L/3RARV
 
 /7<r /?/+
 
 ZERUB THROOP S 
 
 EXPERIMENT. 
 
 MRS. A. D. T. AVIIITNEY, 
 
 . OF "HITHEKTO," "PATIFXCF. STKONO S OUTINCS," "TIIK r.AVivoitTHTS," "FAITII 
 
 CAIiT.NKV S CIKLIIOOD," "WE GIKLS," ETC., ETC. 
 
 O H T N G- , Publisher, 
 
 COR. BROMFIKLD AND WASHINGTON STREETS, 
 BOSTON.
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by 
 
 A . K . L O H I N G , 
 In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 Rockwell & Churchill, Printers and Stereotype,
 
 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 T. 
 
 HOW ZERUB LEFT IT ALL TO PROVIDENCE. 
 
 ZERUB TIIROOP sat in his spring-lock sanctum. 
 It was a contrivance of his, whereby it might never 
 be precisely known whether he was out or in ; also, 
 no other person, curious or dishonest, could invade 
 the place to occupy it even for a moment, except 
 with door carefully set wide. lie carried the key 
 in his pocket. Once swung to, the heavy leaf fast 
 ened itself instantly; then he and his cigar and his 
 black cat were walled up together. Zerub always
 
 4 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 kept a black cat. He had had six generations of 
 them, all precisely alike. Where the type varied, 
 the kitten was drowned. 
 
 A staircase led down from the passage without to 
 the side entrance of his house. People on errands, 
 or with bills, or to pay money, or receive orders, 
 came here. Zerub could see from his window whom 
 it might be. 
 
 He had an office directly below, where he made 
 payments, and signed receipts, and gave such other 
 audiences as he chose,. holding thus pretty much all 
 his limited intercourse with his kind. Unless he 
 owed a man, or a man owed him, or one or the other 
 wanted for money, money s worth of use, property, 
 or service, what should there be between them? 
 Zerub Throop always wanted to know that. 
 
 He had a little dining-room beyond his office. 
 His sleeping-room was within his sanctum. What
 
 ZERU11 THROOI S EXPERIMENT. 5 
 
 if he should die there some night with his oak 
 sported? 
 
 The whole front of his large old house, a place 
 he had taken a whim to buy furnished as it stood, 
 was unused. 
 
 lie had his head out at his window at this 
 moment at which we take him up. He was watch 
 ing a woman who had come to the door below with 
 something to sell. She had come from a good way 
 oil , peddling her wares, or she would never have 
 climbed Thro op Hill. 
 
 " Tell the mistress it will be sure to make the 
 hair grow, if it s gone ever so." 
 
 "It isn t a mistress, it s a master," said the 
 servant Sarah, from within. " And he don t buy 
 hair-grease; and he won t have peddlers." 
 
 " It isn t grease ; it s Phoenix Regenerator. 
 It ll" 
 
 "It s no use, I tell you. Not if it would save
 
 6 ZEUUB 777 ROOT S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 souls. I tell you he don t buy things." And Sarah, 
 bethinking of her half-ironed shirt-bosom, and her 
 cooling flats, shut the door summarily. 
 
 Zerub Throop laughed. The woman looked 
 up. 
 
 " My hair never comes out, madam, I assure 
 you," said he with a mocking blandncss, and a half 
 bow of his thickly-covered, close-trimmed, grizzled 
 head. "I m not in the habit of losing things." 
 
 "You might, though," she answered, as ready as 
 he. "You might begin ; and it s things that never 
 
 o o y o 
 
 went before that goes worst if they once sets out. 
 When it once begins to drop, you ll " 
 
 " Hammer it in, ma am ! and rivet it on the other 
 side. Good-morning ; " and Zerub shut his win 
 dow. 
 
 " Hammer it in ! I guess you re used to hammer- 
 in in; feelin s and Christian charities and such. 
 Done the undertakin business pretty much all
 
 ZERUB THIiOOP S EXPERIMENT. 7 
 
 along, I should say. Well, wait till you re ham 
 mered in, and riveted on the other side ! : 
 
 As she walked out of the upper gate upon the 
 hill, another woman rang the bell at the front-door. 
 The sound pealed through the house startlingly. 
 
 Hardly once in a year did any one ring at Zerub 
 Throop s front-door. One had to turn aside from 
 the gravelled drive to reach it, across a grass-plot. 
 Old vines, little trained or cared for, tangled up the 
 porch-way; but Mrs. Whapshare came to the front 
 door. She had been ten years making up her mind 
 to come at all, ever since her husband died, and 
 left her poor. Now her little children were grow 
 ing up, she had a hundred needs for them to-day 
 that pressed her sorer than the needs of ten years 
 a<ro. They mi^ht go out into the world to make 
 
 O > O O 
 
 their Ay ay ; but she Avanted life-tools to give them to 
 go out Avith. Training, knowledge, opportunity, 
 these things, in the outset, must ahvays cost some-
 
 8 ZERUB THKOOP S EXFERIMKNT. 
 
 body something. She could not give them bread 
 and butter now, and send them to bed. There was 
 other feeding that they were hungry for. 
 
 Zerub Throop knew Mrs. Whapshare by sight, 
 as he knew nearly every man and woman in the 
 town ; but lie had never spoken to her. Why 
 should he? She was no tenant of his. He wanted 
 nothing of her ; she could buy nothing of him. The 
 human relation, as Zerub understood it, failed. 
 The wires were down. 
 
 Yet Mrs. Whapshare came, and rung at his front 
 door. 
 
 "There is a lad} r , sir, in the north-east room, 
 askin to speak to you," called Sarah, from outside 
 the oak, not knocking, for she knew now that he 
 was there. 
 
 "Why didn t you get rid of her, as you did of the 
 Regenerator?" half pleased, half surly, at her 
 management; first good, then bad.
 
 ZKKUlt THEOOP S EXPERIMENT. 9 
 
 " She isn t the rogcneratiii sort. She uint got 
 bottles, nor yet books, nor yet forty graphs of 
 President Grant and Mr. Bismarck Brown. There 
 uint nothin to send her off on. She jest wants to 
 see you. 1 can tell you who tis. It s Mis Whap- 
 share, down Ford Street way. She stepped in as 
 if she d made up her mind ; and it s one of the little 
 ones that makes up Avith a twist." 
 
 Sarah Hand was almost the only person who ever 
 made many words with Zcrub Throop ; but her 
 words suited and amused him, and she knew it. It 
 Avas with a sort of crusty good-humor that he went 
 down into the dim and musty north-east parlor, 
 where Sarah had folded back a single shutter, to see 
 Mrs. Whapshare. 
 
 The lady rose as he entered, stirring the gloom 
 and must of the corner in which she had seated her 
 self, and gathering up, as it were, the darkness into
 
 10 ZERUli TFtROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 shape with the shadowy movement of her black 
 dress. 
 
 Zerub bowed. 
 
 "Mrs. Whapshare," said the lady, " Mrs. Miles 
 Whapshare." 
 
 Zerub sat down, and waited for more. 
 
 " I have come to ask you something, Mr. 
 Throop." 
 
 "Of course, madam. They all do," answered 
 Mr. Throop politely, drawing down his waistcoat, 
 and leaning back in his chair, laying his right foot 
 across his left knee, and folding his arms, as a 
 human being in a state of siege instinctively barri 
 cading himself. 
 
 Mrs. Whapshare looked at him quickly. She 
 changed her tone and approach. She was not a 
 timid woman, though she had been ten years mak 
 ing up her mind.
 
 ZERUR TJIROOP S EXPERIMENT. 11 
 
 "I beg your pardon, sir, I began wrong. I 
 mean, I came to tell you something." 
 
 Mr. Throop bowed. 
 
 " You owed my husband, Miles Whapsharc, 
 fifteen thousand dollars." 
 
 "Once I did," answered Mr. Throop. 
 
 Don t yon think I mean / do think you 
 owe his children something now." 
 
 " In this country, madam, no one is persecuted 
 for opinion s sake. You have a perfect right to 
 think so, and to continue thinking so." 
 
 Mrs. Whapshare was forced back to her ques 
 tions. " Don t you think so, Mr. Throop? " 
 
 "No, madam. I am quite willing to answer any 
 inquiry you would like to make. I do not think 
 so." 
 
 Mrs. Whapshare had to put it interrogatively 
 again. Otherwise, it was plain the conversation
 
 12 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 was to drop, and in like manner would perpetually 
 drop. 
 
 "Why, sir?" 
 
 "In the first place, madam, three and twenty 
 years ago Miles Whapshare hadn t any children. 
 Whatever responsibilities he undertook afterward, 
 he undertook in the face of his business loss. He 
 began the world again, as I did. / couldn t afford 
 children, ma am. In the second place, I paid him, 
 as I did everybody else, twenty-five cents on the 
 dollar, and was discharged. I began again, and 
 worked up. If Miles Whapshare didn t work up, 
 that is simply the difference between us. In the 
 third place, if I were to call it a debt now, how 
 much do you think the debt would be ?" 
 
 "I don t know. I don t know as that alters 
 it." 
 
 "I ll tell you, then. Upon fifteen thousand 
 dollars, I paid Miles Whapshare three thousand
 
 ZERUll TfiROOP S EXPERIMENT. 13 
 
 seven hundred and fifty, leaving eleven thousand 
 two hundred and fifty. That, at simple interest, 
 would by this time just about have increased by one 
 and a half. Do you think I owe Miles Whapshare s 
 children to-day twenty-eight thousand one hun 
 dred and twenty-five dollars? It is either that or 
 nothing." 
 
 "I think it is likely it is that, then," replied Mrs. 
 TVhnpsharc, with a calm indifference to the figures. 
 " But they would be glad of a very small propor 
 tion." 
 
 Possibly. Miles Whapshare was. But you 
 leave the argument. The grandchildren might 
 come back with their claim, by and by. The world 
 doesn t go trailing on after that fashion. When 
 things are squared up, they are squared. There 
 had to be a deluge, once, ma am, and the race be 
 gan again. Pope Gregory had to strike ten days 
 out of the vcar 1582, to bring the world s account
 
 14 ZERUB TJIROdP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 down to what the sun could pay; and I believe you 
 think your sins are settled for on much the same 
 principle, don t you?" Bankruptcy and discharge 
 seem to be taken into the original plan of things. 
 At any rate, that is what occurs, and there is an 
 accepted order for it. Is this all, madam? and is 
 your mind satisfied ? " 
 
 And Zerub Throop arose. 
 
 The woman s figure in black moved again also, 
 making that shape of shadow in the gloomy sofa- 
 corner. A voice that trembled now came out of 
 the shade. 
 
 "It seemed to me as if it ought to have been, 
 somehow ; a few thousand dollars would have been 
 so much to us all this time ! and I knew you owed 
 it once. You are rich, Mr. Throop ; and you have 
 nobody to keep your money for." 
 
 "I can leave it to cats and dogs if I like. I can 
 do as I please with my own."
 
 ZKRUD THROOP^ S EXPERIMENT. 15 
 
 "You may think you can," said the widow, 
 speaking firmly again ; " but it will be as Provi 
 dence pleases, after all. Even the king s heart is 
 in the hand of the Lord." 
 
 " Very well ! Try Providence ; but, if Provi 
 dence is anything like Zerub Throop, it won t do to 
 begin by telling him he owes you an old debt on 
 somebody s else account." 
 
 "You know about that Mrs. Whapshare?" Mr. 
 Throop said, interrogatively, to Sarah Hand, when 
 she was bringing in his dinner, a roasted duck, 
 with port-wine sauce. " She s a pretty comfortable 
 sort of person, I should think." 
 
 "Well," answered Sarah, "folks is most alwers 
 pretty comfortable, aint they, xcept the regular 
 give-up starvation ones ? You see em goin round ; 
 and they has shoes an stockin s on, an gowns, an 
 bunnits, or coats and hats ; an they goes in some-
 
 16 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 wheres when it rains, or it corncs night ; an they git 
 breakfast, an dinner, an supper, I s pose, or else 
 they wouldn t be goiii round. You don t see em 
 droppin nowheres. Of course, they re comfortable. 
 Everybody gets shook down into some sort of a 
 place. The world s like a hoss-car; they git in, an 
 they git out ; an they ve been took along between. 
 Some sets down, and some stands up, and sonie 
 hangs on to the straps. Some gits into a place at 
 the beginning, and some slips into one when some 
 body else gits out. There don t seem to be no rule 
 about it ; it regilates itself." 
 
 "But Mrs. Whapshare? she lives in a good 
 house." 
 
 "They can t eat shingles and timbers, though. 
 Taint like little King Boggins." 
 
 " She has a roof over her head, however, and it 
 is her own. She has several children." 
 
 "More. She s got six."
 
 ZERUH THROOP 1 S EXPERIMENT. 17 
 
 " All grown up ? " 
 
 "Well, the everidge of em is. Charlotte, she s 
 eleven. Miles Whapshare died ten years ago, and 
 didn t leave much of anything but the old house and 
 the mirdini* 1 and the six children and a mess of old 
 
 o o 
 
 store-books full of bad debts and tribulations." 
 
 "Been to school?" 
 
 "Children? Yes an meetin , an Sunday school, 
 right straight along. John, he s got a place in a 
 store. They re nice folks enough. Mis Whap 
 share aint got much force to her, though." 
 
 " I should think she had done pretty well under 
 the circumstances." 
 
 "That s just it. She s a woman that s always 
 been under a lot of era, clear down. What 
 business do folks have to be under the circumstan 
 ces, I wonder? AVhy don t they get on top of em? 
 What is circumstances made for?" 
 
 "To ftfa?id round, Sarah," said Mr. Throop, in
 
 18 ZERUB THROOP S 
 
 italics. "If you knew. Latin, you d see. That s 
 what we ve got to do with em. Keep em in their 
 places. Make em stand round ! " 
 
 " Or git," said Sarah, sententiously. 
 
 Mr. Throop laughed. 
 
 " Bring me a lemon," he said ; and Sarah, having 
 done that, understood that the conversation was at 
 an end, and withdrew, like a circumstance, into the 
 kitchen. 
 
 The one course over, Zerub went, as was his cus 
 tom, upstairs to his wine, his dessert, and his 
 cigar. He never ate pastry. A little fruit was 
 set upon the round table, in his sanctum, also a 
 basket of small sweet biscuits, these more es 
 pecially for the benefit of the cat, to whom he fed 
 them ; beside these, a bottle with cap of tinfoil over 
 the cork, his cigar-holder, tray, and match-box. 
 In this company, Mr. Throop always read his papers 
 after dinner for an hour. The cat, when she had
 
 ZERUD TJIROOP S EXPERIMENT. 19 
 
 got biscuits enough, dozed beside him on a soft 
 square sofa-cushion, flung down, for her use, upon 
 the floor. Zcrub pulled her ears once in a while, 
 and woke her up to tell her the news, and what he 
 thought about it. 
 
 " She knows, and she don t contradict," said he. 
 
 To-day, he did not read long. 
 
 " They ll get into a nice mc ss in Europe ; won t 
 they, Tophct? They ve got to, sooner or later; 
 that s what I told the AYhapshare woman. The 
 world s never safe from a muddle but when it s just 
 out of one ; and, if you can t be safe then for a 
 while, what s the use of the muddle? Hey, old 
 cat?" 
 
 Tophct rose lazily, stretched out her fore legs to 
 their farthest possible extent, stretched up her 
 hind ones, lifting her back into a heap, and drop 
 ping her neck into a hollow; then gathered herself
 
 20 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 
 
 together again, with raised and vibrant tail, and 
 rubbed and coiled herself round her master s ankles. 
 
 "I wonder how it would seem to do it, old cat? 
 I wonder what she would think herself, if I really 
 did? See here, now; " and Mr. Throop drew forth 
 his great wallet, and therefrom took a slip of white 
 paper, such as he kept ready for bills and receipts. 
 He dipped a pen info an inkstand that stood upon 
 the table, and wrote four lines. 
 
 " That would do it." 
 
