The Madness of Philip

THE HEART OF A CHILD

The sun-glare lies on the road and the field and the house. The beetles buzz and buzz, and the hens chuckle drowsily, half sunk in the gray dust. There are only three little white clouds in all the warm blue sky. It is quite still, except for the hens and the beetles and the occasional flap of the collie’s tail on the warm flags. No one passes up or down the road. It is the hot noon sleep of the country in August.

Suddenly comes the grating sound of something dragged over the floor, and the door opens. The Child pushes out with a little wooden rocking-chair and a great tin pan heaped with unshelled peas. She stands the chair carefully in the coolest patch of shade and squeezes her plump little body between the curved arms. Her blue-checked apron is tied by the waistband around her neck—it is a grown woman’s apron, and covers her and the chair, which is far too small for her, now. 96But one cannot be always eight years old, and when one is eleven shall one relinquish without a pang the birthday gifts of one’s childhood?

She lays the pan beside her and puts a handful of peas into her blue-checked lap. She presses her brown little thumb against the sharp green edge and drags it down the pod. Out patter the little green balls, and rattle into the pan. Truly, a pleasant sound! Like the rain on the roof. When she was very little and slept with her mother, she woke once in the night, and it was raining hard. The thunder frightened her, and her mother comforted her and sang her to sleep in the bed. And when the lightning flashed and all the room was bright and dreadful, her mother told her to keep her eyes shut and then the flashes would not trouble her. So she screwed her eyes hard together and held her mother’s hand and drifted off to sleep.

That was so long ago! But whenever anything rattles and patters she shuts her eyes quickly, and sees for a moment the dark room and the square white counterpane, and hears her mother 97singing “Mary of Argyle.” She wonders if when we die and go to heaven we are reminded by little sights and sounds of what we used to do on earth. Of course, we shall do only pleasant things there, but they might remind us of the pleasant things here—the pasture in the early morning, when it is so still and cool and almost strange; the barn, full of sweet piles of hay, musical with pigeons, checkered with amber sunlight, a fairy palace on whose fragrant divans one sits with sultans and slave girls, and listens to Sindbad and Aladdin; the shady porch, where cool white milk and dark shiny gingerbread wait the weary, berry-stained wanderer. In the brown book in the parlor is a poem about a little girl who used to “take her little porringer and eat her supper there.” The Child feels like that little girl when she eats in the porch.

There is another little girl in the brown book—“Sweet Lucy Gray.” She thinks of Lucy when she comes home alone at dusk, and quickens her steps.

98How frightened she would be! Not that the Child has been foolishly taught to fear. Only that she is imaginative, and knows enough to be afraid.

In that poem there is mention of one “minster-clock.” What may that be? She connects it hazily with the watch that the minister takes out before the sermon. But that could never strike. If she could have one wish in all her life she knows what it would be. A beautiful gold watch all chased with figures and a cherry-colored ribbon tied into the handle. Then she would put it into her waist—but her dresses open in the back! The disadvantages of youth are obvious enough, in all conscience, without that last pathetic touch. When can she have a separate waist and skirt?

Suppose she should die before she grows old enough to attain this glory? People have died when they were young—much younger than she. The little Waters girl died, and she was only nine. The Child went to the funeral, but not with her mother. She slipped into the kitchen and listened at the door. When she told her mother that she had gone her mother looked at her so strangely.

99“Why did you want to go?” she said. The Child could not tell.

“It made me cry,” she answered, “but I felt good, too. I want her to tell my brother that I am pretty well, and that I hope he is the same, when she gets to heaven. Do you suppose she will get there by to-night?”

They talked about her conduct on that occasion so strangely and so long that she never spoke any more with them about death or the life after it. But she thought about these things.

She wondered whether Mary Waters remembered the secret place they made together in a hollow gate-post. Mary Waters had a way of sometimes telling things not quite as they really were. Did she do so now? Or had she told enough lies to send her to hell? For liars inherit hell. It is not that this fact has been impressed upon her mind by others, but she has read it in the Bible and heard it read.

There are strange things in the Bible. One is commanded to refrain from doing so many things that one never would do anyway. But those 100things must have been done by the Israelites and the Pharisees and the Hittites and the Publicans. Then did God mean that the Americans must keep the same laws? But Americans were free and equal. They threw over the tea, and with a wild whoop—wait! let us pretend!

This is Boston. It is still and quiet. Night is dark all around. Soft and stealthy come footsteps—the Indians! They gather from the shadows of the trees and houses, they wave their tomahawks exultantly, they glide to the wharf. In their path stands a little girl in a blue-checked apron. She falls upon her knees in terror.

“Save me!” she cries. The chief laughs a horrid laugh; he raises his tomahawk—the dog barks loud and the Child nearly drops the peas in her lap, so frightened she is.

“I thought they were real! I thought they were coming!” she whispers to herself.

Let us think of pleasant things! Peas are so small if you count them by ones! If people considered whenever they gobbled peas so quickly that every one had to be shelled by one poor, 101tired little girl! But no, they eat them without a thought of how she sat in the little tight chair and rattled them into the pan. If they were only rich enough to leave the chair and the peas and the farm and go to a city! What city? Oh, New York or Boston or Persia. In Persia the days are full of richness and the nights are Arabian. Along the streets walk veiled and lovely women—does it matter that to the Child their veils are of the dull blue cotton that wreathes her mother’s hat? By all the Persian monarchs, no!—driving black dogs and white hinds, followed by turbaned slaves and glaring eunuchs, with misty genii hovering in the background. They enter a frowning portal—but let us pretend!

This is Persia. The streets are narrow; the people jostle and crowd to one side a little girl in a blue-checked apron. She walks along unknown, unnoticed. Wait! Who is this? It is a slave in a turban with a scimitar flashing with jewels. He bows low.

“I am bidden to tell you that your presence 102is desired by my master, lovely maiden!” The lovely maiden looks haughtily at him.

“I will follow you, Slave,” she says. They go on to a low narrow door. The slave says a magic word and the door swings open. Through a long passage and a great hall they go. There bursts upon them a radiance of light. Flowers fill the air with an unearthly fragrance. Golden goblets and ruby pitchers stand on silver salvers with “dried fruit, cakes, and sweetmeats, which give an appetite for drinking.” Lovely slave girls lead the maiden to the bath, and attire her in rich and costly robes. They seat her in a golden chair and give her a bowl of seed-pearls to string. (These are the pearls.) She lifts her lovely head and says in a voice of silver music, “Where is your master?”

“Lady,” says one of the slaves, bowing low, “he comes.” She hears the feet of the approaching prince; she dares not raise her eyes. How will he look? What gift will he bring? She sinks her hands deep in the pearls. Ah, what is that? A great sweet-bough drops in the pan.

103“Your gran’ma wants them peas!” says the prince in genial rebuke. Alas! And did Haroun-al-Raschid speak through his nose?

The Child stares at him, dazed.

“These are the pearls.”

“These—these are pearls!” she says. “I am stringing them for my girdle! Does your Highness desire that I should wear this—this carbuncle?”

His Highness laughs loud and long.

“It’s a sweet-bough,” he chuckles, “and I guess you better eat it right up, now.” One moment of wavering: shall awful wrath come upon this desecrator of the soul’s best rites, or good 104fellowship and feasting be given him? She scowls, she shrugs her aproned shoulders, she glances from beneath her lashes, she smiles.

“I’ll give you half,” she announces. After all, it is hardly probable that the prince would have helped her shell the peas. And William Searles will, if he is only the chore-boy. Vain hope!

“I got to drive the chickens ’round back,” he demurs. “I can’t spend my time shellin’ peas. Your gran’ma says if you don’t get ’em done pretty soon you can’t go over to Miss Salome’s this afternoon. She says you’re a dreadful slow child!”

This is the last straw. The Child rises with what would indeed be a freezing dignity were it not that with her rises the birthday-chair. “William,” she begins. But more suddenly than is consistent with her tone she sinks back. William sits upon the grass shaking with laughter.

“You looked so awful funny, so awful funny!” he gasps. The Child hangs for a moment between tears and laughter. Then she accepts the situation and laughs as merrily as the chore-boy

105“I was pretending I was a princess,” she explains. “I——”

“Ho!” rejoins William, “you ain’t like a princess! You don’t look like the ones you tell about, anyway! Why”—as she glares at him over the apron, “your hair’s red, red! An’ your eyes are kind o’ green, they are! An’ you’re just jam-packed full o’ freckles! I guess I know well enough how they look, and you ain’t like ’em!”

The tears stand in her eyes, but she will not let them fall.

“I don’t care, William Searles,” she says bravely, “I may look freckled, but I don’t feel so! And it’s better to know how they look than—” But no! She is an honest Child, with all her imaginings. She knows that it is better to look like them than to know about them: better for the maiden and the prince, at least. William waits for the sentence. She begins again.

“William Searles,” she says solemnly, “wouldn’t you rather I could tell you about those princesses than look like them?” William’s eyes sparkle greedily.

106“You bet!” he replies with fervor. The Child sighs with relief.

“All right,” she says, “then don’t complain.”

She is alone again, and only William’s faint and fainter invitations to the chickens break the silence. The peas fly into the pan. Suppose she should be kept from Miss Salome’s! But no, that shall not be. She looks ahead to the happy afternoon, singing as she works.

And now, and now the time has come. The dishes are wiped, the cat fed, and the fennel picked for the long sermon to-morrow. She, her very self, in her new dotted lawn walks carefully up the hill to the big house, terraced and gravel-pathed. She knocks timidly at the brass ring and the tall colored butler lets her in. He is the only indoor man-servant she has ever seen, and she reverences him greatly. He smiles condescendingly at her, as he smiles not upon all the country people.

“If Miss will walk up,” he says. She goes up the soft-carpeted stairs into the upstairs drawing-room. She draw’s a long breath of happiness and 107wonder ever new, and makes her little curtsy to Miss Salome.

Out of the dim delicious dusk of the room come slowly the familiar treasures: the high polished desk, the great piano, the marvelous service of Delft that fills a monstrous sideboard in the distance, the chairs, all silk and satin and shining wood, the great pictures in gilt frames. In the largest chair sits Miss Salome. Will the Child ever tire of looking at her pale lined face, her silver high-dressed hair, her beautiful hands sparkling with rings, her haughty mouth, her tired, troubled eyes? She must have been almost as lovely as the Princess Angelica, once. But she smiles so seldom. She puts out her hand.

“And what has happened since last Saturday?” she says.

The Child laughs for pure joy. To talk, to describe, to venture at analysis, to ask the why and wherefore, to illustrate by gesture as vivid as her speech—these things are her happiness. To be suffered this joy in snatches is much, to have it demanded, and for one whole afternoon! Here 108is no one to reprove, no one to blame the idle hands, no one to question the propriety of mimicry, or to insist on her sitting in her little chair.

Miss Salome watches her flitting about the dusky parlor, her reddish gold hair gleaming now against the Delft blue, now against the polished mahogany desk. She tells of the chickens that lost their mother. She wanders about clucking for her brood and cooing over the returned prodigals. She walks across the room as William does—her slouching gait, open mouth, drawling voice, irresistibly perfect. She describes the shooting star that seemed to her like a lost spirit, gone to sorrow and the earth.

“It made me think of ‘Lucifer, son of the morning, how art thou fallen!’” she says solemnly. “I wonder how that star felt, Miss Salome?”

There is a long pause. The lady sighs.

Then, “You may read, if you like,” she says at last.

The Child’s face flushes for joy. She runs to the book-cases and brings out a small brown 109book. She fingers lovingly the tree-calf that covers the precious pages, and opens them before she finds her chair. She curls up on a great satin ottoman and smooths the leaves. Where is the farm? Where the peas? Where William? They are less than shadows, more unreal than dreams. Her voice trembles as she begins:

“’And now, your Highness permitting, I shall relate to your Majesty one of the most surprising adventures ever known to your Majesty—’” Ah, it is good to have been a child and perfectly happy.

