THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 ALUMNUS 
 BOOK FUND 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET 
 
 A NEIGHBORHOOD STORY 
 
 BY 
 
 MRS. A. D. T. ^WHITNEY 
 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 1891 
 
ALUMNUS 
 
 Copyright, 1890, 
 BT ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. lloughton & Company. 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ASCUTNEY STEEET is a shady little thoroughfare, 
 running westerly between Midland Avenue, where 
 the horse-cars from the neighboring city pass, to 
 Katahdin Street, which crosses it at the top. It 
 is in a comfortable suburb where a new district 
 has been built up on a boom and christened with 
 a pretty name, Wellswood ; it is pleasant and 
 quiet, with houses of moderate air and pretension 
 occupying the not very large lots on either side. 
 
 These houses, however, have certain modern 
 touches about them, which link them, as it were 
 generically, with the prouder mansions which do 
 not stand on streets, but have private approaches 
 from the common highway, and occupy the aristo 
 cratic seclusion of their own wide grounds. It is 
 the way with houses and people, in these days ; 
 some touch of art, as truly as of nature, makes the 
 whole world kin. 
 
 These little houses in Ascutney Street had, some 
 
 023 
 
2 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 of them, their Dutch doors with glazed upper halves ; 
 some of them their projecting upper story and 
 hooded windows ; all had at least some eccentricity 
 of color or contrasting of clapboard work and 
 shingles. So Ascutney Street took rank, as it had 
 been laid out to do, with pronounced gentility, 
 albeit in a small way. 
 
 The people of Wellswood had conceived the idea 
 of making the mountains sponsors for their avenues 
 and byways ; and the brisk demand for lots laid 
 out on Ascutney Street vindicated their sagacity. 
 
 Ascutney Street was "as good as Katahdin 
 Street," and Katahdin Street was "as good as 
 Shasta Street," way out on the new western limit. 
 So of course the syllogistic deduction was, that As 
 cutney Street was as good as Shasta Street, which 
 is to say as good as anything on the planet need 
 to be. 
 
 The horse-car conductors and the little boys called 
 it " Scntney Street ; " but some travelers call the 
 great Vermont peak so, which does not belittle it 
 at all ; and the dwellers on the happy line gave it 
 its three distinct syllables with religious fidelity. 
 
 There were two or three persons on Ascutney 
 Street who knew people on Katahdin Street. These 
 accordingly ruled on Ascutney, and led the little 
 variations and advances of style in cards and invita 
 tions, dishes and garnitures. In Katahdin Street, 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 3 
 
 again, a few favored ones had friends over on 
 Shasta ; and ruled, in turn, their middle province. 
 On Shasta, Heaven knew who ruled, or whence ; as 
 Ascutney emulated Katahdin, and Katahdin Shasta, 
 it was an unspoken creed, I think, at the remoter 
 end of the social order, that those high and ineffable 
 existences did simply " emulate the angel choir, and 
 only live to love and praise." 
 
 And why not emulate up and up, until one 
 reaches the angels? The principle is good, is 
 Bible doctrine and inspiration ; but possibly the 
 grandest principle may, in practical and partial 
 application, get turned inside out. Perhaps what 
 they did on Ascutney Street was to mistake the 
 outside for the in. Or, the links all there, and the 
 line of progression plain, perhaps there befell an 
 inevitable catastrophe of too conscious evolution ; 
 the tadpoles being in a hurry, and pulling off their 
 own tails before they had done with them. 
 
 Only one or two ladies on Ascutney Street had 
 two servants ; only three or four more " kept a 
 girl " at all. The rest did their own housework, 
 with help hired in, and with a reticent dignity, 
 nobly superior to any circumstance involved, except 
 the carefully guarded contingency of being caught 
 at it. The devices for escaping this were individual 
 and original, I may add transparent ; if they had 
 not been, there would not have been so many sepa- 
 
4 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 rate inventions diligently sought out. Each one 
 knew perfectly well her neighbors ways, in certain 
 things; each, nevertheless, fondly imagined that 
 her own brighter contrivance was her own secret. 
 To do them justice, the credit of the whole street 
 was so much at every heart that they would not 
 have found each other out, out loud, if they 
 could. 
 
 Mrs. Hilum had it all to herself, the getting up 
 before sunrise, and washing the insides of her parlor 
 windows before the break of day. Mrs. Inching 
 had a costume, in which her own baby would not 
 have cried for her, under whose disguise she boldly 
 went forth of a Saturday forenoon and not only 
 washed the outsides of hers, but cleaned off the 
 piazza floor afterward with broom and scrubbing 
 pail. And Miss Rebecca Rickstack, who lived all 
 alone in serenest neatness and comfort in the little 
 brown and primrose cottage on the corner of Thorn 
 Lane, and whom the good managing sense of the 
 ambitious community would hardly have justified 
 if she had kept a girl, even Miss Rickstack made 
 her one little dodge by choosing moonless evenings 
 to shake her rugs and doormats out on her back 
 grass-plot, instead of otherwise breaking into an 
 extra hour of counted service reckoned at the 
 quarter cent a minute. Nobody ever saw the rugs 
 shaken ; the inference was plain ; but if Ascutney 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 5 
 
 Street folks drew inferences, they drew them for 
 the most part silently, and stopped short of 
 references. 
 
 Half a dozen housewives economized by sending 
 out the real chorewoman to perform these obvious 
 labors, while in the inner sanctity they ironed the 
 clothes which the hireling had washed the day be 
 fore, and hung out in the sight of the neighborhood. 
 To put the proper Ascutney Street face upon things 
 was the one thing required by public opinion ; the 
 only unpardonable sin would have been to com 
 promise the common self-respect by departing 
 openly from the prescribed lines. If there were 
 not a cook and waitress in every house, matters had 
 merely to go on as if there were, without confession 
 or exposure, and the status was maintained. 
 
 Ascutney Street was embarrassed in two points 
 by this tacit observance : one fertile subject of con 
 versation was limited, and the " answering " of bells 
 became a problem. 
 
 Always to go to one s own door was too patent ; 
 it was alsj} very often inconvenient, or even im 
 practicable. Two elegant customs were adopted in 
 general avoidance of this dilemma. 
 
 Ascutney Street folks had " afternoons." They 
 divided a fortnight amongst them, and each lady 
 received once in the two weeks. And for between 
 times, somebody had found out that on Katahdhi 
 
6 ASCUTNEY STREET, 
 
 Street, where there was much social running across 
 lawns and impromptu dropping in, a ribbon was 
 tied around a doorbell in sign of absence or inevit 
 able engagement. So it soon came to pass that 
 here, through the busy hours of every day, there 
 was a delicate fluttering, as of poised butterflies, of 
 violet, crimson, blue, and yellow knots, in varying 
 shades, all along from porch to porch ; and when 
 these were withdrawn, the hostesses were apt to be 
 seated in their front windows, with their afghan- 
 work or their more delicate sewing, or even with 
 some new book that was being so talked and printed 
 and preached about that it was equivalent to not 
 understanding the American language not to have 
 read it, and thus they were prepared to meet, at 
 the entrance, with cordial alacrity, any visitor who 
 might approach. 
 
 The beauty of this system of signals was not only 
 its refinement, but its sincerity ; they told no lies, 
 yet they offended no one ; they were daintily polite. 
 
 Ascutney Street certainly gained by its two em 
 barrassments ; it reached at least two points of a 
 true high-breeding : it dropped the servant-topic 
 out of its talk, and it took up a graceful social 
 veracity. 
 
 There is no endeavor at ascent, at whatever low 
 incline of angle, that does not lift a little in the 
 perpendicular. Ascutney Street had learned a 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 1 
 
 primer lesson ; it invaded no one s business, so far 
 as private and unseen domestic arrangements were 
 concerned ; when it came to obvious facts and out 
 ward conformities to a severe local standard, it 
 discussed these with the cruelties of self-defense 
 that can risk no mistake of mercy. 
 
 Yet even these severities were a training ; per 
 haps we can see how the world at large has come 
 up, through some such stages, to the perception and 
 claim of a more interior elevation ; to the sense that 
 at least there should be no " bad form " of habit 
 or intercourse incongruous with the high character- 
 tone to which u noblesse oblige." The forces of 
 the kingdom of heaven bend even our earthliness 
 
 O 
 
 toward itself. 
 
 The mere adoption of that word " form " shows 
 much. It is an acknowledgment that act and 
 conversation are but exponents of the hidden and 
 only essential reality. 
 
 But I have a scrap of story to tell, and it is time 
 I had fairly begun it. 
 
 Jane Gregory had a scrap of a story; a very 
 scrap ; the most inconsequent trifle. And yet it 
 was a first page, hardly that, even, a broken 
 sentence, of something that might with some 
 other girl, in a book, for instance, have had a 
 captivating middle and a lovely end. Jane sat and 
 conned it over, this little " to be continued ; " in 
 
8 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 an innocent way, half-conscious that she did so, in 
 quiet, lonely intervals that came to her often, over 
 her monotonous work or in her even more monot 
 onous resting times. 
 
 Jane Gregory was a seamstress. She went out 
 at a dollar and a quarter a day. She felt she must 
 insist on that quarter, for her room, with the partial 
 or occasional board required, cost her four and a 
 half a week. Out of the rest had to come her 
 clothes, her car-fares, and her coal and kerosene. 
 
 Jane Gregory was as pretty as it is at all judicious 
 or even comfortable for a poor, unsheltered little 
 seamstress to be. She knew that beauty was a 
 snare ; she had experienced that it was sometimes 
 an embarrassment ; she knew also that beauty was 
 as grass, that it could not last long, especially 
 with a hard-worked, hurried little sewing-woman, 
 always anxious about darts, and arms eyes, and 
 drapes. Yet it was a great comfort to her just to 
 be pretty ; to have that much of the joy and glory 
 of a living thing ; to possess, in her very own self, 
 that much of the inheritance of the earth, of which 
 else she had so very little. And as to the grass- 
 iness and fadiness, well, she remembered the 
 verse about " so clothing the grass of the field," and 
 thought, in her simple sort of interpretation, that 
 if God did that, He would so much more do the 
 better other ; He would so much more, somehow, 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 9 
 
 clothe that real, waiting, wanting life of hers. The 
 grass withered, the flower faded ; but the " word," 
 what was that but the intent and promise under 
 the making of the grass and flower ? that should 
 be kept forever. She did not exactly preach it out, 
 but the texts came to her ; she caught a glimpse 
 through them, and she kept on with her cheerful, 
 small, vague expectancy. 
 
 And she treasured up her one morsel of adven 
 ture ; a thing that had happened to her one day, 
 that brought to her a momentary share in something 
 she had seen making the daily life and common 
 place of girls more fortunate. It was a deferent 
 little service, rendered to her with a pleasure of 
 rendering evidenced even through the restraint of 
 well-bred strangerhood ; a restraint that was of 
 itself the finer compliment. 
 
 The occasion was a troublesome little accident ; 
 but it had put her, for the brief while, in the dignity 
 and privilege of her womanhood. She had been 
 gently cared for by a gentle man. I like to separate 
 those two words ; they are so commonly run to 
 gether, to the annihilation of their meaning. 
 
 It was on the train ; she was going from Wing 
 Street station down to Briarwood, for a day s work. 
 There were a good many persons getting on ; some 
 slow, old people, and some women with children ; 
 besides those individuals who are on every train, 
 
10 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 who do not know which car they wish to get into, 
 and who block the platforms. Jane let them all 
 have way, and came up the last ; she was scarcely 
 inside the door when the train started. At the 
 same moment, some one just before her stepped 
 backward again and crowded her. She held by the 
 rail, and the brakeman shouted a warning ; the un 
 decided passenger went forward, and the danger 
 was over ; but a sudden whirl of wind it was a 
 gusty day seized Jane s hat, and carried it back, 
 past the line of moving carriages, quite out of sight 
 and beyond rescue. They were gaining headway, 
 and there was nothing to be done ; even the brake- 
 man had not seen, for he had already turned his 
 back, holding his own hat on, to close the door of 
 the opposite car. Another person, however, seated 
 just inside that opposite door, had noted the mis 
 hap, and the swift consternation that flashed over 
 the sweet, unshielded face. 
 
 Jane Gregory slipped into the first seat, the 
 one in the corner, behind everybody. She untied 
 a little scarf from her throat and put it over her 
 head, knotting it under her chin. The young man 
 opposite soliloquized silently. 
 
 " Some women would have jumped off, or tried 
 to ; nine in ten would have screamed out ; almost 
 any pretty girl like her would have shown some 
 mixed consciousness, of annoyance or adventure; 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 11 
 
 would have laughed, have blushed, have been ex 
 cited. She is simply troubled ; and she behaves so 
 that not three people know." 
 
 He came to the conclusion that only two persons 
 knew ; then he wondered what she would do ; then 
 it occurred to him to do it himself. While this brief 
 process of thought occupied his mind, he continued, 
 without staring, to read the charming features, the 
 modest attitude, absolutely quiet. Then he drew 
 forth a notecase, and took from that a slip of paper ; 
 it had an " I$7 " in the corner* He wrote a couple 
 of lines rapidly, turned, and glanced down the car. 
 The conductor had advanced halfway, collecting 
 tickets. He went to him and handed him what he 
 had written. 
 
 " Send this back to Wing Street from the next 
 station, will you ? " he asked, and tendered also a 
 coin with the message. 
 
 The conductor read the slip and put back the 
 money. " That s all right," he said. 
 
 The message on the recipe blank read : " Lady s 
 hat blown off train at Wing Street ; send in by next 
 to parcel-room in town." 
 
 Still, what would she do ? She might say noth 
 ing, but leave the train herself at the next station. 
 She might not have been proceeding all the way to 
 town. As he reached his forward seat again, he 
 thought this ; he gave another glance across at the 
 
12 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 quiet head, the figure as reposeful as if nothing un 
 usual suggested a restlessness, the face thoughtful 
 as with some uncertain consideration. They were 
 slowing up now; as the brakeman chanted out 
 " Pi-e-n Avenoo ! " the doctor passed him and en 
 tered the next car before the movement of pas 
 sengers prevented. He shielded Jane, holding her 
 self so still there in the corner, her slightly covered 
 head turned away from the few approaching faces ; 
 he stood before her, his own hat in his hand. 
 
 " I beg pardon," he said ; " but there has been a 
 dispatch sent back for the lost hat ; it will be at the 
 station in town within ten minutes of our arrival. 
 If you will keep your seat, or step into the 
 inward baggage-room, it will be attended to im 
 mediately." 
 
 Jane Gregory looked up at him with a quick 
 flush, but the least movement possible. It was only 
 that lifting of the head, that upraising of the eye 
 lids, the showing of a relief and thankfulness in the 
 relaxation of little muscles that let go the expression 
 of anxiety. 
 
 " I thank you very much," she said simply. 
 
 " Where did the girl learn it all ? " he wondered. 
 The very freshness and genuineness of her intona 
 tion every clear syllable uttered as if she meant 
 just that and all of it was not like the usedness of 
 the favored class of women, whose self-possession was 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 13 
 
 the careless certainty of attention, whose thanks 
 were mechanically interjectional. Yet the compo 
 sure was all there ; not a taint of common, underbred 
 consciousness ; she might have been a Vere de Vere. 
 But she wore a very plain, yes, an old, dress ; and 
 carried a very ordinary little satchel. Upon this, 
 the doctor, as he bowed and turned to leave her, 
 noticed the J. G. in indented letters. It gave him a 
 curious sensation ; a ridiculous feeling of proprietor 
 ship in the little bag. The letters were the begin 
 nings of his own two names. 
 
 Jane sat still; she looked at no one, thereby 
 assuming, with a passive dignity, that no one looked 
 at her. If her beautiful hair had been of a darker 
 tint, rolled up, as it was, and crowning her head 
 with its twisted waves, it would have been hardly 
 observable, perhaps, that she was unbonneted ; but 
 the fair shining of the soft blonde coils gave no 
 evasion of indiscriminateness ; it was uncompromis 
 ing in its contrast with the bit of dark blue silk. 
 
 She would be late for her day ; she would have 
 to take off the extra quarter ; there would be her 
 added fare to town, one of her trip coupons must 
 be given now, instead of her way ticket ; and there 
 would be another eight cents back again to Briar- 
 wood. 
 
 Those were the things she thought of while she 
 took it all so staidly, and made no sign. But her 
 
14 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 hat would not be lost, and it was almost a new one ; 
 and she would not even have to walk, bareheaded 
 or nearly so, up the long train-house to the waiting- 
 room, with the crowd. 
 
 Her thought came back with that to the kind 
 ness which had cared for her. If it had been given 
 by an old lady, she would have felt warm, grateful. 
 Who can blame her, if her pulse were a little 
 quicker with her gratitude, because it was the chiv 
 alrous service to a woman from a man? It was 
 something that she had a woman s right to, in the 
 world ; that in her world, was not apt, in just such 
 beautiful sort, to come to her. 
 
 When, some five and twenty minutes after, wait 
 ing at the far end of the great station-house, the 
 car she had left already filling with an outward 
 bound company, she saw coming rapidly down the 
 platform the same fine, well-carried figure, the same 
 pleasant, handsome face looking at her as it ap 
 proached with a friendly, not intrusive recognition, 
 and perceived the somewhat clumsily pinned paper 
 parcel which her fellow-passenger was bringing her 
 with as easy and graceful handling as if it had 
 been a daintily wrapped bunch of flowers, she cer 
 tainly did experience a sudden tingle of exhilarant 
 surprise. 
 
 " He is coming back with it himself ! He might 
 have given it to a brakeman, or anybody ! " 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 15 
 
 She could not help being pleased, glad; she 
 who was only little Jane Gregory, going out to sew 
 for the day. She had never been so attended to 
 before. But there was no ordinary, silly, visible 
 elation ; she was as composedly modest as before ; 
 her eyes were almost pathetic as they lighted up 
 again so softly with the touch of happiness in the 
 courtesy that had come to her, and she said again, 
 with that gentle, even emphasis, "I thank you, 
 very much." 
 
 Dr. J. G. (we will be content for the present 
 with knowing only as much of his personality as he 
 knew of Jane s) received her thanks with a smile ; he 
 answered them with "No need; it was no trouble." 
 Then he lifted his hat, with perhaps a half second s 
 lingering in his parting glance at her face that it 
 was certainly " no trouble" to look at, and 
 departed. 
 
 Three steps down the platform some one, about 
 entering the waiting train, recognized and accosted 
 him. "How are you, Doctor?" and "How are 
 you, Drummond ? " were the words exchanged ; and 
 then one sprang upon the car, and the other con 
 tinued swiftly on through the long house. 
 
 Jane Gregory adjusted her hat, and came slowly 
 after. " Doctor ! " she said over to herself ; still 
 following afar off with her eyes the figure that was 
 gaining distance so fast and disappearing among 
 
16 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 the moving groups and streams of people near the 
 gates, disappearing into the great mass and other 
 ness of human life, a whole worldful with which 
 she had nothing to do, after just that instant s co 
 incidence of the line of his path with hers. How 
 queer living was ; how much there was of some 
 parts of it, what mere points and breaths of 
 others ! 
 
 " Doctor ! " said Jane Gregory to herself. " I 
 wish he had just said Doctor who ! " and then she 
 laughed a quick small catch of a laugh, and blushed 
 a tiny blush of which she was not at all conscious, 
 and moved more rapidly herself to get down and 
 around to the far opposite track where the next 
 train stopping at Briarwood would be. 
 
 Jane Gregory s work went well that day; and 
 she was so apt and cheery with it, and so nimble- 
 fingered and sure with her fittings, and wore alto 
 gether such a contagious, happy content, that at 
 night when she shyly said to her employer that she 
 " had been so late in coming that she must not take 
 the quarter," the lady answered, " Nonsense, child ! 
 you ve done a full day s work ; I m satisfied," and 
 doubled up the dollar bill about the piece of silver, 
 and pushed it kindly into her hand. Mrs. Scorrell 
 was not apt to pay beyond the bargain or the due, 
 either. 
 
 That had been two years, or even more, ago ; all 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 17 
 
 that time the whirl and churning of the world s 
 great change and mingling had gone on, in which 
 her little shred of circumstance had vanished ; but 
 it was Jane s scrap of story still ; it came back to 
 her with its pleasantness of something that belonged 
 to her, its reminder of unlikeliness that was yet 
 always possible, its curious assurance that every 
 fragment argued a remaining part somewhere, and 
 that no bit of anything ever came into knowledge 
 or experience that sooner or later did not bring 
 a sequel of itself or something to which it was akin. 
 At the same time, these were feelings, not rea 
 sonings, with her ; they took no slightest shape of 
 positive expectation. She was not weaving a ro 
 mance about her incident ; it only remained with 
 her by the force of its kindly significance. It was 
 the breath of an atmosphere, it drifted to her as 
 the airs did to the sailor across the long waters, 
 from a beautiful world he should find more of, by 
 and by. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 AND now she was here in Ascutney Street ; stay 
 ing at Mrs. Turnbull s ; doing a little work for her ; 
 taking in a little from other people ; resting a good 
 deal, which she needed more than she wanted, 
 it being the dull time ; and she was paying three 
 dollars a week for her board. 
 
 Mrs. Turnbull had employed her for a year or 
 two ; and made a " find " of her. Mrs. Turnbull 
 had a way of discovering these work - nuggets ; 
 people of this sort before they had " got up in their 
 prices ; " and securing good service from them while 
 they remained comparatively unknown, and work 
 ing, as she called it, " reasonably." To work rea 
 sonably, meaning always, with a certain class 
 of persons, by a curious inversion, accepting an 
 irrationally small equivalent for toil. 
 
 Mrs. Turnbull did not share her advantage with 
 her immediate neighbors, for reasons ; but she did 
 put Jane in the way of other work at discreet dis 
 tances. So Jane was grateful, and always ready 
 to come to Mrs. Turnbull on an emergency, and 
 between times. 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 19 
 
 It had been a sudden inspiration on the lady s 
 part, this present arrangement of making the girl 
 an inmate. Jane had found it hard to pay four 
 dollars and a half a week, especially in vacation 
 times ; she had no friends to visit, and of course 
 little journeys or excursions were out of the ques 
 tion. She had to just weary on, in the stuffy little 
 house in a crowded neighborhood, on a low, wet 
 street where there was almost always a good deal of 
 illness; and to go back in the fall, pale and un- 
 refreshed, to her stitching and draping for women 
 and girls brown and ruddy and shining-eyed from 
 mountain or sea air, and good times that she could 
 only distantly imagine. 
 
 One day she had happened to say something of 
 this to Mrs. Turnbull ; contrasting the nice tea she 
 was taking with her, for Mrs. Turnbull did not 
 grudge a little extended hospitality like this when 
 she was otherwise alone, and in good humor with 
 her plaitings and panels, with the poor fare she 
 had to put up with at her lodging-house. 
 
 " You can t think what a treat such biscuits are ! " 
 she said. 
 
 Mrs. Turnbull knew that her biscuits were a 
 treat to almost anybody. But she enjoyed being 
 told of it, as much as if she had needed the 
 assurance. 
 
 That night it all came into her head, while she 
 
20 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 was undressing. " I don t see the reason why not ! " 
 she exclaimed aloud. 
 
 " Nor I," rejoined her husband, untying his cravat. 
 "What is it?" 
 
 That was the way fresh subjects were usually 
 started between them. Mrs. Turnbtill began in the 
 middle, like a modern novel ; Mr. Turnbull took 
 her up like a seasoned reader, sure that the recapit 
 ulation and elucidation would be immediately forth 
 coming ; well, if, when once begun, they were not 
 altogether too exhaustive. 
 
 " Only I don t know what Ascutney Street 
 folks would say ! " continued the lady. 
 
 " Why should they say anything at all ? " sug 
 gested the gentleman. 
 
 " I don t know as they need ; if I could only 
 fix it so ! " 
 
 " Fix it as you re fixing it now, and you 11 do," 
 said Mr. Turnbull. 
 
 " Oh pshaw ! " exclaimed his wife impatiently ; 
 and then broke into full tide of explanatory state 
 ment, at the end of which Mr. Turnbull did not 
 see much of either why or why not. If it suited 
 his wife, however, all right. 
 
 "But you don t take it in ! " cried she. " Can t 
 you understand ? It will be as good as a girl all 
 I want of a girl ; and she 11 pay me three dollars 
 a week, instead of I her ; and she 11 be good com- 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 21 
 
 pany, for Jane is nice and bright, and picks up as 
 she goes along ; and there won t be things broken, 
 nor given away out at the back door ; and she 7 be 
 sights better off!" 
 
 That was how Jane Gregory came to board with 
 Mrs. Turnbull, and saved a dollar and a half a 
 week, and had a nice room with a sunshiny window, 
 and a flounced dressing-table, and pure air and 
 good food, and was only too glad to " set an odd 
 stitch," or " give a hand " at wiping dishes, to make 
 up the difference. 
 
 There had only been one other condition, a 
 little peculiar, but not much to care for after all. 
 "It wouldn t ever do," Mrs. Turnbull had said 
 with frankness, "to have Ascutney Street folks 
 know. We might as well give up our lease at once. 
 It s nobody s business but yours and mine, and we 
 must keep it to ourselves. It won t make any real 
 difference to you, you see ; Ascutney Street folks 
 would n t come to see me if I kept a boarder ; and 
 they would n t come to see you if I said you were a 
 seamstress. So you would n t get acquainted any 
 way. I thought I d better say it right out to begin 
 with. And I don t suppose you got acquainted 
 down in Bogley Street." 
 
 Of course Jane did n t ; the reticence was on her 
 own side, there. And here, why, with the sweet, 
 clean room and pretty house, the piazza and the 
 
22 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 garden, the smell and color of the blossoming 
 flower-plots right under her window, and the shady 
 larch-tree in the garden, and the elm on the side 
 walk, with the oriole s nest swinging at the tip of 
 the highest branch, that seemed to take her right 
 up into sky and air, herself, as she looked at it, and 
 found out by sympathy the oriole part of her own 
 nature, with all these, what did she care for 
 "folks"? 
 
 Does it strike you how lonely a girl must be, 
 before she can come not to care for folks ? 
 
 Jane Gregory was a very well brought up young 
 person. That was what Mrs. Turnbull had said to 
 her husband when she had backed up to her real 
 starting-point in her conversation with that gentle 
 man, and confided to him in detail what she had in 
 mind; or, in more applicable common parlance, 
 what she had taken into her head. 
 
 "She knows her place; she won t put herself 
 forward ; she 11 keep to herself," she said. Which 
 meant that the young person knew she hadn t 
 any place, and would n t try to take it ; she could 
 be let alone as much as the people in the places 
 pleased. 
 
 In essential truth, Jane Gregory had not been 
 brought up at all. She had been let grow up ; and 
 she had had certain care taken of her growing ; but 
 the bringing, the tender leading, the going before 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 23 
 
 and drawing after, by nearness and by love, had 
 not been hers. 
 
 She just remembered losing a father and a 
 mother. She could recall very little of having an 
 uncle, who was a coal merchant in an inland town, 
 who took her home, gave her a place at his table, 
 and sent her to school. She should have a good 
 education, he said ; after that she must take care 
 of herself. He had a good many of his own to 
 provide for. Ownness does not reach so far upon 
 this little globe, where one would think it might 
 almost all be kith and kin, as in the great kingdom 
 of heaven. 
 
 Jane came to girlhood and womanhood, a well 
 instructed, well repressed " young person ; " she was 
 not anybody s daughter or sister or intimate friend. 
 She had been put in her no-particular place, and 
 she had kept it. What a wonder it is that people 
 do so meekly accept their denials, and that so few 
 seize by force or audacity their loaf of bread ! 
 
 When Jane came to the time the " after that " 
 in which she was to take care of herself, she tried 
 at first to teach ; but she had headaches, schoolroom 
 and anxious headaches, from bad air and stupidity 
 and strict requirements ; and then she took to her 
 needle, which was quiet and perfectly under her 
 own control, and rendered her accountable to only 
 one person at a time, instead of to a lot of contra- 
 
24 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 dictory parents, or a school committee. And up 
 the line of railroad, from Brankton to the great 
 city, she had drifted from neighborhood to neighbor 
 hood, as people learned of her, and found her deft 
 and "reasonable," until now she had been three 
 years in the large town which included Wellswood. 
 
 In the mean time her uncle at Brankton had died, 
 and left five hundred dollars in his will to Jane, 
 which she had put away in a savings bank and 
 out of her mind, as something not to be touched 
 or thought of, until she should be in sickness and 
 need, or until any wonderful, impossible contin 
 gency should arise for which she should have to 
 buy more gowns than she had use for now, and 
 other things for which she had now no earthly use 
 whatever. 
 
 44 And about your own acquaintances ? How will 
 that be ? " Mrs. Turnbull had inquired of her. 
 
 44 You mean people coming ? Oh, there may be 
 messages and errands ; but " and Jane laughed 
 an odd little laugh 4< I have n t any acquaint 
 ances. Only aware-ances. I haven t anything 
 own in the world." 
 
 A girl right in the midst of things, making home 
 and street and visiting dresses for other girls, and 
 no part in anything herself! For a minute, the 
 hardness of it came to Mrs. Turnbull s heart ; but 
 it was only an added strength to the argument for 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 25 
 
 that which she had taken into her head, and it 
 never occurred to her that she could do anything 
 more about it. If it were all the more convenient 
 for her that Jane should have no visitors complicat 
 ing with her own, the fact had not been of her 
 ordering. She simply availed herself of it ; and 
 Jane had come. 
 
 Now Jane, all by herself as she was, and because 
 of being so, had a certain little thread of humor 
 running through her quieted nature, that saved her 
 from many a bitterness, hurt, and resentment. It 
 was so funny, the way in which she was kept out 
 of what she had n t the least desire to be in, the 
 way she was guarded from an observation she could 
 not have supposed herself liable to, among these 
 Ascutney Street folks. She never sat in the par 
 lor : Mrs. Turnbull never asked her to do so, though 
 she often called her into her own room upstairs, 
 and had her there by the day together, when there 
 was dressmaking going on. She never sat on the 
 piazza of an evening : " Mr. Turnbull s friends were 
 apt to drop in, and it was awkward." If invited 
 company came, of course she was behind the scenes : 
 often importantly so ; for it was upon these occa 
 sions that Mrs. Turnbull made application of the 
 proviso that she was now and then to " give a 
 hand." Well put, that, also ; for it was free giv 
 ing, and no lending, hoping for anything of special 
 
26 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 return again. It was her service that was special ; 
 the consideration for it was a generality. 
 
 It was even suggested, as she went and came 
 upon her business errands, that the short cut across 
 to Atchell s Corner was a better way for her to meet 
 the cars, than to go and stand at the head of the 
 street ; there was the druggist s shop to step into 
 and wait comfortably; and coming home, it was 
 nearer if she just ran in at the back door, which was 
 not locked, as the front one always was. 
 
 Jane accepted it all, and departed and arrived 
 through the kitchen entrance ; it had quite the air 
 of a servant being kept ; only, and fortunately, lest 
 intervals should be observed too closely by any 
 curious overlooker, the short way was so covered in 
 by high fences and trees that there was but little 
 likelihood of her being noticed or exactly timed. 
 
 Jane could play the piano a little ; and it would 
 have been a pleasure to her to try hymns of a Sun 
 day, or to run through a simple old waltz when her 
 fingers were tired of needle and scissors, and her 
 spirits wanted some light relief. But Mrs. Turn- 
 bull begged her not to do it much ; people would 
 wonder if they went by ; she herself was not musi 
 cal, and never attempted the little she had learned 
 long ago ; the piano had come to her because it 
 was done with elsewhere, and she enjoyed it, she 
 said, for her friends, which meant " company." 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 27 
 
 There was only one thing Jane could do with 
 her morsels of leisure, and only one place for her 
 to do it in, out of her bedroom. The larch-tree in 
 the back garden was nicely out of the way ; and 
 when Mrs. Turnbull found that Jane betook her 
 self to its shelter to read, she had a big old wooden 
 chair with a sloping foot-rest brought down from 
 the attic, and set there in the evergreen shade for 
 the girl to " take full comfort in." This also pre 
 cluded the carrying out of any more modern piece 
 of furniture, and it established the understanding 
 that here Jane, with her book and her shawl, was 
 to content herself. There was only one house 
 whose windows commanded the larch-tree, and that 
 was occupied by a person who, like Jane herself, 
 had no acquaintances, scarcely " aware-ances," on 
 Ascntney Street. 
 
 " I wonder why nobody seems to know Mrs. Sun 
 der! and," Jane had said to Mrs. Turnbull one day, 
 over their sewing* 
 
 " Well, that s it, ; replied the lady. " Nobody 
 does know. She s just Mrs. Sunderland, who took 
 the house last spring. She s got nobody with her 
 but an aunt, that s what the children call her, 
 though whether she s aunt to the mother or the 
 children, I m sure I can t guess, and the chil 
 dren themselves. Nobody even knows whether 
 she s a widow or not. They might like to find out, 
 
28 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 if she had any sort of style. But she never seemed 
 like Ascutney Street folks, and they have n t taken 
 to her. She don t dress, and she don t dress her 
 children, and her aunt does all the work ; hangs 
 out the clothes, right in broad daylight, and washes 
 down the front steps, and all. And the furniture 
 that went in was as plain as porridge ; and nothing 
 but brown shades to the windows, not even a 
 lambrequin. She s pretty, too, and a good figure ; 
 if she d only do something like other folks, if 
 she d just wear a bustle, t would make a differ 
 ence." 
 
 " You mean people would call upon her ? " asked 
 Jane, laughing. 
 
 " Well, yes ; if she looked more like it. But she 
 does n t make any appearance at all." 
 
 "I suppose an appearance is necessary in this 
 world," said Jane thoughtfully. " You could n t 
 know an angel, without. But then it need n t 
 be a bustling and rustling one, I should think." 
 
 Jane gave a slight twirl, as she spoke, to the 
 wire dress-form before her, upon which was draped 
 the black satin merveilleux with loops and scarrings 
 and diagonal sweep of apron front, stiff with shin 
 ing passementerie. "Soft clothing," she murmured, 
 half to herself. "They that wear soft clothing 
 are in kings houses. I wonder if that may n t 
 mean something about the real king s daughters, 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 29 
 
 sometimes, as well as about people in common 
 palaces." 
 
 " Common palaces ! What a queer girl you are, 
 Jane Gregory ! " cried Mrs. Turnbull. " Yes, 
 that hitch is better. Why, I like a little rustling ; 
 just a crisp, fresh sort of sound, you know, of a 
 nice, new thing. Anybody likes to step off with a 
 touch of style, especially in back breadths. As- 
 cutney Street folks do ; I won t deny it." 
 
 Undeniably, Ascutney Street folks did ; they all 
 went up the sidewalk to catch the cars, with an as 
 sertive consciousness of back breadths. Ascutney 
 Street style was of the most obvious sort. 
 
 Jane Gregory did not say anything more about 
 it then ; but she knew very well that it was the ob 
 viousness that was the mistake. She had occa 
 sional employment on Katahdin Street, and even 
 up on Shasta; and she could make closer compari 
 son than Mrs. Turnbull. In a certain way, she 
 was getting a nicer training and discrimination 
 than that ambitious person would ever have. Girl 
 as she was, and working girl, she had found out 
 some things that showed her what the secret of 
 sham was. It was not the aim at something better 
 than one has, the desire upward which takes for 
 pattern that shown in the mount, whatever the 
 mount or upper level may be ; it was the content 
 ing with the merely representative, behind which 
 
30 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 was always something in the higher place, that 
 these others could not see, and had nothing to do 
 with. 
 