 He was only thinking now, not soliloquizing. 
 Mr. Throop never did that foolish thing ; he only 
 talked out now and then, in scraps, to the cat. 
 
 He sat holding that which he had from a queer 
 impulse written, fancying queer what-ifs about it. 
 
 "That would do it. Give that woman this slip of 
 paper, and it turns her life right over for her, 
 t other side up again, the side she hasn t seen for
 
 ZERUR TIIROOP 1 S EXPERIMENT. 21 
 
 ten, twenty years, perhaps, by that time, no, nor 
 ever ; and it alters six lives after hers. 
 
 "I don t -suppose anybody ever wrote exactly such 
 a note as that ; couldn t bo discounted. It would 
 stand c;ood, though, when the time came. Mrs. 
 
 O * ~ 7 
 
 Whapshare, two things arc between you and this 
 slip of paper, my will, and my life. lean, and 
 I can not. There comes in free agency, and all the 
 rest of it. It is certain that I either shall or shall 
 not turn this freak into fact. Certain somewhere. 
 Where? In time, or Providence? Providence 
 may meddle with such things ; but I never came 
 across Providence amongst cm, that s all. I ve had 
 1113* way to work up ; and I ve been left pretty much 
 to myself; and I ve worked it. I m left to myself 
 now. Am I though? How do I know? 
 
 "See here, what if I do neither? What if I 
 leave it to Providence to finish it, if it will?" 
 
 There was a small blank in one of the four lines.
 
 22 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 Zerub Tkroop dipped his pen again, and filled the 
 space with two words. He turned it over, and in 
 dorsed it with a date and a sentence. Then he 
 laid down the pen, and sat folding and rolling the 
 paper abstractedly several minutes until he held it 
 in a tight round, like a very small Catherine-wheel, 
 between his finger and his thumb . 
 
 " Would it ever fire off? " he wondered. 
 
 In the same whimsical, half-voluntary way, as if 
 letting his vagary, that he might stop at any point, 
 run on with him, he tore a bit of tinfoil from the 
 sheath that had covered his bottle, and rolled it 
 again, carefully and compactly, in that. He folded 
 and pressed and smoothed the foil around it, and 
 welded it into a silvery ball. 
 
 "Did you ever see a secret, Tophet?" he said to 
 the cat. "That s a secret. That s the sort of 
 thing it is, when you take it out of your mind, and 
 look at it."
 
 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 23 
 
 Then he sat holding it again, amusing himself so, 
 playing passively, as it were, with fate and possi 
 bility, others fate that he thought he held ; first in 
 his own mind and will, now that he had taken it 
 out, and looked at it, between his thumb and finger. 
 
 13ut what was he to do next, or not to do, seeing 
 he had given it up to Providence? Providence 
 would neither put it by, out of his thumb and fin 
 ger, nor throw it away. 
 
 "I won t destroy the thing," he said. "I ll go as 
 far as that, and then it is out of my hands. I ll 
 leave it loose on creation. Things have to go some 
 where. What difference will it make to me?" 
 
 He laid it out of his fingers, on the table, any 
 where, as it happened to fall. 
 
 "That s all between you and me, Tophet,"hc said. 
 
 " Ni ai o ! " answered the cat. 
 
 "And the post, Tophet ; you and me and the 
 post. What do people mean by the post?"
 
 24 ZERUB TJIKOOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 Then he took his hat and cane, and went off for 
 his afternoon walk. 
 
 Zerub Throop was not an ill-souled man ; he was 
 only a strange, solitary one, grown selfish and 
 one-viewed through solitariness, and through 
 having " worked his way up." 
 
 Sarah Hand came upstairs, found the door 
 hooked back that she might enter, carried off the 
 empty bottle, the fruit-basket, and the torn bit of 
 tinfoil that was evidently rubbish, beside it. She 
 picked up the round bright ball, looked at it, turned 
 it over, saw that it was folded, not crumpled, and 
 laid it into the little grooved lid at the top of Mr. 
 Throop s writing-desk, to keep company with an old 
 knife, a bit of sealiug-wax, some used pens, and a 
 piece of India-rubber. Sarah Hand never " cleared 
 up" anything that could by any possibility ever be 
 called for or thought of again. There were old 
 bits of paper, scribbled with temporary calcula-
 
 ZERUn THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 25 
 
 tions, tucked between the leaves of his blotting- 
 book, thrust into his match-box, and clasped among 
 the notes and scraps in his little gilt finger-clip, that 
 had been dusted over and replaced for month after 
 month, even year after year. f . 
 
 So, when Zcrub came home, there the secret lay, 
 taken care of by Providence and Sarah Hand. There 
 it continued to lie for several weeks ; till, one clay, 
 when he lifted the grooved lid to find something that 
 was underneath, the silvery ball rolled out at the 
 end, and upon the table, and down to the floor. 
 
 Zerub looked at it. " It s out of my keeping," said 
 he ; "I ve nothing to do with it." And he let it lie. 
 
 Sarah Hand picked it up when she swept next 
 day,, and dropped it into the bronze match-box, 
 where it fell to the bottom, among some stray tacks 
 and screws and buttons that were safe there from 
 being lost or wasted, and also from ever being 
 drafted to any earthly use.
 
 26 ZERUB TJIROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 Zerub did not ask for it, or look for it. It had 
 fairly got beyond his knowledge now, as when one 
 wilfully loses count of some sound or motion one 
 has pained one s self involuntarily in following, and 
 is thankful to Jet go. One night, months after, he 
 upset his match-box in the dark. The dust that 
 fell from it got brushed up in the morning, the 
 tacks and screws and buttons put back again, and 
 nobody, of course, thought of or recollected any 
 thing more ; until, that same afternoon, sitting with 
 his wine and his paper and his cigar, Zerub saw the 
 cat claw something from under the edge of the low, 
 broad base of his round table, give it a pat, to try 
 if it had life and fun in it, and send it shining across 
 the floor. 
 
 " Why, that s " said Zerub ; but before he came 
 to the exclamation-point at the end of his sentence, 
 Tophet was after it again ; and a second buffet drove 
 it straight before his eyes to the one possible spot
 
 ZKRUE THROOr s EXPERIMENT. 27 
 
 where it could get lost out of that room, down 
 
 the open lips of the old-fashioned, brass-valved 
 
 it- 
 register. 
 
 "That s all ! " said Zcrub, with a deliberate period. 
 " Nothing is lost while yon know where it is. But 
 it s none of our business; is it, black cat?" 
 
 They two kneAV ; and they never told. 
 
 Afterwards, Zcrub Throop lived on for the space 
 of two years and five months, and gathered to him 
 self his interests and his dividends, and smoked his 
 cigar daily after his dinner ; but he never spoke 
 again with Miles Whapshare s widow, or put her 
 name again to any paper that he wrote or caused to 
 be written; and at the end of this time, suddenly, 
 and in the midst of his strength, he turned away 
 from all these things, as if he had never striven for 
 or possessed them, and went, as we all go, to "work 
 his way " up farther.
 
 28 ZKtWJl THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 II. 
 
 HOW IT WAS WITH THE WHAPSHARES. 
 
 MRS. WHAPSHARE went out through the tangled 
 
 porch, and heard Mr. Throop draw the rusty bolt 
 
 
 behind her. There was an odd blank in her mind 
 
 as she walked down the hill into the town again, as 
 if she had taken some hope up there with her that 
 she had been long used to, and had buried it, and 
 was coming back into her life alone, without it. 
 
 "It had been, all these ten years, a kind of vague 
 assurance to her to see Zerub Throop go by, up and 
 down the street, and to think to herself, " That man 
 failed, and owed my husband eleven thousand 
 dollars that he could not pay. He has got it now,
 
 m ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 29 
 
 and plenty more ; I ve a great will to go, some clay, 
 and remind him of it." 
 
 It helped her, this undefined hope and half- 
 intent, almost unconsciously, through many a 
 hard pinch. She had a nut that she might yet 
 crack, as they do in fairy talcs, when they get to 
 the worst; and who knew what might come of it? 
 Anything, everything, might ; and, so long as there 
 is a "might" in one s life, one can go on; it is a 
 reserve in the army of one s forces. 
 
 This morning she had gone and cracked her nut ; 
 and there had come out of it black ashes. 
 
 She looked so tired when she came in, that 
 Martha, her daughter, did not tell her that the soup 
 was burned ; but she smelled it, coming in out of the 
 fresh air. Burnt "peas are pungent. 
 
 " There s our dinner gone ! " said she. 
 
 "No," spoke out Caroline, from the kitchen; and 
 she opened, with a gay clatter, the oven door.
 
 30 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 "Smell my potato puff; and we ve an omelet just 
 ready ; and you re to have a cup of tea, with a table- 
 spoonful of cream that I got off the bowl for you 
 this morning." 
 
 That was Caroline Whapshare s way with things. 
 Martha took them harder. 
 
 "I think the soup is always burned for us." she 
 would say. "There s a wrong somewhere, that 
 things should be so." 
 
 She was like the Jews, who asked, " Who hath 
 sinned, this man or his parents ? " 
 
 Caroline had the Christ-answer ready. 
 
 "Not so much a wrong, may be, as something 
 to be set gloriously right. How good it will be 
 when the sun breaks out in the west, Mattie ! " 
 
 "Yes, away down; just a strip for the last 
 minutes under the clouds, when the day is all 
 <rone."
 
 ZKRUB TUROOP S EXPERIMENT. 31 
 
 "Even then, it is not as if there were not another 
 coming." 
 
 " That docs not help the Johnnie feeling." 
 
 Now, when John Whapshare had been a little 
 boy, ho had given the household this compound 
 substantive and a proverb. They were trying to 
 comfort him, for a childish disappointment, by tell 
 ing him of the good time he was to have next week, 
 at Thanksgiving. "Ye-e-s," he persisted, sobbing 
 with undiminished vigor; " but what kind of a time 
 be I a-havin now?" 
 
 Martha thought the family had been brought up 
 on the Johnnie feeling. 
 
 "Mother has lost something," she said to Caro 
 line, over the dinner dishes, that day. " She looks 
 as if she had had something put away, and had gone 
 to get it, and it was not there." 
 
 "What queer ideas yon have, Mattie ! " 
 
 "Maybe. 1 feel all sharpened up, as if I knew
 
 32 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 things through the ends of my fingers. Queer 
 ideas come of queer living. What are we going 
 to do with that old straw matting for winter ? " 
 
 " It was rather a pity in the beginning. Children 
 do scrape their chairs so ! " 
 
 "Well, it s the end uow ; and it has only lasted a 
 year. It is terribly expensive to be poor, Car. If 
 we had had a good ingrain for half as much again, 
 it would have lasted six years." 
 
 "I ll tell you what I have thought of," said Car. 
 " That north-east parlor, we cannot do much with 
 it in cold weather. What is the use of having a 
 best room when you cannot have an every-day one ? 
 We are right on the corner of the street ; we might 
 let it for fifty or sixty dollars a year ; and then there 
 would be the carpet and all the things to spare. 
 We could fill up with them splendidly for ever so 
 long." 
 
 " That very best Brussels carpet ? "
 
 ZKIlUli TIIROOP S EXPERIMENT. 33 
 
 "Well, yes; twenty-two years old, is it not? 
 Older than either you or I, Mattie ; which is all the 
 reason we venerate it so. It was the best when we 
 were born ; and we were never allowed to have any 
 crumbs over it. It is not handsome." 
 
 " But let a room? Who to, or what for? " 
 
 "To some comfortable old maid; or for an office, 
 or a shop, or anything. Why should we care? I 
 believe I shall put it into mother s head." 
 
 "How we should miss it in summer ! our only 
 cool, shady place ! " 
 
 " It is a good thing to let things go when you do 
 not miss them. Then, when the missing time comes 
 round, you rub along somehow. That s the way for 
 poor folks to give. I ve something else to pro 
 pound, Mattie, some time; and I don t know 
 whether to doit all in a heap, or to wait another year. 
 For it must be a winter-strained notion too." 
 
 " I think when you arc pretty well thumped
 
 34 ZERUB TIIROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 
 
 already is the time to take another. You might as 
 well keep on hammering." 
 
 "We might sell our garden for fifteen 
 hundred dollars, Martha Whapshare.! " 
 
 The first few words came slow and hard, trying their 
 way as they came, Caroline s eye fixed closely upon 
 Martha s face. The last all ran together in a great 
 hurry and triumph. 
 
 "We might -T- all get into our caskets!" an 
 swered Martha, with a sepulchral indignation. 
 "You would leave us just about room enough." 
 
 "Lydia ought to have those organ lessons that 
 she wants so much, and an organ to practise on. It 
 would be a profession for her." 
 
 " How do you know ? " 
 
 Caroline opened her eyes at her sister. "Why, 
 of course it would. Are they not building new 
 churches everywhere, all the time? and are not all 
 the women taking to preaching, which will leave a
 
 ZKRUR THItOOP S EXPERIMENT. 35 
 
 capital chance for anybody that is willing just to 
 glorify at the other end, without being seen of 
 men ? " 
 
 " Pshaw ! I don t mean that. How do you know 
 about the garden ? " 
 
 "I asked liufus Abcll. He knows. I wouldn t 
 go at mother, and stir her up for nothing, you 
 see." 
 
 Martha rubbed the cover of a potato-dish silently 
 for a full minute, looking at nothing, with that 
 
 f O O 
 
 "sctness" in her features, her eyelids fixed at 
 half-mast, neither lifting nor falling, a white pinch 
 in the end of her nose, and the corners of her mouth 
 crowded down with the close shutting of her small 
 jaws, as if her indignation at life were held in 
 somewhere behind her face, as a smoker takes in 
 and holds tobacco-smoke. 
 
 " She held her breath, and the mad went out at
 
 36 ZEKUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 her ears," she said once of herself when she was a 
 child. 
 
 "I think it is a very prettily managed world," 
 she remarked quietly, when she had put the dish- 
 cover down, and shaken out the towel. " All 
 Oregon and Alaska empty at one end, and people 
 crowded out of their door-yards at the other. I m 
 going to talk to mother about it." 
 
 While " the mad went out at her ears," Martha s 
 mind was always calmly made up to the inevitable. 
 Her mother had lost some might, could, would, or 
 should, to-day ; she had seen that ; she might as well 
 piece out the conditionals for her. Martha Whap- 
 share said her mother lived in the conditional 
 mood. 
 
 Caroline knew how it w^ould be beforehand ; it 
 was the regular circumlocution of things in the 
 family. She had the ideas. Martha growled at 
 and presented them ; Mrs. Whapsharc laid them up
 
 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 37 
 
 among the mights, coulds, woulds, and shoulds ; 
 now and then one was drawn out in an emergency, 
 and acted upon. 
 
 Rtifus Abell came, aud measured the garden- 
 piece. Itiifus Abcll was surveyor, real-estate agent, 
 broker, lawyer, executor, what-not, to half the 
 people, living or dead, who had, or had had, in 
 terests in Eiutheroote. 
 
 There were thirty-two hundred square feet : " it 
 would sell," he said, "for fifty cents a foot; that 
 would be sixteen hundred dollars." Mrs. AYhap- 
 share went to bed with sixteen hundred dollars in 
 her pocket of possibilities. On the strength of that, 
 they had sirloin-steak for dinner the next day. 
 That did all the family good; in regular turn, it 
 would have been salt fish, One of the make- 
 believe days," Martha called it; when the dinner 
 was got over, and no one dined. They made be 
 lieve, at regular intervals, with salt cod, baked
 
 38 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 beans, pea-soup, and liver. That left three days 
 in the week for something real, two at first 
 hand, and one warmed up. 
 
 Mr. Abell also put a notice up at the post-office, 
 and into the village paper, of a desirable corner- 
 room to let in a dwelling-house, in a central locality, 
 suitable for a single lady or a professional man ; 
 apply to him. 
 
