AN ANCESTRAL 
 INVASION AND 
 
 MADELINE 
 YALE WYNNE 
 
 l. iiitl! ilii
 
 AN 
 ANCESTRAL INVASION 
 
 And Other Stories
 
 AN 
 ANCESTRAL INVASION 
 
 <And Other Stones 
 
 BY 
 MADELINE YALE WYNNE 
 
 SELECTED BY 
 ANNIE CABOT PUTNAM 
 
 THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
 
 GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 
 
 I92O
 
 PS. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY 
 
 ANNIE CABOT PUTNAM 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF 
 
 TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, 
 
 INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 
 
 COPYRIGHT, J897, 1898, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 To INTRODUCE this book of stories and im 
 aginings to new readers is a pleasure. Many 
 people in the Eastern and now Central States 
 have, in later years, remembered with joy hav 
 ing heard some of them read by the bright friend 
 who is gone, and are glad that they may enjoy 
 them anew. She knew the New England country 
 people of a generation now past, and in her 
 presentation of their old-time ways had love 
 and respect for them. Like Whittier, she cared 
 to present "The unsung beauty hid life s com 
 mon things below"; yet also she enjoyed their 
 canny side. None the less her eyes could see 
 the happy faun in the wood as well as appreci 
 ate the ingenious malice of the household imp. 
 
 Strangely gifted artist as she was with pen, 
 brush, violin, crucible, carving-tool and cleft 
 gemsetter s pliers, she encouraged and guided 
 in others any gift that might by real effort be 
 made good. Her sympathy was ready she 
 had for all who came near her a simple but high 
 courtesy. 
 
 The late Mr. Philip H. Wynne, her son, and 
 her friend Miss Anna Cabot Putnam selected 
 and edited these stories. 
 
 EDWARD WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 "For cleft, read deft 1
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FOREWORD BY EDWARD WALDO EMERSON. v 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. A MASTER-HAND AT BEES . . 3 
 
 II. AN ANCESTRAL INVASION ... 15 
 
 III. THE UNDOING OF THE BURGLAR . 33 
 
 IV. SABRINY, DAD AND Co. ... 45 
 
 V. A DROVE OF FACTS AND A FLOCK 
 
 OF FANCIES 59 
 
 VI. A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK . . 65 
 
 VII. A STUDY IN HANDS 75 
 
 VIII. A FLIGHT OF FEATHERS ... 87 
 
 IX. AN EXPERIMENT IN TIME ... 99 
 
 X. A GAME OF SOLITAIRE .... 105 
 
 XI. THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 131 
 
 XII. IN NETHER SPACES 159
 
 AN 
 ANCESTRAL INVASION 
 
 And Other Stories
 
 AN ANCESTRAL INVASION 
 
 And Other Stories 
 
 A MASTER-HAND AT BEES 
 
 MARY ELLEN, you jest let that kettle 
 alone; I m goin to tend to it myself 
 as soon as ever I can. I ll git round to 
 it before noon." 
 
 "I d jest as soon wash it as not; I m pretty 
 nigh through with the moppin ," said Mary 
 Ellen in a muffled tone, her head bent over the 
 mop that she was twisting vigorously, holding 
 the handle tightly between her knees; her mouth 
 working with every twist of the dripping cloth, 
 while her eyes travelled along the last strip 
 of floor to be wiped dry. 
 
 "I don t want you should, let it alone." 
 Sarah Emma s voice came from the buttery; 
 the words were emphasized by thuds of the 
 rollingpin as it flattened out the dough of the 
 seed cakes, ready for the cutting out. 
 
 Sarah Emma was hurrying to get her baking 
 done and out of the way. Mary Ellen was 
 hurrying to get her mopping done and the floor
 
 4 A MASTER-HAND AT BEES 
 
 dried. They were both working with a right 
 eous frenzy, a perfect debauch of New England 
 conscience. The Sewing Circle of the Baptist 
 Church at Four Corners was to meet at their 
 house, the one annual society function under 
 their roof. There were still many things to be 
 done. Mary Ellen was to run up to the store, 
 over the hill, to get a pound of black tea. Both 
 she and Sarah Emma always drank green tea; 
 so did most of the folks up their way, except 
 the minister s wife; she came from the city and 
 so she drank black tea. This seemed a distinc 
 tion between lay and official religion, and it 
 would have been most indecorous of them to 
 have failed to provide the more chastened 
 drink. 
 
 In her haste Mary Ellen accidentally hit, with 
 the handle of her mop, the kettle that stood on 
 the stone hearth, and was the cause of the flur 
 ried dispute. 
 
 "Now, Mary Ellen, be you goin to let that 
 kettle alone or not? Don t you dare to tetch 
 it." 
 
 The voice was imperative, even a trifle 
 threatening, and the rollingpin paused for an 
 answer. 
 
 "I ain t a-meddling with it," was the brief 
 reply. Sarah Emma s voice had raised the ire 
 in Mary Ellen s righteous breast, and she made 
 a mental reservation to the effect that she
 
 A MASTER-HAND AT BEES 5 
 
 hadn t, so far, promised not to wash it or meddle 
 with it when she got ready. 
 
 Pork and greens had been boiled in the pot, 
 it was the first mess of beet-tops that they had 
 gathered this year; of course in the everyday 
 march of events the kettle would have been set 
 away till the next day so that the pork fat would 
 rise and be skimmed off, but to-day the yearly 
 invasion of the Sewing Circle made it imperative 
 that every corner of the house should be made 
 ready. The eyes of the community would be 
 on each and every detail of their housekeeping; 
 why otherwise have the meeting? What would 
 there be to talk about afterward ? How was any 
 one to get at the standing of each housekeeper 
 except by the showing at these meetings? No 
 black pot should be a blot on their escutcheon; 
 their reputation must remain immaculate. This 
 was how matters had been brought to this in 
 harmonious condition, for Sarah Emma in a 
 moment of unwonted slackness had said " bother 
 the pot, let it stand over; put it out in the shed; 
 tain t likely folks will investigate that." 
 
 But Mary Ellen was determined not to risk it 
 and so the clash had ensued and now the pot had 
 swelled to immense proportions in the conscious 
 ness of both sisters; it loomed upon their mental 
 horizons a gigantic issue; it became a test of 
 character. The pot had invaded inner shrines 
 where the holiest imperatives lie that sacred
 
 6 A MASTER-HAND AT BEES 
 
 precinct of the New England woman s character 
 which is governed by will and illuminated by 
 liberty of conscience. 
 
 Sarah Emma argued that because she had 
 washed the other dishes it was her duty and 
 privilege to do this as it was the most disagree 
 able of tasks and therefore doubly a duty. How 
 otherwise was sweet martyrdom to be obtained? 
 
 Mary Ellen s point of view was, that as she 
 had insisted on the kettle s being washed to-day, 
 in violation of long-established custom, it was 
 her duty to do it herself; besides which, Sarah 
 Emma had been short about it and dictator 
 ial; she was just like her aunt she was named 
 after. Thus Mary Ellen s determination, like 
 a dye, was fixed by the mordant of another s 
 opposition. 
 
 In the little kitchen there was a silent but 
 forceful conflict of wills for a short space of time; 
 then Sarah Emma remarked in a casual tone, 
 " I ain t baked only five dozen of these seed cakes. 
 That ought to be enough in all conscience, 
 along with that cup-cake, besides all the stuff 
 that the folks will bring along; I made double 
 the receipt. I dunno as I needed to make 
 any, only I am so sick o hearin Eliza Price 
 forever harpin on the kind she makes, the kind 
 she won t give the receipt of to nobody. I sort 
 of wanted to show, oncet fur all, that some 
 folks know somethin about cookin as well as
 
 A MASTER-HAND AT BEES 7 
 
 other folks. But I never would have started 
 in ef I d a-known them pesky bees would have 
 swarmed to-day. It took me two good hours 
 by the clock to get em in, though I will say I 
 never seen a handsomer swarm, or one that took 
 more kindly to bein hived; their buzzin was 
 just as friendly as could be, not mad for a min 
 ute. It seemed as ef they fairly hankered to be 
 took in; they crawled all over me jest as kindly 
 as ever was, and I scooped em in like they was 
 a mess o berries in a pail. We ain t had no sech 
 a swarm sence five years past. I dunno as I 
 begrudge the time, though it has set me dread 
 fully behindhand. It s like tryin to haul a cat 
 backward by its tail to make time fur all I ve 
 got to do." 
 
 Mary Ellen did not answer this propitiatory 
 monologue, she soused her mop and hung it up 
 to dry in the woodshed, turned the mop-pail 
 upside down to dry and said in a cold voice, 
 "I guess I ll put on my sunbonnet and run over 
 to the store for a pound of that black tea." She 
 paused a minute and then said, in an offhand 
 manner: "Hadn t I better jest rense out the 
 pot, seein as my hands is wet?" 
 "No, you won t, let it alone I say." 
 It was hot in the kitchen. June was floating 
 in at the open door. The bees hummed about 
 in the long row of hives under the apple trees. 
 The cat lay in the sunny path lazily watching
 
 8 A MASTER-HAND AT BEES 
 
 the quick flirt of the unattainable cat-bird in 
 the lilac bush. 
 
 The sweet, dry odour of caraway cookies in 
 the oven blew through the kitchen. On the 
 hearth sat the complacent black pot, the success 
 ful breeder of belligerency in the breasts of these 
 kind, conscientious New England sisters. Sarah 
 Emma in aggressive silence took the last batch 
 of perfect discs from the oven and added them 
 to the panful of sweetness that was cooling in 
 the pantry window. 
 
 In an inner room Mary Ellen slipped a dark 
 skirt on over her working dress, and tying her 
 bonnet strings, said: "Well! ef you are so set 
 about the pot I may as well go for that tea. I 
 s pose, Sarah Emma, you ain t forgot that you 
 was to go over to cousin Jane s and borry her 
 extry long tablecloth, the snow-drop one; there 
 ain t a single one of ourn that s long enough fur 
 the double table." 
 
 This was said in a suppressed tone; it implied 
 something like this "I hope you see that I ain t 
 got no hard feelin s on account of that pot, 
 though you must admit yourself that you are 
 unreasonable about it. I only hope you will 
 have time to get your chores done before the 
 folks begin to come." 
 
 Sarah Emma heard the meaning of the un 
 spoken words wrapped up in the spoken words; 
 she responded in the same counterpoint of ideas.
 
 A MASTER-HAND AT BEES 9 
 
 "I am goin right off for that tablecloth." 
 The thought under this was that she wasn t going 
 to be mean enough to march up and take that 
 kettle and wash it, right before Mary Ellen s 
 face; she would wait till she had been over to 
 Jane s for the tablecloth and then hurry home 
 and wash it up before Mary Ellen got home. 
 It was only a stone s throw over to Jane s, there 
 would be plenty of time for the conclusive deed 
 before Mary Ellen could possibly get back from 
 the store. 
 
 She could see Mary Ellen s back as she 
 climbed the steep hill that led to the Corners, 
 she saw her nearing the brow where the road 
 forks, and then she ran out through the garden 
 and climbed the stone wall by the currant 
 bushes and stood on the top of it, hanging to a 
 low branch of an apple tree in full blossom, 
 to steady herself while she looked along the 
 road to watch Mary Ellen still toiling up the 
 hill. 
 
 Now Mary Ellen knew that Sarah Emma 
 would be watching her, so she kept her face 
 resolutely turned toward the Corners. There 
 was a perfect circuit of understanding between 
 the blue calico figure on the wall and the black- 
 skirted figure on the road. 
 
 "She s lyin low to come back and wash up 
 that kettle, jest as soon as she thinks I m gone 
 for the tablecloth," thought Sarah Emma.
 
 IO A MASTER-HAND AT BEES 
 
 "She s goin to hurry home and git that kettle 
 before I get there," thought Mary Ellen. 
 
 "She won t turn round, she knows I m 
 a-watchin ." 
 
 "She needn t think I ll turn round, I know 
 she ll stan there till Doomsday ef she sees me 
 look round." So she reached the hilltop and 
 passed over, then sat down on the bank and 
 waited for a minute, then raising her head a 
 little, she could see through the veil of grass tops 
 the blue figure on the wall. It stood still a 
 little while and then clambered down on the 
 orchard side and ran across lots toward Jane s. 
 
 Then Mary Ellen got up and ran down the 
 hill back home. She had arranged a perfectly 
 good reason for going back: she had purposely 
 forgotten the money for the tea. As she ran 
 she pictured it to herself: it lay in the Lowes- 
 toft sugarbowl that had been her great- 
 grandmother s; it was now the family treasury. 
 She could see with a sort of inner sight the fifty- 
 cent piece and three silver quarters lying in the 
 bottom; this was her honey money for the past 
 month. She also saw, with equal distinctness, 
 a big black pot half full of brownish liquid. 
 She could even feel the tilt of the pot that 
 would make the liquid pour out when she tipped 
 it. She could see herself going through all the 
 motions, even to the putting away of the kettle 
 in the pot closet.
 
 A MASTER-HAND AT BEES II 
 
 The house was dark in contrast to the sunny 
 day outside; the black pot loomed darkly on 
 the hearth. She deftly pinned her black skirt 
 behind her, lifted the pot with experienced hand 
 and carried the casus belli into the back shed, 
 set it on the floor, ran for a pan and squatted 
 down on her heels to tilt the pot. She took 
 hold of the rim with a firm hand, and glanced 
 up. 
 
 She was opposite the arched opening of the 
 wood-shed. The garden was like a sunlit 
 picture, as quiet as a Sunday. How pretty it 
 was! The vines swayed slightly, they hung 
 down like a garland through which the blue sky 
 was seen. 
 
 "My," she thought, "but I never did see the 
 balm so red and so full of blossoms, and do see 
 them bees, they re as thick as spatters, the 
 flowers fairly bend with em, they are so heavy. 
 I guess we sha n t want for honey this year. I 
 shouldn t much wonder if we got honey enough 
 to shingle the shed, it needs it. Do hear em 
 hum, seems as ef the air was full o wings and 
 buzzin* and sweet smells. Who d ever believe 
 them busy things could sting sol I d a sight 
 ruther meet a bull any day than a bee ef it was 
 mad. Now Sarah Emma is different by nature, 
 she s jest like a bee herself, smooth as honey ef 
 you don t rub her the wrong way, and she says 
 that same thing about bees, Let em alone,
 
 12 A MASTER-HAND AT BEES 
 
 " . 
 
 says she, and they ll let you alone, rile em 
 and they ll sting. She don t never seem to 
 rub em the wrong way and they don t never 
 sting her. She certainly is a sister to bees. 
 My! but wouldn t that make her mad ef I said 
 so to her, and she so fond of em, too. I s pose 
 I ve been a-rubbin her the wrong way all the 
 mornin , all long o that ol pot. I declare 
 for t, I m ashamed, I ll jest leave it stand 
 for her to wash. I shouldn t never have seen 
 it this way except for them bees. I dunno as 
 they ve never taught me to be busy, but they 
 certainly have said something to me to-day. 
 It does seem a pity to rile bees, jest for the sake 
 of rilin em, when you know fur certain they ll 
 sting back every time, I dunno as I care who 
 washes that pot, I don t believe I ever did care 
 all along only Sarah Emma is so set. Wall! 
 all I ve got to say is that ef she is a bee, she s 
 got to be treated as such," 
 
 And now setting the pot respectfully back 
 on the hearth she went for the second time up 
 over the hill, for the tea- 
 Sarah Emma had not been able to get away 
 from Jane s as soon as she expected, so she came 
 hurrying back through the orchard, the table 
 cloth held carefully before her for fear of mussing 
 it, her eyes strained to catch sight of the door. 
 When she saw Mary Ellen s back going up the 
 road, wrath filled her soul, wrath all the greater
 
 A MASTER-HAND AT BEES IJ 
 
 because she had expected this very thing. She 
 ran through the garden and into the kitchen. 
 
 She would not look at the hearth where she 
 expected not to see the kettle, till she had care 
 fully laid the tablecloth on the dresser, then 
 she turned with a rigid expectancy. There stood 
 the kettle. She went to it and looked in it had 
 not been emptied ! She looked around the room 
 as if she expected something to happen, a sign 
 from Heaven, some writing on the wall. Was 
 the pot bewitched? Mary Ellen must have 
 come back to empty it! 
 
 Finally with a long breath she said to the pot, 
 "Well, I m beat, nothing in all my life so queer 
 as this has happened. What ever brung Mary 
 Ellen back?" 
 
 She trembled as she emptied the pot, almost 
 disappointed at her victory. 
 
 The Sewing Circle that afternoon was a great 
 success. The minister s wife told about the 
 women and their work all over the country. 
 "Why! you will hardly believe it, but they study 
 api-culture and get a living raising bees," she 
 concluded, as a staggerer. 
 
 "That would suit you," said Mary Ellen to 
 Sarah Emma. Then she turned to the minis 
 ter s wife and said proudly, in spite of herself, 
 "Sarah Emma has jest hived a swarm of bees 
 this mornin without a soul to help her; I m 
 dretful fraid of bees."
 
 14 A MASTER-HAND AT BEES 
 
 "You?" exclaimed the city woman, "you! 
 why, you never could!" 
 
 " I dunno why I shouldn t," said Sarah Emma 
 stitching on her gingham apron with vim. 
 
 "What! actually handle bees. Have you 
 studied api-culture?" 
 
 "No, I ain t studied no culture about nothing; 
 but I never could see why folks make such a 
 fuss over bees. I should think that anybody 
 with any gumption at all could handle a passel 
 of bees and hive em, too, fur that matter. 
 What s been a-puzzlin me lately is how some 
 folks learns to handle human critters. It 
 seems to come by nature to some folks. I ain t 
 any hand at it." 
 
 Sarah Emma glanced at Mary Ellen and the 
 latter said with a proud toss of the head, "Sarah 
 Emma is a master-hand at bees."
 
 AN ANCESTRAL INVASION 
 
 DANIEL GRACE walked slowly down 
 a street in Perth Amboy, scanning each 
 house as he passed. He was trying 
 to identify one that he had seen but once, and 
 that some years before; he had a memory of 
 it as a large, square house, with many windows 
 in which were small greenish panes of glass. 
 
 When he came to a certain house, set a little 
 farther back from the street than the others, 
 he recognized it and walked up the straight path 
 to the door and pulled the bell-handle; he heard 
 the unmusical tinkle in the hall immediately 
 behind the door, and it came into his memory 
 that he had noticed that same jangle when he 
 had been there before. 
 
 "Dear me," was his thought, "here it is ten 
 years since we left the furniture stored here 
 and we thought at the time that we should go 
 to housekeeping the very next year!" 
 
 "Good morning." These words came from 
 within through the crack of the door which had 
 been quietly opened just wide enough to speak 
 through. The hand that held the door open 
 had a detached look, and the voice hardly 
 
 is
 
 l6 AN ANCESTRAL INVASION 
 
 seemed to belong to any one, as the speaker 
 stood back where she could not be seen. 
 
 Mr. Grace waited a moment and then, as 
 the door remained almost closed, he said, "Good 
 morning, can you tell me if Mrs. Gerrish is at 
 home, Mrs. Thomas Gerrish?" 
 
 "Yes, she is." 
 
 There was no movement of invitation, no 
 apparent intention of asking his errand, so he 
 added, "I would like to speak with her please." 
 Waiting for another embarrassed moment he 
 added, "May I come in?" 
 
 The door was reluctantly opened and he 
 thought that he recognized the woman who 
 stood there as the one that he had come to 
 see. 
 
 "You are Mrs. Gerrish, are you not? I am 
 Mr. Grace." 
 
 The woman did not speak but led the way 
 toward the room on the right of the hallway. 
 If Daniel Grace had been left to himself he 
 would have said that the family lived on the 
 left side of the hall, and that he had rented the 
 rooms on the right to store his furniture in, but 
 the doors on both sides were open and evidently 
 the family occupied the whole lower floor. He 
 resented the idea that his furniture had been 
 shifted without notification, for Daniel Grace 
 was a very exact and methodical man. 
 
 The room that he was shown into was large
 
 AN ANCESTRAL INVASION IJ 
 
 and sunny; it had a most friendly and attractive 
 look; it was homelike, even to his critical and 
 conservative taste; he had a memory of quite 
 an opposite impression when he had been there 
 before; then it had looked arid and poverty- 
 stricken. 
 
 The woman excused herself for a moment, and 
 as she left the room he was growingly sure that 
 she was Mrs. Gerrish, the very one with whom 
 he had made the arrangements about the stor 
 age ten years ago. 
 
 He heard a quiet, short conference with some 
 one in the hall, and the outer door was shut care 
 fully; he had a sudden fear that she had gone out. 
 
 As he waited for her to come back he went 
 over in his mind the manner in which the furni 
 ture had been crated, boxed, barrelled, or bur- 
 lapped, how each piece had been plainly stencilled 
 with his name and business address, in a method 
 ical way. There must have been enough furni 
 ture to fill two or three good-sized rooms, and 
 on account of fire risk the stipulation had been 
 made that the storerooms should be on the 
 ground floor. 
 
 These people must have taken advantage of 
 him and moved his belongings upstairs. A 
 high-handed proceeding! 
 
 Now Daniel had not a sharply observing mind 
 or rather his mind was not one for gathering 
 rapid impressions. Given his own time he could
 
 l8 AN ANCESTRAL INVASION 
 
 observe accurately, and he could reconstruct 
 the past in detail and with exactitude. 
 
 He sat facing the window through which the 
 sun shone with a dazzling brightness. This 
 had a bewildering effect, but when Daniel s 
 eyes had become accustomed to it, so that he 
 could see plainly, he found himself face to face 
 with a familiar sofa, and also face to face with an 
 unbelievable fact. 
 
 The sofa looked at once familiar and un 
 familiar, as a friend might look, seen under new 
 and unexpected circumstances, especially if pre 
 sented suddenly to the consciousness. 
 
 And sitting there, Daniel Grace had to accept 
 with amazement the astonishing fact that he 
 was sitting opposite to his own sofa that in 
 timate though inanimate friend of a lifetime. 
 "// is y it is our own sofa!" 
 
 He took a grave and disapproving survey 
 of the room. This inspection resulted in many 
 revelations and identifications. 
 
 He was in a room completely furnished with 
 his own belongings which he himself had crated 
 and otherwise protected his household goods 
 or gods; to him they were gods, for all the pieces 
 were ancestral, all had personal associations of 
 an honourable kind. 
 
 To be a Grace was an honourable estate, and 
 to belong to a Grace as near to honour as any 
 thing inanimate could attain.
 
 AN ANCESTRAL INVASION 19 
 
 With his hands clutching the arms of his 
 chair, literally his own chair, he made a survey 
 of the room. He was sitting in a Grace chair 
 opposite a Grace sofa, one that had been his 
 mother s before she married. She had been a 
 Tyndale, a name of equal distinction with Grace. 
 
 Over and behind the sofa hung an oval mirror 
 which quite filled the space between two win 
 dows. He had known this mirror intimately 
 since his childhood; its oval shape was to him 
 quite unlike all other mirrors in the world. It 
 was and always had been THE MIRROR, 
 whose distinguished lot had been to reflect the 
 Grace lineaments and to adorn the Grace wall. 
 
 Lying carelessly on the sofa was a guitar, 
 delicate with the softly mellowed surface of an 
 old and aristocratic instrument. He followed 
 with his affronted eyes the familiar tracery of 
 mother-of-pearl that outlined its form. This 
 was the guitar that Mrs. Grace had played 
 upon in her maiden days, it was the sacred in 
 strument upon which she had tinkled the ro 
 mantic music that had beguiled the hours of 
 courtship on moonlight evenings. A guitar 
 fragrant with memories of June and roses. 
 
 The sun fell full upon the instrument it 
 broadly emphasized the brash blue ribbon that 
 had replaced the dim blue of his memory. 
 
 The Grace piano filled one space at the end 
 of the room, and through the door he could see
 
 2O AN ANCESTRAL INVASION 
 
 into a dining room where the noble outlines of 
 his own mahogany sideboard dominated, the 
 sideboard that was brought over from England 
 by his great-great-grandfather. 
 
 Daniel s eyes fell to the floor he was inade 
 quate to cope with these iniquitous discrepan 
 cies, this domesticating of the Grace furniture 
 in this alien household. His tenderest memo 
 ries were being desecrated and profaned. 
 
 His eyes, physically speaking, were fixed on 
 the carpet, but mentally he was surveying the 
 past and trying to penetrate into the future. 
 
 Suddenly his eyes awakened to the fact that 
 they were tracing the pattern of the carpet; it 
 was an old Grace carpet, rich and heavy in 
 design, where roses mocked at art and nature. 
 But they mocked not at Daniel; every thread 
 in the carpet was sacred to him. 
 
 The wandering garlands of flowers had been 
 trodden into gray uncertainty by the feet of 
 strangers, there were sordid reminders of cross 
 ings and recrossings. 
 
 Daniel raised shocked eyes and saw, hung 
 upon the wall, the family portraits. The 
 frames were tarnished but forever dignified 
 by the enclosed portraits. 
 