 It occurred to Jane s observation, for instance, 
 that when she had helped to make a dress of beau 
 tiful material and gracefully devised construction 
 for Mrs. Talthrop, the Judge s wife, she herself 
 never saw or heard of it again, after the last stitch 
 was set. It passed to a use quite within Mrs. Tal- 
 throp s common, public round; it belonged to a 
 part of her life that Ascutney Street only guessed 
 at. But because there was this inner, removed 
 something to which the lovely apparel was ger 
 mane and fitting, its fashion must be reproduced in 
 Ascutney Street, with an accentuation of detail, 
 and put en evidence on horse-cars. 
 
 If the Gransomes, living gently and delicately 
 always, asked in friends to a luncheon, and had it 
 served in quiet, elegant little separate courses, this 
 way of doing things filtered down by report and 
 imitation Jane herself was closely questioned, 
 often through successive social strata, in each of 
 which it was a more distinct effort than in the last, 
 until it came to be a stringency in every little 
 household where it was an anxious, one-handed 
 struggle, and needed days before and after for 
 preparation and recovery. The seizing upon signs 
 became an utter degeneration in realities. This 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 31 
 
 deduction bore in upon Jane s mind as that of the 
 principle of gravitation did upon Sir Isaac New 
 ton s. It was the assertion of a law. 
 
 Discovering this, Jane got insight into deeper 
 facts of similar relation also. Philanthropy and 
 religion were done up in much the same way, she 
 thought, in many places. It was truly high and 
 fine to be interested in the lower classes ; if they 
 were only unmistakably low enough. Jane won 
 dered sometimes what course all the benevolences 
 would take, if, suddenly, the very miserably poor 
 and openly degraded should all at once die of their 
 poverty and despair, and be taken away to heaven, 
 or elsewhere, and nobody be left for people 
 to be kind and merciful to but other people very 
 much like perhaps intrusively or reproachfully 
 like themselves. If Jane was getting slightly 
 cynical, it was because she was such an outside 
 young creature ; only seeing things as they showed, 
 and hardly ever taken into the heart of anything. 
 Yet she really had discovered a great law. It is in 
 the inside world that we must live up into the next 
 higher. Putting on expressions of it even in 
 beautiful rites of worship does not do the thing 
 at all. 
 
 Jane did not go to church very often ; she was 
 apt to be too tired ; she was apt, also, not to get 
 much good of it. When she did go, she puzzled 
 
32 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 about it in very much the same way. Was it be 
 cause the angels sing praises, that the hymns and 
 anthems were "rendered" by trained and culti 
 vated choirs ? Was it because before the throne 
 they adore always, that the prayers, in such sub 
 limity of words, and with so many of them, went 
 up ? Were they all, with their full meanings, in 
 all the hearts of the great crowd, under their furs 
 and plushes, and their tailor-made costumes ? The 
 fuller the ceremonial, the smoother the recital, the 
 more she marveled. She could not worship so 
 fast, herself, so easily. Had it all been thought 
 and felt, in that hour and a half, after which the 
 multitude streamed forth, fresh from their ascrip 
 tions " with all the company of heaven," to make 
 little social salutations, even exchange of worldly 
 news and comment, and go home to dinner-table 
 talk of weekday things ? 
 
 She supposed it was true with some, or the obser 
 vance itself would hardly continue to be ; but with 
 the many, was it earth entering into communion 
 with heaven, or was it a spiritual Ascutney Street 
 trying to put on what it supposed Katahdin Street 
 to do ? Remember that in this, also, Jane Gregory 
 was the same little outside creature en the Sunday 
 that she was from Monday morning to Saturday 
 night. For it had not happened to her, yet, to be 
 taken by the hand and drawn in toward the truest 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 33 
 
 and the best by those who so knew it that their one 
 pure longing was to make others know. This was 
 due, indeed, partly to her external changes and un 
 certainties, and partly to her own shy, reticent un 
 willingness in her peculiar isolation, to put herself 
 forward or even to respond. 
 
 So Jane s Sundays, in this pleasant weather, 
 were mostly spent under the larch-tree. She could 
 just catch glimpses of the church costumes as they 
 shimmered by between the front shrubberies ; all 
 the puffings standing off well behind, and vibrating 
 en masse to the high-heeled footsteps ; the ladies 
 buttoning their fresh kid gloves as they passed 
 along, perhaps, and then sticking the glove hook 
 into the trim corsage, behind the bunch of flowers 
 or the delicate embroidered corners of the handker 
 chief that peeped forth like spreaded blossom-pet 
 als in gay, soft colors. Husbands with their wives, 
 sisters together, friends joining each other, chatting 
 as they went along. It was what she made clothes 
 for, and then stepped, herself, aside from. 
 
 Acquaintances ! If she could have chosen them, 
 and been really " acquaint ! " For to know people 
 would have meant more to Jane than simply to 
 have them to nod to and speak with and call upon, 
 trying herself on with them, as she saw girls do, 
 indifferently, but with a certain invariable effu 
 sion, with each other. To have anybody any one 
 
34 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 body to know well, and to feel herself known 
 to ! Jane turned to her two books with a sigh. 
 
 One was a story, the other a little volume of 
 texts. " Crumbs," or " Broken Bread," or some 
 such. It was an old little book, and had been her 
 mother s. For this she cared for it, and kept it by 
 W, and conscientiously took its morsels as pre 
 pared quantities chosen from the great bewilder 
 ment, to her, of the whole Bible, where she hardly 
 )rnew what to turn to. She was familiar, she 
 thought, with all the history, old and new ; and to 
 go over and over it again, by long chapters, was 
 not what Jane had learned to love, because, per 
 haps, the chapters did not yet divide themselves 
 /nto their clear, distinct word-shinings, or carry 
 through their transparencies the thread of a uniting 
 living meaning. She did not care to tell them 
 over, as mere beads. But the little texts said 
 something straight to herself at times. 
 
 And who shall say that it was not straight to 
 herself that, to-day, for I am telling of a par 
 ticular summer Sunday morning, the message 
 was sent, when she read, close upon those other 
 thoughts, and that little lonely sigh : " Acquaint 
 now thyself with Him, and be at peace " ? 
 
 Was that possible ? To know Him, to under 
 stand Him, and be understood by Him, as friend 
 with friend? 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 35 
 
 Another verse was linked with it ; they stood in 
 pairs : " Who dwelleth in the high and holy place, 
 with him also that is humble and of a contrite 
 heart, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to 
 revive the heart of the contrite ones." 
 
 She wondered what " contrite " meant, exactly 
 and purposely there ? Was it the wretched for 
 sin, only ? " Contrite " was bruised together, she 
 thought ; that should be for sin, certainly ; but 
 bruised, rubbed harshly, pinched and cramped and 
 pained, in hard places were not hearts like that, 
 too, apart from sin ? And the heart, the very 
 wanting and suffering and prisoned affection, 
 that was the thing promised to be revived, to 
 have its life given to it by Him ! To " show 
 pity upon all prisoners and captives " was not 
 this what these very words engaged to do ? 
 
 The Sunday air was sweet to her, breathed in 
 with such thought ; the story book lay unopened 
 upon her lap ; a bird sung unseen in the high, hid 
 den glooms of the larch-tree ; perhaps up in the 
 sunshine, quite atop of the gloom ; and Jane lis 
 tened, and the cheer was like a sudden music in 
 herself ; whether she sang, or the bird sang, she 
 could hardly tell. 
 
 All at once there came an odd little interruption. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 IT seemed an interruption ; but Jane remembered 
 it afterward as just the beginning of the rest of 
 it; what the Bible word and the bird song had 
 meant. 
 
 Between the Turnbulls back garden and the 
 narrow grounds of the next little house ran a fence 
 of board palings, set close together, nailed to cross 
 strips top and bottom. One of these, it appeared, 
 was unnailed at the lower end ; for it slid aside 
 and a child s head and shoulders were thrust 
 through. One hand pushed away and held up the 
 paling, and the other gathered up the hem of a 
 frock, while the little wearer squeezed herself 
 through edgewise, and then stood upon her feet on 
 the hither side, letting the board drop into its place 
 behind her. 
 
 It was like the appearance of a fairy upon a stage 
 scene ; the small bright face and figure, the tossing 
 curly hair, the look of power and merry mischief 
 as she held herself still and upright an instant and 
 glanced round her, catching sight, among other ob 
 jects, of Jane. 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 37 
 
 " I Ve come through the looking-glass," she said. 
 " But that is n t the looking-glass ! " She made a 
 disdainful gesture over her shoulder at the fence 
 and its closed breach. " It is the real one, be 
 tween the windows, over the console. I ve been 
 here before, daytimes, not Sundays. Are you 
 the White Queen?" 
 
 " Are you Alice ? " asked Jane, amused, and con 
 tinuing the allusion. 
 
 " Yes, I m Alice. Alice Sunderland. That s al 
 most Alice in Wonderland, is n t it ? But I 11 tell 
 you one thing, I don t really get into the looking- 
 glass ; I kneel up and play pretend, and then slide 
 round, out the window ; then I m behind, you see, 
 just the same. And if you go through a looking- 
 glass, why, you finish it all up. There s a good 
 deal of mischief there in the parlor, though, without 
 that. The big jar slipped off when I kneeled up, 
 and the water and the roses are all over the mat 
 ting. I tellifomed up to Aunty, and then I came 
 off quick, quite away. When people are going to 
 be in a f ue, you had better not be there, if you 
 can t help." 
 
 Alice was evidently quoting, partly. As she 
 ended, she walked toward Jane under the larch-tree, 
 still holding up the hem of her frock. 
 
 " What have you there, Alice ? " asked Jane, 
 very much as if she had been the White Queen. 
 
38 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 " Oh, they re uncle Hansel s mound beads. I 
 borrowed em. They were hung over the handle 
 of the jar. Mamma lends me things ; things to 
 look at, and pencils, to write ; and sometimes her 
 stylo pen. But she does n t give me things, because 
 I lose em, and forget to put em back. I 11 lend 
 you these, if you want me to." She put a great 
 heap of strung shells a yard or more in length, 
 all gathered up together into Jane s lap. They 
 were very queer, with a dead color and a worn sur 
 face, as if they had been eaten into smoothed 
 roughness by some long action, of water or other 
 wise. They made Jane think of tiny skulls. 
 
 " They came from way out West," said her little 
 visitor. " Don t you think they re pretty ? " 
 
 "Very curious," said Jane, holding the long 
 double festoon across her hands. " Yes, I like them 
 very much." 
 
 " They were dug up ; they d been in the ground 
 a long time, with heaps of other things. And 
 people ! " she whispered mysteriously. " Do you 
 live here?" 
 
 " I stay here," said Jane. " And I m very glad 
 to see you. Only don t you think Aunty will be 
 looking for you ? " 
 
 44 1 don t want to go while she s looking this 
 way," answered Alice. " When she s gone up 
 stairs, I will. But I shall come again. Are n t you 
 ever here daytimes ? " 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 39 
 
 " Why, this is daytime, isn t it?" 
 
 " Well, it is n t bedtime. But Sunday does n t 
 seem a day, exactly. It s a kind of a long, shiny 
 stop. There ! I hear Aunty, way round by the 
 barnhouse. We have n t got any real barning in it, 
 of horses, you know, out here." And Alice 
 darted off as suddenly as she had come, slipped 
 through the broken paling, and was gone, leaving 
 the string of mound shells in Jane s lap. 
 
 What was she to do with it? It must be re 
 turned, of course. It would not be safe or neigh 
 borly to hang it on the fence. The child might 
 not come back for it until another Sunday reminded 
 her, unless there were a search made for it. 
 Would it be better to wait for that? It might not 
 be noticed, or thought of, at once. Jane thought 
 she must go round with it, and immediately, before 
 all the people were coming down the street from 
 church. It was a bit of a happening also, and she 
 had not had anything happen to her for a great 
 while. She also would go through the looking- 
 glass. 
 
 That for her, however, was around by the street, 
 under the shady elms and maples, a moment s 
 turn, which brought her to the front door of Mrs. 
 Sunclerland s house, left open by Alice in her 
 hurried entrance while Aunty was in the rear prem 
 ises. Jane stood upon the porch, just lifting her 
 
40 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 hand to the bell, when Aunty appeared through a 
 door at the back of the hall ; a somewhat slow and 
 portly personage, evidently out of breath. 
 
 " That child ! " she panted. " If it is n t one 
 thing, it s another ; and just what you can t expect 
 or get ahead of, always ! " 
 
 " I beg pardon," said a gentle, deferential voice ; 
 and then Aunty saw Jane at the door. 
 
 "I beg pardon too," she said, as she came for 
 ward. " I m cross and. flustered, and talking to 
 myself. I can stand anything but being wee- 
 wawed ! " 
 
 What that meant, precisely, Jane did not stop 
 to consider. " I came to bring back these " she 
 was beginning, when Alice s voice, from the head 
 of the staircase, interrupted her in great excite 
 ment. 
 
 The child had a tiny bell in her hand, which she 
 tingled, and then called out " Hullo ! " She was 
 "tellifoming." 
 
 " Come quick, Aunty ! Kick s half out of the 
 window, and he won t mind me ! " and then as 
 Aunty hurried to the stairfoot, and seizing the rail 
 swung herself round the newel-post to the ascent, 
 the little figure, which had disappeared in its flash 
 ing way from the top, came flying back, and another 
 call, in two words only, hollow with dismay, smote 
 both listeners direfully. 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 41 
 
 "J7e s out!" 
 
 Poor Aunty stumbled and fell forward, up the 
 steps. Jane sprang past her, she hardly knew how, 
 and rushed to the upper floor, following the little 
 girl into a bedroom where was a low open window 
 in the farther opposite corner. 
 
 She hastened to it, saw that it gave upon a 
 narrow sloping hood over a small portico below. 
 No one was visible anywhere but Alice. There 
 was no sound, either. 
 
 If the child had fallen ! 
 
 She turned trembling, but with all speed, to the 
 staircase, and was at the foot again on her way to 
 the spot beneath, not even noticing that Aunty had 
 picked herself up and was doubtless preceding her 
 in the same direction, when a shrill little pipe 
 called out exultingly from overhead, 
 
 " I was n t out ! I was only hided in the 
 curtain ! " 
 
 Jane sat down, strengthless, for an instant, upon 
 the lowest stair. But she rose directly, and went 
 to meet Aunty, coming in through the parlor from 
 the portico. " It can t be ! " the poor woman was 
 gasping. "He isn t there! but the Good knows 
 where he is ! " 
 
 Jane s first words, " He s safe ; he s coming," 
 were half lost in Aunty s own ejaculations. 
 
 " I m right here ! I was good ! I did n t 
 
42 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 tumble ! " Rick himself continued to announce, 
 and one foot foremost, came rapidly paddling down 
 the stairs. 
 
 Aunty sat down, in her turn, upon the nearest 
 thing, which was the floor. Her face grew paler 
 yet, she slipped into a heap, and lay there. Jane 
 ran through to where she knew the dining-room 
 must be, came back with a pitcher, placed Aunty 
 flat, poured water into her own hand, and wet her 
 face. 
 
 " I m not faint," Aunty whispered resolutely. 
 " I never fainted in my life. But I can not 
 bear beinsf wee-wawed ! Pulled first one 
 
 O 
 
 way and then the other, you know, in my 
 work or in my feelings ! " 
 
 " You ve been the death of Aunty, Rick ! " 
 said Alice s voice, solemnly, over the balusters. 
 " She always told you, you would." 
 
 Aunty faintly laughed, and with that the revul 
 sion came, and she sat up, bursting into tears. 
 
 " I ain t! I ain t not! " shouted Rick, standing 
 in the parlor doorway. Then suddenly he turned 
 and ran out at the front door and down to the little 
 gate. 
 
 " Mamma, mamma ! " they heard him begin, 
 and go on brokenly and in a choking haste. u I 
 ain t not been the death of Aunty ! I did mind, 
 I was good, I didn t not tumble out, I just 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 43 
 
 hided (a quick, eager catch of breath and a sort 
 of spasmodic swallow at each gap between his 
 words) from Alice, and Alice went and 
 frightened Aunty, and Aunty sat down 
 to rest a little on the floor, and now Alice 
 is coming down to zadgerate ! " 
 
 But Alice was not coining down ; she was stand 
 ing still upon the stairs ; a little confounded by 
 all that had resulted from her imaginations this 
 morning. 
 
 Mrs. Sunderland came in, leading little Kick. 
 
 The same sweet, quiet figure of a woman that 
 Jane had had glimpses of, sometimes, across the 
 garden way, or on the street. A lovely face with a 
 tradition in it of some sort of life that Jane knew 
 belonged elsewhere ; a plain gown of soft gray 
 summer serge, straight-hanging save for one grace 
 ful lift and loop from side to back, a round shoulder 
 cape, a straw bonnet with white ribbon knotted 
 with a few green leaves beside the crown ; not 
 withstanding all the simplicity and quietness, a 
 movement and expression bright and vigorous and 
 self-contained enough to account for her being the 
 mother of two little originals like Alice and Rick ; 
 such a presence was this of the unnoticed neighbor, 
 the woman who made no appearance, and whom 
 nobody called upon. 
 
 She went straight to Aunty, who was trying to 
 
44 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 stop her tears, and had got upon a chair. " What 
 was it all about? " she asked tenderly. 
 
 " Oh, nothing, now it s over," was the reply. 
 " I 11 tell you just as soon as I get myself fairly 
 shook together." 
 
 Mrs. Sunderland left the room, and came back 
 presently with two small glasses of wine. She 
 made Aunty take one, and handed one to Jane. 
 " You look pale, too," she said. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," Jane began, as she had 
 begun before. " I only came to bring back " 
 she looked round for the string of shells. " I ve 
 dropped them somewhere ; they were some beads 
 that the little girl brought over and forgot." 
 
 " Never mind ; sit down, please, and drink the 
 wine." 
 
 Alice came in now, to her mother s side, bring 
 ing the beads, which she had found upon the stairs. 
 " I borrowed em, mamma," she said, " and I went 
 through the looking-glass, and I found Is she 
 the White Qneen ? " she whispered. 
 
 Mrs. Sunderland glanced at Jane, who was still 
 standing, and smiled. " I should think not," she 
 answered her little daughter, in a gentle aside. " I 
 do not think she looks like her at all." 
 
 " No," Alice whispered again ; "the White Queen 
 was square and chunky ; but she might be an 
 other white queen, a nicer one, you know." 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET, 45 
 
 Jane was tall, though I have called her little ; 
 she was only little in a social, historical sense ; she 
 had a dignity that came of much keeping of her 
 own position ; and her face was fine, as well as 
 pretty. Mrs. Sunderland, as she looked at her, 
 was puzzled how to place her here, in Ascutney 
 Street. 
 
 "I found her in the garden," Alice went on 
 aloud, " and she knew I was Alice, and she under 
 stands Wonderland ; and I told her about the 
 beads, and then I came home, and then Eick " 
 
 " I think you will have to tell me one thing at a 
 time, Alice," said Mrs. Sunderland. And again 
 she begged Jane Gregory to sit down. 
 
 But Jane recollected that she must be gone. 
 She had taken a sip of the wine, and now she set 
 the glass upon a table. " I thank you very much," 
 she said ; " but if you will excuse me, they will 
 be coming home, and would you mind if I went 
 round by the back way ? " 
 
 " Not a bit, if you wish," said Mrs. Sunderland. 
 " Only I have n t had time to understand, and I m 
 sure you have been very kind. Won t you come 
 in again, either way ? " she asked, smiling. 
 
 Jane looked into the sincere, beautiful eyes. " I 
 would, if I might," she said. " I wonder if I 
 may." 
 
 "I wonder very much why not?" said Mrs. 
 
46 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 Sunderland, with some meaning. "I wonder 
 But I will ask you other things another time." 
 She gave her hand, in a warm, friendly way ; then 
 Jane went, with a vague, happy sense that a new 
 door had been opened to her, into a pleasant place, 
 and that, for once, not with needle and scissors. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 IT was one of Mrs. Turnbull s afternoons. Mrs. 
 Inching and Miss Rickstack were in the parlor. 
 It was a warm day, and the front door stood open. 
 Street neighbors would step in without ceremony. 
 If anybody did come from further off, Mrs. Turn- 
 bull could easily meet the visitor at the threshold. 
 She sat within view on purpose, so there was no 
 need of door-tending. 
 
 Jane was hemming pillow-cases, sitting under 
 the larch-tree in the old chair. She had on the 
 same white, thread-checked muslin she had worn 
 on the Sunday, four days ago. Alice Sunderland, 
 from a perch lower down in the garden on her side, 
 where a "lovely rock" sloped up to the fencetop, 
 and an apple-tree leaned over, discovered her ; in 
 consequence, and because of a certain promise in 
 regard to Wonderland and the looking-glass, she 
 hurried in and upstairs to her mother. 
 
 " Mamma, I said I d tell you. I m going 
 through the looking-glass. The White Queen is 
 on her throne. I won t borrow anything to take 
 with me ; and I won t do any mischief." 
 
48 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 " How is it you get through the looking-glass, 
 Alice ? " asked Mrs. Sunderland. 
 
 " Oh, don t inquire things, mamma ! it breaks it 
 all to pieces I " 
 
 " Your going through ? " 
 
 " No, no, mamma ! your anybody s knowing 
 how ! " 
 
 "But I ought to use my judgment about it, 
 Alice, don t you think ? How can I give you leave 
 without?" 
 
 Alice considered, a little nonplussed. 
 
 "Mamma, why can t you lend me your judg 
 ment?" she asked gravely. " I 11 be very careful 
 of it ! " 
 
 This was hardly to be resisted. 
 
 " Are you sure there s no danger ? you won t get 
 a tumble ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, mamma ! I could n t tumble ! it s only 
 just"- 
 
 " Well, you need n t tell me. And you won t 
 tear your frock ? " 
 
 " I can t ever be quite sure about my frock," 
 said Alice slowly ; " but I don t think it would, if 
 I wrap it tight." 
 
 " Very well. Remember you ve borrowed my 
 judgment. It is a thing I am very particular 
 about." 
 
 " I 11 be very particular indeed, as particular as 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 49 
 
 if it were my own," Alice answered with most 
 responsible probity. 
 
 Mrs. Sunderland meanwhile had been writing 
 three lines upon a card. 
 
 " Take this to the White Queen," she said. 
 
 Two minutes afterward the loose paling was 
 swung aside and the bright little face peeped in 
 under the thick shadows upon Jane. A small hand 
 held up a bit of something white. " May I come 
 in ? " said Alice. 
 
 "You appear to have a ticket," answered the 
 White Queen. " Only the Gray Cat is the door 
 keeper, and the Gray Cat is also a policeman and 
 has had to go away. He has just arrested a mouse 
 for petty larceny." 
 
 " Oh, how delightful you are ! " cried Alice, com 
 ing forward. " What is petty larceny ? " 
 
 " Small thieving ; borrowing without leave." 
 
 "Who told the cat?" 
 
 " Oh, the cat knew beforehand. That is what his 
 smellers are for." 
 
 " Did n t the cat know I was coming ? " 
 
 " Perhaps he smelt the ticket too, and he did n t 
 smell anything borrowed, this time." 
 
 " No. Mamma lent me her judgment, herself ; 
 of her own decord, almost," said Alice. " And she 
 told me to give this to you." 
 
 Jane read upon the card, "Do you not mean 
 
50 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 to come over? Can you not give me a half hour 
 to-night after tea ? " In the middle of the card was 
 engraved delicately, "Mrs. Richard Lee Suncler- 
 land." 
 
 Jane took a pencil and a small memorandum pad 
 from her work-basket. Upon a leaf from the lat 
 ter she wrote, 
 
 " Thank you very much. I will try to come. 
 
 JANE GREGORY." 
 
 " When you go home, you can carry that to your 
 mamma," she said, doubling the paper and laying 
 it back for the moment with the tablet. The card 
 she slipped into a pocket of the basket-lining. 
 
 Alice looked at her with appreciation. "I 
 think you are very polite," she said. 
 
 " Did you think a white queen would be not po 
 lite ? " asked Jane. " I hope you will sit down and 
 stay a little while. There is quite room in this 
 wide chair." 
 
 " Oh, I could n t think of getting up into your 
 throne ! " said Alice. " May I sit here, on the 
 cricket part ? " and as Jane moved to the right and 
 turned a little sidewise to keep her needle hand 
 free, making an open place beside her, the child 
 took contented possession of the vacant end of the 
 long foot-rest. She drew a breath of deep satis 
 faction. " It s so nice to have it all come real," 
 she said. " It s fatiguing sometimes to pretend 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 51 
 
 everything yourself, don t you think so ? But per 
 haps you don t pretend ? " 
 
 44 No, I don t. But I think it would be very 
 fatiguing." 
 
 " Does everything come real to grown-up peo 
 ple ? " asked Alice. " Don t you have to pre 
 tend?" 
 
 " It s a great deal better not to. Something 
 comes real. It is better to be satisfied." 
 
 " Only while you re waiting, between the things. 
 Oh, I think I shall always want to pretend just a 
 little," said Alice. " I m so apt to feel in a hurry. 
 But I forgot, you re the White Queen, and you re 
 in Wonderland. Everything pretends itself in 
 Wonderland, and everything comes right off." 
 
 44 Does it ? " asked Jane. 44 There s the cat." 
 
 44 Where s the mouse ? " 
 
 44 Oh, the mouse is executed," said Jane solemnly. 
 44 That s what happens to people who take things 
 in a hurry, that don t belong to them. You see it 
 is best to wait." 
 
 44 Well, I think the cat would have got the mouse 
 all the same," Alice retorted. 44 You said he was 
 beforehand ; and I think he s taken a good deal 
 that did n t belong to him ! " 
 
 44 What did it say on my ticket?" she began 
 afresh, when there had been no immediate answer 
 to that last. 
 
52 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 " Something very polite and kind." 
 
 " Mamma always is." 
 
 " I am going to see her, by and by." 
 
 " Well, she 11 be glad. Only nobody must come 
 to see yo u, right here, except me." 
 
 "Nobody at all?" 
 
 " Well, not anybody that does n t believe in 
 Wonderland, at any rate." 
 
 " Will that keep out a great many ? " 
 
 " Most everybody. You see they don t believe 
 enough to really pretend. I don t know about 
 mamma, even ; she likes it, she thinks it s 
 pretty, to tell me ; but I m afraid she s got over 
 it herself, since she used to play Hansel and Gretel 
 with uncle Hans, oh, that s a pretty story ! " she 
 broke off to exclaim, clasping her hands. " Don t 
 you think, your majesty " suddenly returning 
 with those two words to the tone and manner of 
 Wonderland, " that it s when people are grown up 
 and can t believe enough to really pretend, they 
 have to pretend they believe ? " 
 
 If a little bell had not tinkled out of Alice s 
 nursery window just then, it is hard to say into 
 what corners of difficulty she might have led the 
 White Queen with her questions ; but hearing that 
 she sprang to her feet. 
 
 " Oh dear ! give me the note," she said. " I 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 53 
 
 must go ; that s my tea-bell. And you 11 come, 
 you 11 come quick, won t you ? " 
 
 "Dear little child, I ll try," said the White 
 Queen. And then Alice put up her hands about 
 Jane s neck and kissed her. Jane Gregory could 
 hardly remember when she had been kissed be 
 fore. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 JANE went out in the twilight at the garden gate, 
 through the little court which was the short cut to 
 the druggist s corner, and so into the garden gate 
 at Mrs. Sunderland s. She walked up the alley- 
 path beside the fence under the apple and pear 
 trees, and then crossed over to the side entrance in 
 the angle of the little house. It was quite the 
 proper door for her to come to ; the degree between 
 parlor and kitchen which it represented was pre 
 cisely her own. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Turnbull were on their front 
 piazza, airing their leisure and their proprietorship. 
 Jane had washed up the tea-things ; so Mrs. Turn- 
 bull had been able to keep on her company attire. 
 Nobody thought where Jane was, so that she was 
 not in the way ; and Jane was glad there was one 
 house in Ascutney Street not tabooed to her 
 through being the habitation of any of the discrete 
 order to whom her own neighborhood and its cir 
 cumstance must by no possible means or accident 
 be made known. 
 
 As sometimes happens to those who take a lower 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 55 
 
 place, Jane s choice of modest entrance led her 
 straight to special privilege, for at right angles to 
 the door at which she was about to ring, a window 
 opened down to the floor, from the corner of the 
 little back parlor. Just inside sat Mrs. Sunder- 
 land, in her low, wide basket chair, beside which a 
 table, also low and wide, held writing materials 
 and sewing and knitting baskets on its double 
 etages. 
 
 " Don t ring ; come right in here," said the pleas 
 ant voice at Jane s elbow ; and the sash was pushed 
 up higher from within, and Mrs. Sunderland stood 
 back to let her enter. 
 
 " I m glad you came neighborly, not as a caller," 
 she said, pulling nearer another low wicker chair 
 set on small rockers. " There ! now you re right 
 in my intimate corner ; only it has n t been inti 
 mate, yet, with anybody but the children. Miss 
 Gregory, I m going to begin on the puzzle at once. 
 What is the matter with the neighborhood, or 
 with me ? I ve been here six months, and not a 
 being has approached me from less than three 
 miles. I thought " but here Mrs. Sunderland 
 checked herself, and waited as if for an answer to 
 her question. 
 
 " I don t believe I can explain," Jane said. "I 
 don t belong here, myself. I don t quite under 
 stand " and then she laughed. " It s atmos- 
 
56 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 phere, Ascutney Street atmosphere," she added, 
 as if she might be thought to mean a repellence of 
 some sort on Mrs. Sunderland s part. 
 
 " Oh, atmosphere ! Airs ? " 
 
 "Atmosphere is made up of airs, I suppose," 
 Jane answered. "But, Mrs. Sunderland, I don t 
 think you know about me. I am not one of Mrs. 
 Turnbull s family." In the second pause she made 
 she did not notice the flit of amused expression that 
 played over Mrs. Sunderland s face, just lifting lip 
 and eyebrow with an " I should think not ! " of 
 acquiescence. " I have an arrangement with 
 her, for a while ; that is all. I am only a seam 
 stress, Mrs. Sunderland." 
 
 " You are only the one lady I know of as yet 
 in Ascutney Street, Miss Gregory," returned 
 Mrs. Sunderland. " The others seem to have sent 
 me to Coventry." And a gay laugh of utterest 
 fun broke forth as she spoke the words. 
 
 " It s an idiotic shame," observed Jane Gregory, 
 making a mere statement without the slightest 
 emphasis. 
 
 " Why, you treat it gravely ! " said Mrs. Sun 
 derland quickly. " Do they say any evil of me ? " 
 
 Now Mrs. Sunderland was a born diplomate, 
 with all her absolute sincerity. She knew which 
 key to touch by instinct. Perhaps it was her in 
 heritance ; at any rate, she could not help it. She 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 57 
 
 discerned at the outset that this girl, this seam 
 stress, who stitched from house to house, had noth 
 ing in her of the low or small ; that she would not 
 retail silly things that she might easily know ; that 
 she would not secretly turn against those who had 
 employed her, repeating any foolishness, even if it 
 were such in her own estimate only, to which such 
 employers could have nothing correspondent. She 
 would not tell of them what she thought they ought 
 to be ashamed to have told. But Mrs. Sunderland 
 wanted to know ; to have the full fun of it ; and to 
 study Jane Gregory a little further in the experi 
 ment besides. So she asked, with tentative pur 
 pose, " Do they say any evil of me ? " 
 
 Jane sprang into the trap. Defending Ascutney 
 Street from suspicion of malice, she betrayed its 
 littleness. 
 
 " Oh, no, indeed ! it s only, why, it is too ab 
 surd to be, to say nothing of explaining, or mind 
 ing. I think it was first the children s 
 blue denim garden suits ; and then you did n t 
 dress so that they could be impressed by it ; and 
 they have seen your aunt hang out the 
 clothes." 
 
 Mrs. Sunderland clapped her hands, and gave a 
 musical little shriek. " Oh, what fun ! " she cried. 
 " My aunt ! Do go on ! " 
 
 " Not to make fun, Mrs. Sunderland. Only to 
 
58 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 show you how very little it all was. I think I Ve 
 said all I ought." 
 
 " Just exactly all," was Mrs. Sutherland s reply, 
 in a quite different tone. " I won t ask you a 
 word more. I Ve been making the most delicious 
 mistake that ever was, you see ; only you don t see, 
 for I can t quite explain it to you. But my aunt! 
 Why, Miss Gregory, Aunty is, I Ve almost for 
 gotten the rest of it, Anastasia something, I be 
 lieve ; but Anty ever since I can remember her 
 at home in my mother s service ; and Aunty to 
 the children from the time they could first speak. 
 Of course she hangs out the clothes ! she does ev 
 erything ; and likes it better than when if 
 there were half a dozen more to do one thing or 
 half a thing apiece. Poor dear Aunty ! so there 
 came along a blackbird and nipped off her nose ! 
 Mother Goose illustrated ! " and the gay, sweet 
 laugh chimed out again. 
 
 u I beg your pardon," seeing that Jane could do 
 nothing but sit silent ; " but if you could see just 
 what I do, my going through the looking-glass! 
 I wanted to ask you, are your arrangements with 
 Mrs. Turnbull quite permanent and exclusive? 
 Can nobody else have a bit of you, for a week 
 or two, at least ? " 
 
 "Oh, no yes, I mean; I go out whenever I 
 can. It is the dtdl time now. It is only when I 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 59 
 
 am not occupied anywhere else " There Jane 
 stopped, as approaching too nearly detailed ex 
 planation which she was not at liberty to make. 
 
 " I see," said Mrs. Sunderland. But she did 
 not see ; she only thought Mrs. Turnbull got sew 
 ing, and possibly other service, from Jane, at these 
 intervals, in return for her board. 
 
 " I would like you to come here, if you would. 
 I have needlework to put out ; but I would rather 
 take the needlewoman in, if it could be you. 
 Shall we try each other for a fortnight ? A month 
 would be better, if I might ask for it." 
 
 " I thank you. You are very kind." Jane an 
 swered with the same genuine, deliberate utterance 
 of each separate word that we have noticed before 
 to be her way. " I will come for the fortnight ; 
 and then, if it seems best, it can be the month, 
 the rest of it, afterward. Did you mean to 
 stay, or only by the days ? " 
 
 "And go back to Mrs. Turnbull for the nights? 
 No, indeed. I want a little of your leisure, to put 
 with mine and the children s. Alice has taken 
 such a loving to you, Miss Gregory." 
 
 Jane did not repeat her thanks. This could not 
 be thanked for in words. Had she got among the 
 angels? But I think Mrs. Sunderland under 
 stood her muteness. 
 
 At this moment the children came running in, 
 
60 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 followed by Aunty. Jane sat in the shadow, and 
 they passed her, going to their mother. " May 
 Aunty light the moon ? " they cried. 
 
 Yes, Aunty might light the moon ; the sky-moon 
 would not be lit to-night. Jane sat still, waiting 
 to see what would come of that. A lamp, of 
 course, she supposed ; these children were so imagi 
 native ; nothing was in the ordinary to them. 
 
 A match snapped and flickered ; by the light of 
 it Jane saw Aunty lift the top hemisphere of a 
 great white globe that hung in the middle of the 
 room over a table. The flame was touched to a 
 lamp within the shade, the upper half replaced, 
 and then was seen, hung by delicate chains to a sil 
 ver equatorial line, a fair, soft, planet-like thing, in 
 pure white glows and dusks of carven work on ala 
 baster, that shed a tender radiance through all the 
 room, and was itself an apparition of delight to 
 look at. 
 