What do children know of life, she thinks, who play with tops and dogs and kittens? There are books in the world. And they own all lands and seas and peoples, who own those printed leaves. Even Miss Salome does not know as much as the books. Even Miss Salome cannot say such curious wonderful things. Why is Miss Salome so good to her? In heaven, will they see each other? “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” Suppose she should be put in Miss Salome’s? Will the “Arabian Nights” be 110there? When she lifts her eyes from the book they fall on an immense peacock-feather fan. It glows on the wall, and the eyes dilate and tremble and satisfy her hungry little soul with the color she loves. On a small table near her stands a sandal-wood cabinet. Its faint sweet smell mingles with the spices and gums of the tale, and should a Genius spring from the cover and bow to the ground before them, she would not be surprised.

With a sigh of pleasure she releases the princess and outwits the evil spirit.

“’And now if your Majesty would care to listen to the story of the Fisherman——’”

“That is enough,” says Miss Salome. “Are you tired?” The Child’s eyes answer her.

“Then sing to me.”

“What shall I sing?” says the Child. “’Lord Lovell’”?

“If you like,” answers Miss Salome.

The Child rises and stands before the great chair. Her face is raised and serious. She knows only ballads, but to her they are opera 111and symphony in one. She clasps her hands and begins:

Her voice rings true as a bell. Miss Salome smiles at the eager little face.

She carries them through fateful verses and unconsciously softens and saddens her voice at the woful ending, where

112Miss Salome applauds vigorously.

“One more,” she begs.

The Child’s heart grows big with happiness. That she should love it so, and yet with it pleasure others! It is too much joy. She will make a special prayer to-night and thank God, as does her grandmother, for unexpected bounty.

“I will sing, ‘Come with thy lute,’” she says. It is a quaint, old-fashioned tune, and her voice rises and falls, and reaches for the notes with an almost pathetic feeling for their beauty:

She looks at the lovely lady in the white satin gown in the great gold frame before her. How beautiful she must have been! She died when she was very young. Her husband shot himself with grief for her. She might have sung that 113song to him—who knows? The Child chokes and swallows her tears at the end of the song, and when she looks at Miss Salome she sees that her eyes, too, are full of tears.

“Oh, I have made you cry! I am sorry—so sorry!”

Miss Salome wipes her eyes.

“If I make my guests unhappy, they will not care to come again,” she says. “Ring for Peter, dear child.” So the Child taps the bell, and Peter comes gravely in with the beautiful silver tray, and in a flutter of delight the Child forgets the song and the picture. Miss Salome cuts the dark frosted cake, and dishes into glass plates the candied ginger, floating in syrup, and pours out cups of real tea. And the Fairy Princess is served with a banquet worthy of her dreams. Oh, to be at last in Miss Salome’s mansion!

The clock chimes for half-past five. Heaven is over. She brushes the crumbs to a little heap on her gilt-rimmed plate.

“I must go now, I think,” she says with obvious effort. Her hostess smiles.

114“But you will come next week?” she asks. And the Child’s face lights up.

“Oh, yes! I’ll surely come next week, surely,” she replies with emphasis. So she goes around to Miss Salome’s chair, and the beautiful ringed hand raises her face and strokes her little freckled cheek.

“Good-by, my Sunshine!” she says. The Child catches the hand in a rush of loving worship and kisses it.

“I will never be cross to William Searles again, never!” she cries. “I will be good to everybody—even to stupid people!” Miss Salome pinches her cheek and laughs.

And the Child goes out and down the steps of the terrace, rapt, wondering, lifted to a height of love and admiration that keeps her little soul to its sweetest, highest pitch for—ah, measure not the time, I beg you! The children who are older, how long do the glow and the flush remain with them? They can only say, “There will be another!” and wait for it as well and patiently as may be.

115The Child goes back to the life of everyday, and embroiders its dull web with eyes of peacocks and sifts into it the scent of sandal-wood, and sets it weaving to the tune of ballads, quaint and sweet. Yet she has taken into another’s web, unknowing, a tiny scarlet thread of happiness, that weaves through the tarnished cloth of silver and blesses the pattern as it grows. And the Master of the Looms has planned it all.

ARDELIA IN ARCADY

“Throwing assorted refuse.”

When first the young lady from the College Settlement dragged Ardelia from her degradation—she was sitting on a dirty pavement and throwing assorted refuse at an unconscious policeman—like many of her companions in misery, she totally failed to realize the pit from which she was digged. It had never occurred to her that her situation was anything less than refined, and though, like most of us, she had 120failed to come up to her wildest ideals of happiness, in that respect she differed very little from the young lady who rescued her.

“Come here, little girl,” said the young lady invitingly. “Wouldn’t you like to come with me and have a nice, cool bath?”

“Naw,” said Ardelia, in tones rivaling the bath in coolness.

“You wouldn’t? Well, wouldn’t you like some bread and butter and jam?”

“Wha’s jam?” said Ardelia conservatively.

“Why, it’s—er—marmalade,” the young lady explained. “All sweet, you know.”

“Naw!” and Ardelia turned away and fingered the refuse with an air of finality that caused the young lady to sigh with vexation.

“I thought you might like to go on a picnic,” she said helplessly. “I thought all little girls liked——”

“Picnic? When?” cried Ardelia, moved instantly to interest. “I’m goin’!”

She brushed the garbage from her dress—Ardelia was of that emancipated order of women 121who disapprove of the senseless multiplication of feminine garments, and wore, herself, but one—and regarded her rescuer impatiently.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “I’m all ready. Hump along!”

“We’ll go and ask your mother first, won’t we?” suggested the young lady, a little bewildered at this sudden change of attitude.

“Jagged,” Ardelia returned laconically. “She’d lift y’r face off yer! Is it the Dago picnic?”

The young lady shuddered, and seizing the hand which she imagined to have had least to do with the refuse, she led Ardelia away—the first stage of her journey to Arcady.

Ardelia’s origin, like that of the civilization of ancient Egypt, was shrouded in mystery. At the age of two months she had been handed to a policeman by a scared-looking boy, who said vaguely that he found her in the park under a bench. The policeman had added her to the other foundling waiting that day at headquarters, and carried them to the matron of the institution devoted to their interest. Around the other baby’s neck 122was a medal of the Blessed Virgin, and a slip of paper pinned to her flannel petticoat labeled her Mary Katharine. The impartial order of the institution therefore delivered Ardelia, who was wholly unlabeled, to the Protestant fold, and one of the scrubbing-women named her.

Later she had taken up her residence with Mrs. Michael Fahey, who had consented to add to her precarious income by this means, and at the age of four she became the official nurse of Master John Sullivan Fahey. A terribly hot August, unlimited cold tea, and a habit of playing in the gutter in the noon glare proved too much for her charge, and he died on his third birthday. The ride to the funeral was the most exciting event of Ardelia’s life. For years she dated from it. Mrs. Fahey had so long regarded her as one of the family, that though her occupation was gone, and her board was no longer paid, she was whipped as regularly and cursed as comprehensively, in her foster-mother’s periodical sprees, as if they had been closely related.

What time she could spare from helping Mrs. 123Fahey in her somewhat casual household labor, and running errands to tell that lady’s perennially hopeful employers that her mother wasn’t feeling well to-day, but would it do if she came to-morrow, Ardelia spent in playing up and down the street with a band of little girls, or, in the very hottest days, sitting drowsy and vindictive at the head of a flight of stone steps that led into a down-stairs saloon. The damp, flat, beer-sweetened air that rushed out as the men pushed open the swing-doors was cool and refreshing to her; she was in a position to observe any possible customers at the three push-carts in her line of vision, and could rouse a flagging interest in life by listening to any one of the altercations that resounded from the tenements night and day. Drays clattered incessantly over the pavement, peddlers shouted, sharp gongs punctuated the steadier din. A policeman was almost always in sight, and one of them, Mr. Halloran, had more than once given her a penny for lemonade. In the room above her head an Italian band practised every evening, and then Ardelia was perfectly 124happy, for she loved music. Often before the band began, a hurdy-gurdy would station itself at the corner, and Ardelia and the other little girls would dance about, singly and in pairs, shouting the tunes they knew, rejoicing in the comparative coolness and the generally care-free atmosphere. Ardelia was the lightest-footed of them all; her hands held her skirts out almost gracefully, her thin little legs flew highest. Sometimes the saloon-keeper—they called him “Old Dutchy”—would nod approval as Ardelia skipped and pranced, and beckon her to him mysteriously.

“You trow your legs goot,” he would say. “We shall see you already dancing, no? Here is an olluf; eat her.”

And Ardelia, who loved olives to distraction, would nibble off small, sour, salty mouthfuls and suck the pit luxuriously while she listened to the Italian band.

Except for Mrs. Fahey’s errands, which never carried her far off the street, Ardelia had never left it in her life, and her journey to the Settlement-house 125was one of interest to her. She was a silent child, but for occasional fits of gabbling and chattering with the little girls in the street; and though she did not understand why the young lady from the Settlement should cry when she introduced her to two other ladies, nor why so many messages should be left for her mother, and so many local and general baths administered, she said very little. She was not accustomed to question fate, and when it sent her two fried eggs—she refused to eat them boiled—for her breakfast, she quietly placed them in the credit column as opposed to the baths, and held her peace.

Later, arrayed in starched and creaking garments which had been made for a slightly smaller child, she was transported to the station, and for the first time introduced to a railroad car. She sat stiffly on the red plush seat with furtive eyes and sucked-in lips, while the young lady talked reassuringly of daisies and cows and green grass. As Ardelia had never seen any of these things, it is hardly surprising that she was somewhat unenthusiastic; 126but the young lady was disappointed by this lack of ardor. She was so thoroughly convinced of the essential right of every child to a healthy country life, that she was almost disposed to blame Ardelia for not sharing her eminently creditable conviction.

“You can roll in the daisies, my dear, and pick all you want—all!” she urged eagerly. But no answering gleam woke in Ardelia’s eyes.

“Aw right,” she answered guardedly, and stared into her lap.

“Look out, dear, and see the fields and houses—see that handsome dog, and see the little pond!”

Ardelia shot a quick glance at the blurring green that dizzied her as it rushed by; the train was a fast express making up for lost time. Then with a scowl she resumed the contemplation of her starched gingham lap. The swelteringly hot day, and the rapid, unaccustomed motion combined to afflict her with a strange internal anticipation of future woe. Once last summer, when she ate the liquid dregs of the ice-cream 127man’s great tin, and fell asleep in the room where her mother was frying onions, she had experienced this same foreboding, and the climax of that dreadful day lingered yet in her memory. So she set her teeth and waited with stoical resignation for the end, while the young lady babbled of green fields, and wondered why the child should be so sullen. Finally she laid it to homesickness, and recovered her faith in human nature.

At last they stopped. The young lady seized her hand, and led her through the narrow aisle, down the steep steps, across the little country-station platform, and Ardelia was in Arcady.

A bare-legged boy in blue overalls and a wide straw hat then drove them many miles along a hot, dusty road, that wound endlessly through the parched country fields. To the young lady’s remark that they needed rain sadly, he replied, “Yep!” and held his peace for the following hour. Occasionally they passed another horse, but for the most part the only sight or sound of life was afforded by the hens clucking angrily as 128the travelers drove them from their dust baths in the powdery road. Released from her horror of foreboding, Ardelia took a more apparent interest in her situation, and would perhaps have spoken if her chaperone had opened conversation; but the young lady was weary of such efforts, disposed to a headache from the blinding heat, and altogether inclined to silence. At last they turned into a driveway, and drew up before a gray wooden house. Ardelia, cramped with sitting still, for she had not altered her position since she was placed stiffly on the seat between her fellow-passengers, was lifted down and escorted up the shingle-walk to the porch. A spare, dark-eyed woman in a checked apron advanced to meet them.