 There were Jonathan and his wife the 
 maternal grandparents. There was Governor 
 Grace his grandfather, and hanging next to 
 him was he himself as a small boy in a white
 
 AN ANCESTRAL INVASION 21 
 
 suit, posed before a parted blue drapery which 
 revealed a landscape in the distance. On an 
 other wall hung the beautiful portraits of his 
 two aunts, Eleanor and Marianna. 
 
 It was with actual physical misery that he 
 dully surveyed this annexation of the Grace 
 ancestors; he wiped his face with his cambric 
 handkerchief; he felt as if he were trying to 
 waken himself from a terrifying dream. 
 
 He tried to formulate an adequate protest 
 to make to this Mrs. Gerrish. Would she ever 
 come back? Had she gone out to avoid him? 
 He stared at the bookcase full of familiar books, 
 and then he heard her come back into the room. 
 He turned to confront her. 
 
 She sat down in a Grace chair, and adjusted 
 her dress with a certain formality, and with the 
 manner of one who came to an encounter not 
 unprepared, and yet with a baffling sort of 
 inertia that had the quality of a barrier. 
 
 The silence was so long that at last he broke 
 it almost violently. He tried not to see his famil 
 iars, the chairs and pictures, they embarrassed 
 him, but instead of the arraignment he had com 
 posed, he heard himself say, with the formal 
 politeness of a Grace at his best, "I hope that 
 I shall not embarrass you but I have come to see 
 about the furniture that I stored with you some 
 ten years ago." 
 
 "Yes." That was all the response that she
 
 22 AN ANCESTRAL INVASION 
 
 gave. It was hardlycomplete,consideringthecir- 
 cumstances,but the woman added no other word. 
 
 "I see," he now said with forced courage, 
 determined to face the situation and to accuse 
 her directly of fraud, or at any rate of violation 
 of her contract, "I see" he hesitated, then 
 substituted something quite other from his 
 originally intended sentence, "I see that you 
 occupy both sides of the house." This was 
 inane, and not likely to advance him on his 
 difficult way. 
 
 "Yes," she assented, and silence fell again. 
 Now fully recognizing his inadequacy he de 
 termined to drop all discussion and merely to 
 give notice of the removal of his furniture. 
 
 "I think, if it is perfectly convenient to you, 
 Mrs. Gerrish, that I will have the furniture "- 
 he had almost said boxed, but thought better 
 of it and said "removed." He felt that accord 
 ing to all ethical standards it really was boxed 
 as he had left it. Then he reiterated fatuously, 
 "At your convenience, of course." 
 
 "When should you think of sending for it?" 
 
 "I will send for it day after to-morrow," he 
 said, resolutely. 
 
 "I am afraid that I could not be ready by 
 then." Mrs. Gerrish said this quite as if she 
 had taken him at his word and would let his 
 convenience wait upon her own. 
 
 This stiffened him up; he could feel the blood
 
 AN ANCESTRAL INVASION 2J 
 
 beating in his temples, but instead of saying 
 as he knew that he ought to, "I really must 
 insist upon having it at once," he sat in uncom 
 fortable silence. Mrs. Gerrish also was silent; 
 he could hear the firm ticking of his grand 
 mother s clock where it stood at the foot of the 
 stairs measuring off time in its impersonal 
 manner. The sound drove him to speech: 
 "When will it be convenient for you to have the 
 furniture removed?" 
 
 She thought for a moment and then said, 
 "My daughter Luella is to be married in two 
 weeks, on the second of June." 
 
 : This is certainly very extraordinary!" 
 ejaculated Daniel. 
 
 "My daughter is not very strong and I should 
 be sorry to have confusion in the house at this 
 time." 
 
 She spoke very quietly but Daniel felt that 
 she meant every word to tell upon him. 
 
 He thought for a moment, then his irritation 
 swept him into saying abruptly, "I am afraid 
 that I cannot wait." 
 
 "Luella has gone out for a few minutes, she 
 may come in at any time, I should be sorry to 
 have her know about the furniture," said Mrs. 
 Gerrish. 
 
 "Do you mean sorry to have her know that 
 I am going to take my own furniture from your 
 house?"
 
 24 AN ANCESTRAL INVASION 
 
 "No, sorry to have her know that it does not 
 belong to us." 
 
 "You do not mean, Madam, it is not possible 
 that your daughter thinks that you own all 
 this!" He gave a sweep with his arm that 
 seemed in its dignity to embrace and gather 
 together, to rescue once for all these matchless 
 Grace belongings. 
 
 "Luella has always liked these things better 
 than all the others; she has been brought up to 
 dust and to take care of them, and to see that 
 they were all in order." 
 
 Good heavens, what could he say! Just then 
 the front door opened and closed. Mrs. Gerrish 
 and Daniel looked at each other, almost fur 
 tively. He had a bewildered feeling that he 
 was in a conspiracy to keep Luella in ignorance 
 of his true reason for coming to the house, that, 
 in short, preposterous as it was, he was to help 
 in the fraud, to forswear for a time his owner 
 ship, to enter into this combination against 
 himself. 
 
 Luella was a slender young thing and she 
 slipped into the room, not shyly but as noise 
 lessly as a breath of air. She looked too young 
 and too unaware to be married, and much too 
 young and innocent to be a part" to her 
 mother s deceit. 
 
 Her mother took her by the hand and said, 
 "This is Luella, Mr. Grace."
 
 AN ANCESTRAL INVASION 1$ 
 
 The manner of the introduction seemed, in 
 some indefinable way, to put Luella into his 
 keeping, to bespeak for her his consideration, 
 to emphasize her youth, her innocence, to make 
 of her a potential lamb to a possible sacrifice. 
 
 "Luella," said her mother, "run and put on a 
 thinner dress." 
 
 "The white one?" This was a scarcely audi 
 ble question, hardly more than the moving of 
 the lips, but Daniel heard it like a keen, thin 
 sound penetrating the fog of his bewilderment. 
 
 Then Luella went out and he straightened him 
 self, to him this was his last opportunity of put 
 ting matters right, and probably Mrs. Gerrish 
 had sent her away on purpose that they might 
 have a last word. 
 
 Not a movement on her part; he looked at her, 
 she sat quietly there without the slightest re 
 vealing expression; she just waited for Luella 
 to come back. Her face was of a pale plump 
 ness, impassive, inscrutable. 
 
 She rose, after a moment, and slightly lowered 
 the window-shades. Tempering the light made 
 a unity of the room, and the portraits came into 
 more prominence as the frames reflected less 
 light. The faces seemed to glow from the can 
 vas, they might well be going to take part in 
 this drama. 
 
 Luella came in again with that half-sliding, 
 half-inquiring motion which seemed a part of her
 
 26 AN ANCESTRAL INVASION 
 
 individuality; she was arrested by her mother s 
 voice just as she stood in front of the portrait 
 of Daniel s Aunt Marianna Grace. 
 
 Daniel was struck by the singular sense of 
 arrested motion expressed in Luella s figure; 
 he glanced at Mrs. Gerrish, feeling that in some 
 way she was not only directing Luella s move 
 ments but also that she in a sense controlled his 
 own observation. He felt that his eyes were 
 being directed by some compelling force to 
 look first at his Aunt Marianna s portrait, and 
 then at the younger, appealing face of Luella; 
 then he was suddenly struck with the strong 
 suggestion of likeness between the two. 
 
 He was shocked to admit this even to himself, 
 and he knew that the only thing to do now was 
 to cut the unpleasant interview short off, and 
 to go away, sending someone else, less intimately 
 connected with the transaction, to recover the 
 goods, move them, and put an end to this dis 
 graceful predicament. 
 
 But he frustrated his own design by lingering 
 and saying against his own volition, "What a 
 curious resemblance there is between your 
 daughter and the portrait above her." 
 
 Luella smiled at her mother and then glancing 
 fondly at the portrait said, "That is a portrait 
 of my favourite aunt. She isn t living you know, 
 but I have always loved her better than all 
 the others." Luella in her diminutive way re-
 
 AN ANCESTRAL INVASION 2J 
 
 peated his own sweep of the arm and gathered 
 to herself this whole sheaf of Grace ancestors. 
 Then she sat down on the well-remembered 
 Grace footstool, directly under the portrait. 
 
 It was extraordinary to see the child of Mrs. 
 Gerrish sitting with her young and happy face 
 under the ancestral Marianna, challenging his 
 recognition of, and acquiescence in, the fact that 
 there was a strong likeness. She evidently ex 
 pected from him a sympathetic pleasure. 
 
 He felt dizzy, he was being ridiculously led 
 into acts contrary to his intentions; he wanted 
 to protest, he wanted also to find out how much 
 Luella was a free agent or the dupe of that im 
 possible, preposterous imposter, her mother. 
 
 Then Luella with a little excitement in her 
 voice took the lead. "I know I look like my 
 aunt, everybody says so. I made this dress 
 myself just like hers in the picture, don t you 
 see?" 
 
 Daniel did see, and admitted it with a nod, all 
 the while wondering if, after all, it was not the 
 dress that made Luella look like Aunt Marianna. 
 He regretted that even his nod of admission 
 had still further entangled him in the fantastic 
 web of circumstance that was being woven 
 around him, and was Luella in it? or only an 
 other victim! 
 
 "You see," she went on, folding her slender 
 hands in evident security of his interest, and
 
 28 AN ANCESTRAL INVASION 
 
 yet with a little glance of dependence at her 
 mother, "you see my Aunt Cecilia died when I 
 was very young, she never saw me but I was 
 named after her. Cecilia is my middle name. 
 She left me her portrait; she was only twenty- 
 seven when she died, and she left me all her 
 things: her portrait and her books and the sofa 
 and the piano, and even her guitar. I have her 
 old music pieces, too, and I have learned to play 
 on her guitar. I wrote a little song about her; 
 I sing it to her sometimes when I sit here. She 
 used to sing, too." 
 
 "I had an aunt also, who died young." 
 Daniel announced this stiffly in a sort of an 
 tagonistic competition. 
 
 "Tell me about her," pleaded Luella with 
 ready and sweet sympathy. 
 
 It would not do to relinquish his beautiful 
 Aunt Marianna into the hands of the Gerrishes, 
 so he added, "My Aunt Marianna was very 
 beautiful and lovely, she" he hesitated "she, 
 too, died young, before she was thirty." He 
 spoke with difficulty as if his features were 
 stiff; his speech was mechanical and his lips 
 immobile. Luella leaned forward, clasping her 
 hands more tightly together. "Tell me more." 
 
 Here was a new trouble his Aunt Marianna 
 had died of a broken heart, so the family ro 
 mance ran, a tale entirely of sweet obedience 
 to parental authority, the renouncing of an
 
 AN ANCESTRAL INVASION 29 
 
 unworthy lover, an early death, a bier of lilies, 
 and fragrant, pathetic memories. This was 
 not a tale to tell this strange young girl who 
 claimed this very aunt for her own, as she sat 
 under the portrait, and who herself was to 
 be married so soon. It was still more of an 
 outrage to think of revealing sacred Grace memo 
 ries to these strange people, but nevertheless 
 he said briefly, "She had an unhappy love affair; 
 she never recovered from the grief of it." Thus 
 shamelessly did the correct Daniel betray the 
 Grace history. 
 
 "Did she die of a broken heart? Oh! how sad, 
 how very sad. I did not know that any one ever 
 did really die of a broken heart, I thought it hap 
 pened only in books! Mother, you don t sup 
 pose that Aunt Cecilia died of a broken heart. 
 I never knew how she died; you don t suppose 
 she did!" 
 
 No human being with a trace of a heart 
 could turn and say to her, "Luella, you never 
 had an Aunt Cecilia, or, if you did have one, this 
 is not a portrait of her. This is the portrait 
 of my own Aunt Marianna Grace; it is only by 
 chance that you look like her. I am going to 
 take the portrait away. She isn t yours. It 
 is all a mistake or worse. She is my aunt, 
 not yours." If he could not say this what was 
 to be done! 
 
 He rose suddenly and looking at his watch
 
 3O AN ANCESTRAL INVASION 
 
 he said he must defer business till another day 
 as he must hurry to catch a train. 
 
 Luella laid her hand confidingly in his at 
 parting, and Mrs. Gerrish followed him to the 
 door, and as he went out he heard her say, in 
 colourless, low tones, "You can have the furni 
 ture moved on the tenth of June." 
 
 He always afterward remembered this 
 woman as large, with a white, impassive face 
 showing as an opaque blur, framed in the 
 partly open door, and he could hear the low, 
 even words, "You can have the furniture 
 moved on the tenth of June." 
 
 Daniel had no keen sense of humour, but he 
 laughed derisively at himself as he went down 
 the street. To have been so befuddled and 
 bamboozled by that pasty-faced woman, not 
 only to be kept waiting for his furniture now, 
 but to have had it used so many years, to have 
 no explanation, no apology! To have been 
 drawn into a conspiracy, to have been forced 
 to lend the Grace furniture for a wedding, to 
 have allowed that young girl to rob him of his 
 aunt, to have even seemed to have counte 
 nanced this disgusting fraud! Good Heavens! 
 It was incredible! 
 
 On June tenth Daniel went to Perth Amboy. 
 He had regained a certain amount of firmness 
 and had matured a scheme for at least getting 
 at the reasons for the desecration of his property,
 
 AN ANCESTRAL INVASION 31 
 
 and also for finding out how much Luella really 
 knew. In his heart of hearts he wanted to ex 
 onerate her from all complicity. 
 
 The house in Amboy had its shades down, 
 there did not seem to be any one there; there 
 was that indescribable air of aloneness that 
 marks an unoccupied house. A neighbour was 
 evidently on the watch for him and came run 
 ning over with the keys in her hand; she opened 
 the front door. He saw that the house had been 
 dismantled, the rooms at the right were full of 
 furniture, crated, barrelled, boxed, and bur- 
 lapped. Each bundle was stencilled with his 
 name and address, exactly as he remembered 
 leaving it ten years before. 
 
 The neighbour was saying, Mrs. Gerrish 
 left yesterday. Luella was married on the 
 second of June; she told me to tell you that she 
 looked exactly like her aunt, the one she was 
 named after. She did look like the picture, but 
 to my thinking she would have looked prettier 
 in a more modern dress. She always was just 
 daft over that aunt of hern." 
 
 "Did Mrs. Gerrish tell you what was to be 
 done with the furniture?" 
 
 "No, she said you would understand and to 
 tell you that she was much obliged to you, she 
 said that you knew all about it, that was all; 
 she never was one for many words." 
 
 "Did she leave her address with you?"
 
 J2 AN ANCESTRAL INVASION 
 
 "Why, no, don t you know where the furniture 
 is to go?" 
 
 "Yes, I know where it belongs, if it is to be 
 sent where it was originally intended to go. I 
 certainly ought to know, if anybody does." 
 This was the last feeble protest made to himself, 
 for the neighbour apparently was only a mes 
 senger as ignorant of the Gerrishes as he himself 
 was. 
 
 "Are you any relation of the Gerrishes?" the 
 neighbour inquired curiously. 
 
 "No," he said, "/ am not in the remotest degree 
 related to them" then he added, "I am I happen 
 to be, in this matter, the agent of Mrs. Gerrish." 
 
 "My! ain t he stiff!" said she as she went 
 away and left him alone with his recovered 
 ancestors.
 
 THE UNDOING OF THE BURGLAR 
 
 MRS. CLARA G. BROWN is a widow. 
 She believes in clubs, in alliances, and 
 in reciprocity days. She gives much 
 time and thought to these activities, and she was 
 the originator of the saying " Show me a woman 
 and I will tell you whether she belongs to a club 
 or not." Sometimes she varies this by saying, 
 "Show me a club and I will tell you what sort 
 of woman belongs to it." This last aphorism 
 occurred to her when bridge-whist clubs came, 
 and came to stay. They had to be accounted 
 for. 
 
 Impressions drifted into and out of Mrs. 
 Brown s mind as do ships into and out of a 
 harbour leaving no trace. Intellectual tides 
 had^washed her through Orientalism, Esoteric 
 Buddhism, Theosophy, and Transcendentalism, 
 into the safely modernized generalization that 
 mind is master of all matters, great and small. 
 
 She says " I am broad, I have no fads. My 
 only children, alas! are the children of my brain." 
 
 She is the personification of Modern Woman, 
 but she still has one weakness, one obsession, 
 one miserable fibre of femininity. Clara is afraid 
 
 33
 
 34 THE UNDOING OF THE BURGLAR 
 
 of burglars. In vain has she tried to eradicate 
 this fear, in vain has she followed the recipe 
 of one cult after another; she cannot exorcise 
 this humiliating thought. She remains in abject 
 fear of burglars. Small, creeping things, like 
 spiders and rodents, she has been able utterly 
 to abolish from the corner of her mind where fear 
 generates; but the burglar terror, vivid and 
 tormenting, always recurs at bedtime. 
 
 She lives alone in her pleasant suburban 
 house, with one competent maid who does the 
 cooking, waits on the table and the door, and 
 at odd moments buttons and hooks Mrs. Brown 
 into her well-fitting waists. To be well-dressed 
 is a creed of Mrs. Brown s. She is a socialist, 
 just now, and is willing to reciprocate in all 
 ways; she would gladly do up the waist worn by 
 her maid, only in the nature of things the maid 
 would never think of asking her to do this. 
 Really, the mutual duties of socialism easily 
 adjust themselves, because the foot-rule of 
 custom is still in the memory as a standard. 
 
 Mrs. Clara Brown always begins the rites of 
 retiring for the night by being unhooked by the 
 maid, whom she then dismisses with the injunc 
 tion to lock all the doors and to put a stick over 
 the hall window, for a clever burglar could per 
 haps introduce a thin-bladed knife through the 
 crack of that particular window and press back 
 the catch.
 
 THE UNDOING OF THE BURGLAR 35 
 
 After the maid goes, Mrs. Brown takes a 
 candle and looks under the bed. She is a trifle 
 plump, not aggressively so, but the act of stoop 
 ing requires consideration. 
 
 One night, two weeks ago, she lifted the val 
 ance of the bed and peered underneath. She 
 saw no burglar, but away back she did see a 
 small object. It might possibly be a glove, or a 
 pair of stockings that had slipped from the bed 
 on the far side. It was quite small and obscure 
 in the candlelight. Her fear of seeing a burglar 
 being allayed, there came in its place an irrita 
 tion at the maid s carelessness. It was sweep 
 ing day, and no corner should have been over 
 looked. 
 
 She tried to reach the object and couldn t. 
 Then she got her hair-brush and tried to poke 
 it out, but it was still out of reach; so she gave 
 it up and framed, in her mind, a proper rebuke 
 for the maid. She needed watching evidently. 
 
 She forgot to reprove the maid next morning, 
 for she went off early to town. At the club 
 there was to be a lecture by a learned Oriental 
 a Pundit of Pundits, who was to speak on the 
 "Visualization of the Invisible." Afterward a 
 luncheon in his honour was to be given. Mrs. 
 Brown determined to eat no meat on this oc 
 casion, out of respect for the Pundit s religion; 
 but she was much perplexed to observe that he 
 partook liberally of all the good things, includ-
 
 36 THE UNDOING OF THE BURGLAR 
 
 ing meat. She made a pencil memorandum in 
 her gold-trimmed notebook, in her usual orderly 
 manner, to this effect: "Ask Pundit to explain 
 theory of vegetarianism after lunch." 
 
 That evening a friend went home with her to 
 spend the night; a Mrs. Parkinson, of Hacken- 
 sack, who was a delegate to the Federation of 
 Clubs. They talked late, and Clara was so 
 tired she actually forgot to look under the bed, 
 and promptly fell asleep. 
 
 About midnight she awoke with a start. She 
 was sure that she heard a stealthy tread. She 
 lay awake, shivering, with her eyes wide open, 
 but after a time she got hold of an antidotal 
 thought, a thought to banish fear, and finally 
 went to sleep with that in her mind, like a 
 mental lozenge. She slept well, and in the morn 
 ing she told her friend of the occurrence and 
 gave her the formula for abolishing fear. She 
 felt that she had at last "demonstrated" with 
 perfect success. 
 
 But the next night the burglar idea came back 
 upon her with appalling strength. It took all 
 her courage to look under the bed at all. There 
 was no burglar there, but away, way back 
 against the wall lay not only the small object 
 she had seen before, but also something bigger: 
 something that might be a fur boa or a scarf, or 
 even a small shawl. This seriously annoyed 
 her; it kept her awake for a long time, during
 
 THE UNDOING OF THE BURGLAR 37 
 
 which she thought out a project for the more 
 vigorous education of maids. She planned a 
 lecture to be given at the clubs with illustrations. 
 Also, through the agency of the clubs, there was 
 to be circulated through the kitchens of the 
 land a collection of photographs of the best 
 Greek art. She believed that a daily, yes, an 
 hourly influence would emanate from these, in 
 which the use of the straight and the curved 
 line is so splendidly manifest. 
 
 She fell asleep with this uplift idea in her mind. 
 She called the lecture "The Minds of Maids, 
 or Order Through Art." The next day she 
 talked seriously with her maid and sent her to 
 pick up the things that had fallen under the bed. 
 The maid came back and said she could find 
 nothing under the bed, but she thought perhaps 
 the bed-clothes had slipped back and made a 
 little heap. She had straightened them out 
 and now they were all properly tucked in. 
 
 Mrs. Clara Brown was not convinced. That 
 night, moreover, there was an even bigger heap 
 of something back in the dark. A fur coat 
 or a big ulster would look like that. She took 
 a broom and poked at it but she couldn t get it 
 out. She sat on the floor and wondered if her 
 nerves were giving way with all her club work 
 and this burglar fear. She was ashamed to 
 call the maid, and she then and there determined 
 to take a vacation just as soon as the club year
 
 38 THE UNDOING OF THE BURGLAR 
 
 was ended. Next day, however, she recovered 
 her nerve, or a portion of it. Curiously enough, 
 it was no longer apprehension of seeing a bur 
 glar that agitated her, but the dread of seeing 
 more things slipped down behind the bed. She 
 certainly did need a change! 
 
 That night she held the candle well away from 
 her; for, having a frugal mind, she remembered 
 that she had on her second-best, black-silk 
 skirt. She slowly bent her plump person, threw 
 the valance back, and looked. 
 
 There was the burglar! 
 
 There he was, one sinister eye fastened upon 
 her, after the manner of burglars, one hand 
 stretched out toward her, and in its grasp was a 
 shining pistol, its gaping muzzle pointing straight 
 at her. 
 
 She sank slowly to the floor. She seemed 
 paralyzed; she could not call out, she could not 
 rise, she could not seize the dinnerbell that al 
 ways stood on the table by her bed for the very 
 purpose of alarming the neighbours. All her 
 plans were as naught in the stupendous presence 
 of the burglar. 
 
 "Good evening," said he. 
 
 "Good evening," returned Mrs. Brown, me 
 chanically, while the cold chills ran up and down 
 her back. Then, as if wakened by her own voice, 
 she tried to get up; but the burglar said quietly 
 (you must remember that he had a pistol in his
 
 THE UNDOING OF THE BURGLAR 39 
 
 hand loaded and cocked): "Don t move, and 
 don t be frightened; I am not going to hurt you 
 if you keep still." 
 
 Oh, the awful threat that lay behind those 
 words, the exact words she had heard a hundred 
 times in imagination, the very words that bur 
 glars always use to hypnotize their victims be 
 fore shooting, or tying them up with cords and 
 putting gags in their mouths so they can t 
 scream. 
 
 "In fact," continued the burglar, "I can t 
 get out of here." 
 
 "Mercy!" ejaculated she. "Are you hurt?" 
 
 "No, I am not exactly hurt," said he, "but 
 I am unfinished." 
 
 "What do you mean by unfinished, and who 
 are you?" 
 
 "My name," said he, "is C. C. Mr. 
 
 Carking Care." 
 
 "What a name!" she exclaimed. "I don t 
 believe it is your name at all, it doesn t sound 
 like a real name." 
 
 " It s all the name I ve got ! " Then he added 
 wistfully: "At present, anyway." 
 
 Mrs. Brown sat silently gazing at him. The 
 candle was tipped and the drip, drip of the wax 
 was making stalagmites in her broad and shining 
 silk lap. 
 
 Then he went on, "I am incomplete as yet, 
 and it is only this incompleteness that saves
 
 40 THE UNDOING OF THE BURGLAR 
 
 you; I am, to use the watchmaker s phrase, not 
 fully assembled yet." 
 
 "I don t understand you," said she, much 
 puzzled, thinking the man must be insane. 
 
 "Why," said he, "you made me! You said 
 that a burglar was your carking care; you often 
 said so, you kept repeating it, and it is lucky for 
 you that I am not yet complete. I have de 
 veloped this far, and in a few days, maybe to 
 morrow, I should have been a full-blown burglar. 
 Of course I never should have been a first-class 
 burglar, because your mind is so faulty. Now 
 see," said he with an expression of disgust, "just 
 see this darned pistol! It is simply ridiculous. 
 Just such a pistol as you would expect a woman 
 to make! No gunsmith in the world would be 
 willing to put his trade-mark on it! It is all 
 barrel and trigger and about twice as long, and 
 as thick again, as it should be, and much too 
 shiny; why, it is perfectly absurd!" He gave 
 it a contemptuous jerk. 
 