 Jane uttered a low exclamation. 
 
 " Pretty, is n t it ? It is the children s moon. 
 I brought it from Ah, yes, Alice," she inter 
 rupted herself opportunely. " Your White Queen 
 is here ; the looking-glass leads both ways." 
 
 They sat a little longer in the fairy light, Jane 
 talking with the children ; then they all said good 
 night, for Aunty came for the little ones, and Jane 
 rose to go. But it was settled, in the moment on 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 61 
 
 the porch, after the children were upstairs, that 
 that day week should be the beginning of the fort 
 night. 
 
 Mrs. Turnbull came into Jane s room just after 
 the latter had taken down the fastenings of her 
 hair, and stood brushing it before the glass. The 
 lady had over her arm a polonaise of peacock-blue 
 surah, and some breadths of dove-colored silk. 
 
 " I just wanted you to look at this," she said. 
 " I guess we can make a combination with them, 
 and I thought we d take hold of it to-morrow." 
 And she went on with intricate suggestions of " let 
 ting in some side puffs, and putting on a plaiting, 
 and finishing with an edge of lace across the front, 
 and a heading of some iridescent bead trimming." 
 
 " 1 11 begin, if you wish," said Jane ; " but I 
 have a basque promised to Mrs. Storrie, and a 
 week from to-day I am engaged for a fortnight. I 
 will do all I can." 
 
 " Oh dear ! and Mrs. Hilum s lunch is Tuesday ! 
 The Flyes are there, from New York. I wanted it 
 to wear ! " 
 
 " If it could be a little simpler, I might try ; 
 I 11 finish the basque to-morrow, and there 11 be 
 Saturday and Monday. Maybe we need not alter 
 it so much." 
 
 " Oh, I hate simple things ! " Mrs. Turnbull re 
 joined, with an indescribable nasal contempt in the 
 
62 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 utterance of the first syllable of the adjective. 
 " And I want it to look entirely different from what 
 any part of it ever did before. That s the beauty 
 of combinations. You can transmogrify, and not 
 show the vamping up." 
 
 Mrs. Turnbull waived the fact that she herself 
 knew every shade of color and inch of trimming 
 that her intimate friends had ever worn, and could 
 trace them, with perfect accuracy and unflagging 
 interest, through all after - adaptations ; and that 
 kindred methods made all women keen. 
 
 " But where are you going next week ? " she 
 asked curiously. 
 
 Jane threw back her flood of fawn-brown hair 
 upon her shoulders, and leaned over the polonaise, 
 examining something in its construction. 
 
 Mrs. Turnbull was easily diverted. " What 
 hair you have got, Jane ! " she cried. " Now if I 
 could match that color in a silk ! It is n t caffiolay, 
 nor old gold, nor furlmort ; but liow it takes the 
 light ! " 
 
 Jane stood back again, and resumed her brush 
 quietly. " I like my hair," she said, much as Mrs. 
 Turnbull might speak of a bonnet that pleased her ; 
 and her fingers slipped along its shining length half 
 caressingly. " Hair is such a beautiful thing." 
 
 " How funny you are ! even with a compliment. 
 But you don t do anything with it ! " 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 63 
 
 " My hair ? I enjoy it. It is all my own." 
 
 " Of course. I can see that" returned the ac- 
 centuative lady, " when it s all down." Jane did 
 not explain her different meaning. " But when 
 it s up, it s pretty, of course ; but there s no 
 sort of effect to it. It would look like another 
 thing, if you d dress it, as I do. My ! if /had 
 such hair ! " 
 
 Jane glanced at the reflection in the glass over 
 her shoulder she would not have looked more 
 directly of the mass of bang and finger-puffs 
 and coroneted braid, and could not resist saying, 
 "Yes, it would be quite another thing. But I 
 should need to be quite another person." 
 
 " Perhaps that s it. It might not be so suitable. 
 You re a very sensible girl, Jane, if you are queer," 
 Mrs. Turnbull answered serenely. 
 
 But she took an agitated tone again as she sud 
 denly reverted to her former subject. " What in 
 the world am I to do for Tuesday ? And where is 
 it you are going on Thursday ? " 
 
 " Mrs. Sunderland wants me ; and I have prom 
 ised." 
 
 It had to come. 
 
 " Well, I must say ! " ejaculated Mrs. Turnbull. 
 What she must say she did not proceed to state. 
 Perhaps it was not easy, in due order and force, to 
 extemporize it. She gathered up her peacock and 
 
64 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 dove colored stuffs and went off to her own bed 
 room. 
 
 On Monday night a little twisted note came over 
 from Mrs. Sunderland to Jane. Alice brought it ; 
 to the front door this time. Mr. Turnbull, smoking 
 his cigar as he walked about among the little 
 shrubberies in the front yard, took it from her at 
 the gate. Mrs. Turnbull sat on the piazza, and 
 said nothing. Children were such an entering 
 wedge, she thought. Mrs. Sunderland was Jane 
 Gregory s acquaintance ; and Alice had on a plain 
 gingham frock, and an old-fashioned white pina 
 fore. 
 
 This was the note : 
 
 " Please come on Thursday at eight, precisely ; 
 I have a reason. And for a reason, or a fancy, 
 please come up the little outside staircase from the 
 garden, at the very back, and enter at the door you 
 will find unfastened at the top. 
 Yours truly, 
 
 M. G. SUNDERLAND." 
 
 At eight o clock on Thursday the children were 
 at breakfast with their mother in the dining-room 
 on the other side ; Aunty was busy attending upon 
 them; Jane crossed the garden and went up the 
 flight of steps that ran from the grass ground to a 
 small square landing at the very end of the building 
 above. A door here, half glazed and screened 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 65 
 
 with white muslin, led her into a plain but exqui 
 sitely dainty little room, a half-square rectangle in 
 shape, whose length took the whole cross dimension 
 of this extended portion of the house. 
 
 A white straw matting covered the floor ; two 
 soft white sheepskin foot-rugs lay upon it, one by 
 the bedside and one before the tiny fireplace in the 
 outer wall, where stood a large, comfortable cane 
 chair, with cushions covered with white dimity. A 
 dressing-table made of a packing-box and flounced 
 with the like material, a white pine bedstead with 
 dimity spread and pillow - scarf , a white pine 
 washing-stand with rods above it plentifully hung 
 with plain towels that shone with fine ironing and 
 were precise in evenly creased folds, nicely fitted 
 fresh white window-blinds, these were the other 
 furnishings. Holland shades of dark, cool green, 
 between the white ones and the sashes, and three 
 jacqueminot roses in a slender glass upon the dress 
 ing-table, were the only relievings of color. Over 
 by the further window a light sewing-machine 
 table was placed sidewise ; a white cover laid over 
 its working parts. 
 
 Jane stood there, making just a corresponding 
 bit of delicate tint and prevailing whiteness, in her 
 cambric dress with its tiny pink sprigs far apart on 
 a fair ground. She stood there still, taking in the 
 prettiness and sweetness all around her, when steps 
 
66 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 were heard coining along an inward passageway : 
 little, hurried, eager ones, and others, as light, al 
 most as quick, but differently measured. Mrs. 
 Sunderland was speaking to the children. 
 
 " No ; you have never been here before ; it has 
 not been open. But now, you see the way. There 
 is the looking-glass. You may knock three little 
 knocks upon the door beside it." 
 
 Three little single knocks sounded ; then a very 
 audible half whisper, " Me, mamma, too ; let 
 me ; " and just as Jane had her hand on the knob 
 there came three more, rather faster and lower 
 down. She turned the latch, drew herself back as 
 she gently swung the door quite in against the 
 wall, and Rick and Alice entered, curious, excited, 
 delighted. Mrs. Sunderland stood in the doorway. 
 Across the outer panels, now folded into the cham 
 ber, hung a large square mirror in a light frame. 
 
 " There, Alice ! " said Mrs. Sunderland. " This 
 is a nearer way. When the White Queen is here, 
 and would like to see you, there will be the look 
 ing-glass, and you may knock. When you cannot 
 come in, or she is not here, it will have disappeared, 
 and the door will be fast. Thank you," she said 
 to Jane, " for playing into my little plan. I hope 
 you won t object to what it leads to. The children 
 have been getting very lonely. You must not let 
 them come upon you too much ; but when you can 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 67 
 
 have them, the other matters are quite secondary, 
 please understand." 
 
 " I thank you, Mrs. Sunderland. I do under 
 stand ; and I am pleased, very much. * I am so 
 glad to be in their little story. I m sure it is in 
 me to be fond of children, though I have n t had 
 much chance to realize it. It has been just as if 
 they were birds ; I always long to get close to them 
 and coax them into my hands, but I never expect 
 they will let me catch them." 
 
 The truth was, Jane, in her outside feeling as 
 regarded everybody, was absolutely timid with the 
 children of those who admitted her to no sort of 
 personal relation with themselves ; and more espe 
 cially so, the more the little people were fenced off 
 by airs and costumes. She made the fences her 
 self ; she approached them only to do that ; after 
 ward, they were separated from her by her own 
 handiwork and devices. She knew it was an ut 
 terly senseless feeling ; but it got the better of her, 
 none the less. 
 
 Mrs. Sunderland opened a deep drawer in a 
 wall-press beside the chimney, and showed Jane a 
 pile of nice white stuffs flannels and cottons and 
 cambrics and Hamburg edgings ; a basket upon a 
 shelf above held threads and needles, buttons, 
 tapes, and all such things. 
 
 " I have set up this place for you ; it was easy to 
 
68 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 fall in with Alice s fancy. You have a white 
 realm, you see ; and as I wish you to take full 
 authority here, it is well you are installed as the 
 White Queen. There is nothing to manage chil 
 dren with like a little myth of their own to handle 
 them by." 
 
 Meanwhile, Alice and Kick were reconnoitring 
 eagerly. " Why did n t you tell us of this place 
 before? We thought it was only a closet." 
 
 " Well, you see what the closet opens into, now 
 the time has come. It was full," she explained to 
 Jane, " of trunks and bundles and all sorts of un- 
 bestowed lumber, until within a week. And I dis 
 covered it would make such a nice little sewing- 
 room." 
 
 " Mamma ! " cried Alice, finding and opening 
 the door upon the outside landing. " Why ! " 
 turning round and round in bewildered recogni 
 tion ; " we have played up and down these steps, 
 and they did n t go anywhere but to the platform. 
 Where was this door ? " 
 
 Mrs. Sunderland came out and pulled across the 
 entrance a sliding shutter that filled up with a flat 
 board surface from floor to eave the space between 
 the upright beams that served as doorposts. " That 
 shuts it in, safe from cold weather or tramps," she 
 said. 
 
 " Mamma 1 it is magnificent ! It is a story-book 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 69 
 
 thing ! I m so happy ! " and Alice danced up and 
 down in ecstasy. 
 
 " I thought it would please you, some day," said 
 her mother. " I kept the secret till I knew just 
 what to do with it." 
 
 Was all this for only two weeks, or for a 
 month, even ? It felt to Jane like a new beginning 
 of something that was to go on into a quite different 
 life for always. Already her changes from house 
 to house, her dreary intervals at Mrs. Turnbull s, 
 seemed long ago. There was a place here made 
 for her ; a thought for her in everything about it. 
 Work ? Was that what she had come for ? Per 
 haps. Perhaps it would be for work that she 
 should come to paradise. But in paradise, work 
 takes other character and name. Some word 
 sweeter than " pleasure " would stand for it in the 
 new language. 
 
 I do not mean to detail every little thing that 
 had to do with Jane s fortnight here ; but this way 
 in which it began was such a pretty way of its own 
 that it needs to be represented as it was presented 
 to her ; it opens and indicates the whole spirit and 
 expression of that which followed and surrounded 
 her through the days. 
 
 " One thing I will say to you," Mrs. Sunderland 
 began, as they sat down together over a basket of 
 work. " You will know just what I mean, and 
 
70 ASCL7TNEY STREET. 
 
 don t mean. Whatever there is here which you 
 may notice behind my little looking-glass, unex 
 pected or otherwise, please don t be provoked 
 into explaining, in my behalf. I d rather not be 
 explained, if I cannot explain myself. Character 
 is like the solar system. It has nothing to do but 
 to go on. People will only understand what they 
 come to, if all the secrets of the universe were chis 
 eled out upon the rocks." Which was perhaps a 
 rather stately way of putting it, but Mistress Mar 
 garet Sunderland could be stately sometimes. 
 
 " Oh, I quite know," Jane answered. " It s 
 just as true of a little bit of moss as it is of a 
 planet." So these two met each other, and fitted 
 to each other s thought. 
 
 If Jane ever did make common talk of anything, 
 she would not for the world have made common 
 talk of the things she saw and was part of for the 
 time in Mrs. Sunderland s household. The deli 
 cate refinement of all, and the generosity that took 
 her into it, gave it a sanctity. 
 
 " I suppose she s got more than she can finish," 
 Mrs. Turnbull had suggested, as a final solution of 
 the problem. This was at once a clinching of a 
 certain theory that, chiefly through Mrs. Turnbull s 
 observations, had sprung up in Ascutney Street, 
 and a disposal of the contradiction to it which had 
 at first seemed involved in Mrs. Sunderland s em- 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 71 
 
 ployment of a seamstress. The theory was that 
 Mrs. Sunderland "took in work" herself. The 
 coming and going of certain parcels had looked 
 like it; and then there was a particular carriage 
 that came now and again of a morning, rather 
 early, from which either the man who drove, or a 
 very inconspicuous little feminine person in plain 
 dress who sometimes came and alighted, carried in 
 a basket. 
 
 " It might be fine washing, even, who knew ? " 
 said the Ascutaey Street people. " It was n t any 
 body to see her, for it was n t a seeing hour, for 
 folks who would come in carriages, except on an 
 errand ; and the girl who got out was n t a car- 
 riage-y looking person, either." 
 
 " It may lead to a permanency," Mrs. Turnbull 
 had said, in a slightly ill-used tone of sarcasm. 
 " She may take you in partnership." 
 
 Jane Gregory knew very well that there would 
 be more of this, in question and comment, when 
 she returned after the fortnight : and that she 
 should be continually provoked to mention some lit 
 tle quenching incidental circumstance ; but now, 
 and she was glad to have her own indignant pride 
 for her new friend strengthened by her friend s 
 frank word, nothing could have drawn from her, 
 through provocation, artifice, or surprise, any least 
 betrayal. 
 
72 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 She would not have told Mrs. Turnbull that 
 while all the furnishings of the little house which 
 had been observable in the landing from the wag 
 ons, or patent at windows, were of the simplest, 
 there were other things that had come invisibly in 
 safe foldings and packings, which gave marvelous 
 tone and finish to the home Ascutney Street knew 
 nothing of ; things quite out of Ascutney Street ex 
 perience or imagination. She would not have said 
 that while " there was not a woolen carpet in the 
 house," there were rugs of indescribable softness 
 and richness in the bedrooms, a superb tiger-skin 
 with ivory claws stretched out before the settee- 
 like sofa of wickerwork in one parlor, and that in 
 the other was a bear-skin like a snowdrift. She 
 might not have been able to state that a great, beau 
 tiful etching of a Madonna upon one wall was an 
 Overbeck ; or a painting of a tiny, lovely bit of 
 wood-glade, with two rabbits alert and listening, 
 with slender, erected ears that seemed to say 
 " Hark ! " like uplifted fingers, whence you felt 
 at once the gesture of the uplifted finger must 
 have somehow grown, and quivering with the 
 spring that was presently to take them flashing 
 away into a thicket from some as yet far-off alarm, 
 was a real Landseer. She would not have told of 
 the children s " moon," or the fair, white sculpture 
 of the Persephone, that rested on the only bit of 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 73 
 
 velvet or fine upholstery stuff in the room, a gar 
 net-covered bracket ; she would not have counted 
 as upholstery a table-cover or two that were like 
 woven pictures ; nor spoken of the books that filled 
 from floor to ceiling a plain set of dark-stained 
 shelves. 
 
 Of the life they lived there, it would have been 
 of no use to speak ; people must live a piece of such 
 to know it. The very questions of the children 
 were of a range and realm that the mere good- 
 clothes - wearing, scrupulous - card - leaving, lunch- 
 spreading and lunch - eating round had never 
 touched ; that it was too busy with its own labo 
 rious following and striving to reach up to. 
 
 They played out whole fairy-tales in the white 
 room and the rooms adjoining, which were the chil 
 dren s for their sleep and sport ; and the long L-pas- 
 sage and the outer platform, with the garden stairs 
 leading to the shade and pleasantness of the small 
 but pretty grounds, served them for space and 
 scenery enough. 
 
 Mrs. Sunderland was as happy and as earnest 
 as Alice and Rick ; she said she liked them to live 
 out their little imaginations, and represent in action 
 what had so pleased them in fancy. To them it 
 was realization : and to realize one s ideals, even if 
 beginning only with nursery fables, was the way to 
 live. It would lead to actualization of theories, 
 
74 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 perhaps, in after times, which otherwise might re 
 main useless day-dreams forever. For this very 
 reason she but slightly approved of exhibited the 
 atricals : these were the formalizing less of the 
 thing than the shadow ; they beguiled into self- 
 consciousness ; whereas the genuine " be-ing," as 
 the children called it, their favorite characters, and 
 the " doing " of their deeds, was a self-surrender 
 to that which they ardently delighted in and ad 
 mired. 
 
 With all their pretty make-believes, Jane 
 thought there were never little people so honestly 
 and simply real, as the two little Sunderlands. 
 
 " The great mistake in all living," said Mrs. 
 Sunderland to her, " is the keeping of two separate 
 selves : one that would be, and one that is. There 
 is always some way of uniting the two." 
 
 " Do you think so ? " asked Jane, surprised. 
 " There is something that is stronger than would 
 or will, I m afraid. Must treads both down." 
 
 "Make must serve your own turn, then," said 
 Mrs. Sunderland. 
 
 " Men may do that," said Jane meekly. " They 
 make the world suit them, or turn it upside down. 
 Girls have a hard time." 
 
 " Are you there, little one ? " asked Mrs. Sun 
 derland, with a laugh. " Better steer round that 
 snag ; let the iron double-bows run against that. 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 75 
 
 My dear ! " she broke forth in fresh, serious ear 
 nest, " boys have a hard time ! They re getting so 
 dreadfully shoved aside. They re pushed away 
 from behind the counters, and out of the profes 
 sions. I think it s a great shame. Why, a young 
 man can t marry, nowadays, until some young 
 woman, I suppose, has laid up a prudent compe 
 tence, enough to support a husband, and comes and 
 asks him. And by the time they might come, they 
 know better ; there is n t any motive. A man can t 
 make a Jiome^ while the woman does the other 
 thing ! I ve a feeling on this subject, Jane ; I ve 
 got kinsmen, and friendsmen, and I know 
 how horrid it is for them. They would want nice 
 wives, of course ; and they Well there s poor 
 old Hans gone out West, away from everybody 
 he likes and belongs to, to ride round among the 
 ranches, and get caught in the blizzards. Why 
 don t these enterprising women do that, if they re 
 so equal to everything? Men have to take the 
 rough, it seems, and make the places, and women 
 are to come in as fast as they re smoothed out, and 
 fill all up, and drive on the poor fellows, that ought 
 to be some of their husbands, to more wilderness, 
 like the hunted aborigines ! " 
 
 " Women can t all marry," said Jane. 
 
 " No, of course they can t, under such circum 
 stances. It s because the men can t. I don t say 
 
76 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 it s all their doing, just in this way ; but that s 
 part of it ; and between the dolls and the drivers, 
 it s done. And then, where the men are n t angels, 
 it conies back upon the women, and there are the 
 poor unspeakables." 
 
 " Still as things are, we have got to work, or 
 starve, or come to the unspeakable." 
 
 " Work, yes ; you re in the right line, my 
 dear ; but the other two, no ! there are homes 
 yet ; and they want more women in them. Daugh 
 ters don t stay ; or if they do, it is n t much for 
 home, only for headquarters ; literally, a place to 
 put their heads in when they are n t in their bon 
 nets. They ve got the boom, and they re off for 
 outside careers and causes. This is where the 
 change and the compensation come in, and will 
 keep the world round, after all. It s a game of 
 puss-in-the-corners, and the wise pussies will slip 
 into the corners, by the firesides and the mending- 
 baskets and the cradles. You re all wanted there, 
 Jane Gregory, and you re not wanted in the crowd 
 and hustle." 
 
 " I wonder if women could n t do something in 
 the new places," said Jane thoughtfully. 
 
 u Out there among the blizzards ? Why, yes ; 
 and as fast as they get there, they do it, the wo 
 men s part of it, and that way has to be often, 
 to be sure, a piece of the men s ; but for the first 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 77 
 
 clearing, the very roughest, the men generally go 
 ahead alone. After the families begin, there begin 
 to be pussy corners, you know, too ; even in log 
 cabins." 
 
 " I don t see how the families do begin," said 
 Jane. 
 
 " A few go in families at the start, of course ; 
 some leave their families in the old places for a 
 while, and fetch them when they ve chopped the 
 woods a little, or ploughed up a bit of prairie ; and 
 then there are the towns that are laid out and set 
 tled up all in the lump, like the sentences children 
 read without spelling. I never considered it very 
 systematically ; but that s the way we hear about 
 it. And Oh, the railroads, of course ; they are 
 like rockets with lines to them, fired off from point 
 to point over the breaks and chasms, and bridging 
 the way for the crowd, that will go wherever it sees 
 a bridge. Oh, yes ; settling the country is done by 
 the big job, now, but it does n t make new country 
 into old home, for all that ; and it s hard for a 
 long time for a man like my like Hansel." 
 
 Mrs. Sunderland felt a sudden little mental 
 twitch when she came to the name that before had 
 been so quick upon her lips. She had nearly said 
 something else, something much more fully explan 
 atory ; and then it occurred to her that she would 
 not. Not at all in any wild, remote, impossible 
 
78 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 reference to Jane ; such never entered her sensible 
 head ; only as it concerned herself. Something in 
 clined her, in the attitude things had taken with 
 her in Ascutney Street, not to make manifest even 
 to Jane, quite yet, the least bit of her personal and 
 social links ; names and relationships open up a 
 good deal. " Sunderland " might happen to be 
 anybody s name ; but if the whole of Doctor Han 
 sel s, and its connection with herself, were as this 
 and that set together, they would, to a great many 
 people, give the key to the whole story which she 
 meant for a while to have the fun of keeping to 
 herself. 
 
 Not one of these small Ascutney Street men of 
 the modern little multitudinous business world, but 
 would have heard, at least traditionally, of the 
 stately old mercantile firm of Griffith and Sunder 
 land, that was great on the wharf and the exchange 
 long before Ascutney Street was even a cross foot 
 path over the country fields, or ever an " hourly " 
 omnibus plodded from that precinct to the city. 
 And nobody, who knew by the merest hearsay of 
 present general society, but could tell you that the 
 Griffiths and Sunderlands had so married back and 
 forth in two or three generations, besides reaching 
 matrimonially into other strong parallels, that these 
 stood as at the head of a list, the very mention of 
 any single family of which suggested a whole clan 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 79 
 
 and history of social power, having its roots in at 
 least three great metropolitan centres. It did not 
 matter, in individual cases, whether the money 
 power were there or not ; of course many a young 
 Griffith or Sunderland had his own way to make, 
 as Margaret said ; and probably it came all the 
 harder upon them in the matter of starting new 
 centres and planting new homes. 
 
 All this parenthesis is ours ; it was but a flash in 
 Margaret Sunderland s mind as she spoke. 
 
 " Is it Doctor Hansell who is the children s un 
 cle Hans ? " Jane asked quite innocently. 
 
 " They call him so," answered the duplicit Mar 
 garet. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 GRETEL TO HANSEL. 
 
 "You need not thank me so meekly, dear old 
 Hans, for my tumultuous letter-writing to you ; it 
 is my only safety-valve. But then you always were 
 my steam-escape, you know, the only one I can 
 puff off all my half-condensed sublimations to. 
 How queer it is that nobody seems to realize as 
 we always did, since the days we traveled off to 
 the old witch-fairy s sugar-candy-and-gingerbread 
 house together that all we do in this world is to 
 live out some fable or other ; and that only a fa 
 ble means only a thing factable. You need n t 
 laugh at my English words or my Latin derivation. 
 I ve looked it out and don t care. It s all one in 
 creation, to speak and to do. You were half 
 right and two thirds wrong and that also is an 
 anti-common-sense possibility in shaking your 
 head at my experiment in coming here to Ascutney 
 Street, and trying life alongside a different row of 
 people from those I had been accustomed to, and 
 who, I insist upon it, had a most limiting and re 
 pressing influence upon one whole side of me that 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 81 
 
 was getting paralyzed and withered in consequence 
 of the cramp and useless tying-down. I knew I 
 was right at the start, and in the leading motive, 
 to do something at my end that should correspond 
 to what brave old Eick was doing at his, and so the 
 sooner, perhaps, make the two ends meet again. I 
 knew I was right in leasing Bay Hill, and getting 
 out of the expenses there. It was no use for Rick 
 to say, c You can remain as you are ; I don t see any 
 need to alter things essentially for you here, when 
 I knew the money it would take would be just so 
 much out of what he was going off to the opposite 
 meridian to get together again and make up his 
 losses with; just so much time lengthened out 
 days for dollars in our separation. For the 
 way of living involves so much, more than just 
 the housekeeping accounts from month to month ; 
 it settles the whole principle of plan and calcula 
 tion and necessity in the general and for the future. 
 I knew he would not come back until he could feel 
 he need never go again ; and I wanted, in case of 
 disappointment or break in health, or any trouble 
 here apart from money, in which we must have 
 each other, that there should be a kind of living 
 established and proved that he could come right 
 back to. I wanted to find out that we might do 
 without paraphernalia. Besides all this I had a 
 curiosity. I wanted to take the chance to dip a 
 
82 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 while into a different piece of the story ; to get near 
 to something simpler, something more primitive 
 and neighborly. I thought I should like to live in 
 a quiet little country street, with people who did 
 not ride in their own carriages, or give grand re 
 ceptions, but knew each other s little ins and outs, 
 and were especially sympathetic with the outs. 
 
 " There s just where I missed it. They don t. I 
 plunged myself, unbidden and without introduc 
 tion, right into the midst of the fiercest kind of an 
 aristocracy ; aristocracy, I was going to say, in the 
 making ; only I fancy it is not precisely the genu 
 ine process. It is rather aristocracy in the poten 
 tial ; and which takes upon itself the indicative. 
 
 " Do you believe, they would nt let me in ? I Ve 
 been here six months, and not a creature has called 
 upon me. They look at me over the fences, and 
 spy me out and guess at me, and decide that I am 
 not their sort, and that the bars are not to be let 
 down. So I have hidden myself up more than 
 ever. And the fun of it is even beyond what 
 the experiment would have been ! I never guessed 
 before how easy it was to hide and be forgotten. 
 Why, you have only to slip out of your place for a 
 moment, with whatever slight pretext, and pro 
 vided you have done nothing to bring the police 
 after you there are n t half a dozen persons to 
 bother about you, or care whether you ever turn 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 83 
 
 up or not, till you choose to put yourself in evi 
 dence once more. Out of town is all there needs 
 to be said about it. 4 Gone a journey, it does 
 n t matter whether five miles or five thousand, since 
 you re off, and people have turned round to the 
 next thing. I would have gone out West with you, 
 if that had n t been really too wild a notion with 
 the children ; but here, only as far west as Chester- 
 bury, I am just as secure. Even if I run up 
 against anybody in a town shop, I need only say, 
 4 Down from the country on an errand or two, and 
 they let me go again, both out of sight and out of 
 mind, with the most Barkis-y willingness ! Of 
 course I owe much immunity to the fact that Kick 
 has gone to the far Indian seas to patch up the 
 hole in his fortune, and that we sold the town 
 house and the ponies and a carriage or two, before 
 he left. Doubtless when some of the kin reassem 
 ble within easy drive after their scattered summer- 
 ings, it will change the aspect. A few more car 
 riages coming and going will perhaps open wider 
 the curious eyes to a kind of enlightenment they 
 can take in. The fun will then be to see what 
 they can consistently do about it. 
 
 " Do you know, Hansel, why the knight s move 
 is the most puissant on the chessboard ? It is the 
 move of courtesy and valor ; so it carries strength 
 and privilege. The mightiest majesty cannot 
 
84 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 budge at all, of course, except to edge itself 
 from a threatened intrusion ; the castles the 
 great solid established powers and orders go 
 up and down their perpendiculars and horizontals, 
 and bear tremendously on whatever is precisely 
 in their way ; the bishops, and other clergy, slide 
 on their peculiar diagonals, seeming to avoid the 
 rigidities of rank, but maintaining their own ; the 
 queen, a h ! she indeed may vary with the subtle 
 dominance of the suave oblique, the dignified 
 limit of the direct, but her weakness is that she 
 cannot, after all, for whatever emergency, break 
 out of range or confuse her lines. See what the 
 knight, the free noble, does! He alone leaps 
 the boundary ! He only can take two steps on his 
 own road and one off at the same time upon the 
 path of his neighbor ; or one step off from self and 
 the conventional, and two alongside in fellowship 
 upon the next parallel. Over heads, across bar 
 riers, he springs and alights as he will, and as he 
 is wanted. It is he who solves the problems and 
 defies the hindrances ; and he never jumbles up 
 the game, either. Hansel, chess would be aw 
 fully stupid if it were not for the knight s move ! 
 
 "I only meant to write you a light running 
 domestic ; but you and I always do get into the 
 reasons of things. What I am explaining and pref 
 acing is, that I have taken a sort of knight s 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 85 
 
 jump myself into a next row, and found what 
 I should not have got precisely if I had held on 
 to my own particular square, or file of squares, for 
 ever. I have made friends with a most charming 
 little pawn, and am gently escorting her forward, 
 or planning to do so, step by step, out of a block 
 she got into, without a safe or worth-while move 
 for her in any direction. And you know there is 
 this about a pawn, she may, under special protec 
 tion, and by gently wise progression, come eventu 
 ally to queen ! I never thought until this minute, 
 what a pretty thing it is that the only piece that 
 has the very elements of the royal move in its own 
 small, unpretending, faithful, patient advances, is 
 the pawn ! 
 
 " I have n t any special scheme for her ; I do not 
 mean to put schemes into her head, or even dis 
 contents ; I have simply got her into my home, in 
 her own humble capacity and use, and further into 
 my heart than she imagines. I do not mean to let 
 her go again carelessly ; and I feel somehow sure 
 that there is something for her in the world that 
 maybe I can help her reach. She would n t care 
 to be a queen ; and I don t mean place and station 
 for her, when I think of possible change ; but some 
 little rule and realm that every woman likes, at 
 least some little freedom and fullness of existence, 
 that I feel like demanding for her, and wringing 
 
86 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 out of circumstance. These Ascutney Street people 
 have so looked down upon her ! I mean just one 
 household of them who have had her services, for 
 her board, I believe, and have kept her presence 
 with them disguised or suppressed, because they 
 knew Ascutney Street would look down ! 
 
 " Probably I should not have told you all this, 
 but that I have had literally nothing else to tell 
 of late, or to interest myself about, beyond the 
 children s pranks ; and it was a prank of theirs, in 
 deed, that brought Jane here. She has won her 
 way with them ; Alice came upon her, as she called 
 it, through the looking-glass ; which really meant, 
 I had reason to suspect, a trespass across garden 
 bounds into my disdainful neighbor s premises ; 
 and the child has named her the coincidence 
 with what I have been saying just strikes me as I 
 write it her White Queen. 
 
 " Maybe I have left you to suppose that I have 
 wrapped my enthusiasm about some ordinary un 
 bred girl of coarse service, and am trying my wand 
 upon her, by way of turning a Cinderella into a 
 princess, and making a coach out of a pumpkin for 
 her to ride in. Altro ! If sweet, high womanli 
 ness means that, my little seamstress is a lady. 
 She s a different speshoo, as old Dobson used to 
 say to us in her descriptive comments on Australian 
 natural history. 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 87 
 
 " Do not think, either, that I am uncomfortable 
 here, or desolate, or repenting my bargain. I have 
 got more experience, and some better things, than 
 I came for; the house and garden are pretty 
 and nice ; the children are happy, for they fetched 
 their fairyland with them ; Primrose comes to see 
 me, on her way to and from the trains, where she 
 leaves or meets her husband, and brings me apricots 
 and roses and grapes from Edgemere ; I have Rick 
 and you to write to ; and I don t even contemn I 
 only watch, as a specimen in the grub condition 
 Ascutney Street. 
 
 " Now I want another long letter from the wilds. 
 I don t care if it is rit a ranch country, or mines 
 and gulches, or a tornado track ; all these things 
 are west of the Mississippi, and so are you ; and I m 
 only gradually getting able to sort you out and set 
 you apart. Has your old Swedish woman learned 
 to pronounce her /s, or got her tongue round all 
 the consonants in the 4 Griffith yet ? or does she 
 still despair of that, and call you 4 Dhocdhor Yan, 
 and does she make yam, and yems, and yonnycake 
 for you, and open yars of yinyer, when the yudye 
 rides over at tea-time ? And did her currant yelly 
 yell? 
 
 " I m very peaceful about your having her, dear 
 old Hans ; and the photograph of the little long, 
 low house is lovely, with the natural park-like sur- 
 
88 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 roundings of soft sweeping turf and the far shadows 
 among the groups of lordly old black walnuts! 
 Sunnywater is a picture and a poem, in the very 
 name ; but I can t trust altogether to that for you ; 
 and I do hate to think of those long rides out to 
 the farms, and the winter storms, and the break 
 neck road to the fort, and only Mrs. Knutzen and 
 her boy Bap for you to come home to ! " 
 
 HANSEL TO GRETEL. 
 
 " Don t worry, little woman, about what I have 
 to come home to, when you keep me company your 
 self with such budgets as that I have just spent 
 half my evening with. And as to what I go out 
 to, you simply can t think what the glorious differ 
 ence is between a rush over the prairie with a fairly 
 beaten bridle-path to follow, or even a scramble 
 down the bluff and a transit by the cable ferry 
 to the opposite scramble up again, and the tame 
 ways of crowded civilization, hanging on to straps 
 in horse-cars, timing trains, or driving along macad 
 amized thoroughfares in a continuous procession 
 that never passes a given point in any number of 
 hours together. Why, I never got out, before, in 
 all my life, until I came here ! and I think I am 
 like the genie that got out of the bottle. Now I 
 have fairly stretched myself, I don t believe I shall 
 ever get back again, to stay, at any rate. 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 89 
 
 " The joke of your supposing that going to As- 
 cntney Street the last little adaptation of Queen- 
 Anne-to-the-million in pretentious demand and 
 supply for modern measures and patterns of living 
 would bring you into some sweet, arcadian 
 simplicity ! Of course the simplicity all went there 
 with yourself, like the children s fairyland, and 
 was speedily disenchanted into a very disgusted 
 enlightenment. I am glad, however, that you are 
 not wholly disheartened or desolate ; you would be 
 pretty sure to be preventing somebody else from 
 being so wherever you were. 
 
 " As to your chess parable, I can add a simili 
 tude to those you have so ingeniously fitted. Does 
 it occur to you what the doubled pieces mean? 
 That there is a king s side and a queen s side to the 
 affairs of life? Yours is the feminine chivalry, 
 the knight s move with the womanly power ; there 
 remains to be made a reinforcing of the position 
 by the K. Kt. And where is he, to be on yomr 
 part for your white pawn ? If you can bring him 
 forward, my lady, I think you may have done your 
 work. 
 