“Terrible hot to-day, ain’t it?” she sighed. “I’m real glad to see you, Miss Forsythe. Won’t you cool off a little before you go on? This is the little girl, I s’pose. I guess it’s pretty cool to what she’s accustomed to, ain’t it, Delia?”

“No, I thank you, Mrs. Slater, I’ll go right on to the house. Now, Ardelia, here you are in the 129country. I’m staying with my friend in a big white house about a quarter of a mile farther on. You can’t see it from here, but if you want anything you can just walk over. Day after to-morrow is the picnic I told you about. You’ll see me then, any way. Now run right out in the grass and pick all the daisies you want. Don’t be afraid; no one will drive you off this grass!”

“’Huh?’”

The force of this was lost on Ardelia, who had never been driven off any grass whatever, but she gathered that she was expected to walk out into the thick, rank growth of the unmowed side yard, and strode downward obediently, turning when in the exact center of the plot, for further orders.

“Now pick them! Pick the daisies!” cried Miss Forsythe excitedly. “I want to see you.”

Ardelia looked blank.

“Huh?” she said.

130“Gather them. Get a bunch. Oh, you poor child! Mrs. Slater, she doesn’t know how!” Miss Forsythe was deeply moved and illustrated by picking imaginary daisies on the porch. Ardelia’s quick eyes followed her gestures, and stooping, she scooped the heads from three daisies and started back with them, staring distrustfully into the depths of the thick clinging grass as she pushed through it. Miss Forsythe gasped.

“No, no, dear! Pull them up! Take the stem, too,” she explained. “Pick the whole flower!”

Ardelia bent over again, tugged at a thick-stemmed clover, brought it up by the roots, recovered her balance with difficulty, and assaulted a neighboring daisy. On this she cut her hands, and sucking off the blood angrily, she grabbed a handful of coarse grass, and plowing through the tangled mass about her feet, laid the spoils awkwardly on the young lady’s lap.

Miss Forsythe stared at the dirty, trailing roots that stained her linen skirt and sighed.

“Thank you, dear,” she said politely, “but I 131meant them for you. I meant you to have a bunch. Don’t you want them?”

“Naw!” said Ardelia decidedly, nursing her cut hand and stepping with relief on the smooth floor of the porch.

Miss Forsythe’s eyes brightened suddenly.

“I know what you want,” she cried, “you’re thirsty! Mrs. Slater, won’t you get us some of your good, creamy milk? Don’t you want a drink, Ardelia?”

Ardelia nodded. She felt very tired, and the glare of the sun seemed reflected from everything into her dazed eyes. When Mrs. Slater appeared with the foaming yellow glasses she wound her nervous little hands about the stem of the goblet and began a deep draught. She did not like it, it was hard to swallow, and instinct warned her not to go on with it; but all the thirst of a long morning—Ardelia was used to drinking frequently—urged her on, and its icy coldness enabled her to finish the glass. She handed it back with a deep sigh. The young lady clapped her hands.

“There!” she cried. “Now, how do you like 132real milk, Ardelia? I declare, you look like another child already! You can have all you want every day—why, what’s the matter?”

For Ardelia was growing ghastly pale before them; her eyes turned inward, her lips tightened. A blinding horror surged from her toes upward, and the memory of the liquid ice-cream and the frying onions faded before the awful reality of her present agony.

“A blinding horror surged from her toes upward.”

Later, as she lay limp and white on the slippery hair-cloth sofa in Mrs. Slater’s musty parlor, she heard them discussing her situation.

“There was a lot of Fresh Air children over at Mis’ Simms’s,” her hostess explained, “and they ’most all of ’em said the milk was too strong—did you ever! Two or three of ’em was sick, like this one, but they got to love it in a little while. She will, too.”

133Ardelia shook her head feebly. She had learned her lesson. If success, as we are told, consists not in omitting to make mistakes, but in omitting to make the same one twice, Ardelia’s treatment of the milk question was eminently successful.

After a while Miss Forsythe went away, and at her urgent suggestion Ardelia came out and sat on the porch under the shade of a black umbrella. She sat motionless, staring into the grass, lost in the rapture of content that follows such a crisis as her recent misery, forgetful of all her earthly woes in the blessed certainty of her present calm. In a few minutes she was asleep.

When she awoke she was in a strange place. Outside the umbrella all was dusk and shadow. Only a square white mist filled the place of the barn, the tall trees loomed vaguely toward the dark sky, the stars were few. As she gazed in half-terror about her, a strange jangling came nearer and nearer, and a great animal with swinging sides, panting terribly, ran clumsily by, followed by a bare-legged boy, whose thudding feet sounded loud on the beaten path. Ardelia shrank 134against the wall with a cry that brought Mrs. Slater to her side.

“There, there, Delia, it’s only a cow. She won’t hurt you. She gives the milk—” Ardelia shuddered—“and the butter, too. Here’s some bread and butter for you. We’ve had our supper, but I thought the sleep would do you more good.”

Still shaken by the shock of that panting, hairy beast, Ardelia put out her hand for the bread and butter, and ate it greedily. Then she stretched her cramped limbs and looked over the umbrella. On the porch sat a bearded man in shirt-sleeves and stocking feet, his head thrown back against his chair, his mouth open. He snored audibly. Tipped back in another chair, his feet raised and pressed against one of the supports of the porch roof, sat a younger man. He was not asleep, for he was smoking a pipe, but he was as motionless as the other. Curled up on the steps was the boy who had brought them from the station. Occasionally he patted a mongrel collie beside him, and yawning, stretched himself, but he did not speak.

135“That’s Mr. Slater,” said the woman softly, “and the young man is my oldest son, William. Henry brought you up with the team. They’re out in the field all day, and they get pretty tired. It gets nice an’ cool out here by evenin’, don’t it?”

She leaned back and rocked silently to and fro, and Ardelia waited for the events of the evening. There were none. She wondered why the gas was not lit in all that shadowy darkness, why the people didn’t come along. She felt scared and lonely. Now that her stomach was filled, and her nerves refreshed by her long sleep, she was in a condition to realize that aside from all bodily discomfort she was sad—very sad. A new, unknown depression weighed her down. It grew steadily, something was happening, something constant and mournful—what? Suddenly she knew. It was a steady, recurrent noise, a buzzing, monotonous click. Now it rose, now it fell, accentuating the silence dense about it.

“Zig-a-zig! Zig-a-zig!” then a rest.

“Zig-a-zig! Zig-a-zig-a-zig!”

136She looked restlessly at Mrs. Slater. “Wha’s ’at?” she said.

“That? Oh, those are katydids. I s’pose you never heard ’em, that’s a fact. Kind o’ cozy, I think. Don’t you like ’em?”

“Naw,” said Ardelia.

Another long silence intervened. The rocking-chair swayed back and forth, and Mr. Slater snored. Little bright eyes glowed and disappeared, now high, now low, against the dark. It will never be known whether Ardelia thought them defective gaslights or the flashing, changing electric signs that add color to the night advertisements of her native city, for contrary to all fictional precedent, she did not inquire with interest what they were. She did not care, in fact.

After half an hour of the katydids William spoke.

“Nick Damon’s helpin’ in the south lot t’day,” he observed.

“Was he?” asked his mother, pausing a moment in her rocking.

“Yep.”

137Again he smoked, and the monotonous clamor was uninterrupted.

“Zig-a-zig! Zig-zig! Zig-a-zig-a-zig!”

Slowly, against the background of this machine-like clicking, there grew other sounds, weird, unhappy, far away.

“Wheep, wheep, wheep!”

This was a high, thin crying.

“Buroom! Brrroom! broom!”

This was low and resonant and solemn. Ardelia scowled.

“Wha’s ’at?” she asked again.

“That’s the frogs. Bull-frogs and peepers. Never heard them, either, did ye? Well, that’s what they are.”

William took his pipe out of his mouth.

“Come here, sissy, ’n I’ll tell y’ a story,” he said lazily.

Ardelia obeyed, and glancing timorously at the shadows, slipped around to his side.

“Onc’t they was an ol’ feller comin’ ’long cross-lots, late at night, an’ he come to a pond, an’ he kinder stopped up an’ says to himself, 138’Wonder how deep th’ ol’ pond is, anyhow?’ He was just a leetle—well, he’d had a drop too much, y’ see——”

“Had a what?” interrupted Ardelia.

“He was sort o’ rollin’ ’round—he didn’t know just what he was doin’——”

“Oh! Jagged!” said Ardelia comprehendingly.

“I guess so. An’ he heard a voice singin’ out, ’Knee deep! Knee deep! Knee deep!’”

William gave a startling imitation of the peepers: his voice was a high, shrill wail.

“’Oh, well,’ s’ he, ‘’f it’s just knee deep I’ll wade through,’ an’ he starts in.

“Just then he hears a big feller singin’ out, ‘Better go rrrround! Better go rrround! better-goround!’”

William rolled out a vibrating bass note that startled the bull-frogs themselves.

“’Lord!’ says he, ‘is it s’deep’s that? Well, I’ll go round, then.’ ’N’ off he starts to walk around.

“’Knee deep! Knee deep! Knee deep!’ says the peepers.

139“An’ there it was. Soon’s he’d start to do one thing, they’d tell him another. Make up his mind he couldn’t, so he stands there still, they do say, askin’ ’em every night which he better do.”

“Stands where?” Ardelia looked fearfully behind her.

“Oh, I d’know. Out in that swamp, mebbe.”

Again he smoked, and the younger boy chuckled.

Time passed by. To Ardelia it might have been minutes, hours, or generations. An unspeakable boredom, an ennui that struck to the roots of her soul, possessed her. Her muscles twitched from nervousness. Her feet ached and burned in the stiff boots.

Suddenly Mr. Slater coughed and arose. “Well, guess I’ll be gettin’ to bed,” he said. “Come on, boys. Hello, little girl! Come to visit with us, hey? Mind you don’t pick poison vine.”

He shuffled into the house, and the boys followed him in silence. Mrs. Slater led Ardelia 140upstairs into a little hot room, and told her to get into bed quick, for the lamp drew the mosquitoes.

Ardelia kicked off her shoes and approached the bed distrustfully. It sank down with her weight and smelled hot and queer. Rolling off, she stretched herself on the floor, and lay there disconsolately. Sharp, quick stabs from the swarming mosquitoes stung her to rage; she tossed about, slapping at them with exclamations that would have shocked Mrs. Slater. The eternal chatter of the katydids maddened her. She could not sleep. Across the swamp came the wail of the peepers.

“Knee deep! Knee deep! Knee deep!”

At home the hurdy-gurdy was playing, the women were gossiping on every step, the lights were everywhere—the blessed fearless gaslights—the little girls were dancing in the breeze that drew in from the East River, Old Dutchy was giving Maggie Kelly an olive;—Ardelia slapped viciously at a mosquito on her hot cheek, heard a great June bug flopping into the room through 141the loosely waving netting, and burst into tears of pain and fright, wrapping her head tightly in her gingham skirt.

In the morning Miss Forsythe came over to inquire after her charge’s health, accompanied by another young lady.

“How do you do, my dear?” said the new lady kindly. “How terribly the mosquitoes have stung you! What makes you stay in the house, and miss the beautiful fresh air? See that great plot of daisies—does she know that she can pick all she wants, poor little thing? I suppose she never had a chance! Come out with me, Ardelia, and let’s see which can pick the biggest bunch.”

And Ardelia, fortified by ham and eggs, went stolidly forth into the grass and silently attacked the daisies.

In the middle of her bunch the new young lady paused. “Why, Ethel, she isn’t barefoot!” she cried. “Come here, Ardelia, and take off your shoes and stockings directly. Shoes and stockings in the country! Now you’ll know what comfort 142is,” as she unlaced the boots rapidly on the porch.

“Oh, she’s been barefoot in the city,” explained Miss Forsythe, “but this will be different, of course.”

