and
+started for the hotel. He was in a reckless, hopeless mood, ready to
+take diversion wherever he found it, and as is usual in such cases,
+diversion met him half way.
+
+The little hotel office was in a spasm of activity, bells were ringing,
+doors slamming, and guests arriving. The group of loiterers who
+usually sat facing the fire, criticizing the daily proceedings of the
+legislature, now stood in a semicircle with their backs to it, watching
+the new arrivals.
+
+"It's a theatrical company," explained one of the voluble crowd to
+Donald; "the liveliest lay-out we've had for moons. That's the star
+talking to the fellow in the checked suit. Some winner, isn't she?"
+
+The object of this remark, having just told a story that elicited
+a round of laughter, turned carelessly and swept the room with a
+brilliant, experienced glance. The searchlight passed the porter and
+bell boys, the obsequious clerk at the desk, the semicircle of admirers
+at the fire, and came to an audacious pause when it reached Donald
+Morley.
+
+He was lighting a cigarette at the moment, and presented an appearance
+of colossal indifference to all stars, terrestrial and celestial.
+But when he had tossed the match into the open grate, he nonchalantly
+sauntered to the desk and glanced at the register.
+
+There was the dashing signature, the ink still wet on the flourish,
+
+"La Florine."
+
+It was Cropsie Decker's old flame, "The Serpent of the Nile," whom he
+had last seen poised on the cork of a champagne bottle on a poster
+on Billy-goat Hill! Without looking up he was aware that the same
+mischievous eyes which had peeped through the black-gloved fingers on
+the poster, were watching him now with the liveliest interest. They
+followed him across the room, they laughed at him over the shoulder of
+the man in the checked suit, they flung a challenge at his feet, and
+dared him pick it up.
+
+Donald watched her with increasing fascination. It was good just to be
+near anything so careless, and gay, and irresponsible. He, too, had once
+poised tiptoe on the perilous edge of things, and laughed defiance in
+the face of Fate. Why shouldn't he do it again? A man about to be hanged
+is given a last good dinner, why shouldn't he humor himself to one more
+good time before the die was cast on the morrow?
+
+It would only be necessary to present his card and mention Cropsie
+Decker, and the rest would be easy. He had just about enough money to
+pay for a theater ticket, and a cozy little supper afterward. But what
+about flowers?
+
+He thrust his hand eagerly into his pocket on an investigating tour.
+As he did so his ringers encountered a small, hard object which he drew
+forth and looked at curiously. It was the dried hip of a wild rose, that
+had been transferred from pocket to pocket since the day it dared to
+bloom before its time, in a cranny of the stone wall that circled the
+garden at Thornwood. The touch of it brought back an old barrel hammock
+under the lilacs, and the glowing eyes of a girl, lifted to his with a
+look of trusting innocence.
+
+Without another glance at "The Serpent of the Nile," he turned up his
+coat collar, pulled his hat over his eyes and plunged out into the wet,
+dismal street. For hours he tramped, neither knowing nor caring where he
+went. He was fighting the hardest fight a man is called on to fight, the
+fight against himself with no reward in view.
+
+When he got back to his room, spent and disheveled at nine o'clock,
+he found two letters under his door. One, a black-bordered envelope
+addressed in Connie's familiar scrawl, he thrust into his pocket,
+smiling in spite of himself at the memory of Miss Lady's bargain
+stationery. The other, a long, bulky envelope, bearing the device of a
+well-known magazine, caused him to sit limply down on his steamer-trunk
+and gaze at it miserably.
+
+His cherished story had come back at last! The possibility of its being
+accepted had been the one hope he had clung to during many a desperate
+hour. In it he had, for the first time, dared to say the things he
+felt, to venture boldly into the land of romance which hitherto he had
+cautiously skirted. Dozens of other similar tales were teeming in his
+brain, only waiting to know the fate of this one. And it had come back!
+It was the best he had to offer, and his best was not good enough! He
+looked at the shabby, dog-eared sheet, and the folded enclosure that
+doubtless set forth the editor's smug regrets, then with an impatient
+gesture he flung the envelope and its contents into the scrap-basket,
+cursing himself and his conceit in thinking he could write, and editors
+and their conceit in thinking they could judge.
+
+The folded enclosure, meanwhile, that had been in the manuscript elected
+to disprove the total depravity of inanimate things, and instead of
+falling face downward, fell face upward on the very top of the heap.
+Thus it was that Donald Morley, charging desperately about his limited
+quarters, suddenly spied a word that made him snatch up the sheet of
+paper and rush to the light.
+
+The editor, it appeared, had read the story with genuine pleasure.
+Khalil Samad was an entirely new creation, presented with an originality
+and humor altogether delightful. The one fault of the story was its
+brevity. Of course, the magazine would accept it as it was, but the
+opinion of the office was to the effect that if the author had material
+for other stories of a similar nature it was a pity for him not to
+elaborate it into a book. A novel with Khalil Samad for a hero, if
+written with the same charm as this first story, would be an undoubted
+success. This was merely a suggestion, of course, and might not fall
+in with Mr. Morley's other literary plans. In any case the editor
+congratulated him upon the originality of his story and would look
+forward to publishing it in one form or the other.
+
+Donald read the note through twice before he mastered its contents, then
+he drew a prodigious breath. Other stories of a similar nature? Why, he
+knew dozens of them! Khalil Samad had been his sole companion for two
+months, and Khalil's chief occupation had been talking about himself
+and his escapades. Donald knew the main incidents of his dramatic career
+from the time he had been stolen by a Bengali bandit and sold into
+matrimony at the age of ten, to the day he had salaamed a tearful
+farewell from the dock at Bombay.
+
+Yes, most certainly, the writing of the novel _did_ fall in with Mr.
+Morley's literary plans. But what about his other plans? He caught
+himself up suddenly. How did he know what twenty-four hours might bring
+forth? What if, through some terrible error, he was not granted a new
+hearing? But Noah Wicker was confident. He had discovered a point in
+the former trial which was technically inadmissible. A witness had been
+permitted to make a statement over Mr. Gooch's objection, and Noah
+had succeeded in finding a previous decision that made him believe a
+reversal was practically certain.
+
+Somehow since his story was accepted, Donald found it much easier to
+share Noah's confidence. Waves of returning courage swept over him.
+Perhaps after all, he was going to be able to do something worth while
+in the world! He would work like a Trojan, he would begin to-night.
+
+He seized pen and paper, but the desire to share his good news prompted
+him to write letters rather than fiction. He wanted to tell Miss Lady,
+he wanted to tell the Doctor. He wanted to paralyze Cropsie Decker! Then
+he thought of Noah, and ramming the editor's note in his pocket, he went
+plunging down the steps and across to the hotel.
+
+Noah had gone to bed, but he was unceremoniously routed out.
+
+"Read that!" shouted Don, thrusting his hand in his pocket and pulling
+out an envelope.
+
+"It isn't opened," said Noah, yawning; then recognizing Connie
+Queerington's handwriting he suddenly woke up.
+
+"Hang it! That's the wrong one," said Donald, diving for the other note.
+"Here it is! Behold a budding author, Wick! I've written some stuff they
+say is worth while. They want more!"
+
+Noah read the note, then returned it calmly.
+
+"It's encouraging, I congratulate you," he observed laconically.
+
+Donald's face clouded, then cleared and he stepped forward impulsively:
+
+"See here, Wick," he said, "you think I'm poaching on your preserves.
+I'm not. That's the first letter I have had from Connie for weeks. I
+haven't written her a line since I left home, but she likes to keep me
+on the string. She just plays with Ivy and me to keep her hand in. Don't
+you mind either one of us. Stick to it and win."
+
+"Oh, I'm sticking to it all right," said Noah doggedly, "but I don't
+seem to stand much chance with the rest of you."
+
+"Nonsense, man! Think of your head-piece! The Lord started you out with
+more brains than most of us end with. The Judge said this morning that
+you knew more common law than any young lawyer he could think of."