 A great many people applied, two washer 
 women ; a horse-car conductor with a wife and 
 seven children; an intelligence-office keeper; the 
 teacher of a boys private school. At last a young 
 doctor, newly come to the neighborhood, Arthur 
 Plaice, got it ; paid tw r enty dollars in advance for 
 the first quarter, twelve of which Caroline AVhap- 
 share took to the city the next day, and paid, also 
 in advance, for the same length of time, for a Mason 
 and Hamlin organ. This came out on the same
 
 ZERUK TJJItOOr s EXPERIMENT. 30 
 
 express-wagon that brought Dr. Plaice s desk and 
 arm-chair ami book-shelves. 
 
 They got acquainted with their tenant over the 
 unloading and bringing in. The ladies Whapshare 
 had been rather shy of him before. 
 
 lie helped the express-man bring in the great 
 box into their sitting-room ; then he stayed, and 
 unscrewed it for them, and drew the instrument 
 safely out, according to directions ; then, when 
 they opened it, and wondered how it would sound, 
 and what Lydia would say when she came home, 
 he put a chair before it, and seated himself, opened 
 the stops, and touched the ke} r s with a few beautiful 
 glad chords, and played what Caroline always 
 
 called afterward, the " Which being interpreted." 
 
 
 It had in it struggles and changes, and snatches of 
 
 comfort, and little climbing-up-hill notes, and sure 
 high ones, and droppings and sobbings down again ; 
 yes, and " the very little pinches too, that nobody
 
 40 ZERUB TffROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 noticed but the pinched people ; " and it had the 
 great reach and longing ; and, at last, a grasp and 
 a joy, and a gentle flood of bright content, that 
 filled the room and all their hearts as they listened, 
 just as the sunset and the home pleasantness filled 
 it, and glorified its new aspect ; with the best 
 things brought in for every day, and the " real 
 Brussels," faded though it might be, on the floor, 
 and the organ standing in the shady corner. 
 
 The old maid, Miss Suprema Sharpe, lived right 
 opposite, and could see, over her blinds, all that 
 occurred. What she did not see, she heard ; and, 
 what she did not hear, she imagined ; and what she 
 saw, heard, or imagined, of a morning, for exam 
 ple, she ran up street, of an afternoon, and told to 
 her friend, Mrs. Benny Dutell, white it was warm ; 
 just as she might carry ginger-cakes. 
 
 She was not a bad old maid, either; that is, she 
 did not mean to be. She only lived all alone,
 
 ZKRUK TnROOI S EXPERIMENT. 41 
 
 and there did not much happen to her. Nine 
 from four you can t ; so you borrow ten. Miss 
 Suprema went borrowing ten all along the line. 
 She got things mixed up sometimes/ and her sums 
 wouldn t prove. 
 
 Mrs. Benny Dutcll was the postmaster s wife; 
 what came to her never grew cool in her hands ; 
 so that you had your own story passed round to 
 you again presently, or even beforehand ; as if it 
 had got ahead of the sun round the world, by 
 the way of Upper Five Corners, or Lower Green 
 Point. 
 
 Dr. Plaice had hardly gone away into his office, 
 when Miss Suprema came "pcrpcndiculating" 
 over. She walked very stiff and straight and 
 quick ; so that she seemed like a stick shot broad 
 side, instead of endwise, keeping its uprightness 
 as it went; or as a wiiter-spomt or a sand-column, 
 that slides tall and swift from horizon to horizon,
 
 42 ZERUB TIIROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 without a motion or a swaying, save detcrminately 
 on. 
 
 Nothing prevented Miss Suprema from getting 
 over sooner, and meeting Dr. Plaice there, but an 
 " enibarras de richesses." She stood in the middle 
 of her bedroom, and fairly spun when she saw the 
 furniture going in, and the big box, marked " Cabi 
 net Organ," slid over the threshold along a board ; 
 when she spied, by the strong western light shining 
 in level through the room, the busy group about it 
 unpacking; and when Dr. Plaice sat down and 
 began to play. Her bonnet was in the closet ; and 
 she would have to turn her back, and disturb her 
 hearing, to fetch it and put it on ; besides, if she 
 did, which w r ay? She was in a hurry to get to 
 Mrs. Benny s before the sun went down upon her 
 pheese ; and she was eager to gather more to go 
 with to-morrow. She wanted to run right in among 
 the Whapshares, and she did not want to " stop
 
 ZERUB TfTROOP S EXPERIMENT. 43 
 
 things;" the end was, that she came in upon their 
 comfortable twilight complacency, waiting for 
 Lydia s return and rapture. 
 
 "Well, I declare ! You are spread out ! " 
 
 Miss Supremo- looked round the room beamingly. 
 She looked at the carpet, and the gray moreen 
 curtains, and tho marble-topped pier-table ; she did 
 not mean to see everything all at once ; she let the 
 organ wait in its shady corner. 
 
 "Xo, Miss Suprcma," said Caroline; "not spread 
 out ; only drawn in. The syrup is boiled down, 
 that is all. 
 
 "To a richness? Well, how elegant you do 
 look ! You won t let it make any difference 
 towards me, will you ; but I may run in neighborly 
 just the same, if I rub my feet well?" 
 
 Miss Suprcma had quick little looks, that she 
 sent everywhere out of her round brown eyes like a 
 squirrel s; never moving her body, that sat straight
 
 44 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 up from the edge of her chair, but only her head. 
 Lydia Whapshare said all she wanted was a bushy 
 tail, and a nut between her forepaws. But, to do 
 her full credit, the nut was seldom lacking meta 
 phorically ; and the tale was bushy enough by the 
 time she ran up the road again with it, along under 
 the wall. 
 
 With her swift, continued peeps, she was the 
 first to see Dr. Arthur Plaice, standing again in 
 the door-way of the room in the increasing twi- 
 light, 
 
 " Can you lend me a hammer for a moment, 
 Mrs. Whapshare?" he asked. 
 
 And while Mrs. Whapshare went for the ham 
 mer, Suprema Sharpe had a good look at him, with 
 what light there was at her own back, and full in 
 his face. 
 
 He was a very handsome man, she saw that, with 
 a square, firm figure, not over tall, a calm equipoise
 
 znnuB TIIROOF S EXPERIMENT. 45 
 
 in look and attitude, and all the indescribable 
 bearing of a gentleman, that shows itself whether 
 he stands quietly waiting, or moves and speaks. 
 
 He neither came into the room, nor withdrew 
 oliyly, but simply stood where the last natural act 
 left him, until it should be time for the next. 
 Self-consciousness, which is neither ladylike nor 
 gentlemanly, always has to do something between. 
 Dr. Plaice could make a pause. When Mrs. 
 "Whapsharc brought him the hammer, he thanked 
 her, and turned away. 
 
 " So that s him ? " said Miss Suprema. 
 
 "That is Dr. Plaice," replied Mrs. Whapshare. 
 
 "Young, isn t he? " 
 
 "I dare say. I do not know his age." 
 
 "Just beginning. Well, you won t be much 
 knocked up nights yet a while. To be sure, he s 
 got the little east door to himself. It ll be sociable 
 evenings. It s a good plan to have somebody there.
 
 46 ZERUJi TIJ HOOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 I wonder you never thought of it before. You 
 didn t really want that room. If you had only 
 made up your mind last year, there was little Lot 
 Green looking everywhere for a place to put up his 
 sign, and begin turuin at law. You wouldn t have 
 had much company of him, though, for his evenings 
 were spoken for ; and it wouldn t have been perma 
 nent, because he s married now, and keeping house 
 and office all together. I guess it happened right 
 as it is." 
 
 "We had only just come through to the bare 
 floor here," said Martha, bluntly; "and I don t 
 suppose we shall have much to do with Dr. Plaice s 
 evenings." 
 
 "He s right in the house, anyway; and there s 
 always hammers and things ; you ll get acquainted. 
 Well, I must go. I only looked in for a minute. 
 I ll come again. If anything should happen that 
 I shouldn t be able to come, you know, why, there s
 
 ZERUB TflROOP f! EXPERIMENT. 47 
 
 the doctor ; and one of my little quinsies might be 
 an encouragement to him." 
 
 She fairly forgot the organ, after all. 
 
 She stood on the sidewalk for a moment, when 
 she had got out, with a flapping in her mind that 
 she was subject to, like a sail in a flaw of wind. 
 She trimmed her decisions, however, quickly, and 
 laid her course direct for Mrs. Dutcll s. 
 
 She must go, sundown or not. She had a little 
 joke on the tip of her tongue that tingled. Keep it 
 over night? She might as w cll have tried to keep 
 a Spanish fly there. 
 
 She was in too much of a hurry with it, though, 
 when she reached Mrs. Benny s. 
 
 "It s easy enough to guess now what will to/tC 
 Plaice!" she cried right out, without preface. 
 
 "La! what?" said Mrs. Benny Dutoll. 
 
 Then Miss Suprcma saw that she had begun at 
 the wrong end of her little joke, and spoiled it. I
 
 48 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 am viciously glad she did. I am glad she found 
 out once in a while, in her own small way, which 
 was all the way she could, how good it is to have 
 things tipped out in a hurry, wrong end foremost. 
 
 There are two kinds of gossip, the one that 
 purely invents or recklessly misrepresents ; and the 
 one that shrewdly spies, puts this and that together, 
 guesses, and anticipates; and the latter is inde 
 scribably the most aggravating. It was Miss 
 Suprema s sort. 
 
 You can sit in your own room complacently, 
 with a three weeks influenza, and be told from out 
 side that you have got the varioloid, or a softening 
 of the brain ; or that you have quarrelled with your 
 wife or husband, and run away. All that will right 
 itself; but to be informed that you are about to give 
 out invitations to a party, or publish a book, or go 
 to Europe, when you can t say you haven t it in 
 your mind, or to be "speered at " in regard to an
 
 ZKRUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 49 
 
 impending engagement in your family, which you 
 can neither declare nor deny, to be told your own 
 news before it is news, I wonder if that was not 
 the devil s fine art in torturing Job? His friends 
 came to tell him of all these things, which was all 
 they were left alive for. I think he must have 
 wished they had not been left alive, and that he 
 could have found the things out quietly in time for 
 himself. 
 
 This looking over shoulders spiritually into the 
 page of a life that is barely being written, this pick 
 ing pockets of personal experience, is the mean 
 enormity of which the literal prying into private let 
 ters or stealing portc-monnaics are only feeble 
 types. Yet the social pickpockets run about safely 
 and respectably, spending their stolen change, and 
 there is no House of Correction for them. 
 
 Arthur Plaice had not got his clothes hung up in 
 his closet, or his books put up on their shelves, be-
 
 50 ZERUD Tnnoop s EXPERIMENT. 
 
 fore all that might happen, well, all that did hap 
 pen, for what is the use of trying to keep the story 
 back after a Miss Suprenia has seized hold of it? 
 was an " I told you so ! " in Rintheroote. 
 
 There are two ways in which very ordinary men 
 are influenced by this social force which is brought 
 to bear upon their doings (doings, I mean, which 
 tend, or may drift, matrimonially), and of which 
 they usually become aware before the women do. 
 It either frightens them oif, or frightens them on. 
 Arthur Plaice showed his manhood in that it did 
 neither with him. 
 
 He was probably well aware that all Rintheroote 
 was peeping and noticing, guessing and prophe 
 sying; yet he went in and out just the same, coining 
 into easy and natural contact with the Whapshare 
 family, living along precisely as if his life had been 
 let alone. 
 
 Caroline, the pretty one, and the obvious one, of
 
 ZERU11 TllROOP S EXPERIMENT. 51 
 
 the Whapsharc girls, shielded by this simple "grit," 
 as Robert Collycr would call it, of the young doctor, 
 from the shame and harassment that many a deli 
 cate girl docs have to go through, that I have 
 seen delicate girls suffer from, of knowing that 
 a thing has been surmised impertinently, and that lie 
 has heard it, and is shy or coo in consequence, 
 Caroline Whapsharc went on innocently and quietly, 
 and kept her little school upstairs. 
 
 There was nothing said about the school before ? 
 No ; because we came in at the Whapshares] out of 
 school-hours, at dinner-time, when the pea-soup was 
 burning ; and in the afternoons the little children did 
 not come. 
 
 Caroline Whapshare had not served an apprentice 
 ship to any system. She had never been inside a 
 kindergarten ; but she had a garden for little chil 
 dren in her heart, as every woman has who is born 
 
 \ 
 with the genius of motherhood in her, a place
 
 52 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 full of blessed waiting growths and living images 
 of truth, vital and simple with the child-instinct hi 
 them, that has never died out of her, but flowers 
 forth in its heavenly use when the children come, as 
 it was ordained. 
 
 She was full of little, bright teaching thoughts. 
 Things came to he] in clear, happy, object-fashion. 
 She delighted to ted them again to little, growing 
 souls, or even to think how she might do it. She 
 felt always, going through the pleasant mind-and- 
 spirit places, just as she did once in riding through 
 a beautiful country, full of farm cheeriness and 
 woodland beauty, and, far away, uuhaunted nooks 
 and seclusions, "Oh, what lovely places to be a 
 little child in ! " 
 
 So she brought out of all her school knowledge 
 and her later readings, fresh, charming applications. 
 There was nothing old and trite with her; nothing 
 that only letters and syllables stood for. The ob-
 
 ZERUB THJROOP S EXPERIMENT. 53 
 
 ject, the very thing itself taught of, was palpable to 
 her imagination ; and she made it palpable to the 
 child, in words quick from the live sense in herself, 
 or in some quaint, clever, bewitching little impro 
 vised play. She kept a kindergarten without 
 knowing it, or setting it up to bo such. 
 
 Martha could not keep school ; she should not 
 have the patience, she said. She did the Martha- 
 work, and was cumbered, and sometimes cross, poor 
 girl ! with much sewing. 
 
 There were times in that square upper south 
 chamber, where the sun came in on the bare floor, 
 and where three benches and three little rows of 
 desks formed three sides of a quadrangle, and the 
 fireplace was the fourth, with the teacher s table in 
 the corner between it and the window, times that 
 those little souls will never forget for their early 
 blessedness ; times of reciting that were like play, 
 and play-times that were like oh ! what were they
 
 54 ZERUD Tnnoop s EXPERIMENT. 
 
 like? when they went "round the barberry-bush," 
 or " hunted the squirrel through the wood, and lost 
 him and found him ; " or sang " Chickany, chickany, 
 craney crow," and ran from the fox that was after 
 the brood of them. Why, those four plain walls, 
 and that bare floor, and the three little low benches 
 that they jumped over for safety, w r ere to them all 
 wild and beautiful nature, full of fables and fairy 
 tales that they were playing out. And Caroline 
 "vVhapshare was just as young and as pleased, and as 
 full of " make-believe " and " certain-true " as any of 
 them. 
 
 I think it was the little school, as much as any 
 thing, that Arthur Plaice fell in love with. 
 
 All winter long the little feet, trudging up and 
 down the long back stairs, and the little voices, 
 shrill and sweet and happy, sounded into his heart, 
 and told tales there ; and all winter long the sight 
 of Caroline Whapshare s face, fair and sunshiny,
 
 ZERVB TH HOOP S EXPERIMENT. 55 
 
 grew to l)e to him a daily bread of blessing that his 
 life had waited for. 
 
 lie did spend many an evening in the cosey home 
 room, where they were "having the good of their 
 best things;" he helped Charlotte with her sums, 
 and ho mended Miles s skates ; he went off skating 
 with them all, boys and girls, up the shining river, 
 in the still, keen moonlight ; he brought home nuts 
 sometimes, and cracked and picked them, and 
 Martha made pan-candy; he read aloud lovely 
 stories, and books of curious fact, Avhilc the sewing- 
 baskets were out and the needles were busy ; he 
 showed John how to carve brackets and boxes ; he 
 played for them upon the organ; and, on Sunday 
 evenings, they all sang together glorious and tender 
 
 O O O O 
 
 hymns, or listened while he drew forth from the 
 stops and keys the grand, beautiful meanings of 
 Handel and Beethoven. 
 