And so it was, but not in the sense she intended. To patter about bare-legged on the clear, safe pavement, was one thing; to venture unprotected into that waving, tripping tangle was another. She stepped cautiously upon the short grass near the house, and with jaw set and narrowed lids felt her way into the higher growth. The ladies clapped their hands at her happiness and freedom. Suddenly she stopped, she shrieked, she clawed the air with outspread fingers. Her face was gray with terror.

“Oh, gee! Oh, gee!” she screamed.

“What is it, Ardelia, what is it?” they cried lifting up their skirts in sympathy, “a snake?”

Mrs. Slater rushed out, seized Ardelia, half rigid with fear, and carried her to the porch. They elicited from her as she sat with her feet tucked 143under her and one hand convulsively clutching Mrs. Slater’s apron that something had rustled by her “down at the bottom,” that it was slippery, that she had stepped on it, and wanted to go home.

“Toad,” explained Mrs. Slater briefly. “Only a little hop-toad, Delia, that wouldn’t harm a baby, let alone a big girl nine years old, like you.”

But Ardelia, chattering with nervousness, wept for her shoes, and sat high and dry in a rocking-chair for the rest of the morning.

“She’s a queer child,” Mrs. Slater confided to the young ladies. “Not a drop of anything will she drink but cold tea. It don’t seem reasonable to give it to her all day, and I won’t do it, so she has to wait till meals. She makes a face if I say milk, and the water tastes slippery, she says, and salty-like. She won’t touch it. I tell her its good well water, but she just shakes her head. She’s stubborn’s a bronze mule, that child. Just mopes around. ’S morning she asked me when did the parades go by. I told her there wa’n’t 144any but the circus, an’ that had been already. I tried to cheer her up, sort of, with that Fresh Air picnic of yours to-morrow, Miss Forsythe, and s’she, ‘Oh, the Dago picnic,’ s’she, ‘will they have Tony’s band?’

“She don’t seem to take any int’rest in th’ farm, like those Fresh Air children, either. I showed her the hens an’ the eggs, an’ she said it was a lie about the hens layin’ ’em. ‘What d’you take me for?’ s’she. The idea! Then Henry milked the cow, to show her—she wouldn’t believe that, either—and with the milk streamin’ down before her, what do you s’pose she said? ‘You put it in!’ s’she. I never should ’a’ believed that, Miss Forsythe, if I hadn’t heard it.”

“Oh, she’ll get over it,” said Miss Forsythe easily, “just wait a few days. Good-by, Ardelia, eat a good supper.”

But this Ardelia did not do. She gazed fascinated at Mr. Slater, who loaded his fork with cold green peas, shot them into his mouth, and before disposing of them ultimately added to them half 145a slice of rye bread and a great gulp of tea in one breath, repeating this operation at regular intervals in voracious silence. She regarded William, who consumed eight large molasses cookies and three glasses of frothy milk, as a mere afterthought to the meal, gulping furiously. He never spoke. Henry she dared not look at, for he burst into laughter whenever she did, and cried out, “You put it in! You put it in!” which irritated her exceedingly. But she knew that he was biting great round bites out of countless slices of buttered bread, and in utter silence. Now Ardelia had never in her life eaten in silence. Mrs. Fahey, when eating, gossiped and fought alternately with Mr. Fahey’s old, half-blind mother; her son Danny, in a state of chronic dismissal from his various “jobs,” sang, whistled and performed clog dances under the table during the meal; their neighbor across the narrow hall shrieked her comments, friendly or otherwise; and all around and above and below resounded the busy noise of the crowded, clattering city street. It was the breath in her nostrils, the excitement of her nervous 146little life, and this cold-blooded stoking took away her appetite, never large.

Through the open door the buzz of the katydids was beginning tentatively. In the intervals of William’s gulps a faint bass note warned them from the swamp:

“Better go rrround! Better go round!”

Mrs. Slater filled their plates in silence. Henry slapped a mosquito and chuckled interiorly at some reminiscence. A cow-bell jangled sadly out of the gathering dusk.

Ardelia’s nerves strained and snapped. Her eyes grew wild.

“Fer Gawd’s sake, talk!” she cried sharply. “Are youse dumbies?”

The morning dawned fresh and fair; the trees and the brown turf smelled sweet, the homely barnyard noises brought a smile to Miss Forsythe’s sympathetic face, as she waited for Ardelia to join her in a drive to the station. But Ardelia did not smile. Her eyes ached with the great green glare, the strange scattered objects, the long 147unaccustomed vistas. Her cramped feet wearied for the smooth pavements, her ears hungered for the dear familiar din. She scowled at the winding, empty road; she shrieked at the passing oxen.

At the station Miss Forsythe shook her limp little hand.

“Good-by, dear,” she said. “I’ll bring the other little children back with me. You’ll enjoy that. Good-by.”

“I’m comin’, too,” said Ardelia.

“Why—no, dear—you wait for us. You’d only turn around and come right back, you know,” urged Miss Forsythe, secretly touched by this devotion to herself.

“Come back nothin’,” said Ardelia doggedly. “I’m goin’ home.”

“Why—why, Ardelia! Don’t you really like it?”

“Naw, it’s too hot.”

Miss Forsythe stared.

“But Ardelia, you don’t want to go back to that horrible smelly street? Not truly?”

148“Betcher life I do!” said Ardelia.

The train steamed in; Miss Forsythe mounted the steps uneasily, Ardelia clinging to her hand.

“It’s so lovely and quiet,” the young lady pleaded.

Ardelia shuddered. Again she seemed to hear that fiendish, mournful wailing:

“Knee deep! Knee deep! Knee deep!”

“It smells so good, Ardelia! All the green things!”

Good! that hot, rustling breeze of noonday, that damp and empty evening wind!

They rode in silence. But the jar and jolt of the engine made music in Ardelia’s ears; the crying of the hot babies, the familiar jargon of the newsboy:

“N’Yawk moyning paypers! Woyld! Joynal!” were a breath from home to her little cockney heart.

They pushed through the great station, they climbed the steps of the elevated track, they jingled on a cross-town car. And at a familiar corner Ardelia slipped loose her hand, uttered a 149grunt of joy, and Miss Forsythe looked for her in vain. She was gone.

But late in the evening, when the great city turned out to breathe, and sat with opened shirt and loosened bodice on the dirty steps; when the hurdy-gurdy executed brassy scales and the lights flared in endless sparkling rows; when the trolley gongs at the corner pierced the air, and feet tapped cheerfully down the cool stone steps of the beer-shop, Ardelia, bare-footed and abandoned, nibbling at a section of bologna sausage, secure in the hope of an olive to come, cakewalked insolently with a band of little girls behind a severe policeman, mocking his stolid gait, to the delight of Old Dutchy, who beamed approvingly at her prancings.

“Ja, ja, you trow out your feet goot. Some day we pay to see you, no? You like to get back already?”

Ardelia performed an audacious pas seul and reached for her olive.

“Ja, danky shun, Dutchy,” she said airily, and as the hurdy-gurdy moved away, and the oboe of 150the Italian band began to run up and down the scale, she sank upon her cool step, stretched her toes and sighed.

“Gee!” she murmured, “N’Yawk’s the place!”

EDGAR, THE CHOIR BOY UNCELESTIAL

You all know how they look in the pictures—enlarged photogravures, mostly: they have appealing violet eyes and drooping mouths and oval faces. They tip their heads back and to the side, and there is usually a broad beam of light falling across their little official nighties. People frame them in Flemish oak and hang them over the piano, and little girls long to resemble them.

But Edgar was not that kind. So greatly did he differ, in fact, that even the choirmaster, who ought to have known better, was deceived, and discovered him with difficulty. When that gentleman confronted them in the parish house, a mob of suspicious little boys, shoving, growling, snickering, and otherwise fulfilling their natures, he promptly selected Tim Mullaly, who possessed to an amazing degree the violet eyes and the 154drooping mouth and the oval face, as his first soprano. The choirmaster was young in years and his profession.

But Tim refused to sing the scale alone, and as the others scorned to accompany him in this exercise, Mr. Fellowes, determinedly patient, suggested in the hilarious “come-on-boys!” fashion consecrated to childhood by adults, that they should all join in some popular melody, to limber them up and dispel their uneasiness.

“But Tim refused to sing the scale alone.”

155“What shall we sing?” he called out breezily, from the piano-stool, faintly indicating a “ragtime” rhythm with his left hand, still facing them as he searched the forbidding countenances before him for a gleam of friendship.

After all, they were human boys, and they could all sing after a fashion, or they would not have been induced by relatives who had read the qualifications for choir membership to attend this trying function.

“’Hot time!’” burst from one of the youngsters.

“All right!” and the inviting melody drew them in; soon they were shouting lustily. Raucous altos, nasal sopranos, fatal attempts to compass a bass—at any rate, they were started. The verse was over, the chorus had begun, when a sudden sound sent the choirmaster’s heart to his throat, his hands left the keys. Into the medley of coarse, boyish shouting dropped a silvery thread of purest song, a very bird-note. For a moment it flowed on the level of the chorus, then suddenly, with an indescribable leap, a slurring 156rush, it rose to an octave above and led them all. The choirmaster twirled around on the stool.

“Who’s that? Which boy is singing up there?” he demanded excitedly. There was no reply. They grinned consciously at each other; one could imagine them all guilty.

“Come, come, boys! Don’t be silly—who was it?”

Silence, of the most sepulchral sort. Mr. Fellowes shrugged his shoulders, swung round again, and started the second verse. They dashed through it noisily; he picked out here and there a sweet little treble, one real alto. But his ears were pricked for something better, and presently it came. The rhythm was too enticing.

“By George, he’s a human blackbird!”

“That’s high C!”

The choirmaster burst into a joyous if somewhat reedy tenor.

157He whirled about, still singing, and caught the ecstatic, dreamy gaze of Tim Mullaly.

“It’s you!” he cried, pouncing on him. Tim giggled feebly.

“Yessir,” he said.

“Now sing this scale, and I’ll give you five cents.”

An envious sigh quavered through the parish hall.

Tim threw back his head and opened his drooping mouth.

“Do, re——”

There was a flash of blue gingham, a snarl of rage, a sound as of fifty pounds of small boy suddenly seated on the floor.

“Where’s yer fi’ cents?” a new voice inquired easily.

The choirmaster perceived with amazement that the owner of the voice, a freckled boy with an excessively retroussé nose, was sitting on the prostrate Tim.

“What is the meaning of this? Get up!” he said sternly. “What’s your name? I can’t have any of this sort of thing in my choir!”

158The freckled boy did not rise. In fact, he seated himself more comfortably on Master Mullaly, and demanded again:

“Where’s yer fi’ cents?”

“’Where’s yer fi’ cents?’”

The choirmaster stepped forward and seized the offender’s collar. As his fingers tightened, the captive burst into the chorus of the moment before—it was the blackbird voice! So obstinate was the choirmaster’s first impression that he looked instinctively at the fallen Tim to catch the notes, but Tim was struggling meekly but firmly for breath, and this free trilling came from above him. The choirmaster relaxed his hold.

159“It was you all the time!” he said in a stupor of surprise.

“Yep,” replied the singer, “it was me. Did yer think it was him?” with a slight jounce to indicate his victim.

“Get up, won’t you, and sing me something else,” the choirmaster urged. The boy rose promptly.

“What’ll I sing?” he returned amicably. There had been a different tone in the choirmaster’s voice.

“Happy Home! Happy Home!” the crowd demanded. They had stood to one side in the most neutral manner during the brief struggle that had laid Tim low, and listened respectfully to the brief colloquy that followed. It was evident that past experience had suggested this attitude on their part.

The choirmaster looked relieved. He had no narrow prejudices, but he realized that a hymn like “My Happy Home” comes with good effect from the parish-hall windows.

“Where’s your mouth organ?” demanded the 160freckled one of a larger boy in the crowd. The latter promptly produced the instrument in question, cuddled it in both hands a moment after the fashion of the virtuoso, and drew forth the jerky and complex series of strains peculiar to it. It was evidently a prelude—a tune vaguely familiar to the choirmaster. Suddenly the boy’s voice burst into this sombre background:

“’I’d leave my yappy yome fer you, Oo-oo-oo-oo!’”