 Mrs. Brown gave a start and a little scream. 
 
 "Pooh!" said he; and then went on: "And 
 just look at me!" The command was entirely 
 unnecessary for she was looking at him intently. 
 "Yes, just look at me! Only one eye; you never 
 would see but one eye in your imagination one 
 eye, one black eye, sinister enough for a dozen. 
 Don t you know that some burglars have light 
 blue eyes as pleasant and innocent as a baby s?
 
 THE UNDOING OF THE BURGLAR 4! 
 
 And there are lots of other things that you have 
 left out entirely, or got wrong. Just see how 
 flat I am! You would have rounded me out 
 after a while, of course, but you never in the 
 world would have made a good job of me. I 
 am pretty much all eye, overcoat, and pistol!" 
 
 He did look flat, she could see that herself, 
 now that she was calmer. His voice was dis 
 agreeable and fault-finding. 
 
 Well, anyway, here I am! You have got me 
 so far, and what are you going to do about it?" 
 
 "Do about it?" she echoed. 
 
 "Yes, do about me. I am still growing, and 
 I am bound to keep on growing or shrinking. 
 It all depends upon you." 
 
 "Can t you go away?" she suggested. 
 
 "Go away? No, I can t! Where could I go 
 to, I should like to know in this semi-assembled 
 condition!" 
 
 "What can I do about it?" asked she. 
 
 "Why, disseminate me; disembody me! I 
 must be dissipated." 
 
 "Dissipated! Mercy!" she cried. She had 
 an abhorrent vision of drinking and carousing 
 right there in her own house. 
 
 "Yes, if you don t want a full-blown burglar 
 in your house, you d better get rid of me, the 
 quicker the better. Now you stop looking 
 under the bed at night, and go about your busi 
 ness, saying to yourself all the time: There
 
 42 THE UNDOING OF THE BURGLAR 
 
 is no burglar under the bed; there is no such 
 thing as a burglar. I dispel the error; I rid 
 myself of the burglar thought. 
 
 "This is what you must keep saying every 
 time your mind sets toward the burglar idea. 
 You must demonstrate for courage and truth. 
 
 "You must do this for ten days, three hours a 
 day. It has taken you about ten days to as 
 semble me, and of course this life-long fear of 
 burglars has tended to make me particularly 
 robust, unusually so. Very likely the pistol 
 idea in your mind will be the hardest to elimi 
 nate. If that remains, you must give yourself 
 a special treatment for it. 
 
 "And during all this time you must not look 
 under the bed once. If you do, you will add just 
 so much to my permanence and my persistence." 
 
 "But don t you see, I can t bear to think of 
 you under the bed all this time, while I am treat 
 ing for you." 
 
 "You can t think of me as being under the 
 bed if you don t think of me at all, can you?" 
 
 He said this quite rudely, and continued: 
 "What I m trying to make you understand is, 
 that you mustn t think of me at all, not once. 
 And if you follow my instructions exactly, I 
 ought to be flattened out of existence in about 
 ten days or so; say twelve days to be sure that 
 there isn t a trace of me remaining." 
 
 "I will try," said Mrs. Brown, meekly.
 
 THE UNDOING OF THE BURGLAR 43 
 
 "Then you d better begin at once. Now say 
 after me: There is no such thing as a burglar. 
 
 Mrs. Brown said it. 
 
 "Oh, you ve got to do it with more spirit than 
 that! Say it this way," he ordered in a dicta 
 torial tone. 
 
 Mrs. Brown tried it again. 
 
 "That s better, now say it over once more." 
 
 She repeated it, this time with emphasis and 
 spirit. 
 
 "That will do. Now say these things after 
 me: The burglar idea is an error; I banish error 
 from my mind. I banish fear from my mind; 
 I have no fear. I am mistress of my own mind. 
 
 Mrs. Clara G. Brown, with the candle drip 
 ping wax puddles in the lap of her next-best, 
 black-silk skirt, her eyes fixed on the one eye 
 of the burglar she had made, repeated these 
 phrases after him in a firm, vigorous voice. 
 
 "Now," said Carking Care, "remember! For 
 ten days, three hours a day, you must repeat 
 these words, and you d better take an extra 
 treatment every other day for the pistol. If you 
 are resolute, you will entirely disembody me by 
 that time; and you bet I shall be glad enough 
 to be out of it; I hate a botch, and I shouldn t 
 be proud of my mind s work, if I were you. You 
 made a perfectly ridiculous mess of me," 
 
 Mrs. Brown dropped the valance and hid her 
 burglar from sight, then carefully shutting the
 
 44 THE UNDOING OF THE BURGLAR 
 
 door, she went into another room to sleep, all 
 the while repeating: " I have no fear, there is no 
 such thing as a burglar." 
 
 At the end of ten days she believed him to be 
 disseminated, but she didn t dare look under 
 the bed. She was thin. She had lost ten 
 pounds. She packed her trunk and folded her 
 best black silk to the formula: " There is no 
 such ," etc., etc., etc. 
 
 Even at the moment of departure she didn t 
 dare to tell the maid to put the stick over the 
 hall window. "Who knows what I might 
 nucleate if I should say anything!" she reflected. 
 She even stopped herself when she thought that 
 she was going to think of the fear thought. 
 
 She reached Detroit at ten o clock in the 
 evening; and after a night s rest she felt more 
 like herself again. 
 
 At the breakfast table a telegram was handed 
 to her. She opened it carelessly, but read with 
 amazement: "Last night a burglar broke into 
 your house by the hall window and stole every 
 thing he could carry off." 
 
 Poor Clara G. Brown says she hasn t yet de 
 cided what to do. In view of all the facts it 
 does not seem to be of any use to repeat the 
 formula against burglars, because she feels per 
 fectly sure that the thing under her bed wasn t 
 the one who afterward came in by the window. 
 She even wonders if they looked at all alike.
 
 SABRINY, DAD & CO. 
 
 PART ONE 
 
 YES, that s right so fur as it goes; out of 
 wood it is, but the burnin question 
 is, what kind o wood. You see, little 
 gal, there s wood and wood. And so now, 
 ef it is agreeable to my pardner, we ll just 
 knock off work fur a spell and have a business 
 meetin to consider what kind o wood is most 
 suitablest, all things considerin , fur this ere 
 chist. 
 
 "I ll jest sort o stiddy my head with a dror 
 at my pipe while I set the question fairly before 
 ye. 
 
 "Now, speakin o woods, there s gopher wood, 
 that s a kind o scripter wood and no mistake; 
 but we don t seem to have no great supply of 
 that particular kind o timber on hand, not jest 
 at present, that is. Therefore we ll pass on to 
 cedar of Lebanon; that s scripter wood, too, and 
 it always sounded to me, Sabriny, as ef cedar 
 of Lebanon would hev a sweet sort of smell to 
 it, like spice; now gopher wood, as I study on it, 
 don t seem as ef it would hev no sweet smell, 
 
 45
 
 46 SABRINY, DAD & CO. 
 
 but it would hev a nice dark colour to it. I 
 should ev preferred, myself, to hev had cedar o 
 Lebanon on account o the sweet smell, but it so 
 happens thet we ain t got no supply o that on 
 hand neither we re jest about out o that kind, 
 leastwise there ain t enough to make a chist out 
 of. Can my pardner think of any other sort of 
 wood that would be suitable fur the work we 
 hev in hand?" 
 
 "Dad, how would pine do?" 
 "Shucks! Why, pine, of course, the very 
 thing for this chist; and it happens that we hev 
 got some pine, jest as dry as bone and exactly 
 the right length. Now jest see the advantage 
 of hevm a pardner!" 
 
 "Shouldn t you have thought of pine, Dad?" 
 "I might, and then again I mightn t. Of 
 course I should hev come to it in time, but 
 beginnin* way back in the Bible fur the different 
 kinds of wood it stands to reason thet I shouldn t 
 hev got round to pine till we d wasted lots of 
 time on the road. And now here we be, jest 
 by one word spoke by my pardner. We ve 
 got some pine fur sure, and betwixt ourselves 
 and the Co. it s pine or nothin this time. Shall 
 we call it pine?" 
 
 "Let s make it of pine this time." 
 "Pine it is then, and now, Sabriny, you know 
 that this chist is to be the best chist that ever 
 was made. No king couldn t hev no better
 
 SABRINY, DAD & CO. 47 
 
 chist than this one that we re makin at this 
 very minute as ever was." 
 
 "Couldn t a king have a gold chist, Dad?" 
 "Cert in, cert in he could, ef he hed a min to; 
 but the question is t would he like it, all things 
 considered. Now on a cold mornin in March or 
 mebby in January, with the snow a-squeakin 
 under foot, would he like to git up early in the 
 mornin and leave his warm bed, to open the 
 chist to git a plane or a dror-shave out, so as to 
 ease up the queen s door ef it had happened to 
 hev sagged a mite so s t it wouldn t stay shet? 
 Would he like to lay a-holt on a freezin cold 
 gold chist and mebby hev to fumble round to 
 git the key into the lock till his ringers got so 
 numb thet he couldn t git the chist open, let 
 alone handlin the dror-shave? No, even a 
 king would git riled at thet, I do believe. I 
 kind o think, all things considered, thet a pine 
 chist is the best, even fur a king. 
 
 "So here goes ! You best jest squint your eye 
 along this ere piece of pine, pardner, to see ef it 
 is a good piece for a starter." 
 
 "I think it is a splendid piece, Dad." 
 "All right then, now! One to begin, two to 
 show, three to make ready, and four to go. I 
 believe this day was jest made for Sabriny, 
 Dad and Co., the rain sort of shets us in and 
 shets other folks out." 
 "Ma, for instance?"
 
 48 SABRINY, DAD & CO. 
 
 "Now, Sabriny, it isn t fur me to say I meant 
 Ma, but it cert inly is considerable damp fur 
 her to come out here to the shop. Now I don t 
 say she won t come, and I ain t sayin that 
 Sabriny, Dad and Co., don t want her to come; 
 what I do say is, thet this ere rain is goin* to 
 do the crops considerable good, and I m not 
 sayin but what I am willin to see it keep on 
 a-rainin this way all day long." 
 
 "Oh! Dad, what beautiful curls you are 
 makin , I wisht my hair curled like them 
 shavin s, all round my head." 
 
 "Sho, Sabriny! I don t wish no sech a thing. 
 I don t believe I could work with no sech a 
 curly-headed pardner round the shop, nohow. 
 It would upset me dreadful. You see, when I 
 selected a pardner it was as much as anything 
 else because she hadn t no curls flyin round 
 loose and gittin mixed up with the shavin s. 
 You hev to be mighty sober and particular to 
 be a pardner in a firm like ourn!" 
 
 "Dad, how do you stick the corners of the 
 chest together?" 
 
 "We don t exactly stick em together, we 
 jines em, and what Sabriny, Dad and Co. jines 
 together no man can put asunder; they ll be 
 jined as firm as them that enters holy matri 
 mony. It s cling or bust, and you can t bust." 
 
 "What can t bust, Dad?" 
 
 "The corners of the chist, to be sure. As I
 
 SABRINY, DAD & CO. 49 
 
 was sayin , a chist is mighty like holy matri 
 mony. It may be chuck full of edged tools, 
 but it won t separate, not ef it s made by one of 
 these three Sabriny, Dad and Co. Well, I 
 declare! Ef I ain t jest about got these ere 
 pieces ready to jine." 
 
 "I thought a chist was a square box, Dad. 
 What makes you make it that shape, bigger 
 at the top?" 
 
 "This ere chist is peculiar, it s an invention 
 of your ole Dad s. You jest watch, now, and 
 see him cut out these ere two little half-moons. 
 Look out, Sabriny! Don t never tech a dror- 
 shave; thet tool s sharper than all creation. 
 Don t you never play with edged tools. As the 
 Bible says, use em but don t never play with 
 em. I swan to man, ef thet ain t the dinner bell 
 a ready and Ma hollerin fur Sabriny! I cal 
 culate somebody ll hev to go in purty quick so s 
 to pacify Ma. I guess it hed better be me, be 
 cause it stands to reason thet ef it is too rainy 
 fur Ma to come out here, it is too rainy fur 
 Sabriny to go in, to say nothin at all about her 
 ever gittin out again. So ef the heft of the firm 
 will stay right out here in the shop, and mebby 
 jest curl down with her doll on them shavin s 
 her Dad ll fetch her out a piece o pie or sumthin* 
 or other; that is, ef Ma s willin . Mind, he don t 
 promise nothin fur cert in, only jest mebby."
 
 5O SABRINY, DAD & CO. 
 
 "Wal r I do declare for t, ef she ain t jest fell 
 fast asleep with them ere shavin s pinned to 
 her head fur curls! What cur us things little 
 gals is, anyway; I most wish they wouldn t 
 never grow up. I guess I ll hev to flax round 
 and git that peculiar chist of ourn done afore 
 she wakes up. I do reely suppose I d orter 
 hev set thet light o glass into the butt ry winder 
 by all rights, and mebby it would ev been peace- 
 fuller all round ef I hed a-done it. But this ere 
 chist has got holt on me and I guess I ll jest let 
 the butt ry winder and Ma slide fur onct. As 
 we useter say when we was children, Scoldin 
 don t hurt none, lickin don t last long, and kill 
 me she dasn t! 
 
 "Awake, are you, little gal? Well, there s 
 your pie; you jest eat it like a nice little gal and 
 then come over here and see the chist. It s 
 most finished a ready. There!" 
 
 "Why, Dad! It s a cradle; it s a doll s 
 cradle!" 
 
 " Land o Goshen ! so it is, it s jest an ordinary 
 doll s cradle, rockers and all! Who d a* thought 
 it! And here your old Dad s been figgerin on 
 its turnin out to be a tool chist, all the time he s 
 been a-tinkerin on it. That s a good one on 
 the ole man, and the very first day, too, thet 
 he s worked fur Sabnny, Dad and Co. Keerless 
 ole Dad!"
 
 SABRINY, DAD & CO. 5! 
 
 PART TWO 
 
 More particularly about the Co. 
 
 "Wai, I do declare! Ef that don t take me 
 back ten years an more, to see you, Sabriny, 
 a-settin there on the end of that ere bench, fur 
 all the world jest as you did that rainy day when 
 your old Dad made that peculiar chist that 
 turned out to be a cradle, jest an ordinary doll s 
 cradle. Seems to me that you re too fine to be 
 a-settin on the bench with all them folderols 
 a-bubblin and a-bilin over the end o* the bench 
 fur all the world like geese s feathers a-comin 
 out of a piller-slip. Come to look at ye, ye 
 be, and again ye ben t, the same little gal that 
 wore the checkered apron; but you ve got the 
 same eyes, Sabriny, jest the same eyes the little 
 gal had, that Dad made the cradle for." 
 
 "This is my graduating dress, Dad. You ll 
 come over to the Academy and see me graduate, 
 won t you, Dad?" 
 
 "Wai, I dunno. You look as pretty as a 
 clove pink, but I dunno as I want to see a hull 
 garding full o pinks! I guess jest one pink is 
 enough fur Dad." 
 
 "Dad, what is that you re making?" 
 
 "Not a tool chist this time; it s only a hen 
 coop fur the old speckle. The tarnation ole 
 thing has gone and stole her nest ag in, and come
 
 2 SABRINY, DAD & CO. 
 
 out unbeknownst to me with a hull brood of 
 little chicks, and now she s a-tuin round, oneasy 
 like, coz there ain t no coop waitin handy for 
 her to move into. As ef coops came by nature 
 as chicks do!" 
 
 "I wish it was a chest that you were making, 
 Dad, and that it was wider at the top, and that 
 when it was done itwould turn out to be a coffin." 
 
 "A coffin! Why, Sabriny! You mean a 
 cradle, don t ye?" 
 
 "No, Dad, not a cradle. I ain t a child any 
 more, I wish it was a coffin." 
 
 "Sho! A coffin? What a notion that is, to 
 be sure, to git into Sabriny s head unbidden, as 
 it were. Why! You don t need no coffin no 
 more than nothin at all. You ain t a-goin to 
 be dead, and ef you was you wouldn t take no 
 kind of comfort in it! What folks reely enjoy 
 about bein dead is thinkin about it. When it 
 comes to the real thing, as I rigger on it, it ud 
 be an empty sort of privilege. Wishin they 
 was dead is the very breath of life to some folks." 
 
 "/ do, Dad, I wish that I was dead. I m 
 sick and tired of living and everything else." 
 
 "Now that seems cur us to your dad, you jest 
 a-graduatin and mebby with a prospect of a 
 school of your own some time, and now you re 
 a-wishin you was dead. Why, Sabriny, when 
 you was a little gal you was always a-wishin 
 that you hed curls, and nothin would do but
 
 SABRINY, DAD & CO. 53 
 
 you must pin shavin s onto your head and per- 
 tend that they was curls; you fell asleep onct 
 with them shavin curls pinned on. And then 
 you wanted a cradle, and I made that fur you, 
 and now you think that you want a coffin. Dear 
 me suz, wantin a coffin ! Now you jest tell your 
 ole good-fur-nothin Dad all about it don t 
 cry. Sabriny, I wouldn t cry ef I was you, I 
 mean cry away ef it eases you any, it won t hurt 
 nothin . And here s my bandanner, the one 
 you giv me at Christmas, that time you earned 
 the money pickin berries and saved it up fur 
 the handkerchief. Here, you just tuck it under 
 your chin so as not to spile them fine close. 
 There! I ain t a-lookin at ye, cry away! I ve 
 locked the door so s t the folks can t come in. 
 And mebby bimeby you kin tell it all to Sabriny, 
 Dad and Co., confidential like, and p raps you ll 
 find that you don t need no coffin after all, only 
 jest Dad s ole ear. 
 
 "Sabriny, did you ever think how many 
 folks there is a-livin on this earth this very 
 minute? And I guess ef the hull truth was 
 known most every one on em that drors the 
 breath of life drors in some sorror with it. They 
 jest hev to grapple with it, unbeknownst to 
 everyone else; and mebby the next one right 
 alongside of em don t never know nothin about 
 it. Is it your studies that bothers you, Sabriny? 
 Algebry, mebby?"
 
 54 SABRINY, DAD & CO. 
 
 "Not altogether algebra, Dad; you see, Dad, 
 when the new teacher came last fall he took a 
 great interest in my studying algebra. He said 
 I had a good mind, and as there wasn t anybody 
 else to go into advanced mathematics he made 
 a class just for me, and I have done splendid 
 work, he says so himself." 
 
 "Sho, you don t say so! Wai?" 
 
 "And then last term Squire Jones s daughter 
 she took a notion to study French French of 
 all things and she don t know how to speak 
 English hardly. And then he went and made 
 a class in French, just for her, and she calls her 
 self a special and comes teetering in at eleven 
 o clock, and has a half-hour lesson all by her 
 self " 
 
 "Now go slow, Sabriny, you jest go slow so s t 
 I kin follow. She comes in and I s pose that she 
 gits so much French mebby that it kinder inter 
 feres with your gittin* enough algebry; there 
 ain t enough left over for you, so to speak." 
 
 "No, Dad, of course that isn t it. Of course 
 I can learn all I have a mind to, though he did 
 change my hour just to suit her." 
 
 "Then mebby now mind I m only s posin - 
 mebby there ain t quite enough teacher to go 
 round fur both on ye; is that it?" 
 
 "Oh, Dad! how can he like that silly little 
 thing, she giggles all the time and her hair is 
 frizzled all over her head till it looks like a
 
 SABRINY, DAD & CO. 55 
 
 hurrah s nest, and she sits and gets red like a 
 baby when he speaks to her. I declare it makes 
 me fairly mad to see the way she goes on; and 
 
 now he s going away and and 
 
 "Sh-sh-sh. There, don t cry onlyjest enough 
 to make you comfortable. I ve got a cold in 
 the head, myself, it bothers me dreadful when 
 I go to speak! And now, Sabriny, I want to 
 tell you somethin , it s a little story about your 
 Aunt Lize. She s a pretty comfortable old 
 body now, like your Dad; but when she was 
 about eighteen why, you re jest eighteen, too, 
 Sabriny, that is you ll be eighteen come June. 
 Now don t things come round sort o cur us! 
 wal, when your Aunt Lize was jest eighteen a 
 new teacher he come to town. He was a spry 
 young feller, and he was only teachin till he 
 got a call to preach. There was a sort of re 
 vival of religion in our town when it was found 
 out how this young man attended all the meet- 
 in s, among the young folks especially. Lize 
 she took to goin to all the meetin s jest like all 
 the other girls, and the young feller, that is the 
 teacher, he used more often than not to see her 
 home with another girl that lived up her way. 
 Your Aunt Lize had always been dreadful easy- 
 tempered up to this time, jest like a lamb to 
 live with; you wouldn t ever have supposed 
 that she and your Ma were of the same family, 
 not of course but what your Ma s temper is all
 
 56 SABRINY, DAD & CO. 
 
 right, only it isn t jest the same kind as your 
 Aunt Lize s. But now all of a sudden Lize 
 turned sort of snappish, and she cried dretful 
 easy ef anything crossed her, and she seemed 
 to have a tumble time with her religion, till it 
 almost seemed as ef there wa n t no living with 
 her, and then all at once she cleared up like a 
 May mornin ; and bimeby it come out that she 
 was goin to marry the preacher, and so her 
 troubles ended. I don t know zactly what all 
 this has to do with yourn about your algebry, 
 only it sort of popped into your old Dad s head; 
 and now I guess you hed orter be a goin over 
 to the Academy. I thought I seen the teacher 
 and a lot of folks a-goin by, some time ago." 
 
 "Here s your bandanna, Dad. It ain t so 
 very wet, but I ll hang it on this peg to dry, and 
 I want you to know, Dad, that there ain t a hu 
 man being in the wide world that I care a snap 
 for, no not one snap except just you." 
 
 " I guessed it all the time, Sabriny, I guessed it 
 from the start. And now run along, and don t 
 you never go and care fur no one else, so long 
 
 as you ve got your ole Dad." 
 
 ******* 
 
 "Dad, has Ma gone to bed?" 
 "No, she s jest down suller for yeast." 
 "Come out here, Dad, just a minute, just 
 one minute. Oh, Dad, I m so happy." 
 "Not wantin no coffin mebby."
 
 SABRINY, DAD & CO. 57 
 
 "Not wanting any coffin or anything hes 
 waiting out at the gate, I ve told him all about 
 Sabriny, Dad and Co., and what do you think? 
 He wants to be the Co." 
 
 "Sho! Who d a thought it. Wai, run along, 
 Sabriny, I hear Ma on the stairs." 
 
 "Curls and shavin s, and chists and cradles, 
 and coffins and lovers; and mebby, bimeby, 
 cradles and coffins ag in. And then old Dad, 
 he ll step out and t will be jest Sabriny and Co. 
 Useless old Dad!"
 
 A DROVE OF FACTS 
 
 AND 
 
 A FLOCK OF FANCIES 
 
 HE STARTED out early in the morning, 
 even before sunrise, for he had a drove 
 of Facts and a flock of Fancies to take 
 to market. 
 
 Every Fact was the best of its kind, A.I 
 Registered. Every Fact stood on three legs 
 as facts must do in order to be stable and yet 
 adjustable to uneven foundations; a four-legged 
 fact would teeter, just as a four-legged milking- 
 stool rocks on an uneven barn floor. 
 
 These Facts were of a monotonous, dull gray 
 colour, with thick hides and a few bristles. They 
 were of a sort of square shape, but inclined to 
 elongate when they moved. 
 
 It was a handsome drove, and represented a 
 good sum of money. 
 
 The man had also a flock of Fancies for sale; 
 these he had carefully crated for easier transpor 
 tation, for they had wings, and were restless, and 
 also a little wild and uncertain to handle. The 
 crate was made of woven osiers, delightfully 
 
 59
 
 6O A DROVE OF FACTS 
 
 braided and interlaced with the bark still show 
 ing green and bronze-brown. 
 
 The Fancies were something like birds, but 
 also somewhat like butterflies. In colour they 
 were an idealized rainbow, modified with grays 
 and whites with now and then ebony splashes 
 for distinguishment. 
 
 The Facts plodded along steadily on their 
 three legs, giving him no trouble at all, and no 
 delight. But they would bring him much gold 
 in the market place. 
 
 The Fancies, on the contrary, kept him busy; 
 they fluttered with anger at their prison bars 
 and shed bits of iridescent down that came float 
 ing out through the loosely woven osiers, as if 
 rainbows were shedding feathers. 
 
 They twittered and made plaintive broken 
 trills while they pecked at their bars. 
 
 Suddenly at a sharp turn in the road the 
 crate tipped over and both sides gave way, and 
 out flew the whole flock. 
 
 Such a burst of Fancies never before was seen, 
 and he, in despair, threw his arms up toward 
 the sky and cried aloud, "Oh, ye Gods of 
 Greece!" 
 
 Now never before in all his life had he called 
 on the Greek Gods for aid, and presumably they 
 were as surprised as he himself was, but they 
 came to his aid. 
 