+
+"Yes, but knowledge of common law won't win this suit. She'll never look
+at me, Donald, except as a last resort. She thinks I am a heavy, awkward
+hayseed, and I reckon she's about right."
+
+He towered there in his blue pajamas two sizes too small for him, his
+hair on end, and his large hands grasping the chair back. "I don't know
+the game," he went on helplessly. "You fellows take the trick while I am
+making up my mind what to play. She's too much for me. You are all too
+much for me, but I shan't throw down my hand, not yet."
+
+Donald got up from the foot of the bed where he had been sitting, and
+took Noah by the shoulders.
+
+"You've been working like a dog on my case, old fellow. Suppose you let
+me take charge of yours?"
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"You say you don't know the rules of the game. I know them backwards and
+forwards and upside down. You let me play this hand for you with Connie
+Queerington, and you stand to win."
+
+"But--but you?"
+
+"Heavens, man! Do you suppose if it were anything to me I'd have
+forgotten to read her letter all this time? No, I am through with that
+sort of thing." He turned his head abruptly and his face darkened.
+"There never was but one race for me, that was worth the running and I
+got left at the post."
+
+"Perhaps Miss Connie--"
+
+"Likes me? Of course she does. And I like her tremendously. That's how
+I am going to help you. Leave it to me, Wick. Let me write her all the
+letters I want to. Let me tell her about the stir you are making up
+here, about the Judge cottoning to you, and the Governor asking you to
+dinner. In short, let me dramatize you, Wick; I'll write her a play in
+five acts with you for the hero. All you have to do is to ease up on
+your letters and keep out of her sight for a month or so. Tell her that
+as long as you can't be anything more to her you will be a good friend.
+Connie hates a man to be a friend! She wants him to be either an
+acquaintance or a lover. You have gotten out of the first class, and she
+will never let you alone until she gets you back into the third."
+
+Noah rubbed his massive and bewildered brow. "It's too complicated for
+me," he said; "I guess I'll have to accept your services."
+
+That night Donald worked until the small hours, eagerly blocking out the
+chapters of his new book. So absorbed was he that it was not until he
+straightened his tired back, and started to make ready for bed that he
+remembered that he had not yet read Connie's letter.
+
+It was a blotted and incoherent scrawl.
+
+"Dear Cousin Don," he read, "I don't see how I am ever going to write,
+for my eyes are almost out from crying, but Miss Lady simply _can't_ do
+everything, and somebody has to tell the relatives. Hattie ought to help
+me, but she thinks she has to write to her intimate friends first, and
+she's got about a dozen. You know how hateful she is.
+
+"Well, he was taken worse last week, Father, I mean. I can't go into the
+details for I have told them over to so many people now that I'm about
+crazy, and every time I go over them I almost cry myself to death. He
+didn't know any of us all last night or this morning, except once he
+called for Miss Lady and patted her cheek. At the end he seemed to get
+stronger and opened his eyes and asked for his manuscript. It was the
+most pitiful thing you ever saw at the last, to see him trying to turn
+over the sheets, with his poor eyes staring out at the wall, not knowing
+any of us. You'll see about the funeral in the morning's paper. I don't
+see how we are ever going through with it.
+
+"Your loving cousin,
+
+"CONSTANCE QUEERINGTON.
+
+"P. S. Please tell Mr. Wicker--I'd rather die than write another
+letter."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+The summer that followed the People's Bank failure was one of those
+uncompromising summers that arrive in May and depart only with the
+last leaf in October. The river dwindling to a feeble stream staggered
+between distant banks, and the countryside lay parched and panting
+beneath an unrelenting sun.
+
+In the city Noah Wicker toiled laboriously over his first case which
+had been granted a rehearing, and set for November the sixth. At the
+Capitol, Donald Morley sat day after day, coatless, collarless, in the
+torrid confines of his small bedroom, furiously covering reams of paper
+with compact handwriting. At Thornwood Miss Lady, who had been left in
+command of a sinking ship, struggled heroically to bring it into port.
+
+One day early in July, Myrtella Flathers sat just inside the screen door
+of the summer kitchen, armed with a fly-spanker and a countenance of
+impending gloom. She was evidently rehearsing a speech, for her lips
+moved in scornful curves, and her bristling black locks were tossed in
+defiance. Mike, venturing out of a shady corner and catching a glimpse
+of her face, thought her inaudible remarks were addressed to him and
+retired with guilty eyelid and drooping tail to the woodshed.
+
+Myrtella's bitter reflections were interrupted by the appearance of Miss
+Lady on the vine-covered porch. She looked absurdly young in her
+widow's weeds, in spite of the fact that her color was gone and her eyes
+beginning to look too big for her face.
+
+"They've come to stay a week!" she announced, sinking wearily on the top
+step and casting a desperate glance at the closed shutters of the guest
+room above. "And it's Friday, and Mr. Gooch will be here to supper. Do
+you see how we are ever going to hold out?"
+
+"_I_ ain't!" declared Myrtella, spanking a fly into eternity with deadly
+precision. "I'm sick and tired of company. There ain't been a day in the
+three months since the Doctor died that we ain't had his kin folks on
+our hands. It beats my time how half the world gits a prowlin' fit every
+summer, and goes pestering them that stays at home. As to these old
+maids that come to-day, if they had a eye in their heads they'd see you
+was plumb wore out. I wouldn't 'a' ast 'em to stay."
+
+"But I had to. They are the Doctor's cousins. They said they'd been
+coming to see him every summer for years, and they don't want to lose
+sight of the children."
+
+"Umph! The children wouldn't mind losing sight of them! Miss Hattie got
+sent to bed onct for sassing the thin one that wants special dishes and
+all her water boiled. I bet she'll ast you to change her mattress."
+
+"She has already. That's what I came out to tell you, and she wants her
+supper an hour earlier than ours. But that isn't what's troubling me,
+Myrtella, I have something much more serious than Cousin Emily to worry
+over."
+
+"You ain't no exception," said Myrtella, somewhat defensively. "Trouble
+is about the only thing that rich people ain't got a monopoly on. I've
+had my share; it's a wonder I got a black hair left in my head!"
+
+"Has your brother lost his good place?" Miss Lady asked.
+
+"Phineas? No, mam. He's been at Iselin's ever since he left Mrs.
+Sequin's, an' to hear him tell it he's runnin' the whole 'stablishment.
+I must say he's doin' better 'n he ever done before, but he's as full
+of airs as a music-box, an' that there Maria, a paternizing me like I
+hadn't been payin' her rent all these years. But I kin get along without
+them. It's little Chick I'm a worryin' about."
+
+"What's the matter with Chick?"
+
+"Matter with him?" Myrtella turned on her fiercely. "Ever' thing is the
+matter with him. What chanct has he got in the world? Picked out of a
+ash-barrel, livin' in dirt an' ignorance, drinkin' the beer that leaks
+outen the kegs on the freight cars, hangin' 'round the saloons an'
+gittin' runtier an' dumber an' more pitifuller every day he lives. My
+Lord! Ain't that enough the matter with him?"
+
+Miss Lady's quick, eager sympathy leapt into her face.
+
+"We must do something for Chick. Dr. Wyeth believes he can cure him if
+they can ever get him into the Children's Hospital. Why can't we--" she
+checked herself, and sat looking off to the hills across the river.
+
+"Myrtella, I've got to tell you something," she began again desperately,
+"I've been trying to tell you all day, but I didn't know how. You have
+been so good to us, all through the Doctor's illness, and before. But
+I'm afraid after this month we'll have to let you go."
+
+Myrtella had been threatening to give notice for a month, but at this
+announcement she looked as if she had been the victim of an unsuccessful
+electrocution.
+
+"It's a question of money," went on Miss Lady hurriedly. "You see we
+simply haven't any. I've kept account of every cent that comes in and
+goes out, just as Mr. Gooch told me to; but it doesn't balance. We'll
+just have to keep on cutting down expenses until it does."