The choirmaster sighed ecstatically. A voice so tender, so soft, so rich in appealing inflections he had never heard. The repeated vowels cooed, they caressed, they allured.

If you remember how Madame Melba cooes, “Edgardo! Edgardo-o-o!” when she sings the mad scene from “Lucia,” you will have an idea 161of the liquid, slipping notes of that snub-nosed, freckled boy.

“What’s your name?” asked the choirmaster respectfully.

It appeared at first to be Egg-nog, but resolved into Edgar Ogden under careful cross-examination, and its owner agreed to attend three weekly rehearsals and two Sunday services for the princely salary of twenty-five cents a week, the same to be increased in proportion to his progress.

Subsequent efforts proved that it was utterly hopeless to attempt to teach him to read music. When Tim Mullaly and the stupidest alto in the United States—as the choirmaster assured him—could stumble through what was considerately known as a duet at sight, and that was the work of many months, Edgar was still learning his solos by ear. It was wasted effort to insist, and the choirmaster spent long hours and nearly wore his forefinger to the bone, fixing in his pupil’s mind the succession of notes in anthems and Te Deums. Once learned, however, he never 162forgot them, and Mr. Fellowes thrilled with pride as the silver stream of his voice flowed higher, higher, above the organ, beyond the choir at his side, till the people in the church sighed and craned their necks to look at the wonderful boy.

“As a matter of fact, they looked, most of them, at Tim.”

As a matter of fact, they looked, most of them, at Tim Mullaly, who, fresh from his Saturday bath, in his little cassock and cotta, realized the dreams of the most exigent lithographer. He stood next to Edgar, and owing to a certain weakness of mind invariably followed with his lips the entire libretto, so to speak, of the work in hand. As his appealing expression and violet eyes were undetachable, he had all the effect of the soloist, and received most of the credit from that vast majority who fail to distinguish one little boy, like one Chinaman, from another, unless he possesses 163some such salient feature as Tim’s pleading gaze.

This little apprehension was mercifully unsuspected by Edgar, otherwise it is to be feared that the services of a physician would have been required in the Mullaly household. Not that Edgar had any professional pride in his voice. He possessed, according to his own ideas, many more valuable and decorative qualities. His power of song was entirely hereditary, and came to him from his father, who was of English descent. The elder Mr. Ogden, whom rumor reported to run frequent risks of being bitten like a serpent and stung like an adder at the last, had mounted to a dizzy height in the Knights of Pythias entirely through his voice, a sweet and powerful tenor, and was accustomed to spend the greater part of his time in committing to memory and practising dramatic songs of a highly moral variety with choruses on this order:

164At the proper point, a friend in another room would shoot off a blank cartridge to a stormy accompaniment on the Pythian piano, and the Knights would become so appreciative that the soloist, to borrow a classical phrase, rarely got home until morning. What time Mr. Ogden found himself able to spare from getting up his repertoire was judiciously employed in borrowing money for the purchase of new articles of regalia, for with the Pythians to rise was to shine.

His elder son Samuel, familiarly known as Squealer, inherited both his father’s tendencies, and was in great demand among the saloons and pool-rooms, where he sang ballads of a tender and moral nature, dealing mostly with the Home, and the sanctity of the family relation in general. One of these in especial, in which Squealer assumed a hortatory attitude and besought an imaginary parent to “take her back, Dad,” adding in a melting baritone,

so affected a certain bar-room habitué, whose habit of chasing his family through the tenement 165with a carving-knife had led them to move out of town, that he had been known to lay his head on the bar and weep audibly.

It was a moot point among his friends as to which was Squealer’s real chef d’œuvre, the song just mentioned or another which ran,

Very often after singing this Squealer would become too affected to endure the thought of what the song described as “the old home, empty now,” and would repair to some scene which drew less heavily on the emotions, thus assuring a sleepless if wrathful night to Mrs. Ogden, and fluent altercation on his return to the old home.

Mrs. Ogden was not musical herself, and devoted most of her energies to fine laundry work, a less emotional but more lucrative occupation. Edgar’s professional duties interested her chiefly by reason of the weekly salary, now grown to fifty cents, of which one-tenth was allowed him for his private purse, the remainder being applied 166to the very obvious necessities of the household. His consequent position as wage-earner was firmly established, and his mother, though she cherished a natural contempt for the mental calibre of any young man who considered Edgar’s voice worth fifty cents a week, saw to it that so remunerative an organ received all the consideration it deserved.

“Shiny storm rubbers were urged upon the artist’s reluctant feet.”

To Mr. Ogden’s undisguised horror, two new suits of under flannels were purchased at the beginning 167of the winter, and shiny storm rubbers were urged upon the artist’s reluctant feet on every slushy day. The most unconvincing cough was rewarded with black licorice, purchased from the general household fund, and when Edgar had the measles, the Prince of Wales, to use Mr. Ogden’s irritated phrase, might have been glad to taste the mutton broth and cocoa that fattened that impudent kid.

“She was not in the habit of applying her disciplinary measures to the throat.”

Nor was her system limited to this soft indulgence, 168as the occasion of one of the choirmaster’s visits proved. Fearful lest the purpose of his call should become evident too abruptly, he began by one of his customary eulogies of his first soprano’s voice. She received his enthusiasm coldly, indicated forcibly her own lack of musical ability, and boasted, with a pride inexplicable to one who has not been accustomed to consider this gift synonymous with penitentiary qualifications, that she could not carry a tune. On his mentioning somewhat diffidently that Edgar’s fines for tardiness, absence, etc., must in the nature of things make appreciable inroads upon his salary, the interview assumed a different aspect.

Wiping her hands on her apron, Mrs. Ogden assured the choirmaster that if Edgar wasn’t earning his wages she’d attend to that part of it, all right. So intent was her expression that he felt obliged to put in a plea for gentleness, on the ground that such a delicate mechanism as the human throat could not be too carefully treated. Mrs. Ogden assured him that she was not in the habit of applying her disciplinary 169measures to the throat, and the audience was at an end. The day happened to be Saturday, and at the evening rehearsal it seemed to the choirmaster that things had never gone so smoothly. After all, he thought, it needed a mother to reason with the boys—he had made several calls of the same nature that week—a mother knew best how to influence them. And he was abundantly justified in his conclusions.

“A mild and stolid youth.”

On Sunday afternoon Edgar marched into the church, impassive and uninteresting to the outward vision, with Tim beside him, rapt and effective. Edgar stared vacantly into space, his feet marked the time at the proper distance from the crucifer, a mild and stolid youth, who could never understand why it was that just as he turned the corner 170and began to climb the steps to the choir-stalls his cassock should suddenly tighten below the knees and almost throw him. Edgar’s partner in the column could have informed him, but prudence rendered him uncommunicative.

Edgar’s brows met, he took a longer stride in reaching for his B flat, and the crucifer grasped his pole nervously and broke step a moment—his cassock had caught again.

“He sings like an angel,” the rector mused. “How clumsy that Waters boy is!”

Once through with the Psalter, which he loathed because he was not always certain of his pointing, and could not endure Tim’s look of horror at his occasional slips, Edgar, having hunched his shoulders at just the angle to prevent the tenor behind him from looking across into the transept, and ostentatiously opened his service at 171the Nunc dimittis, so that Tim might by his innocent nudging and indications of his own Magnificat page call a frown and a fine from the choirmaster, devoted himself to a study of the rose-window over the transept.

The decoration of this window was a standing subject of quarrel between him and the first alto, Howard Potter. Edgar had advanced the somewhat untenable proposition that the various figures in the stained-glass windows represented the successive rectors and choirmasters of St. Mark’s. Howard had objected that the dedications under the windows referred (as he had discovered by adroit questions that gave his informants no idea whatever of what he was driving at) to persons who had never held office of any kind in the church.

Edgar had then fallen back on the theory that the figures were portraits of the persons whom the windows commemorated. Howard triumphantly queried why, then, should the legend, “Sacred to the memory of Walter, beloved husband of Mary Bird Ferris,” appear under a tall woman in dark 172green glass with a most feminine amount of hair and a long red sash? Edgar was staggered, but suddenly recalled his father’s glowing account of a costume ball given by the Knights of Pythias, in which many of the Knights appeared in women’s clothes, one in particular, the proprietor of a fish market, having rented a long and flowing wig the better to deceive his fellow-Knights and their delighted guests. This had impressed Edgar as intensely humorous; he greatly enjoyed picturing the scene to his imagination, and he strengthened his wavering infallibility by declaring that the beloved husband of Mary Bird Ferris was beyond doubt a Pythian in costume.

This had silenced Howard for a week, but one afternoon at evensong, just before the electric bell sounded in the robing-room to summon them to the hall, he had rapidly inquired in a hissing whisper, “Who that white puppy carryin’ the flag in the round window on the side, where the bird was, was a picture of?”

The bird was the lectern-eagle, and neither of the antagonists had ever seen a lamb. Edgar 173had recognized the fact that it was a poorly drawn puppy, and he did not believe that it could possibly have balanced in one crooked-up knee and at that perilous angle any such banner as the artist had given it. It was also crushingly apparent to him that no Knight of Pythias, with all the assistance in the world, could transform himself into such a woolly, curly, four-legged object as that.

“’Who that white puppy carryin’ the flag ... was.’”

Then why should the brass plate beneath it declare that this rose-window was placed in “loving memory of Alice Helen Worden, who departed this life June nineteenth, eighteen hundred and ninety”? That was no name for a puppy, to 174begin with. The whole affair irritated Edgar exceedingly. He saw no explanation whatever. He perceived that he should have to fight the first alto. This was not only a great responsibility in itself, but the necessity of evading the parental eye added to the nervous strain, and the consciousness that on this particular Sunday afternoon Mr. Ogden occupied one of the rear pews, with the idea of seeing how he behaved during service, and subsequently accompanying him home, so weighed upon the spirits of the first soprano that William Waters accomplished the choir steps, in the recessional, without a stumble.

Throughout the service Edgar was as one in a dream. His vision was turned inward, and he even forgot his effective trick of frightening the choirmaster into cold chills by looking vacantly uncertain of the proper moment to take up the choir’s share of the responses. The fact that he invariably came in at the precise beat had never fortified Mr. Fellowes against that nervous shudder as he saw his first soprano’s mouth open hesitatingly two seconds before the time. To-day he 175was spared all anxiety. Edgar’s voice and Tim’s eyes were the perfection of tuneful devotion.

they implored softly. Neither of them had the remotest idea what inheritance meant—they would have besought as willingly a blessing for irrelevance or inelegance; but to the assistant clergyman, whose nervous scratching of his nose, while waiting for the alms-basin to reach him, was to Edgar and Tim as definite and eagerly awaited a part of the service as any other detail, the slow-syllabled Gregorian cadence brought the word in a sudden new light and he made it the text for a sermon so successful as to get him, a little later, a parish of his own. This leads us to many interesting conclusions, musical and other.

The rector noticed with pleasure the seedy-looking man in the back of the church: he was just then smarting a little under the accusation of “aristocratic tendencies”: a body of conservatives had never approved of the boy-choir. He hoped to get the man into the Brotherhood of St. 176Andrew, if he were allied to no other organization.

Mr. Ogden, as we know, was on business of his own—business that kept him glaring fixedly in the rector’s direction, which encouraged that good man still further. It is to be doubted if the Brotherhood would have appealed to him, however. Not that he would have been hindered by any narrow sectarian tendencies. Mrs. Ogden, who did up the shirt-waists of the Presbyterian minister’s daughter, was by her presented regularly with a missionary bank in the form of a papier-maché cottage with a chimney imitating red brick; and Edgar, employing a Napoleonic strategy, triumphantly attended the Methodist Christmas festivals and the Baptist Sunday-school picnics, the latter society offering a merry-go-round on a larger scale, the former providing the infant faithful with more practicable presents and larger candy-bags. Squealer, moreover, had sung “The Holy City” more than once for the Congregational Christian Endeavor Society, so that Mr. Ogden felt, with a certain justice, that his 177church connection did him credit on the whole, and excused himself from any undue energy in that direction.