 He brought into the house a wealth of resource
 
 56 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 and companionship ; and in return he received 
 home. He had not had a home before for fifteen 
 years ; there had only been for him school and 
 college, and the world. 
 
 Why could not people let them all alone, to take 
 what God was giving, and to make their simple 
 history ? 
 
 All the while, the vulgar, hurrying gossip was go 
 ing about, robbing the sweet, unconscious time that 
 lives have a right to before they find out their own 
 whole secrets ; interfering, concluding, spoiling. 
 For while Caroline knew nothing of it, because they 
 guarded her so, and because she had that kind of 
 dignity that silly impertinence could never approach 
 directly, Arthur Plaice and her mother each came 
 to know it separately quite well ; and each felt at 
 last uncomfortably responsible. 
 
 Dr. Plaice was not scared nor small about it. He 
 had no little pitiful, provoked corner in his mind,
 
 ZKRUB THKOOP S EXPERIMENT. 57 
 
 ever so far back, in which he visited upon Caroline 
 Whapshare the annoyance he certainly did feel. 
 Her face was just as dear and sunshiny to him as 
 ever; and he let her see just as plainly the re 
 flected shine in his. But he knew that he had a 
 lonui; waiting-time before him in his life ; and he had 
 
 O O 
 
 a conscience ; these two things made a differ 
 ence. 
 
 He began to be busy in his office, or to be called 
 away now and then, more frequently than he had used. 
 Mrs. Whapshare had ripping, untidy, or bulky 
 work upstairs sometimes, and carried off the large 
 kerosene lamp from below to do it by ; and where 
 mother was, there was always the household. Even 
 Miss Suprema could sec that they were not always 
 now "lit up and waiting" in the curtained room. 
 Lydia had a candle, and practised all alone, often; 
 that was dull. It was all duller than it had been ; 
 they hardly knew when it began to change, but the
 
 58 ZERUB TflROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 winter grew a great deal wearier toward the 
 end. 
 
 It made no difference ; they could not defend 
 themselves ; gossip would have something. Dr . 
 Plaice was " cooling off " now ; the Whapshares had 
 " taken hold rather too strong ; " " all the time never 
 held out ; " " it would do Dr. Plaice more good, as a 
 young physician, to go about and become acquainted 
 generally." "And what could it amount to? 
 Neither of them had anything." "It was strange a 
 woman of Mrs. Whapshare s experience hadn t had 
 more judgment." 
 
 Some of these things crept round at last to 
 Martha s knowledge. They made her harder and 
 sharper than ever. She said nothing about them ; 
 but she was brusque, even rude, now and then, to 
 Arthur Plaice ; she was abrupt with her mother, 
 and with Caroline she was like a thorn-hedge, bris-
 
 ZKRUfi THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 59 
 
 tling and thrusting sharp points at her continually, 
 by way of sheltering her in. 
 
 Yet, as Suprcma Sharp herself had said, he was 
 there right in the house ; and there were always 
 hammers and things." Some pleasant hours were 
 natural, inevitable ; he could not always be denvincr 
 
 / <J O 
 
 himself; neither could even Marfha be always on 
 guard against what there might be no real danger 
 of, and at any rate was nobody s business. 
 
 The days lengthened, and the spring came round. 
 Mrs. Whapshare had taken Rufus Abell s advice, 
 and, instead of selling her garden lot, had given 
 him a two-years mortgage upon the whole place, 
 for which he had lent her the sixteen hundred dol 
 lars. At the end of that time, he told her, if things 
 were not easier for her somehow, she could sell at 
 an advanced value, pay up the mortgage, and have 
 something left. Meanwhile, as Mrs. Whapshare 
 said, the children would have two years more of 
 breathing-time before she walled them in.
 
 60 ZERVB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 III. 
 
 HOW THE COMET TOLD TALES, AND SET THE SOLAR 
 SYSTEM IN COMMOTION. 
 
 THE houses on the east, or rather south-east side 
 of Ford Street opened by their front and back doors 
 into two different worlds, as the lives of men also do. 
 
 One way, there was -the dusty, glaring high-road, 
 with the street-cars running up to the corner ; the 
 bank, the post-office, the shops, the town-pump, and 
 the hay-scales, all in sight, and constituting what 
 New England people call " the prospect." 
 
 The other way, there was green grass, a sloping 
 bank, the shade of trees and wild shrubs, secret 
 stillness and beauty; and the broad, slow river 
 widened out above the dams.
 
 ZERUU Tnnoop s EXPERIMENT. Gl 
 
 Nobody would have thought it, going l>y along 
 the front. Nobody would have thought, that be 
 hind the commonplace village, with its houses 
 crowding right on to the thoroughfare, was this 
 escape into a hidden and wonderful delight. People 
 did not remember it, although they knew, who 
 lived on the other side, and had close back-yards, 
 stopped short by the yards of Chaffer Street. 
 
 The little children knew. Little children always 
 know. 
 
 Half Caroline Whapsharc s teaching was done, in 
 pleasant weather, out on the "back slope." There 
 was a real barberry-bush to run around ; there were 
 beautiful hiding-places for the chickens, and sly 
 corners for the fox. Above all, there was room for 
 the planets. 
 
 Dr. Plaice came through the Ions 1 hall of the old 
 
 O O 
 
 house, one day in May, drawn by the open-air 
 chatter of little voices like loosened brooks. He
 
 62 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 stood there a minute or two in the end door, looking 
 on at a wonderful game, no less than the game 
 of the stars in their courses. 
 
 The roundabout, which dried the"* clothes on 
 Monday, had its long arms taken out, and piled 
 away beside the fence. To the swivel at the top 
 of its centre-post were fastened stout twine strings, 
 longer and shorter ; and each of these was held at its 
 farther end by a little scholar, who, drawing by its 
 tether to a greater or less distance, and keeping the 
 line taut, was joyously revolving in a prescribed or 
 bit, to the time of a tune which Caroline, seated on a 
 low stool at the centre, and personating the Sun, 
 sang to them as the music of the spheres. 
 
 Little golden-haired Mercury the youngest 
 pet pupil, Robie Lewiston trotted around close 
 by her feet ; occulted now and then against her lap 
 when ho grew tired. A pretty eight-years-old 
 Venus, sunny-eyed and ringleted, came next ; and
 
 ZERUB THIIOOP S EXPERIMENT. G3 
 
 then sober, clear-faced, pleasant Ruth Tollman, for 
 Earth. Mars was a sturdy, rollicking, rather un 
 manageable fellow; Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, were 
 the big scholars, in the edge of their teens. Farther 
 into space Caroline did not try to go ; nor could she, 
 without getting into the river. It was enough for 
 all practical purposes. 
 
 By and by (this was the best part of the play) 
 Caroline lifted up her hand, and forth started a 
 comet from behind a gooseberry-bush. From away 
 down by the bank of the river he came, describing 
 his parabola among the planets, bearing down to 
 ward the Sun, crossing orbit after orbit, but never 
 when the heavenly body was there. This was the 
 " steering." It was as great fun as coasting down 
 
 o O O 
 
 hill among multitudinous sleds. lie took his sight 
 from the start, and threaded his way, bobbing under 
 the lines, and, wheeling at length close around with 
 little Mercury, shot oft* again upon the other side.
 
 64 ZERUB TIIROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 Dimmy Pickctt did it ; a pennon of white muslin, 
 fastened around his head, flew behind him. This 
 was the comet s tail. Dimmy was only seven years 
 old, little and bright. A larger, duller boy could 
 not have done it. 
 
 When the play was over, the planets, out of 
 breath, came up around the Sun ; and the Sun asked 
 them questions. 
 
 " What are the strings meant for ? " 
 
 " Gravitation, that ties them to the sun." 
 
 " What is your pulling away as far as you can 
 for? 
 
 "Centrifugal force, that makes them fly off." 
 
 "What do both together do? " 
 
 "Keep them going round and round just in their 
 own separate places." 
 
 " Are there really strings up in the sky ? " asked 
 little Venus.
 
 ZKllUJi THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 65 
 
 Caroline held up her finger, and beckoned to 
 Venus. Venus came. 
 
 "Why did you come to me? I did not pull you 
 with the string." 
 
 " You beckoned." 
 
 " God beckons." 
 
 All the little planets were still. There was 
 silence in their heaven for the space of half a 
 minute. 
 
 Then Dimmy Picket spoke.* 
 
 " Suppose she had had her back turned ? " 
 
 " Every little atom in the whole world of worlds 
 has its face toward God." 
 
 " What do they pull away for, then? " 
 
 "God gives them a will of their own, to go a 
 little way of their own ; but they cannot get beyond 
 his will. The two wills make the beautiful glad 
 motions, and all the life and the glory. 
 
 " There are anemones down by the spring. Who
 
 66 ZERUB T /TROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 will come this afternoon, and go with me to gather 
 them?" 
 
 Caroline had given them their bit of physics and 
 metaphysics. It was enough for this time. 
 
 Everybody would go and gather anemones, 
 everybody but big Jupiter. He did not say any 
 thing ; he wanted to play football. 
 
 "May I go too?" asked Dr. Plaice, coming over 
 from the door. 
 
 Caroline had sat with her back toward him. She 
 started a little, and flushed. 
 
 "It is the children s walk. Will you have Dr. 
 Plaice go too?" she asked them. 
 
 " He doesn t belong," whispered Venus, shyly. 
 
 " Oh ! I m the new planet, the far, far-away 
 one, that only comes in sight once in ever so long. 
 I ve been a good while getting here. But I m dis 
 covered now, and must be counted in. I belong ; 
 truly I do."
 
 ZEROS TIIKOOP S EXPERIMENT. 67 
 
 Something made the pretty Sun change color yet 
 more at this. Among them all, nobody had the 
 presence of mind to say him nay. So the doctor 
 said he would come, and bring his microscope with 
 him. After the tremendousness of things in general, 
 they might like to descend to something small and 
 particular. 
 
 Dimmy Pickctt stood staring, in a queer, bright, 
 eager way, while the plan was settled. lie looked 
 at the doctor and at Caroline, as if he were making 
 a bewildering computation, astronomical or other 
 wise, too large for his small head. 
 
 Caroline did not notice ; she was busy with little 
 Mercury. But the doctor saw it, and had an end- 
 of-the-world instinct that the comet was bearing 
 down upon him. 
 
 All at once, the erratic little luminary did bear 
 down upon the Sun, displacing Mercury. 
 
 "See here!" said he, breaking out with a shy
 
 68 ZERUR Tnnoop s EXPERIMENT. 
 
 bravado in a child s loud whisper. " I know some 
 thing, Miss Caroline, I do ; only Flipper told me 
 not to tell." 
 
 "Then," said innocent Caroline, "be sure you 
 don t. You won t ever be a man, a splendid, 
 honorable man, if you tell things that you ought 
 not. And say Philippa. Your sister has a pretty 
 name; but Flipper isn t pretty." 
 
 " Everybody calls her Flipper. She is Flip 
 per ! " returned the comet, half inclined to be a 
 little sulky. He had expected to have his secret 
 teased out of him. 
 
 Dr. Plaice caught the last sentences as he turned 
 away quickly, for fear of what might come next. 
 He walked back into his office with an excited per 
 plexity in his mind. 
 
 How long could he save Caroline from this ? And 
 what ought he to do? Go away? or staj r , and do
 
 ZERUB TlinOOl S EXPERIMENT. 09 
 
 that which he had hardly made up his mind would 
 be right to do? 
 
 He sat down in his corner chair, near which the 
 little passage and the blinded east door were opc ii, 
 letting in the soft summer of a few hours that the 
 May day was giving. 
 
 He had hardly sat there tw r o minutes, when 
 little steps came by around the corner, and little 
 heavenly bodies three or four made a constel 
 lation just outside the folded blinds. 
 
 lie could see them as they stood. The Comet 
 looked big and red and portentous ; little Venus 
 was sparkling and coaxing. 
 
 " Tell me, Diminy ; just me, you know." 
 
 And Earth and Jupiter crowded up close also to 
 hear. 
 
 " I s pose Flipper meant not to tell her; besides, 
 she s always telling everybody not to tell every 
 thing. And they do. She does."
 
 70 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 " Grown-up people tell the most, I think," said 
 Venus, gravely. " They keep all the telling and all 
 the cake, and say it isn t good for children. Is it 
 about us, Dimmy?" 
 
 "I told you twas. By least it would be some 
 time. She said it would be a forever vexation." 
 
 "Vacation, you mean, Dimmy," said elder 
 Earth. 
 
 " I say vexation at home ; and Flipper says it is 
 vexation. So now," said Dimmy. 
 
 "I shouldn t like a forever vacation," said Ruth 
 Fellman, waiving the point. 
 
 "But it would be," persisted Dirnmy, "if she 
 went and got married. And Dr. Plaice is her 
 beau. Flipper said so." 
 
 " Poh ! " said big Jupiter, and walked off. 
 
 Earth and Venus looked at each other with a 
 wide wonder in their eyes, and set their little white
 
 ZERUB rnnoor s EXPERIMENT. 71 
 
 teeth suddenly very tight upon their under lips. 
 It was a tremendous secret ! 
 
 Venus came to first. 
 
 "Well, it must be pretty nice to have a beau," 
 she said. 
 
 " Mr. Dimmy Comet ! " said a voice behind 
 them. The blind opened, and the doctor stood 
 there. 
 
 "Allow me to beg the honor of a further ac 
 quaintance with so well-informed a gentleman. 
 You will please to walk into my office here." 
 
 Dr. Plaice s hand was on Dimmy s shoulder. 
 
 "Oh, my gracious!" cried Earth and Venus 
 simultaneously, and simultaneously rushed down a 
 broad vista of space, that is, the village street, that 
 turned between the tin-shop and the tailor s. 
 
 That light hand on Dimmy s shoulder was not to 
 be mistaken. He walked in up the step as a little
 
 72 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 boy docs walk in when his sins have found him 
 out. 
 
 Dr. Plaice closed the door. 
 
 Take a seat, Mr. Comet," he said politely. 
 "The arm-chair, if you please." 
 
 If he had put him on a cricket, or let him stand, it 
 would not have been half so bad. The arm-chair 
 was high, formidable, and awfully suggestive. The 
 tone of the " if you please " was unrelenting. The 
 doctor might be going to pull all his teeth out ; but 
 he was without remedy. 
 
 Dimmy hitched up backwards into the great 
 chair, putting his heel upon the forward rung, and 
 hoisting himself by the arm. Seated there, his 
 Iqgs hung ridiculously short and small. 
 
 " The leading object of my life," said the terrible 
 doctor, turning to the mantel, and taking up his 
 meerschaum, " is enlightenment. You have en 
 lightened me very much indeed within the last five
 
 ZERVD T77JIOOI> > S EXPERIMENT, 73 
 
 minutes, Mr. Comet. I feel exceedingly obliged 
 to you, and to Flipper." And the doctor filled 
 leisurely the howl of his pipe, pressing the tobacco 
 down evenly. 
 
 "Smoke, Mr. Comet? No, I thought not. 
 Judging professionally, I should say that your con 
 stitution was not quite up to it." 
 
 Dr. Plaice struck a match, held it to the pipe, 
 and took a whiif or two, then drew a chair, and sat 
 down himself. 
 
 This was awful ! How long was it to go on ? 
 How long did it take the doctor to smoke his pipe ? 
 Would he keep him there all day mocking at him? 
 Would he ever let him go? And what would 
 Flipper say ? 
 
 Dimmy twisted his short legs desperately, and 
 untwisted them hazardously, and recklessly twisted 
 them again. lie squeezed the rim of his little soft 
 felt hat into a great many doubles, to correspond
 
 74 ZEKUB TflROOp S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 with his legs ; then he let it out, and squeezed it 
 up again. He began to grow alarmingly red and 
 
 swelled in the face with mingled shame and fear 
 
 
 and indignation. 
 
 "Your news was very interesting, Mr. Comet," 
 resumed the doctor ; " especially to myself. For 
 that reason, and for another that I will mention 
 presently, I should prefer that it should not be 
 spoken of in like manner again. Do you under 
 stand ? " 
 
 For all answer, Dimmy struggled with his legs 
 again, and obliterated his cap. 
 