+
+"An' you are going to begin on me," said Myrtella furiously, "an' git
+in some onery nigger that'll carry home more in a basket than my wages
+would come to!"
+
+"No, Myrtella; we are going to try to do the work ourselves."
+
+"You mean _you_ are! An' Miss Connie'll primp herself up an' go hiking
+into town after beaux, an' Miss Hattie'll set around with her nose in a
+book, an' you'll go on workin' an' slavin' an' wearin' yourself to the
+bone fer them, an' their tribe of prowlin' kin. Where's the money you
+got for this farm?"
+
+"It went to pay the debts and to carry out the Doctor's wishes."
+
+"'Bout printin' all them books he wrote over again, an' bringin' 'em out
+in the same kind of covers?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How many was there, in all?"
+
+"Twenty."
+
+Myrtella compressed her lips, and with difficulty refrained from
+comment. However freely the Doctor's will had been discussed in public,
+no criticism of it was brooked in the presence of Miss Lady.
+
+"As to your leaving," she said, changing the subject, while Myrtella
+vented her wrath on the flies, "you know you have wanted to go for
+months. It was only your goodness that made you come out here with
+us after you had saved money enough to start your boarding-house. We
+haven't been paying you enough, I know that, and--and we haven't enough
+to go on even as we are."
+
+Myrtella wheeled in the doorway, her face purple with anger:
+
+"If you think I'm a-goin' an' leave you children in this big house,
+messin' up yer own food, an' lettin' everybody run over you, you are
+mighty mistaken! Miss Hattie 'd be having indigestion inside a week, an'
+Bertie 'd git the croup, an' you'd have every female Queerington that
+could buy a railroad ticket comin' an' settin' down on you!"
+
+"But what can we do, Myrtella? I tell you the money is giving out!"
+
+"Do? I'll tell you what we can do. We can board the company! We can fill
+up the rooms with folks that pay for what they eat, an' there won't be
+any room for the free prowlers. You git the boarders an' I'll manage
+'em."
+
+"Why, Mrs. Ivy and Gerald wanted to come that way, but I laughed at
+them. Besides I don't know about Gerald--"
+
+"On account of Miss Connie?" asked Myrtella, who had been too much in
+charge of the family not to know its secrets. "You let him come. He's
+one of them men that's like vanilla extract--you git too much of him
+onct, you never want no more!"
+
+"And perhaps Mr. Gooch would come."
+
+"Well it would go kinder hard with him to pay fer anything he's always
+got free. But git Miss Hattie to ast him. He'd do it fer her quicker'n
+anybody."
+
+The project, under Myrtella's able generalship, developed immediately.
+Mr. Gooch and the Ivys gladly availed themselves of the opportunity
+of fleeing from the stifling city to the cool shade of Thornwood. Two
+former pupils of the Doctor's, who were taking a summer course at the
+university, also asked if they might have a room, and at the end of a
+week paying guests were in possession and the family relegated to any
+nook or corner that was large enough to accommodate a bed.
+
+One problem was unexpectedly solved by the appearance of Uncle Jimpson,
+who announced that "he had done come back home to stay." The distinction
+of driving forth daily in solitary grandeur to exercise the Sequins'
+horses, had palled upon him, and the prospect of conducting the
+Queerington boarders back and forth to the station, and renewing his
+intimacy with old John and Mike, had proven irresistible.
+
+Aunt Caroline had died in the early spring, and Uncle Jimpson found
+even the society of Myrtella a relief after his enforced loneliness. He
+listened with bulging eyes and sagging jaw to her accounts of the latest
+murders and obeyed her slightest command with a briskness that would
+have amazed the old Colonel.
+
+"We's helpin' Miss Lady git a start," he would say proudly again and
+again, "an' then maybe she git married some more."
+
+"Married!" Myrtella would flare, "yes, she orter git married to another
+widower with three children, and a thousand kin folks. Besides, who's
+she going to marry?"
+
+"Ain't no trouble 'bout dat," Uncle Jimpson said wisely; "you jes' let
+her peek over de blinds onct, an' you see what gwine happen."
+
+"Well, she ain't going to peek," Myrtella said firmly. "She ain't got
+a thought in her head, but gittin' Miss Hattie an' Bertie educated, an'
+keepin' Miss Connie straight, an' carryin' out that fool will of the
+Doctor's."
+
+"Jest wait," Uncle Jimpson smilingly insisted, "dat chile can't no more
+help 'cumulatin' beaux dan a flower kin bees. An' hits de king bee dat's
+comin' dis time, shore!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+"Where's Connie? Where's Hat?" cried Miss Lady breathlessly, bringing
+her foam-flecked horse to a halt in front of the porch where Mrs. Ivy
+was sitting in the twilight. "Don Morley has written a book and it's
+going to be published this month!"
+
+"A book!" echoed Mrs. Ivy incredulously, then,
+
+"Ah, my dear, do get off that vicious beast; I haven't had a moment's
+peace since Mr. Wicker sent him over!"
+
+Miss Lady slipped to the ground and stood with her arm around Prince's
+neck, laughing. The thrill of her long ride, the first one in nearly
+two years, still surged through her, and the news just received made her
+heart dance for joy. Happiness, in spite of her efforts not to expect
+it, was beginning to shine across the troubled waters, a dim and
+wavering light as yet, but drawing her toward it with irresistible
+fascination. It was something to steer by in times of stress and storm,
+something to turn to tremulously, in the lonely hours of the night, when
+over-taxed muscles refused to relax and her tired brain ached with the
+pity and sorrow of the world.
+
+During her long ride this afternoon she had dared for the first time to
+give rein to thoughts that had hitherto been held in check. Surely life
+was more than the dreary, monotonous, loveless business of the past
+summer! With all its problems and perplexities, it was nevertheless a
+mysterious, fascinating thing. She did not approve of it, nor did she
+altogether trust it, but she was incorrigibly in love with it--and would
+be to the end.
+
+"I suppose you know that supper is over," said Mrs. Ivy, with veiled
+reproach. "Were there no letters for me?"
+
+"Oh, dear, how stupid of me. I forgot to look through the rest of the
+mail. Here it is."
+
+Mrs. Ivy sorted out her own official-looking budget, then peered closely
+at the two remaining envelopes.
+
+"As I suspected," she said with a significant lifting of her eyebrows;
+"two for Constance, in the same handwriting and both postmarked from the
+Capitol."
+
+"But what of it, Mrs. Ivy?"
+
+"My _dear_," Mrs. Ivy breathed, "don't you see they are from Mr.
+Morley?"
+
+"Yes; but I have one from him, too; he's telling us about his book."
+
+Mrs. Ivy smiled with sad superiority, "Ah, my dear, you are not a very
+sophisticated little chaperon. I have hesitated to speak to you before,
+but I really think this young man's attention to Constance should be
+stopped. It isn't fair to poor Gerald. You know how she has always
+adored my boy, ever since she was in pinafores, and I don't mind
+confessing to you that I've encouraged her. Of course Gerald's artistic
+temperament has made him susceptible to many forms of beauty, but he has
+really been quite devoted of late. I simply can not endure the thought
+of that Mr. Morley interfering with the blossoming of their childhood
+love."
+
+"But Mrs. Ivy, he--he is her cousin; he looks upon her as a child."
+
+"She is only a year younger than you are, my dear, and much more worldly
+wise. I've had my eyes open and I've seen a great deal. She is getting
+quite secretive, and she isn't always gracious to Gerald. Mr. Morley's
+back of it all, you 'II see."
+
+"I don't think there is any danger," said Miss Lady critically examining
+the tip of Prince's nose.
+
+"Ah, my dear girl, you have been too engrossed for the past six months
+to notice. Ask Mr. Wicker; he spoke to Gerald about it last spring. Ask
+Gerald himself, he's wretchedly unhappy. And now you are helping her
+to get ready to go up to the Capitol to visit, and he's sure to see her
+every day. I must say that I think it's wretched taste for him to pay
+attentions to any girl under the circumstances."