He watched his son keenly, but Edgar’s ecclesiastical demeanor was without a flaw. Moreover, his plans were gradually maturing. He sang Amen at proper intervals and by a process of unconscious cerebration managed to get between the organist and the tenor, who depended on Mr. Fellowes to mark the time for him with his left hand, and in consequence of being unable to see him, bungled his offertory solo; but his thoughts were otherwhere. He had decided to slip out of the south transept door, thus eluding parental pursuit, and fight Howard Potter in his own back yard before he slept. He would practise upon his victim a recent scientific acquisition proudly styled by him “the upper-cut,” which he had learned from an acquaintance at the cost of ten cents and three sugar-cookies.

At this point the anthem-prelude drew him to his feet. He had saved his voice, according to directions, for his solo, and in the waiting hush 178every word flowed, soft and pure, to the end of the church.

“Mercy and truth, mercy and truth, mercy—” Ah, that exquisite soft swoop downward! The organ rippled on contentedly, a continuation of Edgar’s flutelike tones—“and truth are me-et together!” There was all the richness of a woman’s voice, all the passionless clearness of a boy’s, all the morning innocence of a child’s.

It occurred to him suddenly that the north transept would be safer—it was on the side farthest from home.

“Righteousness and peace, righteousness and peace have kissèd each other!”

He wondered if Howard had learned the upper-cut since their last encounter.

Tim’s face was as the face of an angel; a long slanting ray from the rose-window fell across his curls.

“Have kissèd each other,” Edgar sighed softly. “Have kissèd each other—” the caressing tones melted into the organ’s, whispered once more, “each other,” and died lingeringly. A long 179breath, an audible “Ah-h-h!” drifted through the church. The choirmaster kicked his feet together under the organ for joy. He little knew that at that very moment the future of his vested choir was swinging lightly in the balance.

But such was the fact. Fate, who links together events seemingly isolated, smoothed Edgar’s way to his fight, but allowed him to be beaten. If this had not happened, his wrath would not have vented itself in hectoring a bad-tempered bass at the Wednesday rehearsal, by scampering in front of him and mimicking with wonderful accuracy his gruff, staccato voice.

“He taketh up the isles—as a ver-ry—little thing!” mocked Edgar.

“Shut up!” growled the bass.

“A ver-ry lit-tle thing!” Edgar continued malignantly, slipping across his victim’s path.

“Oh, all right, young feller!” called the bass, enraged at the grins and applause of the other men, “all right! Just you wait till Sunday, that’s all!” If Edgar had not teased him so, he 180would not have added: “I know what’ll happen then, if you don’t.”

“’You’re going to be bounced, that’s what.’”

“What?” Edgar inquired derisively, catching up with him.

“You’re going to be bounced, that’s what,” said the bass irritably.

“Aw, come off! I ain’t either!”

181“Well, you ought to be, the whole pack of you,” the bass continued decidedly. “Bag and baggage! And a good riddance, too. No choirboy camping-out this summer!”

Edgar dropped behind and mused. “Who told yer?” he called.

“Ask Fellowes—and if he don’t lick you, I will!” retorted the bass, making a quick grab, which Edgar easily evaded.

He summoned his mates immediately; the question was laid before them. Had they heard that they were to be bounced? Did they believe that the two weeks’ camping-out, the object of all their endurance and loyalty, the prize of their high calling, was to be discontinued? Tim was deputed to inquire on Saturday afternoon. He returned disconsolate; they shoved each other significantly.

“What’d he say? What’d he say?”

“He says mos’ prob’ly not. Says it costs too much. Says maybe a picnic——”

“Aw! old chump! Goin’ to bounce us, too?”

182“I dunno. I guess so. I didn’t ask him that. I just says to him, ‘Aw, say, Mr. Fellowes, ain’t us boys goin’ campin’?’ An’ he says, ‘I guess not this year, Tim, mos’ prob’ly. Maybe a picnic——”

“’Well, I bet he don’t bounce me!’”

“Well, I bet he don’t bounce me! I betcher that, I betcher, now!”

Edgar strutted before them. They regarded him with interest.

“Whatcher goin’ to do?” they asked respectfully.

183“What’ll I do? I’ll—I’ll bounce myself!” he called over his shoulder, as he strode home.

His moody air during supper convinced Mr. Ogden that something was up. Ever since he had discovered Edgar’s demand for an additional ten cents a Sunday, on the ground that his mother thought him worth more, and his later daring strike for five cents further salary, which the choirmaster had innocently considered abundantly justified and paid out of his own pocket, Mr. Ogden, who, having heard rumors of wild dissipations in the peanut and root-beer line, had pounced upon his son returning plethoric from pay day, and promptly annexed the extra fifteen cents, was convinced of the necessity of surveillance for this wily wage-earner, and formed the habit of escorting him regularly on pay nights, alone at first, later assisted by Mrs. Ogden, who accompanied the family group as a self-constituted and final auditor. It has frequently been remarked that a great grief may bind together once disunited members of a family; it is extremely improbable that any affliction whatever could have produced among 184the Ogdens such a gratifying esprit de corps as resulted from their unfeigned interest in pay day. But when Mr. Ogden had shadowed his son to no more secluded and dangerous spot than the church-yard, and saw him in earnest conclave with his attentive mates, he went, relieved, about his own business, reassured by the words “campin’ out” and “Sunday afternoon,” that he caught from behind a convenient tombstone. He was utterly unconscious that the scene he had left was far more menacing to his household than even the most disfiguring fight of his warlike son’s varied repertoire. But so it was. Haranguing, promising, taunting, threatening, Edgar led them, finally subdued, into one of the most satisfactory rehearsals of the year.

They waited till quarter of eleven on Sunday, and finally the men marched in alone, somewhat conscious and ill at ease, followed by a red-faced, determined rector, and a puzzled visiting clergyman. They sang “O happy band of pilgrims,” but it was remarked by the wondering congregation 185that they did not look happy themselves. There was no music but the hymns, which, as they had been altered to well-known numbers, were chanted lustily by the inhabitants of the pews, thus winning the sincere admiration of the visiting clergyman.

“And made a speech that will adorn the parish annals for many a year.”

“Really, such well-trained congregational singing 186is quite rare,” he remarked afterward to the rector, and was somewhat surprised at the short answer: “It shall certainly never occur again.”

It had gone hard with the vested choir but for Mrs. Ogden. Mr. Fellowes pleaded in vain; in vain the Ladies’ Auxiliary passed resolutions; the rector was firm. It was only when Mrs. Ogden swept in upon him in his study, a chastened, still apprehensive boy under one arm, followed by half a dozen women similarly equipped, and made a speech that will adorn the parish annals for many a year, that he yielded, respectfully convinced.

Edgar had met his Waterloo, and lived, so to speak, under a consequent military surveillance, with much of his prestige gone, his pay docked for a month, and the certainty of approaching warm weather, when it would be impossible to take cold, and nothing but a summons to the choir invisible could excuse him from rehearsals here, to render the future all too clear to him. In the words of the processional,

To-day, if you should attend evensong at St. Mark’s, you will beyond a doubt be delighted with a silver voice that appears to proceed from a violet-eyed boy with a sweet expression.

“It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord!” the voice declares melodiously, but it is doubtful if its owner is in a thankful frame of mind. He would in all probability prefer to be with his brother Samuel, who is at present touring the West triumphantly with a Methodist revivalist, rendering “Where is my wandering boy to-night?” to weeping congregations for ten dollars a week and his traveling expenses. And even this success leaves Squealer dissatisfied; he would far rather be in his father’s position—first tenor in the Denman Thompson Old Homestead Quartette—and sing “The Palms” behind the scenes, when the stereopticon vision of the repentant prodigal thrills the audience.

It would seem that your artistic temperament 188is doomed to discontent. Whereas Mrs. Ogden, who cannot carry a tune, is perfectly satisfied with fine laundry work.

“Perfectly satisfied with fine laundry work.”

THE LITTLE GOD AND DICKY

“Where are you going?” said somebody, as he slunk out toward the hatrack.

“He turned like a stag at bay.”

“Oh, out,” he returned, with what a vaudeville artist would call a good imitation of a person wishing to appear blamelessly forgetful of something he remembered quite distinctly.

“Well, see that you don’t stay long. Remember what it is this afternoon.”

He turned like a stag at bay.

“What is it this afternoon?” he demanded viciously.

“You know very well.”

“What?”

“See that you’re here, that’s all. You’ve got to get dressed.”

“I will not go to that old dancing-school 192again, and I tell you that I won’t, and I won’t. And I won’t!”

“Now, Dick, don’t begin that all over again. It’s so silly of you. You’ve got to go.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s the thing to do.”

“Why?”

“Because you must learn to dance.”

“Why?”

“Every nice boy learns.”

“Why?”

“That will do, Richard. Go and find your pumps. Now, get right up from the floor, and if you scratch the Morris chair I shall speak to your father. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Get right up—you must expect to be hurt, if you pull so. Come, Richard! Now, stop crying—a great boy like you! I am sorry I hurt your elbow, but you know very well you aren’t crying for that at all. Come along!”

His sister flitted by the door in an engaging déshabillé, her accordeon-pleated skirt held carefully from the floor, her hair in two glistening 193blue-knotted pigtails. A trail of rose-scented soap floated through the hall.

“Hurry up, Dick, or we’ll be late,” she called back sweetly, secure in the knowledge that if such virtuous accents maddened him still further, no one could blame her. His rage justified her faith.

“Oh, you shut up, will you!” he snarled.

“Secure in the knowledge that if such virtuous accents maddened him still further, no one could blame her.”

She looked meek, and listened to his deprivation of dessert for the rest of the week with an air of love for the sinner and hatred for the sin that deceived even her older sister, who was dressing her.

A desperately patient monologue from the next room indicated the course of events there.

“Your necktie is on the bed. No, I don’t know where the blue one is—it doesn’t matter; that is just as good. Yes, it is. No, 194you can not. You will have to wear one. Because no one ever goes without. I don’t know why.

“Many a boy would be thankful and glad to have silk stockings. Nonsense—your legs are warm enough. I don’t believe you. Now, Richard, how perfectly ridiculous! There is no left and right to stockings. You have no time to change. Shoes are a different thing. Well, hurry up, then. Because they are made so, I suppose. I don’t know why.

“’Stop your scowling, for goodness’ sake, Dick.’”

“Brush it more on that side—no, you can’t 195go to the barber’s. You went last week. It looks perfectly well. I cut it? Why, I don’t know how to trim hair. Anyway, there isn’t time now. It will have to do. Stop your scowling, for goodness’ sake, Dick. Have you a handkerchief? It makes no difference, you must carry one. You ought to want to use it. Well, you should. Yes, they always do, whether they have colds or not. I don’t know why.

“Your Golden Text! The idea! No, you cannot. You can learn that Sunday before church. This is not the time to learn Golden Texts. I never saw such a child. Now take your pumps and find the plush bag. Why not? Put them right with Ruth’s. That’s what the bag was made for. Well, how do you want to carry them? Why, I never heard of anything so silly! You will knot the strings. I don’t care if they do carry skates that way—skates are not slippers. You’d lose them. Very well, then, only hurry up. I should think you’d be ashamed to have them dangling around your neck that way. Because people never do carry them so. I don’t know why.

196“Now, here’s your coat. Well, I can’t help it, you have no time to hunt for them. Put your hands in your pockets—it’s not far. And mind you don’t run for Ruth every time. You don’t take any pains with her, and you hustle her about, Miss Dorothy says. Take another little girl. Yes, you must. I shall speak to your father if you answer me in that way, Richard. Men don’t dance with their sisters. Because they don’t. I don’t know why.”