 " But these little pawns with the queen s impulse 
 in them have a hard time getting across the board, 
 even among their friends. I have caught glimpses 
 of such in my ways among all sorts ; and I know 
 just the kind of 4 sweet, high womanliness, without 
 
90 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 its fair chance, that you mean. And yet, you 
 women of the step above, are you always willing 
 to make real room for them, a place beside you 
 that would need no patronage? I wonder what 
 you would say to me, for instance, Gretel, if I were 
 to take a knight s jump somewhere, and lead a little 
 white pawn toward the front ? " 
 
 When Margaret got thus far in Doctor Hansel s 
 letter, I am bound to say she made a long pause 
 and catechized herself, and I am afraid she did not 
 come out from the catechizing quite satisfied with 
 the lesser self to which the nobler put the test ques 
 tions. I am afraid that she was not quite ready 
 that Doctor Hansel should make that knight s 
 move. "At any rate," she said, taking up the 
 letter from her lap with a long breath, " he is away 
 out there. One need not trouble about it yet 
 awhile. He won t pick up a red pawn, nor a 
 black one. He s a white knight." She did not 
 fancy the white pawns were especially plenty at 
 Sunny water. 
 
 The rest of the letter she read aloud afterward 
 to Kick and Alice ; and Jane Gregory heard it. 
 
 " I would like to have had you and the children 
 with me up the river on a holiday I have just had. 
 I don t often go out of instant reach of my work ; 
 but I had no especial cases, and there is a good fel 
 low out here on a prospect for a practice, whom I 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 91 
 
 have half a mind to go shares with myself, in a 
 circuit I can hardly swing round to now, and that 
 will double up its population in ten years time. 
 Anyhow, I took this run went up on one of the 
 government boats with an inspecting party under 
 Major Griggs. There were half a dozen pleasant 
 men, and two or three ladies. We went where the 
 Indian summer comes from. All along the river 
 lands was that lovely haze like gold mist, and the 
 trees and creepers were just beginning to kindle 
 up. You have no idea how a creeper does grow, 
 when it has only one thing to cling to. If I were 
 a versifier, I would save that to make a poem of. 
 But the poem was there, with a thousand others. 
 You will see a tall elm, with a trunk column as 
 round as a fair Doric, running straight up all by 
 itself sixty feet before it throws out its tent of 
 boughs ; and a vine starting at its roots has laid 
 every shoot and leaf close down upon the bark, 
 knowing right well there is nothing else near to 
 fling out for ; and so climbing and clinging and 
 facing itself all the time toward the light, it has 
 fitted a perfect, unbroken mosaic of foliage to the 
 tree-pillar. Above, where it gets to the branches, 
 the streamers and festoons have their way, and the 
 whole splendid thing is alive with breath and 
 motion in the high blue air. The colors, breaking 
 out here and there on single leaf or tips and 
 
92 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 clusters, are like jewels among green enamel. 
 Fancy the whole tree incrusted, as it will be soon, 
 with such a fretwork of gems, and then imagine a 
 colonnade of such trees just far enough from each 
 other to keep their single perfection, and you have 
 one of the variety of pictures that this up-river, 
 lazy stroll, in shallow, uncertain waters, gave and 
 suggested to us, with sufficient lingering before 
 each point to make it thoroughly a study and 
 possession. 
 
 "The solitude of these river stretches between 
 the towns is wonderful. The channel changes 
 make the farm borders so uncertain on the water- 
 lines, that a man may have acres of plantation one 
 year that are all under the river next; and of 
 course they build their houses away back in safer 
 places. You see nothing of habitation ; when the 
 boat wants fresh eggs or butter, a yawl is sent off 
 to a landing, and the men go up country a mile or 
 more for a supply. Fancy the sunsets in this 
 width of stillness, when the hazy air turns crimson 
 and pink; and the twilights and the moonlight 
 nights ! 
 
 "I know it; there s where the romance might 
 come in. But somehow, I think romance would 
 have interrupted. Chatter did, often. I think al 
 most any kind of talk, measured against that grand 
 quietness, would have sounded small ; the distance 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 93 
 
 was hardly appreciable, in such contrast, between 
 the light conversation of the upper deck and the 
 chaff and chuckle of the roustabouts down below. 
 
 " There were two pretty young women on board, 
 but there wasn t any" ("H m! nonsense!" 
 Margaret interpolated. The next words really were 
 "White Queen.") 
 
 " An incident happened one day, however, which 
 reminded me of a glimpse I did once get " 
 (" H m h m ! I believe I ve lost my place," 
 said Mistress Margaret, glancing on and returning. 
 " Ah, here it is ") . . . " steaming up finely 
 along an open run of deep water, making the best 
 time we could to reach the furthest point of our 
 trip before night. There was a fresh wind, almost 
 directly in our faces ; we were on deck, enjoying the 
 exhilaration of progress after so much dawdling ; 
 when for an instant the breeze rose to a gust, and 
 two hats went off, whirling down and across stream, 
 and finally lodging among the weeds and osiers of 
 a broad marsh. One belonged to an officer, and 
 one was a young lady s. There was a good deal of 
 fun, of course ; the girl was very pretty, and her 
 hair got loose and flew picturesquely about her 
 face ; she behaved nicely enough, but rather as if 
 she enjoyed it ; and afterward there was some to- 
 do about turning a spare soft felt of the major s, 
 with twisting and ribboning, into a feminine head- 
 
94 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 gear, that was successfully effected, and the thing 
 sported with the least little air of pleased distin- 
 guishment, during the rest of the voyage. 
 
 "I ll tell Alice of the other thing like and 
 unlike that I saw once. It was a great deal 
 harder for the girl, for it was on a railroad train, 
 full of passengers, going into the city. The hat 
 blew off as she stood upon the platform, just as the 
 cars left a way station ; she had to go into the car 
 riage and sit down, bareheaded ; and she did it 
 just as simply and as quietly as if she had had 
 a half yard s height of bows and plumes overhead 
 to keep her in countenance, instead of only some 
 light, beautiful rolls of sunny-colored hair, and a 
 few soft, wavy tips or short locks that touched her 
 forehead and temples like the fringy edges of a 
 little bird s feathers. She looked troubled, but she 
 did not let even that appear, very much. She 
 never glanced to see who noticed her, or how, but 
 slipped into the first seat and tied a scarf over her 
 head. Somebody told the conductor, and the hat 
 was telegraphed back for, and sent on into town 
 not many minutes later. I happened to be near 
 her when she recovered it and put it on ; and I saw 
 how wonderfully charming an unaffected incon- 
 spicuousness could be." 
 
 " Do you think you take that in, Alice, the 
 last long words and all?" Margaret asked, with a 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 95 
 
 certain odd intonation, as she paused again in her 
 reading. 
 
 " Yes, I do, mamma," Alice answered positively. 
 " 1 like that girl, and I don t wonder it took very 
 particular words to tell what uncle Hans thought 
 about her. I think uncle Hans is very noticing, 
 don t you?" 
 
 Jane Gregory sat perfectly motionless in a 
 window-seat. The lamp by which Mrs. Sunderland 
 was reading did not shine upon her, for the curtain 
 fell partly between. A slow surge and swell of in 
 tense surprise and feeling had passed over her ; she 
 could not have moved or spoken, yet she thrilled 
 from head to foot. 
 
 It had come close to her again, that piece of her 
 story ; it had joined to it something incredible ; it 
 had so augmented and weighted itself that ifc could 
 never drift away from her again into f orgetfulness. 
 Something more positive belonged to her, and yet 
 what more of it should she ever know ? 
 
 She knew too much on her side, little Jane Greg 
 ory. To this Doctor Hansell, how well she 
 recollected the mere title by which he had been 
 hailed in her hearing, it was all vague and un- 
 associated. She had lent a touch to his mental 
 picture of an ideal ; her heart swelled that she 
 could have done that ; but his ideal and herself, 
 if she could dare to think of them together, how 
 
96 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 was it likely that ever for another instant they 
 should coexist to him ? 
 
 Mrs. Sunderland went on, resuming rather hast 
 ily her reading. Jane recollected afterward, in 
 some mysterious way, what now fell simply on her 
 outward ear. Inwardly, she was listening to such 
 strange, bewildering things ! 
 
 " Rick would have enjoyed seeing the snagboats 
 that we visited at their work : great, two-beaked, 
 clumsy things that would puff and steam down 
 upon a tree-trunk sticking out of the water, catch 
 it between their iron jaws like a bootjack, and 
 yank it up, and haul it on board for firewood. 
 
 " Once, we got caught on a sandbar ; it was to 
 ward the last of our down trip ; stayed there a day 
 and a half; the roustabouts went off up-shore and 
 brought pecan nuts. It looked serious about get 
 ting off ; the major was anxious to get back to 
 headquarters, and some of us were in a hurry. We 
 began to think of having the yawl, and rowing 
 down to a railway landing, when at noon the 
 second day a funny thing happened, I 11 leave 
 the moral to you, Gretel, another steamboat 
 came down river, full head, a little river craft, 
 drawing much less water than we. She saw our 
 predicament as soon as she rounded the bend in 
 the deep water above ; we were just in the edge of 
 the channel. The little wretch thought to give us 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 97 
 
 the go-by with a flourish. On she came, full rush, 
 whooping, depth and width enough for her, appar 
 ently ; but, behold you, the heave and swell she 
 brought with her rolled beautifully under our keel, 
 lifted us up, and carried us sweeping over, while 
 in our very wake she drifted exactly into our old 
 place, and stuck there fast. As we steamed away, 
 roustabouts shouting and whistle screaming, they 
 were getting poles in rig on board the other for 
 working off. 4 They 11 do well enough, said the 
 major nonchalantly. Small enough to swim any 
 where. Suggesting that as a timely aphorism, I 11 
 shut up." 
 
 " I m so glad I was n t on board that mean little 
 steamboat ! " Rick exclaimed, as his mother stopped. 
 
 " Rick thinks he really was on the other, with 
 uncle Hans," Alice remarked superiorly. "Mam 
 ma, what is an aphorism?" 
 
 " A pithy saying ; something said in a few words 
 that means a great deal." 
 
 " I think uncle Hans is a pretty pithy man some 
 times," was Alice s meditative comment, as she 
 buttoned her doll s nightgown. 
 
 " Are you tired? " Mrs. Sunderland asked, turn 
 ing to Jane. 
 
 " On the contrary I was thinking," Jane re 
 plied, gathering herself back slowly, " what a dif 
 ferent thing living is among live people." 
 
98 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 " Ascutney Street folks ? " 
 
 "Live and lively may be quite distinct," said 
 Jane. 
 
 " Are you two talking aphorisms ? " inquired 
 Miss Alice. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 I COULD tell you a mere story in three paragraphs, 
 or even Csesarean phrases : they met ; they wooed ; 
 they married ; she was here, in this strait ; that 
 happened ; she did thus and so ; she came out there. 
 But that would not be telling you the things that 
 are the complexion of life and character. Com 
 plexion is general hue and aspect, but it is made 
 up of a thousand peculiarities and combinations of 
 texture and color. I should not care two straws 
 what eventually became of Jane Gregory, if I could 
 not enter in beforehand to what made Jane Gregory 
 just what she was. 
 
 Her days with Mrs, Sunderland were crucial 
 ones ; they brought to light much ; they influenced 
 and determined much. In this new action upon 
 her of circumstances, her past stood clearer, what it 
 had bred in her more apparent. She was hardly less 
 a study to herself, or a re-presentation, than 
 she was to her friend. 
 
 The soreness and the weariness that she had felt, 
 in contact with small pretense and an unvarying 
 iteration of petty, external routine and detail, came 
 
100 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 out in all her expression of herself, and in her con 
 fidence that answered to unwonted interest and 
 sympathy. It was plain that much of this soreness 
 had grown to be morbid, and needed to be broken 
 up and worn off; it interfered with the highest 
 and most essential things ; it cramped hope and 
 spirit, and even faith, as well as daily motive. 
 
 " Pretense," said Mrs. Sunderland, one day, in 
 reply to something Jane had spoken with her pe 
 culiar gentle bitterness that was not distilled of 
 noxiousness, but rather of an honest wholesome- 
 ness, like the pungency of the meek, sturdy little 
 camomile flower, " pretense may be true or 
 false." 
 
 " Pretense I True ? " 
 
 " Yes ; or why do we emphasize false pretenses ? 
 It is simply the taking hold of beforehand ; and to 
 apprehend and appropriate a true thing beforehand 
 is just what we live for." 
 
 Alice sat by, catching such bits as she could, as 
 usual. " Monkeys are pre-hensile," she volunteered, 
 with learned reference to natural history. 
 
 " Very much so, in a certain way," said her 
 mother, laughing ; " that is partly illustrative of 
 what we are talking about ; people seizing hold and 
 lifting themselves up by their meaner capacities 
 only. Monkeys drop that, it is to be supposed, 
 when they get rid of their tails, and begin to de 
 velop their brains." 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 101 
 
 "Mrs. Sunderland," Jane said suddenly, "it is 
 why I left off going to church ! It seemed al 
 most all of it like make-believe. I tried different 
 sorts : in some they were always turning the Bible 
 over and over, settling and unsettling things 
 ideas about it ; not looking right straight into it, 
 at all ; just as people turn a letter over and over, 
 and guess about the date and the postmark and the 
 handwriting, and never break the seal to see what 
 it says to them. And in others, they had got out 
 of it or with it something that they had 
 worked up into a set scheme or ceremony, just as 
 the children of Israel made the golden calf out of 
 all the earrings and ornaments, and fell down and 
 worshiped that, while Moses was up in the moun 
 tain with the Lord. It was exactly the same that 
 it is in society; people worship style, and they 
 worship church ! And then you read such things, 
 and hear people say them, who won t worship, and 
 who are outside of the whole. Moses didn t write 
 his books, and John did n t write his ; they explain 
 everything except how anything got written at all, 
 until you feel as if nothing ever did, and nothing 
 ever truly happened." 
 
 " My dear child ! you have got your foot in the 
 tangle ! Just take hold of this, and be sure it is 
 true : when we have got the least little bit of the 
 word of God that is everywhere into our 
 
102 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 hearts ; when He really says it to us in ourselves, 
 we shall feel what it is in the things other hearts 
 have learned from Him. The Bible is full of these 
 things; and that is how we must come to know 
 them. That is the grain of mustard-seed the whole 
 church grows up from ; that s why the birds sing 
 in the branches ! " 
 
 " But people don t begin at the heart, they don t 
 grow into it ; they are n t native birds ; they are 
 strange, common, coarse fowls that only crowd in, 
 and roost ; and they break the branches down ! 
 
 " They have only got as far as Ascutney Street 
 yet," said Mrs. Sunderland. " It is the court of 
 the Gentiles." 
 
 " But will Ascutney Street ever come to anything 
 else ? It is so satisfied." 
 
 " That is the hindrance, all through everything. 
 Ascutney Street is so apt to be satisfied, and to 
 stay. It likes to rest in an effect ; and to hide, or 
 to ignore, the real. It slips over, covers up, the 
 want, the hope, the struggle, the hard work, and 
 assumes the thing is done. If one could catch 
 them at it, in their hearts or in their kitchens, and 
 make them understand actual values, and not be 
 false-faced or ashamed ! " 
 
 " How clear you see ! That is just it. I have 
 often admired behind the scenes; the work, the 
 capability, that were real. I ve saicl to myself, 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 103 
 
 and almost right out, Oh, why are n t you proud 
 of, content with, that ? " 
 
 "Let s set a trap, Jane, and catch somebody! 
 Who do you think would be easiest ? " 
 
 Jane laughed. "I don t know them much, of 
 course. I ve been kept out of that. But I should 
 say the nicest of them all is Miss Rickstack. I 
 suppose the nicest would take your sort of bait the 
 quickest." 
 
 "The nicest did," returned Mrs. Sunderland 
 concisely. " But Miss Rickstack, which is she ? 
 What does she do ? " 
 
 " She does everything. She lives all alone. She 
 irons her clothes, and shakes her rugs after dark, 
 and has a beautiful garden. She is just wild after 
 flowers." 
 
 " Well, my trap will be to watch my chance. 
 Chances are always happening ; if you have your 
 mind set on a thing, there 11 be a way to it. That s 
 what the proverb means." 
 
 " The 4 will and the way ? I thought that was 
 just you could if you really wanted to." : 
 
 " All the same. But I mean that the chances 
 drift to the will, where there weren t any 
 chances before. Make an object of anything and 
 see." 
 
 Three days later, it happened just as Mrs. Sun 
 derland had said. At bedtime, an express wagon 
 
104 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 stopped at her gate. A package for Mrs. Sunder- 
 land, which she had expected ; another left with it, 
 which was not hers at all, but which the driver in 
 his hurry had glanced and guessed at, in the light 
 of the street lamp. It was directed to Miss R. L. 
 Rickstack. The identity of the first two initials, 
 and a big whiplash loop to the standard of the 
 R," with the running likeness in the surname, in 
 its equal number of tall letters, had sufficed for the 
 blunder. It was a box from Vick s, long and 
 light and carefully put up ; roots and cuttings, evi 
 dently. The man was rattling off on the avenue 
 before the mistake was fully ascertained. 
 
 " What did I tell you ? " Mrs. Sunderland de 
 manded of Jane. " And on the same principle I 
 know she will be at her ironing when I go over to 
 morrow morning." 
 
 " If she is, there will be a scarlet ribbon on the 
 door-knob." 
 
 " I am not initiated. It does n t matter to me 
 how people decorate their door-knobs. I think I 
 shall go round the back way. I m not a pushing 
 person." Which from Mrs. Richard Lee Sunder 
 land, who, if she pushed any way, would have to 
 push down, was sufficiently entertaining. 
 
 It was a pretty picture she came upon the next 
 morning at Miss Rickstack s, as she walked up the 
 graveled path to a sheltered square porch which 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 105 
 
 was really the kitchen entrance, though far more 
 attractive than the regulation sashed door in front 
 with its lace flutings inside the glass. As to the 
 door-knob, and its signal, Mrs. Sunderland had 
 slightly changed her mind, as will appear. 
 
 The secluded spot in the angle of the small 
 building, of which the roofed platform filled one 
 corner, was blazing with flowers, all in one raised 
 plot, with a rim of low-banked sod. In the middle 
 of each side a tiny footpath just reached in suffi 
 ciently to give access for the needful care to all its 
 plants. Zinnias and asters, in clumps of garnet 
 and gold, rose and white and purple, some shades 
 and exquisite petalings of which were rare enough 
 even to Margaret, with every tint of bronze and 
 yellow in the splendid nasturtium blooms heaping 
 and creeping around all just inside the grass bor 
 der, and tossing their tendrils and trumpets down 
 over the edge upon the very gravel, made a bril 
 liantly lovely mass of color. In the midst was a 
 little forest of sweet peas ; nobody ever saw ,such 
 shadings from deep to faintly delicate, or such 
 swarms of butterfly flowers, poising and hovering 
 and nodding from twisted columns of vinery. Op 
 posite, by the porch step, was the low, jeweled bed 
 of pansies, with beautiful dark velvet faces, or pale 
 sweet silken ones, in tenderest violet, straw-color, 
 creamy, and pure white, crowding and smiling up- 
 
106 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 ward. A sweet smell breathed all about ; the light 
 was lovely, the air was warm and gracious ; on the 
 porch a woman, fresh enough with plain attire of 
 cleanest cambric, bright, open-air complexion, and 
 nicely ordered hair, to stand among the flowers 
 without incongruence, was busy ironing ; this was 
 Miss Rebecca Louisa Rickstack. 
 
 " I did not ring your bell ; I knew by the signal 
 you were busy ; people are always busy in the 
 morning ; so I came round with my errand. You 
 will excuse me ? " 
 
 Mrs. Sunderland stopped before the platform 
 step ; she would not come further without an ask 
 ing. 
 
 Miss Rickstack held her iron poised as if she 
 were so magnetized that she could not drop it ; for 
 a breath or two she made no answer. In truth, she 
 was mentally framing sentences explanatory of this 
 conjuncture for Mrs. Hilum and Mrs. Turnbull; 
 but she did not look irate or formidable, so Mrs. 
 Sunderland went on. 
 
 " It was a mistake of the expressman ; this par 
 cel is for you, I think ; it was left with one for me, 
 late last night. I am Mrs. Sunderland, from the 
 end cottage ; you may not know. * 
 
 " Oh, yes, I do ; and I m sure I beg your par 
 don, and I thank you very much," said Miss Rick- 
 stack, the spell upon voice and muscle relaxing, so 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 107 
 
 that she set her iron safely on its stand, and her 
 politeness into speech, as with one impulse. 
 " Won t you come in and sit down ? " 
 
 Whether she begged pardon for the trouble the 
 expressman had put her neighbor to, or that she 
 had never recognized her neighbor, was not clear ; 
 but there was a certain tone of release and plea 
 sure in her voice, as at something she had not trans 
 gressed for, but was ready to welcome in this un 
 conventional approach. 
 
 " May n t I stop here a minute and enjoy your 
 flowers ? They were partly the reason, to be so far 
 honest, that I came round by the side path. I 
 don t think I ever saw such flowers ! " 
 
 " They are nice. I take great comfort in them, 
 living all alone," said Rebecca Louisa, speaking 
 tenderly of them, as if they had been children, and 
 drawing forth a chair for her visitor s accommoda 
 tion. 
 
 " And how charming to do your work out here 
 among them ! Please don t ; I d rather sit here, 
 close to the pansies, really." And Mistress Mar 
 garet placed herself upon the low wooden step, her 
 white dress sweeping the clean, pebbly walk. 
 
 " Well, that is sociable ! " said Miss Eickstack, 
 with a satisfaction ; as one might say, " This is 
 comfort," divesting one s self of a tight shoe, or an 
 oppressive garment. " I often wish Ascutney 
 
108 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 Street folks did n t keep quite so much to regula 
 tion ways and times and card-cases. I m often 
 lonesome, when it isn t calling- hours. Do you 
 mind if I finish this frill while my iron s hot ? " 
 
 " I should be very unhappy if you let it dry ; it 
 does n t do with fine starched things." She spoke 
 as if she might have been a laundress all her life, 
 for any strangeness that her hostess s occupation 
 had for her. " Ironing is pretty work ; and how 
 beautifully you do it ! " 
 
 " It would n t answer to let some folks know I 
 did it at all," said Miss Eickstack, with a sudden 
 confidence. 
 
 Margaret opened her eyes with a questioning as, 
 tonishment. " Really ? Why, I should think you 
 would be proud. Besides, it saves so much, in wear 
 and tear, as well as money." 
 
 Miss Rickstack laughed. " I suppose it does, 
 if you count it saved when you have n t exactly got 
 it. I save a good deal that way in carriages, and 
 horses, and di monds ; but I don t seem to have it 
 all ! " 
 
 Then they both laughed. Miss Rickstack was 
 evidently delighted to find some one on her own 
 plane to whom she could unbosom herself without 
 transgression. " I was a little in a hurry to-day, 
 too. I m going off to-morrow, for a fortni t, to my 
 sister s, in Ryemouth. What in the world I m to 
 do with those cuttings, I don t see." 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 109 
 
 64 1 know something about plants," said Mrs 
 Sunderland. " I might set them in a box for yom 
 and keep them watered till you come back." 
 
 " Would you ? Why, I could n t have asked if: 
 of anybody ! " 
 
 " I d like to, very much. I m glad there was 2 
 mistake, and that I came." 
 
 " There ain t any mistake about you ! " said 
 Miss Rickstack vigorously. 
 
 " Are you sure ? " The lurking mischief in the 
 question was not in the least understood. 
 
 Miss Rickstack went into the kitchen to change 
 her iron. When she came back, she replied, 
 " Yes ; I am. You re straightforward. I like 
 straightforwardness. I d like to be clear and 
 above-board myself, about everything, ironing, 
 and sweeping, and all. But when you re amongst 
 folks, you have to live the most part of your life 
 on the sly. I don t like it. It s a great deal 
 harder work ; and it is n t free-hearted. I d like to 
 do about everything just as I did about my teeth." 
 
 Mrs. Sunderland came very near ejaculating a 
 repetition of the last words, with a change of pro 
 noun. But her instinct of breeding made it impos 
 sible. 
 
 " Yes," Miss Rickstack answered to the un 
 spoken interrogatory, just as if it had been supplied 
 as expected. 
 
110 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 "I d been a year about it, mumble-jawed. 
 When I got them, finally, the dentist said to me, 
 4 There ! You must n t mind if people do look at 
 you. You 11 be strange to yourself for a while ; 
 but you must just take hold and get used to it. 
 Well, I went to a sewing-circle that next day ; I 
 was glad to see people, I always am ; and I sup 
 pose I smiled all round more than I was aware of. 
 Every living soul laid down her needle, or let 
 her scissors gape up in the air, or held her 
 thread stopped short in her own teeth, and 
 looked at me. Then I recollected ; but I made up 
 my mind. I was just as I was going to be the rest 
 of my during life, and I and folks had got to face 
 it. I did n t mean to go round with a getherin - 
 thread in my lips, I had n t done that when my 
 naturals was a-failing. I took my work and sat 
 down between Miss Caley and Mrs. Basset. That 
 was at Ryemouth. They began to talk, and to 
 peer and peek, sideways, tipping their heads a lit 
 tle, one each way, over their sewing. There was 
 going to be a wedding in town, and they were tell 
 ing that the day was just set. But la ! they did n t 
 know any more what they were talking about than 
 you know this minute. I looked first at one and 
 then at the other, and never tried to hide a bit ; 
 did n t even put up my pocket-handkerchief. I 
 thought it might as well all come out at once. 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. Ill 
 
 They were the ones that did n t dare to be straight- 
 out and full-faced about it ; they kept making little 
 sharp, quick gimlety screw-tinizes ! Did you say 
 it was going to be on the twentieth ? says I. 4 Oh 
 m m ! says Miss Caley, and gave a twist, as if 
 she was trying to unscrew the gimlet, but she could 
 n t fairly get her eyes away. Twentieth? says 
 Mrs. Basset, on the other side, and she leaned 
 down and bit off her thread, and sent a determined 
 sort of slanting look up out of the corners of her 
 eyes like prying with a crowbar ; N-o, it is n t 
 the twentieth ; it s the twenty-second. I smiled 
 as much as ever I could, first one way and then the 
 other, to treat em both alike. Why did n t you 
 say the twenty-tooth ? said I. And after that I 
 had my new property to myself. When people 
 know all they can know, they 11 let you alone." 
 
 Mrs. Sunderland came home, sat down in the 
 white room with Jane, and laughed with tears in 
 her eyes. " She s bewitching ! I m intimate 
 with her. And she s going away for a f ortni t ! 
 So un-iovtmt for me ! " 
 
 Jane was going away for a fortnight also, to 
 keep an old promise of " fall work," and then to 
 return for some odd days with Mrs. Turnbull, also 
 promised. " But after," said Mrs. Sunderland, 
 " we 11 all begin where we left off ! " 
 
 After a fortnight ! When a day or an hour can 
 
112 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 set us forward to a life s length from what we left 
 off with so confidently ! Things were to happen in 
 this fortnight. 
 
 Mrs. Sunderland had something on her mind. 
 A step, whether to take it or not ; and she was 
 not clear precisely as to what hindered her. 
 
 It would be good for the children ; just what she 
 had needed for them. And good for the girl? 
 She had thought so. Why was she doubting ? 
 
 Margaret was not fond of temporary expedients 
 or relations ; she always wanted things to last, at 
 least to be begun with an intent and promise of 
 lasting. Now this was so good, so much better 
 than the common, that it was becoming evident 
 to her that it would last, if it began. How much 
 was she willing to be responsible for, in the girl s 
 own behalf, or in connection with herself, under all 
 possible circumstances ? How far would she risk 
 setting in train whatever might follow such trans 
 planting of precisely this sort of young woman, 
 with her contrarieties of nature and environment, 
 her antagonisms of capacity and place ? She was 
 too fine a creature to be repressed, of too tender 
 and sweet a womanliness to be crushed. What 
 might come to her, and how might she, Margaret 
 Sunderland, stand affected, in the new openings, 
 the contingent occurrences, the providence of 
 God ? Was that it, after all ? Was she undertak- 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 113 
 
 ing, in these ponderings of the future, what be 
 longed only to omniscient counsels ? What, then, 
 definitely and simply, did belong to her ? 
 
 To do the good deed, to brighten a life, to 
 "lend " into it as her little Alice was so fond of 
 saying things that were the possession of her 
 own, and to gain in return a fresh, genuine friend 
 ship, a help of love and intelligence in her motherly 
 cares, and the safe contented consciousness that she 
 had not passed by on the other side, when she 
 came, as she journeyed, not out of her way, or in 
 a purposed straining, to where the chance of ser 
 vice was? And then just to leave all that might 
 grow of it to the Lord ? It did not take a woman 
 like Margaret Sunderland long to settle a question 
 with herself when it had got thus far ; it was no 
 longer with herself only. 
 
 There were certain things she did not as yet 
 know ; perhaps that was well ; if she had known 
 them, they would have been a part of what she was 
 bound intelligently to consider. She did the thing 
 she felt she had received her order to do. She 
 asked Jane if, when her present engagements were 
 ended, she would return to herself ; would make a 
 part of her family, take her little children in per 
 sonal charge, and resume, under more favoring con 
 ditions, the work of teaching for which she had 
 been fitted. 
 
114 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 When Jane heard that, she just burst into tears. 
 " Why, Mrs. Sunderland ! " was all she could say 
 in reply. 
 
 " Then you will come, my dear ? " Mrs. Sunder 
 land said, with an ignoring of the emotion more 
 sweetly tactful than any spoken soothing or assur 
 ance. It calmed Jane instantly with its quiet, nat 
 ural assumption. The thing was in a moment no 
 longer too good to be true, but so good that it had 
 to be true. 
 
 " Why, surely I will I " she said. " And I will 
 be as much to you as I am capable of being. And 
 when I cannot be all you want, I will thank you 
 and go away." 
 
 " We will let by-and-by s be by-and-by s," an 
 swered Margaret to that. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 AT the end of the fortnight Jane came back to 
 Ascutney Street. 
 
 Reaching Mrs. TurnbulTs house at about the tea 
 hour, she passed directly to her room to take off 
 her things, and make no delay in presenting herself 
 in time, possibly, to be of assistance. 
 
 On her table lay a little note. She knew already, 
 as she knew distinctly everything of Mrs. Sunder- 
 land s that had thus far come under her observa 
 tion, the strong, delicate, characterized hand. She 
 opened it eagerly. 
 
 " This has been sulphur-smoked : no one need 
 fear; but do not come to my house at present. 
 Little Rick has diphtheria. M. G. S." 
 
 Jane put on her hat which she had just laid off. 
 She took some things quickly from her hand-bag, 
 put them away, and replaced them with others 
 from a bureau drawer. She wrote two pencil lines 
 at the foot of Mrs. Sunderland s note, and carried 
 it into Mrs. TurnbuH s room, where she placed it 
 open on the dressing-table. Mrs. TurnbuH s voice 
 was at that moment to be heard from the front 
 piazza. 
 
116 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 What Jane had written was this : 
 
 " Mrs. Sunderland needs me. I am sorry, but 
 will come to you as soon as I can safely. 
 
 JANE." 
 
 Three minutes afterward, she had passed across 
 the garden, gone up the outer stairs, and entered 
 the white room. There she found Alice. Aunty 
 had gone to fetch some supper for the child. Mrs. 
 Sunderland, with a trained nurse, was isolated in 
 her own room, taking care of Rick. 
 
 " Why, Queen ! " cried Alice. 
 
 " Yes, I ve come," said Jane. " I am going to 
 take care of you." 
 
 The outside door opened again ; the other was 
 fast, battened with cotton. An excellent thing 
 that garden stair was now. Aunty entered. 
 
 " The Good save us ! " she ejaculated. " You 
 here ! Be right off, jest as quick as you can. We 
 Ve got diptheery." 
 
 " I know it. I have come to stay. I 11 take 
 care of Alice. You will have your hands full." 
 
 Aunty sat down, the little tray on her lap. She 
 did not speak for fully a minute. Things vibrated 
 in her mind with anxious force. But at the min 
 ute s end, she broke forth. 
 
 " Well ! you re here, and I suppose you Ve 
 done it! They won t want you anywheres else 
 now, most likely. If I d had it to think of, I 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 117 
 
 should have been every which way in my mind to 
 once. I m clear thankful to you, though you d 
 no business to a come. We can sail straight now, 
 and I can t stand bein wee-wawed ! Alice, 
 child, here s crab-apple jell to your bread and 
 butter." 
 
 It was a strange life there in the white room for 
 many days after that. 
 
 Nothing but the most rigid measures would sat 
 isfy Mrs. Sander land. Now that Jane was come, 
 even Aunty, who held the most remote and guarded 
 communication possible with the hospital quarter 
 of the little house, was forbidden to approach them. 
 All that they needed was placed upon the outer 
 stair, everything scalded or fumigated that was 
 used by them, and Jane herself did all the fetch 
 ing in and out. Aunty had the kitchen work ; 
 the parlors were unvisited ; a tin cake-box, rigged 
 by its handles to a cord and pulley, went up and 
 down between an upper and lower window with 
 supplies, and was kept cleansed for every transit. 
 No risk had been run, since the nature of the dis 
 ease had declared itself ; and yet who could say 
 what subtle death-atom might have been borne ear 
 lier, through some unthought-of channel, or even 
 from first causes, to lurk and work in the atmos 
 phere of the pure, secluded little room, or might 
 
118 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 float now, despite all watchfulness, in its horrible 
 minuteness and invisibility, through the stirring 
 and enfolding air, to be caught into the dear little 
 breath and life for whose security they fought 
 blindly with the unknown? At any moment it 
 might reveal itself in ghastly triumph. And Jane 
 knew all that, and had known it when she came. 
 Mrs. Sunderland had sent to Jane a verbal message 
 through her two assistants, which was called up by 
 Aunty from the garden, and which lay warm at 
 Jane s heart all through the time of anxious quar 
 antine. 
 
 " Tell her she is an angel of God," had been the 
 word of love and thanks. Jane treasured it, in in 
 most humility and joy. 
 
 " I am so glad to be here ! " she had sent back, 
 written on a bit of paper. 
 
 " An angel is but a messenger," she said to her 
 self ; "the greatest, or the least little one of all, 
 even." And she lifted up her heart, showing it, 
 with the joy in it, as the priest shows the offering 
 at the altar, to Him who had sent no, brought 
 her here, in wonderful close tenderness of giving. 
 
 Little letters went down on the tray and up in 
 the tin box to the mother from Alice, with word 
 from Jane as to the child s happiness and well- 
 being ; no scrap of anything tangible returned, but 
 answers by word of mouth traveled back to them, 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 119 
 
 few in syllables, and such as could not be changed 
 or forgotten on the way, so full and alive they were 
 with that which impelled them. 
 
 A card was hung to the bell-knob at the front 
 entrance, with the one word upon it in clear, large 
 characters, which was sufficient to turn any casual 
 comer aside. 
 
 On the third day of Jane s stay, however, some 
 body came up the steps to the piazza, just after the 
 doctor s chaise had driven away. 
 
 Miss Rickstack had got home, had discovered 
 the signs of illness, and had heard from the hor 
 rified and even resentful neighbors that that queer 
 woman had brought diphtheria among them. " A 
 thing that was never heard of in Ascutney Street 
 before ! " they said indignantly. 
 