 His Fancies circled widely around his head
 
 AND A FLOCK OF FANCIES 6l 
 
 with soft pipings, they lit on his shoulders and 
 on his hands; they flew wide winged over the 
 hedges into the fields, then up into the blue 
 sky; and always going or coming they lit upon 
 the backs of the plodding Facts and gave deri 
 sive little nips and pecks at them. 
 
 "I shall never lose those Fancies of mine," 
 said the man, reassured; "I couldn t lose them 
 if I would, and by the Gods I would not! They 
 shall be free." 
 
 Strange, but he was swearing again by his 
 new-found Gods, not even noticing that he was 
 doing so. He was amazingly happy. 
 
 When he arrived at the market place with his 
 drove of pedigreed Facts and his flock of Fancies 
 he was the sensation of the moment. The crowd 
 gathered round him with shouts of admiration. 
 
 He cunningly thought to himself, I will sell 
 my Fancies first, the Facts will sell later, they 
 always sell. 
 
 So he offered his Fancies in rhyme and song, 
 he sang of their delectable companionship while 
 they perched on his cap and on his outstretched 
 arm and hand. 
 
 The crowd laughed but soon turned away; 
 they were not here at the market place to buy 
 Fancies. 
 
 One little girl only came to him and said: 
 "Please, sir, will you sell me one little Fancy 
 for a penny?"
 
 62 A DROVE OF FACTS 
 
 "Indeed I will," said he, and he held out to 
 her a plump little winged fellow with azure 
 coat and violet wings; but before he gave it 
 into her hands he said, "Here is my sweetest 
 Fancy. What will you do with it?" 
 
 "Please, sir," said she, "I will take it home, 
 and my mother will cook it for supper." 
 
 He cast the bird into the high air and cried 
 aloud, "Oh, ye dear Gods of Greece, protect 
 these radiant Fancies and me." 
 
 This prayer greatly shocked the public, but 
 it did not prevent them from buying all the 
 Facts, which they got at amazingly low prices, 
 for the man seemed indifferent to their value 
 and in a hurry to be off. 
 
 It was, however, a very goodly sum of money 
 that he carried with him in a leathern purse 
 tied to his belt. 
 
 He was walking homeward slowly and reluct 
 antly when he suddenly stopped and put his 
 hand to his head and gave a cry of regret. 
 From his pocket he drew a small bit of purple 
 woollen cloth; a scrap of paper was pinned on 
 it, with these words written on it: "Match 
 this sample of my dress with cotton thread, and 
 also buy one yard and seven eighths of purple 
 ribbon to match it it must be just one inch 
 wide with a corded edge. Don t forget!" 
 
 He had forgotten. He looked down at his 
 feet, and there stood a new little square Fact
 
 AND A FLOCK OF FANCIES 63 
 
 looking stupidly at him. He gazed at it un- 
 comprehendingly; at first he thought it must be 
 one of his old Facts that had followed him home 
 from market; then, suddenly, it dawned upon 
 him that here was a brand-new Fact, the fore 
 runner probably of a lot of new Facts that would 
 be turning up, day after day, and have to be 
 fed and marketed next year, and then more new 
 Facts, year after year. No end of the square, 
 uninteresting, everlasting Facts! 
 
 He stooped, and taking off the leather bag 
 he tied it with a thong around the neck of the 
 new Fact; then he wrote on the back of the scrap 
 of paper that had been pinned to the purple 
 worsted sample these words, " I am sorry, but I 
 forgot the thread and the ribbon." He pinned 
 this, together with the sample, on to the leather 
 bag, then gave a little shove to the new Fact 
 and said to it, "Now go home." And the Fact 
 started off on his three-legged trot. 
 
 The man looked after him and smiled, then 
 he sat down on a bank of green grass and all the 
 Fancies flew to him and hovering over him wove 
 a garment with their wings that hid him from 
 sight in a flurry of iridescence. 
 
 That evening at sundown the wife went to 
 the gate to watch for him. She could not see 
 him, but out of the dust-bow made by the rays 
 of the setting sun she saw a little Fact emerge. 
 He came to her and she undid the leather bag,
 
 64 A DROVE OF FACTS 
 
 full of gold, and she gave a cluck of happy greed 
 like a satisfied hen. Then she saw the writing 
 on the paper, and read, " I am sorry but I forgot 
 the thread and the ribbon." 
 
 "Sorry he forgot, is he? Well, he d better 
 be and good riddance to him, 7 say!"
 
 A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK 
 
 ONE scene, one act. 
 Scene in a cobbler s shop. Leather 
 hangs on the wall. A pile of old shoes 
 to be mended lies on floor or bench. An old 
 stove in the corner. A cobbler s bench, some 
 straight-backed, splint-bottomed chairs, and 
 any other properties of a cobbler s shop. The 
 cobbler wears a leather apron, flannel shirt 
 with suspenders. He has heavy, gray, over 
 hanging eyebrows, hair standing up straight, 
 and a wrinkled, strong face. He looks like a 
 weather-beaten old bird of prey. He is pegging 
 on a boot, keeps at work most of the time, and 
 talks with tools in hand. He changes the 
 hammer and pegs for an awl and waxed thread 
 after the first few sentences. 
 
 The tramp opens the door cautiously, sticks 
 his head in, looks around, then comes in and 
 half closes the door. He is untidy, slouching, 
 half humble and half blustering. His first 
 manner is beseeching. 
 
 TRAMP: Father, I ve come home. 
 
 [Cobbler looks the tramp over but makes no 
 answer and returns to his pegging.] 
 6s
 
 66 A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK 
 
 TRAMP: Father, don t you know me? Don t: 
 you know your son Ben that ran away from 
 home so many years ago? I am Ben. I ve 
 learnt a lot sence then and I am sorry for what 
 I did; I ve come home to stay with you and to 
 help you in your old age; you are gittin too old 
 to live alone and work so hard. I am goin to 
 stay right here and help. 
 
 [The cobbler looks for a tool at his side then 
 slowly waxes his thread before he an 
 swers, then he says slowly and with 
 emphasis.} 
 
 COBBLER: No, you ain t come home, and you 
 ain t come home to stay, nuther. 
 
 TRAMP [whining]: Don t you know your 
 own son, father? Don t you know Benny? 
 Don t you remember how I ran away because 
 you tole me to go out and bring in a log of fire 
 wood and I wouldn t do it? Don t you remember 
 how you said you would lick me if I didn t 
 mind, and I said I would run away and never 
 come back, and you said "Go" and I went, 
 and I ain t never come back, till now, like I said 
 I wouldn t. I am sorry now that I didn t mind 
 you. I ve turned over a new leaf; I ain t always 
 been as good as I ought to have been but I am 
 going to be good now and stay right here and 
 comfort you. Ain t you glad to see me again? 
 [The cobbler does not look at him or seem 
 to hear him, but sews at his work.}
 
 A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK 6j 
 
 TRAMP: Father, I ve repented, I am all 
 right now. I d ought to have studied to have 
 been a minister like you wanted I should, but 
 I got into bad ways and bad company. 
 
 [The cobbler leans forward and points to 
 
 the door with his aw!.] 
 
 COBBLER: Young feller, you kin go out 
 or stay in as suits you, but you best shut that 
 door, it ain t any too warm in here, anyway. 
 
 [Tramp shuts door but keeps his hand on 
 the latch for a minute as if not certain 
 whether it was not best to be on the other 
 side, then he sneaks nearer the cobbler.} 
 TRAMP: Father, ain t you goin to forgive 
 your son? You hadn t ought to be so hard 
 and unforgivin to any one that s sorry. The 
 gospels say 
 
 COBBLER [interrupting him sharply}: Quit 
 that, young feller! I ve been studyin on your 
 case sence you come in here and I ll tell you 
 what I ll do for you. I notice that your right 
 heel is all trod down and wore out, and if you ll 
 take that boot off, I ll mend it for you and I ll 
 do it for nothin , too, and then I ll take down 
 that whip that hangs over yonder and I ll give 
 you the all-firedest lickin that you ever got, 
 and then you kin go. 
 
 TRAMP [getting mad]\ You old brute, you! 
 You always was a hard man, everybody says so 
 and I won t take off my boot for you to mend,
 
 68 A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK 
 
 and I ll go away this time and I won t never 
 come back again no matter how much you want 
 me to [whining}. I should think you would 
 want to be kind to your only son, you will be 
 sorry for this some time when it is too late and 
 I am gone. Good-bye, father. [Hesitates for 
 a minute and then hunches up his shoulders and 
 goes partly out, then turns and shakes his fist at 
 the cobbler, goes out and leaves the door open. 
 The cobbler sits and shakes his head slowly, speak 
 ing to himself.} 
 
 COBBLER: No son of mine. 
 
 [MR. WOOD, the minister, comes in im 
 mediately.} 
 
 MINISTER: Good morning, Good morning, 
 Deacon Atwood. 
 
 COBBLER: Mornin , parson, set. [Pushes a 
 chair toward him.} 
 
 MINISTER: It s a cold morning, Deacon, 
 mercury way down below at seven o clock. 
 This is the warmest place I ve seen yet, and it 
 smells good, too, in here. I reckon you ve got in 
 some new leather. I was brought up on the smell 
 of leather. I declare! it makes me feel just as 
 if I was in my old home; I love the smell of 
 leather, and have, ever since I was a child in 
 petticoats. I sometimes think that I was cut 
 out for a shoemaker instead of a minister; but 
 I didn t go into the ministry without thought, 
 either. At first I went in only because my
 
 A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK 69 
 
 father had wanted me to, and then I felt the call. 
 Before I die I hope to justify his hopes. I was a 
 disappointment to my father. 
 
 COBBLER: Is your father living, Parson? 
 
 MINISTER [after a pause and with sadness^ 
 slowly] : Yes, he is living. 
 
 COBBLER: Yes, I just got in a nice lot of 
 leather, I callate it will last me all winter. 
 Mebby it will last as long as I do, till I am gone 
 where there ain t no shoes to wear out and no 
 need of leather to mend em. I am gittin on in 
 years, and they lie heavy on me. 
 
 MINISTER: Nonsense! You are the young 
 est and the spryest man in town. 
 
 COBBLER [searching for something and his 
 shaking shoulders showing thai he is laughing]: 
 I suppose I be as spry as most of my age, but I 
 ain t by a long sight so spry as that young tramp 
 was in gittin out of here when he got mad cause 
 he seen [chuckle] that I was minded to take the 
 whip down. He wouldn t even wait to have 
 his boot heel mended, and I offered to do it fur* 
 nothin , not charging a cent for time nor for 
 leather. 
 
 [The minister rises and walks around the 
 room looking interestedly at the leather 
 and the shoes, then he draws his chair 
 nearer to the cobbler as if he had de 
 termined to talk seriously .] 
 
 MINISTER: Deacon Atwood, what made you
 
 7O A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK. 
 
 offer to mend that young tramp s boot for 
 nothing? He looked like an able-bodied man, 
 capable of work. Rather a mean face, though! 
 Did you know who he was? 
 
 COBBLER [working at intervals as he talks} . I 
 guess that young feller didn t know rightly who 
 he was himself; he claimed to be my son who 
 ran away fifteen years ago this very month. I 
 guess you know the story, most everybody docs, 
 and you have been here five years [pause]. 
 
 I often thought I d tell you about it, cause 
 your name is Benjamin, and cause you have a 
 little son named Benjamin and a little gal 
 named Sairy, same as my wife was. That 
 made me often think I d like to tell you about it. 
 But somehow it come difficult. 
 
 MINISTER: And I have often wanted to talk 
 with you about it, very particularly, for some 
 very good reasons. I ve got something on my 
 mind. 
 
 COBBLER: That young feller that was in 
 here had picked up the story somewhere in 
 town and he thought to come it over me by pre 
 tending to be my Benjamin, but he didn t take 
 me in. I persuaded him that he wa n t no son 
 of mine and that he didn t want anything at 
 my hands, not even a lickin [chuckles], I jest 
 pinted to that whip that hangs up there, same 
 as it did when my son ran away. When I look 
 at that whip I don t feel so old as I do when I
 
 A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK yi 
 
 set here and think [pause]. That whip has 
 hung there for fifteen years, waitin for the day 
 when he comes home to bring in that log of 
 fire-wood [pause]. Did you say that you was 
 brought up on the smell of leather? Mebby 
 your father was a shoemaker, too, same as I be. 
 
 MINISTER [with deliberation}-. Yes, my father 
 was a shoemaker; you make me think of him. 
 
 COBBLER: And you make me think of what 
 I wanted my son to be, and you always have made 
 me think of that ever sence you came here and 
 was settled [with a sigh]. I never wanted 
 anything in all my life so much as I wanted my 
 son to be a minister of the gospel [looks straight 
 ahead as if seeing his life and disappointment]. 
 
 MINISTER: You are sure that that young 
 fellow that came in here wasn t your son? 
 
 COBBLER: No, he wa n t no son of mine 
 [goes to work with energy]. 
 
 MINISTER: How can you be certain that he 
 was not your son ? I have known the story of 
 your son ever since I came here, yes, and before 
 that, too; I have always believed that he would 
 come back. I hope that when he does you will 
 have cause to forgive him. How do you know 
 that you will recognize him after all these years? 
 The boy has become a man, and changed. 
 
 COBBLER: Not know my son! Not know 
 Benjamin! I guess I should know him if he 
 was to turn up after a hundred years. My
 
 72 A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK 
 
 Benjamin ! I would know him ef we met by 
 accident on the street. Why ! I should know him 
 ef he entered town at midnight and I was in 
 bed and didn t see him, I d feel him. 
 
 MINISTER [gently but impressively} : He would 
 be about my age; you wouldn t whip a man of 
 my age? 
 
 COBBLER: A promise is a promise, and when 
 Ben comes home he will get the licking that I 
 promised him, ef I can wield the whip. He ll 
 expect it. It is justice, and nothin short of 
 justice. He is sure to come home sometime 
 [pause]. I am sorry that his mother did not live 
 to see him again. She died four years after 
 he ran away; she believed in him. She went so 
 far as to say that she wouldn t wonder ef he 
 became a minister of the Gospels after all. 
 There wa n t a meal, breakfast, dinner, or supper, 
 that she didn t set a plate for him on the table, 
 and she kept the sheets on his bed aired in case 
 he came suddenly at night. She set by the fire 
 and pictured how he would come, and she knit 
 socks fur him in case of need. She knew and / 
 know, as sure as there is a Power in heaven, that 
 Benjamin will come home. It is borne in upon 
 me that it will not be long now before he comes. 
 Ben wa n t all bad, he had good blood, but he was 
 headstrong at times, and he needed chastening. 
 This ere feller that came in here to-day he wa n t 
 no good, he was bad, bad all through. He had
 
 A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK 73 
 
 picked up the story straight enough. He thought 
 to take me in, me, Ben s father! He is the fourth 
 feller that has tried that game, one feller went 
 so fur as to write me a letter askin* me to send 
 him money to come home with; he wanted to 
 help me, too. They are all keen to help me in my 
 old age. I didn t answer that feller s letter. 
 When Benjamin is ready to come home he will 
 come straight, he won t write. It may take 
 him years to make up his mind, fur he is a chip 
 of the old block, but he will come straight, he 
 ain t no coward. I shouldn t much wonder ef 
 he brought in that stick of wood that I sent 
 him out arter. That would be like Ben yes, 
 that would be like him. 
 
 MINISTER: And when he does come don t 
 you think you might for once forget that in 
 junction about the rod, and trust that time has 
 chastened the boy, that perhaps the good has 
 triumphed over the bad? 
 
 COBBLER: I have often thought about that; 
 but a vow is a vow. I vowed with reason that 
 I would chastise him. Mebby I was hasty, 
 mebby the Lord has meted out to both of us 
 what was our due, but all the same I sha n t 
 never forget to have that whip in readiness 
 when he does come. 
 
 MINISTER [rising: Deacon, if you don t 
 mind I will go out and get a stick of wood for 
 the fire, it is getting low. [He goes out and
 
 74 A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK 
 
 comes in with a stick of wood which he lays by the 
 stove, then he stands before the cobbler and says]: 
 Is there any mark by which you could know 
 your son, Deacon Atwood? 
 
 COBBLER: Why! I tell you there s no need. 
 I d know him anywheres, but there is a way, and 
 he knows it and / know it. My son Ben he 
 hadn t any big toe on his right foot, he chopped 
 it off when he was a mite of a boy trying to chop 
 wood. Why! he wa n t more n seven years old, 
 and by that I should know him anywhere, only 
 there d be no need. I d know him without that, 
 but that is the reason that I wanted the tramp 
 to take off his boot. I am set, but I hope that 
 I am not bigoted. 
 
 MINISTER: Father, I have brought in that 
 stick of wood for the fire, and now I will take 
 off my right boot if you will mend it for me. 
 [The cobbler looks long and searchingly at the 
 minister then rises and takes the whip from the wall 
 and places it in the minister s hands.} 
 
 COBBLER: Son, Benjamin, my son, you have 
 beat your old father this time, but you must re 
 member that it was me that first led your feet 
 into the paths of righteousness, and that the 
 Scripters are right when they teach "Spare the 
 rod and spile the child" [he lays his hands tenderly 
 on the minister s shoulders and says]: I wish 
 your mother was here to-day, mebby she is.
 
 A STUDY IN HANDS 
 
 I WAS riding up town in a State Street car 
 when I discovered myself intently studying 
 the hands of the man who sat opposite me. 
 I had not particularly noticed him till I found 
 that I was unconsciously interested in his hands: 
 they were crossed, one over the other, on the 
 head of his cane; and they held a pair of gloves 
 in their loose grasp. The hands were fine in 
 form, as beautiful as some of the sculptured 
 hands on Italian tombs. I had been getting 
 pleasure in merely looking at them, without in 
 any way analyzing the cause of my gratification; 
 then my eyes naturally followed up the line 
 of the sleeve of the well-fitting spring overcoat 
 to the collar, and then to the face of the man. 
 
 Above a certain grade one overcoat does not 
 materially differ from another; still one does 
 see now and then an outward covering which 
 carries an essential revelation. This coat an 
 nounced quite plainly that the man who wore 
 it was a New Yorker, that he was a club-man 
 and incidentally a gentleman, and also that 
 leisure was his absorbing profession. He was 
 gazing directly in front. I was naturally in- 
 
 75
 
 76 A STUDY IN HANDS 
 
 eluded in his line of vision, but at the same time 
 I was absolutely excluded by reason of his entire 
 unconsciousness of me: not at all an assumed 
 obliviousness, but the outcome of acquired in 
 difference to casual surroundings. 
 
 "These hands have done some momentous 
 work in the world, henceforth they will be 
 folded: for better or worse their work is com 
 pleted." 
 
 I heard these words as if they had been 
 spoken to me, not at all as if I had clothed an 
 idea in words for better comprehension. 
 
 The hands were, as I have said, beautifully 
 formed and well kept, but it was not on either 
 of these counts that they held my attention; 
 it was rather because they seemed to have at 
 tained a distinct individuality apart from their 
 possessor. 
 
 I could not explain the conviction that they 
 had done some definitive work; in their passiv 
 ity they bore a singular look of self-intelligence. 
 
 What had they done? They were not liter 
 ary hands; no, nor were they used to diplomatic 
 red-tape or ribbons; they had never carried 
 the green baize bag from office to court, nor 
 were they the acquisitive hands of the financier; 
 and most certainly they had never toiled for a 
 living in the realm of material things. 
 
 What had they done? Why were they out 
 of the conflict?
 
 A STUDY IN HANDS 77 
 
 I was forced to respect them, they held the 
 secret in so loose but significant a grasp. 
 
 Then a vague unrest or fear infused itself 
 into my interest. I wished that the man would 
 move them, that I might see them in action. 
 The wish grew to be imperative, unbearable; 
 it was morbid. If only something would hap 
 pen to lessen the persistent imprint on my 
 retina of the crossed hands! 
 
 I turned and looked out of the window. I 
 counted the foot-travellers as we passed them, 
 I read the signs over the shop windows. 
 
 We crossed the bridge ; people got out and other 
 people got in. The man was oblivious to all 
 these comings and goings, and I found myself 
 again studying the hands crossed over the tan 
 gloves, on the head of the cane. 
 
 The car stopped, and in through the narrow 
 door flowed a tide of. velvet, silk, and lace, with 
 an accompanying whiff of violets. There was a 
 pressure for seats, there were polite refusals 
 and humorous philosophies, with stray shafts 
 of wit at Chicago s expense which seemed to 
 cement the party together and to set them quite 
 apart from the rest of us. 
 
 A tired, slender girl with a jaunty, cheap hat, 
 gave up her seat to one of the youngest of the 
 incomers. Evidently she was hypnotized by 
 the picture hat and the bunch of violets so care 
 lessly worn in the open jacket.
 
 78 A STUDY IN HANDS 
 
 Little by little the first one of the party was 
 pushed up the aisle till she stood almost between 
 me and the man of the hands. She had unwill 
 ingly progressed backward, yielding inch by 
 inch, grasping her full draperies with one hand 
 while with the other she made desperate, tight- 
 laced clutches at the various straps that offered 
 themselves successively to her. She held her 
 dress up with an ungloved hand, which was 
 sufficiently clothed in a multitude of rings. 
 
 She was redolent of wealth. In her last 
 clutch for a strap the glove fell to the muddy 
 car floor; she did not miss it for a moment, and 
 it lay there just between me and the man of 
 the hands. 
 
 I watched him, expecting him to move; I 
 thought that now the sentient hands would re 
 veal themselves, in the act of picking up and re 
 turning the glove. 
 
 There was not a motion of them, not even an 
 involuntary contraction of the muscles that 
 await an order from the brain. 
 
 He sees, but does not advertise his seeing, I 
 thought. 
 
 Then, deliberately, and with intention, he 
 raised his foot and placed it on the glove. So 
 wanton, so inexplicable an act I have never 
 seen; it was an atrocity, taken in connection 
 with his evident breeding. All traditions were 
 outraged; in the act not only that glove but all
 
 A STUDY IN HANDS 79 
 
 the innumerable gloves of romance and chivalry 
 were muddied and trampled by his offending 
 foot. 
 
 I heard myself give a protesting gasp, but I do 
 not know whether he heard or not; his eyes 
 were still set toward the, to him, nothingness 
 of outward human things. 
 
 Half way between us the elaborated bulk of 
 black lace made up over a lavender silk lady was 
 swaying in uncomfortable apprehension, no seat 
 seeming available. 
 
 Suddenly her eyes fell on the man opposite 
 me, and she exclaimed, "Why, Dick! Why, 
 Cousin Dick, where in all the world did you 
 come from? . . . Oh, dear me, I ve drop 
 ped one of my gloves!" And she agitated her 
 self to investigate the floor. 
 
 "It s here, I am keeping it for you," said 
 Cousin Dick. And he indicated the glove under 
 his foot with the slightest possible gesture of his 
 head. 
 
 The lady s tiny headgear was tossed with 
 indignation and she said, more to herself then 
 to him, "The same old" I thought she said 
 "brute!" 
 
 Evidently the violet-wearing young girl 
 caught a glimpse of him, for she called out, 
 "Why, is that you, Cousin Dick?" 
 
 "I thought I was myself," rejoined he, "until 
 your mother called me a "
 
 8O A STUDY IN HANDS 
 
 "Sh, Dick, don t make a scandal!" broke 
 in the lavender lady. "And now tell me what 
 brings you out into these wilds? Have you 
 come out to the wedding?" 
 
 or to the funeral?" interpolated he. 
 
 "That s so like you, Dick dear, so quick and 
 so clever, but hardly well, you know I never 
 meant to say that! Oh, Dick, I have just 
 been down to see poor, dear Adelaide. You 
 know she is much worse to-day. I only saw 
 her for a minute so sad, isn t it? It would be 
 very awkward if anything should happen right 
 now, though it would, of course, save all of us 
 a long journey out here again, just now, as the 
 hot weather is coming on." 
 
 "Exactly! And is the day and hour fixed for 
 both functions? I hope they don t conflict." 
 
 "Dick, how can you! You know perfectly 
 well what I mean, there is no use disguising 
 matters, it is absolutely necessary in these 
 crowded times to make arrangements for every 
 thing beforehand, no matter how much one s 
 feelings are concerned." 
 
 "Quite true, and that is why I want to know 
 if Adelaide has taken this into her consideration. 
 Is she obliging as usual, thinking of everybody 
 except herself?" 
 
 "Now, Dick! I shouldn t have known her! 
 Have you seen Adelaide?" 
 
 This question seemed to me to have been
 
 A STUDY IN HANDS 8l 
 
 sprung on him with intent, as if to surprise him 
 into some betrayal, but he did not give the slight 
 est sign of consciousness, he did not answer her, 
 but rose and, touching his hat, left the car. 
 
 The bustling, lavender lady sank into the 
 vacant seat, and with unabated plenitude of 
 manner said to the friend who sat next to her, 
 "Cousin Dick just hates me and he has hated 
 me ever since that terrible winter in New York. 
 My, but that was a season! We lived on social 
 dynamite, and now to think of poor Adelaide 
 Perrin s dying out here! Such a beauty as she 
 was, too! Everybody raved over her. But 
 she was j/y, though, I ve always said so, and I 
 always will, for she was just j/y, that s the word! 
 