He slammed the door till the piazza shook, and strode along beside his scandalized sister, the pumps flopping noisily on his shoulders. She tripped along contentedly—she liked to go. The personality capable of extracting pleasure from the hour before them baffled his comprehension, and he scowled fiercely at her, rubbing his silk stockings together at every step, to enjoy the strange smooth sensation thus produced. This gave him a bow-legged gait that distressed his sister beyond words.

“I think you might stop. Everybody’s looking at you! Please stop, Dick Pendleton; you’re 197a mean old thing. I should think you’d be ashamed to carry your slippers that way. If you jump in that wet place and spatter me I shall tell papa—you will care, when I tell him, just the same! You’re just as bad as you can be. I shan’t speak with you to-day!”

“Going daintily and dutifully to dancing-school.”

She pursed up her lips and maintained a determined silence. He rubbed his legs together with renewed emphasis. Acquaintances met them and passed, unconscious of anything but the sweet picture of a sister and a brother and a plush bag going daintily and dutifully to dancing-school; but his heart was hot at the injustice of the world and the hypocritical cant of girls, and 198her thoughts were busy with her indictment of him before the family tribunal—she hoped he would be sent to bed. Life is full and running over with just such rosy deceits.

He jumped over the threshold of the long room and aimed his cap at the head of a boy he knew, who was standing on one foot to put on a slipper. This destroyed his friend’s balance, and a cheering scuffle followed. Life assumed a more hopeful aspect. In the other dressing-room his sister had fluttered into a whispering, giggling, many-colored throng; buzzing and chuckling with the rest, she adjusted her slippers, and perked out her bows, her braids quivering with sociability.

A shrill whistle called them out in two crowding bunches to the polished floor.

Hoping against hope, he had clung to the beautiful thought that Miss Dorothy would be sick, that she had missed her train—but no! there she was, with her shiny high-heeled slippers, her pink skirt that pulled out like a fan, and her silver whistle on a chain. The little clicking castanets that rang out so sharply were in her hand beyond a doubt.

199“Ready, children! Spread out. Take your lines. First position. Now!”

The large man at the piano, who always looked half asleep, thundered out the first bars of the latest waltz, and the business began.

“A line of toes rose gradually.”

Their eyes were fixed solemnly on Miss Dorothy’s pointed shoes. They slipped and slid and crossed their legs and arched their pudgy insteps; the boys breathed hard over their gleaming collars. On the right side of the hall thirty hands held out their diminutive skirts at an alluring angle. On the left, neat black legs pattered diligently through mystic evolutions.

The chords rolled out slower, with dramatic 200pauses between; sharp clicks of the castanets rang through the hall; a line of toes rose gradually towards the horizontal, whirled more or less steadily about, crossed behind, bent low, bowed, and with a flutter of skirts resumed the first position.

A little breeze of laughing admiration circled the row of mothers and aunts.

“Isn’t that too cunning! Just like a little ballet! Aren’t they graceful, really, now!”

“One, two, three! One, two, three! Slide, slide, cross; one, two, three!”

There are those who find pleasure in the aimless intricacies of the dance; self-respecting men even have been known voluntarily to frequent assemblies devoted to this nerve-racking attitudinizing futility. Among such, however, you shall seek in vain in future years for Richard Carr Pendleton.

“One, two, three! Reverse, two, three!” If you want your heels clipped, step back inadvertently into Master Pendleton’s domain. No matter how pure your purposes, you will illustrate 201the inevitable doom of the transgressor against nature’s immutable limitations; you will be severely nipped. And it will be just—he is triumphantly following the rules.

The whistle shrilled.

“Ready for the two-step, children!”

A mild tolerance grew on him. If dancing must be, better the two-step than anything else. It is not an alluring dance, your two-step; it does not require temperament. Any one with a firm intention of keeping the time and a strong arm can drag a girl through it very acceptably. It was Dicky’s custom to hurl himself at the colored bunch nearest him, seize a Sabine, so to speak, and plunge into the dance. He had his eye on Louise Hetherington, a large, plump girl, with a tremendous braid of hair. She was a size too big for the class, but everybody liked to dance with her, for she knew how, and piloted her diminutive partners with great skill. But she had been snapped up by the six-year-old Harold, and was even now guiding his infant steps around the hall.

202Dicky skirted the row of mothers and aunts cautiously. Heaven send Miss Dorothy was not looking at him! She seemed to have eyes in the back of her head, that woman.

“Oh, look! Did you ever see anything so sweet!” said somebody. Involuntarily he turned. There in a corner, all by herself, a little girl was gravely performing a dance. He stared at her curiously. For the first time, free from all personal connection with them, he discovered that those motions were pretty.

She was ethereally slender, brown eyed, brown haired, brown skinned. A little fluffy white dress spread fan-shaped above her knees; her ankles were bird-like. The foot on which she poised seemed hardly to rest on the ground; the other, pointed outward, hovered easily—now here, now there. Her eyes were serious, her hair hung loose. She swayed lightly; one little gloved hand held out her skirt, the other marked the time. Her performance was an apotheosis of the two-step: that metronomic dance would not have recognized itself under her treatment.

203

“Thethelia,” she lisped.

Dicky admired. But the admiration of his sex is notoriously fatal to the art that attracts it. He advanced and bowed jerkily, grasped one of the loops of her sash in the back, stamped gently a moment to get the time, and the artist sank into the partner, the pirouette grew coarse to sympathize with clay.

“Don’t they do it well, though! See those little things near the door!” he caught as they went by, and his heart swelled with pride.

“What’s your name?” he asked abruptly after the dance.

“Thethelia,” she lisped, and shook her hair over her cheek. She was very shy.

“Mine’s Richard Carr Pendleton. My father’s a lawyer. What’s yours?”

“I—I don’t know!” she gasped, obviously considering flight.

He chuckled delightedly. Was ever such 204engaging idiocy? She didn’t know. Well, well!

“Pooh!” he said grandly, “I guess you know. Don’t you, really?”

She looked hopelessly at her fan, and shook her head. Suddenly a light dawned in her big eyes.

“Maybe I know,” she murmured. “I gueth I know. He—he’th a really thtate!”

“A really state? That isn’t anything—nothing at all. A really state?” he frowned at her judicially. Her lip quivered; she turned and ran away.

“Here, come back!” he called, but she was gone.

“Ready for the cotillion, children!” and Miss Dorothy, her arms full of long, colored ribbons, was upon him.

There was a rumbling chord from the piano, a mad rush for the head of the line. A rosy blonde, with big, china blue eyes, dragged her protesting sailor-suited partner to the front, and glared triumphantly at the roly-poly couple behind her. They stared at each other desperately—they had had their dreams of precedence—and suddenly, 205as the robbers stood far apart and swung their arms carelessly high, the roly-poly couple crouched down, slipped between them, and emerged at the head of the procession!

The march began. Dicky, linked to a tomboy in white duck, who whistled the march correctly as she swung along, had fought for a place behind his late partner, and as they clambered into adjacent chairs he nudged her violently and whispered, “I’m going to choose you!”

She smiled shyly.

“All right,” she said.

Miss Dorothy approached with the favors. A violent hissing and snapping of fingers burst out from the line. They wriggled on their chairs. Miss Dorothy paused, threateningly.

“Perhaps we had better not have any cotillion,” she said sternly. “If I hear another hiss—” There was a dead silence.

Dicky sat primly, looking at the ceiling. As he had expected, a broad violet streamer fell in his lap. He leaped to the floor, seized Cecelia by her skirt, hustled the tomboy, as in duty bound, 206within the purple leash, and beckoned to the next girl in the row. They arranged themselves three abreast, and he drove them, to the inspiring two-step, across the room, in line with two other drivers similarly equipped. On the return trip they were confronted by three bands of prancing little boys, perilously realistic in their interpretation of the pretty figure, and as they met in the middle, with a scramble of adjustment, the steeds paired off neatly, and the flushed drivers, more or less entangled in their long ribbons, accomplished an ultimate two-step.

“Now, you choose me,” he commanded, as they scrambled into the chairs. Again she smiled, again she hid her cheek with her hair.

“All right,” she said again.

In vain Louise Hetherington made signs to him; in vain the rosy blonde snapped her fingers—he was blind and deaf. He slipped into the broad blue ribbon she held out to him at arm’s length, and cantered cheerfully before her, her slave forever. How lightly she floated on behind them! Not like that tomboy Frances, who clucked at 207her team as if they were horses, and nearly ran them down; nor like that silly, fat, yellow-curled Gladys, who bubbled with laughter and hung back on the satin reins until her team nearly fell over. Cecelia swam like thistledown in their wake, and slipped the ribbon over their heads with all the effect of a scarf dance.

“How lightly she floated on behind them!”

“That will do for to-day,” said Miss Dorothy, gathering up the ribbons, and they surged into the dressing-rooms, to be buttoned up and pulled out of draughts and trundled home.

She was swathed carefully in a wadded silk jacket, and then enveloped in a hooded Mother Hubbard cloak; she looked like an angelic 208brownie. Dicky ran up to her as a woman led her out to a coupé at the curb, and tugged at the ribbon of her cloak.

“Where do you live? Say, where do you?” he demanded.

Her hair was under the hood, but she hid her face behind the woman.

“I—I don’t know,” she said softly. The woman laughed.

“Why, yes, you do, Cissy,” she reproved. “Tell him directly, now.”

She put one tiny finger in her mouth.

“I—I gueth I live on Chethnut Thtreet,” she called as the door slammed and shut her in.

His sister amicably offered him half the plush bag to carry, and opened a running criticism of the afternoon.

“Did you ever see anybody act like that Frannie Leach? She’s awfully rough. Miss Dorothy spoke to her twice—wasn’t that dreadful? What made you dance all the time with Cissy Weston? She’s an awful baby—a regular ’fraid-cat! We girls tease her just as easy—do you like her?”

209“She’s the prettiest one there!” he said.

His sister stared at him.

“Why, Dick Pendleton, she is not! She’s so little—she’s not half so pretty as Agnes, or—or lots of the girls. She’s such a baby. She puts her finger in her mouth if anybody says anything at all. If you ask her a single thing she does like this: ‘I don’t know, I don’t know!’”

He smiled scornfully. Did he not know how she did it? Had he not seen that adorable finger, those appealing eyes?

“And she can’t talk plain! She lisps—truly she does!”

Heavens! Was ever a girl so thick-headed as that sister of his! Brains, technical knowledge, experience of the world, these he had never looked to find in her; but perceptions, feminine intuitions—were they lacking, too?

Poor deluded sex! What shall emancipation, what shall higher education profit you that cannot even now discern what charm has entangled your brothers and husbands?

“She puts her finger in her mouth! She can’t 210talk plain!” Alas, my sisters, it was Helen’s finger that toppled over Troy, and Diane de Poitiers stammered!

He listened calmly to his sister’s account of his infatuation and its causelessness.

“Why, she’s a nice little girl,” said his aunt, smiling, “but, really, she can’t be called exactly pretty. There is something rather attractive about her eyes.”

In this wise may Mark Antony’s aunt have dismissed the very Serpent of old Nile herself!

“I should like,” he said to his mother the next day, “to go and see her.”

“Well, you can go with me to-morrow, perhaps, when I call on Mrs. Weston,” she assented.

“What? Why, of course not! Men don’t go calling in pumps. Your best shoes will do. Are you crazy? A straw hat in February! You will wear your middy cap. Now don’t argue the matter, Richard, or you can’t go at all.”

Seated opposite her on a hassock, their mothers chatting across the room, his assurance withered away. There was nothing whatever to say, 211and he said it, adequately perhaps, but with a sense of deepening embarrassment. She took refuge behind her hair, and they stared uncomfortably at each other.

“Seated opposite her on a hassock.”

“And he has never condescended to have anything to do with little girls before, so we are much impressed.”

Oh, why did not the hassock yawn beneath him and swallow him up! To discuss him as if he were a piece of furniture! Laugh away! The crackling of thorns under a pot....