 " Death has n t been heard of in Ascutney Street 
 yet, please the Lord it may n t be now," said 
 Miss Rickstack. " But it s got to come, all the 
 same, as sure as there s livin folks here for it to 
 come to. We re dyin flesh, and no other kind, 
 if we have got Dutch doors and Queen -Anne 
 winders ! " 
 
 And Rebecca Rickstack threw up all her Ascut 
 ney Street allegiance at that rebellious instant, and 
 within the hour marched obliquely across the way, 
 in as direct a line as she could make, to the marked 
 dwelling, which every one else passed by with 
 holden breath and on the other side. 
 
120 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 At the door she paused and bethought herself. 
 " Maybe the best thing I can do will be to help 
 with the child that is n t sick. And before I mix 
 myself up, I 11 find out." 
 
 Saying this in her own mind, she descended 
 the steps again, and made a circuit of the house 
 around through the side ground and the garden. 
 "If I can t see anybody at the winders, I ll go 
 home and write a note," she continued, in her 
 mental reflections. 
 
 But at the farther end, as she came out from 
 among the screening shrubbery, she caught sight 
 of Jane and Alice upon the platform at the head of 
 the garden stairs, sitting there in two chairs, with 
 a little table between them. 
 
 "I ain t the least mite afraid," she called out 
 instantly and eagerly. " But I Ve come to see 
 what use I can be. If I can do anything to help 
 nurse, I 11 take right hold, any minute. And I 
 know about nursin , too. But if it s something 
 else that s wanted, I 11 keep out of t other and do 
 that. See here," she went on, her idea and purpose 
 developing as she spoke, " you tell Mrs. Sunder- 
 land that she s welcome to me and my house for 
 all we re worth. There s nobody to be hurt there 
 but the cat ; and t ain t ketchin to cats, I don t 
 believe. You say I d admire to have you bring 
 the little girl right over, and stay as long as you 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 121 
 
 like. T would be a real good change for her, and 
 she must be lonesome. I ve got lots of things that 
 I had fifty years ago, when I was little, and some 
 twenty years older than that, that was my mother s. 
 I always liked them best. She d be amused with 
 em, and I ain t forgot how to play with em, 
 neither. Maybe you don t know who I am. I m 
 Miss Rickstack, and I live over at The Crocus." 
 
 After Miss Rickstack got started, both ideas and 
 expressions flowed ; the whole thing took beautiful 
 and convincing shape in thought and word at once ; 
 and was more convincing to the listener for being 
 thus instant to herself. 
 
 Jane spoke as soon as she had a chance. She 
 came down the steps as she did so. " Indeed I will 
 let Mrs. Sunderland know. You are as kind as 
 you can be. Yes, I know quite well who you 
 are," she came up to the good lady as she went 
 on, and held out both hands to her ; " and if Mrs. 
 Sunderland approves, I think it would be nice for 
 Alice to have the change. Not altogether, I 
 did n t mean that ; but to come sometimes. I will 
 send up word at once." 
 
 " And you 11 give my love to her, and I hope 
 the little boy it s a little boy, isn t it? is get 
 ting on well ? You have Dr. Escue, have n t you ? 
 Dr. Rescue, I call him. He 11 do all anybody can, 
 and what most folks can t." She shook Jane s two 
 
122 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 hands, which she had kept in a firm grasp, and hav 
 ing said her say, albeit somewhat lengthily, made 
 her movement to go, only pausing with the real 
 question in her face which she had merged with the 
 rest of her inquiry in such intricate fashion. 
 
 " Rick is a strong child," Jane answered ; " there 
 is good encouragement, I believe ; but he is not out 
 of danger yet. To-morrow we shall know more." 
 
 "I ll come again to-morrow. Or to-night, or 
 any time, if you want anybody. Or I 11 stay at 
 home and be ready for you and " 
 
 " Alice ? " Jane supplied the name with a heart- 
 ful tone. 
 
 " Yes, and Alice. Just take The Crocus for 
 an annex while this business lasts. Can I cook 
 anything? Can you think of anything I could 
 fetch over ? " 
 
 "Aunty does everything. But if there should 
 be, you shall. You are as good Why, there s a 
 little bit of heaven in Ascutney Street, and I never 
 knew it ! " Jane s voice filled up and broke while 
 her face was bright with a smile. To come near to 
 people, to find in them this hidden reality, behind 
 all the little miserableness she had hated so, 
 it reproached her while it swelled her very heart 
 with a gladness that was almost a sudden pain. 
 
 Mrs. Turnbull saw the pantomime of the scene 
 from an upstairs window, carefully kept closed, 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 123 
 
 on what was, as she at this time had congratu 
 lated herself, the " blind side " o her own house. 
 
 " Rebecca Rickstack can t keep out of anything 
 that s going on, not even diphtheria ! I wonder 
 when she went and got so intimate there ; and \vith 
 Jane Gregory, too ! Squeezing hands and all but 
 kissing ! / do give up ! " 
 
 All she said aloud was the last sentence of four 
 words, and that with intense deliberation ; the rest 
 had rushed from her mental lips only, distinct, if 
 not articulate. Wliat she gave up was not clear 
 to herself, perhaps ; it might even be, as with ter 
 rible prognostication, Ascutney Street itself and 
 altogether. 
 
 Jane sent a note around by the tray and Aunty 
 and the box-lift. Things were very much like 
 " Through the Looking-Glass," she could not help 
 reflecting in the midst of her anxieties. 
 
 In these days, she and Alice lived a good deal 
 behind the looking-glass, in the clever story, and in 
 the suggestions that arose from it. I may as well 
 put in here although to the interruption of what 
 was immediately forthcoming from the sending of 
 the note and the looking-glass world was full of 
 just such interruptions an illustration of such 
 demurs and interpretations, on the one side and 
 the other, as took place not infrequently between 
 the two. 
 
124 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 Alice always called Jane " Queen." 
 
 " Queen," she said one morning, " how quick you 
 are ! You dress like a daisy. The wind blows, 
 and the sun shines, and there you are, all ready, as 
 if the morning put your clothes on for you. And 
 you look so new every day ! " 
 
 Jane laughed. " And you talk as a brook runs ; 
 you don t go round hunting for drops of water ; 
 they come from the sky and the hills, and you can t 
 help it. But, Alice, that White Queen was very 
 untidy ! " 
 
 " I know she was ; but that was the wrong-side- 
 out part ; that s the queerness of the looking-glass ; 
 you can t tell what everything meant. But she 
 was so good and kind, the dear White Queen! 
 She had nobody to ad-dress but herself, you know ; 
 and everything was crooked." 
 
 That turned Jane silent. She thought all at 
 once how untidy she had truly often let herself be, 
 in that inside world where she was so alone, and 
 things so crooked. She began to discover very 
 keen applications in the funny parable. 
 
 " 4 Jam yesterday, and jam to-morrow, and never 
 any jam to-day ; I think it was a hard way 
 to live, for a queen," said the child, thoughtfully 
 drawing on her stockings. 
 
 Jane came suddenly to her help, put her arms 
 around her from behind, and clasped her close for 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 125 
 
 an instant as she did so, burying quick, warm little 
 kisses in the tangle of her curls. 
 
 " Why do you kiss me, Queen, in such a hurry ? " 
 
 "Because you re in behind the looking-glass, 
 and I m so glad of you ; and nobody ever came 
 before," said Jane. 
 
 When Miss Rickstack came over to the little 
 orchard-place below the steps again, with a bunch 
 of bright carnations in her hand to leave for Mrs. 
 Sunderland and Jane, and two or three fastened in 
 the white kerchief that was gathered about her own 
 neck, Jane had to seize a little inward pang of jeal 
 ousy as by the throat, and strangle it. It was 
 quickly, resolutely done, though; and she gave 
 Mrs. Sunderland s message of warm thanks, and 
 took Alice s other hand to let her walk between 
 them over to The Crocus. 
 
 "Why here I am between the Queens," cried 
 Alice, with a hop-skip of delight. " Every bit of 
 it is coming true. Only you don t push, and things 
 won t be helter-skelter, and I sha n t pull the table 
 cloth down, nor shake you into a kitten ! " Which 
 was all Greek to Miss Rebecca Rickstack, who did 
 not even know she was a Red Queen. 
 
 Jane left Alice ecstatically happy with wonderful 
 things that had belonged to two generations, them 
 selves two and three generations back from the 
 present. 
 
126 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 Miss Bickstack had, with, reckless lavishness of 
 resource, set them all out at once upon a big table ; 
 but their various capabilities would not be ex 
 hausted in many visits. There was a little fireplace 
 of baked clay, with a chimney, a perfect model of 
 the great-grandmothers fireplaces before ranges 
 and cookstoves were : crane and hooks and hangers, 
 pots and kettles, and irons, tin-kitchen and tin- 
 baker to set before the fire. There was a tiny 
 cheese-press with wooden screws ; an upright churn 
 and dasher; a miniature spinning-wheel. Set 
 apart from these were modernized appliances : a 
 stove which would burn charcoal, with real covers, 
 boiler, steamer, saucepans and frying-pan, and a 
 cubby of an oven in the side that would bake a pie 
 as big as a half dollar, or a loaf of bread two inches 
 long. In another group, a complete little set of 
 stuffed drawing-room furniture, green, with gold 
 bands, a mirror and a bookcase, all of a real old- 
 fashionedness not old enough to be revived in the 
 craze of the new style, but absolutely forgotten. 
 And there was store of tea-set and dinner-set china 
 in piles of plates and cups and saucers ; these, too, 
 of varying patterns and periods, enough to set any 
 little girl s heart in a whirlwind of delight. 
 
 "You shall make pats of butter, and pans of 
 gingerbread for Rick, as fast as he gets better," 
 said Miss Rickstack, and Alice hovered over and 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 127 
 
 handled the pretty toys with a true little house 
 wife s lovingness and dainty touch. 
 
 "Now will you keep house fifty years ago, or 
 twenty years ago, or to-day ? " the Red Queen was 
 asking as Jane turned away, to go back to duties 
 she was set free for, and to watch and listen 
 through the critical hours upon which so much was 
 hanging. 
 
 As she came in at the little lower gate, she saw 
 a stranger at the front door a gentleman. He 
 had just dropped the written card from his fingers 
 and was laying hand upon the bell-knob. 
 
 " If you please, sir ! " called Jane hurriedly, 
 making her way toward the piazza end across the 
 grass. The visitor turned and walked toward her, 
 meeting her at the side steps. " I don t think " 
 arid then she caught her breath. The two looked 
 at each other. 
 
 " Doctor Hansell ! " said the girl to herself ; 
 spelling the name mentally, as she always did, with 
 two Vs. 
 
 " J. G. ! " ejaculated Doctor Hans, also mentally, 
 without any question of orthography, or fact. 
 
 There she stood, in what might have been the 
 identical soft gray dress, a blue veil tied over the 
 fawn-brown hair lying in the same little feathery 
 locks upon the clear, sweet brow. And there was 
 he, the same strong, upright, manly figure, lifting 
 
128 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 his hat to her as he had done that long-ago morning 
 in the old Bay Line station-house ; the same kindly, 
 courteous look, dwelling, as it had done then, upon 
 the face uplifted to him ; a gleam of surprised re 
 cognition added, which she could well see, and to 
 which her own eyes involuntarily answered. 
 
 Several confused ideas were flitting through the 
 doctor s head. Could he have mistaken the house ? 
 This girl J. G. belonged here, evidently, a 
 strange coincidence ! Question, relief, perplexity, 
 fear, and pleasure, all had time in a single instant 
 to complicate themselves in features capable of 
 most swift and delicate differencing of expression. 
 
 Jane waited. She could not say now what she 
 had begun, of refusal or inquiry. It was for Dr. 
 Hansell to make his own demand. Beyond that 
 involuntary glance, neither claimed anything. A 
 graver matter had immediate precedence. 
 
 "Is this I beg pardon Mrs. Sunderland s 
 house ? " came the question. 
 
 " Yes. And you see there is sickness." 
 
 "I see. Severe? Who is it?" The words 
 were of telegraphic brevity. The face was intent 
 upon hers for the answer. 
 
 "Not desperate. Hopeful, I think. Little 
 Rick." Jane replied, with as instant precision. 
 
 44 Tell her I am here. Doctor " he paused 
 slightly, hesitating whether to be so abrupt. 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 129 
 
 " I know Doctor Hansell," said Jane Gregory. 
 " It will not hurt her. She will be glad. Will 
 you wait here a moment? I do not go into the 
 front of the house at all. I have charge of Alice. 
 I will send some one." 
 
 With which concise explanation she left him in 
 some unsuspected surprise, and took her swift way 
 to the staircase entrance, and to communication 
 from above with Aunty. 
 
 Then it all came to him as he stood there. The 
 " White Queen " of Gretel s letter. This was she. 
 That she should also be J. G., and why she should 
 have called him Dr. Hansell, were points to be put 
 aside and thought of later. A moment more, and he 
 was in the house ; a fleet step was on the stair ; a 
 voice, hushed, yet keen with joy, cried, "Hans! 
 O Hans ! This is God s sending ! How ? 
 But that was how ! " And Margaret had her arms 
 about his neck. 
 
 " I was in Chicago, and just ran on. Now let 
 me come right up." 
 
 That night Rick was out of imminent danger; 
 but Margaret had the sickness. "In time; only 
 just in time," she said, with fresh thanksgiving, 
 resigning Rick into his uncle s hands, and giving 
 herself up to be cared for. 
 
 Dr. Griffith telegraphed to his comrade in 
 Sunnywater, and stayed on in Ascutney Street. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " How easy things happen when they once be 
 gin ! " said Miss Rickstack, " and then, again, they 
 won t start for a lifetime." 
 
 " Just so," said Aunty. " When you re ready, 
 they come ; when you re unready, they tarry, and 
 you all slumber and sleep. Who knows how much 
 sooner But I won t take liberties with Scripcher. 
 All /want is to see a straight way, and happen- 
 in s likewise, as if they was sent, and did n t jest 
 tumble. Then I don t care which way, least I 
 try not to. But there s a great many wee-waws, 
 hither-an -yons, and criss-cross, till you can t see 
 what Providence itself is up to. And in your own 
 mind the worst ; whether to do, or whether you Ve 
 done ; and thinking whether you Ve done is awful ! " 
 
 Miss Rickstack and Aunty were great friends in 
 these days ; but these days were a little further on. 
 There had been some hard " wee-waws " first. One 
 was the night when Margaret was at the worst, and 
 the nurse was worn out, and only Doctor Hansel 
 fit to watch either patient. " And he would n t be, 
 only he s a man," said Aunty, with touching confi- 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 131 
 
 dence in the strength of the stronger sex. She 
 and Jane still called the doctor by his fairy-tale 
 name, Aunty from habit, Jane from mistake, just 
 touched with a doubt that there was a mistake 
 somehow. When she could, without confusing 
 him with Dr. Escue, she used only the medical ti 
 tle. 
 
 " It s a wee-waw," Aunty said ; " only it won t 
 swing clear e er-a-way, more n an inch." 
 
 Jane gave it a push. " We will leave Alice 
 over at The Crocus, and I 11 go up," she said. 
 " We must do the best thing, and that is it." 
 
 " She can t come back again ! " cried Aunty, in 
 amazement. 
 
 " Of course not. But I must take the responsi 
 bility now. She is perfectly safe and happy. Mrs. 
 Sunderland will approve when she knows." 
 There was a sob in the break between the words, 
 but it was kept down with a brave face. 
 
 Aunty could not so well hold back the emotion 
 to which the contagion of Jane s gave release. 
 She sat down on the lower step of the garden stair, 
 whence she had held counsel with Jane at the top, 
 and put her face between her hands upon her 
 knees. " Don t speak to me ! " she choked forth 
 with very poor disguise ; " I m think ing ! " 
 
 Jane stepped back into the white room ; a mo 
 ment after, when she came forth again, Aunty was 
 
132 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 on her feet, pouring from a broken-nosed pitcher 
 some carbolized water upon the step where she had 
 been sitting. " T ain t my resk, either way," she 
 was saying; "nor sha n t be. Don t come down 
 till I m clear off," she called up hurriedly. " I 
 might forget, if you was within arm s reach, you 
 dear, blessed, contrary creechur ! " 
 
 That night, when the hush and dusk had settled 
 upon the sick - rooms, the night-lamps placed, 
 the nurse gone to bed for a three hours rest, 
 and Kick in his first sleep, Dr. Griffith, pass 
 ing along the little corridor to his sister s room, 
 saw the swing-door to the long L-passage gently 
 slip ajar, and a white figure enter noiselessly 
 from beyond. Jane Gregory met him, in soft, 
 silent raiment, straight skirts and sacque-wrap of 
 starchless cambric, fresh ones upon her arm to re 
 place with, and a little linen bag in her hand. She 
 stopped, just over the rubicon, when she saw him. 
 
 " You here ! Miss " began Dr. Hansell. 
 
 " Yes. I am Jane," the girl answered low. " 1 
 have come to stay with Rick. I knew somebody 
 was needed." 
 
 " But I don t know what to do with you ! " 
 The tone in which the doctor was obliged to speak 
 was inadequate to express his half-annoyed, en 
 tirely perplexed astonishment. 
 
 " There is nothing for you to do," Jane answered, 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 133 
 
 "except to put up with me." In the dim light he 
 saw that she smiled quietly. " I shall sit by Rick. 
 The nurse can sleep, and you will have only Mrs. 
 Sunderland." She moved forward to pass on. 
 
 " What have you done with Alice ? You can t 
 go back, you know." 
 
 " I know. She is at Miss Rickstack s. She 
 can stay." 
 
 " The best place for her," said the doctor briefly. 
 " You have left me nothing to object to except 
 yourself. And now we must leave that where 
 we leave everything we can t help. You are a 
 brave woman, Jane." 
 
 She had given him nothing else to call her by 
 but her little Christian name. He might have left 
 that off ; but that he did not sent a curious feeling 
 through Jane s consciousness. It was as if he had 
 taken her by the hand. 
 
 " If there are any particular directions " she 
 began, as she went by into the doorway of Rick s 
 room, where she turned and paused. But the doc 
 tor came in also. He put something into a glass 
 with water, and told her to drink it. Then he 
 prepared another similar portion, which he covered 
 and set upon the mantel. " Take that at twelve 
 o clock," he said. " Give Rick a teaspoonful of 
 this upon the table every hour when awake. Offer 
 him milk also. It is in the little cooler. Water 
 
134 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 when he asks for it. I shall be in once or twice 
 before morning. Keep him as quiet as possible. 
 Sleep before everything." With these brief sen 
 tences, he went away. 
 
 He had treated Jane precisely as she chose to be 
 treated. He had understood, and had taken her 
 at her word. She felt received into confidence and 
 trust. More : she had entered into rapport with a 
 high, strong, sincere nature. 
 
 In the two adjoining rooms these two sat, anx 
 ious, intent upon their watch, yet singularly con 
 scious of each other ; wondering, each how the 
 other had again come in the way, and now so 
 closely. 
 
 In the morning, Mrs. Sunderland was easier ; 
 the doctor came and treated Rick s throat, which 
 was nearly in its normal condition. Jane was not 
 tired ; she knew how to take even watching with a 
 certain repose of nerve. The nurse had had full 
 rest, and resumed her post with Mrs. Sunderland ; 
 Dr. Griffith went off for a nap ; Jane stayed with 
 Rick, and told him little inexciting stories. The 
 child was happy. His mother did not know that 
 Jane was there. 
 
 Dr. Griffith managed to learn somehow the rest 
 of Jane s name ; the next time he had occasion to 
 make use of it, he addressed her as Miss Gregory. 
 She was not a housemaid, nor a nursemaid; she 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 135 
 
 felt the delicate respect and courtesy; but she 
 liked to remember that once saying of " Jane." 
 For her part, she had found out no more concern 
 ing his ; she had got used to thinking of him as 
 Dr. Hansell, and she did not care ; it was easy 
 enough to call him " Doctor." Of course he was 
 Mrs. Sunderland s near relative ; her brother, 
 doubtless ; but what Mrs. Sunderland s maiden 
 name had been she did not know. It was pleasant 
 she did not ask herself why still to think of 
 him as Dr. Hansell. She was in no hurry to begin 
 her acquaintance with him over again under a 
 strange appellation ; " Dr. Hansell " held all her 
 associations thus far. 
 
 She was considering far more another circum 
 stance which, indeed, at this juncture did not matter 
 much, but would trouble her honesty by and by. 
 That she knew a little more of Mrs. Sunderland s 
 brother than Mrs. Sunderland was aware of, 
 that she was keeping to herself the fact of that first 
 meeting, that recognition of herself in the doc 
 tor s little written story of it, all this must be 
 held account with by and by. She was very con 
 scious that it had not been a light, forgotten mat 
 ter with her ; if it had been, it would not be pre 
 senting itself as a stern question of candor now. 
 But these things waited. 
 
 What Dr. Griffith thought did not appear. 
 
136 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 On the second day, all possible precautions 
 taken, he had Jane and Rick transferred to the 
 white room, where he watched over their well-being 
 by open-air colloquies on the staircase, and by mi 
 nute directions for Jane s proceeding and observa 
 tion with the child and with herself. 
 
 Always quiet, always simple and direct, there 
 was nothing in Jane s manner but earnest atten 
 tion and entire occupation with the duties in hand. 
 Sometimes, notwithstanding that first electric look 
 that he knew had shot between them, he very 
 nearly doubted if she positively remembered. But 
 he, no more than she, passed, by any word or sign, 
 the limits which the present time imposed. 
 
 For the by-and-by a question waited with the 
 doctor also, which was fast taking shape as a deter 
 mination. He had time to arrange his tactics 
 clearly in his own mind ; that was where he had 
 advantage of the girl. She would have to be taken 
 by surprise whenever and however he might make 
 allusion or inquiry. 
 
 It came the day before Mrs. Sunderland was to 
 go downstairs again. There was no more time to 
 lose. 
 
 The doctor met Jane as she took her little con 
 stitutional among the apple-trees. Dr. Escue had 
 just left, his visits ended with this one ; things 
 were glad and bright in the little house now ; they 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 137 
 
 were going to be very busy. Final fumigating and 
 cleansing, one part at a time ; then packing and 
 moving, for a change was prescribed and imper 
 ative. Whither, Jane did not know, nor how far 
 it would concern herself ; she had a talent for not 
 asking questions. 
 
 " Good-morning, Miss Gregory." 
 
 " Good-morning, Doctor." 
 
 " You have not got farther aU this time than the 
 handle to my name. I have never been properly 
 presented. Yours had n t one, suitably avail 
 able, so I was obliged to inform myself. Dr. 
 Griffith, at your command, Miss Gregory." And 
 the doctor lifted his hat and bowed. 
 
 Jane laughed gently, frankly ; at the same time 
 she too bent her head. " Thank you," she replied. 
 
 "Do you mind telling me," said Dr. Griffith, 
 with something of a quiet, professional method of 
 steadily working to a point, " how you happened 
 at first to call me Dr. Hansell ? " 
 
 " Did you notice that ? " asked Jane, a little dis 
 turbed. "I The children called you so, Dr. 
 Griffith." 
 
 " Yes. Before you saw me, before I came, I 
 mean. How, please, did you identify me ? " 
 
 This was a bad corner ; from which Jane came 
 straight out. 
 
 " If you please, Dr. Griffith, I would rather not 
 
138 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 tell you that. I cannot quite explain it now." It 
 was said with the shyest deference, and yet with 
 a sweet courage of directness, her eyes raised con 
 fidently to the courtesy in his. 
 
 Dr. Griffith bowed again. He treated her as if 
 she were a princess, this rare, high-mannered gen 
 tleman. 
 
 " 1 think you are a very spirit of truth," he said. 
 " And truth has it all her own way. The eternal 
 years are hers. I will wait." He smiled. And 
 then he began to tell her what he and his sister 
 had decided. 
 
 " We are all to go away," he said. " A little 
 salt -air tonic, an out-of-door life awhile in this 
 beautiful weather, is what you must all have." As 
 if Jane were really one of them ! 
 
 " There is a little place down among the rags 
 and fringes of the Maine coast that we know, 
 that my brother-in-law leased one summer, and 
 that we can have again, Leeport Island ; only 
 three houses on it. Cliffs, and sea, and beach, and 
 woods, all in a strip of a mile s length by a half 
 mile in width at the broadest. Shall you like 
 it?" 
 
 Again that making her of importance ; that 
 counting her in, not merely by permission, but as 
 a motive. She was to be thought of, also ; cared 
 for. Jane s eyes shone with more than pleasure. 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 139 
 
 " You are good" she said with her simple empha 
 sis. 
 
 Dr. Griffith answered nothing to that ; he very 
 slightly raised his hat again and went away. 
 
 There was nothing in the colloquy to neighbor 
 ing eyes, and the eyes were not wanting, be 
 yond the highly interesting and suggestive daily 
 movements about the isolated and guarded house. 
 What this, that, and the other meant in the pro 
 ceedings and precautions casually apparent was a 
 wonderfully sustaining object in life just now to 
 Mrs. Turnbull, interrupted, as she was, in the ordi 
 nary autumn absorption of wardrobe readjustment. 
 The " blind side " of her dwelling was vantage- 
 ground for keenest observation. 
 
 In a few days, Jane came as far as the fence, 
 and opened parley. The washerwoman was hang 
 ing linens upon the line, and with message by her 
 Mrs. Turnbull was summoned. 
 
 She came cautiously as far as the larch-tree. 
 
 " Everything has been scalded and fumigated, 
 and we are all well again. You need not be at all 
 afraid," said Jane. " But I thought I would not 
 come until you knew." 
 
 " Oh, I m not afraid ; but then it s always well 
 enough to be careful. It s been a pretty serious 
 thing in the neighborhood, this sickness." 
 
 " In the neighborhood, yes," said Jane ; "/or 
 
140 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 the neighborhood, there has been no danger. Ev 
 erybody has been careful." 
 
 " Everybody except Rebecca Rickstack," Mrs. 
 Turnbull replied, accepting the commendation. " I 
 really think the Board of Health ought to have 
 interfered with her. Back and forth, trailing mi 
 crobes up and down the sidewalk ! Is the little 
 girl there now ? " 
 
 " She sleeps and eats there. She came to see 
 her mother yesterday." 
 
 " And you Ve been in the end room, have n t 
 you? Taking your meals in from the stairs? 
 And who was that you talked to, on the steps, and 
 in the garden ? " 
 
 " Aunty ? " asked Jane naughtily. 
 
 "Aunty! As if I didn t know her I The 
 man." 
 
 " That was the doctor." 
 
 "Not Dr. Escue?" 
 
 " No. The other one. He stayed all the time, 
 after the worst began." 
 
 Dr. Griffith had betaken himself to the city for 
 lodgings since the recoveries were certain. True 
 as she was, Jane did not feel obliged to explain 
 everything to Mrs. Turnbull. 
 
 " He s a mighty polite man. Lives mostly with 
 his hat in his hand, I should think. What s his 
 name ? " 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 141 
 
 " He is always polite," remarked Jane, in acqui 
 escence. " They have ordered us off," she made 
 haste to say, and to transfer Mrs. Turnbull s soli 
 citudes to her own affairs. " And that is my errand 
 now. I hope you won t think I ve deserted you, 
 but maybe you d as lief have me after I have been 
 away among the sea breezes." 
 
 " That s it, is it ? Well, I can get along some 
 how ; I suppose I must. What s Miss Kickstack 
 going to do to get aired off ? I don t think she 
 need put out her red ribbons yet awhile, anyway. 
 Ascutney Street folks won t trouble her much at 
 present." 
 
 " Miss Rickstack is to go with us," said Jane. 
 
 " Where ? " demanded Mrs. Turnbull, staring. 
 Jane stated briefly. 
 
 A little bell tinkled from the white room window, 
 and she turned to go. 
 
 " Well, I do give up," came after her, in solemn 
 intonation. 
 
 But Mrs. Turnbull did not give up. She was 
 never farther from it. She struggled with the sur 
 prise and problem all day. When Mr. Turnbull 
 came home, she presented the subject to him, in 
 her habitual inverted fashion. 
 
 " I never thought Rebecca Louisa Rickstack was 
 quite a fool, before," she observed, handing her 
 husband his second cup of tea. " It is certainly a 
 most astonishing thing." 
 
142 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 " That a woman should be a fool ? or that you 
 should find a fool out ? " 
 
 " I don t see how she can ever have the face to 
 come into Ascutney Street again ! " 
 
 "Perhaps she ll back in. It is an impressive 
 way to do anything." 
 
 " I don t know what you mean." said Mrs. Turn- 
 bull, aware that her husband was chaffing her as 
 usual, but missing the point. 
 
 " There we are in perfect sympathy, my dear. 
 Did n t you forget the sugar in this tea ? " 
 
 " She s going off with those Sunderlands and 
 Jane Gregory to some little down-east place that 
 they came from," said Mrs. Turnbull, pouring out 
 her news and a ladleful of sugar, at one dash, into 
 Mr. Turnbull s ears and his extended cup. Mr. 
 Turnbull drew back with what he had received, and 
 tasted his amended beverage and intelligence 
 in silence. 
 
 " Folks might have got over what she did, off 
 hand, in time of sickness, if it had stopped there. 
 But this is in cold blood." 
 
 " Diabolical. I mean the tea. But no matter." 
 
 " You re a very funny man," said his wife, with 
 severe irony. " Everybody thinks so. But every 
 body does n t know what it is to have to live all 
 the time with a funny man, and tell him things in 
 earnest." 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 143 
 
 " Perhaps if you could be just a little less in ear 
 nest, it s hard for a person sensitive to impres 
 sions to stand too much, you know," and Mr. 
 Turnbull sipped ruefully his over-sweetened tea. 
 " But 4 telling things in earnest is good. I like 
 that. It s apt to be a woman s way ; and a man 
 has to be funny, or otherwise." 
 
 " Wait till you hear what Mrs. Inching will say," 
 answered his wife undivertedly. 
 
 "I m not obliged to hear that ; I m not Mr. 
 Inching." He left the table, and lighted his cigar. 
 A woman has no such refuge. It would not have 
 been a refuge for a woman like Mrs. Turnbull. 
 She could not so have broken off an argument. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 Two things Dr. Griffith had said to Jane Greg 
 ory, which would have remained her possession, 
 though he should never have spoken to her again. 
 He had said that she was a brave woman ; he had 
 called her a very spirit of truth. But it began to 
 be a trouble in her mind, the doubt whether she 
 were continuing either. 
 
 Several times, now, she had sat alone with Mrs. 
 Sunderland, when there had been opportunity, so 
 far as that went, to have explained to her the one 
 fact which she felt the latter had a right to know. 
 But the declaration assumed so much in the very 
 making, that it interposed an impossibility. How 
 was she, an unpretending earner of her bread, 
 now, indeed, in Mrs. Sunderland s own employ, 
 to presume to make it of consequence that she had 
 met the lady s brother, Dr. Griffith, two years be 
 fore ; that he had then rendered her a trifling inci 
 dental service, and that she had remembered it and 
 him ever since? That she had understood, and 
 taken to herself, all that he had said in that letter ; 
 that she had known him the moment she had 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 145 
 
 met him; and that she had kept silence until 
 now? 
 
 Every day made it harder. And yet Mrs. Sun- 
 derland ought to know. To continue to hold it 
 back, Jane felt, was to make it increasingly signifi 
 cant. Significant to herself. Jane was conscious 
 of that reality, and did not mean to suffer it. If, 
 indeed, Dr. Griffith had forgotten but she was 
 well aware that he had not. It must be done ; and 
 yet she must do it with as little show and forcing 
 of purpose as might be. So it was but just before 
 the flitting from Ascutney Street that time and 
 way came to her. 
 
 She was helping Mrs. Sunderland pack a large 
 box that was to go to Bay Hill. Jane knew about 
 Bay Hill, now ; at the end of its summer lease 
 Mrs. Sunderland would return there for the pres 
 ent ; Dr. Griffith had persuaded her. Ascutney 
 Street was to be given up. 
 
 The two sat together, quietly busy, folding and 
 placing. The children were at Miss Kickstack s ; 
 Dr. Griffith was in town. 
 
 " I should never have undertaken this but for 
 my brother," Margaret said, a little wearily. " It 
 is so good of him to stay and see us settled. But 
 I know it will do him good also. He cannot live 
 altogether without sea air. He is barely amphib 
 ious as to climate, and will always have to come 
 
146 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 east of the Alleghanies to store up native atmos 
 phere, he says. And just now there is a young 
 medical man out near Sunnywater, to whom he has 
 lent a start, as he calls it. He manages to make 
 the wind blow both ways, ill to nobody." 
 
 " I think Dr. Griffith is always good," said Jane 
 calmly. But her head was pretty well over in the 
 packing-box. When she lifted it up, and sat fac 
 ing Mrs. Sunderland, her hands for a moment lay 
 quietly upon her lap, while her friend hesitated be 
 tween certain next parcels. She would not say 
 her next words under cover, as if she needed any. 
 
 " It was Dr. Griffith I was the girl, I mean, 
 whose hat blew off upon the train, once, and he 
 got it for her. There were a hundred people there, 
 but only one Dr. Griffith." 
 
 Then she took the package in order and put it 
 down into the box, directly to the best place, fitting 
 it in with perfect care and attention. She turned 
 to receive another, with the same honest self-com- 
 rnand, although the silence of a half moment in 
 which she did so seemed long to her. Of what was 
 Mrs. Sunderland thinking ? 
 
 " Then you recognized the details of that little 
 story for Alice in the letter?" In the slowness 
 with which the question came, and was uttered, 
 Jane perceived precisely what she had expected : 
 that another question lay behind, which she knew 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 147 
 
 Mrs. Sunderland would not like to put to her 
 downrightly, " Why did you not tell me then ? " 
 
 " I recognized the things that happened, and 
 Dr. Griffith," Jane replied, without embarrass 
 ment. " He made it rather hard for me to recog 
 nize myself." 
 
 " What a good packer you are, Jane ! " said Mrs. 
 Sunderland. 
 
 Jane looked a little surprised at the sudden 
 turn ; but it was no turn at all. Mrs. Sunderland 
 only applied to Jane s sentences an illustration 
 from her obvious work. Everything had been 
 gotten into them. Every fact that it was her own 
 right to know was there, at her service, but in as 
 little extension as possible. Care had been taken 
 to present the whole truth ; but conclusions had 
 been left to take care of themselves. There was no 
 secret now, in Jane s memory, concerning Dr. Grif 
 fith ; she made no secret of her own appreciation of 
 him ; she explained, without explaining, how im 
 possible it must have been for her, at the moment, 
 to claim all that the story in the letter said of the 
 girl about whom it was told. The rest she left to 
 Mrs. Sunderland, with that reposefulness of an en 
 tire unconcealment which was mere relief to Jane, 
 but which Mrs. Sunderland was more than half un 
 certain whether to set down to personal unconcern 
 or not. She felt almost rebuked by Jane s pure 
 
148 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 directness for the slight obliquity, the little ten- 
 tativeness, that had been in her own first leading 
 observation. 
 
 For Dr. Griffith had already told his sister all 
 that Jane had now, to Mrs. Sunderland s better 
 satisfaction, volunteered. Soon after her conva 
 lescence had begun, he had acquainted her with the 
 circumstances very " like a story," Margaret 
 said which had brought him first to Chicago, 
 and thence home. 
 