+
+In an instant Miss Lady had wheeled with flashing eyes:
+
+"Donald's friends know that he hasn't done anything to be ashamed of!
+I don't believe he thinks of Connie in the way you mean, but if he does
+she has every reason to be proud of it!"
+
+And without waiting for an answer she drew the bridle over her arm and
+tramped indignantly off to the stable.
+
+Mrs. Ivy sighed, then turned to join Mr. Gooch who had just come out on
+the porch.
+
+"Has it ever occurred to you," she said as if enunciating a hitherto
+unuttered truth, "how reluctant youth is to learn of age? This dear
+little widow that the good Doctor left to our care, is making some grave
+mistakes."
+
+"I think she does fairly well," said Mr. Gooch, settling himself
+comfortably; "the beef is not always good, but the fowls and the
+vegetables are ex-excellent."
+
+Mr. Gooch spoke with unusual warmth. Myrtella's cooking, together with
+Miss Lady's graciousness, and the sharp proprietorship that Hattie had
+assumed over him, were working a miracle. Even now as the sounds of
+music and laughter came forth from the living-room, he paused to listen.
+He was surprised to find that "Molly Darlings," and "Nellie Grays,"
+and other musical girls he'd left behind him, still haunted the dim
+corridors of his argumentative mind, and gave him little thrills of
+pleasure.
+
+"Ah," purred Mrs. Ivy, continuing the conversation. "Far be it from me
+to criticize her. It is against my principles to entertain a critical
+attitude toward any one. Besides, I quite adore the dear child.
+I consider her a precious gift to a grateful world. But you must
+acknowledge, Mr. Gooch, that with all her sweetness, she doesn't always
+allow herself to be guided."
+
+"Good Lord, no," said Mr. Gooch testily.
+
+"She'll look you straight in the eye and smile, while you are advising
+her, then go straight off and do as she pleases. This matter of the
+Doctor's will, for instance. I spent two days arguing with her about the
+futility of publishing two dozen volumes that nobody will ever read."
+
+"But that was his dying request, Mr. Gooch. Only one who has loved
+and lost can know the nature of that obligation." Mr. Gooch sniffed
+impatiently. Conjugal felicity was a subject that irritated him in every
+fiber.
+
+"Then her charities," he went on crustily; "she's got no money to be
+throwing away, yet every family on Billy-goat Hill comes to her when it
+gets into trouble."
+
+"Yes, and she doesn't hesitate to sit down in those dreadful hovels,
+and take those unclean babies in her arms. It has made me frightfully
+nervous since we came here. Gerald is so sensitive to germs."
+
+"What is this latest tomfoolery about a kindergarten?"
+
+"Why, she has actually gotten Mrs. Bartrum and Mrs. Horton, and some of
+those other society women, to rent the hall over the grocery where the
+Cant-Pass-It Saloon used to be. They are going to open a kindergarten
+and Margery Sequin is coming home from Europe to take charge of it. I am
+afraid the project is built upon the sands. There is not a church member
+on the board!"
+
+"Well, they needn't come to me for a contribution," said Mr. Gooch. "I
+don't believe in kindergartens."
+
+While this conversation was taking place, quite a different one was in
+progress, on the up-stairs side porch which had been converted into a
+summer bedroom for Miss Lady and Bertie.
+
+"Do you 'spose," Bert was saying sleepily, "that God 'ud give me a horn
+'stead of a harp when I get to heaven, if I ask him to?"
+
+"I know He will, Bert. Take off your other shoe."
+
+"Why didn't He give Chick something to say?"
+
+"He did, but Chick's throat won't let the words come through. Step out
+of your clothes now, hurry up, Buddikin!"
+
+But Bert's feet were firmly planted, and his sleepy eyes fixed in
+philosophic musings:
+
+"If He had all kinds of throats I don't see why He didn't give Chick a
+good one."
+
+This required elucidation, and Miss Lady attempted to make the matter
+clear while extricating the small boy from his clothes.
+
+"Ain't you going to tell me a story?"
+
+"Not to-night, Bert. I'm so tired; all the stories have run out."
+
+Bert crawled into his bed silently, and lay watching the shadows in the
+big tree outside.
+
+"I wish Cousin Don was here," he sighed. "He never does run out of
+stories. When is he coming back?"
+
+"I don't know, dear. Shut your eyes now, and go to sleep."
+
+He shut his eyes obediently, but continued the conversation drowsily,
+
+"He knows all about whales and tigers, and big ships and elephants.
+He's--been--clear--around--the--earth--"
+
+But the Sandman had conquered, and Miss Lady, having slipped on a
+dressing-gown and loosened her hair, tiptoed to the far end of the
+porch and sitting on the railing gazed fixedly out into the gathering
+darkness. For half an hour the dim enchantments of twilight had been
+abroad, transforming hill and valley, and merging heaven and earth in a
+tender, elusive atmosphere of dreams. But her absorbed, white face, and
+tense hands locked about her knees, showed that she was not concerned
+with the beauty of the evening.
+
+Mrs. Ivy's words had kindled a bonfire, by the light of which recent
+events leapt into view. Connie had been secretive, not only about her
+letters but about her engagements as well. She was growing daily more
+indifferent to Gerald Ivy, and developing a taste for reading that
+had been the cause of much surmising and teasing on the part of the
+household.
+
+Twice during the summer Donald had come to Thornwood, and on both
+occasions Miss Lady had been seized with an unreasoning fear, not
+only of him, but of herself. She had received him under the depressing
+chaperonage of Mr. Gooch and Mrs. Ivy, and she remembered now how Connie
+had taken possession of him on both occasions. But even if Connie's
+transitory affections were temporarily engaged, surely Donald was not
+encouraging her!
+
+A low whistle from the path below made her look down. It was Connie and
+she was stepping very cautiously as if trying to elude somebody.
+
+"Miss Lady!" she called softly. "Aren't you coming down again?"
+
+"No, I'm going to bed."
+
+"Don't go yet. I'm coming up. I want to tell you something."
+
+A moment later Connie opened the door, and closed it carefully behind
+her.
+
+"Is Bertie asleep?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It's all over!" she announced tragically. "Gerald and I have had an
+awful quarrel, and he swears he'll never live to see another dawn."
+
+"Of course he won't, I doubt if he has ever seen one. What's his
+trouble?"
+
+"Everything! He wants me to sit at his feet every hour in the day and
+adore him, and how can I adore a man who is afraid of a bumblebee, and
+can't drive, and sleeps with an umbrella over his head to shut out the
+light? I just simply can't stand him another minute!"
+
+"But, Connie, you were so crazy about him, you wouldn't listen to a word
+against him."
+
+"I know it. I've been a perfect little idiot." Connie was sobbing now
+on Miss Lady's shoulder. "The first time I saw him he'd just gotten
+home from Europe. He was playing at a concert. Everybody said he was
+a genius, and his eyes were so wonderful, and I had never seen anybody
+like him. The more he snubbed me the crazier I got about him. It wasn't
+until Cousin Don came back that I saw him as he really is."
+
+Miss Lady patted the heaving shoulders, but said nothing.
+
+"And the very minute," Connie continued tempestuously, "that I began to
+feel differently, Gerald began to like me. He has worked himself up to
+a terrible pitch, and doesn't want me out of his sight for a minute. I
+feel as if I'd been living on chocolate creams for three months!"
+
+"Connie!" Miss Lady took the tear-stained face between her hands. "I'm
+glad it isn't Gerald. I'm glad from the bottom of my heart, but are you
+sure it isn't somebody else?"
+
+Connie's blue eyes, never very steadfast, shifted uneasily, and Miss
+Lady went on earnestly:
+
+"Are you quite sure you aren't doing just what you did before, getting
+infatuated, and making yourself miserable over some one who doesn't care
+for you?"
+
+"But he does!" burst out Connie indignantly; "he cares for me more than
+for anybody in the world!"