 "I couldn t ever see why Dick fancied her. 
 But he just hated me; he seemed to think that 
 I had something to do with those horrid rumours 
 that were flying about that winter after they 
 were engaged the ones that finally brought 
 about the tragedy. But I didn t have a thing 
 to do with it, why should I? Of course, every 
 body talked and everybody heard, one can t 
 be deaf in society; but Dick chose to think I 
 was to blame. 
 
 "You saw him set his foot on my glove just 
 now the brute! Well, that matches something 
 he did once before that very winter I was 
 speaking about. One evening, we had been 
 dining out, and I laid my gloves on the window-
 
 82 A STUDY IN HANDS 
 
 sill. He took them up and held them, looking 
 at them for a moment, then he deliberately 
 threw one of them out of the window into the 
 rain. You may believe whether I was mad or 
 not! He didn t say one word. You owe me a 
 pair of gloves for that! said I I was perfectly 
 furious with him. 
 
 "You owe much more, said he, with a 
 strange smile, the kind of thing that makes 
 your blood run chilly for a moment. 
 
 "I knew, of course, what he meant; it was 
 his way of telling me that he hated me and that 
 he held me accountable for some of the talk 
 that was flying around town about him and 
 Adelaide. 
 
 "That happened more than fifteen years ago. 
 Think of that man s memory! Just now he 
 wanted to remind me of it. I know him! It 
 was just two weeks before the date set for his 
 marriage to Adelaide. 
 
 "The talk about her flirtation with that 
 Washington man was so disagreeable that every 
 body was wondering if the wedding would ever 
 come off. The bets were against it. 
 
 "All that season Adelaide looked exactly 
 like a wraith, but she held her head pretty high 
 those days, and the trousseau that she was get 
 ting was something to make people stare, espe 
 cially as Adelaide never had much money to 
 spend.
 
 A STUDY IN HANDS 83 
 
 "We just held our breath. Of course Dick 
 never showed in any way that he knew what was 
 being said, he went everywhere, and was per 
 fectly devoted to Adelaide; and all the while 
 these horrid things were in the air. 
 
 "Finally it was whispered that she had ac 
 tually been secretly married to the Washington 
 man. His name was Denio Frank N. Denio. 
 It s a perfectly ghastly tale! But I ve just got 
 to tell you it was so like him to trample on 
 my glove! 
 
 "One evening at a ball given in Adelaide s 
 honour the very swellest thing of the season 
 just before supper, Denio was found on the 
 floor, in the supper-room dead. 
 
 "There wasn t the slightest doubt as to the 
 manner of his death. Some things tell their 
 own story apoplexy is a convenient name for 
 inconvenient deaths. But / knew, and every 
 body else knew or guessed. I can t bear to 
 think of it, even after this long time but they 
 said that there were marks well, let s drop it." 
 
 "You surely don t mean anything so terrible 
 why did you think ?" 
 
 "Did you ever notice Dick s hands? Well, 
 the next time you meet him you just study his 
 hands. Don t ask me why, you just look at 
 his hands. You study them you do as I 
 tell you. Oh, yes, it is easy to call me queer, 
 but you do as I tell you!"
 
 84 A STUDY IN HANDS 
 
 "What became of Adelaide?" 
 
 "Oh, of course she went out of society; then 
 she went abroad, and finally she came home. 
 She had become a Catholic. Later she came 
 out here to Chicago to live. 
 
 "Did I tell you that that night just as soon 
 as I heard what had happened I went to find 
 her and they told me she had gone home with 
 a headache?" 
 
 "You don t suppose she knew!" 
 
 "I don t suppose anything. I am just telling 
 you what I know. Ever since then Adelaide 
 has devoted herself to the Church, and she has 
 spent a fortune in charities I call it charitable 
 penance." 
 
 "But where did she get the money for her 
 charities? I thought you said she was poor." 
 
 "Not a cent of her own! But all the same 
 she has given away thousands upon thousands 
 of dollars to the poor." 
 
 "Where in the world did it come from?" 
 
 "Well, Dick is rich, for one thing; where 
 should you think it came from? You d better 
 study Dick s hands, as I said." 
 
 "I would rather have you tell me, I may never 
 see him again. Do you know?" 
 
 "No, I don t know, nobody knows, that is, 
 what I know wouldn t stand as evidence in 
 a court of law. But my idea is that Dick s 
 hands know the whole story. I believe they
 
 A STUDY IN HANDS 85 
 
 got the best of Dick that night at the ball, and 
 that is saying a great deal, because nobody and 
 nothing else ever got the best of Dick before nor 
 since. Even Adelaide did not, in the end." 
 
 Then she lowered her voice and said, "To-day 
 is Thursday, and if poor dear Adelaide should 
 pass away to-night, it is all arranged that the 
 papers shouldn t have the news till the next 
 day on account of the wedding, you know. 
 That simply can t be put off, of course." 
 
 I saw no more of the lavender lady; but I 
 found myself following with unwonted interest 
 the wedding and the death-notices in the 
 papers. It was on account of the latter that I 
 found myself, three days later, before the Cathe 
 dral at noon. The mist was drifting in from the 
 lake; the building through this veil grew mag 
 nificent in its wavering proportions. Through 
 the Cathedral door passed dim figures, shadowy 
 like gray spirits. 
 
 A hearse stood there with many attending 
 carriages, waiting for that something that man 
 may not take with him at his departure, but is 
 constrained to leave, with apologies, to the kind 
 offices of friends. 
 
 I saw the man with The Hands as he came 
 down the steps, and I stood aside to let him 
 pass. In one hand he held a bronze-like leaf, 
 such a leaf as one might take from the hands of 
 the dead.
 
 86 A STUDY IN HANDS 
 
 I had come to think of this man and his hands 
 as separate personalities, fellow-travellers in 
 time and space. In one deed done by the hands 
 the man had but acquiesced. Thereafter it was 
 the hands that had submitted. 
 
 The newspaper paragraph which had brought 
 me to the Cathedral was the death-notice of 
 Adelaide Perrin Denio.
 
 A FLIGHT OF FEATHERS 
 
 THERE were three of them, Jane Bassett, 
 Dilly Bassett, and Sophronia Bassett. 
 There had been a fourth, Deborah, but 
 she had married and died, leaving one daughter. 
 This niece of the Bassett girls, as they were 
 called, also married and lived in New York. 
 
 She could never find time to run up to the 
 farm to see her aunts; she was too busy, she 
 lived up to a very high standard which might 
 be called the theory of the balance of weight, 
 measure, and proportion as applied to conduct. 
 In such a scheme of life, of course, little things 
 must give way to the more important. An Old 
 Ladies Home would outweigh three little old 
 aunts in the country; besides which, she knew 
 that they had a farm, and a cow, hens, and 
 geese, what could they need of her? 
 
 The Bassett girls were not in need of patron 
 age. The name of Bassett was the best in 
 town, it inhered, it was not a label pasted on; 
 it was, so to speak "dyed in the wool." It was 
 all-embracing, it included even the little black- 
 and-tan breed of dogs, one of which was always 
 in evidence at the farm. 
 
 87
 
 88 A FLIGHT OF FEATHERS 
 
 The best eggs at the village store were Bas- 
 sett eggs, and Bassett eggs brought the highest 
 price and were always in demand for hatching. 
 
 Everything in Pa Bassett s time had brought 
 the highest market price, everything was sold 
 at an advantage derived from the name. Their 
 geese were superlative, but one other thing that 
 was also superlative was never sold. No geese 
 feathers had ever been offered for sale. 
 
 Live geese feathers were the Bassett fetish. 
 The Bassett girls had never heard the word 
 fetish but they had the worship. A feather 
 pillow was an object of respectful desire and of 
 solicitous preservation. 
 
 Their treasure-house of feathers had a light- 
 hearted quality that does not obtain where gold 
 is hoarded. 
 
 "Where s Sophrony?" asked Dilly. "I ain t 
 seen her sence noonday." 
 
 "Oh, I guess she s in the sullar, empty n them 
 pillers of hern." 
 
 "Which ones, the ones that Aunt Cindy left 
 her?" 
 
 "No, them other ones she s kep so long in the 
 attic, hanging up in that blue cotton bag." 
 
 "You don t say so! Not the long bolster, 
 the one she allers meant to make into pillers 
 for the spare bed?" 
 
 "I dunno, I guess twas them; she said yister- 
 day that she was goin to be pretty busy this
 
 A FLIGHT OF FEATHERS 89 
 
 week, when ole Mis Marvin ast her to come 
 over to her house and help her to make jell." 
 
 "It s awful draughty down sullar when the 
 wind is in the east. Has she got her head tied 
 up?" 
 
 "I shouldn t wonder. Sophrony she s gittin* 
 careful; she says she ain t goin to die till she s 
 got her last ticking washed and the feathers put 
 back. She s got one set put back already, to 
 my own knowledge, besides that set that is hern 
 by rights, them that Eph s wife uses on her own 
 bed, over to the Corners; they d ought to have 
 been Sophrony s, she was named for Eph s 
 mother. Seems as if they d ought to belong to 
 Sophrony, but she ain t one to make a fuss with 
 her own folks, she s kind o set, too, when she s 
 made up her mind, fur all she s so still. I guess 
 she ll get them pillers yet." 
 
 The two old heads wagged wisely. Jane 
 washed up the blue china cups carefully; the 
 aroma of home-made soft soap was in the air 
 it is like incense in the nostrils of a thrifty New 
 England woman. And what is soft soap but 
 the incarnation of an idea, the means of purifica 
 tion, the ultimate symbol of thrift, the co 
 ordinated result of generations of economists 
 with a passion for duty regulated by seasons, 
 the recurrent periods marked by soft-soap 
 (spring), jell (summer), cider-apple-sass 
 (autumn), and patch-work quilt (winter).
 
 9O A FLIGHT OF FEATHERS 
 
 "I guess," said Jane, tentatively, as if the 
 idea was just formulating in her mind, "I guess 
 I ll jest c llect the pillers that belong to me and 
 hang em out in the sun. I ve been meanin to 
 git at em all the spring, it s high time they was 
 looked to; they smelt jest the least bit musty 
 the last time I seen em, and that was a week 
 ago last Saturday, the day I was showin em 
 to Ann Munn s sister. I was dretful fraid 
 she d notice it." 
 
 "It s a good day for pillers," said Dilly, "but 
 I sha n t be able to git to mine to-day, I m 
 afeared, till I get these aprons run up. The 
 Ladies Aid Society s goin to pack up the 
 Missionary box to-morrow. Mebby I can hem 
 em to-night." 
 
 They worked in silence for a time, their faces 
 as gentle and as vacant as the pillow ticks 
 that were airing on the clothesline. The line 
 was stretched between the plum tree and the 
 tall stake that supported the birdhouse. 
 
 There was an unusual activity in the air: feath 
 ers were flying, feathers not propelled by bird 
 bodies, but strange feathers, large and proud like 
 white sails of ships; the birds saw them whirled 
 in the spring wind and were intent on securing 
 them for the linings of their nests, making ready 
 for the family that was to be. 
 
 From the clothesline fluttered a long bolster 
 cover, its striped length careering madly, now
 
 A FLIGHT OF FEATHERS 9! 
 
 collapsed, now filled to plethoric proportions. 
 In spite of Sophronia s careful picking out of 
 every feather she could find, stray feathers 
 found freedom in the breeze, to the delight of 
 the nest-builders. 
 
 Down in the cool, damp cellar Sophronia sat 
 at her rites. A scant, unearthly light came in 
 at the high, unglazed windows above her head; 
 an earthy smell pervaded the place. In corners 
 it gave way to other odours: in one place, on a 
 shelf, stood a pickle-jar, and around it sweet 
 odours of spice and the sharpness of vinegar 
 clung; the potato-bin had an arc of raw perfume, 
 while a promise of quickening life was shown in a 
 slender, pale, ghost-like finger of a sprout, a 
 finger that essayed to reach the light. 
 
 Sophronia sat on a backless wooden chair; 
 two boards were placed beneath it to keep the 
 legs from sinking in the soft ground, another 
 board kept her feet from the dampness that 
 might penetrate to her old bones. She ran 
 to bone as Jane did to flesh, a sort of natural 
 selection by which one became the prototype 
 of the empty and one of the filled pillow. 
 
 "There," said Sophronia, "you ain t a mite 
 too fat to suit me." She shook and patted 
 the bulging pillow and smoothed its distended 
 sides. "Some folks seem jest possessed to git 
 their pillers as thin as a rail. I ain t that kind. 
 I want em fat, so as to fill up the cold spots in
 
 92 A FLIGHT OF FEATHERS 
 
 the neck, kind of comfortable on cold nights. 
 Jane she s different, I dunno as she s got any 
 cold spots; she s soft and warm, she s so fat; 
 she takes after her grandma Bennett, she does." 
 
 Sophronia cocked her head on one side and 
 eyed the companion pillow that lay on the 
 boards at her feet. "Sakes alive! I dunno 
 but I ve gone and got one of these pillers fatter n 
 t other one, and I hefted em careful, too. I 
 declare for t, I believe I ll have to rip t other 
 one a mite and pull out a handful of feathers." 
 
 Her face wore a grave, judicial expression as 
 she lifted first one pillow and then the other, 
 calculating their weights and comparing them. 
 She might well have the gravity of a judge for 
 she was weighing, if the truth were known, her 
 own moral nature; she was hefting her own 
 strength of mind; she knew in her innermost 
 soul that there was not the sixteenth of an ounce 
 difference in the weight. She was indulging 
 herself in a debauch, the pillow-frenzy was upon 
 her. 
 
 Again she lifted the pillows one at a time; she 
 sighed and shook her head; she argued with 
 herself, "Pretty close, pretty nigh the same, 
 mebby the right-hand one is jest the least mite 
 bigger. I dunno as tis and I dunno as tis. 
 She held them at arm s length, one in her left 
 hand and one in her right hand, then she half 
 closed her eyes so as to leave her mental sight
 
 A FLIGHT OF FEATHERS 93 
 
 unembarrassed, and slowly and cautiously her 
 left eye closed a little tighter. It was a tenta 
 tive wink, a wink, if it might be called one, 
 which was the outcome of her baser nature, a 
 last effort to overthrow her moral conviction 
 that the weight of the two pillows was equal; 
 the wink tipped the scale. "There certainly 
 is a difference. I must take out a handful from 
 this one and put it into that. The girls will 
 think I am everlastingly slow, but pillers is 
 pilfers, and feathers is feathers, whatever they 
 may say." 
 
 Awhile later Sophronia emerged from the 
 cellar, her eyebrows encrusted with down, her 
 headgear awry, looking like a species of human 
 hen. 
 
 Dilly was alone in the kitchen. Jane had 
 gone upstairs to get to work on her pillows; Dilly 
 could hear her beating them with unremitting 
 energy. She envied her, and sewed with a sullen 
 rectitude on the apron for the missionaries. 
 
 "Where s Jane?" demanded Sophronia with 
 a touch of sharpness. 
 
 "Oh, Jane s up in the attic lookin over them 
 pillers of hern." 
 
 "Which pillers?" 
 
 "I dunno, mebby them live geese feathers 
 from the last picking." 
 
 "Umph!" There was disapproval in this 
 ejaculation; she creaked upstairs to see if Jane
 
 94 A FLIGHT OF FEATHERS 
 
 was doing exactly what she knew she was doing. 
 She fully appreciated the necessity for her own 
 attention to her pillows, but she had a feeling 
 that Jane s activities were a sort of weak imita 
 tion, a vanity, a waste of time. She just barely 
 tolerated Jane s pillows. 
 
 "Fur the lan s sake, what be you doin , Jane? 
 You make enough noise to wake the dead!" 
 
 "I m just beatin my pillers before I hang em 
 out in the sun; how s yourn gittin on?" 
 
 "First rate. I suppose you and Dilly will 
 think I ve got em too thick, but I like mine fat, 
 you know." 
 
 Sophronia and Jane went to the Sewing Circle 
 that afternoon. Dilly had an attack of accommo 
 dating rheumatism, and stayed at home. She 
 sewed to the end of her apron seam, and then 
 with carefully modulated steps she mounted 
 with dignity the steep stairs, and opened the 
 closet where she kept her pillows. She was 
 the orderly one of the Bassett sisters. Between 
 each pillow and the next in the high pile lay a 
 carefully spread newspaper. Little slips of 
 paper were pinned to each pillow with numbers 
 written on them. Three pairs lay divided with 
 scrupulous care. She lifted them carefully, and 
 lovingly laid them one by one on a chair which 
 she dusted beforehand; then she wiped off the 
 shelves with a dry cloth and laid the pillows 
 reverently back. Her foot hit the wooden cradle
 
 A FLIGHT OF FEATHERS 95 
 
 that had been stored for fifty years beneath 
 the lower shelf; it rocked with a homely, sym 
 pathetic joggle. Dilly was very happy in com 
 munion with her sacred pillows. 
 
 When the last one of the Bassett sisters had 
 been separated by death from these idols, and 
 the pillow roll-call sounded, there were five 
 pillows that responded, in Jane s division, there 
 were three pairs to Billy s credit, and eight 
 plethoric forms were in line as Sophronia s 
 contribution. 
 
 This accretion of three lifetimes, this light- 
 hearted company represented the imaginative 
 flights of the three sisters, and this outward 
 sign of inward aspiration bore this inscription: 
 "To our beloved niece, in token of our affection 
 and our admiration, we leave these pillows as a 
 slight reminder of her three aunts." Signed, 
 "Aunt Jane, Aunt Dilly, Aunt Sophronia." 
 
 When at her breakfast table in New York 
 the niece read the letter written by the minister 
 of the Baptist Church to whom this bequest 
 had been entrusted, she sat up rigid with as 
 tonishment and disapproval. 
 
 "John," said she, "did you ever hear any 
 thing so trying. The minister writes that the 
 last of my old aunts has died." 
 
 " I am sorry but I suppose she was pretty old." 
 
 "Yes, but that is not the worst of it, they 
 have left me all their pillows."
 
 96 A FLIGHT OF FEATHERS 
 
 "Well, pillows are useful things. It seems to 
 me you once told me that their hobby was 
 pillows." 
 
 "I should think it was! How many do you 
 think they left? Nineteen pillows all packed 
 and waiting for me to send for them. Nineteen, 
 and I never have or will use a pillow. I won t 
 let the children use them. I believe they are 
 unsanitary and worse than useless. You are 
 the only Sybarite in the family, and you know 
 what I think of that." 
 
 "Splendid chance to do something for your 
 Old Ladies Home. It would be a fitting thing 
 to commemorate the thrift and energy of the 
 old aunts, and benefit the Home at the same 
 time." 
 
 "What an idea! You know I couldn t con 
 scientiously give the Home anything that I 
 disapprove of for myself." 
 
 "Couldn t you stretch your conscience for 
 once, as a recognition of the well-meant gift?" 
 
 "No, I couldn t, I really couldn t." 
 
 "Well, give them to a foundling hospital, 
 babies haven t consciences, and they must have 
 pillows." 
 
 "No, John, don t quibble, you know my 
 principles; but what shall I do?" 
 
 "Give them to me." 
 
 "You? What an idea!" 
 
 "Yes, give them to me, I won t give them to
 
 A FLIGHT OF FEATHERS 97 
 
 any hospital, infant asylum, old ladies home, 
 or any blessed institution, nor to any individual. 
 Cross my heart and hope to die if I do." 
 
 "But what in the world will you do with 
 them?" 
 
 "That will be my one and only secret of a 
 lifetime. You will trust me?" 
 
 "But it is so ridiculous!" 
 
 "Not at all, you don t want them and I do." 
 
 "Where are you going to have them sent?" 
 
 "That s a part of my secret." 
 
 "Well," said his wife, reluctantly, "here is 
 the minister s address. Honour Wight, no 
 breaking of your promise? I can t think what 
 you mean to do with them." 
 
 And he never broke his promise, but when he 
 rides to his fishing-camp in a buckboard, for it is 
 forty miles from the railroad, he likes to lead 
 the driver on to telling about the time when 
 there was a strange downfall of feathers one 
 night in the early spring. He says that "when 
 the folks down in the holler* woke up one 
 morning the ground was white in the corners 
 of the fences and sheltered spots, and they 
 thought it had snowed, but when they looked 
 the patches turned out to be feathers; the birds 
 lined their nests with down for the whole sea 
 son." 
 
 "Queerest thing you ever see," said the 
 driver, "there had been a fresh breeze from the
 
 98 A FLIGHT OF FEATHERS 
 
 mountains where they seemed to come from. 
 But you know folks say that sometimes it rains 
 frogs or toads. I never seed it, but I ve heard 
 tell on it. And I can t see why feathers is any 
 stranger than frogs, anyway I have seen them 
 feathers, and what s more I ve got a bottle 
 full that I picked up, and kep ." 
 
 The husband of the niece of the three old 
 aunts smiles as he listens to this tale, for he 
 likes to think of that flight of feathers.
 
 AN EXPERIMENT IN TIME 
 
 I WAS going down hill, feeling tired and dis 
 couraged. The landscape was monotonous, 
 the hills seemed low, and the birds sang only 
 occasionally in the hedges. 
 
 Suddenly it came to me how good, how very 
 good, everything had been to my palate as a 
 child. I thought how much easier the journey 
 would be if I could go back just for a few min 
 utes. I turned quickly, retraced the few feet of 
 descent from the brow of the hill over which 
 I had come; then I made a desperate leap across 
 the chasm of middle life, and passed rapidly 
 back over the highway of time. 
 
 I stood for a moment by the enchanted pool 
 of youth, where those who sail know not whether 
 the boat be in the sky, or the sky in the water, 
 but sit watching the reflections of themselves 
 and their companions entangled with the stars. 
 I passed through the white birches on the bank 
 to the farther side, then along the fields till I 
 came to the brown house by the river; I did not 
 look carefully at the house, but I knew that the 
 shutters were closed. I went through the or 
 chard, up the hill, climbed the fence, and found 
 
 99
 
 IOO AN EXPERIMENT IN TIME 
 
 myself at the edge of the beech-woods. There, 
 on a stone, exactly where I expected to find him, 
 sat the little brown kobold. 
 
 "Good afternoon," said I. 
 
 "Good afternoon," he returned, pleasantly. 
 
 "I am glad to find you here," said I. 
 
 "I expected you," he answered. 
 
 "Then you know what I want?" 
 
 "I can guess," replied he. 
 
 I sat down on a stone near him, for my knees 
 felt tired after my climb. The kobold looked 
 exactly like the picture of him in my heart, 
 which was taken directly from a portrait that 
 was in an old book I once had. I waited for 
 him to speak, but as he sat still I said, "What 
 is it that I want?" 
 
 "You want checkerberries and birch-bark to 
 taste just as they did when you were a child." 
 
 "I do indeed," I returned. 
 
 "You want to fight violets with me." 
 
 "What else?" 
 
 "You want to make a burdock basket with a 
 handle that won t fit on straight, and that 
 breaks every time you lift the basket." 
 
 "Oh, I do," and I laughed. "What else?" 
 
 "You want to make a whistle out of willow, 
 yellow willow, in early spring when the sap 
 is running." 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 "You want to dig flag-root, and boil it in
 
 AN EXPERIMENT IN TIME IOI 
 
 sugar until it is all sweet, and then when it is 
 cold, but still sticky, you want to carry it 
 round in your pocket." 
 
 "Yes, yes, I do." 
 
 "You want to squeeze the blue juice out of 
 the spiderwort flowers, and call it ink 
 
 "Yes. What else?" 
 
 "Don t interrupt me so; I hadn t finished. 
 And you want to be always thinking that you are 
 going to make some ink out of pokeweed berries, 
 so you want to be always looking for the berries 
 that you think you are going to make ink of." 
 
 "Oh, yes, I understand." 
 
 "You want to eat sassafras leaves because 
 they are sticky; and sassafras bark and sassafras 
 root because they smart; and to cut spicewood 
 because it is spicy; and chew beech leaves be 
 cause they are sour; and suck the honey-bags 
 of columbine flowers because they are sweet; 
 and eat the false apple of the wild azalea because 
 it has no taste." 
 
 "And other things, too?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, you must eat the young roots of 
 early grass, and call them onions." 
 
 "Anything else?" 
 
 "You want to make horsehair rings, three of 
 them, one pure black, one a yellowish-white, 
 and one mixed, fasten them very clumsily 
 together, and wear the prickly knot on the inside 
 of your ringer."
 
 102 AN EXPERIMENT IN TIME 
 
 " Dear me yes, yes, yes." 
 
 "You want to make a doll out of the rose of 
 Jerusalem, with sash and bonnet-strings of 
 striped grass." 
 
 "Of course, and 
 
 "You want to squeeze the yellow juice of a 
 weed that grows by the stone step on the north 
 side of the house, and put it on your fingers to 
 cure warts." 
 
 "Yes, I will, and- 
 
 "You must never kill a toad, because if you 
 do you will find blood in the milk that you have 
 for supper." 
 
 "I never will kill a toad," said I. 
 
 "You want to tell all the lady-bugs to fly 
 away home because their houses are on fire and 
 the children alone." 
 
 "To be sure." 
 
 "You want to chew the gum of the spruce, 
 also the gum of cherry trees." 
 