 A young fellow, who had been in Colorado for 
 the benefit of his health, had been very ill at Den 
 ver, and when as far on his way back as Sunny- 
 water had suffered a dangerous relapse. Dr. Grif 
 fith had attended him ; had found that, though he 
 could help him to such a degree of convalescence 
 as might make it possible for him to reach home, it 
 would be a painful, hazardous journey, and there 
 was no ultimate hope. The boy, who was but 
 twenty, and had conceived the clinging attachment 
 to the doctor which his character and service in 
 such loneliness and need had naturally drawn 
 forth, begged him to see him safe through. " My 
 father will make it as right as he can," he had 
 said ; and the expression which simply meant the 
 inadequacy of money to make it even at all, Dr. 
 Griffith had put aside as significant of some par 
 tial limit in the means ; and for that very rea- 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 149 
 
 son, white knight as he was, had left the Sunny- 
 water business to the hands of his associate, had 
 taken the youth to his father, and had watched 
 with the old man by the death-bed which proved, 
 as he had feared, the goal of the journey. 
 
 To his astonishment, the old gentleman handed 
 him on his departure, not only a check which was 
 ample remuneration for medical services and time, 
 but papers which transferred to him the value of 
 ten thousand dollars, " at the request of his boy," 
 he said, " whose separate bit of property it was by 
 a legacy, and which he could not, as a minor, be 
 queath by will. Take it," the old man had said to 
 his remonstrance. " I am solitary now, and I have 
 two hundred times as much that must go some 
 where to help strangers ; and you are no stranger." 
 
 So Dr. Griffith had come on east for his holiday, 
 and storage of Atlantic atmosphere, having tele 
 graphed to his friend, " Shall be away a week or 
 two longer. Hold on at Sunnywater for good." 
 
 " I was glad," he said, " to be able to settle that. 
 I Ve taken a fancy to him ; he s a kind of Tom 
 Thurnall, a born naturalist and chemist; just 
 the fellow to take in a big prairie range, and be 
 everywhere at once. And it has made this easy 
 for me, all through ; though I should have stayed, 
 anyway, finding you as I did. Your case took pre 
 cedence of all else." 
 
150 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 "And now?" Margaret had asked; the two 
 words including a great deal, both as to movement 
 and motive, but throwing the burden upon him of 
 understanding and answer. 
 
 " I have not quite done with you ; and my own 
 case still remains," he replied. 
 
 She could gather very little from this, but she 
 felt instinctively that something was to be gathered, 
 beyond the fact that he had, as yet, secured not 
 much to himself of the fine climatic reinforcement 
 he had come for. 
 
 When, however, in the course of more varied 
 talk afterward, they spoke of Jane Gregory, and to 
 his straightforward commendation of her, "Not 
 a failure in her ; not a pretense about her ! " he 
 added quietly, " I knew that was the sort of 
 woman she was, Margaret, the first time I ever 
 saw her," Margaret naturally looked up at him 
 with a wondering question coupled with her eager 
 interest. 
 
 " The first time was on that train in from Ex- 
 ham, at the Wing Street station," Dr. Griffith said, 
 " when her hat blew off, and I telegraphed back 
 for it, I wrote you the little incident. It was 
 queer to meet her here again in the midst of 
 this." 
 
 It had been spoken with the simplest composure, 
 and, as Jane did now, he had left the fact ,with 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 151 
 
 Margaret for such induction as she pleased, chang 
 ing the subject to other matters. 
 
 But John Griffith rarely spoke mere casual 
 words. 
 
 How like these two were to each other in the 
 force of their plain reality ! To what might this 
 force swiftly tend ? And in other things so differ 
 ent ; was it well ? 
 
 Yet what were the "other things," after all? 
 Margaret was driven to ask herself this, in her own 
 sincerity. Were they things, or shadows, the 
 "vain show" in which people walk, disquietedly, 
 or the verities which the shows simulate ? Upon 
 the plane of these verities did not the differences 
 vanish ? 
 
 She determined to put it all aside, into the fu 
 ture which should be responsible for itself. There 
 was nothing else for her to do. A bit of wisdom 
 from the looking-glass story flashed up in her mind. 
 The queen had not pricked her finger yet ; if she 
 cried or worried about that, she would be living 
 backward. 
 
 There was something laid off from each individ 
 ual mind of the party, as they set forward on 
 their pleasant seaward journey. A certain sense 
 of freedom and fresh permission, of all being fair 
 and understood, which nobody stopped to analyze, 
 pervaded their relations. They had furlough for 
 a happy holiday. 
 
152 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 The children effervesced ; Miss Rickstack beamed 
 and glowed continualty. She had never had so 
 large, so sweet a slice of life before. 
 
 " Mamma," said Rick, leaning up by his moth 
 er s side as they sat upon the deck of the little 
 Bath steamer, gliding down into the breadths and 
 water-glades and islanded beauty of the great river 
 debouchure, " Mamma, what a big, beautiful 
 world ! It was awful little in Ascutney Street ! " 
 
 " Maybe you did n t know the whole of it. It 
 was big enough to hold those two," and Mrs. Sun- 
 derland gave a bright, warm look over toward 
 Jane and Miss Rickstack, who had placed them 
 selves slightly aside. They often chose to pair off 
 so, and leave a little family seclusion possible. 
 Aunty sat in the middle of a stack of handbags, 
 shawl-straps, and umbrellas. The share she took 
 to herself was to " keep counted up." 
 
 " Mamma," said Alice, " it did n t hold them. 
 They were on the wrong side of the looking-glass, 
 where everything is queer ; and they came through 
 to us. Jane says she is n t the White Queen, 
 though ; she s nothing but a little pawn on our 
 chessboard. Mamma Margaret, I ve been think 
 ing it all out. I think there s a whole row of 
 looking-glass houses, one after another, just as 
 there was at Bay Hill, you know, where they were 
 opposite, in the buff parlor, and you could see on 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 153 
 
 and on, till you couldn t see anything. I think 
 it s make-believe one side, and come-true the 
 other ; and we are in the looking-glass of the next 
 one till we get in there, and then we re looking- 
 glass to the next, and we grow realer and realer 
 every time, till we get away in to heaven ! " 
 
 " And a chessboard game in every one ? " asked 
 Uncle Hans. 
 
 " I suppose so," said Alice, gravely. 
 
 " It seems to me I remember that things were a 
 good deal upset in Looking-glass House, queens 
 and kings and castles down among the ashes, 
 crowding up close to the chimney in a hurry to get 
 through ; and that somebody said, Mind the vol 
 cano ! don t get blown up ; climb slowly, the regu 
 lar way, and help yourself ! 
 
 " They d got off the board," said Alice. " The 
 only way is to go by the squares." 
 
 Uncle Hans and Mamma Margaret laughed out. 
 
 " But the knights and the queens have a good 
 deal to do with it, helping people across, I 
 mean," said Alice. 
 
 The afternoon light was glowing low, and lovely. 
 They were winding in and out through straits and 
 cuts and rounding points ; and beautiful shores 
 ran their green lines in curves and headlands, and 
 little clumps of woodland, or bare, soft pasture, 
 or gray rock, lifting up from the water, spotted 
 
154 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 the wider expanses ; and they never knew, looking 
 forward, which way the boat would take as it 
 threaded its course along, always down and down 
 toward the open ocean. 
 
 By-and-by, when the sunshine streamed almost 
 level, and the eastern slopes and edges were shin 
 ing in a yellow glow, and the western ones taking 
 deeper and deeper shadows, and the water turning 
 gray or purple or black or golden as the gloom 
 crept or the glory flashed, in the midst of a fairy 
 archipelago of small islets and a winding network 
 of rippling river-paths between, they slowed and 
 slipped up to a little pier, a rope was thrown 
 around a mooring-post, a gang-plank flung across 
 from deck to platform, and our party landed upon 
 Leeport. 
 
 There was a cart to take their luggage, and an 
 open one-horse wagon for those who needed to ride. 
 Mrs. Sunderland and the children were bestowed 
 in the vehicle ; the others went forward on foot. 
 
 The soft, brown country road, plunging into 
 green woods directly from the rocky river-face, 
 took them into a sweet stillness and fragrance. 
 Odors of pine and bay were accentuated as color 
 is in seaside blossoms by the keen, soft tingle 
 of the sea ; the indescribable island atmosphere 
 wrapped and penetrated them with exhilarating 
 delight ; the hush was softly touched with rhvthmic 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 155 
 
 sound by the rote upon a long ledge-beach some 
 half mile or so away ; it seemed as if the drift of 
 every day had borne them to a wonderful out-of- 
 the-world quiet and blessedness, had swept them 
 gently upon its shore, and gone fussing and strug 
 gling on, with puff and paddle, leaving them in a 
 great release and peace. 
 
 It was the beginning of an idyl of days. 
 
 When Jane Gregory and Rebecca Rickstack 
 thought of Ascutney Street, they marveled how 
 Ascutney Street had ever got built upon an earth 
 whose beginnings were like this ; how, being built, 
 and they imprisoned in it, it had ever disappeared 
 from them, and left them in this primal beauty. 
 It was as if city, and tumult, and work, and crowd, 
 and worry had melted away from them, and disem 
 bodied them of the world, leaving them to the very 
 soul of things, unhampered and unspoiled. 
 
 It seemed queer, almost, to take their clothes out 
 of their trunks, which they had packed according 
 to their outer needs that pressed so close and so 
 continually upon them in their old life ; " things " 
 were a strange link between that far-away past and 
 place and this. 
 
 Three houses on the island, as Dr. Griffith had 
 told Jane. One was the little lighthouse, the first 
 beacon on the inland channel, at the end of the 
 long cliff; another was the Morse farmhouse, a 
 
156 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 substantial, well-to-do congeries of dwelling and 
 outbuildings back upon the central upland; the 
 third, this, also a part of the Morse family prop 
 erty, whose former occupant had " taken the fever, 
 and gone West," down where the shore turned 
 southerly, at the head of a beautiful little cove and 
 soft-lapped beach. " Kound the island," walk or 
 drive, as the visitor chose to make it, wound the 
 narrow wagon-track and side-path over brown 
 earth and pine needles, in woody shades and by 
 open shore, with breaks of cliff and ledge-crossings ; 
 now burying the passer in sweet, hidden solitudes, 
 now carrying him close to the blue surge of water 
 that kissed the sand, or tossed gay breakers up the 
 spines of rocks ; and again lifting him to a summit 
 whence the great sweep of ocean one way, and the 
 green slopes of the farm fields the other, could be 
 overseen. 
 
 A path, which led from the old Morse house to 
 the south cove, crossing the little side orchard of 
 the cove house, and touching at its kitchen en 
 trance with demonstration of family use and his 
 tory, ran down to the small gravelly beach, shel 
 tered on either hand by the high out-thrusts of the 
 long ridge, against the base of which the cove cot 
 tage stood. 
 
 Southwesterly the ridge projected itself, narrow 
 ing and sharpening and rising higher ; the drive- 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 157 
 
 way crept along behind it, as behind a rampart ; 
 on its crests were only bleak rock, mossy pasture 
 grass, and hardy furze. 
 
 Down in the safe little cove, Rick and Alice 
 played. Jane and Miss Rickstack sat with them, 
 or found nooks above in cool, rocky niches, where 
 they could watch the children and chat pleasantly 
 together. In the afternoons, when it was loveliest, 
 Dr. Griffith and Margaret would come out, with 
 work or drawing, and books ; and there would be 
 reading and talk that were worth coming away into 
 this distant security for ; that could only so have 
 been attempted and enjoyed. 
 
 It was the third morning after their arrival. 
 Mrs. Sunderland was resting in her hammock, 
 slung between two maple-trees in the front door- 
 yard ; Dr. Griffith had taken the morning boat up 
 to Bath ; and the others were in the rocky cove. 
 
 The children were sailing boats in the edge of 
 the water, keeping them within control by tow 
 ing-lines of twine, the reflex wave carrying them 
 out to full length from shore, and the next incom 
 ing one bringing them back with gentle slide upon 
 the sand. 
 
 These boats were very childish and womanish af 
 fairs, such as Jane and Miss Rickstack could help 
 make, with bits of shingle, and masts of wooden- 
 skewer style, whittled from pine sticks. A sail of 
 
158 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 curiously un-nautical fashion, with stays and hal 
 yards arranged more with an amateur eye to effect 
 than with any technical knowledge, served as a 
 label to each one at least, that might say. " This is 
 intended for a vessel, and as such is to be politely 
 regarded." 
 
 They floated, however, and kept right side up 
 better than might have been expected ; their raft- 
 like proportion and the low, crosswise set of the 
 canvas, for it was a bold adaptation of square- 
 rig to a sloop, perhaps helping to this ; and the 
 young ones, knowing nothing better, and all unwit 
 ting of certain memoranda in Uncle Hansel s 
 pocket-book among the errands which had taken 
 him to Bath, were satisfied ; while the elders were 
 divided between tender compunctions for the im 
 position upon innocent confidingness and fun over 
 their own half-comprehended blunders. 
 
 A new craft was just launched, the Jabber- 
 wock, whose name was stitched in red worsted let 
 ters upon the rectangle of cotton cloth, with osten 
 tatious blazonry ; and a long, retreating lapse of 
 the outgoing tide was taking it finely forth, when a 
 sudden cry from Rick brought Jane hastily to his 
 aid, to find the frail hawser escaped from his small 
 fingers, and the Jabberwock galumphing off to sea 
 in earnest. 
 
 Jane had in her pocket her ball of twine from 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 159 
 
 which rigging and cables were made ; she unwound 
 a goodly length of it, and fastened it to a branch 
 of brushwood. 
 
 " Stand back, Kick," she said ; " I 11 try for it 
 when the next wave comes in." 
 
 It had bobbed back and forth two or three times 
 already, and the outward current was evidently 
 getting the better ; but Jane stepped close to the 
 edge of the water, and held the grapple ready for a 
 fling. 
 
 They were all eagerly intent upon the effort, and 
 nobody saw a small rowboat that had slipped sud 
 denly through a narrow cut in the outreach of the 
 ledge, in a deep, overhanging shadow, until a voice 
 startlingly near called out, " Don t wet your feet, 
 young lady ; I 11 tow in the catamaran ! " and look 
 ing round, they saw the skiff shoot smoothly by, 
 the oar just dropped in its bottom, the last spurt 
 sending it straight in toward where they stood. 
 
 A young man with handsome sea-browned face 
 and athletic figure, in blue woolen shirt, sat upon 
 the middle thwart, and reaching out his arm in 
 passing, caught, not the truant vessel itself in 
 ignominious grasp, as he might have done, but with 
 all respect the floating cable, by which, an instant 
 after, as he sprang upon the beach, and dragged 
 his own boat with one hand upon the gravel, he 
 restored it to its owners. 
 
160 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 Rick caught the line, while Jane stood back. 
 
 " Thank you, sir. Who are you ? And what s 
 a what you called my ship ? " 
 
 The young fellow laughed. " You re welcome," 
 he said. " A catamaran is a flat vessel with one 
 big sail, or none at all. Only it s generally made 
 of three logs, instead of one board. But that does 
 n t matter. And I m Matt Morse." 
 
 Rick looked pleased and puzzled. " But you re 
 not this you re not our Mr. Morse ! " 
 
 " I m this Mr. Morse, anyway," was the reply. 
 " Not Leeport, though ; Morse s Neck. We re 
 half of us Morses round this bit of water. Mr. 
 Azel Morse is my uncle." 
 
 He smiled, and touched his cap as he spoke, di 
 recting his explanation chiefly, and his courtesy 
 wholly, toward Jane. 
 
 " I ve come round from Riggsville, with the 
 mail for the house. Will you look it over, or shall 
 I carry it right up ? " 
 
 " Thank you," Jane said simply. " There can t 
 be anything for me ; so, if you are going, they will 
 be much obliged." 
 
 He had time only for one more swift look, 
 which took in quite as much as the stare that 
 would have been unpardonable, and with another 
 touch of his fingers to his cap, turned and sprang 
 up the rough bank, over which he quickly disap 
 peared from those below. 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 161 
 
 It was the first, but not the last, of Mr. Matthew 
 Morse. 
 
 Kick s head was up ; he came beside Jane 
 proudly. "I like him," he said. "He knows a 
 cat-or-a-man ! " 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 THERE is not much risk in saying that there was 
 at least no handsomer or better-liked young fellow, 
 at that time, between Bath and Boothbay, than Mr. 
 Matthew Morse. He was known all up and down 
 the river. 
 
 The Morses were an old Kennebee County fam 
 ily, and had owned among them, first and last, 
 enough island and other property to have made a 
 small township. They were plain people, and the 
 present representatives held to primitive ways of 
 occupation and living. 
 
 Matthew s father, old Captain Zenas, was retired 
 now upon his little peninsular farm. Matthew 
 helped him, in odd ways and times, but had his 
 own independent craft. He was a boatman from 
 beginning to end of all that a boat needs or is good 
 for. He had served an apprenticeship in a build 
 ing-yard at Bath, and knew how to put a boat to 
 gether from keel to gunnel, from deck to spindle. 
 And wherever any sort of a boat could go, up and 
 down the river-aisles and cuts and intricate chan 
 nels, or along these torn and jagged Atlantic 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 163 
 
 shores, Matthew Morse could take her. He built 
 rowboats and dories, and sold them for the plea 
 sure or use of holiday comers or busy residents ; he 
 had a trim little yacht of his own construction, in 
 which he carried pleasure parties up and down 
 along shore, to and from Squirrel and Mouse, and 
 the other frequented summer resorts, around Bald 
 Head to Harpswell, out to Damariscove and around 
 Monhegan, up to Wiscasset, or even to Penobscot 
 Bay and Castine. 
 
 In the winter, he did house carpentering, made 
 and mended ; he hauled in wood ; he helped to 
 house ice, feeding the elevator, sliding it over the 
 long trams into the great storage buildings, whence 
 the companies contract to take supplies. He also 
 read and studied, building up, as well as he could, 
 upon the foundation of a fair New England school 
 education ; and he reveled in stories of a great 
 outside world as he thought it that he would 
 go forth into some time, not realizing how outside 
 and free he was, just here and already, himself. 
 
 While old Captain Zenas lived, his place was at 
 home. Afterward but he was too good a son to 
 dwell much upon that afterward. 
 
 Beside employment, he had amusement ; trust 
 Matthew Morse for that. He was wanted at ev 
 ery gathering where sledge or skates could carry 
 him, or anybody else ; and, by his energy and social 
 
164 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 indefatigability, fairly held together as a neighbor 
 hood a population scattered here and there over a 
 fifteen-mile area of snow and ice. There was noth 
 ing, apparently, that Matt Morse could not accom 
 plish ; the only point to find fault with was his own 
 absolute persuasion of the fact. He was master 
 of all the little world he knew ; perhaps it was 
 time, in the order of his training as a human being, 
 that he should be shown another. A more difficult 
 one would do him good ; would rouse into evidence 
 some greater but, as yet, dormant elements of his 
 nature. 
 
 When Matthew Morse first saw Jane Gregory, 
 that further world rolled open suddenly before 
 him. 
 
 Not that he knew or feared its inaccessibility. 
 He saw it, as the prince in the fairy tale saw the 
 enchanted island through the clear, invisible wall 
 of adamant. It looked beautiful and strange to 
 him ; there was something in its aspect, different 
 he knew not how, but with a wonderful charm, 
 from what he had ever met before. 
 
 A composure that did not answer, in the fashion 
 of ordinary girlhood, to that first quick noting in 
 a man s admiring look, or his look that had fair 
 cause and chance to be admiring, that did not 
 meet with any shyest challenge, or demurest readi 
 ness, or most covert curiosity the masculine scrutiny 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 165 
 
 and gauge, but was simply and exactly what it 
 had been the moment before, and would be the 
 moment after, this showed in Jane Gregory, and 
 surprised him, with a certain sense of new condi 
 tions to be met, a higher order of companionship 
 to be won. 
 
 If it was not love at first sight with Matthew 
 Morse, it was stimulation to see more, a sudden 
 fascination of the possible. 
 
 Two things he learned within the half hour of 
 their meeting, which gave him the courage of an 
 open opportunity. 
 
 She had said, " There can t be anything for me," 
 when he had offered her the looking over of the 
 mail ; and no girl would have said that who had 
 the keen personal interest anywhere which is al 
 ways expectation. He had asked questions of 
 aunt Kreeshy, and had found out that she was 
 not really of the city family, but just invited with 
 them, a " kind of friendly help," aunt Kreeshy 
 guessed. So she was not one of the unreachable 
 maidens of mirage with whose flitting summer 
 presence came those perilous visions in mountain 
 and sea mists, bewildering reflections of a life 
 whose reality is far away beyond a safe, prohibited 
 horizon. 
 
 It was growing late in the season ; he had but 
 few positive engagements on hand ; he resolved 
 
166 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 that after this week, which he hoped would end 
 them, he would make no more unless at Leeport. 
 Aunt Kreeshy would be sure to want him. When 
 she had boarders, or the uncle Lishe house was let, 
 she always had plenty of plans for her visitors, if 
 they did not make them for themselves. 
 
 He went in and out, with his free, careless grace, 
 among them ; he got readily into talk with Dr. 
 Griffith ; that gentleman soon found out what he 
 could do for them, and secured him and his yacht 
 for two or three sailing excursions that should only 
 wait their own convenient day. " After this week," 
 Matthew said, " there would be nothing else." 
 
 " He is a handsome creature," Margaret said, as 
 he swung off one morning with easy stride, and 
 disappeared with rapid springs down the broken 
 rocks into the cove. 
 
 " A fine physique," said Dr. Griffith ; " and a 
 fine nature otherwise, I think, if it were all devel 
 oped. Remarkable, anyway, in his present place 
 and occupation. He leaves a certain spectrum of 
 bright impression when he vanishes. You don t 
 often see just such coloring." 
 
 It was true ; eyes the hue of a new, ripe hazel- 
 nut, but with a flash and sparkle like light on 
 a brown rippling brook ; hair sun-bronzed and 
 tawny-tipped, tossed back from a clear, square fore 
 head, that showed fair-skinned where the hat had 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 167 
 
 shaded it ; cheeks and throat ruddy like the warm 
 side of a dusky, mellow pear ; even, white teeth 
 that made his smile splendid ; and a way of catch 
 ing and transmitting a gleam and shine of contin 
 ual cheer and pleasure, that left its trail upon the 
 sense, as Dr. Griffith said, when he was gone ; one 
 would say he could but make his welcome where 
 he came, and add zest to any playday party. 
 
 But somehow Jane Gregory felt that he was go 
 ing to interrupt them all. She thought she liked 
 the still times best. 
 
 It was beautiful in those days before the yacht 
 ing was to begin. 
 
 Miss Rickstack was afraid of a rowboat, and she 
 was absolutely happy with the children ; so Mar 
 garet and her brother took Jane with them on de 
 licious little cruises, when they seemed to lose 
 themselves in pleasant bends and channels, and to 
 penetrate into mysterious windings and distances 
 of the water world. Whole afternoons they spent 
 thus upon the river, finding out new pictures and 
 pretty nooks; landing often in still places where 
 they could fancy no one had ever set foot before ; 
 gathering wild vines of glossy leafage that crept 
 about the woodland soil, or filling tiny baskets with 
 the red partridge berries for Rick and Alice, and 
 making addition to their housekeeping array in 
 acorn cups of chosen size and beauty. Some of 
 
168 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 these Mrs. Sunderland painted with minutest dain 
 tiness, like fairy decoration, with buds and bells 
 of little, lowly, hiding things that bloom almost in 
 visible, with tips of crimson mosses, or smallest 
 fern-fringes. 
 
 Miss Rickstack had packed a fair-sized trunk, 
 less with her own wardrobe than with surprises for 
 the children, in the toys of olden time that Alice 
 had lamented leaving ; and the pats of butter and 
 the little loaves of cake were forthcoming almost 
 daily now in rivalry of aunt Kreeshy s bountiful 
 supplies. 
 
 One evening they had gone up and around But 
 ton Island, a green knoll alone in the midst of a 
 wide open, where sometimes a tired yoke of oxen 
 was turned to pasture after a heavy season of sum 
 mer work. 
 
 They had climbed to the highest point of rock, 
 and sat there in the falling dusk, watching the 
 first stars come out over the water, and the distant 
 south light flash its safety-fire across the far-down 
 strait. They could hear the antiphon of three 
 sand beaches, calling to each other through the 
 coming night, as the surf curled crisply up their 
 sides and, shattering itself softly, fell back with a 
 long whisper to the sea. And then they had rowed 
 home in the early darkness, the phosphorescent 
 water parting in sparkles under their bow, and 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 169 
 
 dripping like pale electric fire from each lift of 
 the oars. 
 
 Dr. Griffith knew the shore-marks and the way ; 
 he never undertook anything he was not prepared 
 for. It was a delight to trust to such sure guid 
 ance, and the kindly care with which he watched 
 and arranged their comfort was such a thing to 
 share in ! It was this sharing that made the charm 
 for Jane. It was such privilege, and yet could be 
 so meekly, simply taken. 
 
 They did not talk a great deal ; the intercourse 
 was but the deeper for the silence ; and when there 
 was speech it was of something, like the night and 
 the light and the waters, to be remembered and 
 dwelt in when the time itself had passed. 
 
 " How grand and sweet the wilderness is ! " 
 said Margaret, as they drifted down the strong 
 current, where oars were not needed, under the 
 overhanging walls of a deep cut, fringed and dra- 
 peried from water edge to summit, with beautiful 
 wood growths. They could only see them as a 
 cloud, in the dimness, but the breath of them min 
 gled with the clean water smell, and the stirs of 
 boughs in the wind helped out the music of the 
 breaking ripples. 
 
 " I wonder if the Wilderness of the Fasting was 
 not some such place, and not a great, bare, burned- 
 out desert of hunger and thirst. I wonder if He 
 
170 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 had not forgotten to be bodily hungry and thirsty, 
 where everything was so full of the word He said 
 men live by ! " 
 
 " He went there to be tempted, it says," said 
 Jane, with gentle doubt wistful to be dispelled. 
 
 " He went for what awaited him as we all go ; 
 as He went up afterward to Jerusalem," said Dr. 
 Grffith. " And both times, you see, He went up, 
 and with a prelude of rejoicing. It is in the 
 highest, sweetest places of our nature that we are 
 tempted, and that we suffer." 
 
 " Always ? " asked Jane. " I thought it was so 
 often in the mean and low." 
 
 " The mean and low are the degradations. It is 
 only the high that can be profaned. It is the 
 glory of the human that it is tempted." 
 
 " But vice is positive," said Margaret. " It is 
 not always virtue perverted, or in disguise. Wit 
 ness drunkenness, and all brutality." 
 
 " Ah, but which way do they witness ? Of some 
 things in themselves great and beautiful, exalta 
 tions, affections, whose inversions only the possi 
 ble celestial can mistake for its very good. Satan 
 is a fallen angel." 
 
 They came out into the dawning light of a far 
 rising moon. Neither spoke again, until Margaret 
 said, a little lightly, as if the thought and silence 
 were oppressive, 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 171 
 
 " Looking-glass inversions, Hans ; that is like 
 what you mean, I think. How much we have 
 found out in that nonsense story ! " 
 
 " Because it is n t nonsense," answered John. 
 " I begin to doubt if anything ever is." 
 
 " That reminds me," spoke Jane suddenly. 
 " Rick said such a queer wise thing one day to 
 Alice, Mrs. Sunderland. It was after you had put 
 away some book that you thought silly. Alice, 
 he said, I can tell you one thing. There is n t a 
 single bit of trash in the Bible ! 
 
 O 
 
 44 A very good postulate to start from," said 
 Rick s uncle, laughing. " When we have got at 
 a little of the truth in everything, we shall be saved 
 a great many of our troublesome arguments about 
 the authenticities of Scripture." 
 
 " I have heard people talk of it as trash, if they 
 did n t call it so," said Jane. 
 
 " It is a book which answers to what a man 
 brings to it, as his own face answers to him in the 
 water," said Dr. Griffith. 
 
 " Is that all ? Must we bring all that we are to 
 find ? " 
 
 The query came disappointedly. 
 
 " The answer is larger than the question, or it 
 is no answer at all. And as to bringing, who 
 knows, but for the answering, what he does bring ? 
 A man s face is the thing in all the world that he 
 cannot see directly," said Dr. Griffith. 
 
172 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 Jane thought how good it was to bring askings 
 to such counsel. 
 
 ;t Thank you," she said gently, as one who had 
 received a gift. If she had known how glad Dr. 
 Griffith was that he could give to her ! 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 " I AM going to take Miss Gregory off for a long 
 walk," said Dr. Griffith, one morning later, " as 
 a prescription. She sits about too much with the 
 children. Don t disclaim ; I know you like it ; 
 but I want you to take something, for your good, 
 whether you like it or not." 
 
 " I am taking everything for my good, just now, 
 I think," said Jane, and her quiet face glowed. 
 
 Margaret Sunderland wished for a moment, in 
 one of her accesses of responsibility, that she were 
 sure of that. She wished she were as sure as usual 
 of Dr. John s infallibility. 
 
 As the two went across the field path together, 
 they met Matt Morse coming to the house. He 
 had in his hand a cluster of late wild things ; the 
 strawberry leaves of dark green enamel that grow 
 low in the wet wood-edges ; the tip of a maple 
 branch that was set among them like a red rose 
 spray ; a single tender feather of the princess pine 
 standing up beside it ; a bit of trailing, delicate- 
 leaved vine looped round and dropping over all. 
 
 He held it out to Jane. "There isn t very 
 
174 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 much now," he said ; " but what there is, is 
 pretty." 
 
 " You are very kind," said Jane, and took it ; 
 but she did not say " I thank you," with the sweet 
 clearness of deliberate meaning that Dr. Griffith 
 knew. 
 
 A glimpse at her side face showed the doctor 
 that she blushed, and that a constrained hesitation 
 was upon her. What ailed her ordinary frank 
 ness ? Something in Matt s look struck him also. 
 He wondered if he himself were in the way. 
 Would these two rather have gone on that long 
 ridge walk together ? 
 
 Might there be a knight s move that would be 
 required of him presently, one square off, and 
 two squares down ? 
 
 This walk was his at any rate ; it could not be 
 helped now ; and Jane had certainly looked glad. 
 He would be as fair to himself as to another ; and 
 then, he could be generous, if he were sure 
 that it would be generous to Jane. 
 
 It brought his own thought to a focus ; he knew 
 now, if he had not known before, what he would 
 do, if he could do it in his own undoubted right. 
 
 So they went up the ridge together ; a fair world 
 about them ; the same pleasant things in the same 
 pathway for the two ; a moment ago an unspoken 
 unison between them, that only waited interpreta- 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 175 
 
 tion to fuse what was, as yet, separate in but half- 
 analyzed happiness, to conscious, acknowledged, 
 authorized joy ; it had been like daydawn without 
 a cloud ; but now a mist had rolled over ; it was 
 not sure that there could come a visible sunrise. 
 
 Jane knew that she had, in a certain way, put 
 herself in a false position ; it was something so 
 slight, so inappreciable, that there was no such 
 thing as setting it right ; it was irrevocable because 
 of its shadowiness. Oh! why should her embar 
 rassment have made her blush ? Why could she 
 not have taken the simple things simply ? Why 
 should it seem of consequence to her ? a conse 
 quence likely to be interpreted precisely wrong. 
 She was vexed ; she was ashamed ; so her embar 
 rassment continued. 
 
 It was not in her nature to be rude, ungrateful ; 
 yet she could have thrown the little bunch of leaves 
 away. Only that would do no good ; it would 
 prove nothing, except, indeed, it might italicize, as 
 with false, evasive act, the consciousness that looked 
 like proof already. So she carried it clasped in 
 her left hand that dropped down by her side ; and 
 it was as if nettles stung her. 
 
 Little things had annoyed her before. Things that 
 could not be avoided or contradicted; there had 
 been little looks in Mistress Margaret s face that 
 Jane, with all her love, resented. Mrs. Sunder- 
 
176 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 land was thinking, perhaps, it might be they were 
 ail thinking, planning, how something should be 
 fall which they were arranging in their own minds 
 was to be good for her for Jane. And what 
 she was most indignant with was her own indigna 
 tion ; what she was most bitterly abased by was 
 her own mortification. Of what had she been 
 thinking, that she should be angry that they could 
 think of this? Such a mere remoteness, too; a 
 thing that had had no time to begin to be. 
 
 What other remoteness, impossibility, was there, 
 that had begun to be in the way for Jane ? 
 
 It was by no means clear to her, as I make it, 
 writing it down ; she would not have let it be. But 
 in her mingled feeling it threatened her with its de 
 mand ; it drove her to precisely the same conclusion, 
 in a shrinking, momentary perception, that the 
 doctor had come to by an insight a man need not 
 be ashamed to face. 
 
 She would think of nothing; she would fear 
 nothing ; she would not challenge or misdoubt her 
 self. She would take this walk with her friend as 
 he had asked her, for her good. After all, there is 
 no reassurance like that which comes in the safety 
 of being suspected of exactly the wrong thing. 
 
 It was an air and scene in which all little cir 
 cumstantial shackles might fall off. The keen, 
 clear wind, tempered with such sunny warmth as 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 177 
 
 only the lingering of the real summer in her sweet 
 est places gives, when she meets the rich, luxurious 
 advance of her Indian sister, and the two reign on 
 together, as they do sometimes, and as they did 
 this year, swept up around them, full of stimulus 
 and fragrance, seeming to lift and bear away what 
 ever might oppress, perplex, or fret ; replacing 
 doubt or discomfort with buoyancy and placid 
 strength. Peace and vigor were the elements of 
 the atmosphere ; it wrapped the body with a life 
 that penetrated and reinforced the very inmost 
 being. It was all so large, so gracious ; one could 
 take in without stint such satisfying that uiicontent 
 fell back, rebuked. " How shall He not freely 
 give us all things?" the spirit cried, rejoicing. 
 And nothing seemed impossible to be or to come, 
 when all this was here, a whole horizon flooded and 
 brimmed with ecstasies, to make one transcendent 
 hour for just two human souls. 
 
 It was not without knowledge and foresight that 
 Dr. Griffith had so spoken, " To do her good." 
 He knew how she had been cramped and limited ; 
 he wanted to bring her out into these large places, 
 to see their effect upon her ; they would measure 
 her with themselves. How fully would she could 
 she receive and hold ? 
 
 The inland side of the ridge was here a long, 
 rough slope ; they went up over crisp, short turf, 
 
178 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 broken with outcrops of stone, where flat little 
 juniper bushes spread their blue-green branches, 
 and clung ; the goldenrods stood up in flaming 
 beauty, every spire an exuberant bloom, of a plu- 
 miness and softness such as Jane had never seen 
 before ; and the little, pale, starry asters clustered 
 among them, smiling up to their glory, as saying, 
 " We are less, we differ, but we shine, our way, 
 too ! " 
 
 "I think they talk to each other," Jane said, 
 catching the word of it as she stooped among them 
 and gathered some of the bright and lovely things, 
 which she put with the leaf -cluster. It was not all 
 Matt Morse s now ; she was more comfortable with 
 it. 
 
 There was a good deal of tacit language about ; 
 Dr. Griffith translated a small syllable from this, 
 that made him more inwardly content. 
 
 They came up on the crest ; they faced the sea, 
 that swept up so grandly into the bosom of the 
 land, parting the hills into islands, and afar off 
 stretching in its own infinity to the remotest south 
 erly touch of the bending sky. 
 
 Backward, they looked among the heights of a 
 green country ; opposite shores, eastward, rose in 
 grand inclines ; yet they knew that all around and 
 among them ran the strong, deep channels, anr] 
 that the tides sent up their mighty pulsations be 
 tween fields and forests, for miles and miles. 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 179 
 
 " How wonderful it is, the hills and the sea rush 
 ing together like this ! " said Jane. " I have been 
 on a flat beach, before ; then it seemed to come to an 
 end, both ways ; the shore had run to a sandy edge, 
 and the sea had come to its long line that it could 
 not cross ; but here why, it is both conquering 
 and making triumph together ! " 
 
 She seldom said so much ; it was the pressure of 
 the fullness upon her ; there was that in her which 
 must speak, so borne upon. 
 