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"He's told me so! There--I oughtn't to have told! I swore I wouldn't
+until after the trial. But you won't breathe it, Miss Lady? Promise you
+won't even ask me to tell you anything more?"
+
+Miss Lady looked at her strangely.
+
+"I know everybody is going to disapprove," Connie went on recklessly,
+"and say horrid things about him. But I don't care if you will just
+stand by me. And you will, won't you?"
+
+Twice Miss Lady tried to speak before the words would come, then:
+
+"Yes," she whispered almost breathlessly, "yes, I promise to stand by
+you,--and by him."
+
+After Connie had gone she went back to her seat on the railing and
+stared out into the gathering night. For the first time in her life the
+dark immensity terrified her. The beacon lights by which she had steered
+were no longer visible. The great lonely sea of life lay about her, and
+she had lost her course.
+
+"Daddy!" she whispered in terror, "Daddy help me!"
+
+But only the faint cry of a whippoorwill in the valley below answered
+her call. A trembling seized her and feeling her way to the bed where
+Bertie lay, she crept in beside him, cuddling the soft, warm little body
+close, and checking her sobs that they might not wake him. Long after
+the whippoorwill had ceased its plaint, she lay there staring into the
+darkness, waiting for the dawn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+The autumn sun struggled palely through the windows of the Children's
+Hospital, and sent a beam across the high narrow bed where Chick
+Flathers lay, suspiciously watching the proceedings of the attendant
+nurses. He was not at all sure that he had done right in coming. For two
+days he had been made to stay in bed, and this morning he had suffered
+his third bath and been deprived of his breakfast. His being there
+at all was merely a concession to friendship. Mis' Queerington had
+persuaded him. He wouldn't have come for the Other One, the fat one who
+smiled and talked about The Willows Awful Home. He wouldn't even come
+for Aunt 'Telia, but Mis' Queerington was different; she understood
+fellows. She had said that the doctors would fix his throat so that he
+could yell louder than any boy on Billy-goat Hill! All the suppressed
+yells of a dozen years quivered on his lips at the thought of it!
+"Chick, here's a orange and some cookies I brought you." It was Aunt
+'Telia who sat down by the bed and took his hand. "If you ever get
+well Aunt 'Tella's going to take you to the circus, or the seashore, or
+somewheres."
+
+The seashore presented no concrete idea, so Chick preferred to dwell
+upon the circus, but even that alluring prospect could not hold his
+attention while so many disturbing things were taking place about him.
+One nurse had felt his pulse, another had put a glass tube in his mouth,
+and now a third was wheeling in a curious little bed on wheels.
+
+He turned restlessly from the black-browed, anxious face bending over
+him to the door where Mrs. Queerington was entering. But he knew by
+experience that it would be some time before she reached him. All those
+other sick duffers would want her to talk to them, and the nurses
+would stop her, and the young house-doctor would claim a flower for his
+buttonhole. Chick hated them all indiscriminately. It seemed an hour
+before her bright, reassuring face bent over him, and he heard her say:
+
+"It won't be long, now, Chicky Boy. Dr. Wyeth will be here soon, and
+they will give you a ride on this funny little wagon. I wonder what
+Skeeter Sheeley is doing about this time? Going to school, I expect."
+
+This diverted Chick marvelously. The thought of Skeeter having to spend
+the morning in the schoolroom, made his own lot less hard.
+
+"Is Number Seventeen prepared for the operation?" he heard some one ask,
+and at the same moment Aunt 'Tella's fingers closed on his like a vise.
+
+Then the big doctor, who had brought him there, appeared at the foot of
+his bed.
+
+"Ah, Mrs. Queerington!" he was saying, "the very sight of you ought to
+hearten up these youngsters. But you are still paler than I like to see
+you. Been overdoing again?"
+
+She shook her head. "I'm all right, but what about your patient?"
+
+The doctor stroked his chin and appeared to be interested in the
+ceiling. "Some rather grave complications. Very anemic. Very little
+to work on. Possibly an even chance. However--" he shrugged his broad
+shoulders. "Has he any people?"
+
+"No, except this foster-aunt who supports him. Myrtella!"
+
+But Myrtella had turned her back at sight of the doctor, and refused to
+look up.
+
+Chick narrowly watching the two speakers at the foot of the bed,
+and trying vainly to understand what they were saying about him, was
+relieved when Dr. Wyeth handed Miss Lady a book and said lightly:
+
+"You see that I, like everybody else, have fallen a victim to 'Khalil
+Samad.' I understand it is already in its tenth edition. Young Morley
+has a career before him, if he gets through this trial. Do you know when
+it is set for?"
+
+"November the sixth."
+
+"So soon as that? Well, I don't know the young man, but I hope he'll be
+cleared. I want him to write some more books for me to read. I'm sorry
+Kinner has charge of the prosecution. He'd rather convict an innocent
+man than a guilty one. All right, my boy, I guess we are ready."
+
+"Don't try to get up!" admonished the nurse to Chick; "I'll lift you
+over."
+
+But Chick scorned assistance. Hadn't he only last week valiantly bucked
+the center in a football game between the Bean Alley Busters, and
+the Shanty Boat Bums, and, covered with mud and blood and glory, been
+carried from the field? They needn't think because he was little and
+thin and couldn't talk that he was a baby! He got himself on to the
+wheeled stretcher, but refused to lie down.
+
+"Let him sit up then," said Mrs. Queerington. "He likes to see where he
+is going, don't you, Chick? Here goes our automobile! Honk! Honk!"
+
+The nurse wheeled him through the tall, gloomy halls, while Myrtella
+shambled at one side, clinging to his hand, and wiping her eyes. Miss
+Lady flitted along on the other, telling him about the new football that
+was going to be on his bed when he woke up.
+
+Then they halted, and Myrtella bent over him wildly. "Chick!" she cried,
+her face suddenly contorted, "look at me just once more! Tell me you
+fergive me, Chicky! Oh, if they kill you--!"
+
+The stretcher was shoved hastily into the elevator and the door closed
+on everybody but Chick and the nurse and the orderly.
+
+It was about that time that Chick decided to lie down. Where were they
+taking him? What were they going to do with him? What did Aunt 'Tella
+mean by those strange words? Where had Mis' Squeerington gone? With
+sudden quaking terror he looked at the nurse and broke into hoarse
+interrogatory sounds.
+
+"Here we are!" she cried soothingly, as the elevator came to a halt.
+"And here's Dr. Wyeth waiting for us."
+
+"Well, my little man," said the large figure in white, taking a small
+cold hand in his large strong one, "we are going to put you to sleep and
+when you wake up, it will be all over. You are pretty game, aren't you?"
+
+Chick, trying very hard to keep his knees from shaking the sheet, nodded
+emphatically.
+
+"I thought so," lied the doctor cheerfully, looking into the
+terror-stricken eyes. "I can almost always tell when a fellow's made out
+of the right sort of stuff. You don't wear false teeth, do you?"
+
+Chick's sudden, toothless smile revealed the futility of this question.
+
+"That's good. No danger of your swallowing them. Now suppose you put
+this funnel over your mouth and take a big breath. That's right! Another
+one! That's right, once more!"
+
+Chick felt a hot, sweet air rush into his throat, and began to choke.
+But the doctor's voice kept saying insistently, "Once more!" "Once more,
+my boy!" And the doctor thought he was game.
+
+He shut his eyes and tried not to be afraid, but fearful things were
+happening! His skin was leaving his body; and he was going up in the
+air; lights danced before his eyes and he was suddenly in a terrible
+hurry about something. He had never been in such a hurry before! He was
+leaving doctors and nurses far below, he could hear their voices growing
+fainter every moment. Then suddenly the lights began to dance again, and
+the hurry came back, and all the breath was being squeezed out of him.
+No, he couldn't be game any longer! He must fight! Savagely, blindly,
+dumbly he struggled against this awful unknown thing that was mastering
+him. Then, after a last agonizing effort he sank helplessly into the
+abyss of sleep.