 " The second reason is, that it does not happen to 
 be true. If it were, I should be likely to tell of it 
 myself. A gentleman, Mr, Comet, does not speak 
 of other people s personal affairs until he is author 
 ized ; and he never repeats things that he hears, in a 
 whisper, with a Don t tell ! neither, I thinly, does
 
 THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 75 
 
 a lady. In the first place, ladies and gentlemen 
 do not very often hear those things at all." 
 
 Dimmy s redness grew ominous. He winked 
 very hard. These were very grown-up words of 
 the doctors ; but instinct translated them. He 
 learned a half page of dictionary at least, in these 
 five minutes, that he never forgot. He was very 
 much ashamed, and he was very mad. His legs 
 were in such a snarl with the chair by this time that 
 it was hard to tell which was human and which was 
 mahogany ; his face was big with tears that he 
 would not cry, and his hat was pretty nearly hope 
 less. 
 
 At last, two words came forth, very much 
 thickened and swollen themselves with their long 
 restraint : 
 
 " By George ! " 
 
 Dimmy lisped a little on his g s ; and the exple 
 tive sounded like something huge and soft, flung
 
 76 ZKRUD TffROOP s EXPERIMENT. 
 
 with great force, and hitting as hard as it could. 
 Dr. Plaice laughed out ; he could not help it ; but 
 then he immediately got up, and came oxter toward 
 Dimmy, with his hand held out. He did not wish 
 to humiliate and enrage him utterly. He meant to 
 treat him really like a man at last. 
 
 "That is all, Dimmy. Now let s shake hands, 
 and be friends. You don t like being talked to like 
 a mean little man? Well, you can wake up from 
 that bad dream all safe at seven years old, with 
 twice your age yet to grow in, and to make what 
 kind of a man you will. Miss Caroline told you; 
 if you want to be a splendid, honorable one, don t 
 do any small meddling things, or tell any small, 
 meddling tales." 
 
 And Dr. Plaice kept hold of Dimmy s hand till 
 his legs untwisted, and he was slid safely down out 
 of the big chair. Then Dimmy put on his cap, 
 pulled it very much over his eyes, and departed
 
 ZERUB TH HOOP S EXPERIMENT. 77 
 
 meekly and swiftly. When he was around the 
 corner, however, behind the tin-shop, he paused, 
 pushed his cap up into its place, took a good long 
 breath, and said " By George ! " again. But there 
 were things in this " By George ! " that had not 
 been in the other. Out of it came a good deal 
 in the boy s life that would not else have been 
 there, and that we shall not follow him on to tell 
 about. 
 
 The first resultant was his going with the walk 
 ing-party that afternoon, in spite of the tingle with 
 which he thought of it ; which, if he had not been in 
 a pretty fair sens e a " by-George " character, one 
 would hardly have expected him to do. lie had 
 two minds about it ; but the spirit that swore by 
 the king that was in him prevailed. lie wouldn t 
 sneak of! , afraid. lie would face the doctor and 
 those girls. Besides, ho would stop the tattle ; that
 
 78 ZERUD THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 is, he thought he would. There was a good deal of 
 the royal in this for seven years old. 
 
 Venus was in the middle of a knot of girls when 
 Dimmy came upon the field. He watched and loi 
 tered, until she emerged for a minute, and he caught 
 her upon the edge. Then he sauntered by, close to 
 her, his hands in his pockets. 
 
 "I say," he said low, over his shoulder, "don t 
 tell of that, you know. Taint true." 
 
 " My sakes ! " cried little Venus, coming quite 
 away, and going on with him ; "I have told." 
 
 " Poh ! " exclaimed Diinmy, in disgust. " Who ? 
 
 "Just Aurora, my best friend, you know." 
 
 Now, Aurora was just the biggest little chatter 
 box in the Avhole school. 
 
 Poor Dimmy began to find out, to his -dismay, 
 how hard it is to catch up with a mistake. 
 He thought of Jupiter, too, off in his bigger orbit, 
 with the village fellows. What might not he say, iu
 
 ZERVB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 79 
 
 his big-boy fashion, worst of all, notwithstanding 
 his " Poll " ? The little Comet was very uncomfort 
 able, and wished with all his heart, that he had 
 kept his tale to himself. 
 
 Aurora was nudging and whispering, walking be 
 hind the doctor and Miss Caroline, with her other 
 best friend, a larger girl, Laura Frances. It was 
 plain there was no knowing what might come of it. 
 The whole solar system would have hold of it, and 
 what a blaze and whirl that would be ! 
 
 Dimmy marched up to Dr. Plaice, at his open 
 office-door, when they were back again, and the 
 girls had gone. 
 
 " I can t help it, after all," he said, without any 
 antecedent to the "it." "I tried to stop it, and it 
 won t." 
 
 "It isn t easy to stop a thing that is once started. 
 There s a law of nature against it. But I ll see
 
 80 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 what I can do, Dimmy ; and it is all right between 
 you and me, any way." 
 
 Dimmy s throat felt queer ; and he came very near 
 saying " By George ! " again. 
 
 The sun was going down, and the air was just as 
 s\Tseet and tender as it had been all the day. Win 
 dows and doors stood wide, gathering in the rich 
 feeling of June from the May air. Dr. Plaice came 
 round through the hall again. 
 
 "Miss Caroline," he said, "the Golden Gate is 
 open. Will you go down and see ? " 
 
 The Golden Gate was the opening up the river 
 where the west shone in, and filled up all the water 
 aisle with a mist of glory. Far and deep between 
 the trees that closed on either side lay the burning 
 splendor whence the tide flowed down ; and violet 
 or crimson bars would lie across as the flame faded, 
 or flecks and burnished lines of yet intenser fire be 
 thrown up like isles and coasts along a dazzling sea,
 
 ZERUD THROO^ S EXPERIMENT. 81 
 
 and .ill gathered, as it were, into one focus of light, 
 for the wooded fringe and the high banks of the 
 stream covered at right and left the stretch of the 
 horizon, and left all heaven to be imagined from its 
 single unclosed door. 
 
 So they went down to the river-side. The slop 
 ing bank shut out house and street and all the vil 
 lage sounds. Office and school-room, and all the 
 ways by which their living and everybody s else 
 went on, were behind them. Nothing was here but 
 God s beautiful world that his souls are born into, 
 and before them the Golden Gate lay open. 
 
 "It is like a beautiful secret," said Arthur Plaice. 
 
 " It is like the heaven inside and behind," said 
 Caroline, softly. 
 
 " Yes ; it is like that. It is that heaven is the 
 great, beautiful secret. There is a piece of it, 
 Caroline, that I have wished to tell you. Only the 
 other side, there is still the dusty street." 
 c
 
 82 ZERUB TIIROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 Caroline stood utterly still. 
 
 " I am afraid I have no right ; because " his 
 pause became a period. " I have earned just fifty 
 dollars all this last year beyond what absolutely had 
 to keep me," he said, speaking it out quickly. 
 "Your little school is better than that; and so I 
 have no right to tell you beautiful secrets by the 
 river-side, and then lead you out into the toil and 
 dust." 
 
 " You mean that you have been paid just fifty dol 
 lars," said Caroline, looking at him very proudly, and 
 then turning away again ; " and I don t care for 
 the dusty street." 
 
 "And you do care ?" asked Arthur, eagerly, 
 bending down to look after the shy face. 
 
 Caroline flushed up like the sunrise that tells 
 God s morning story without any words. 
 
 Arthur Plaice felt the joy of his morning ; but he 
 was a man, and wanted speech, just a word, ever
 
 ZERUB Tmtoor s EXPERIMENT. 83 
 
 so shy, ever so small. He forgot his own un 
 finished speaking. 
 
 " Translate," he whispered. 
 
 "I do care," said Caroline, quaintly and tremu 
 lously, " for the beautiful secret which you didn t 
 tell me." 
 
 And then the secret was told. 
 
 " I think they have gone through the Golden 
 Gate," said Lydia, turning round from her organ, 
 when she could no longer see her notes. 
 
 tf l believe so too," said the mother, seeing them 
 come up the old stone step at the end door; but she 
 said it to herself. 
 
 She stepped out from the little dining-room where 
 the tea was ready, split-cake, toast, and a pink 
 square of delicately broiled smoked salmon, and 
 met them in the dusk of the long, old hall.
 
 84 ZERUB TITROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 "Will you come in? "she said to Dr. Plaice. 
 * " We are just ready." 
 
 "I will come if you will let me, mother ! " 
 
 He had got her hand fast with Caroline s in his 
 own, as he said it. 
 
 " O you two children ! " Mrs. Whapshare an 
 swered, when she had got over a little sob. 
 " How long you have got to wait ! " 
 
 " We can t help that," said Arthur. It won t be 
 any longer than it was before. And we should have 
 waited. I suppose we have been waiting, ever since 
 we both were born." 
 
 Dr. Plaice took care to meet Dirnmy Pickett the 
 next morning. 
 
 " I ve stopped it, Dirnmy," said he, holding out 
 his hand. 
 
 "How?" said Dimmy, explosively. 
 
 "As the Indians stop the fire from chasing them 
 on the prairies, kindled it at my own end. I
 
 Tnnoop s EXPERIMENT. 85 
 
 want your congratulations, Dimmy. I ana engaged 
 to be married some time to Miss Caroline Whap- 
 share." 
 
 Dimmy drew back his hand to pull his hat down 
 over his eyes. He shuffled with one foot back and 
 forth upon the ground. He was overwhelmed by 
 this real, grown-up news, told him with his hand in 
 his friend s just as if he had been big enough. He 
 did not know what to do with it, or how to get 
 away and leave it. All at once he pushed his hat 
 back again, stood square upon his feet, and looked 
 up. 
 
 " Are you making fun of me now, Dr. Plaice ? " 
 
 "No, indeed. I am telling you my good news as 
 my particular friend, whom I told yesterday that it 
 wasn t true. You ll wish me joy, won t you?" 
 
 " Yes," said Dimmy. v But, if you want anybody 
 else to know it now, I guess you ll have to tell em 
 yourself. There s Miss Suprema coming."
 
 86 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 And Dimmy vanished round the corner, and into 
 the school-room door. 
 
 Dr. Plaice stood still and laughed. " That s the 
 brightest boy in Kintheroote," said he to himself. 
 
 Miss Suprema came up. 
 
 " Why, doctor, what is it? What have you done 
 to Dimmy Pickett?" 
 
 "Told him some news, and got his advice. The 
 advice, I think, was excellent ; and I am sure my 
 news was." 
 
 Then he told her the news ; and she forgot to ask 
 him anything about the advice. 
 
 When he went back into his office, he saw her, 
 through the blinds, standing in one of her awful 
 equilibriums. Whether she should keep on, down 
 the village-street, taking her chances as she went, 
 or turn about, and go straight up to Mrs. Benny 
 Dutell s, before she heard of it from anybody else? 
 She could not expect to be first with everybody ;
 
 ZERUK THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 87 
 
 she must be first with Mrs. Dutell. So the great 
 whirl within her set her off in a right line at last, 
 and she went up the street like a cyclone. 
 
 The doctor drew up his shoulders with a laugh 
 ing shake, turned to his desk, and sat down. 
 
 Sat down to his desk and his books ; and knew 
 that he began, that moment, the days of a hard, un 
 certain waiting. The news was told ; the fire had 
 run ; he had made a safe place to stand in ; and now 
 he must only stand. That makes a long chapter ; 
 the Apostle Paul knew that, but it is not a chapter 
 for a magazine. 
 
 " It is all there can be about it for ever so long, 
 Arthur," Caroline herself had said to him, in the 
 first, blessed, sober, certain " talking-over." 
 
 " Mother could not do without me, and my little 
 school, until Lydia is ready with her music, and 
 John gets some sort of salary that will more than 
 pay for his tickets in the cars and his lunches in the
 
 88 ZERUD TJIROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 city. I must stay by home, you see. I shouldn t 
 be worth taking away if I wouldn t." 
 
 For two years there was no new point reached in 
 this, their story ; none but the little shining points 
 that count in " the kingdom ; " in the inside beauty 
 that lies away from the dusty street ; that holds all 
 the loveliest secrets, and the least of them some 
 times the loveliest ; and where the Father that seeth 
 in secret keeps his own inner blessedness hidden 
 fast with the hearts of his children. 
 
 But in two" years the outward may halt step with 
 the inward till the hobble grows wearisome and 
 painful. 
 
 In two years Dr. Plaice had only put into the 
 bank two hundred and fifty dollars more. In two 
 years Mrs. Whapshare s face had gathered new 
 lines, and Caroline s had grown a little thin and 
 pale with the constant pull of school. 
 
 Martha was two years crustier, and more like an
 
 ZKHUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 89 
 
 old maid, while her service in the household was 
 more comprehensive and invaluable than ever. 
 Lydia and John were growing up to the realization 
 of the hard tug of life, and the knowledge of the 
 many wants and wishes that must go unmet. 
 
 Snprema Sharpe had had two years in which to 
 find herself often at default for fresh aliment of 
 news, and driven to turn and worry and recrunch 
 the old ; as a dog keeps a bone buried, and digs it 
 up once in a while to try for a little more marrow 
 in it. 
 
 Every now and then she dug up the Plaice-Whap- 
 share bone ; and every time she set it forth in sorrier 
 fashion, and yet " bonier " light. 
 
 " The doctor was tired of his bargain ; ho hadn t 
 much the look of a satisfied man ; if it was ever 
 coming to anything, why didn t it come? The 
 AVhapsharcs held on well ; she would say that for 
 them."
 
 90 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 Or, it was " a shame for Mrs. Whapsliare to keep 
 Caroline toiling on at her school for her. Why 
 couldn t she marry, and keep school to help her 
 self? Car was growing old ; she had got gray hairs 
 on her temples. No doubt they were awful poor ; 
 everybody knew the place was mortgaged ; and old 
 Rufus Abell didn t lend his money just to get it back 
 again. There was Lydia flourishing away on that 
 organ. Much she d ever make of it ! She d better 
 have been running a sewing-machine." 
 
 In two years, Zerub Throop Avas dead, and no 
 body could find out, for a good while, what he had 
 done with his mouej r . By and by it came out that 
 there was a will, and that Rufus Abell was executor. 
 Of course ; Rufus Abell executed everything. 
 
 Mrs. Whapsliare took to having little, nervous 
 starts every time Rufus Abell came round the corner. 
 She could not shake off the notion that news was 
 coming to her yet. from old Zerub ; from old Zerub
 
 ZERUB TJIIWOP S EXPERIMENT. 91 
 
 and the Lord ; for she remembered always that 
 about the king s heart : and she knew that in the 
 inward light of things she had a right, and that 
 the Lord and his angels live and work continually 
 in the inward light, where man can neither see nor 
 reach. 
 
 But Kufus went and came, and never stopped, 
 or even looked up at the Whapshare windows. It 
 was plain that he had no thought of any contingency 
 for them. 
 
 All that was known about the will was, that it 
 was an odd one ; as it would not have been Zerub 
 Throop s if it were not. That nothing was to be 
 settled save certain legacies, the chief of which 
 was to Sarah Hand, providing for her and for the 
 cat for five years ; only the property to be taken 
 care of, rents and dividends collected, and all to 
 wait that time, for any claim that might arise ; fail-
 
 92 ZERUB THROOI^S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 ing which, it was then to be devoted to certain 
 specified public uses. 
 
 Rintheroote was exercised to conjecture what that 
 possible claim might be. A secret marriage, a 
 child, half-a-dozen children, perhaps, adrift some 
 where, liable to turn up? 
 
 Eufus Abell held his peace ; indeed, he had noth 
 ing else to hold ; the will registered, and open to 
 any reading, only said just that : " For any claim 
 upon said estate that may legally and within that 
 time arise." 
 