 She gazed out upon the mingled splendor of 
 land and water, in a flush of many colors, inde 
 scribably rich and lovely : the deep evergreens hold 
 ing their summer verdure ; the clumps of yellow 
 birches ; the scattered oaks and maples, burning 
 in their crimson and orange ; the scarlet tongues 
 of vine and shrub, shooting and waving here and 
 there with vivid flashes as of fire ; the great, chang 
 ing, many-hued ocean, opaline under the bright sky 
 and shifting cloud-shadows, all this to the eye, 
 while the sweet, keen breeze carried the strength 
 and joy of it to the very life-centre ; how could she 
 but forget everything herself most of all as 
 she stood there, in an amaze of gladness ? 
 
 Dr. Griffith looked at her ; she, in this new en 
 vironment, was his especial study ; yet the same 
 great spell was upon him also ; the intense delight 
 was the being in that same wondrous world 
 
180 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 really lifted into it and its sublime meanings in 
 companionship. 
 
 " I think you prescribed for more than you 
 knew, Dr. Griffith," Jane said, as presently they 
 walked on again along the cliff. " I think the 
 good reaches further than breath or eyesight." 
 
 " It is a poor physician who treats only for the 
 external," Dr. Griffith returned. " I knew pretty 
 well what this would be to you. How far have you 
 ever been in this direction ? " 
 
 " Not any distance at all. I was n t sure of the 
 climbing for the children." 
 
 " I shall show you new things, then. Are you 
 sure-footed ? " 
 
 Jane laughed. " I have never been tried very 
 much, you know, off the sidewalks. But I think I 
 have a steady head." 
 
 Down at their left plunged the broken fissured 
 rocks ; at their base curled and hissed the fringing 
 waters ; on the other side the slope grew continu 
 ally more precipitous, as the reef-like promontory 
 reached on southwesterly ; the narrow, rutted road 
 was lost in the thick undergrowth and below the 
 impending height ; across the lessening strip of 
 land could be seen the blue glimmer of the inlet 
 westward, and the thickly shaded shores of the 
 larger, farther island township. 
 
 They had to cross a high, sharp neck that was 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 181 
 
 little more than a pathway, and part of it a scram 
 ble across and between the jags of rock. 
 
 Dr. Griffith took her hand at perilous points, or 
 such as might have been so in weather less serene, 
 or for a hasty step, or an easily dizzied head. 
 Jane proved her head to be steady, as she had 
 said ; and her feet took firm, well-poised hold 
 where the cool head discerned the safest way. 
 
 They went up as far as they could along the 
 summit ; then the doctor led her down, carefully, 
 into a steep ravine that cleft the headland. They 
 came, at length, to a broadened shelf that nearly 
 closed the fissure from side to side, while forward 
 the passage flared suddenly open upon the face of 
 the ledge, and they were confronted with the sea. 
 Behind them reared the rocks they had descended ; 
 the country landscape had disappeared ; they were 
 held in a mountain recess, alone before the majesty 
 of ocean. 
 
 " Now you can sit and rest ; you are absolutely 
 sheltered here," said Dr. Griffith, as he spread a 
 shawl upon a jut of rock where she could lean 
 luxuriously against the cliff-side. " Do you know 
 you are above the lighthouse ? " 
 
 " 1 think I am above and beyond everything," 
 said Jane slowly. 
 
 Dr. Griffith seated himself near by. 
 
 They were utterly silent then, for many minutes. 
 
182 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 " It makes one feel out of the world," said Dr. 
 Griffith, when he broke the pause that had been so 
 full. "It seems as if one might slip off the 
 planet." 
 
 " It makes everything seem of such very little 
 consequence, anywhere else, in the old places," 
 said Jane. " I wonder where they all are, really, 
 and if the streets and shops are buzzing, down in 
 the cities ? " 
 
 " And people worrying, and lives crowding, and 
 little human shows and struggles going on, and 
 human pain being suffered in a thousand ways 
 with all this grand escape so near ! " said Dr. Grif 
 fith. 
 
 " Oh, what right have I to have come into it ? " 
 said Jane. " Oh, the suffering and the pinching 
 why are they let be, when there is so much room 
 and power ? " 
 
 All the troubling, half -comprehended doubts of 
 her life surged back upon the girl s thought. Why 
 had he Dr. Griffith brought her here, to show 
 her this, unless he could tell her the why, and com 
 fort her for the denials that, in the face of a mag 
 nificent peace, came haunting her by contrast ? 
 "Why had lie Almighty God made this space, 
 this grandeur, this freedom, and then crowded his 
 children together in the fierce struggle for exist 
 ence, where this glory of his could never be known? 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 183 
 
 For all answer, Dr. Griffith repeated the grandly 
 lovely words of the Venite : 
 
 " The sea is his, and He made it : 
 
 And his hands prepared the dry land. 
 O come, let us worship, and fall down ; 
 And kneel before the Lord, our Maker ; 
 For He is the Lord, our God ; 
 And we are the people of his pasture, 
 And the sheep of his hand. " 
 
 He had taken his hat from his head with the 
 first words, and his look went straight out through 
 the height upon the depth, in a reverent exulta 
 tion. In the last sentences, with gentle pause and 
 stress he emphasized their wonderful, perfect reas 
 surance. 
 
 " That holds it all some way," he said, a mo 
 ment later. 
 
 Perhaps, young reader, you thought you had 
 been brought out here for some excitement of a 
 special story incident. Jane Gregory thought she 
 had come for this, and that it was enough. 
 
 The handful of leaves and blossoms that she had 
 carried all the way was left forgotten upon the 
 rock seat in the gorge. 
 
 Dr. Griffith forgot to notice its disappearance 
 until Jane and he had almost reached the cottage. 
 
 Afterwards, he went across the fields and down 
 into the woods by ways he knew of, and brought 
 back clover blossoms and violets. 
 
184 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 He met Jane in the doorway, and gave them to 
 her. Margaret came forth upon the instant. 
 " TJiose at this time in the year ! " she ex 
 claimed. 
 
 " If you know how to look," said Dr. Griffith. 
 
 " ?or those who have souls to perceive, 
 The violets bloom in October! " 
 
 " I think they only grew for you," said his sister. 
 
 " No ; for they are not mine now," he returned. 
 
 And Jane said nothing. But she presently went 
 away with her flowers ; and it seemed suddenly as 
 if the very refusal of her life that had been so hard 
 to understand had put forth a disclosure of gra- 
 ciousness in flush and fragrance. 
 
 " To-morrow, if this beautiful weather holds," 
 said Dr. Griffith, as they met on the cottage green 
 at tea-time, "we go to Pemaquid. And it will 
 hold. Look at the sky. We must use every day, 
 now, and lose nothing. We will drain every drop 
 of this wonderful pleasure." 
 
 He spoke like a boy, in his brimful delight. 
 Somehow his doubts had got put by. 
 
 Jane smiled. 
 
 " What is it, Miss Gregory 1 " he asked her. 
 " There s a meaning in your look as there s apt 
 to be." 
 
 " Only," she said, " that I think it would be like 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 185 
 
 the autocrat s syrup pitcher. You could n t drain 
 it dry, if you held it upside down a thousand 
 years." 
 
 " Yes, you are right. That is the wonder of it. 
 And we won t turn it upside down ! " 
 
 So they went in to tea. 
 
 Afterward, Matt Morse came up. He brought 
 the mails, and reported Ladybird as lying ready in 
 the little Sandy Cove. 
 
 Then he asked Dr. Griffith to go down with him 
 and see that all was right on board. 
 
 " I wanted to have a word with you," the young 
 man said, as soon as they got upon the little beach. 
 " I want to know something." 
 
 " All right," answered the doctor, standing still, 
 and bracing himself involuntarily against what 
 might be coming. 
 
 "It is about Miss Gregory. I want to know 
 how much she is above me." 
 
 " That I can t tell, Matt, until I know better 
 how high you are." 
 
 " I don t mean that way. I mean in the world." 
 
 " In the world, Miss Gregory is simply a young 
 girl who maintains herself by her own efforts." 
 
 " I am glad of it," said Matt honestly. " But 
 it s the way now for young women to do that. 
 She might be out of my reach, all the same. Are 
 her relations people who would think there was 
 
186 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 n t any world outside theirs, except for them to 
 travel in, in summer-time ? " 
 
 "She has no immediate relatives at all. My 
 sister tells me that she is quite alone." 
 
 Matthew stood up in a fine manly strength. 
 " She sha n t be that much longer, Dr. Griffith, if 
 she will listen to me." 
 
 That was plain enough. 
 
 John Griffith made the knight s move. 
 
 " My friend," he said, " there is nothing in the 
 way, that I know of, except brief knowledge, and a 
 woman s reserve of herself for the truest there can 
 be for her. If you think you can show her that, it 
 is your chance to try." 
 
 The categorical, matter-of-fact fashion of the 
 doctor s answers struck Matt for he was quick 
 enough with a sense of something near the truth. 
 
 " It is your chance to try," he said. 
 
 After that, it might be some one else would try. 
 The doctor by no means cared if this did appear ; 
 though he would not willfully have made it patent 
 by the least phrase or tone. 
 
 Matthew Morse should have his rights. These 
 days were his only opportunity ; afterward well 
 Dr. Griffith could not be so sure of afterwards, of 
 course, holding himself back now, at the possible 
 crisis. 
 
 What should hinder a girl like Jane, fresh in 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 187 
 
 her joy of this free life, thrown into companionship 
 with a brave, handsome, loving young fellow who 
 was a king in this realm of nature, from seeing all 
 that was fine and strong in him, all that was beau 
 tiful in the grand simplicity of the world she could 
 marry herself into, taking him ? Why, an Eng 
 lish duchess could not come into more superb sur 
 roundings of estate than a woman whose virtual 
 domain should be all that she could appreciate and 
 take to herself among these hills and waters, be 
 neath these glorious wide skies. 
 
 What position would Dr. Griffith place himself 
 in, pausing now? If these days were Matthew 
 Morse s, where were his own ? 
 
 They were where they had been in the two years 
 between his first meeting this woman of such fair 
 womanliness and his finding her again. 
 
 They were as safe as those, if they were days 
 meant for him ; since now he willfully missed noth 
 ing, but simply had to make his knight s move, 
 and stand aside a bit in generous honor. 
 
 Yet it was very like that turning of his pitcher 
 upside down, which he had said he would not do. 
 
 It was after dark when he came into the little 
 parlor of the cottage. And then he looked over 
 his letters ;. said he must go to his room and answer 
 them, that he might have a holiday to-morrow ; 
 advised his sister to keep early hours ; and so they 
 all said good-night. 
 
188 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 The morrow was a fair, rich day ; not much wind, 
 but what there was, was westerly ; it would do. 
 Nobody was in a hurry. They were to be on the 
 water for pleasure, and the sail would be none too 
 long. 
 
 "We are idle folks," Margaret said. "We 
 came here to drift ; we don t want too much energy 
 in anything." 
 
 Aunt Kreeshy stored the little cabin, which was 
 hardly more than a cubby and a locker, with her 
 good things : her bread and butter and cold chicken, 
 her apple pie, her bottled coffee and cream, her 
 brown, spicy doughnuts and sage cheese. 
 
 They were going up around Southport, to be as 
 little out at sea as possible this first trial trip, and 
 to enjoy the beautiful, gradual coming out among 
 the islands. 
 
 All went but Aunty, whose physical as well as 
 mental constitution was a protest against any kind 
 of wee-waws. Miss Rickstack was in that condition 
 of courage and high spirits which comes from dar 
 ing one sort of similar risk when quite incapable 
 of another ; as some people will ride with great ex 
 hilaration behind two horses, who dare not go at 
 all with one. She " supposed it was going to sea 
 in a bowl, after all," she said. " But it was n t a 
 saucer, which made all the difference. There was 
 some sort of a fence to keep you and the sea sepa- 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 189 
 
 rate." Aunt Kreeshy went because "it come so 
 she could as well as not," and to help them with 
 their lunch. 
 
 The sweet, soft breeze would be gently in their 
 favor nearly all the way; and they would come 
 back with the tide. 
 
 In the east cut, for a little while, even the slight 
 wind they had would be shut off from them ; but 
 Matt Morse knew how to manage, and he was not 
 loth to have it to do. Old Captain Zenas and a 
 boy were his sufficient crew ; there would be leisure 
 for him to use this day s " chance " for himself. 
 Yet he did not want all leisure ; his very command 
 was his opportunity ; like every sailor, he was 
 twice a man on board his vessel. If there had 
 been just a little more need for seamanship he 
 would have liked it better; to-day there was only 
 the mere prettiness of light, easy handling, for the 
 most part. 
 
 But this passage through the cut called for 
 strength and alertness, in the way Matt accom 
 plished it, which few possessed as he did, or could 
 manifest with an equal certainty and skill. Per 
 haps his advice to take the northward round, bring 
 ing them down through this inlet, was not wholly 
 unbiased by the pleasure of putting forth his 
 prowess before the eyes that would be looking on. 
 
 One side here was a sheer face of rock ; on the 
 
190 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 other, a strip of woods edged the river ; back of 
 this rose steeply the cliff, fringed with hemlocks 
 and birches; between, the stream ran slow and 
 deep ; it looked still and black, under the over 
 hanging shadows ; only the oaks and maples lit the 
 gorge with any color, lifting their bright heads 
 above the wild undergrowth which wrapped their 
 feet in a dull green. 
 
 Matt Morse sprang ashore with a long leap, car 
 rying with him one end of a heavy rope that was 
 fastened at the other to the boat s bow. 
 
 " How did he get there ? " exclaimed Miss Kick- 
 stack, first catching sight of him on land as he 
 plunged along the tangled, broken foothold of 
 stems and stones among which he had alighted as 
 he could. 
 
 Aunt Kreeshy had never happened to see him 
 perform this exploit before. "You can t do it, 
 Matt," she cried, with a sharp, rising inflection, 
 " no more 9 n a hen can wash dishes." 
 
 The ignominious comparison drew a shout of 
 laughter from the boat party, as Matt gave the 
 contradiction by his agile springs and swings, past 
 and around the crowding tree boles ; now up and 
 now down the bank wherever he could perch or 
 grasp ; flinging his rope ahead, and keeping it free 
 and straight to the yacht, till he had gained such 
 distance that he could throw the line around some 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 191 
 
 sturdy trunk, and send the loose end by a sure 
 flight from a strong, steady hand, back on board, 
 where it was caught and hauled upon, warping the 
 craft forward from point to point. 
 
 Sometimes, for a little clearer way, making the 
 rope s turn around his own body, he would go 
 sturdily on, towing the vessel ; then take it in hand 
 to thread again an intricate, steep place ; springing 
 across the breaks from rock to rock, climbing 
 around obstacles, flashing in and out of sight like 
 a squirrel, never losing his quick calculation, never 
 missing aim ; till just at the right moment, down 
 below, where wood and cliff sloped to open shore 
 again, he made the last bend and haul, and as the 
 boat slid inward toward him, leaped on board, 
 flushed, handsome, careless, and unspent. 
 
 Before they had traced his last movement, he 
 was with them, and had sat down by Jane. Aunt 
 Kreeshy was on the other side. 
 
 " It s all fair and easy now," Matt said. " She 
 11 go along of herself all she can make of it." 
 
 " You ve got good wind," said aunt Kreeshy. 
 
 " Do you call this good wind ? Baby s breath. 
 For my part, I d rather beat a little." 
 
 "No baby s breath about it. I said you had 
 got good wind," repeated aunt Kreeshy. 
 
 " Oh, I. Bound to have, you know, when Lady 
 bird couldn t catch hers. I like to give a good 
 pull through a hard place." 
 
192 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 " It s good when can and will go together. 
 Guess they most always do with you, Matt." 
 
 Aunt Kreeshy had no boy of her own, and she 
 was very proud and fond of the young boatman. 
 Whatever else she may have had in her head, 
 praising him now, she thought was her own secret, 
 even when she added, with innocent simplicity, 
 " I don t believe any lady-bird o your n ever 11 
 have to tug alone through the tough spots." 
 
 Might it have been apropos to that, or to divert 
 slightly the too personal subject, that Matthew be 
 gan to tell them of the new yacht he had nearly 
 finished for a rich cottager at Squirrel Island ? 
 
 The Windflower, he said it was to be called. 
 
 And then he went on to speak of further plans : 
 in a few years, he said he believed he could take 
 on men enough, and run a big business ; and not 
 need to leave home for it, either. 
 
 " Oh, I should n t think you would ever want to 
 leave home ! " Jane exclaimed. 
 
 Matthew turned to her with a bright face. 
 " You like it here so much ? " he asked. 
 
 Jane s day had begun with such a fullness of in 
 ward joy that it would last far on with her. She 
 had not noticed yet any withdrawal or interruption ; 
 she had had so much that she would even rather 
 wait ; and her glad content was ready to overflow 
 without constraint. She forgot to be jealous of 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET, 193 
 
 herself with Matt. " Oh, yes ! " she cried. " I 
 think it must be a great love to anybody that lets 
 them be born here ! " 
 
 " That s a real pretty way of savin it, an pious 
 too," commented aunt Kreeshy kindly. The lit 
 tle secret thought in her own mind was freshly 
 commending itself all the time to her judgment. 
 " Maybe that s why the Lord brings some people 
 here that was n t born here, too," she added, with 
 satisfaction. And with transparent artifice she 
 changed her seat to a little down the bench, pre 
 tending to turn and look over at something on the 
 water. 
 
 Matthew was too much in earnest to say any 
 flippant, presuming thing, such as very likely he 
 had spoken to other pretty girls upon occasion. It 
 was no time to say a serious thing, that might pre 
 cipitate a displeasure ; so he was silent. 
 
 Jane was simply thinking that it was indeed 
 God s love that had given her these days ; and that 
 she did not say, of course. She sat still, and half 
 forgot her companion. 
 
 The absolute serenity of her face charmed Mat 
 thew ; it awed him likewise. How was a girl like 
 this to be approached, persuaded, in ordinary fash 
 ion? 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 MARGARET spoke suddenly to Jane from the 
 other side of the boat. They were not ten feet 
 apart. 
 
 " Oh, you ought to hear this, Queen ! Uncle 
 Hans is telling us how Peinaquid came near being 
 Boston, and Boston nowhere." 
 
 Uncle Hans had a child on each knee. On 
 either side of him sat his sister and Miss Kick- 
 stack. Speaking thus across, Mrs. Sunderland 
 made the two groups one ; of course, they were the 
 more so, being opposite, than they could have been 
 all on one side. Certainly, nobody had reason for 
 discontent. If Jane were a wee bit happier, sum 
 moned into the other conversation, than she had 
 been a moment before, she scarcely needed to be. 
 
 Dr. Griffith explained how it was once called 
 " Jamestown," for the English king, contempora 
 neously with Jamestown in Virginia ; that it was 
 the capital of New England, before Boston was at 
 all ; and how indignant the people were at being 
 tacked on to Massachusetts and losing their impor 
 tance ; how Pemaquid fell back to its Indian name, 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 195 
 
 and its buildings dropped into decay, and its paved 
 streets got covered up, and how they tell you now 
 about a " buried city ; " but that as to how much 
 of it is really buried underground, and how much 
 only in time and forgetfulness, he could not say. 
 
 " I never heard of it in my life before ! " cried 
 Mrs. Sunderland. 
 
 " Suppose it had been the other way," said 
 Jane. 
 
 " That Boston had got buried up, and that here 
 had grown up the commerce, and the great city, 
 and the learning and the splendor ? And that the 
 Three Hills had been called to-day just Shawmut ; 
 and the waters ran all in and around, and Back 
 Bay was not made into solid ground; but little 
 boats, like this, with pleasuring people from this 
 proud old Jamestown, sailed back and forth there 
 between forest banks, in a stillness like this ? " 
 
 " One can t imagine it," said Margaret. 
 
 " A thousand years shall pass, and then 
 I mean to go that way again, " 
 
 quoted Dr. Griffith. " Ah ! where shall we be in 
 the thousand years ? " 
 
 " I almost think that Pemaquid is the happiest," 
 said Jane. U I almost wish that all the cities 
 could be buried, and the world kept fresh, and the 
 work and the pleasure divided round, without such 
 a festering first." 
 
196 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 "Yes, it is a festering in one way. It grows 
 unhealthy. Everything is excessive. It taxes 
 men s nerves and souls to live in it." 
 
 " What do you think of the women" asked Mar 
 garet, " who have the details of life ? Do you 
 know what a day s shopping is, now that you have 
 ten miles to go and do it, and towers of Babel to 
 do it in ? " 
 
 " Even the horse-car conductors seem to have 
 it on their consciences," said Jane, with a funny 
 little smile. * Don t you know what they say, 
 when they cry out the two big bazaar stores and 
 the crush corners, as they come to them, and let out 
 their own jam on Washington Street ? " 
 
 " No ; how do you mean ? " 
 
 < All, Wretch, Wh y ? Chawed n 
 Mashed ! Winter and Summer ! : 
 
 Jane mimicked it gently, with just a touch of 
 street-car intonation. 
 
 " They call it out, over and over, every trip ; and 
 yet the women swarm and crowd, and never notice 
 the remonstrance. I ve often wondered that they 
 didn t." 
 
 "/shall always notice it after this," cried Mar 
 garet, laughing delightedly. " It ? s capital ! " 
 And then, with more little laughs between the 
 words, she repeated them, and translated to aunt 
 Kreeshy their parody upon the names of the great 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 197 
 
 firms and the street crossings where the wildest 
 tussle and roar go on perpetually " winter 
 and summer. Jane, you demure thing, where do 
 you generally keep all the fun that is in you? " 
 
 " Maybe where my good times are," Jane an 
 swered. 
 
 Jane was in a good time now, then. Her face 
 was merry. Little ripples of freshening content 
 played over it as she lifted it to the pleasant air. 
 The soft fawn-brown locks fluttered lightly upon 
 her forehead ; her eyes were full of light. 
 
 How much of this was of the moment? How 
 much belonged to Matthew Morse ? 
 
 These questions put themselves to John Griffith, 
 as he looked on, studying so much deeper than the 
 jest that he scarcely smiled at it. Jane wondered 
 at his gravity. She was afraid she had been a lit 
 tle silly, even out of taste, with her mimicry. The 
 first faint breath of chill came over her perfect 
 day. How could she, on the one part, guess what 
 the grave look meant ? And how could Dr. Grif 
 fith, on the other, understand that yesterday had 
 flowed over into to-day, and that Matthew Morse 
 was simply in the reflex light of it ? 
 
 The real history of the remaining hours was in 
 things that cannot be written. Matt got the best 
 of it, as matters seemed ; he had plenty of oppor 
 tunity. Dr. Griffith gave him his chance, and 
 
198 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 Jane allowed him what she certainly could not put 
 herself voluntarily in the way for, elsewhere. 
 
 It was Matt who told her, as they sailed between 
 Mouse Island and Boothbay, with Squirrel Island 
 off at their right, southward, how the splendid surf 
 came up on the Squirrel Rocks over beyond the 
 sweet cedar woods ; who pointed out dim Damaris- 
 cove, and said they would go out there some day ; 
 who showed her beautiful Spruce Point, darkly 
 dense with evergreens, that in spring were all tas- 
 seled with bright, new tips, like dropping gold ; 
 who reminded her, as they rounded Ocean Point, 
 that here they were fairly out on the Atlantic, that 
 fifteen miles off there, to the east, was old Monhe- 
 gan, and just northwest, before them, was Pema- 
 quid ; and that all the way from here to Passama- 
 quoddy lay crowds of beautiful islands, with capes 
 and points and bays and inlets, and innumerable 
 windings, and quiet harbors and land-locked river 
 mouths behind them, in the grand ragged shore 
 that measures four degrees of longitude, and which 
 enchanted with its primeval loveliness the brave 
 Northmen who came down from Iceland five hun 
 dred years before Columbus sailed from Spain, 
 and in between Cape Sable and Cape Cod found 
 this, to them, fair southern coast, and named it 
 Vinland. 
 
 I am bound to say that Matthew not only had a 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 199 
 
 good chance, but that he used it well. Jane could 
 not help being charmed with all that he was telling 
 her. She did not let herself be impatient that she 
 could not have everything at once. She was far too 
 unpretending to expect continual personal notice 
 and kindness from Mrs. Sunderland and her bro 
 ther, that was how she put it to herself, or to 
 be always in their inner circle of companionship. 
 A pleasant word or glance, when it did come, reas 
 sured her, even as to the momentary gravity which 
 had troubled her awhile since, foolishly, she 
 thought ; for how could she suppose that Dr. Grif 
 fith might not have plenty to preoccupy his mind, 
 and prevent his entering into every little nonsense 
 she, or anybody else, might utter? Yet the day 
 had a little longer stretch in it for her as the noon 
 drew on. 
 
 They had their early lunch, and were gay over 
 it. Aunt Kreeshy did the honors, and took the 
 whole trouble. The children skipped back and 
 forth, and spun the company all into one web 
 again. Afterward, Jane got Kick and Alice to 
 her, with Miss Rickstack, and began a game. 
 
 They were a long time working up from Ocean 
 Point. The slight breeze deserted them, and the 
 tide was at low slack water. Matthew got out his 
 long sweep, and now at one side, now at the other, 
 was urging his vessel with stalwart strokes, only 
 
200 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 to hold her own, it seemed. She scarcely gained 
 perceptible headway. 
 
 Dr. Griffith offered help ; but whether Matthew 
 had a second sweep or not, he did not produce it. 
 He was used, he said, to one-man power. Evi 
 dently, it was his innings again. 
 
 The doctor made his sister comfortable for a 
 rest in a small sea-chair, and came and stood by 
 the others, busy with their game of " Twenty Ques 
 tions." He knew better than to keep too obvi 
 ously apart. There was no reason why, like Mat 
 thew with his oar, he should not, at least, hold the 
 distance he had won. He need not drift quite out 
 to sea, though he had taken down his sail. 
 
 Miss Kickstack had been set to guess. The 
 questions she propounded had already counted up 
 to forty. She was making wild rushes up and 
 down all time and around all creation with her dis 
 cursive inquiry, the children in high glee, mean 
 while, at her futile surmises and the cleverness of 
 Jane in having made suggestion of such a good 
 " object." 
 
 " May I come in and help ? " asked the doctor, 
 when he had listened for a while. 
 
 " Oh, you 11 finish it right up ! " cried Alice. 
 " But you may." 
 
 " See, Jane, how quick uncle Hans will get at 
 whatever he sets out for." And the small maiden 
 clapped her hands in anticipated triumph. 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 201 
 
 Uncle Hans recounted the points they had thus 
 far made. 
 
 " It is an animal, and small and soft ; not par 
 ticularly useful ; ornamental ? " 
 
 "Oh, very!" said Alice. "That s one ques 
 tion." 
 
 " I guessed a muff," said Miss Rickstack com 
 placently. 
 
 " Oh, but that is useful ! " said Alice. " And 
 it is n t 4 a anything. It is always one particular 
 thing." 
 
 " Ancient or modern ? " asked the doctor. 
 
 " Modern," Jane answered, for he looked at her. 
 
 "Alive?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Can t be Alice s nose ? Is it in this part of 
 the world ? " 
 
 " It is." 
 
 "InLeeport?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Domestic or wild? " 
 
 " Domestic." 
 
 " Belongs to Mrs. Morse ? " 
 
 "It does." 
 
 " Is it a whole animal, or a part of one ? " 
 
 " A part." 
 
 " A small point, or an important part ? " 
 
 " A small point." 
 
202 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 At which the children shrieked, and Dr. Griffith 
 guessed, in a tumult of applause, 
 
 " The white spot on the tip of aunt Kreeshy s 
 black cat s tail." 
 
 " I never saw such a guesser, or such a noticer ! " 
 exclaimed Alice. 
 
 Dr. Griffith gave her ear a little pinch, and 
 walked away to seat himself at the rudder with old 
 Captain Zenas. 
 
 A puff of wind had risen again. The sail was 
 run up, and filled ; they slipped smoothly over the 
 placid, sunny water, and so came presently to Pem- 
 aquid. 
 
 Here, I am forced to confess, the holiday turned 
 a bit dull. The interest of Pemaquid was in the 
 fact of it, and this they had enjoyed beforehand. 
 There was not much here to be seen ; only the 
 small patches and vestiges of what had once begun 
 to be, and the very quiet and ordinary present 
 ment of what had actually come to pass. 
 
 It was Matthew Morse again who helped Jane to 
 land, and who walked about with her and Miss 
 Rickstack, as they viewed the fragmentary traces 
 of the ancient town and fort. Mrs. Sunderland 
 was soon tired, and went back on board, where 
 aunt Kreeshy was taking her comfortable knitting- 
 and-dozing spell, as if she had been in her own 
 kitchen at home. Dr. Griffith accompanied his 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 203 
 
 sister, and read to her from some new story, while 
 the children remained with the shore party. 
 
 Jane was not sorry when the word was given for 
 all to return. The remaining hours of sunshine 
 would be none too many for the outward sail deter 
 mined on, and the reaching home as early as com 
 patible with the benefit of the tide up through the 
 bay. The wind had freshened and gone a point to 
 the northward. It had a keener touch, but there 
 was no harshness in it, and the unclouded sun sent 
 streaming warmth along the waters. 
 
 It was a lovely afterpart ; the most beautiful bit 
 of the day was this, when the light began to fall 
 slantwise, and the sea turned violet and green and 
 pearl color, stretching out under the softening sky. 
 Backward, the land rose in radiant heights, the 
 hills standing in autumn sheen that, evening after 
 evening, now sent challenge to the sunsets across 
 the liquid deep that reflected and repeated, or 
 gave softening and blending neutral tints between. 
 
 Jane was still with the pleasure of beholding; 
 perhaps with purpose also, since again Matt and 
 aunt Kreeshy were beside her. The children were 
 quiet from some beginning of weariness. With 
 little ulsters buttoned close, they cuddled upon 
 cushions on the deck between their mother and 
 Miss Kickstack. 
 
 Dr. Griffith had covered his sister carefully with 
 
204 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 shawls, and placed her chair so that her face was 
 from the sun and the warmth was upon her shoul 
 ders ; he himself stood gazing off beyond the outer 
 islands, upon the pearl and beryl shimmer of the 
 southerly expanse. 
 
 They were on the long tack outward. Matthew 
 need not be very busy with the boat ; he began to 
 talk again with aunt Kreeshy of his hopes and 
 plans. Poor fellow, he had to crowd a little, for his 
 time was short ! 
 
 " One of these days," he said, " I 11 build a cot 
 tage for myself on Button Island. I m my own 
 land company there, you know, and I mean to stay 
 so. It is as good growing value for me as for any 
 body, and a prett}^ little house won t hurt it. I 11 
 have nothing but a house and a garden and a boat 
 yard. There is n t a nicer bit of land and water 
 in the whole bay." 
 
 " And what 11 father do ? " 
 
 "Father 11 go where I go. The farm can be 
 let out, or the land sold some time. It s getting 
 heavy for him, and my boat-building ought to be 
 the best craft of the two. The garden will be just 
 pretty work for him to see to. Yes, father 11 go 
 where I go." 
 
 It was manly of him to repeat this. He meant 
 to let his filial duty be plainly understood. That 
 lost no ground for him, if he had any, with Jane j 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 205 
 
 she only thought the talk was turning more on 
 family matters than it concerned her to hear. 
 What was Button Island to her ? 
 
 She wondered if she might not get up and walk 
 away. Would it be rude, a rebuke to Matthew s 
 forwardness with his own affairs, if she did so? 
 Would the quiet person standing there, sending 
 his thoughts away from all of them along that 
 seaward beauty take heed at all if she should? 
 Would he have any word for her to-day, or ever 
 any more, such as he had given her ? How far off 
 was yesterday ? She was so silent that her silence 
 fell, presently, upon the others. 
 
 " The boom, Miss Gregory ! " 
 
 She hardly knew how long it had been, or that 
 Matthew had left his place to attend to his sail, or 
 had said a word of cautioning reminder as he did 
 so, when the canvas flapped in the wind, the heavy 
 spar swung round, and Dr. Griffith s voice and 
 hand reached her just in time. 
 
 Then, for a moment, he did stay beside her. 
 What reason was there for his visibly neglecting 
 her? 
 
 "Have you had. a good day?" he asked her. 
 " Are you tired ? " 
 
 "The day has been wonderful. I could never 
 be tired of the hills and the sea," Jane answered. 
 
 Was it in instinctive use of that hidden weapon 
 
206 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 of defensive coquetry with which woman nature, 
 however sweet and true, is armed, that, feeling his 
 tone, she added what she did? 
 
 " I shall be sorry to leave them. I would like 
 to be among them always." 
 
 With how much of a mere man s feeling, and 
 with how much of his real, large kindliness and 
 faith did he answer her ? 
 
 " I hope you will always have the best you can 
 have ; and I believe you will," he said. 
 
 " You believe that for everybody, don t you, Dr. 
 Griffith?" 
 
 " In a sense, yes. But we all miss, or put off, a 
 great deal that we might have. It is held right 
 out to us, but we are blind, or do not care. That 
 is why it has taken the world a hundred millions 
 of years to get where it even is to-day," he added, 
 with a sudden generalizing. 
 
 " Shall we go round and round a hundred mil 
 lions of years before we get at even the whole of 
 ourselves ? " Jane asked the question as it rose in 
 her mind, but not as one who expects an answer. 
 
 " I suppose the patience of the saints is the 
 sure waiting of them who are being sainted, 
 which is simply being made whole," said Dr. Grif 
 fith. 
 
 With just those words, he made her and her day 
 rich again. 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 207 
 
 But would such words, such days, come only 
 once, or twice, or twenty times in the round of her 
 appointed years ? How many rounds would there 
 have to be before that healing, that whole-making, 
 should come to her, to which every leaf upon the 
 tree of life at last shall minister for the nations ? 
 
 How much had she done herself, just now, to 
 possibly put such things by ? 
 
 This man who " guessed," who " noticed," every 
 thing what had she given him now to think ? 
 
 But she could not get back her words. 
 
 If her day ended in a gift, it hardly ended in a 
 gladness. 
 
CHAPTEE XIV. 
 
 " I THINK it looks as if there were a place making 
 here on purpose for Jane," said Mrs. Sunderland 
 to her brother. 
 
 44 Do you wish it ? " asked Dr. Griffith. 
 
 " I am very fond of Jane. I wish her to be 
 very happy, and I think it seems possible here and 
 suitable." 
 
 " Suitable to what ? " 
 
 " To Jane herself, and her position." 
 
 " Ah, Margaret ! Ascutney Street ! " 
 
 " John, you know I have n t any of that sort of 
 feeling about it ! " 
 
 "Do I? Do you?" 
 
 " If you mean that I don t like things unsuita 
 ble, you can quote Ascutney Street, if you like," 
 said Margaret with dignity. " I feel responsible 
 for Jane ; and I shall be glad if all goes well for 
 her, in a safe, rational way. I can t help loving the 
 girl, and I don t want to be the means of turning 
 her head." 
 
 44 Margaret," said Dr. Griffith, gravely and qui 
 etly, " I can t help loving the girl, either." 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 209 
 
 Margaret flushed up, very red, and sat silent. 
 
 " May I speak right out, Gretel ? " he asked her 
 kindly. 
 
 " To me ? I think you have. What else is 
 there ? " 
 
 " Only this : that I want the best of you in 
 league with what I know is the best of me. Your 
 class training is in the way just now. Theoret 
 ically, you deny it, even to yourself. Practically, 
 it is troubling you." 
 