+
+Meanwhile, on the floor below, sitting on the cold bare steps beside the
+door of the elevator, two white-faced women waited anxiously. All was
+silent in the high, narrow corridor except for the footsteps of passing
+nurses, and the occasional sharp cry of pain, or groan of weariness from
+some suffering patient.
+
+"That's him!" cried Myrtella hysterically as one of these cries reached
+her.
+
+"No, no. He is sound asleep by this time. He won't know anything until
+it is all over." Then as another cry brought Myrtella to her feet, Miss
+Lady added, "Please, Myrtella, don't be so frightened. Those cries come
+from the floor below."
+
+Myrtella shook off her hand impatiently. "How long have they been gone?
+Why didn't you tell me they was going to keep him hours and hours?"
+
+"It's only been twenty minutes. I know how anxious you are, but you must
+try to be calm. If you aren't they won't let you go in the room when
+they bring him down."
+
+"Won't let me in the room!" Myrtella's face blazed with anger. "I'd like
+to see 'em stop me! Who's got a better right? The doctor? The nurse?
+You? There ain't none of you got the right to him I have. Ain't I his
+mother?"
+
+Miss Lady looked at her with amazement, and shrank instinctively from
+the desperate, defiant woman.
+
+"That's right!" cried Myrtella, almost beside herself. "Snatch your hand
+off my arm, shrink away from me like I was a leper! Tell everybody, tell
+the police that I throwed my baby in the ash barrel and abandoned it! It
+don't make no difference now, nothin' makes no difference but Chick. Oh,
+my God! How long have they been?"
+
+"They will be down very soon now, Myrtella. Don't tear your handkerchief
+like that. Here, take mine."
+
+But Myrtella's eyes were too full of terror for tears; she sat with her
+hands locked about her knees swaying to and fro.
+
+"I've never told nobody," she went on wildly; "all these years I've kept
+it bottled up in my soul 'til it's eat it plumb out. I never done it to
+Chick! He wasn't Chick then. He was just somethin' that belonged to a
+devil. Then he growed to be Chick, and all my hate turned to love, and
+now God's gittin' even, I knowed He would! He wouldn't let him live now,
+just to spite me!"
+
+"Myrtella!" Miss Lady's voice commanded indignantly. "Don't you dare say
+such things! Who knows but this very minute God's giving Chick back to
+you? Perhaps He is taking this way of showing you He forgives you. Pray
+to Him, Myrtella! Ask Him to do what's best for Chick, whatever it may
+be."
+
+Myrtella's head had sunken on her knees, and her coarse, work-hardened
+hands were clinging to Miss Lady's slender ones.
+
+Suddenly they both started. The elevator descended creakingly and halted
+beside them. There was a shuffling of feet and the stretcher was wheeled
+past with a small, white-sheeted form lying motionless upon it.
+
+"It's all over," said Dr. Wyeth, following briskly. "He put up a pretty
+stiff fight while taking the anesthetic, but we downed him at last.
+The conditions were less serious than I anticipated. With care and
+good nursing he ought to get well right away now. Hello! Here's another
+patient!"
+
+For Myrtella, glaring at him through her steel-rimmed spectacles, had
+dropped like a log straight across the corridor and lay unconscious with
+her fly-away hat crushed under one ear.
+
+"Loosen her collar," directed Dr. Wyeth, "and bring me some ice water.
+There! She'll come around in a minute."
+
+He knelt beside her with his hand on her pulse, looking at her
+curiously. Then he turned to Miss Lady:
+
+"Queer how faces come back to you. I attended this woman twelve years
+ago, when I was interne in the maternity ward at the City Hospital."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+As the sixth of November approached, Donald Morley's friends for the
+first time became seriously apprehensive over the result of his final
+trial. The fact that he had engaged an unknown, inexperienced lawyer to
+cope with the redoubtable Kinner, was looked upon as his crowning
+folly. The case, which had always excited considerable local interest on
+account of the prominence of the families involved, now became a matter
+of much graver significance, concerning, as it did, the author of
+"Khalil Samad," the most talked-about book of the hour.
+
+Miss Lady, alone at Thornwood now, except for Bertie and Myrtella,
+fought through the days as best she could. Since Connie's confession she
+had seen little of her, for after a round of visits in the Blue Grass
+region, that restless young person had been with friends in town, and
+was still there when the date set for the trial arrived.
+
+Up to this time Miss Lady had conquered in the hourly struggle she was
+making with her own heart. Again and again Donald had tried to see
+her, but on one pretext or another she had evaded him. She was puzzled,
+bewildered, and hopelessly wretched, and she asked herself repeatedly
+why her happiness should be sacrificed for that of a shallow,
+irresponsible butterfly. For Donald, she had no blame, he had drifted
+into this affair with Connie when his need was greatest, and now that
+his honor was involved as well as hers, there must be no turning back.
+
+But when the second day of the trial dawned, and she came down after a
+sleepless night to read discouraging news reports of the previous day's
+proceedings, she found that something stronger than herself was taking
+possession of her. In vain did she try to fulfil her accustomed tasks.
+Every atom of her was there in the courthouse beside Donald Morley,
+standing trial with him. Twice she flung on her coat and hat, only to
+take them off again, and stand at the window impatiently watching the
+storm.
+
+For the long summer had finally come to an end. After days of radiant
+October sunshine, when winter seemed, like the hereafter, vague and
+far off, a wind came rushing out of the north, stripping the trees in a
+single night, and leaving them surprised at their sudden nakedness. Then
+the sleet came, and, not content with attacking trees and shrubs, must
+storm the house itself, invading windows and doors, besieging every
+nook and corner, only to waste away at last into icy streams that went
+rattling noisily down the gutters.
+
+As the morning wore on Miss Lady grew more and more restless. Suppose
+the preposterous should happen, and for the second time twelve honest
+men should pronounce an innocent man guilty? Could Connie face the
+ignominy of the verdict? Would her fickle, inconstant heart steady to
+such a test? Suppose that once again the person on whom Donald Morley
+depended, should fail him in a supreme hour?
+
+For the third time Miss Lady threw on her wraps. She could no longer
+stand the suspense, she must go to him, in case he needed her.
+
+"'Fore de Lawd!" exclaimed Uncle Jimpson when her intention was made
+known to him. "I dunno what ole John'll think of us, takin' him to de
+station a day lak dis! 'Sides de noon train's done went."
+
+"Then we'll have to drive to town. Hitch up as quickly as you can!"
+
+"But, Miss Lady, Honey, you fergit de sleet! Ole John 'ud slide 'round
+de road lak a fly on a bald spot."
+
+"No matter! I'm going. Hurry!"
+
+Myrtella, who was fashioning a dough man, under the personal supervision
+of Bert, looked up indignantly:
+
+"You don't think you are going out in this storm without no lunch, do
+you?"
+
+"I can't eat anything, I'm not hungry."
+
+"That's what you said at breakfast. I ain't got a bit of patience with
+people that get theirselves sick in bed and be a nuisance to everybody,
+just for the pleasure of slopping around in the slush on a day like
+this. I'm going to fix you some toast and a egg, while he's hitchin'
+up."
+
+"Go on with the story, 'Telia," demanded Bertie, carefully bestowing a
+nose on the dough man.
+
+"Well," resumed Myrtella, from the stove, casting an anxious glance
+at Miss Lady who stood at the window impatiently tapping the pane,
+"everbody was a wonderin' what would be his very first words, an' Dr.
+Wyeth he sez, 'Don't pester him to talk, jes' let it come natural.'
+One day me an' the nurse, the stuck-up one I was tellin' you 'bout, was
+fixin' to spray out his throat, an' he look so curious at all the little
+rubber tubes, an' fixin's, that she sez, 'You'll know a lot when you
+leave here, Chick.' And what do you think he up an' answered? Just as
+smart an' plain as if he'd a been talkin' all his life?"