Day before yesterday he had been so easily grand seigneur, so tolerantly charmed: to-day he wished he had not come. Why didn’t she speak? If only they were out of doors; in a room with pictures and cushions a man is at such a disadvantage.

212“If you’ll come over to my house, I’ll show you the biggest rat-hole you ever saw—it’s in the stable!” he said desperately. It was a good deal to do for a girl, but she was worth it.

“Oh! Oh!” she breathed, and her eyes widened.

“Maybe you can see the rat—he doesn’t often come out, though,” he added honestly.

She shuddered and twisted her fingers violently.

“No! No!” she whispered revoltedly. “I—I hate ratths! I dreamed about one! I had to have the gath lit! Oh, no!”

Frightened at this long speech, she looked obstinately in her lap, though he tried persistently to catch her eye and smile.

Their mothers’ voices rose and fell; they chattered meaninglessly. Ladies talked and talked: they never did anything to speak of, they only talked.

She would not look at him: at his wits’ ends, he played his highest card. If she were of mortal flesh and blood, this would interest her.

213“Look here! Do you know what Boston bull pups are? Do you?”

She nodded vigorously.

“Well, you know their tails?”

She nodded uncertainly.

“You know they’re just little stumps?”

“Oh, yeth!” she beamed at him. “My Uncle Harry’th got a bulldog. Hith name ith Eli. He liketh me.”

“Well, see here! Do you know how they make their tails short? A man bites ’em off! A fellow told me——”

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” She shuddered off the hassock, and rushed to her mother, gasping with horror.

“He thayth—he thayth—” words failed her. Broken sobs of “Eli! Oh, Eli!” filled the parlor. He was dazed, terrified. What had happened? What had he done? He was shuffled disgracefully from the room; apologies rose above her sobbing; the door closed behind Dicky and his mother.

Waves of rebuke rolled over his troubled spirit.

214“Of all dreadful things to say to a poor, nervous little girl! I am too mortified. Richard, how do you learn such dreadful, dreadful things? It’s not true.”

“But, mamma, it is! It truly is. When they are little a man bites them off. Peter told me so. He puts his mouth right down——”

“Richard! Not another word! You are disgusting—perfectly disgusting. You trouble me very much.”

He retired to the clothes-tree in the side yard—there were no junipers there—and cursed his gods. To have made her cry! They thought he didn’t care, but oh, he did! He felt as if he had eaten a cold, gray stone that weighed down his stomach. The cat slunk by, but he threw nothing at her, and his neighbor’s St. Bernard puppy rolled inquiringly into the hedge, stuck there, and thrashed about helplessly, but he said nothing to frighten it. He thought of supper—they had spoken of cinnamon rolls and little yellow custards—but without the usual thrill. What was the matter? Was he going to be 215sick? There seemed no outlook to life—one thing was as good as another. He regarded going to bed with a dull acquiescence. As well that as anything else. It might be eight o’clock now for all he cared.

At night his mother came and sat for a moment on the side of the bed.

“Papa doesn’t want you to feel too bad, dear,” she said. “He knows that you never meant to frighten Cecelia so. You know that little girls are very different from little boys in some ways. Things that seem—er—amusing to you, seem very cruel to them. To-morrow would you like to send her some flowers and write her a little note, and tell her how sorry you are?”

He could not speak, but he seized his mother’s hand and kissed it up to her lace ruffle. The cold, gray stone melted away from his stomach; again the future stretched rosily vague before him. In happy dreams he did the honors of the rat-hole to a sweet, shy guest.

In the morning he applied himself to his note of apology; his sister ruled the lines on a beautiful 216sheet of paper with a curly gold “P” at the top, and he bent to his task with extended tongue and lines between his eyes. Hitherto his mother had been his only correspondent. He carried her the note with a sense of justifiable pride.

“It’s spelled all right,” he said, “because every word I didn’t know I asked Bess, and she told me.”

I am going to send you some flowrs. I am sory they bite them of but they do. I hope you did not hafto lite the gas. we are all well and haveing a good time. with much love I am your loving son.

“Bess did the periods, but I remembered the large I’s myself,” he added comfortably. “Is it all right?”

His mother left the room abruptly, and he, supposing it to be one of her many suddenly-remembered errands, was mercifully unconscious of any connection between himself and the roars of laughter that came from his father’s study.

217“Just as it is, mind you. Lizzie, just as it is!” his father called after her as she came out again; and though she insisted that it was too absurd, and that something was the matter with her children, she was sure, nevertheless she kissed him with no particular occasion, and held her peace nobly when he selected a hideous purple blossom with spotty leaves, assisted by the interested florist.

His offering was acceptable, and if, on the renewal of an acquaintance destined to grow into a gratifying intimacy, he learned from bitter experience that more than one subject was tabooed, that more than one sudden emotion must expect no answering sympathy, how was he to evade the tribulations of his kind? This cup was prepared for them from the beginning. If earthly bliss were flawless, should we concern ourselves at all with heaven?

That day she met him on her walk, and smiling almost fearlessly, offered him a camel animal cracker! True, the most obvious projection was bitten off, and that process is the best part 218of animal crackers; but then, she was only seven! It is not an age to which one looks for the most brilliant altruism.

He gave her in return a long-cherished cane-top of polished wood, cut in the shape of a greyhound’s head, with eyes of orange-colored glass. She seemed almost to appreciate it. He had been offered a white mouse for it more than once.

For two long months the Little God led him along the primrose way. The poor fellow thought it was the main road; he had yet to learn it was but a by-path. But the Little God was not through with him.

Her brother, an uninteresting fellow at first, had improved on acquaintance, and though he scoffed at Dicky’s devotion to his sister—thinking her a great baby—he had come to consider him a friend. One day, late in April, he led Dick out to a deserted corner of the grounds, and for the sum of a small red top and a blue glass eye that had been a doll’s most winning feature, consented to impart to him a song of such delicious badness that it had to be sung in secret. 219He had just learned it himself, and the knowledge of it admitted one to a sort of club, whose members were bound together by the vicious syllables. Dicky was pleasantly uncertain of its meaning, but it contained words that custom has banished from the family circle. They crooned it fearfully, with faces averted from the house, and an exhilarating sense of dissipation.

“’Yelly belly, yelly belly.’”

As he slipped back to the house alone, practising it furtively and foretasting the joys of imparting it to Peter, the stableman, Cecelia appeared suddenly from behind a large tree. She was all smiles—she was not afraid of him any 220more. Dancing lightly on one foot, she waved her bonnet and began to sing, bubbling with laughter. Horror! What did he hear?

“Oh, stop! Cissy, stop it! You mustn’t sing that!” he cried wildly.

She looked elfish.

“Why not? Dicky thingth it,” she said with a happy smile.

She had a heavenly habit, left from babyhood, of referring to her interlocutor and occasionally to herself in the third person.

“But girls mustn’t sing it,” he warned her sternly. “Don’t you dare to—it’s a secret.”

She danced farther away.

“Dicky thingth it. Thithy thingth it!” she persisted, and as he scowled she pursed her lips again.

“I won’t sing it! I won’t!” he cried desperately. “I won’t if you’ll keep still! So there! I tell you I won’t!”

221She stopped, amused at his emotion. All ignorant of his sacrifice, all careless of his heroic defense of her, she only knew that she could tease him in an entirely new way.

And the Little God, knowing that Dicky would keep his word, and that Peter would never get the chance for the scandalized admiration once in store for him, strutted proudly away and polished up his chains. His victim was secure.

Her brother, on learning the facts, suggested slapping her well—good heavens!—and having nothing more to do with her, for a mean, sneaking tattle-tale. Here was an opportunity to break his bonds. But to those who have served the Little God it will be no surprise to learn that it was on that very evening that he made his famous proposal to the assembled family, namely, that he and Cecelia should be really engaged like her Uncle Harry and Miss Merriam, and in a little while marry and set up housekeeping in the guest chamber.

“That’s what Miss Merriam is going to do,” he explained, “and Cissy’s grandma is sorry, too; 222it doesn’t leave her any place for company but the hall bedroom. But they’ve got to have the room, she s’poses.”

“That will do, Richard! You are not to repeat everything you hear. And I am afraid I need the guest chamber. What should we do when Aunt Nannie comes?”

“Oh, Cissy could have her crib right in the room. She wouldn’t mind Aunt Nanny,” he replied superbly. “She always sleeps in a crib, and she always will. A bed scares her—she’s afraid she’ll fall out. I could sleep on the couch, like Christmas time!”

But in the manner of age the wide world over, they merely urged him to wait. There was plenty of time. Time! and she might be living in the house with them!

It was that very night that he reached the top of the wave, and justified the Little God’s selection.

He came down to breakfast rapt and quiet. He salted his oatmeal by mistake and never knew the difference. His sister laughed derisively, and 223explained his folly to him as he swallowed the last spoonful, but he only smiled kindly at her. After his egg he spoke.

“I dreamed that it was dancing-school. And I went. And I was the only fellow there. And what do you think? All the little girls were Cecelia!”

They gasped.

“You don’t suppose he’ll be a poet, do you, Ritch.? Or a genius, or anything?” his mother inquired anxiously.

“Lord, no!” his father returned. “I should say he was more likely to be a Mormon!”

Dick knew nothing of either class. But the Little God knew very well what he was, and was at that moment making out his diploma.

The London Chronicle, in a review headed

says:

“We should like to pay Dr. Doyle the highest compliment at our command. It is not simply that this book is superior in originality and construction to the earlier adventures of the great detective. Dr. Doyle has provided a criminal who, as Mr. Holmes admits, is indeed a foeman worthy of his steel.^[1] Hitherto he has found it comparatively easy to unmask his antagonists. But in the present case he finds himself checkmated again and again. There is pitted against him a skill nearly equal to his own, and he wins the game almost by a hair.”

A tale from beyond the bounds of civilization. The second in Mr. White’s series of thoroughly American stories.

The inspiriting breath of the great pine woods is in this dramatic novel of frontier struggle in which a green “land looker” plays a lone hand against a powerful and unscrupulous land company for a vast tract of timber land.

MR. WHITE shows us the rough-and-ready life of a Western mining camp.

“’The Westerners’ lays strong hold on the reader. The thing is vital. There is a force and a sincerity distinctly Western—of the frontier; the grim naturalness of elemental things. Furthermore Mr. White knows his West, his plains, his Indians and his mining camps.”

The first novel of a new master. The work has gained wide-spread recognition on both sides of the water. Three of the most conservative and authoritative publications in England include it among the first twelve of the year. In this country Harper’s Weekly gives it as one of the two most interesting novels of the year.

The critics differ as to with what other master George Douglas should be compared:

The London Times says: “Worthy of the hand that drew ‘Weir of Hermiston,’” and that “Balzac and Flaubert, had they been Scotch, would have written such a book.”

The Spectator: “His masters are Zola and Balzac, but there are few traces of the novice and none of the imitator.”

Vanity Fair: “It moves to its end with all the terrible unity of an Æschylean tragedy.”

Harper’s Weekly: “If Thomas Hardy had written of Scotland, instead of Wessex, it would have been something like ‘The House with the Green Shutters’.... If any man is his (Douglas’) master it is Thomas Hardy.”

Hardy, Stevenson, Zola, Flaubert, Balzac, and Æschylus.

There is plenty of dash and adventure in this book, told with a humor whose most delightful quality is its unstudied naturalness. The critics are all laughing, not at the book, but with it.

“Chantay Seechee Red is the sort of cowpuncher it benefits one to meet even between the covers of a book.”—N. Y. Evening Post.

“Mark Twain has written no more delicious stories.”—Philadelphia Inquirer.

“A delightful study of life in the West.”—Newark Call.

“The wind blows through it, and the meaning of it is health and joy.”—N. Y. Sun.

“The creator of Red Saunders has an exuberant sense of humor.”—N. Y. Evening Telegram.

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