 "I do!" 
 
 "And to eat the cheeses that grow on marsh- 
 mallows." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And you want to make trumpets out of 
 pumpkin-vine stalks, and cornstalk fiddles; you 
 can t make the fiddles ever play, of course." 
 
 "Oh, no, of course not, never." 
 
 "But you must go on making them just the 
 same."
 
 AN EXPERIMENT IN TIME 
 
 "Indeed I shall." 
 
 "You want to brew rose-water wine." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And eat the seeds of sweet fern." 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 "You must steal cinnamon sticks and ground 
 cinnamon and sugar, and carry them round in a 
 wooden pill-box." 
 
 "Must I jtez/them?" 
 
 "Certainly you must, a good many times; and 
 then some evening when the frogs are piping, 
 and the sky is a green-blue, and there is one very 
 white star looking at you, you must tell your 
 mother all about it." 
 
 "Oh yes." After a pause I asked, "What 
 else?" 
 
 "Did I mention eating violets with salt?" 
 inquired the kobold. 
 
 "No, you said fight violets ." 
 
 "Well you must eat them, too, sometimes with 
 salt, and sometimes with sugar." 
 
 "I ll remember that. What else?" 
 
 "Whenever you eat oysters you must always 
 look for a pearl always^ no matter whether 
 they are stewed or raw; remember that always 
 expect to find a pearl." 
 
 "I will," said I; "always." 
 
 "And you must have a secret hoard." The 
 kobold said this impressively in a low, hollow 
 voice, and I asked him in a whisper, "What of?"
 
 IO4 AN EXPERIMENT IN TIME 
 
 "Of a piece of shoemaker s wax, of one big 
 drop of quicksilver in a homeopathic glass 
 bottle, a broken awl, and four pieces of chalk- 
 one piece red, soft and crumbly, one yellow, 
 and two white bits of different lengths; they 
 must all be so dirty that you have to scratch 
 them to know which is which you understand 
 that?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, I understand." 
 
 "And you must have one leather shoe-string, 
 a piece of red sealing-wax, and one very small, 
 teenty bit of goldstone sealing-wax, one piece 
 of iridescent button-paper that crinkles when 
 you bend it, and a button-mould." 
 
 "What should I do with the button-mould?" 
 
 "Make a top, of course, with a match for a 
 stem." 
 
 " Kobold, should I be happy if I had all these 
 things?" 
 
 "Perfectly," said he with decision; "but you 
 wouldn t know that you were happy." 
 
 "Why shouldn t I?" 
 
 "The answer to that is a question." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "Do you know it now?" asked he, with his 
 eyes suddenly turned in toward his own nose, 
 till I couldn t tell whether he was looking at 
 me or not.
 
 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE 
 
 PART ONE 
 
 THE lamp was lit, and the table drawn 
 close to the fire. In Florence, when the 
 tooth of December is set against the late 
 roses, a fire is a good thing. Katharine, being 
 an artist, was indulging herself in the damp 
 luxury of living in an old palazzo, up five flights 
 of stone stairs, and she tended her fire as if it 
 were a shrine. Katharine s family had a slight 
 inclination toward rheumatism which justified 
 her in the seeming luxury of a blaze. 
 
 Naturally, when Josephine Bromley tapped 
 out a Spanish-fandango-sort-of summons on 
 the door, it cost Katharine, knowing immedi 
 ately who it was, a moment of regret to be 
 obliged to admit so unlooked-for and flighty a 
 factor into her orderly evening. 
 
 "It rains," announced Josephine, shedding 
 her wraps from her shoulders to the floor as 
 if they had been autumn leaves or detachable 
 bits of bark that she had done with. "It rains, 
 and it is as dark as Egypt, and you are a dear, 
 Katharine!" she said, making straight to the 
 
 105
 
 IO6 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE 
 
 fire and spreading out her thin hands before 
 it. 
 
 "And you are a disgraceful tramp," responded 
 Katharine with more than a show of sincerity 
 in her tone. "And besides that, you only call 
 me a dear because I happen to have common 
 sense and a fire for you to hover over." 
 
 "Yes, that s true, and whatever should we 
 poor good-for-nothings do if it were not for 
 you heaven-born, worthy ones to look after 
 us?" And Josephine, dropping to her knees, 
 leaned forward in rapturous delight toward 
 the blaze. "Yes, you are the dearest of dears, 
 Katharine." 
 
 The "dearest of dears" looked scornfully 
 at the pile of wet wraps that lay by the door, 
 and made no response to this flattery, but said, 
 "I suppose, of course, your feet are wet?" 
 
 "Of course," admitted Josephine, promptly, 
 as she rose and held up one slim foot after the 
 other, shaking her head with a look of disappro 
 bation in her face, as if her feet had been guilty 
 of an indiscretion against her own supervision. 
 
 "And your cough doesn t get any better?" 
 
 "Not any better at all," assented Josephine 
 in an alien, pitying tone which she often used 
 toward herself. 
 
 "You ought to be sent to an asylum, or 
 home," said Katharine with asperity. 
 
 " I should like to go home," murmured Joseph-
 
 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE IO7 
 
 ine, plaintively, "if only to see my little great- 
 grandmother once more." 
 
 Katharine sniffed. She thought she knew all 
 Josephine s wiles of manner, but she had never 
 before heard of this little great-grandmother 
 that was so dear. "I never heard you speak 
 of your great-grandmother before." The tone 
 seemed to convey a challenge. 
 
 "No, maybe not," said Josephine, sweetly; 
 "but you know I must have had one." 
 
 "I suppose so. I never gave the matter a 
 thought before. You do without so many 
 things that most people consider essential that I 
 did not know what your ideas might be as to 
 grandmothers." 
 
 "My great-grandmother must have been very 
 much like me when she was young," Josephine 
 went on meditatively. 
 
 "I wonder, then, that she ever lived to have 
 great-grandchildren." This was said venge- 
 fully. 
 
 "Oh, she didn t. She only lived to have 
 children." 
 
 "Then what in the name of common sense 
 are you sentimentalizing over, with all this 
 nonsense about going home to see her?" 
 
 "Why, I always go and visit her when I am 
 at home. She lies in a sunny, cozy little grave 
 yard on a hill. I love to go there. She must 
 have been delightful when she was alive."
 
 IO8 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE 
 
 "Like yourself, Josephine, as you mentioned 
 a few minutes ago." 
 
 "Did I say that? Well, I am sure she must 
 have been very much like me. In the first 
 place, she looks like me: there is a picture of 
 her cut in the gray slate headstone. She is 
 represented as lying in a prettily shaped narrow 
 coffin, and on her arm is the child that died with 
 her. The inscription reads In memory of 
 Josephine, the wife of Adoniram Hinton, who 
 departed this life December twenty-sixth, 1785, 
 in the thirtieth year of her age. On her left 
 arm lieth the infant which died with her. Just 
 at this season, Katharine, and isn t that a pretty 
 thought she and her baby asleep all these 
 years together?" 
 
 "You are cheerful to-night, Josephine," was 
 Katharine s only reply. 
 
 Josephine held up her flexible hands and 
 moved them rapidly from side to side before her 
 face "to make oak leaves out of the flames," 
 she explained to Katharine. Then, rising 
 abruptly, she caught up the guitar and waved 
 it to and fro, Spanish fashion, brushing her 
 fingers across it as it swung, making a sort of 
 breathing harmony, to which she hummed an 
 accompaniment in a high voice which was thin 
 but vibrant. She was slender, almost meagre; 
 her dark hair hung in wisps as it had dried after 
 being wet by the rain. It gave her an elfish
 
 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE ICX) 
 
 look, but with all her uncanny thinness and 
 unexpectedness, there was a fascination about 
 her that baffled Katharine even more than did 
 Josephine s faults, for it seemed to ward off 
 criticism; and it vexed Katharine that she could 
 not be more vexed at this wayward thing. 
 
 Josephine never waited for other people s 
 moods to set the pace. She was quite absorbed 
 in her own guitar swinging till the air reminded 
 her of another Spanish song; then she threw her 
 self into a crisp and saucy attitude and broke 
 into a Bolero that ended in a high, shrill note 
 which seemed to fill the room with matadors, 
 senoritas, mantillas, and pomegranates, also 
 with love and treason. 
 
 "Carmen," said Katharine, grimly, "will 
 you please attend to the fire?" 
 
 But Josephine did not stop her singing. 
 Katharine put a fresh stick on the coals. From 
 where she sat she could see that Josephine s 
 dress was drawing wet hieroglyphics on the 
 waxed floor. The dress was very shabby 
 a beggar skirt but worn with picturesque 
 style. 
 
 "I am going to be married," abruptly an 
 nounced Josephine, still thrumming on the 
 guitar. "Yes, I remember now that is what 
 I came to tell you. I knew there was something 
 I meant to speak of." 
 
 "And that is why you were so keen to go and
 
 IIO A GAME OF SOLITAIRE 
 
 see your little great-grandmother who lives in 
 the churchyard and who is so like you?" 
 
 "Perfectly natural in me. I was wondering 
 how she felt when she was engaged to be married 
 before she was the wife of Adoniram Hinton 
 and had earned her little epitaph!" 
 
 "Don t tell me, Josephine, that you are going 
 to marry Smith the dismal Smith who ought 
 never to have come over here to ruin canvas. 
 He ought to be back to-day in Vermont, helping 
 his father on the farm. He will never earn 
 enough to buy a bushel of potatoes, by art." 
 
 "Smithy, little Smithy? Oh, no! He s gone, 
 you know, gone away, disappeared, nobody 
 knows where. Paid all his debts and disap 
 peared, improvident fellow." 
 
 "Do you sleep well at night, Josephine, with 
 all your moral responsibilities?" 
 
 "No, I don t sleep very well. I have night 
 mares." This, again, in her grieved and pitying 
 tone. She was busy building up a vast and 
 comfortable nest near the fire and she did not 
 seem to notice the air of disapprobation that 
 radiated from Katharine. 
 
 Josephine s accessories always favoured her. 
 That was one reason why it was so hard to at 
 tach any ethical obligation to her. Even her 
 atmosphere defied one to attribute responsibili 
 ties. Katharine was almost the only person 
 who ever tried to, and she failed. She watched
 
 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE III 
 
 her now as she propped up the cushions against 
 the copper brocca. This proving insecure, the 
 fire screen was tilted back, the cushions were 
 heaped up, and into them sank Josephine with 
 a contented "There!" 
 
 "I suppose, then," remarked Katharine after 
 a pause, "that you are going to throw yourself 
 away on that count who has been dangling 
 around wherever you have been this fall. He 
 is, if possible, one degree worse than Smith. 
 Smith was respectable." 
 
 "No, I couldn t bring myself to marry the 
 count. I tried to; really I did," replied Jose 
 phine, as if hoping that Katharine would condone 
 her failure in view of her efforts. 
 
 "The only other alternative, then, is an old 
 rich man. You have sold yourself." 
 
 "Never! Katharine, I am pained. This 
 is an old friend of my mother s." 
 
 "I knew it," said Katharine, dejectedly. "I 
 knew it would be, of course, someone who was 
 shiftless, bad, or rich and old." 
 
 "An old friend of my mother s," went on 
 Josephine, undisturbedly. "I met him years 
 and years ago in America when mother was liv 
 ing. He came to see us and he took a great 
 fancy to me. I was only a child then, besides, 
 he had a wife," added she, with one of her sud 
 den smiles that always exasperated Katharine; 
 they meant so much or so little, according to
 
 112 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE 
 
 the next remark. Josephine s smile always 
 left one feeling that however it was construed, 
 the opposite would be found to be true. 
 
 "Now his wife is dead, and he wants to marry 
 me," continued Josephine. 
 
 "Where have you been seeing him?" 
 
 "That s part of the fun of it. I haven t been 
 seeing much of him. We have mostly cor 
 responded." 
 
 "Oh!" groaned Katharine. 
 
 "We shall be married in January," Josephine 
 went on, "here in Florence. He lives in Lon 
 don, but he will go to America to live if I want 
 him to, or anywhere else, for that matter. I 
 am getting my trousseau ready. I bought a 
 dear, delightful brass kettle to-day, big and so 
 comfortable looking." 
 
 Katharine laughed in spite of her indignation. 
 " I suppose you will have towers and domes and 
 frescoes in your trousseau, they would be so 
 useful in America." 
 
 "I did buy a Madonna to-day," said Jose 
 phine impressively, raising herself and clasping 
 her knees with her thin, enthusiastic fingers, 
 "a real old cracked Madonna, with the loveliest 
 little Christus you ever saw. I cleaned it off 
 with my own fingers. I worked for hours over 
 it. I rubbed off all the old sticky varnish 
 (Smithy taught me how just before he disap 
 peared, poor dear) and then I steamed it over
 
 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE IIJ 
 
 an alcohol bath and the cracks all drew to 
 gether, and then I varnished it freshly, and now 
 it is my own beautiful Madonna all my own! 
 And I am going to buy a hundred-franc frame 
 for it. I paid just think, Katharine, and don t 
 scold I paid five hundred francs for the picture 
 alone! Oh, isn t it glorious to be rich!" 
 
 Katharine looked at the frayed bottom of 
 Josephine s dress, and her wholesome common 
 sense revolted against this mothlike creature s 
 burning wings in the awful to be. 
 
 "Josephine," said she, "either don t tell me 
 any more of your doings, or else let me advise 
 you. You will ruin yourself. How dare you 
 spend five hundred francs for anything any 
 thing except actual necessities? And where 
 are you to get your bread and butter if this thing 
 falls through?" 
 
 " c This thing, as you curiously call my engage 
 ment, is not going to fall through, and besides 
 I never did care much for bread and butter; 
 and so, just for once in my life, I am going to 
 spend every cent I have, or can get hold of, and 
 I am going to spend it for luxuries and I am 
 going to enjoy it. Now to-morrow," said she, 
 as she picked up her wet wraps and surveyed 
 them at arm s length with loathing, "to-morrow 
 I shall buy myself a fur wrap, long, ample, and 
 exclusive, with a dash of the sumptuous to it. 
 No, Katharine, you may save your sermon; I am
 
 114 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE 
 
 going now to be happy and look rich. Later 
 I shall be rich and look happy." 
 
 A week later, Josephine s vivacious face 
 blossomed above a fur wrap whose collar just 
 revealed her pink ears. She looked both rich 
 and happy. 
 
 PART TWO 
 
 " Katharine," said Josephine a few days after 
 she had announced her engagement, "would 
 you believe that one could actually buy and 
 have and hold forever, for one s very own, a 
 great, splendid cathedral lamp that has been 
 burning for nobody knows how many centuries 
 before some saint? Well, believe it or not, I ve 
 done it, and I am going to try and live up to it 
 in spiritual faith and constancy, you know. I 
 shall have it hung right over my dressing table 
 when I get settled in my new home in America. 
 I mean to put every scrap that I have collected 
 here in Italy in my own room, so that I shall 
 never forget how happy I have been here here 
 in the land of joy!" 
 
 "When is your fiance coming?" 
 
 "Oh, to-morrow, or yesterday, or sometime. 
 You see, he was to have come last week but it 
 fell through, all along of some sister of his. 
 Katharine, he is rich, actually rich! It is al 
 most ridiculous my marrying a rich man."
 
 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE 
 
 "Quite," was the short reply. "Do you love 
 him?" 
 
 "Of course I do. What a question! Only 
 well, I do not mind confiding to you, dear, that 
 I am just a little disappointed to find he doesn t 
 seem to care one bit about Madonnas. He says 
 they are all trash and bigotry, and I am afraid 
 he is too old to change. I wrote to him yester 
 day that he must try to look at Madonnas as 
 purely decorative. I am hoping that that will 
 appeal to him." 
 
 "Josephine, you are intolerable. You don t 
 deserve to be happy. You are too shallow for 
 anything. I wish something could make you 
 serious." 
 
 "Why, Katharine! I thought you of all 
 people would look on marriage as serious. Why, 
 my dear, just being engaged has utterly changed 
 me. I have become conventional. I don t 
 even think of going out shopping without a maid, 
 and you must remember how I used to roam 
 about. The other day, when I went to meet Mr. 
 Griffith, I took Adela along truly I did." 
 
 " Meet him ? Meet Mr. Griffith ? When and 
 where have you been meeting him?" 
 
 "Why, I meant to tell you that he was to have 
 been here last Friday. He wrote that he would 
 arrive by the eleven-thirty train in the morn 
 ing, you know. We were all ready for him to 
 breakfast with us. Such a pretty salad all
 
 Il6 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE 
 
 green and gold; I arranged it myself in my old 
 majolica bowl, with lots of flowers and fixings. 
 Then came a telegram saying that he must hurry 
 right through Florence on an earlier train, so 
 as to meet his sister who had been very ill some 
 where in Egypt, and was on her way to Naples. 
 He arranged it for me to meet him at the train; 
 and then he begged me to go on with him as far 
 as that place with the queer name, where they 
 meet the incoming train from Rome, you know. 
 Of course I went. Sister Maggie couldn t go; 
 I wouldn t let her go to the station with me, but 
 I took Adela, and put her in a second-class com 
 partment. And I did have a perfect dream of a 
 time! Oh, Katharine, isn t joy easy to bear? 
 And I know I looked well in my fur coat." 
 
 "How old is Mr. Griffith?" 
 
 "Oh, I am sure I don t know some tedious 
 age, I suppose. There is nothing so tedious as 
 age. We ought to begin at the other end and 
 wind up as babies, I have always thought so." 
 
 "Some of us do." 
 
 "Oh, if you mean me I am old, old, old!" 
 Josephine did look a little withered and tired 
 for the moment. 
 
 This was a Sunday afternoon near the end 
 of December. She had dropped in to dine with 
 Katharine as was her wont on Sundays. It was 
 the habit of the " boys," as they called the Amer 
 ican art students, to call for them later on in the
 
 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE IIJ 
 
 afternoon and take them for long walks or to 
 the picture galleries. 
 
 "Miss Josephine looks like a dove to-day," 
 remarked the tall Johnson to Katharine as they 
 strolled through the Boboli Gardens. 
 
 "A dove?" said Katharine, questioningly. 
 She was apt to see things in an ethical light, and 
 it was not without an effort that she disassoci 
 ated looking and being. 
 
 "Yes. You see she has on all the colours, 
 graded from gray to soft fawn, and capped by 
 that iridescent thing round her neck. Her 
 head moves above it just like a dove s head." 
 
 "Methinks it is a cat," said Steinway, who 
 prided himself on being rude. 
 
 Katharine, who was loyal, resented this. "I. 
 wonder," said she, "how any one dares to speak 
 of a woman as if she were a piece of bric-a-brac, 
 a picture or an animal?" 
 
 "Oh, now, Miss Dunning, don t be too hard. 
 We fellows don t mean anything, you know. 
 It is only so-called artistic slang." 
 
 "And really," joined in Anderson, "it is 
 curious, Miss Katharine, but one does get to 
 looking even at one s friends as if they were 
 posing. Just see Miss Josephine now how 
 she flattens out into a fresco against that white 
 wall in full sunlight. Why, if I painted her so, 
 the donkeys who write art criticisms would say 
 I had filched from the old frescoes. But
 
 Il8 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE 
 
 wouldn t it make a sensation in the Salon if I 
 could only hit it off?" Anderson was young. 
 
 "Do you know," drawled Spellman to Kath 
 arine, " when Miss Bromley sings with her guitar, 
 Spanish fashion, I regularly fall deeply in love 
 with someone else!" 
 
 "I wonder who?" thought Katharine. She 
 only said, "Let us walk faster, please." That 
 was almost the only time she did not know ex 
 actly what she wanted. 
 
 Bragdon, "the Baltimore Oriole" as he was 
 popularly called (he was very dashing, and in 
 clined to a bit of flame colour in his cravat) was 
 walking with Josephine, and saying impres 
 sively: "I don t know what I shall do for the 
 dramatic element when you go away from here. 
 It will cost us fellows a heap of money for 
 theatre tickets to keep us amused then, and 
 it won t be half so artistic." 
 
 "You can go to church for nothing," said the 
 dove with serenity. 
 
 Soon after this Sunday, Maggie, Josephine s 
 sister, came in for a long talk with Katharine. 
 She had been so busy with all the shopping and 
 the making up of Josephine s wardrobe that she 
 was brimming over with bottled-up emotions. 
 Besides that, nobody who knew Katharine ever 
 considered any undertaking fully begun or done 
 without having had it out with her. 
 
 "You never in all your life knew any one so
 
 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE 
 
 utterly generous as Josephine is," began Mag 
 gie, "and what do you think she has just done? 
 She says she shall have money enough after her 
 marriage, so she has not only made over to me 
 her half of the farm down in Kennebunk, but 
 she has actually sent over to the savings bank 
 and drawn out all her money, and has given 
 me five hundred dollars. She won t have a 
 cent left after she has paid for all her dresses 
 and for all those queer things she dotes on so 
 much. I tell her she is no Christian, but a per 
 fect heathen in her tastes. She only laughs 
 she does nothing but laugh and sing nowadays. 
 Why, Katharine, the brass things alone that 
 she has bought would fill a ship, I should think; 
 and they smell so brassy. Besides that, she has 
 bought a lot of inlaid chairs and tables and 
 things. I really don t know as I ought to tell 
 you, if she hasn t already; but you know all 
 about that Italian count who wanted to marry 
 her? Well, he failed (he was a gambler, isn t it 
 awful?) he failed, and then shot himself; and 
 now Josephine has gone and bought up most of 
 his old furniture at auction or of some dealer. 
 She says that it has a sentiment for her, and 
 that she is so grateful to have had the dance 
 without paying the piper. I never half under 
 stand her, and I can t imagine how we ever 
 came to be born in the same family. But you 
 must come over and see Josephine s clothes.
 
 I2O A GAME OF SOLITAIRE 
 
 Every dress is copied from some old picture 
 and she has no end of old beads and jewellery. 
 I feel as if I were living in a dream. I almost 
 dread to wake up. And to think in a month it 
 will be all over!" 
 
 "I should suppose Mr. Griffith would re 
 member that you, too, are the daughter of his 
 old friend." 
 
 "Yes," assented Maggie, vaguely, "but it 
 isn t as if he had seen me." 
 
 "To be candid with you, Maggie" (as if given 
 half a chance, Katharine could ever have been 
 anything but candid), "what puzzles me is that 
 Mr. Griffith dared to think of marrying so 
 young a girl as Josephine. And if he wanted 
 to, why didn t he come down to Florence and 
 get acquainted with her first? He must be 
 nearly twice as old as she." 
 
 "Do you know, Katharine, it seems queer 
 to me but he doesn t look so very old. I know 
 he must be, he can t be as young as he looks. 
 I ve been over it again and again in my mind 
 and he can t be less than sixty, but he doesn t 
 look thirty-five." 
 
 "Oh, you ve seen him then?" Katharine had 
 a momentary sense of relief, immediately fol 
 lowed, however, by an uncomfortable feeling 
 that at last Josephine was caught in a fib, for she 
 certainly had said several times that Maggie 
 had not seen Mr. Griffith.
 
 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE 121 
 
 Maggie hurried to say, "No, I haven t seen 
 him but Josephine has his photograph on her 
 dressing table. She puts fresh violets before 
 it every day. His picture does not look old. 
 Josephine is twenty-three, you know, and I am 
 twenty-seven, and mother would have been 
 fifty-seven if she had lived." Maggie knew to a 
 day just how old everybody was, that was her 
 strong point almost her only one. "Now if 
 mother would have been fifty-seven, he must 
 be older 7 , but he doesn t look anything like it. 
 He is handsome, too." 
 
 A thousand little doubts were assailing 
 Katharine, each one so small that it took a 
 whole swarm of them to make a cloud thick 
 enough to be palpable; but the cloud was getting 
 somehow like a gray mist before her mind s eye. 
 
 "Miss Bromley has an aptitude for her future 
 role of great lady," said Spellman to Katharine 
 one day. "Do you know what she has just 
 done? She has bought Bragdon s Arno by 
 Moonlight, and he is so grateful he cannot 
 speak of it without well, doing what, if he were 
 a girl, we should call crying; and he is the most 
 undemonstrative fellow in the world. He means 
 to stay here for three more months of study. 
 It will be the making of him." 
 
 "Good Lord!" said Katharine under her 
 breath. All at once she had a vision of Jose 
 phine as she had appeared that night when she
 
 122 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE 
 
 came in wet, nervous, and wilful, and announced 
 her engagement to Mr. Griffith, while she 
 twanged on her guitar, her shabby gown drip 
 ping with rain; and now, only a few weeks later, 
 she was buying pictures, playing fairy god 
 mother to Bragdon. 
 
 Katharine s face was a study. Spellman 
 answered what he thought he read in it, and 
 said, "Oh, she s all right. She is going to marry 
 money, isn t she? I don t mean, of course, 
 marrying for money. Marrying money and 
 marrying for money are very different things." 
 
 "Yes, it s different from marrying for money," 
 assented Katharine, gravely. 
 
 All the same, that night she took out her 
 bank book, and made a long and careful com 
 putation. "For," said she, aloud, as good 
 people will who live much alone, and whose im 
 aginations need the reinforcement of words, 
 "for, as sure as guns, I shall have to use some 
 of it soon, for friendship s sake. I feel shaky 
 about Josephine. I can t help it I feel very 
 shaky." 
 