 But Rufus Abell did call one day. The mortgage- 
 debt was falling due, and the garden-lot would have 
 to be sold. 
 
 This was how it was with the Whapshares at the 
 time the queer thing happened which nobodj r will 
 believe, and which Mrs. Eylett Bright will tell of in 
 the next chapter.
 
 ZERUB THROOP S EX1>ERIMENT. 93 
 
 IT. 
 
 HOW THE GHOST MANAGED. MRS. EYLETT 
 
 BHIGIIT S STORY. 
 
 MY dear, I well tell you all about it. It was a 
 haunted house. It was all explained by simple 
 causes, yes; but it was a haunted house, never 
 theless. It is a haunted world we live in, for that 
 matter, Dora Dutton. 
 
 You see there are so many of us, so many 
 little Eylett Brights ; I like to call them by their 
 whole patronymic, it suits them so well, Dutton, 
 dear. 
 
 We all needed the country that summer. I was 
 run down with change of servants, and nursing; 
 little Thode had just crept out of scarlet fever,
 
 94 ZERUB TIIROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 with the tattered shreds of his dear little mortality 
 about him, wanting all sorts of patching up ; and 
 the other children had had it too, more or less ; 
 mostly less, thank the good Providence ! We all 
 needed the country, doctor said we must have 
 it ; but there was Eylett tied down to his desk, and 
 the two thousand wasn t any bigger for us this year 
 than ever before. 
 
 The country is so wide and free ; and yet it is so 
 hard to get a place in it, a place for ever so 
 many little Eylett Brights ! 
 
 We wanted a large house, and we wanted it 
 furnished ; there must be plenty of out-of-doors, 
 and yet we did not want a "place" that would 
 have to be kept up. People who were going to 
 Europe, and had out-of-town residences to leave, 
 must leave them to their own sort, you know ; 
 carriage and lawn and garden people, who would 
 have gardeners and grooms. It was as much as
 
 ZERUB THXOOP S EXPERIMENT. 95 
 
 ever we could do to have Onie and Ann. More ; 
 for they were both going to leave. They had 
 objections to the country. So we got Margaret 
 and Ellen from the intelligence office, the same 
 article, you know, with a new label; and there 
 isn t much variety in the labels, either. It is 
 wonderful how we have rung over the changes, 
 Margaret and Katy and Ann ; Bridget and Ann and 
 Katy ; Bridget and Margaret and Ellen ; and how 
 natural and of course the name sounds, whichever it 
 is, when they tell it ; and how the impression of 
 the whole successive multitude drifts and runs 
 together in our minds into the image of one great, 
 awful, representative, kitchen creature ! 
 
 Well, we searched the papers, and we searched 
 the country ; w T e had spent fifteen dollars before we 
 knew it, running out and in to see things, and 
 conclude they wouldn t do. So we kept quiet a 
 while, and almost gave it up. Eylett said we
 
 96 ZERUB rnnoop s EXPERIMENT. 
 
 might hit upon something by and by, when some 
 body s house was left on their hands, too late for a 
 high rent or a whole season. I didn t see how, 
 though. I told him it would have to come and hit 
 upon us ; we couldn t afford to go after it any 
 more. 
 
 Things do come and hit you if you only stand 
 still because you must, not because you re lazy. 
 
 One day, at the counting-room, Mr. Ilaughton 
 was asking Eylett after his family. Eylett told 
 him he was getting along ; but they needed a 
 change, and it was not easy to make a plan that 
 would suit in all ways. 
 
 " Take a house a little way out of town," said 
 Mr. Haughton. 
 
 "I ve been trying to," said Eylett, "but the 
 house I want doesn t seem to be anywhere." 
 
 One of the boys came in from the bank just 
 then, and heard it.
 
 ZERUB TTIROOP S EXPERIMENT. 97 
 
 "I know of a house, Mr. Bright," ho said; "but 
 it s rather a queer one, up over the hill, out of our 
 village; and to let cheap, I guess, old Zerub 
 Throop s. He s dead, and things aren t to be 
 touched for live years. But the house can be 
 hired just as it is, if anybody likes. It is a jolly 
 big one, and an old garden and fields all round it. 
 AVhy don t you come out and sec it?" 
 
 Eylett guessed he would. 
 
 And so, one day, we went out to Kinthcroote. 
 
 Why, you see it was splendid ! All that great 
 hill, and the sunrise on one side, and the sunset 
 the other ! But, as to the house, it seemed as if 
 the day had always had to climb over and round 
 it, and had never shone through it. Such a musty, 
 shad}-, lo-from-the-tombs old place you never got 
 into ! The front door was all grown up with 
 weeds and vines. It was tall and narrow, with an 
 old-fashioned fan-liiHit over it. It looked as if
 
 98 ZKRUB TJIROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 nothing had ever gone in and out but coffins, I told 
 Eylett. 
 
 "We found a woman in the village who had kept 
 house there ; and she went up with us, and showed 
 it. 
 
 " It s in good order," she said; "the front part s 
 clean, because it aint never been dirtied ; and the 
 back part s clean, because I done the scrubbin ." 
 
 There was one real lovely room across the ell, 
 upstairs, at the end. Four windows, east, 
 south, and west, the sun and the soft wind just 
 rioting through. 
 
 "O Eylett!" I cried, standing in the middle, 
 " Here s the summer time and the beauty ! Here s 
 the life of the house ! " 
 
 "Yes m," said Mrs. Hand, "here s where twas. 
 But I ll tell you what, taint more n fair to let you 
 know. I don t believe it s all gone out of it. / 
 don t believe, in my soul, ZeruVs done with it!"
 
 ZERUB TIIROOrS EXPERIMENT. 99 
 
 She spoke in a hushed way, as if there might be 
 some one listening. 
 
 " Done with it? He s dead ! " 
 
 "Yes m; that s just why you can t tell. I stayed 
 here a month afterwards, and I had well, experi 
 ences. If I was you, I d shot it up." 
 
 "Shut it up ! I shall put the children into it." 
 
 " That may do. Maybe he ll quit, then." 
 
 I had my doubts about that conclusion, if I hadn t 
 about the ghost. I couldn t think, if he wanted 
 to come at all, that old Zerub, or any other rational 
 spirit, would come back the less for, } r ou needn t 
 laugh, Dutton ; I don t care if they are mine ! " 
 
 "See here, my good woman!" says Eylett 
 turning round sharp, "I can t come here if my 
 servants and children are to get hold of this non 
 sense. Has it been talked round in the village? " 
 
 " Not from me ; I ve held my tongue too long for 
 Zerub to begin chattering now. I always left all
 
 100 ZERUB TJIROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 his affairs to hisself, an I do yit. But this is your 
 affair, kinder, if you re comiu . I jest cased rny 
 mind." 
 
 " It shall be the play-room, the day-nursery," 
 I repeated, ignoring the nonsense once and forever. 
 "And here," said I, going back into a small adjoin 
 ing chamber, f> I ll have my sewing-machine and my 
 writing-desk, and all my little things and doings 
 that I want close by the children, but not mixed 
 up and crowded with them. We can be grand 
 here, Eylett. There is no end of room. As to 
 those front parlors and bedrooms, we ll fasten back 
 every blind, and fling up every window, and let 
 June do the rest. We ll come, Eylett, won t we?" 
 I concluded after my wife fashion, a decision 
 first, and a question afterward. 
 
 So we went down into Rintheroote, and found 
 Mr. Eufus Abell, the agent ; and Eylett put in the 
 ghost story in the way of business, and got off fifty
 
 Tnnoop s EXPERIMENT. 101 
 
 doll:irs for that ; though I told him men always came 
 out with the very thing they didn t want men 
 tioned ; and we took the house for three hundred 
 and fifty dollars, and could stay the season, three 
 months, or six, as we had a mind. 
 
 But we Avcre not to ask to have the first thing 
 done for us, and we were to alter nothing ourselves. 
 These were the conditions. 
 
 We had a splendid time moving. You know I 
 don t mind trouble ; and the children were as gay 
 as larks. We didn t have much to move, either ; 
 only our clothes, and the few things we couldn t 
 live without, and to send the rest right off to a 
 store-room ; for we gave up our house in town, of 
 course. 
 
 Margaret and Ellen gave warning the second 
 morning after we got there ; that we expected. All 
 we hoped for from them was to get through the 
 flitting ; though how they could, with the sun shin-
 
 102 ZERUK TFIROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 ing as it did, and the clover smelling, and the birds 
 singing, I doii t see. I should as soon have given 
 warning in heaven, as, to be sure, I suppose some 
 folks will ! 
 
 Well, we didn t care ; it was all fun, nobody was 
 going to call, I could just put on a calico wrapper, 
 keep it on, I mean, and take right hold, if it 
 came to that; and we set Mrs. Hand to inquiring for 
 us in the village. In result of which, after three 
 days of the " warning," and three days more of the 
 " week " that they wouldn t stay, and hardly ever 
 will, and you hardly ever care to have them, since 
 the days of warning are in themselves so like the 
 days of doom ; and after yet three other days of 
 expectation and hard work, and baker s bread, 
 there came to " our ha door," and when that Avas 
 opened into the best I mean the dingiest parlor, 
 a well these presents : 
 
 A hat and feather, that is, a very remarkable
 
 ZEKUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 103 
 
 and exaggerated piece of a bird, that was neither 
 wing, tail, nor breast, but enough of it for all three, 
 attached mysteriously to the middle of a forehead ; 
 an emphatic chignon, a very much fluted and hitchcd- 
 up alpaca overskirt, and a pair of tall-heeled boots, 
 on which all the rest walked in. 
 
 AVhat else should have come, unless, indeed, it 
 had happened to be a man? These, you know, are 
 the things which stand for a woman nowadays, and 
 make up the general presentment and expression 
 of her, confounding distinctions; so that the pieces 
 of a woman in the windows of the Great furnishing 
 
 O O 
 
 shops, articulated " on wires, hint out something 
 rather superior, on the whole, to most of the speci 
 mens which articulate themselves, and are seen 
 about the streets. 
 
 The "articulation," in this instance, announced 
 herself to me, looking at her with a puzzle and a 
 question in my face, as "a girl." An American
 
 104 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 girl she was too; no Irish, we found out gradually, 
 would apply. Although Sarah Hand had been 
 reticent, Terence Muldoon, who chored, and chopped 
 wood, and "fought and carried " for old Mr. Zcrub- 
 babel Throop, and who stayed by to "garrud the 
 hoose," with Mrs. Hand, during the month of her 
 closing-up services and administration, had not 
 been so ; and there were vague and terrible rumors 
 afloat in the Irish stratum of society, and the uni 
 versal Irish mind was set against the " owld Throop 
 place an its divilments." This came to us by de 
 grees, as our own experience developed. 
 
 "I m the girl," said the articulation, "that Miss 
 Hand was to look up. She s my Aunt Sarah. I m 
 a dasher." 
 
 "You re a what?" said I, explosively, in my 
 astonishment. 
 
 " A dasher : A dasher down." 
 
 I just stared. I began to think she must be a
 
 ZEIlUfi THRO OP S EXPERIMENT. 105 
 
 lunatic. And a lunatic who announced herself as a 
 dasher down might not be the subject of a form of 
 hallucination one Avoukl like to have illustrated in 
 one s parlor. 
 
 But, while I stared, she added mildly, "That s 
 my name." 
 
 r Oh ! " said I, relieved, arid catching my breath. 
 " Just spell it, if you please." 
 
 " A ,d,a,s,h,a, Adasha ; D,o,w,n,e, Downc ; 
 Adasha Downc." 
 
 " Thank you. It souuds rather terrific, you see, 
 before one knows, especially for a person w r ho is to 
 handle cups and saucers." 
 
 Adasha gave a bright look out of her eyes with 
 out moving a muscle of her very round, and very 
 large, and very solid face. 
 
 "There s many a one gets a name, you know, for 
 a thing they never di V Then she smiled widely. 
 She could not help it ; she must do it widely, if she
 
 106 ZERUB THKOOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 smiled at all. It took very little exertion, and but 
 slight play of her lips ; for her lips were ample, and 
 behind them were white teeth that needed generous 
 accommodation. 
 
 I liked the smile and the bright look. I began 
 to think of engaging her ; up to that moment I had 
 only thought how to get rid of her. I asked her 
 if she could make bread and hop-yeast ; if she could 
 wash and iron ; and if she would do anything else 
 that I might ask of her, and tell her how. 
 
 She could and she would. 
 
 " Will you take off your things and stay now ? " 
 
 " Well, ma am, you see, in my suit and my heeled 
 boots and my hair, I don t really see how I could. 
 But I ll get a bag o clo es, and come back in half an 
 hour." 
 
 "Very well." 
 
 She did. And so we had Adasha Downe. 
 
 That was all we had ; and we found it was all we
 
 ZRRVB Til HOOP S EXPEniMRXT. 107 
 
 bad to hope for. For love, nor money, nor for 
 Christian charity, we could get no soul to offer or 
 consent. We tried for three weeks ; and then v/e 
 settled down, until the prejudice should wear away, 
 to a plan that we fitted to the case. A boy to do 
 chores, and a woman to come three times a week, 
 and wash and iron and scrub. Then, with all the 
 children, and their summer liberty, on my hands, 
 I thought of another expediency, a young girl as 
 a sort of governess-companion, who might keep 
 them up in their A, B, C, and their tables, tell them 
 which side of the world they were on, and a few 
 preliminary items of like importance ; sew on a 
 string or a button now and then, and help mo in 
 such things as I daily put my practical hands to. 
 
 AVo found her ; she Avas foreordained. 
 
 Do you remember little Car Whapshare, the 
 youngest girl at dear old Cradley School the last 
 year we were there? She lives right here in Kin-
 
 108 ZERUD TUnOOp s EXPERIMENT. 
 
 theroote ; and she had kept school until she hadn t 
 much face left ; though what she had kept the 
 pretty in it, as the child s barley-sugar keeps the 
 clear and the sweet down to the last thin needle of 
 identity. She was engaged to marry in this life 
 or in the life everlasting a splendid fellow, the 
 young doctor of the place. But the old doctor 
 wouldn t let go, and the old patients wouldn t 
 change; and so he Avas getting excellent practice 
 and very limited pay ; and Car s mother was poor. 
 And that s the way things were with them ; and 
 they couldn t be much more wayward. 
 
 Arthur Plaice her doctor said she must give 
 up teaching, for all summer at least. She was in a 
 worry. But then, there was I in a worry too, up 
 there on the hill; and the worries of the world do, 
 once in a while, when the right ones are thrown 
 together, turn suddenly, by the beautiful chemistry 
 of things, into a blessed mutual content.
 
 ZKRUD TIIROOP S EXPERIMENT. 109 
 
 Car Whapshare came to live with us all summer. 
 
 And it was just after she came, mind you, that 
 the signs and wonders began. 
 
 How we three Car, Adasha, and I did work, 
 letting the besieging pleasantness into that old 
 house ! Adasha, cleared for action, without her 
 heeled boots and her hair, that is, with only a 
 reasonable amount that you might believe in, 
 gathered up with a screw and a double behind, and 
 fastened with a rubber-comb, without any humps 
 or hitchups, turned suddenly into an individual. 
 That was a refreshment and a confidence. I sup 
 pose there is a beauty of "the all," Emerson says 
 so ; but you do want caches ; the world will never 
 make up the nicest kind of total by rubbing out its 
 units. 
 
 A\ r e could not alter ; but we could innovate and 
 renovate. We rolled back the heavy worsted 
 damask curtains on their old-fashioned gilded poles,
 
 110 ZERun Tn HOOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 throw wide the blinds, and let the summer in. We 
 turned the musty old chairs and sofas out on the 
 grass; we cut away the thorn-branches, and the 
 twisted stems of creepers from the choked-up 
 porch ; and we left the high, narrow door open all 
 day long, so that a column of sunshine poured it 
 self through that way in the morning, and bars of 
 gold shot slanting across from the windows of the 
 south parlor through the noontime. When the 
 house was sweetened full of it, we began to shut 
 the green blinds again in the midday, and only 
 leave the air to filter in from over sun-basked fields 
 and tops of clover. 
 