+
+"What?" demanded Bertie as breathlessly as if he hadn't heard the story
+a dozen times.
+
+"'Shucks', sez Chick, 'I knowed a lot when I come!'" Myrtella's pride in
+this first articulation of her offspring was so great that it rendered
+her oblivious to the fact that the toast was scorching.
+
+"When will you be able to bring Chick home?" asked Miss Lady, gulping
+down the hot tea with a watchful eye on the stable door.
+
+"Jes' as soon as the doctor quits foolin' with his throat every day.
+He's been gittin' on fine ever' since I took him back to Phineas'.
+Maria's gittin' right stuck on him, now she's got to give him up. Says
+she always knowed he was smart, but she never dreamed of the things he
+had bottled up in his head."
+
+"I haven't forgotten about your house," said Miss Lady absently. "Dr.
+Wyeth knows a nice place down on Chestnut Street, and says you can make
+a good living letting the rooms to shop girls. It isn't right for me to
+keep you out here any longer."
+
+"Well, I ain't goin' 'til spring." Myrtella rattled the pans with
+unnecessary vehemence. "Me an' Chick's goin' to stay right here 'til we
+git you settled. Now that Mr. Gooch has got a spell of spendin', an' is
+sendin' Miss Hattie to college, I guess she's settled fer a spell. Like
+as not Miss Connie'll be marryin' some smart-alecky, good-fer-nothin'
+fellow, then she'll be settled. But what's goin' to become of you and
+Bertie?"
+
+Miss Lady leaned impulsively over the child's back as he knelt in a
+chair beside the table, and kissed the bit of neck that showed between
+the collar and the curls: "Bert and I?" she repeated with a little catch
+in her voice; "why, we'll have to take care of each other, won't we,
+Bert?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+The Flathers' family was indulging in a birthday party. The table, set
+in the bedroom so that Chick might participate, was decorated at one end
+by a gorgeous pink cake, bearing a single candle, and at the other
+by Loreny herself, blue of eye, and chubby of cheek, who crawled
+triumphantly about among the dishes, bestowing equal attention on the
+sugar bowl and the molasses jug, only pausing to emit ecstatic screams
+when a rough, red head appeared above the table rim.
+
+In the bed, propped on pillows and with throat bandaged, Chick executed
+a lively tune with knife and fork on his plate, while Maria Flathers
+dedicated herself to the task of preventing Loreny May from putting her
+blue-slippered foot in the butter.
+
+Without, the sleet pelted the windows, and the red top of Mr. Iseling's
+wagon waiting at the gate. It whistled and rattled down Bean Alley
+and converted the telegraph wires into cables of ice. But the Flathers
+family, luxuriating in the unusual extravagance of an open fire, and
+cheered by the hilarity of the occasion, was happily oblivious to the
+storm until a sharp rap at the door brought the redheaded bear from
+under the table to answer the summons.
+
+"Well, if it ain't Mis' Squeerington!" cried Phineas Flathers
+effusively. "Out in all this storm! But I ain't surprised. Didn't I tell
+you, Maria, that I knowed she'd bring the baby a birthday present? Come
+up to the fire, mam. Maria git her a rocker."
+
+"No, no!" cried Miss Lady breathlessly. "I can't stay. I must get
+to town. My horse broke down in the bridge, and I'm on my way to the
+Junction to see if I can't get on the next train when it stops for
+water. I want you to go over and help me on."
+
+"Next train don't stop. It's a express. The local ain't due fer a hour
+an' a half. You ain't fit to go on yit, mam, nohow. I never seen you
+all in like this before! Maria, can't you fix her up a cup of coffee or
+somethin'?"
+
+Miss Lady shook her head, and leaned wearily against the mantel.
+
+"I'll be all right. Are you sure about the trains?"
+
+"Sure az the taxes. You're in fer a wait, an' we'll git a nice little
+visit out of you. Guess you are 'sprised to see me home this time of
+day?"
+
+"I hadn't thought about it."
+
+"Well, you see it's her birthday, an' tor_m_adoes couldn't 'a' kept me
+from bringin' her a cake. Ain't she the purties' object you ever set yer
+two optics on? Say 'Da-da,' Loreny,--leave off talkin' to her, Chick. Go
+on, Loreny, say, 'Da-da' fer de purty lady!"
+
+"He's that silly about her," said Maria Flathers, trying to conceal her
+own pride. "He won't leave me put anything but white dresses and blue
+shoes on her, an' he works extra time to pay fer 'em. Myrtella says
+there ain't no fools like old ones."
+
+"That's all right," said Phineas; "she'll have more to say when I give
+Loreny a diamond ring on her next birthday. Iseling'll be givin' me a
+raise soon. He's as good as said so. He knows I'm good fer everything
+from bossin' a big job to drivin' a wagon; then look at the trade I
+command! Why, Mis' Squeerington, them Ladies' Aiders in the Immanuel
+Church, follered me solid, an' Mrs. Ivy an' the Anti-Tobacs--Shoo, I
+could start out fer myself tomorrow."
+
+"It's one o'clock!" warned Maria, anxious to speed her master on his way
+in order that she might come in for a few conversational crumbs.
+
+"One o'clock! Holy Moses! I must be hiking, if I want to hear the rest
+of the trial."
+
+"The trial?" repeated Miss Lady instantly alert; "were you at the
+courthouse this morning?"
+
+"Yes, mam, I was. Everybody was. Court room packed to the doors. I sez
+to Iseling this morning, I sez, 'I'll make the noon delivery all right,
+but the rest of the day's my own. It ain't only because of my former
+connection with the Sequin family,' sez I; 'it's because Mr. Don Morley
+is a personal friend of mine. He's white an' he's square,' sez I, 'an'
+the open-handedest young gent I ever done a favor for. If it's a case of
+standin' by him in trouble, or losin' my job,' I sez, 'why ta-ta to the
+job!'"
+
+"But when you left," urged Miss Lady, "what were they doing? How did
+people feel about it?"
+
+"Mighty shaky, mam. They ain't got a scrap of good evidence fer him, an'
+enough ag'in him to sink a ship. Old man Wicker's son is puttin' up a
+stiff fight, but he's up aginst Kinner, an' Kinner could convict St.
+Peter hisself!"
+
+"But can't they get the truth out of Sheeley? Can't they force him to
+tell what happened?"
+
+Phineas shrugged contemptuously: "Sheeley lost his memory when he lost
+his eye. One was put out with lead, an' the other with silver. Says now
+he wasn't in the fight at all."
+
+"It's a lie! He wuz!" Chick had risen from his pillow, and was leaning
+forward excitedly.
+
+"What do you mean, Chick? How do you know?"
+
+"He _wuz_ in the fight!" he cried huskily. "It was 'tween him an' the
+drunk. Sheeley ketched him fakin' a ace, an' he calls Sheeley a liar,
+an' they fit all over the floor. The big one wasn't in it! He kep'
+tryin' to stop 'em, buttin' in with his whip."
+
+"But how do you know all this, Chick?" cried Miss Lady almost fiercely;
+"did the Sheeley boy tell you?"
+
+"Skeeter? Shucks, he don't know nothin' 'ceptin' what his paw tole him."
+
+"But who told you?"
+
+Chick closed his lips and shook his head: "He'll set the cop on me."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Skeeter's paw. Fer smashin' the slot machine. But I never took none of
+his money, Mis' Squeerington; it was mine!" His lips began to tremble.
+
+"The cop won't get you, Chick," said Miss Lady, now on her knees beside
+him, coaxing out each statement, and trying to keep down her excitement.
+"Tell me, quick! How do you know about the shooting?"
+
+"'Cause," said Chick fearfully, "I--I seen it!"
+
+"Well, if that ain't the limit!" said Phineas, while Maria gathered
+Loreny up under the impression that Chick had lost his mind, and might
+become dangerous.
+
+"I got shut up in the saloon," continued Chick, evidently torn between
+the desire to be a hero and the fear of the consequences, "an' it was
+night, an' I went to sleep."