 PART THREE 
 
 Josephine was ready to be married gowns, 
 brass kettles, Madonnas, and all. She looked 
 a trifle worn, but she was in the gayest of spirits 
 and more full than ever of her vagaries. She
 
 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE 
 
 was either exasperatingly gentle after doing the 
 most reprehensible things, or else sweetly con 
 trary, always being of the opposite mood, 
 whatever was expected. She gave teas and 
 lunches at her rooms, where her new artistic 
 belongings created the impression of the fif 
 teenth century having kaleidoscoped with the 
 nineteenth. 
 
 Every day she had some new and grotesquely 
 inappropriate possession to exploit, ofttimes 
 bemoaning her inability to buy the little iron 
 devil that presided over the market place, alas, 
 that it was not for sale. "That alone," she de 
 clared, "would be worth more to her than all 
 her Madonnas." 
 
 Josephine was quite the sensation of Florence 
 at this time and it agreed wonderfully well with 
 her. 
 
 One night Katharine was summoned sud 
 denly by a wide-eyed Italian maid, with more 
 emotion than power of speech. She brought 
 a slip of paper from Josephine s sister Maggie, 
 saying, "Come at once; Josephine is very ill." 
 More than this could not be gathered from the 
 maid, whose Neapolitan dialect was beyond the 
 range of Katharine s studies. 
 
 Maggie stood shivering by the door when 
 they reached her apartment. She was haggard 
 with distress. "Mr. Griffith is dead," said she, 
 "and I think Josephine will die, too. What
 
 124 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE 
 
 shall I do? She had a letter this afternoon 
 from his sister in London. He died suddenly. 
 Oh, Katharine, this is the awakening. Jose 
 phine is almost crazy. She fainted away when 
 she read the letter. She had been restless and 
 excited all day as if she felt that something was 
 going to happen; and she dropped down in a 
 heap on the floor with the letter in her hand. 
 Afterward she laughed and cried horribly. I 
 was afraid of her. I sent for the doctor and 
 he couldn t do anything with her till he gave her 
 something to put her to sleep; and even now 
 she starts and calls out. I know she will die. 
 What shall I do?" And poor Maggie laid her 
 head on Katharine s shoulder and had the first 
 cry that she had found time for since the news 
 had come. 
 
 While Katharine tried to comfort her, she 
 herself was going through a certain self- 
 chastisement. She was blaming herself for 
 not feeling the grief of the circumstances more 
 sympathetically, more spontaneously. She was 
 sorry enough for the sobbing Maggie, but there 
 was not that whole-souled oneness in her sym 
 pathy for the two desolated sisters that she 
 felt there ought to be. "I wonder," she thought, 
 "if I have been orderly and methodical so long 
 that I have left no room for the expansions of 
 pity." And worse than the distrust of her ca 
 pacity for sympathy was the black swarm of
 
 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE 125 
 
 doubts which had increased so that they made 
 a cloud in her brain through which Josephine 
 and her dramatic troubles looked farcical and 
 unreal. She seemed to see herself going through 
 some grotesque drama at the bottom of which 
 there was no reality. 
 
 To Maggie, however, there was no unreality, 
 either in Josephine s illness, called by the doctor 
 a "nervous collapse," or in their financial posi 
 tion. The five hundred dollars so generously 
 bestowed upon her by Josephine had long ago 
 melted down to less than a third; and in the 
 days that followed the remaining portion 
 melted like the snow on Monte Morello. 
 
 Life was very real to Maggie. Josephine s 
 health mended slowly and their finances not at 
 all. Doctor s bills, tradesmen s bills, and all 
 the little luxuries of sickness sucked their 
 slender stream dry. One new expense, as 
 Josephine recovered, threatened to bring them 
 to utter and irretrievable ruin. Josephine was 
 obliged to be out for hours driving in the Cascine 
 where, wrapped in her gray rabbit s-fur cloak, 
 with roses tucked in near her pale face, she re 
 ceived the admiring pity of the voluble Italians 
 who had followed in every detail the poor 
 signorina s drama. 
 
 It was now March, and Katharine came to a 
 decision. Action followed always immediately 
 on her decisions. She spent several hours in
 
 126 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE 
 
 writing a letter. This letter was addressed to 
 Mr. J. C. Griffith. After writing it she en 
 closed it in another carefully worded letter to 
 her bankers in London, asking them to forward 
 it to Mr. J. C. Griffith, if it were possible to ob 
 tain that gentleman s address, also asking them 
 as a favour to write a letter to him themselves 
 introducing her, as she was consulting him on a 
 matter of importance, but had not the honour 
 of an acquaintance with him. 
 
 She received a letter in reply from her bankers 
 stating that they had delivered the letter to 
 J. C. Griffith, Esq., who happened to be well 
 known to them, having been for many years a 
 customer of theirs, so that there was no delay 
 in transmitting the letter, with one of introduc 
 tion as requested. 
 
 Then Katharine waited; and while she waited 
 she tided over the affairs of the two sisters in her 
 usual orderly, methodical, and practical manner, 
 but she did not think it necessary to tell them 
 that she had written to J. C. Griffith, Esq., and 
 that she awaited with deep interest a letter from 
 him. Occasionally she thanked Heaven de 
 voutly that she knew what she wanted, and was 
 practical enough to get it. 
 
 Her letter to Mr. Griffith had been a plain 
 and full statement of the affairs of the two 
 Bromley sisters, including all she knew of 
 Josephine s engagement. She began by asking if
 
 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE 
 
 the Mr. Griffith she was now addressing was the 
 Mr. J. C. Griffith who had formerly been a friend 
 of Mrs. Bromley in America, saying: "If you 
 are that friend, the following circumstances are 
 of importance to you. Assuming that you are, 
 I will give them to you as I see them, and I hope 
 that you may help me in my efforts to send the 
 two daughters back to America." She told 
 him that early in the winter Josephine had an 
 nounced her engagement to a Mr. J. C. Griffith, 
 an old friend of her mother s, and that several 
 weeks had been passed in preparing for the mar 
 riage; also that all the fortune of the two girls 
 had been spent. She explained to him that in 
 some adroit manner, either by accident or design, 
 no one but Josephine had ever seen Mr. Griffith, 
 and the engagement had ostensibly been ar 
 ranged by letter; and that this engagement 
 had been suddenly and shockingly broken off 
 by the news of Mr. Griffith s death, communi 
 cated to Josephine by the sister of the man, also 
 by letter. She went on to tell him how ill Jose 
 phine had been and still was, and ended by 
 saying: "The whole affair is to me a matter of 
 confusion and I frankly say, of mystery. It is, 
 however, borne in upon me that the Mr. Griffith 
 to whom Josephine was or was supposed to be 
 engaged was not the old friend of her mother s 
 and, acting on that impression, I write and put 
 the matter in your hands. If you are that
 
 128 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE 
 
 friend, will you aid the daughters on their way 
 to America? And may I let you know when 
 they pass through London? As to what you 
 may think it is your duty to do in unravelling 
 the mystery that surrounds the use of your 
 name in the tragedy of Josephine s life, that is a 
 matter outside of my power to suggest. I need 
 not tell you that they do not know of my in 
 tercession with you on their behalf. On the re 
 ceipt of your answer to this, I shall do as circum 
 stances dictate in the matter of making known 
 to them how I came to communicate with you." 
 
 One day a letter came to Katharine from J. C. 
 Griffith. He avowed himself to be the one who 
 had been honoured as the friend of Mrs. 
 Bromley, "the most beautiful and fascinating 
 woman I ever met or expect to meet." He said 
 that he remembered Josephine as giving promise 
 to be much like her mother, and that nothing in 
 the world could exceed his delight in putting 
 himself at their (he had first written "her" and 
 then substituted "their") service. He added: 
 "Miss Josephine inspires me with great interest. 
 In her, evidently, a trace of the mother lives, 
 even in the aptitude of her feet for somewhat 
 tangled paths. I am proud to be of service to 
 her." 
 
 "Good gracious," said Katharine. "I ve 
 fixed it now. The old fool will marry Josephine 
 as sure as my name is Katharine Dunning."
 
 A GAME OF SOLITAIRE 129 
 
 And he did marry Josephine Bromley in just 
 three months after he met her in London. 
 
 It was a long time before Katharine could 
 make herself write to Josephine after receiving 
 an erratic little note from her announcing her 
 happy engagement to Mr. J. C. Griffith, without 
 a single reference to the past, or a single explana 
 tion of who this Mr. Griffith was. And when 
 Katharine did write, it could hardly be called 
 a congratulatory letter. In fact, it read: 
 
 Josephine Bromley, will you tell me whose photograph 
 you had standing on your dressing table here in Florence, 
 framed in old ivory and silver, before which you put fresh 
 violets every day? 
 
 And Josephine answered by return mail: 
 
 Why, Katharine, you dear old thing, that was only a 
 card that I used in my game of solitaire. 
 
 Yours, 
 JOSEPHINE BROMLEY GRIFFITH.
 
 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 
 
 WELL! What did I tell you! Isn t 
 this a pretty state of things ? Stephen 
 living in rooms, and Stephen s house 
 just teeming with those Swedes. I declare! 
 It makes me ill; I do believe that Stephen ought 
 to be put under guardianship, I do really 
 you re laughing, Eugenia; I suppose it is all 
 very amusing to any one that isn t anything in 
 particular to Stephen; but I tell you, Eugenia, 
 if he were anything to you you would see the 
 utter ridiculousness of the whole thing, instead 
 of standing there and laughing." 
 
 "That is why I laugh, it is so very ridiculous, 
 and so like Stephen." 
 
 ."I call Stephen odd, I don t say that he is 
 ridiculous. He is a victim of circumstances, 
 and it is these circumstances that are absurd 
 and ridiculous." 
 
 The eyes of the two women met and they both 
 laughed, one in irritation and one in a sympa 
 thetic manner which soon ended in a wistful 
 silence, while the other wiped from her eyes the 
 half-angry tears. 
 
 "Now, just look over there," said the irri- 
 131
 
 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 
 
 tated woman. "Isn t that house a beauty? It 
 is a home from top to cellar, it isn t merely 
 a house. Stephen planned every detail; he 
 put his heart into it, it is a perfect home." 
 
 "It certainly seems to be a home," assented 
 Eugenia, "that is if a lot of happy people living 
 in it makes a home of it. I have seen enough 
 mothers and aunts, and fathers and sisters and 
 brothers and children over there to constitute 
 a fair-sized Republic made up of families. For 
 my part I like a full house." 
 
 "So do I, if they are the right people in the 
 right place. When Stephen told me two years 
 ago that he was going to build, I thought that 
 he was doing the most sensible thing of his life. 
 He just beamed when I said that, and intimated 
 that he had expected me to object; I said that I 
 never objected to his doing a sensible thing like 
 this, but that it was the unexpectedly queer 
 things that he was always doing that had made 
 me acquire the objecting habit, and then as the 
 Yankee said, He didn t say nothing and I didn t 
 say nothing, and so one word led to another, 
 and then Stephen fell into one of his silent 
 tempers, and for a week we were conspicuously 
 polite to each other, but we didn t allude to the 
 house. When he got over his miff he brought up 
 the subject again, and I was perfectly amazed 
 to find that he did not in the least mean to get 
 married, as I had supposed of course he would,
 
 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 133 
 
 but that he was just going to build. A home/ 
 he called it, a hollow mockery, I said, and after 
 that I systematically objected to every brick 
 and every stone that went to the building of the 
 house. I criticised everything that he planned 
 to do, right along, till the house was done. He 
 told my husband that it ought to be a thor 
 oughly well-built house as it had had all the 
 benefits of contractor and detractor. I know 
 that I did my part well, anyway. I suppose I 
 am somewhat to blame and that I really drove 
 him into it. Opposition is always the best 
 goad for a man. Anyway, there it stands, 
 Stephen s Folly." 
 
 There was stillness for a time, and then the 
 older woman continued, as if driven to speak 
 against a restraining, better judgment: "Some 
 times in my heart of hearts I think of it as 
 Stephen s and Eugenia s Folly. Perhaps I am 
 wrong there." 
 
 Eugenia was not to be decoyed into admission 
 or discussion. She stood surveying the opposite 
 house with interest. 
 
 There was evidently some sort of gala doings 
 over there: an awning was stretched from door 
 to pavement; a man in livery was placing stones 
 on the corners of the carpet that made an invit 
 ing line of red, running up the steps. 
 
 The wind flapped the striped and scalloped 
 awning which gave to the scene a triumphal,
 
 134 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 
 
 flag-flying effect, while two strictly trimmed 
 box trees in pots stood in formal promise of a 
 function of importance within. 
 
 Showy, light costumes containing conscious- 
 looking women stepped from the carriages 
 "which continually do come," chronicled 
 Eugenia for the benefit of the other, whose in 
 terest was of too irritable a nature to allow of her 
 watching for herself. 
 
 "They all come in carriages, I often walk," 
 remarked Eugenia, meditatively. 
 
 "You can afford to walk." 
 
 "Yes, I suppose so. One would naturally 
 have to ride to one s own wedding, and to 
 one s own funeral, all the other rides are 
 extra." 
 
 "I should say that those Swedes over there 
 lived mostly on extras." 
 
 "Whose wedding is this, anyway?" asked 
 Eugenia. "I suppose it is the pretty white- 
 haired girl that is to be married, the one that 
 watched us from the upper window when we 
 got out of the carriage day before yesterday." 
 
 "I saw at least six heads at the various win 
 dows. It might be any one of the aunts or sis 
 ters or cousins or friends of the family, I am sure 
 I don t know which one; don t ask me anything, 
 my head is bursting with a racking headache, 
 and it all comes from the idiocy of you two, it 
 really does, Eugenia, and it is of no use for you
 
 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 135 
 
 to deny it, and to look so cool and remote, and so 
 innocent." 
 
 As she said this Mrs. Ransome put her head 
 on one side and surveyed Eugenia like an in 
 quisitive robin, to see how she would receive 
 the arrangement. 
 
 As Eugenia kept silence she added, "Did 
 you know that when Stephen was eight years 
 old he nearly had the honour of playing the 
 leading part in a drama that they gave at his 
 school, at the closing of the spring term?" 
 
 Eugenia smiled at the digression and said that 
 she probably had heard of it but that she had for 
 gotten it, as she had unfortunately forgotten 
 many historical events of interest that ought to 
 be remembered. 
 
 "Yes," went on Mrs. Ransome, not at all dis 
 couraged by her listener s small ironies. "Yes, 
 he was appointed for a part and learned his 
 lines, and got his make-up, and was as import 
 ant as if he was to play Hamlet at Drury Lane, 
 and then are you listening, Eugenia?" 
 
 "Of course I am, I am very much interested to 
 find out how you got switched off from the 
 Swedish wedding to Stephen at school, in Ham 
 let did you say, at the age of eight? Well?" 
 
 "Well, it has a bearing on this and on many 
 other things; the very day that the play was to 
 come off Stephen came down with the measles, 
 his face was as red as his hair, and one could not
 
 Ij THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 
 
 say more at that time. Maybe his hair is a 
 trifle darker now. Yes, he took that very day 
 of all others to begin on his measles." 
 
 "Poor little boy!" murmured Eugenia. 
 
 "Horrid little boy, I say. The fact is that 
 Stephen never had in all his life the first glim 
 mering of what we call social instinct; now if I 
 am to have an honour or a pleasure do I take 
 that particular time to have any one of the 
 regular diseases that could be had at any time, 
 at one s own convenience, as it were? I tell you, 
 Eugenia, these things are not accidental, they 
 are temperamental. You don t find that any 
 successful person, socially speaking, has dis 
 agreeable things at critical moments. A man, 
 for instance, would not have a fit of sneezing 
 just at the instant that he was going to propose 
 to the woman he loved above anything on earth, 
 that is, no one but Stephen would. Stephen 
 might, I am not sure about anything s not hap 
 pening to Stephen, he would be sure to have 
 something frustrating anyway." 
 
 Eugenia smiled and the colour came slowly 
 up till her ears burned. She recalled that in 
 truth every event in the life of Mrs. Ransome 
 had somehow fallen at the opportune moment, 
 and at the same time she remembered guiltily 
 in her own case how some indiscretions, some 
 inopportunities, had frustrated or impeded her 
 at moments of social importance, but her admi-
 
 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 137 
 
 ration for Mrs. Ransome s superior quality was 
 mixed with a sneaking sympathy for the little 
 red-headed boy that was devoid of the social 
 instinct. 
 
 "And then," resumed Stephen s sister, re 
 hearsing her grievances in a way that showed 
 them to have been reduced to order and sequence 
 in her mind, "and then again, when he was to 
 be graduated from college at twenty, he had 
 some part in the exercises quite an honourable 
 part, for Stephen in the long run is generally 
 successful what did he do but lie awake all the 
 night before and then go off early in the morning 
 for a long walk to clear his mind, and then he 
 fell asleep in the woods and slept till the whole 
 thing was over. That is the fact, he is subject 
 to some fate, some malignant, obscuring fate 
 that always succeeds in making him ineffective. 
 
 "It has been so his whole life," said she, taking 
 fresh breath, for she felt that she was venturing 
 on to thin ice and she went at it with a rush to 
 have it over with, "and I haven t the slightest 
 doubt in the world but that he would have been 
 married long ago if some miserable, little, in 
 convenient, obstructing fate hadn t come in to 
 frustrate it. 
 
 "You are laughing again, Eugenia, you really 
 are! No? Then you are crying. Oh, don t cry, 
 dear, I didn t think you cared What? You 
 don t care? Well! Why do you show tears,
 
 138 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 
 
 then? I wasn t blaming Stephen, 1 was just 
 trying to explain to myself how it happens that 
 Stephen is so ineffective, and how it happens 
 that those Swedes have possession over there 
 and Stephen is living all alone in some little 
 cooped-up rooms, Heaven knows how or 
 where. 
 
 "There, Eugenia, I know you don t care 
 you say you do care? Well, I thought so, at 
 least I hoped so, I 
 
 "I mean," explained Eugenia, resolutely, "I 
 mean that of course I do care about Stephen, 
 only as a friend of course. But I can t help 
 thinking about that little red-headed boy, he 
 must have been so terribly disappointed, you 
 know. I mean about the school, about Hamlet, 
 you know." 
 
 "Yes, I think he was disappointed, Eugenia, 
 and so far as I can make out he is just about as 
 red-headed and as disappointed now as he 
 was that day; and yet I can really and truly say 
 that I am glad that you do not care for him, 
 much as I love you both. I am very unselfish 
 about it, and you know as well as I do that you 
 are the only woman that Stephen ever cared a 
 straw for, and yet if he ever tried to tell you so," 
 said Mrs. Ransome in the perfectly measured 
 and distinct manner that she always fell into 
 when she was going to "bear testimony," "if 
 Stephen ever tried to declare his love, some dev-
 
 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 139 
 
 ilish thing would happen to break him all up; 
 it would be bound to happen. He never will 
 try to tell you, that is one comfort, for Stephen 
 knows his own limitations, his utter ineffective 
 ness." 
 
 "How can you say that!" blazed out Eugenia. 
 "Stephen has done splendid things, things that 
 make you and me look like, like " 
 
 "Like thirty cents," interjected Mrs. Ran- 
 some, helpfully. 
 
 " Yes, like thirty cents, if that is the smallest 
 thing in the world." 
 
 "Stephen is fine," admitted his sister, "and 
 he is brave; I suppose you are thinking of the 
 little military episode in Cuba. That was a fine 
 thing, we were all of us proud of him, but you 
 must remember that he did not get the credit 
 of even that. At a critical moment he just 
 went in at the risk of his own life and did what 
 belonged to another man to do, and though that 
 other man was a coward, to save that other man 
 from disgrace Stephen held his tongue, and the 
 other man got not only the fame but he got his 
 promotion. All this is very fine, no doubt, I 
 admit that, but ineffective so far as Stephen is 
 concerned! A case of suppressed measles, we 
 might call it, he just missed the point as usual 
 of course. Stephen would give his life or any 
 other little thing to any one in need, except 
 just to himself the neediest one of all, in spite
 
 140 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 
 
 of his money. Oh, yes! Stephen is all right, 
 it is only that fate of his." 
 
 "I think that Stephen is in some ways the 
 finest man I ever knew," Eugenia announced 
 with a candour that was outspoken but yet not 
 entirely incriminating. 
 
 "Oh! we all think the world of Stephen, but 
 for all that The conclusion was left to 
 
 the imagination of any one interested enough 
 to fill the blank. 
 
 The wedding march was heard from over the 
 way. 
 
 "My nerves are all of a frazzle. I hate that 
 march," added Mrs. Ransome, vindictively. 
 
 Eugenia still watched the house over the way; 
 it seemed to have a fascination for her, the house 
 that Stephen had built and in which he now had 
 no part except to see that it always kept the 
 look of the perfect home in every outside detail. 
 She wondered how it was inside, and how much 
 of his furnishings were still there, and if he was 
 happy. 
 
 Mrs. Ransome, Stephen s only sister, had just 
 run over to America for the summer. She was 
 nowadays, as she said, never at home except by 
 chance, for business kept her husband in London 
 all the year round. 
 
 She had not known till her return that 
 Stephen was not living in his own house, and 
 it was this not knowing that made the affair
 
 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 14! 
 
 seem doubly perplexing. Why had he not told 
 her? Why had he left her to hear it from a 
 chance acquaintance here in town (of near 
 friends she had none, that is of the corresponding 
 sort) ? In these two days of waiting to see 
 Stephen it had got on her nerves, and the little 
 dynamic explosions of temper to which she had 
 subjected Eugenia had not in the least dimin 
 ished the potency of the reserved force. 
 
 Stephen, too, had always had what in his boy 
 hood were called red-headed tantrums, and 
 though his sister s temper had no particular 
 colour scheme, it had an intensity quite note 
 worthy. 
 
 Two years before, just after Stephen s house 
 had become an accomplished fact, Mrs. Ran- 
 some, as subjugated foe to the scheme, had made 
 her peace offering in the form of many pin 
 cushions, one for every available room in the 
 house; each pincushion bore on its capacious 
 bosom various kinds of pins such as are in de 
 mand in a large and complex family, some of 
 which were quite unknown by name or use to 
 Stephen, but he was innocently charmed at the 
 homelike quality they immediately imparted 
 to the rooms. If his sister had had her own 
 peculiar satisfaction in thus stabbing the sym 
 bolic pincushions with descriptive pins, it really 
 was no more than her due, for she had done her 
 duty in combating the house. It was not that
 
 142 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 
 
 she had disapproved of a house, it was only a 
 house without a wife and family that she so 
 distinctly combated. It was the altar without 
 the gods, the offerings that were so meaningless 
 without a something to sacrifice to. To be sure 
 the pincushions had served their purpose, and 
 it was to be surmised that not a pin of any kind 
 was left to-day; the geometric designs had been 
 as fruitless as had been her wrath. 
 
 Stephen came at this moment, and the greet 
 ings were as warm between brother and sister 
 as could be wished, although they were constitu 
 tional enemies. Eugenia, too, rose to meet him 
 with an almost tender cordiality, which, how 
 ever, stiffened into a formal greeting as she 
 noted the scrutiny, involuntary as it was, on 
 Mrs. Ransome s part. Her quickness saved her 
 from any further intimate revelations and she 
 said with genuine warmth, "I am so glad to see 
 you and to have a chance to tell you how proud 
 we all were of you in Cuba. We heard of your 
 bravery and the best part of it all was the silent 
 part." 
 
 Stephen s eyes were looking straight into 
 Eugenia s and he saw nothing but friendship 
 there her friendship he had always been sure 
 of. 
 
 Stephen sat down by the window. Mrs. 
 Ransome moved her chair back farther into the 
 room she was going to be very strategical.
 
 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 143 
 
 Stephen s sittings-down always reminded 
 Eugenia of the dropping of a chain, link by link, 
 and now into her memory came a picture of a 
 day long ago, when Stephen had thus sat down, 
 and certain things had been said and certain other 
 things were almost said but well! he hadn t 
 exactly sneezed at a crucial moment, as his sister 
 had prophesied that he would do, but and 
 Eugenia felt herself flushing. Then she heard 
 Mrs. Ransome open the battle by asking 
 abruptly, "Stephen, where in the world are you 
 living? I see your house is rented." 
 
 "I am in lodgings down that way," he indi 
 cated the way vaguely with a motion of the head. 
 
 "Who lives in your new house?" Mrs. 
 Ransome threw the "new house" at him like a 
 missile. 
 
 "A family by the name of Hansen." 
 
 "I do not remember the name among the old 
 families here, are they new people?" 
 
 "Well, no; or yes, you might call them new, 
 it don t much matter what you call them, they 
 are not what you would call in your set." 
 
 "Do you move in a set from which I am de 
 barred for any reason?" This was asked with 
 dignity. 
 
 "Of course not, I didn t mean that, I only 
 meant that you would not be likely to meet them 
 while you are here." 
 
 That "while you are here" was a mistake
 
 144 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 
 
 born of agitation, and his sister hastened to add: 
 "I shall be here all summer, you know." 
 