 " We ll drive the ghosts out," I said, gayly. 
 
 "They ll be driv out or stirred up," said Adasha 
 Downe. "I don t s pose we can tell which till 
 we ve tried." 
 
 Mrs. Hand came up several times to see us. 
 Partly because of her niece ; partly because of the
 
 ZKRUD THROOP 1 S EXPERIMENT. Ill 
 
 cat, which was her charge, but which she could not 
 coax away with her ; and partly to ask me privately 
 every time, and with solemn emphasis, just before 
 she went away, "if we had noticed anything." 
 
 "Nothing," I told her at last, "but that black cat. 
 She haunts the house. There s something awful 
 about her. She steals round everywhere, like an 
 uneasy spirit ; but she won t come in and be tame. 
 I have met her in the rooms and on the stairs ; but 
 the minute she sees anybody, she s off like a black 
 rocket, with her tail straight up in the air, and as 
 big ! The children have found a kitten ; they pet 
 that, and the old cat stands away off and watches. 
 She is like a hunym mother, that lets her child be 
 taken in where she doesn t feel willing or worthy to 
 go. She behaves like a bad conscience." 
 
 " Zerub Throop hadn t a bad conscience. lie 
 waru t giviir, nor he warn t pious ; but he was a 
 real righteous pertickeller man."
 
 112 ZERUB Til HOOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 "I never thought of Mr. Throop, Mrs. Hand. I 
 was speaking of the cat." 
 
 "All the same. She s in it. She knows," said 
 Mrs. Hand, impressively. 
 
 " Cats are siguful creator s, about weather, an 
 sickness, an such ; an they have a feelin for other- 
 world things, too, you may depend they do. They 
 see in the dark. What does that mean? It just 
 corresponds. Do you know how hard it is to keep 
 a cat out of a dyin room, or where a corpse is ? 
 You just wait and notice." 
 
 " Oh, for mercy s sake, don t ! " I cried out, 
 almost with a shriek. 
 
 The woman was growing ghastiy. 
 
 " La ! I didn t mean anything. Like as not 
 you ll never have a chance. But that s a fact. It s 
 the reason why they stay round places so. Every 
 thing isn t gone, and they know it. Why, live 
 folks leaves something of theirselves in the places
 
 ZERUB THR OOP S EXPERIMENT. 113 
 
 where they re been and acted. Now, whenever I 
 hecrd them noises, that cat AVJIS alwers yowlin 
 alongside. Way off, maybe, or even afterwards ; 
 but she always jined in, or Amenned." 
 "Mrs. Hand, what were the noises?" 
 " I don t know. Kind of stirrin s, soimdin s ; 
 everywhere to once, distant and down-like, but 
 striigglin an risin up. I can t tell you what they 
 were ; but the old house seemed all breathin alive 
 with em, as if they might bust out anywheres. I ll 
 tell you what I think. If ever you hear anything, 
 you ll hear more. It seemed to me as if twas only 
 a kind of gettin ready, a-gropin out. You wait 
 and notice." 
 
 "If only you wouldn t please say that!" cried I, 
 nervously. The words were growing awful to me. 
 And then I laughed at myself for minding them, or 
 any of it, as I bade Mrs. Hand good-morning at 
 
 that pleasant cast side-door, opening out into the 
 
 *
 
 114 ZERUB TIIROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 warm, living breath and glory of the perfect June 
 day. 
 
 Well, the children had their games all day long; 
 their blocks and their baby-house, their tea-parties 
 and their soap-bubbles, in the bright ell-chamber ; 
 and they played horse, driving each other with gay, 
 knitted harness and reins, up and down the long 
 passages of the old house ; and they went to bed at 
 night in the west rooms, back of ours, where the 
 twilight lingered till they were fast asleep ; and I 
 said to myself, "They take up all the time, and they 
 fill the house full ; what else if there were any 
 thing could creep in? Their little plays, and 
 their little prayers, and their little dreams, and 
 their sweet sleeping breath, why, it s a home 
 now, brimming over with them. Bad vapors 
 couldn t come up through the fair, full fountain." 
 
 And so, after the happy, tired day, I went to
 
 ZKRVR rnnoor s EXPERIMENT. 115 
 
 sleep myself, and slept as having angels about 
 me. 
 
 There was one thing we had to do to that ell- 
 chamber. We had to take the door down. It was 
 a modern door, put up since Mr. Throop came ; and 
 it lifted off on its hinges. The reason we could not 
 have it on was, that it shut with a horrid spring- 
 lock. We couldn t have the children getting shut 
 in there every day, and having to be taken down 
 outside, you know, with ladders. 
 
 Eylett and I had the north-west front bedroom. 
 There were two large rooms, and a little one tucked 
 in between, on each side the hall in the main house ; 
 then the long ell ran back, and there were three or 
 four in that, besides the attics. Caroline "YVhap- 
 share slept in the large one back, on the south-east 
 side, and the children, as I said, were in the rooms 
 behind ours. Nobody slept in the ell. Adasha
 
 116 ZERUB TJIROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 Downe had the little room next to Miss "Whap- 
 share s. 
 
 Somehow, in the great rambling place, we did 
 like to keep all together at night. There would be 
 thunder-showers, and there might be burglars ; no 
 body believed in anything else or farther off. The 
 children never heard a word. I found I could 
 really trust Adasha Downe. 
 
 Whether it was the fatigue that gave us such 
 sound nights, or whether there never was anything 
 to wake us up until the night I am going to tell of, 
 I don t know ; but so it was, that, for a week or two 
 after my talk with Sarah Hand, we might have been 
 the builders and first dwellers at Throop Hill, for all 
 sign we had from the " soul of things " in its old 
 timbers or out from its far corners. 
 
 Then, all at once, something happened. 
 
 I had gone to bed one evening at ten, and had
 
 ZERUJi THROQ^S EXPERIMENT. 117 
 
 had my first two hours nap. Suddenly I sat up, 
 wide awake. 
 
 Something crashed me awake ; a great resounding 
 came with me out of my dream ; and I listened 
 
 mentally in as great an outward silence, to hear 
 
 -- 
 
 what it had been like. 
 
 A ringing, clattering, metallic sound, as if a tin 
 man s cart had been upset outside, or a great sheet 
 of thin iron been shaken or struck upon somewhere 
 in the house. 
 
 Had I heard it ? or was it only that all my nerves 
 had suddenly vibrated with some tingling shock, 
 and waked me with a feeling of such sound? It 
 was "all over, everywhere," as Mrs. Hand had ex 
 pressed it ; cither all over me, or creation per 
 haps. 
 
 Why did not everybody in the house wake up ? 
 
 While I held my breath and wondered, it came 
 again. Now I knew that I. heard it Avith my bodily
 
 118 ZERUB T/IROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 ears. But what I heard, I could neither conceive 
 iior tell. 
 
 "My gracious, Eylett ! what was that noise?" 
 
 I had my hand tight upon my husband s shoulder. 
 But Eylett was lying on his right side ; and he 
 could not hear with his left ear. 
 
 "Noise? I don t hear any. Let me move. Let 
 me get my good ear up. What was it like ? " 
 
 "I don t know. Like a ringing, or scraping, a 
 rattling, a reverberating, crashing and hollow, far 
 off and all round. In the air. As if the house was 
 a Chinese gong, and somebody was walking in the 
 middle of it." 
 
 "All that? Pooh! You ve been dreaming." 
 
 "No, I haven t. I ve been sitting straight up 
 with my eyes open." 
 
 We both sat straight up for ten minutes, and in 
 those ten minutes everything was deadly still. At
 
 ZKRUR Til ROO^S EXPERIMENT. 119 
 
 the end of them, we heard a cat s dolorous cry, 
 away off, down below, somewhere. 
 
 ; How can that cat have got in?" 
 
 " She isn t in ; she s under the piazza, probably. 
 She docs go there. You d better go to sleep, 
 Lizzie." And Eylett laid himself down again, as 
 men do when there isn t a fire nor anybody to shoot. 
 
 I knew I had better go to sleep ; but I didn t for 
 two good hours. By that time, I could hardly have 
 declared that I had heard anything, it was so long 
 ago, and I had so studied my impression to pieces, 
 trying to match it to any possibility of causation. 
 
 Of course Eylett laughed at me in the morning ; 
 and of course I let him laugh, and didn t say any 
 thing till he got through. Women never do. Only 
 when I thought he had had it out reasonably, I 
 hushed him up as regarded the rest of the family. 
 "Don t talk about it downstairs," I said. 
 
 He thought I wanted to be let alone on my own
 
 120 ZERUB TflltOOP s EXPERIMENT. 
 
 account. It was not that. I wanted the fact let 
 alone. If it was not a noise, it was an experience. 
 That was what Mrs. Hand had called it. If you 
 have the experience, what difference does the noise, 
 or whatever else it may be, make, one way or the 
 other? 
 
 The next night I went to bed in a perfectly calm 
 and equable state of mind. I can positively affirm 
 that I expected nothing except to sleep. And I did 
 sleep, as I always do, instantly and soundly, after 
 my little read, which I always indulge in at night, 
 with a candle on my small book-table beside niy 
 bed, in defiance of all old-time superstitions handed 
 down from the days of voluminous bed-curtains and 
 top-hamper, and absurdly repeated now, when we 
 lie down on our flat mattresses in their low French 
 boxes, with nothing combustible within a yard of 
 the light. 
 
 I slept my three or four early hours. I am glad
 
 THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 121 
 
 they arc the hours of " beauty-sleep ; " for they are 
 the ouly hours I am perfectly sure of. After that, I 
 begin to nap and dream, to wake, and think of 
 things, the beans I meant to have told Adasha to 
 put to soak, the jam that must be scalded over, the 
 twist and buttons to be got for the tailoress who is 
 coming Thursday, then, being thoroughly roused, 
 to go round and regulate open windows, and cover 
 up the children. 
 
 It was, perhaps, about two o clock when I was 
 again electrified into full and instant consciousness. 
 The same reverberating, radiating noise, ringing, 
 rattling, metallic, with a queer sound of struggle in 
 it, too, that suggested Pandemonium as one great 
 tin kettle, and all the little imps clawing frantically 
 to get out. 
 
 Then there came a bang. That woke Eylett. 
 Neither of us said a word, but both were instantly 
 out of bed and into dressing-gown and slippers.
 
 122 ZERVK TflROOP s EXPERIMENT. 
 
 We went into the great upper hall, and stood 
 still. Everything else stood still, too. We could 
 hear the old Willard clock ticking away composedly 
 down in the dining-room, and not a breath or move 
 ment of anything else. 
 
 We went on, down between the rooms ; as we 
 went, there came winding up from somewhere, the 
 eerie, weary, wandering wail of that uncanny cat. 
 
 Two doors moved their open cracks a little as we 
 passed, and two noses were put forth. 
 
 "Marm! Sir!" cried Adasha Downe, in a 
 tremulous whisper, "what was that racket?" 
 
 "What can have happened?" said Car Whap- 
 share. 
 
 "Don t wake the children," whispered I. "We 
 are going to see." 
 
 We went everywhere ; tip and down all the stairs, 
 into the kitchen and pantries and out-rooms. We 
 opened the side-door, and looked out into the star-
 
 XKRUB WHOOP S EXPERIMENT. 123 
 
 light. Something black dashed out between 
 Eylett s logs. 
 
 " I told you that cat was in," said I. 
 
 " Well, she s out," replied Eylett. She couldn t 
 have done it." 
 
 We found nothing to account for the clatter, not 
 even a dipper or tin pan fallen down. 
 
 We went upstairs again, and encountered the 
 noses waiting. 
 
 "What Avas it?" came the two whispers again. 
 
 " It doesn t seem to have been anything," an 
 swered Eylett. 
 
 "Marrn!" said Adasha Downe, breathlessly, 
 " that s awful ! " 
 
 "No, it isn t," I retorted, with decision. "It s 
 quite comfortable. Don t frighten the children." 
 
 In the morning I was dressed early, and went 
 through the rooms upstairs with a vague feeling as
 
 124 ZERUB Til ROOF S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 if I might see by daylight where the sound had 
 bceii. 
 
 There was a tin horse on the entry floor, lying 
 peaceably upon its side, with that touchingly help 
 less and resigned expression that children s dolls 
 and horses have in the cast-off positions in which 
 little hands have left them ; there was the usual 
 litter of blocks and toys in the play-room, but noth 
 ing seemed as if it had borne part in any m}"stical 
 orgie. The summer sun streamed in, and filled the 
 chambers to the brim with cheer and splendor. 
 
 Coming out of the ell-room, I noticed the reg 
 ister-valve slipped slightly out of its place, and rest 
 ing with one edge just over upon the floor. I 
 pushed it back, and wondered who had moved it. 
 I supposed Adasha must have lifted it out, in sweep 
 ing, to brush the dust from the spreading mouth 
 of the pipe. I mentioned it to her when I went 
 downstairs, and asked her to be careful. It would
 
 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 125 
 
 not do for the children to get an idea of its coming 
 off. Adasha told me she had not "tctched" it. 
 She didn t know it would come off. It was queer ; 
 but I supposed it "happened " somehow, and then I 
 forgot all about it. 
 
 We had two still nights, and then in the third 
 a rattle and a slam woke me up. I missed the re 
 verberation, if it had occurred. In fact, I did not 
 connect this with the other. It sounded like some 
 one fumbling at a blind or lock, and then a sudden 
 jar, as of blind or door flung back. 
 
 " It s burglars this time ! " I whispered loudly in 
 Eylett s car. " I heard them trying something, and 
 then it banged." 
 
 " Burglars don t bang," said Eylett, sleepily. 
 
 " There isn t any wind, and things don t bang 
 themselves," said I. "You d better get up." 
 
 So we had another promenade. It came to noth 
 ing, like the rest.
 
 126 ZERUJI TH ROOF S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 " Are we never to get any sleep in this house ? " 
 asked Eylett, in a melancholy way. " Don t hear 
 anything more, Lizzie, if you can help it." 
 
 "No, I won t," I replied dutifully, keeping the 
 rest of my thoughts to myself. 
 
 In the morning, before I went down the back 
 stairs to the kitchen to look after breakfast, stop 
 ping at the play-room, as I had a habit of doing, 
 drawn by the pleasantness of the place where the 
 children had been yesterday and were going to be 
 to-day, and taking a glance at the sunshine and the 
 toys that seemed conspiring a good time together, 
 I saw that register off again, really off, this time, 
 an inch or two. 
 
 Could it have been that that banged in the night ! 
 I went back and called Eylett. 
 
 " Just look ! " said I. " How do you suppose it 
 came so ? " 
 
 "Children," said he.
 
 ZERUB TH ROOT S EXPERIMENT. 127 
 
 " Xo," I affirmed positively. "I found it so be 
 fore ; and I have Avatched. They never meddle 
 with it; and, besides, it was not so at bedtime. 
 AVc undressed them here. Do you suppose I 
 shouldn t have noticed it?" 
 
 "Spirits, then," suggested Eylett, meekly, as 
 driven to a logieal end. " It s their style. Like 
 their impudence." 
 
 Pshaw ! " said I, which was precisely what he 
 wanted me to say. 
 
 For all that, the same night there was a greater 
 din and rampage than ever ; and the next morning 
 there was the register fairly oft* and aw T ay, wheeled 
 completely from the hole, and laid with nearly its 
 entire circumference upon the carpet. 
 
 I called them all then, Eylett, Caroline, and 
 Adasha Dowiie. It was early. The children were 
 only just waking up, and beginning to throw the
 
 128 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 pillows at each other, or to pull on stockings heel- 
 side before. 
 
 "That ghost comes up the register-pipe," said 
 Adasha Downe, solemnly, looking into the hole as 
 into the mouth of the pit. 
 
 " And the ghost is " cried I, with a sudden illu 
 mination. 
 