+
+"Yes, yes!" pressed Miss Lady; "go on."
+
+"Then they come in an' got to rough-housin' an' I crawl up-stairs an'
+lay on me stommick an' peek through the crack. An' Sheeley an' the Drunk
+they got to scrappin' like I tole you. An' then while the big one was
+tryin' to git Sheeley to quit, the Drunk he come over to the door right
+where I was layin' at, an' he steady hisself aginst the wall an' bang
+loose at Sheeley with a pistol."
+
+"Would you know the Big One again? Oh, Chick, try to remember what he
+looked like!"
+
+Chick shook his head, "Naw, I don't 'member what none of 'em looked
+like. But you know which one he was; he gimme the silver knob offen his
+whip."
+
+Miss Lady sprang to her feet: "We must get him to the courthouse, Mr.
+Flathers. Quick! Help me with his clothes. I'll put on his shoes and
+stockings."
+
+"But the train--" began Phineas.
+
+"We can't wait for it!" cried Miss Lady. "You must drive us in the
+wagon." In a surprisingly few minutes Chick, bewildered but interested,
+was fully clothed. "Give me the blankets off the bed and help me wrap
+them around him," said Miss Lady. "There! You carry him and I'll hold
+the umbrella. Keep your mouth shut, Chick; don't you dare open it until
+I tell you."
+
+[Illustration: "Tell me quick! How do you know about the shooting?"]
+
+The bewildered Chick, encased like a mummy, was rushed out to the wagon
+and deposited between two ice-cream freezers, while Miss Lady knelt
+beside him, trying to shield him from the wind. Just as Phincas was
+driving away there was a call from the cottage.
+
+For the first and only time in her life Maria Flathers had collided with
+an idea. In vain she reversed her mental engines and tried to back off,
+but the collision was head on, and she and the idea were firmly welded
+together.
+
+"Here's the whip han'le!" she called wildly, as the wind caught her
+skirts and twisted them about her. "I been usin' it fer a thimble. An'
+here's the whip itself--Take'em along! Take'em fer a witness!"
+
+Once again the red-topped wagon got started, this time in earnest.
+Through the mud and slush of Bean Alley, past the Dump Heap, across the
+Common, the sturdy little mare dashed furiously.
+
+"Don't breathe through your mouth, Chick!" implored Miss Lady. "And
+don't be afraid. All you have to do is to tell what you saw. Don't keep
+back anything, tell it just as you told it to me."
+
+"'Bout the slot machine?" queried an anxious voice from the blankets.
+
+"About everything. Nobody is going to hurt you, or blame you. You aren't
+catching cold, are you? Here put on my gloves, and you mustn't talk, not
+another word."
+
+For an interminable time they splashed through the slush of the road,
+before they came to the pavements of the city. Looking out of the wagon,
+they could see the broad yellow waters of the river with its long, black
+coal barges, and the dim outline of Billy-goat Hill, growing fainter in
+the distance.
+
+"Faster, Mr. Flathers, drive faster!" implored Miss Lady.
+
+Phineas willingly laid the whip across the flank of the little mare, and
+they dashed along, through the crowded thoroughfare into a broad street
+of warehouses, where they followed the tramway straight across the
+murky city. All the while the sleet beat on the red top of the wagon
+and rattled under the horse's hoofs, and Miss Lady sat clasping Chick,
+counting the passing moments.
+
+At last the dark courthouse loomed up ahead of them, and Phineas
+rounding a curb by a fraction, dashed for the open square.
+
+"Morley case gone to the jury?" he hung half out of the wagon to shout
+to a man coming down the wide steps.
+
+"Not yet."
+
+Miss Lady was already frantically pulling the blankets from the
+submerged Chick.
+
+"Wait for Mr. Flathers to carry you," she cried, springing to the ground
+and looking up at him anxiously. "Remember you are going to tell them
+everything. You are helping to save Mr. Morley, and you're doing it for
+me."
+
+The eyes of the pale, spindle-legged child, standing in the end of
+the wagon, flashed past the courthouse to the barred windows of the
+adjoining jail. Suddenly his legs fell to shaking harder even than they
+had shaken at the hospital, and his lips quivered threateningly.
+
+"Chick!" cried Miss Lady despairingly. "You aren't going to fail me--you
+are going to stand by me, aren't you?"
+
+For a moment he shut his eyes very tight, then he transferred the small
+quid of tobacco which had been his one solace in the past hour, from his
+right cheek to his left.
+
+"Sure!" he said resolutely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+"One! two! three! four!"
+
+The big clock that had ticked away so many anxious moments for so many
+anxious watchers, hurled its announcement over the crowded court room.
+The last testimony had been given, Chick had told his story, produced
+his proofs and identified Morley; the prosecuting attorney had torn
+his story to tatters, and confused the youthful witness hopelessly; the
+counsel for the defense had now risen to make his final speech to the
+jury. Suspense hung thick as a fog over the court room.
+
+Miss Lady, sitting between Mr. Gooch and Connie, pushed back her short
+black veil impatiently. The hours she had fought through since midnight
+seemed as nothing compared to this eternity of waiting. Since entering
+the room she had not once looked at Donald. She dared not open even a
+tiny sluice in the dike that held back the sea of her love. But in
+every fiber of her being she felt him sitting there under suspicion, his
+future in the hands of twelve men who had the power of making him suffer
+the penalty of a crime which he had not committed. It was unjust, cruel,
+infamous! Surge after surge of indignation swept over her. She would
+fight for him against them all. She would get up and tell what she knew
+of the story, and his reason for staying abroad.
+
+"Isn't he magnificent?" whispered Connie, clasping her arm; "he has
+been perfectly calm and quiet like that all along, and yet think what it
+means to him! Look at his eyes!"
+
+Miss Lady could not look, the grip at her throat was tightening and a
+dull roar sounded in her ears.
+
+"But if he loses, Connie? If he loses, what then?"
+
+"He won't lose. He's going to win. You ought to have heard him this
+morning. He was perfectly magnificent! Even Mr. Gooch said he made him
+think of Lincoln. Listen to him now!"
+
+Miss Lady followed Connie's adoring gaze until it rested on the stern,
+earnest face of Noah Wicker, then the truth rushed upon her.
+
+For a moment a blindness seized her, then she sprang to her feet and
+lifted her face to Don. He had been waiting for that look ever since she
+entered the court room, and when it came he was ready for it.
+
+As Noah Wicker sat down amid a thunder of applause, and the jury,
+after a brief charge from the bench made ready to retire, a slender,
+black-gowned figure pushed her way impetuously through the crowd. She
+circled the rear seats and rushed headlong to where the defendant sat.
+
+"Are you a member of Mr. Morley's family?" asked the deputy sheriff.
+
+"No," said Miss Lady, brushing him aside, "but I'm going to be."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+That evening Mr. Gooch went home with the Ivys whom, as he was now
+adrift, he purposed adopting. For a long time they sat over the fire
+discussing the exciting events of the day.
+
+"I could scarcely believe my eyes," murmured Mrs. Ivy, "when at the
+verdict,' Not Guilty,' I saw her fling her arms about his neck!"
+
+"Why surprised?" snapped the attorney. "Aren't women born fatuous?"
+
+"But the whole thing is so indelicate, so heartless! A young widow who
+ought to be mourning beside her husband's grave, and a wild young man
+who has just escaped the penitentiary. Hasn't suffering taught them
+anything?"
+
+Gerald, sitting on a hassock before the fire with hands clasped about
+his knees, looked up with shining eyes:
+
+"You don't understand, Mater! All this has been the price they've paid
+for each other. A great love like theirs comes high. One must pay for
+it with suffering. Jove, it was worth it! That one look they gave each
+other, there at the end--",
+
+"But the dear, dear Doctor," interrupted Mrs. Ivy, "laid away only seven
+months ago!"
+
+"Six months and three weeks," corrected Mr. Gooch testily.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill, by Alice Hegan Rice
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