 "I meant to say that you would not meet 
 them in the society you move in." 
 
 "Is there anything the matter with them?" 
 
 "Oh, come now! Frances, you needn t play 
 dull. You understand what I mean, it is a 
 matter of convention, of so-called social dis 
 tinctions." 
 
 "I am not sure that I do understand. Will 
 you call with me on these Hansens?" 
 
 " But I do not call on them myself, that is in 
 a social way, our relations are of a purely busi 
 ness nature." 
 
 "Dear me! are they so bad as that?" 
 
 "They are not bad at all, they are very nice 
 people, honest, respectable, with a little bit of 
 means, and altogether thoroughly nice." 
 
 "What rent do they pay?" 
 
 "Rent? W T hy, let me see." He looked over 
 to the house as if he expected to get a memory- 
 refreshing placard. Then he said quietly, 
 "They do not pay any rent, that is not exactly 
 in stated terms." 
 
 "Not pay any rent! What do you mean? 
 Why don t you turn them out? It is bad enough 
 to have that sort of people in your house, but to 
 have them cheat you, it is monstrous." His 
 sister was out of breath with indignation she 
 was quite overwhelming.
 
 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 145 
 
 "Now, Frances, you are away off, you must 
 have been hearing all sorts of stuff about the 
 house. Just let me tell you about the people, 
 who are above blame in every way and only 
 came to be in the house in the most natural 
 course of events. 
 
 "I had meant to tell you all about it on our 
 way out here, but my fate as usual made me 
 miss connections and I couldn t meet you at the 
 wharf or anywhere else. It was too bad. I was 
 ever so mortified, and then I had to stay over 
 for that business of yours, you know, Frances." 
 
 As he alluded to his fate, a glance flashed be 
 tween the two women. Eugenia felt guilty to 
 have been a party to this interchange and 
 turned her face more directly toward Stephen. 
 
 "Oh, I understand, now," said Mrs. Ransome 
 with sympathy, "there was not time for you to 
 write to me in London, telling me that you had 
 rented the house; and your bad luck prevented 
 your meeting me in New York, and then you 
 missed us at the wharf, and at the Waldorf, and 
 in fact everywhere, and my tiresome business 
 kept you till now. It was too bad, because I 
 have been worrying unnecessarily. I did get 
 the wrong impression from some of these stupid 
 people here. I understood them to say that you 
 hadn t lived in the house for a year or more; 
 it is all too ridiculous. I ought not to have been 
 such an idiot. I am glad it isn t so at all.
 
 146 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUJLT 
 
 "And these people have just moved in? And the 
 terms of rent are still unsettled? And I suppose 
 you are going abroad or something and want 
 to have the house taken care of. I wish you 
 hadn t selected so big a family. However, I 
 dare say it will be all nght, it looks neat over 
 there." 
 
 All this was said in the sweetest and most help 
 ful manner and she drew her chair nearer to his 
 with sympathetic attention. 
 
 She also laid a detaining hand on Eugenia s 
 arm as she rose to leave the two alone together. 
 "Don t go, dear. You want to hear about the 
 house, too, especially as I find I was all wrong 
 in my criticisms. 
 
 "And now tell us all about it, Stephen." 
 Stephen crossed his long legs and looked obsti 
 nate. 
 
 The day was very still except for the laughter 
 and the pervasive mandolins that were an ac 
 companiment of the wedding breakfast over the 
 way. The festivities seemed exuberantly in 
 evidence. There had been several weddings 
 over at the house, but it seemed to Stephen 
 that never before had there been such aggres 
 sive hilarity; perhaps he was hearing with the 
 ears of Mrs. Ransome and seeing with the eyes 
 of Eugenia; though he could not make out to his 
 own satisfaction exactly what Eugenia was seeing 
 with her grave eyes. She looked sympathetic,
 
 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 147 
 
 but then there was his sister; maybe she was 
 sympathetic with her point of view. 
 
 In his perturbed state of mind he held firmly 
 to one thing only, and that was that he must 
 make it plain that the Swedes were not offend 
 ers, pushing themselves into a house where 
 they were not wanted; they must come off scot 
 free. And to do that he must not lose his 
 temper, it was always so hard to find it again; 
 he must keep cool, be explicit, and get away as 
 soon as he could. 
 
 He felt terribly guilty, and as if his sister were 
 an inimical judge and Eugenia an utterly non 
 committal jury. 
 
 "After you went away, you know, Frances, I 
 hired a housekeeper. I hired the one you rec 
 ommended to me. You remember you told 
 me about Sophie Johnson. You said she was a 
 faithful and capable girl. You remember Sophie, 
 don t you?" 
 
 Stephen smiled winningly at his sister, her 
 recommending the housekeeper seemed some 
 how to bring them to a common meeting-ground 
 and to involve Mrs. Ransome pleasantly in the 
 future events. 
 
 "Yes, I remember." Mrs. Ransome did not 
 seem to be so deeply involved as he had hoped. 
 
 "Well! Sophie married Hansen, she is Mrs. 
 Hansen now." 
 
 "Oh!"
 
 148 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 
 
 Stephen felt quite alone again. Then he ex 
 plained at length that while Sophie had been his 
 housekeeper, her sister Ada had come to do 
 second work while Sophie officiated in the lower 
 regions. 
 
 Mrs. Ransome did not seem to care for in 
 structions as to the division of duties between 
 cook and housemaid and was aggressively silent. 
 
 Eugenia, too, was silent, either because she 
 had nothing to say or because she, too, saw that 
 silence was a most discomfiting weapon. 
 
 "Things went very smoothly at first, indeed 
 they have always gone smoothly, there hasn t 
 been any trouble, everything is all right, I am 
 perfectly contented. I am glad that I built the 
 house. I like living as I do, it is easier than 
 housekeeping, though that was perfectly easy, 
 too. Sophie managed splendidly. I liked that, 
 too, of course. 
 
 "But all this seems so hard to express, to 
 make you take my point of view, and last year 
 yes, even now, it seems the only point of view, 
 or rather I can t see a better. It all seems very 
 simple, only you seem, or the circumstances 
 seen through your eyes seem, to make me guilty 
 of something heinous. I feel guilty. Frankly, 
 now, I began to feel guilty the minute that 
 you wrote that you were coming home for the 
 summer. 
 
 " I am not really guilty of anything, but for all
 
 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 149 
 
 that I feel like a criminal. I wish," said he, 
 getting up and then sitting down again, "I wish 
 someone would put the charge in words. You 
 want to know how it comes that I am not living 
 in the house that I built to live in, and when I 
 try to tell you it all seems so very complicated, 
 and it really is not complicated at all. I just 
 don t live there and someone else does live 
 there." 
 
 Here he glanced, by chance, at Eugenia, and 
 suddenly to him the jury seemed to have melted 
 into a friend, or rather the judge and the jury 
 became from that moment merely lookers on, 
 and he became his own judge and his own jury; 
 he took himself before the bar of his own reason; 
 he arraigned himself, was council, and made his 
 own plea. He felt, too, that this time it was the 
 final trial; the verdict would be for life. 
 
 "You see," he said after a pause and quite 
 easily now, "after a few weeks in my perfect 
 house it dawned upon me that it was very 
 empty, that brick remained brick and that plas 
 ter was just plaster, and that emptiness would 
 be emptiness to the end. 
 
 "An old house is always full of memories, they 
 may not be your own memories but they are 
 there; they fill the spaces, they speak of the 
 human beings that have flitted through the 
 rooms. They are still potent though the people 
 have gone away. The autographs of souls, they
 
 I5O THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 
 
 may be called, are written everywhere and these 
 autographs are unfading. 
 
 "But a new house is an empty house. It was in 
 an empty house that I took my solitary break 
 fast, in the window of the breakfast room where 
 the sun shone in on June days like this, at just 
 the right angle as I had so carefully planned. 
 The coffee was good, the rolls superlative, and 
 the room was empty. 
 
 "I noticed after a while that downstairs they 
 had for breakfast coffee, ham, sausage, and other 
 pleasantly odorous things, and, too, that there 
 were voices of cheer at the breakfast table, 
 sometimes many voices; I fancied that they had 
 lots of friends, and sometimes I distinguished 
 the voice of an old person. Fortunately I could 
 listen without hearing what was said, the voices 
 were pleasant in contrast to my silence and to 
 my thoughts. 
 
 "I found after a time that the old Swedish 
 mother had come over to join her daughters and 
 that she was domiciled in the house. I was 
 not consulted in any formal manner but I made 
 it plain that I liked to have her there, it made 
 the household arrangements seem more perma 
 nent. 
 
 " The old woman and I became quite friendly; 
 she couldn t speak a word of English and I don t 
 think she understood any, but it seemed to be 
 enough for her that my smile was a welcome.
 
 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT I $1 
 
 It embarrassed me no end at first, because when 
 we met she would courtesy and then gravely 
 kiss my hand. I couldn t have stood it from 
 one so old, but that I knew, to her, it was only a 
 custom of her country, a long-ago acquired 
 habit, a thing of ancestry, not a personal thing 
 as regarded me. Certainly there was dignity 
 in the way she performed the act. She had 
 perhaps a better acquaintance with her part 
 than I had with mine. And so we smiled at 
 each other and if she played the role of one in a 
 humbler class upstairs, I am convinced that she 
 was an autocrat below the salt. In fact, she was 
 so arrogant to her daughters that I, in my mind, 
 dubbed her the Queen Mother. 
 
 "Her children dressed her well and I very surely 
 knew that her hands were never lifted in any 
 work. She reigned in the idleness of the upper 
 class on the lower floor." 
 
 Eugenia had relaxed her attitude, and a little 
 smile played round her mouth. 
 
 "Then the Queen Mother had a most tragic 
 mishap; she fell and broke her hip. All her 
 meals had to be carried up two flights of stairs, 
 and on busy days she was left quite alone for 
 hours. That troubled me somewhat, especially 
 as I, a perfectly able-bodied man, had an en 
 tire floor to myself and a little lift that com 
 municated with the kitchen on which my meals 
 could be sent up if I should be ill.
 
 152 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 
 
 "I thought it all out one night. It was very 
 simple, a proposition that a child would cope 
 with more easily than I had done. Move my 
 self up and move the Swedes down. 
 
 "I liked upper rooms. I frankly admit that it 
 was not all generosity on my part, it was justice 
 and self-indulgence. 
 
 "I had known the delights of an attic room 
 in my boyhood at the old house in Salem. To 
 be sure I was no longer a boy, nor were the upper 
 rooms in any sense an attic, but they were high 
 up and I liked them. 
 
 "A very few alterations made us all comfort 
 able, they on the middle floor and I up higher 
 with a little staircase for myself that led down 
 to the first floor." 
 
 Mrs. Ransome sat in somewhat frigid silence. 
 Eugenia laughed appreciatively. He glanced 
 at her. "I suppose it does sound queer, but if I 
 had a pencil, I could show you in a minute how 
 cleverly the staircase was arranged so that I 
 could go down without passing through their 
 hall at all." 
 
 "You gave up the front stairs to them, of 
 course," suggested Mrs. Ransome. 
 
 "Giving up sounds too self-denying. I ceased 
 to use them, that is all. You see, I did not enter 
 tain after the first two months, for it is dreary 
 work entertaining in bachelor fashion; entertain 
 ing people that had to be sorted out to fit the
 
 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 153 
 
 artificial standard of a bachelor home took 
 away all the pleasure. It was a bore and I gave 
 it up. In building the house, the entertaining 
 of guests was a very pleasant anticipation, but 
 next to the emptiness of the house, the filling 
 of it with idle, curious, ill-assorted people was 
 my most disappointing experience. 
 
 "As for putting the Swede family on the second 
 floor, there seemed but one point of view, at 
 least there seemed, at that time, but one sane 
 point of view. To-day things seem less clear 
 something awakens echoes not quite in keeping. 
 I dare say that I shall again see things simply, 
 anyway I had built these rooms for living pur 
 poses, for health, and for sickness in case of 
 need. 
 
 "The old Queen Mother seemed to supply the 
 human element, here at hand was need, and 
 here were the rooms; good! To be sure it was 
 not my mother that was ill, it was not my wife, 
 nor was it a child of mine that needed these 
 things that I had provided, it was only a little 
 old woman called the Queen Mother by a de 
 risive whim. 
 
 "As I say, it seemed to me then that it was 
 hers by right of need." 
 
 Eugenia moved restlessly. 
 
 "There were some evolutions in the new house 
 that had a humorous side. I remember wonder 
 ing at first with great amusement what male
 
 154 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 
 
 voice it was that I heard at increasingly short 
 intervals below stairs. In time I began to 
 believe that the voice had come permanently 
 to stay. And I became conscious that a mas 
 culine form came in and out of the kitchen door 
 with quite the air of residence. 
 
 "I am not sure that I should not have resented 
 this had it not gradually dawned upon me 
 that Sophie was married. I do not know that 
 she ever told me so at any one stated time, but I 
 finally learned that she had really been married 
 quite a while before she came to live with me 
 and that she had only gone out to service in 
 order to get a little money to go to housekeeping 
 with, and that the man expected shortly a small 
 inheritance that would help them out in their 
 plans. 
 
 "Of course with these new conditions down 
 stairs the hospitalities were increased. And 
 why not! I was not in the mood to entertain 
 upstairs, Swedes are gregarious, I had the means 
 to pay for the small expenditure, and Sophie 
 was economical. Why should any one object 
 to the fact that the dinners were laid and were 
 eaten downstairs instead of upstairs? You 
 don t know till you have tried how easy it is to 
 do differently from what the world expects; the 
 first thing is to ste differently. 
 
 "There was, as I say, an occasional bit of hu 
 mour brought into my life, and I assure you I
 
 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 155 
 
 stood in need of such small solace as fell to my 
 lot, for I was lonely. 
 
 "For instance, the voice of an infant wailing 
 was a moment of excitement and of humour 
 I think that I blushed a little also, for I remem 
 bered having at various times vaguely suggested 
 to Ada that there must be a kitten in distress 
 somewhere below. When I really accepted the 
 voice as that of another human document added 
 to my fast-accumulating collection (I had for 
 gotten to say that at various times various sis 
 ters and a cousin or two had temporarily lived 
 in what was now known to me as "our house"), 
 it did not take me so long to discover that the 
 infant needed lighter quarters than it had down 
 stairs, though, to be sure, they had acquired 
 by this time the use of the big dining room as an 
 upstairs living room." 
 
 "You may as well tell us how that happened, 
 it is all so very interesting," said Mrs. Ransome. 
 
 "Why! it was only that the Queen Mother 
 was, all her remaining days, confined to her 
 room, and I offered to take all my meals in the 
 one dining room instead of having my break 
 fasts and luncheons in the breakfast room, 
 which would make the care of one less room. 
 And then Sophie herself suggested that the 
 smaller room, the breakfast room, was the sun 
 nier and pleasanter; Sophie always looked out 
 for me. So I took that for dining room. At
 
 156 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 
 
 first the other room was shut up, but I was glad 
 to see some time later that it was occupied in 
 the evenings by the family, and I put extra 
 chairs and things in there till it looked about 
 the pleasantest room in the house. The baby 
 lived there." 
 
 By this time Stephen was telling his story 
 entirely to Eugenia and she was wonderfully 
 receptive, smiling or grave with his mood. 
 
 "The truth is that when I looked into that 
 room in passing, I saw that human histories were 
 being written. It was not to remain a phantom 
 home, for I had discovered by this time that I, 
 personally, could build the house but I could 
 not create the house soul the home. 
 
 "But I had found a way to outwit fate. I 
 could stand aside and let the life of others flow 
 into the empty spaces, the haunting emptiness 
 that depressed me. 
 
 "You see that at bottom it was selfishness, but 
 it was not a preventive selfishness. Life had 
 grown round the things that I had provided. 
 Children have been born under the roof. Sis 
 ters and cousins have been married and gone 
 out from there to build other homes, and in time 
 the Queen Mother was carried out of the front 
 door to her last resting place, and whether the 
 door lent dignity to the clay that was carried 
 out, or the clay lent a final dignity to the door, 
 I have not been able to decide. I do not know.
 
 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 157 
 
 But the round of human life had been enacted 
 under the roof and in time I, too, flitted. I 
 went into lodgings quite large and dignified 
 for one of my small possibilities. And now I am 
 merely so-called owner of the house over ^the 
 way. I hope it looks pleasant to you, Eugenia. 
 I shall never let it go out of my hands, and 
 externally I mean it to represent all that I tried 
 to express in the building." 
 
 "Which means," broke in the sister, "that 
 you pay taxes, you make repairs, you pay water 
 rent, gas bills, and I have no doubt that you 
 furnish fuel and " 
 
 "Not all the fuel, only for the furnaces be 
 just, Frances." 
 
 "Yes, and you keep the lawn and the shrubs 
 trimmed, and you buy pretty, formal box and 
 bay trees for the entrance, and you paint and 
 repair the house and pay wages to the house 
 keeper " 
 
 "No, not full wages, she is on half wages 
 now." 
 
 At this Eugenia laughed, it was a laugh that 
 was good to hear, and Stephen laughed with her. 
 
 Mrs. Ransome rose. The door shut on the 
 retreating form of the diplomatic and joyfully 
 retreating enemy. Then Eugenia rose and 
 passing behind Stephen s chair she laid her 
 hands over his eyes. Holding them there she 
 said, "Guess whose hands these are."
 
 If8 THE HOUSE THAT STEPHEN BUILT 
 
 And Stephen answered quite quickly and cor 
 rectly, though with a rising inflection and much 
 wonder in the tone, "Mine?" 
 
 "If you still want them," said Eugenia with 
 a slight tremble in her tones, and holding his 
 eyes very tightly shut. 
 
 And this was the house that Stephen built.
 
 IN NETHER SPACES 
 
 THE Witch sat rocking her body back and 
 forth while she crooned: 
 
 " I launched two ships on a scarlet sea, 
 One for thy soul and one for me. 
 Perchance sometime we dead may be, 
 And I fain would know of the mystery. 
 Black Cat, hearest thou me? 
 
 "These ships they tossed on the blood-red sea. 
 Thy ship was staunch and mine sailed free. 
 The winds blew shrill and the night was dree; 
 Thine made for its port; but mine, ah, me! 
 Black Cat, come near to me. 
 
 "The scarlet waters hissed in glee, 
 While the shuddering, bat-like soul of me 
 Went lurching down to eternity 
 In the trough of the blood-red, crawling sea. 
 Black Cat, laugh with me!" 
 
 Then the voice of the Witch and her cat went 
 round the world in an unholy shriek; on its way 
 it rattled the shutters of the sleeping folk. The 
 child cried, though it waked not. The priest 
 crossed himself. The nun shivered as she
 
 l6o IN NETHER SPACES 
 
 i 
 
 prayed. The wolf growled; his mouth was wet 
 with the longing for the lamb. 
 
 "What was it that thou wert singing, dear 
 Witch?" 
 
 "That, my dear Cat, was witch-broth, afflatus, 
 a riddle." 
 
 "Was it Poetry?" 
 
 "Poetry? No; that word has no meaning." 
 
 "What does Poetry mean, then?" 
 
 "It does not mean anything. Can t you 
 understand that when something is something 
 that isn t anything else, it is called poetry; is 
 that clear to thee? Of course, there had to be 
 some way to express that idea, so they thought 
 up a word and called it poetry." 
 
 "Can you make it, dear Witch?" 
 
 "Make it!" she screamed. "He-he-he! It 
 can t be made; it grows, it grows in the soul of a 
 poet." 
 
 "Oh," purred the sleepy Cat, "it grow-ow- 
 ow-ows, it grow-ow-ow 
 
 The Witch touched him with her foot. 
 
 "Wake up, beauty-black; thou sleepest out 
 of season; night was never made for sleep. I 
 would have thy waking company. I like thee 
 best when thy green eyes glow in the darkness. 
 Wake up, my beauty; thou art drowsed by the 
 sweet, warm breath of hell; wake, else I will 
 transport thee to a colder place. All hells are 
 not warm."
 
 IN NETHER SPACES l6l 
 
 "Dear Witch, dost thou fly to-night? Art 
 thou going to ride thy broomstick?" 
 
 "Truly, soul of mine, twixt twelve and three 
 I shall ride abreast of the winds on the track 
 of the lightning. I will take thee, too, my sweet 
 singer; for I know a palace where a prince will 
 be born ere morning; we will celebrate his com 
 ing with a song. There are back yards to pal 
 aces, aye and high fences, too, where thou canst 
 slink along, and then, black as midnight, and 
 stealthy as death, thou canst creep till thou art 
 under the window, then raise thy voice aloft 
 in shrill natal praises. Sing now, flower of my 
 heart, that I may hear thy voice in my outer 
 ear." 
 
 The Cat sings, and from the world rolling 
 through darkness are heard the echoes of the song. 
 
 "That was well done, amazingly well done; 
 but rest thee now lest thou dull the shrill edge 
 of thy matchless voice. I promise thee a fine 
 chorus of gray singers to-night. Thou wilt like 
 that, my velvet-throated creature." 
 
 "Not to-night, dear Witch; I prithee not to 
 night; for I, too, know something of import. 
 I heard thee say to thyself that a poet also was 
 to be born to-night, in a gray house on a hill, by 
 a wood." 
 
 "What then! What if a poet be born also! 
 May not a prince and a poet hear the same 
 song?"
 
 l62 IN NETHER SPACES 
 
 "Nay, I think the poet, he who is to be a 
 singer himself, should hear other music than 
 mine." 
 
 "And why not thine, melodious one?" 
 
 "Why, I thought they, the poets, were chil 
 dren of- 
 
 "Hush-sh-sh." 
 
 "Well, then, are they not under the care of 
 the white ones?" 
 
 "Not always, no, not always," chuckled the 
 Witch. "Not always, black friend of mine; 
 thou jumpest to a conclusion as thy brethren 
 on the earth jump at a mouse." 
 
 "Are poets then, dear Witch, of thy people?" 
 
 "What foolish questions thou askest: they 
 are, and then again they are not; but they are 
 good game; yea, rare good game. I will tell thee, 
 then, Black Cat, about poets. 
 
 "Poets are born into that wonderful border 
 land where black spirits and white may hunt. 
 Ah, it is the keenest sport I know to go a-poet 
 hunting. White wings and black wings rilling 
 the air. The poet sits, his eyes looking inward; 
 he hears the flutter of wings, black wings and 
 white wings, fluttering, fanning, turning, swirl 
 ing. White wings, black wings, wings fluttering 
 all about his soul; oh, that is sport. Sometimes 
 it is a close game." 
 
 The Witch wagged her head. 
 
 "Yes, it is worth while to go a-hunting for a
 
 IN NETHER SPACES l6j 
 
 poet s soul, and you can t tell always in a poet s 
 lifetime whether he belongs to the black or to 
 the white wings." 
 
 "Why is that?" 
 
 "Well, it all seems to lie in the parentheses. 
 You see the recipe for a poet runs thus: 
 
 "Pure light 4 parts (flame may be substituted). 
 
 "Sense i part (this may be altogether omitted). 
 
 "Non-sense i part (essential, no substitute). 
 
 "Love divine 2 parts) (self-love may be used 
 > in whole or part for 
 
 "Love human i partj these three portions). 
 
 These be the nine parts that go to the making 
 of a poet. If a poet be made by strict rule he 
 belongs to the white ones. When the substitutes 
 are used we have a chance to get him. It is not 
 often a poet is made by strict measure, and it is a 
 long time before flame can be distinguished from 
 pure light; not till it begins to scorch his own soul 
 by its heat. Pure light has no power to burn 
 the soul that part of man that is called soul." 
 
 "Ah, I see now; and can you have a hand in 
 the making of a poet, dear Witch?" 
 
 "Only indirectly. But I think we may safely 
 count on the poet that will be born to-night. 
 Thou canst sing to that end." 
 
 "I will sing; but, dear Witch, what are these 
 gray things that fly around and flap in our 
 faces? They are as stupid as June-bugs."
 
 164 IN NETHER SPACES 
 
 "Those be mistakes, my velvet love; they be 
 born of ignorance and inertia. Poor things, 
 they cannot even die, not being living things. 
 That big one there, tumbling round near the 
 ground, that is a new one; he has just been made 
 by a statesman. Oh ! he is a big mistake, a great 
 stupid mistake!" and the old Witch cackles 
 with low glee. "I could tell you more," she 
 said, "if I had time." 
 
 "Time? Why, is there such a thing as time 
 at the mouth of hell?" 
 
 "Oh, as to that, it is all as you look at it. I 
 am a pretty spry old body. I am pretty busy. 
 Can t you see what I am doing? I am weaving 
 ropes of hell-fire." 
 
 "What are they for?" 
 
 "Oh, nothing in particular; they are handy 
 to have around. I like best to do things for no 
 special purpose, that is what keeps most folks 
 busy, witches as well as world-folk. All busy, 
 busy, busy, doing nothing. I hate a butterfly; 
 methinks they are much too light of wing." 
 
 "I like butterflies," said the Cat, licking its 
 jaws. 
 
 THE END
 
 THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
 GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 CAYLOBD
 
 A 000 764 90S 6