 "Never in this world ! " broke in Eylett, catching 
 my idea, and putting the extinguisher on before I 
 had fairly shown its little blaze. 
 
 "Just lift that register," said he. 
 
 I put my hands under the two valves, an iron 
 and a brass one. I suppose they weighed six or 
 seven pounds. Could indeed a well, the object 
 of my suspicion lift them up ? 
 
 "I don t care," said I. "We ll see. I ll sit up 
 this very night." 
 
 On the whole, however, when bedtime came, I 
 decided to take that first nap, and trust to the usual
 
 ZKltUB T/IKOOP S EXPERIMENT. 129 
 
 reveille for warning. If I was right in my convic 
 tions, it would give me time enough. I am a light 
 sleeper. I always hear the first stir. 
 
 I put a light in one of the ell-rooms, and set the 
 door open upon the passage. I left another burn 
 ing in my little sewing-room, back in its farther 
 corner, and shaded so that it shone faintly out 
 through the play-room. 
 
 A cross passage led over from opposite the head 
 of the back staircase, between the rooms, to a 
 linen-closet. Standing in this opening, or just 
 down the first step of the staircase, one could com 
 mand the whole scene of action, and nothing could 
 pass in or out without observation. 
 
 I laid my dressing-gown and slippers in instant 
 readiness. In fact, everybody else did the same ; 
 and we all slept, so to say, upon our arms ; for 
 everybody had petitioned, " Call me, if you hear 
 anything."
 
 130 ZERUB TJIROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 Somehow, we were a little later that evening than 
 usual ; so that, with my ordinary and extraordinary 
 preparations for the night, it was eleven o clock, 
 and the others were all asleep, when I was about to 
 put out my own candle. Just as I had my hand 
 upon the extinguisher, it began, the noise. 
 
 That frantic, struggling, scratching, ringing, in 
 fernal sound, coming away up from depths below, 
 and echoing everywhere. 
 
 " Quick ! there it is already ! " I cried to Eylett, 
 and in the same moment was off myself. I darted 
 in at the two doors on my way, and wakened the 
 girls with one shake each. 
 
 " Don t be ten seconds, or else don t come ! " I 
 said, and hurried on. And in less than a minute we 
 were all upon the spot, huddled, listening, lying in 
 wait, in staircase and entry. 
 
 There was no doubt, standing there, where the 
 sound came from. Up that long pipe from
 
 ZKRUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 131 
 
 two floors beloAv, it tore and grappled, grated and 
 resounded ; came on, with pauses, higher and higher ; 
 at last was on a level with ourselves. Then a fierce 
 stirring and grinding, a seizing of hold and pur 
 chase. And then the valves clattered, as if pushed 
 against, ineffectually, once or twice; then, with a 
 great hoist, they raised, swivelled, clashing round, 
 and fell with an awful bang upon the floor. 
 
 That demoniac cat walked forth. 
 
 It was a positive fact. We saw it with our eyes. 
 If anything in this story my part or anybody s 
 else is embellished, it is not that. 
 
 " I told you so ! " said I to Eylett. 
 
 And Eylett could not say a word. 
 
 We were all down cellar next morning, after our 
 early breakfast, investigating ; and the more we 
 investigated, the more we wondered. 
 
 Out of the brick dome of the furnace, high up, 
 came the tin pipe that ran horizontally one-third or
 
 132 ZERUB TfTROOF s EXPERIMENT. 
 
 more the length of the house, then up, twelve feet 
 perhaps, through the lower story and the two floors. 
 
 We opened the iron door of the air-chamber from 
 which the pipes radiated, and looked in. There 
 was only this one that started laterally ; all the rest 
 sprung from the top. The furnace itself was built 
 close against a brick partition which divided the 
 cellar. A heavy padlocked door shut off the for 
 ward part, which had been Mr. Throop s wine-cel 
 lar, and where all remained as he had left it. 
 Through some opening in the back, accessible only 
 from this locked division, must come the supply of 
 air to feed the furnace-chamber, and circulate in the 
 pipes. Through this, also, by ways known only to 
 herself, must have crept the cat, and likewise cir 
 culated. 
 
 Into that dark, hollow space, up its rough-cast 
 sides, into the small, utterly obscure aperture, 
 along those twenty feet of mystery and uncertainty,
 
 ZEIiUB THfiOOP S EXPERIMENT. 133 
 
 one would think this was exploit and marvel 
 enough ; but up that twelve feet perpendicular, with 
 nothing but the lapping of the tin sheets to claw by, 
 and the bracing of her body between the narrow 
 sides ! Beyond that, the closed register at the top ! 
 "What sort of faith, or instinct, or impishness, was 
 it that led her on? We stood in utter, awed be 
 wilderment. It was almost stranger than a ghost. 
 
 One thing was certain, we could not let the play 
 have a run of a hundred nights. Something must 
 be stopped up, or come down. 
 
 "The hole in the furnace," suggested Caroline. 
 
 " We can t get at it." 
 
 " Nail something over the register." 
 
 "Then we should have the noise, all the same, 
 and the poor cat would have to tumble twelve feet, 
 and crawl twenty backward. She deserves better 
 for her smartness." 
 
 " Unhitch the pipe."
 
 134 ZERUB THKOOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 "We can t have workmen into the house, or alter 
 anything." 
 
 "I ll do it myself," said Adasha Downe. And 
 she straightway ran up the cellar staircase, beside 
 which passed the pipe, and laid brave hold. 
 
 A neck of iron was set in the brick-work of the 
 furnace, around which fitted the tin sheet. Adasha 
 pulled and pulled ; but what could she do with 
 twenty or thirty feet of metal cylinder, and years 
 of rust? Eylett stood still considering, while she 
 strove unheeded. Then he went and got a hammer 
 and a chisel. Then I climbed up on a barrel, on the 
 other side of the pipe to where Adasha was. Caro 
 line took the children up the staircase, and kept 
 them there peering down at us in a little eager heap 
 from its head. 
 
 Eylett hammered and loosened, and we pulled. 
 We all pulled. Eylett twisted ; and presently, all 
 of a sudden, some weak joint gave way above, and,
 
 ZKRUK T/inoor s EXPERIMENT. 135 
 
 at the same moment, the neck yielded, and crash ! 
 down came the whole thing, revenging itself upon 
 us by its compliance. 
 
 " O mamma ! mamma ! " cried out Robbie ; for I 
 and my barrel had tumbled down. Adasha seated 
 herself very hard upon the stairs. 
 
 "Are yon hurt, Lizzie ?" cried Eylett, coming in 
 a hurry. 
 
 No. Nobody was hurt. Only the pipe was sep 
 arated in two or three places, the air was full of 
 dust, and we felt as if we had pulled half the house 
 down. 
 
 "Phew! phew!" said Eylett; and brushed his 
 hands against each other, and looked at the wreck. 
 
 He lifted a long piece, and set it up on end 
 against the wall. Out of it, as he did so, fell a 
 great deal more dust, and other things which we 
 perceived as the dust subsided. A great many pins, 
 of course ; an old piece of black comb ; a red
 
 136 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 chessman ; nutshells ; a brass thimble ; hair-pins ; 
 corks ; a handful of coppers that probably used to 
 roll out of Zerub Throop s trousers-pockets when he 
 pulled them off; in the midst of the heap, some 
 thing round and bright, like a silver ball. 
 
 The children little wreckers that they always 
 are were down again by this time, notwithstand 
 ing remonstrances. They couldn t help it ; they 
 kept minding, and going up, and irresistibly grav 
 itating down again, in little sprinkles, one and two 
 at a time. 
 
 Eobbie pounced upon the shining thing. 
 
 "Oh, I speak for that ! Is it a silver dollar, 
 mamma ? " 
 
 Poor Eobbie had heard traditions of silver dol 
 lars, earned and saved up in his father s childhood ; 
 but his little experimental knowledge stretched not 
 beyond the days of scrip.
 
 ZERUB TH HOOP S EXPERIMENT. 137 
 
 "Oh, no!" I said, foolishly. "That isn t a dol 
 lar. It isn t anything." 
 
 " Not anything-, mamma? Why why here it 
 
 "I ll tell you what it is," said Blossom, standing 
 daintily on the stairs out of the dust, with her fresh 
 pique frock, and her little white stockings. "It s a 
 fairy ball, and Miss Whapshare will tell us a story 
 about it." 
 
 "So I will," said Car, seizing her opportunity. 
 And she got them all away, up out of the cellar. 
 
 What she told them I don t know, about fairy 
 balls that opened, and had wonders inside ; and 
 fairy balls that only rolled and rolled and rolled, 
 and led people along through forests and among 
 mountains, and out into some paradise perhaps, of 
 elf-land, at last ; but when I had changed my dusty 
 dress, and washed my face and hands, and seen 
 Eylett brushed up and off to the train, I found them
 
 138 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 all together in the play-room ; Car, with the ball ill 
 her hand, and Robbie and Blossom beseeching her 
 to open it. 
 
 "Then it will be spoiled," she said, "if it isn t an 
 opening ball. I think it is a rolling one. It must 
 have rolled down the register. Who knows where 
 it will roll next?" 
 
 Behind me up the stairs, in a fashion of privilege 
 she had taken, came suddenly Sarah Hand. 
 
 And, of course, then came the story, all about 
 the cat, and the pipe, and the ball. 
 
 "You see a great tin piece of the house came 
 down when they pulled," said Robbie, " and broke ; 
 and everything came out, cents and pencils and 
 everything." 
 
 "Droppiu s and sweepin s," said Sarah Hand. 
 "That s how they came there." 
 
 " Not my fairy ball," said Robbie. "That rolled 
 itself. Nobody knows where it rolled from. Way
 
 ZE11UB mROOP S EXPERIMENT. 139 
 
 down and down, and over and over, and all through 
 the world." 
 
 " I ll tell yon where it rolled from," said Sarah 
 Hand, taking it up. "I remember it. It s one of 
 the things that used to lay round on Zerub Throop s 
 table. I know em all by heart; the things I used 
 to turn over and dust, and put back careful. I 
 noticed that, because it looked as if there might be 
 something did up in it. He fixed it his own self 
 .one day after dinner. I recollect the day too. 
 
 Cause Miss , he d had a visitor, and we d had a 
 
 talk. I s posc he was jest settin thinkin . It s 
 kinder awful, coinin across things so, after folks is 
 dead and -gone." 
 
 And Mrs. Hand laid back the ball on Caroline 
 Whapshare s lap. 
 
 Caroline took it up as if by a sudden impulse, 
 and picked out one dflgc of the folded foil. A little 
 tremor passed over her.
 
 140 ZERUR TflROOP s EXPERIMENT. 
 
 " What is the matter ? " said I. 
 
 "Nothing. I shivered, I don t know why." 
 
 "Una ! " said Mrs. Hand, and looked solemn. 
 
 " I think that might as well be unrolled, and done 
 with, now the story is told," I said briskly ; for the 
 children s eyes were getting big. " We shall be 
 having little nightmares of the ball travelling about, 
 if we don t take care." 
 
 Then Caroline turned back corner after corner, 
 edge after edge, until two ends were opened out. 
 It was no longer a ball, but a little roll. There 
 was something in it. 
 
 Paper, written paper, folded and coiled. 
 
 " I feel as if it were a secret," said Caroline, as 
 the last doubling of tin-foil fell away, and left it in 
 her hand. 
 
 " Perhaps it is. But there is nothing hidden " 
 
 I stopped. Car had got tl^e paper open, had
 
 ZERUB THKOOP S EXPERIMENT. 141 
 
 given one glance at it, and every bit of color bad 
 flashed instantly out of her face. 
 
 " Mrs. Bright ! What does it mean ? " 
 
 And poor little Caroline burst out crying. That 
 saved her from fainting away. 
 
 I took the creased and cnrled-up scrap. 
 
 " For value received of Miles WJicvpsJiare, in the 
 year one thousand eight hundred and forty-five, I 
 promise and direct to be paid to Mrs. Miles Whap- 
 share, widow of said Miles Whapshare, or her heirs- 
 at-law, six months after my decease, or on the pres 
 entation of tJds paper to my executors at any time 
 witliin five years from such decease, Thirty-five 
 thousand dollars. 
 
 "ZEEUBBABEL Timoor." 
 
 I turned it over. 
 
 " October 19th, I860. 
 
 " Left to Providence. 
 
 " Payable to order; that is, on turning up."
 
 142 ZERUB TffROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 We sent for Rufus Abell and for Dr. Plaice. 
 
 It was all quite plain and strong ; as strong as it 
 was queer. 
 
 " This is the thing that was provided for," said 
 Rufus Abell, just as unmoved as if he could possibly 
 have expected it. I suppose Mr. Abell had got 
 over surprises long ago. 
 
 Arthur and Caroline went home together to tell 
 Mrs. Whapshare. 
 
 I watched them go down the hill in the sunshine, 
 gathering it, as it were, around and after them, to 
 carry down in one great golden rush into the corner 
 house that had been full of little crowding clouds 
 of care so long. I thought of that bit of creased-up 
 paper in Rufus Abell s wallet, and how it would go 
 to probate with the will, and settle everything, and 
 how strange, and changed, and wonderful it all was. 
 And I bit my tongue to try if I was awake ; and 
 then I turned round and said to Mrs. Hand :
 
 ZERUK THROOf S EXPERIMENT. 143 
 
 " To think it should all be by means of that 
 cat ! " 
 
 "It s very well," said Mrs. Hand, with slow 
 significance, "to lay it all off on to her. But what 
 possessed the cat? It s like the pigs in the New 
 Testament. If a ghost wanted something 
 ont of a register-pipe, he might very likely need 
 some sort of a cat s-paw to help hisself with." 
 
 Was it a cat, or was it a ghftst, or was it simply 
 Providence? It was the question left on our minds. 
 We thought, humbly and honestly, that it might be 
 all three. We put this and that together that we 
 had learned, and we believed it just possible, among 
 the mysteries, that Zerub Throop had at last "come 
 across Providence," and had been set to work per 
 haps with such links and agencies on earth as he 
 had established for himself. 
 
 At any rate, the Ghost Story and the Cat Story
 
 144 ZERUB THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 got so mixed up and merged, that they were never 
 popularly disentangled. 
 
 We could never get any other girl than Adasha 
 Downe to live with us at Throop Hill, though we 
 came there three summers. 
 
 " The owld man might ha left somcthin else that 
 needed seein after; who knows?" the Irish said. 
 
 Caroline Whapshare and Arthur Plaice were 
 married in September. Mrs. Whapshare gave 
 them five thousand dollars. 
 
 "There would be that," she said, " for each of the 
 children, and the same for her own part. They 
 should have their share as they came to want it. 
 She d done waiting enough herself for the whole 
 family." 
 
 Miss Suprema Sharpe had a kind of congestive 
 fever that fall. She took cold at the wedding. But 
 the doctor did not think that was quite the whole 
 of it. There was a feverish fulness that must de-
 
 ZERVD THROOP S EXPERIMENT. 145 
 
 tcrmme somewhere, a greater pressure than the 
 ordinary circulation could carry off. 
 
 A ghost-story, a wedding, and a fortune, what 
 they did with it, and how they behaved about it, 
 all this, you see to come right in here, like an 
 avalanche, at the corner, to be thoroughly sifted and 
 discussed, and realized and criticised ; well, it could 
 not have gone much harder with Suprema Sharpe ; 
 and if you Knew her as we do, Dutton, you would 
 understand. 
 
 It isn t a matter to make fun of, though, and I 
 wouldn t have you think I do. It s an awful fact, 
 and a solemn retribution. There is such a thing as 
 a vacuum in heart, or brain, or life, by which the 
 surrounding atmosphere has to press in with fifteen 
 uncompensated pounds to the inch. And that is 
 the way the burden of everybody s else affairs comes 
 down at last upon the Sharpes. 
 10
 
 146 ZERUB TIIROOP S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 That couldn t have been in Dante ; could it, 
 Dutton dear? 
 
 But if Dante had come after Kepler and Newton 
 and a few other folks I guess it would have 
 been.
 
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