 44 Because I think I may have made a great mis 
 take." 
 
 " It s just here, Gretel. The mistake is not in 
 what you have done, but in what you may do. 
 Women of your sort are always falling into pre 
 cisely such dilemmas. You take up people for 
 what they are; at a certain point you set them 
 down again because of what they are rated to be. 
 Your patronage becomes caprice, because it ought 
 never to have been patronage, but pure recogni 
 tion." 
 
 It was somewhat hard for Margaret, who thought 
 she had recognized with some generosity, to be 
 told this. 
 
 " And what do men of your sort do ? " she 
 asked. 
 
 44 What God not the Devil puts it into a 
 man s heart to do." 
 
210 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 Margaret looked up at John with eyes full of 
 love, but trouble also. 
 
 " I do not mean to be proud," she said, " and I 
 could not be prcud against you ; but what if this 
 a simple life in the midst of all she delights in 
 so with her whole nature were the right thing? " 
 
 " That is what I am waiting to see. But when 
 you speak of her whole nature, Margaret, I doubt 
 if it is met here. She is higher than Matthew 
 Morse." 
 
 "And you are higher than she. Why should 
 not a man marry up, as well as a woman ? " 
 
 " There is no why not. Both must marry up." 
 
 " How can that be ? " 
 
 " I am speaking of the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 Gretel, we must go behind the looking-glass in 
 these things. There is an inside world ; it is there 
 that God joins together. If people marry in the 
 outside world and for it, they make a sham, a 
 reflection, thin and evanescent. They are nothing 
 but shadows to each other ; not even true images 
 at that. I must go behind the shadows. I must 
 find my wife in the certain-true." 
 
 " And yet you are waiting for this other thing 
 to happen, if it will ? " 
 
 "Yes. It could only begin to happen now, I 
 suppose. It is too soon. But she is going away. 
 I think he will say something. I shall give him his 
 opportunity." 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 211 
 
 It was on Margaret s mind to ask, " Why do 
 you not give her her choice ? " But it did not 
 get to her lips. She really did not know that it 
 would be right. Jane was a good girl ; but a good 
 girl may be dazzled by very goodness. This ques 
 tion must be settled by heart-instinct, not by any 
 enthusiasm of admiration, any glamour of upward 
 looking. John knew best. Matthew s chance had 
 better come first. She could not wish against her 
 brother ; but she still thought he might be saved 
 from a mistake. If he were, he would be saved 
 completely, after some struggle, perhaps. He was 
 strong and good. He would not let this spoil his 
 life. 
 
 " On Wednesday, or Thursday, we go to Wis- 
 casset," said Dr. Griffith, after the pause in which 
 she had been thinking this. "If we make out 
 Wiscasset on Wednesday, then I will run up on 
 Thursday and see that all is ready at Bay Hill. 
 I shall be back on Saturday. You will want my 
 help here the day before you leave." 
 
 The subject was changed. Margaret could not 
 return to it. There were a dozen questions she 
 would have liked to ask, but it was not time for 
 them yet. 
 
 Their answers hung upon what might happen in 
 this week to come. 
 
 Jane had time, before the Wednesday, to ask 
 
212 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 herself many questions growing rapidly more 
 definite and searching in which no one else 
 could help her. 
 
 Where was the happy looking-forward gone that 
 she had had thus far in every fresh plan and prom 
 ise, in every day for the next day to come? Why 
 had Pemaquid been disappointing, and why did she 
 think of beautiful Wiscasset and this new sail up 
 and down the river-aisles with a certain dread ? 
 
 The catechizing came close home. Whatever 
 other people meant, what did she mean herself ? 
 Why had kindness it was only that from one 
 person made the same sort of kindness irksome to 
 her from anybody else ? Why was the least with 
 drawal painful to her, on the one side ; the least 
 advance repugnant to her, on the other ? Was it 
 the same sort of kindness ? Had she any right 
 to call the two the same ? Why was she so quick 
 to fear from the one, so slow to hope from the 
 other ? 
 
 To hope what ? What absurd presumption was 
 she beginning to be guilty of ? 
 
 She would prove to herself that it was nothing. 
 She would keep herself in a tight hold. She would 
 let one thing be as another. She would riot be 
 afraid. She would not be disappointed. She 
 would take things as they came. How foolish 
 otherwise ! How soon it would all be over ! What 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 213 
 
 could it possibly amount to in these few days left? 
 They would all go back again, away from these 
 woods and waters; they would never see Matt 
 Morse any more. Dr. Griffith would go home to 
 Sunnywater. 
 
 One thing sent a pulse of exultation through her 
 as she thought of it. Mrs. Sunderland was her 
 friend ; she belonged with her ; she would hear ; 
 she would know ; there would be a link ; she 
 should not altogether lose 
 What? 
 
 She brought herself short up again with the 
 stern demand. If they could think of this as fur 
 ther kindness, what did it make of her desiring 
 to keep not bearing to lose ? Pride and shame 
 flamed up in her. 
 
 What right had she to let a single imagination 
 stray out beyond Mrs. Sunderland and her service? 
 Least of all, through her to hers, who only as hers 
 could be of any distant concern to herself, Jane 
 Gregory ? It was base ; it was disingenuous ; it 
 was not to be allowed. If she could not help this, 
 she must go away to her seamstressing again ; she 
 must go back to Ascutney Street. 
 
 Holding this threat over herself, she shaped her 
 behavior. 
 
 Every day that our little party planned for 
 seemed also planned to meet them, with all con- 
 
214 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 comitants of wind and weather. Wednesday came 
 with a sweet, south, summer air. The atmosphere 
 was balm. It was a golden day of a golden sea 
 son. Going up the river their sails were full. It 
 was only as the stream and inlets wound about that 
 their course involved a little shifting. It was just 
 enough to escape monotony. 
 
 Captain Zenas could not go to-day. Matthew 
 had more to do, therefore. A part of the time Dr. 
 Griffith sat at the tiller. When Matthew took it 
 from him, he asked Jane if she would not like to 
 steer. How could any one suppose that her ready 
 assent was in pure contradiction of herself ? That 
 because she would really rather have been some 
 where else, she seated herself with Matthew in the 
 stern, the tiller-shaft between them, and with good 
 will took her lesson ? 
 
 Not Matthew ; he was blithe. Not Dr. Griffith ; 
 he saw as a man sees, even so keen a man as Dr. 
 Griffith, where it stands him in closest behoof 
 to be keen. For Margaret Sunderland, a woman 
 with a little sympathetic, innocent feminine crooked 
 ness, it was the first glimpse toward the truth. 
 
 All this day she watched. It was nollesse 
 oblige with her. Because she had not been quite 
 able to wish that her brother might do this thing, 
 because she knew that, if the other happened, she 
 would be secretly half relieved, or would have 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 215 
 
 been before that talk with Hans, she set herself 
 to see clearly, even in Hans behalf. 
 
 Through the nobility of this very contrariety of 
 her own, she discerned the contrariety in Jane. 
 Does a generous person reach out an eager hand 
 to seize the best thing, the thing most unquestion 
 ably to be desired ? Does a delicate woman put 
 herself forth to take with over-readiness that which 
 her hidden hope most covets, or does she half avert 
 herself and put it by, letting some commoner claim 
 and opportunity assert itself, that the " thing so 
 sweet, so dear," may not know its own great price, 
 but may come insisting, if it will come at all ? 
 
 How far, possibly, might this go ? How far 
 was it a consciousness ? With her brother stand 
 ing aloof, the very fact, perhaps, awakening Jane 
 to what she would be self-shamed to realize, 
 might it even be that she should be drawn into 
 this easier possibility, to cure herself of the first, 
 that was so preposterous, so hopeless ? 
 
 " I want the best of you to be in league with 
 what I know is the best of me." That was what 
 John had said. It repeated itself over and over 
 again to Margaret now. 
 
 Jane got a little tired of Matthew, apart from 
 whatever Matthew s seeking and lingering might 
 mean. He was somewhat too content, to-day, per 
 haps ; he was slipping into that easy assurance that 
 
216 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 had grown to be his habit from the way in which 
 his world had treated him ; it began, maybe, to 
 seem easy enough to enter, if he would, this other. 
 
 He talked a little too much of his own life, plans, 
 and resources. In the midst of this wider, finer 
 delight this outlook upon river, hills, and heaven 
 that they had come for, in which might have been 
 read to her, Jane knew, such wonderful sentences 
 of a living word little personal hopes and prides 
 seemed trivial, obtrusive. She grew silent and did 
 not listen to quite all he said. It looked like lis 
 tening, though, and Dr. Griffith interpreted it as 
 contentment, if not pleasure. Margaret detected 
 in the still face the shade of weariness, the line of 
 endurance. 
 
 So they sailed past the sprinkling islands and up 
 the beautiful straits, through the long, deep dale 
 of the Sheepscote between Upper Westport and 
 Edgecombe on the east, and came into bright Wis- 
 casset Bay. 
 
 Jane got the children with her, a part of the 
 time, after their lunch; but she could not even 
 cling to them without seeming to cling to their 
 more special surrounding ; and uncle Hans was 
 never spared from their monopoly long. She be 
 gan to tell them a story, and they called to him to 
 come and hear. Then she brought it to its climax 
 quickly, and Rick rebelled. 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 217 
 
 "They didn t go home and live happy ever 
 after, right then. You ve skipped ! " he cried re 
 sentfully. 
 
 " Have I ? " Jane said, a little listlessly. " I 11 
 tell it all over again, by-and-by." 
 
 44 Miss Gregory is tired," said Dr. Griffith. 
 "Come away. We are going to haul up to the 
 wharf." 
 
 And he went ashore with them, one in each 
 hand, his sister just before, and so led the way for 
 the small party up the bank and over to the ancient 
 blockhouse in the field. 
 
 Traditions of the old Indian times came in there. 
 Dr. Griffith seemed to know them all ; but he ap 
 pealed courteously to Matthew, and left the narra 
 tion to him wherever he took it up most confidently. 
 He meant to give the boy his chance in every way. 
 
 Afterward, Matthew contrived to be first off to 
 the shore, convoying Miss Bickstack and Jane 
 Gregory. 
 
 It was easy to get in advance of Miss Rickstack 
 down there among the shards and fragments of 
 loose rock and the rough projections of the water- 
 worn cliff base. The good lady was busy at once 
 in looking after " queer stones ; " besides, she was 
 saying to herself, kind-heartedly, and with a pleas 
 ant bit of self-delusion, " We were all young once." 
 Dear, gentle soul ! She had been all her life, for 
 
218 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 her own part, utterly innocent of any sentimental 
 river-side ramblings, or pairings off of any sort. 
 She had not been pretty in her girlhood. As a 
 matter of fact, she had, rather, the parings if 
 one may be pardoned the unpremeditated play on 
 the word of all youthful social f oregatherings. 
 But there is a point in life, no doubt, where the 
 imaginations of the past take shape into realities 
 through haze of distance, as those of the future 
 used to do. Very likely Miss Rickstack thought 
 she had done such things, or might have done 
 them. 
 
 It was out here, among the heaps and debris of 
 time and river work, done through centuries upon 
 rock and soil as they stood and peered far into 
 a deep crevice that, the story says, runs back into 
 the cliff, away underground, and w r as once made 
 communicable with the rough stronghold of the 
 early settlers ; at least, some such half -hidden fis 
 sure did so, and it might well enough be that 
 that Matt said abruptly, 
 
 " I can t bear to think you are all going off so 
 soon, Miss Gregory. These have been such pleas 
 ant days." 
 
 " They have been beautiful days," said Jane 
 calmly. " And we have owed much of our enjoy 
 ment to you, Mr. Morse." 
 
 While she spoke, she moved along to pick up a 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 219 
 
 clear, soft, gray-white, polished stone, that lay, con 
 spicuous in shape and color, among dark pebbles. 
 
 If he had said so much to little Dorothy Serle, 
 the pretty schoolmistress at Beech Point, she 
 would have blushed all up, and caught her breath, 
 and waited, mute and fluttering, for his next word, 
 
 a word that he knew in his conscience he had 
 stopped short of many times, in his secret security 
 and his half-readiness to compromise his freedom. 
 He hardly knew what to make of this emotionless 
 Miss Gregory. 
 
 " I don t feel satisfied I wish I need n t think 
 
 that all the acquaintance would end here," he 
 said, coming beside her again. " If I should come 
 to Boston, I might, in the winter, some time, 
 would you tell me where you would be, and let me 
 call and see you ? " 
 
 " I do not know exactly where I where we 
 
 shall be, Mr. Morse. I expect to be with 
 Mrs. Sunderland. I dare say she would be very 
 happy to have you come. But you had better ask 
 her." 
 
 Was it shyness, or was it coldness, or was it the 
 sort of encouragement a girl gives when she refers 
 to those who have the guardianship or protection 
 of her ? 
 
 He said no more for a few moments, and then 
 made different essay. 
 
220 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 " We have never been round Kiggsville yet," he 
 said. " It s a pretty row there, up the creek. I d 
 like to take you one afternoon before you go." 
 
 To which assertion, for it stopped short of ask 
 ing, Jane said " Thank you," without committal ; 
 meaning and expecting to be altogether too busy 
 for carrying any such idea into effect. 
 
 "Miss Kickstack!" she called, directly after, 
 " there are some lovely things over here. And I 
 do believe I ve found an arrowhead." 
 
 She stooped and picked up a three-cornered bit 
 of flint, and Miss Kickstack came stumbling across 
 the moraine. 
 
 Matthew Morse did not know whether he were 
 rebuffed or not. This kind of courteous, self-pos 
 sessed reserve was something new to him. It 
 might be a higher tone of coquetry, or a mere de 
 corum ; he could not tell. It was not scorn, nor 
 affront. It was too gentle, too tranquil. What 
 ever it did mean, it meant all the more thoroughly. 
 For the moment he had to be content with that. 
 
 But she did not sit at the tiller any more with 
 Matthew, going back. Matthew was interrupted, 
 busy with rope and sail. They had tide in their 
 favor, but the soft wind was ahead. Dr. Griffith 
 managed the rudder for a good while ; this left 
 Jane a chance to attach herself to Mrs. Sunderland 
 and the children, which she did with gladness. 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 221 
 
 Sweeping along with the swift current into the 
 broad bay at sundown, the full glory of that won 
 derful mingling and play of color in sky and sea 
 and shore broke forth before them. It is impossi 
 ble to put it into word or picture. The hand of 
 God spreads it out in a few such places ; our small, 
 human capacity may merely stand and be filled 
 with it, nor dare to try its reproduction. 
 
 Gold and flame-color and pale green in the sky; 
 green and gold repeated in the sea ; a far-off ame 
 thyst line against the horizon-bend ; the lovely hues 
 palpitating, floating, changing, like jewels massed 
 and molten, flowing one into another ; shores radi 
 ant with answering tints, breathing and shining in 
 rich leafage, mirrored in still margins and clear 
 depths ; the creeping inlets all on fire with beauty, 
 whether of the earth, or of the heaven, it were hard 
 to tell ; a splendor flung back and forth in echoes 
 of shine and sheen ; sleeping, tender shadows 
 waiting their turn to veil all in a yet more exqui 
 site softness, upon which quiet stars will look down 
 with benison, this is a hint of what lay before 
 their eyes and reached into their spirits, as the sea 
 reaches up into the glowing land. 
 
 They all stood forward and watched, Dr. Griffith 
 with them. Margaret drew a long breath and 
 spoke, 
 
 " It must be more beautiful, Hans, than even 
 
222 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 what you wrote us of from up that still, sunshiny 
 river. You remember, Jane ? " 
 
 She really spoke quite unpremeditatedly. Dr. 
 Griffith turned quickly. 
 
 They were all illumined in that universal flush 
 of light ; but was it sunset color that mantled 
 Jane s face all over with such revealing brilliancy ? 
 
 " I remember," spoke up Alice eagerly. " It 
 was the letter that had a seraphim at the end of 
 it." 
 
 The laugh was a relief, to one at least. But 
 what followed did not relieve. 
 
 " A seraphim ! What do you mean, dear little 
 child ? " cried Margaret. 
 
 " Well, it was something like that. It was the 
 story about the girl that had her hat blow off that 
 uncle Hans told for me ; and all about the steam 
 boat, and the river piling up and letting them go 
 by ; and the seraphim was something that did n t 
 say much, but meant a good deal. Was n t it, 
 Jane?" 
 
 Jane might blaze, but she stood like her name 
 sake of Arc at the stake. When things were at 
 the worst she had her heroism, the heroism of a 
 simple directness. 
 
 " I remember it very well," she said. " But the 
 word you mean was aphorism. r 
 
 She knew it to the last word, then. And all 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 223 
 
 that about herself which had declared Dr. Grif 
 fith s identity to her and in such fashion be 
 fore they met, that second time, in Ascutney 
 Street. 
 
 She had known whom to expect to meet. She 
 had known what his first thought of her had 
 been. That was the disclosure now between these 
 two. 
 
 A mutual perception was suddenly established 
 between Jane Gregory and Dr. Griffith that could 
 not be ignored, any more than it could, at this in 
 stant, be acknowledged or dwelt upon. The flash 
 through one mind was " How much did that 
 color mean beyond the inevitable embarrassment 
 of appropriating being known to have appropri 
 ated all that had been said of her in the telling 
 of that little story?" In the other, " He knows, 
 now, how I knew ; but he does not seem as if he 
 cared so much as when he first asked me." And 
 Jane held up her head proudly ; that a simple 
 fact should appear was neither her fault nor her 
 concern. 
 
 John Griffith noted that also. "She lets the 
 truth take care of itself," he thought ; and again 
 her brave simplicity laid strong hold of the noblest 
 that was in himself. "She does not look for a 
 sign ; she would die rather than have one escape 
 her. She is not a coquette ; she is a woman." 
 
224 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 At the same instant Margaret scanned the two 
 faces swiftly, and read them both. With lovely 
 tact she reverted to her first question. 
 
 " 1 think this must be even more beautiful than 
 that, John," she said again. 
 
 " A second beautiful thing is better understood 
 from having known the first," John answered. 
 
 " And that s another aphorism," said Alice 
 quaintly. 
 
 Uncle John told her that she ought to patent 
 her system of mnemonics, left her to ask her 
 mother what that meant, and walked away. 
 
 Certainly, the knight s move is sometimes very 
 erratic. In the dream of the looking-glass, at 
 every critical juncture, especially of any little tri 
 umph or advantage, it was to tumble sidewise off 
 his horse. 
 
 " John," said Margaret to Dr. Griffith that 
 night, after the children had gone up to bed with 
 Jane, " the chance is yours. You can t give it to 
 anybody else, if you try. And, John, dear, I in 
 on your side ; and do make haste." 
 
 " Gretel ! Why what has swept you over, quite 
 to the other extreme ? " 
 
 "That s the queen s move, isn t it?" asked 
 Margaret, laughing. But the tears were in her 
 eyes. " Don t leave it any longer to that Matthew 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 225 
 
 Morse," she said softly. " There is n t much time 
 now." 
 
 " There is n t any, just at present, Gretel. And 
 I thought you were quite sure. I certainly need 
 not be in haste." 
 
 " Sure ? Of one thing yes, I am ; but there 
 are so many things." 
 
 " I shall be back on Saturday," said Dr. Grif 
 fith. And for thanks he took his sister in his arms 
 and kissed her. 
 
 44 He 11 leave it all. He 11 be off for three days. 
 He thinks it will make no difference. I wonder 
 how men ever do get married ! " was what Mistress 
 Margaret said, perturbedly, to herself. 
 
 "Well, Matt, and how did it go with Lady 
 bird, to - day ? " asked old Captain Zenas of his 
 son, as they sat at supper. 
 
 "It all went well, father," was the reply. 
 
 " And how with both ladybirds, I mean ? " 
 
 " I think it went well, father. I hope so." 
 
 " You d be sorry, Matt, if it did n t, would 
 you?" 
 
 "I should be more sorry than I know how to 
 be." 
 
 He spoke literal truth. He had never learned 
 how to be sorry. 
 
 " Somehow it s a queer world somebody 
 
22G ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 most alwers hes to be sorry, whatever happens. 
 Little Dorothy would be sorry, Matt. And may 
 be somebody else would be sorry after that other 
 girl. It s a dreadful queer world. I m sorry 
 for little Dorothy, myself. I might ha gone to 
 day, Matt, I suppose ; but some way, I did n t feel 
 to keer to, quite." 
 
 The simple words of his old father found a 
 place in Matthew s heart that had never been 
 reached before. 
 
 For the first time in his life he felt what a disap 
 pointed hope might be. 
 
 Had he given any hope that he might be guilty 
 in disappointing ? 
 
 Yet how could he help it ? He had never 
 known anything like this before. How could he 
 have understood ? 
 
 He got up and went out. He went on board 
 the Ladybird that swung at her quiet mooring. 
 He sat down on the tiller-bench, where Jane had 
 sat. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THOSE next three days were not nice ones for 
 Jane. 
 
 " She s in a wee-waw," said Aunty to Margaret, 
 at last. " And when a woman s in a wee-waw 
 about them things Lor sake, Mis Sunderland, 
 I could n t never ave stood it, an that s just why 
 I had to leave it alone ! " 
 
 Jane was deep in a fixed self-disdain by this 
 time. 
 
 What had she treasured up in the memory of 
 that first meeting, like a raw, romance-reading, ig 
 norant girl, to join afterward with the discovery 
 that had been her secret for a while, only to inten 
 sify her folly, and that the betrayal of all should 
 come at once, now that it had apparently ceased to 
 be of interest to Dr. Griffith ? 
 
 How had she fallen into depreciation with him, 
 slipped from the dignity of simple womanhood, in 
 which he had given her the beginning of a beauti 
 ful friendship, to the position of a weak creature 
 toward whom it was a kindness on a man s part to 
 assume cool, guarded distance ? 
 
228 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 Margaret was even sweeter than ever. Was 
 this a woman s compassion for a woman in such 
 strait, sunken to such evident, pitiable self-aban 
 donment that all must do what could be done to 
 silently help her up from it ? 
 
 The temptation did come upon her, transiently, 
 to give utter contradiction to this need in the most 
 positive way ; a way that, had it not been shut to 
 her by this very foolishness, she could even see 
 might have been a good way. 
 
 How did she know but this was what was truly 
 meant for her, and that she should grow content, 
 once having put the other irrevocably out of her 
 thought? 
 
 She should have God and his beautiful world, 
 anyway ; if He put her here, in this Paradise 
 of his, should she not thank Him and serve 
 Him, " acquaint herself with Him, and be at 
 peace " ? 
 
 Did Eve look about in Eden, or out into the wil 
 derness, for any other than the Adam by whose 
 side because, without her choice, she was of his 
 side the Lord had set her ? 
 
 Ah, but this being of a man one living flesh 
 with him in God s own sight what strange be 
 wilderment had Eden come to, in this crowded 
 world where each brought into casual personal 
 presence with but few. and so imperfectly must 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 229 
 
 find and choose out of the millions of a generation 
 her very own ? 
 
 One s own could not come to every one. Should 
 she take another s then ? 
 
 No ; she could stay alone. Because a little door 
 too low and narrow for her, like the one in Al 
 ice s dream was the only one she could discover, 
 must she drink that strange and perilous draught 
 which would make her spiritually small enough to 
 enter ? 
 
 She thought these things all out within herself 
 while busy, outwardly, with the children and the 
 trunks and the packing ; while she told stories and 
 played games with them on that rainy Thursday 
 and dull Friday that followed their enchanted sum 
 mer sail. 
 
 She stayed upstairs when Matthew Morse came 
 in below ; he did not like to ask for her, and so 
 escape was easy. She thought she could keep on 
 escaping for just these few days ; if not, whatever 
 she had to do would not be her fault. 
 
 She was only determined that it should not be 
 that row to Riggsville. 
 
 The Saturday came, clear but cooler. The wind 
 was from the west, with now and then a snap of 
 north in it. Matthew Morse came round in the 
 morning with his yacht ; he was going to Squirrel 
 Island to take a party up to Bath on their way 
 
230 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 home. The children ran in to tell that he had left 
 his rowboat that pretty Dragonfly in the little 
 cove. 
 
 " Be sure you don t go near it," said Mrs. Sun- 
 derland. " You promise ? " 
 
 Eick and Alice promised their mother aloud; 
 Jane promised herself as positively in silence. 
 
 In the afternoon they were all out in the warm 
 pine grove behind the cottage ; it was still and 
 sheltered there ; it had been their favorite resort 
 in the latter part of the day, with their books and 
 work. They sat there now, rather more wrapped 
 in shawls and sacques than made work convenient ; 
 but covetous of every last hour in every pleasant 
 place. 
 
 The children were feeding some squirrels that 
 had grown tame enough to come almost within 
 their reach for crumbs. They were watching them 
 scud along a regular route, from the big old tree 
 where they had their nest in a hollow, up its 
 shaggy trunk, out on its farthest-reaching knobby 
 branch ; a flight across to the tip of the low, 
 horizontal stretch of the next one ; up and down 
 and across from limb to limb, one little plumy- 
 tailed fellow after another, with always the same 
 turns and runs and springs, which the children 
 were never tired of following, till they stood 
 with their bright eyes glancing this way and that, 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 231 
 
 tails waving and arching, chattering, scolding ; the 
 same invariable hesitation at the same point about 
 coming nearer, which was always overcome at last 
 in the same way, till down they rushed " a whole 
 stream of squirrels," Alice said over the back of 
 the last bent stem to where she and Rick had 
 strewed bits of bread and apple, to fill their 
 cheeks with these, and then scamper off over their 
 " branch-road," to a safe perch where they could 
 take " three minutes for refreshments," and munch 
 in comfort. 
 
 " We shall miss them so ! " said the little peo 
 ple. 
 
 " But we shall have Daisy and Dandelion, and 
 Shag and Shock, and all the new kittens at Bay 
 Hill," said their mother. " And may be next year 
 we will come and see the squirrels again." 
 
 She could not help glancing at Jane as she said 
 that ; and that Jane s face was of an unreadable 
 stillness only offered a blank into which Mrs. Sun- 
 derland thought she could put for herself some 
 easy syllables. 
 
 The tip of a white sail, like a bird s wing, ap 
 peared above the green edge of the bank beyond 
 them, where the hill sloped steeply to the narrow 
 channel on the Southport side. It slid along, 
 seeming to cleave a way between the soft, blending 
 lines of either shore. 
 
232 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 " It is Matt come back ! " cried Eick. " May n t 
 we go clown now, mamma ? " 
 
 Jane let go her self - command, and half lost her 
 head. 
 
 Startling from the thought of what might next 
 be expected of her with the children, she sprang to 
 her feet and spoke hurriedly, confusedly, to Mrs. 
 Sunderland. 
 
 " Would you please excuse me just a little 
 while ? I can t I want to go I have a head 
 ache I d like a walk, all by myself," she said. 
 
 She tied the strings of her gypsy hat firmly 
 under her chin, for the wind was brisk ; it made a 
 soft, continual rush overhead there, in the tops of 
 the thick pines. 
 
 " Take your shawl," said Mrs. Sunderland, as 
 senting as of course. 
 
 Now the shawl was a soft, knit thing, of cardinal 
 red. 
 
 " Oh, no ! " Jane answered, with quick positive- 
 ness. " My jacket will do." And she buttoned it 
 closer, as she turned and sped swiftly off between 
 the dark trees. 
 
 It was then that Aunty said to Margaret that 
 the girl was in a wee-waw. 
 
 Jane kept in the grove as far as it reached ; 
 then she hastened across toward the ridge, through 
 a little dip in the pasture land beyond ; choosing 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 233 
 
 a harder path and farther from the cove than the 
 one she had climbed with Dr. Griffith, that she 
 might make the shelter of a group of cedars, and 
 reach the top beyond it, where she would not be 
 observed from anywhere about the cottage. 
 
 She had the fleeing instinct upon her, which 
 seizes a creature bodily when the mind finds no 
 safe way to turn ; to get off as far as she could 
 to be alone to escape everything, became a wild 
 desire. 
 
 In the mean time, Matthew came up through the 
 orchard into the pines, met Mrs. Sunderland, and 
 asked with direct purpose for Miss Gregory. 
 
 " She has a headache," said that lady. " She 
 has gone off to be quiet. I am sorry, but I 
 do not think she would wish to be sent for." 
 
 Matt s face fell. 
 
 " I came to ask her to have a row with me 
 over to Eiggsville." 
 
 " I m afraid it s out of the question ; and, 
 is n t it rather too windy for comfort, anyway ? " 
 asked Mrs. Sunderland, willing to soften with ex 
 ternal reason the personal refusal. 
 
 " You feel it more on shore than you need to 
 on the water," answered Matt. "Among these 
 islands you can always get under the lee of some 
 thing. That s the beauty of being landlocked. 
 You can row or sail, when you could n t walk upon 
 
234 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 the cliffs. It may blow for an hour or two, but 
 it 11 calm down by sunset. Don t you think it 
 might do her good, perhaps, to go? " 
 
 His eyes met Mrs. Sunderland s as he spoke, and 
 if ever a man s eyes said anything to a woman s, 
 there were words in his at that moment. " Ah, do 
 be on my side ! " they plainly besought. 
 
 Margaret s heart smote her that it had come to 
 this. She must be on his side ; but it could not be 
 as he asked. It must be to spare him ; she had to 
 look steadily, kindly, at him, and reply, " I do not 
 think so." 
 
 Then Matthew broke forth, " How much don t 
 you think, Mrs. Sunderland ? I want to see her. 
 I shall have so little chance now. I know it is too 
 soon for her ; but it s all dead sure with me. I 
 want to ask her just to remember me," said the 
 poor fellow ; and drops stood with the flush upon 
 his forehead. 
 
 Margaret knew what real mercy was. 
 
 " Matthew," she said, " we all like you too well 
 to be willing to hurt you. And so / think there is 
 something you will have to give up." 
 
 " You think ; but you do not know ? " 
 
 " I will find out for you, Matthew ; I believe I 
 have found out already ; I wish I could have seen 
 sooner, for I might have saved you something. 
 But I will be honest for you now, and I will tell 
 you honestly." 
 
ASCUTN&Y STREET. 235 
 
 And with that Matthew Morse had to go away. 
 
 An hour and a half later, the little steamer 
 touched at Leeport Landing, and Dr. Griffith came 
 ashore. 
 
 He found Margaret in the cottage parlor, pale, 
 uneasy. " O John ! " she cried, " she has been 
 gone, alone, this ever so long, and the wind blows 
 so ! She must have gone a strange, long way." 
 
 "What did she go for?" 
 
 " Because Matt Morse came for her, with his 
 boat." 
 
 " You mean she went with him ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, no ! she would n t. She went off out 
 of his way." 
 
 "Did she go up the ridge?" John Griffith 
 asked ; and Margaret guessed from his tone and 
 look the danger. 
 
 " Oh, I don t know ! She was just wild to get 
 off ; she may have gone anywhere ! " 
 
 John took two tall sticks from the parlor corner : 
 one was his own alpenstock, iron-pointed ; the other 
 a stout oak pole, trimmed and ferruled. 
 
 He went to the door and whistled. Sachem, a 
 splendid spaniel, until lately with his brother, 
 Sagamore, the property of the old farmer, Azel 
 Morse, but in these recent weeks, by that instinc 
 tive friendship which attaches chosen beast to 
 chosen man, and by exchange of value in dollars, 
 
236 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 transferred to Dr. Griffith Sachem, who had 
 just met his master at the landing and tumultu- 
 ously escorted him homeward, came rushing in de 
 lightedly. 
 
 " Give me something of hers ah, this will do," 
 and the doctor picked up the little red shawl which 
 he knew quite well. He held it for the dog to 
 sniff, then rolled it up under his arm. 
 
 44 Where did she start from ? " he asked Mar 
 garet. 
 
 " From the bench under the two pines," she told 
 him. " But oh, Hans ! are you going on the cliff ? 
 How shall I know how can you tell what may 
 have happened, whether you can do, alone ? " 
 
 " Give me your handkerchief," he said. " I 
 will send Sachem back with this ; if I tie a knot in 
 it, all is well, and I want nothing ; if he brings it 
 loose, send help. Now you may be easy." 
 
 There had not been two minutes lost ; the doctor 
 was off, first to the little bench between the trees, 
 where he gave Sachem the scent again. 
 
 " Follow ! Find ! " he commanded ; and the 
 dog, after circling and sniffing a moment, darted 
 away over the soft brown needle-mould, in the way 
 Jane had taken. 
 
 Jane, meanwhile, had at first pushed on mechan 
 ically, without thought or calculation as to distance 
 or return. 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 237 
 
 She had gained the crest of the ridge, and upon 
 its broader, northern stretch, like a high moor, had 
 walked on, with plenty of leeway for yielding to 
 the force of the keen, bright wind, which rather 
 nerved and toned her for exertion than gave her 
 any anxiety. She leaned against it, as it were, 
 and let it help her forward, as with a kind, strong 
 hand. There was a certain comfort in feeling its 
 support and urging ; she had so little else to lean 
 against, in any sense, just now ! 
 
 It came in sweeps and lulls. If she had been 
 more weatherwise, this gusty character would have 
 warned her of the more possible risk ; as it was, 
 she kept on, the inward impulse still driving her 
 forward, and a secret desire drawing her toward 
 the wild, beautiful spot where she had spent one 
 such marvelous hour. Above everything, as she 
 had said ; to get above, beyond, this was her 
 prompting now, simply to escape ; by and by she 
 must do her own thinking, her resolving. The 
 future must be all redetermined, perhaps ; but she 
 would not look at it yet. 
 
 On ; over the scrambling, difficult gaps and out 
 crops ; up and down the cross ridges, like great 
 vertebras of a colossal spine, to the beginning of 
 the narrow neck with the steep, inward incline on 
 one side, and the jagged, seaward precipices on the 
 other. 
 
238 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 It did not take long to cross ; in those moments 
 the wind made one of its brief pauses. Jane 
 climbed and clung well ; she was safely over to the 
 head of the cliff-fissure which she had descended 
 with Dr. Griffith. 
 
 Once below the frowning top, she was in a calm ; 
 no touch of the wind reached her. She did not 
 venture quite so far as the doctor had led her, but 
 found a scooped-out hollow, part way down, with a 
 bolstering edge of rough rock forward ; here she 
 placed herself, and set her spirit free into that 
 wide, glorious distance. 
 
 It was as if all troubling, impassioned thoughts 
 that had been bound in upon herself, chafing and 
 fretting like caged things, were let loose upon the 
 living air that lifted them from her and bore them 
 away, lost in its overflowing vastness. 
 
 She sat there, breathing quietness, expanding 
 into strength. 
 
 Above her, the wind rose in higher, more impet 
 uous gusts. It smote itself against the rough in 
 land steep, and swirled upward. It rushed, view 
 less, from the lip of the crag over her head. 
 Across the jagged bridge that she had passed, it 
 swept clean, resistless. She could not have stood 
 there now. 
 
 Half an hour later, she clambered upward, and 
 met it in its face. 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 239 
 
 Happily, the fissure path led round a point of 
 crag that was between her and the sea. Against 
 this she paused, almost pinned there by the gale. 
 
 She crept and struggled a little way, on hands 
 and knees, then wedged herself into a side crevice, 
 and waited. 
 
 How should she ever cross that mauvais pas ? 
 
 It stretched before her ; she could see its length ; 
 it was like the neck of a great animal whose head 
 was turned toward the sea. Just in the turn, below 
 the beetling uplift of the head itself, was her own 
 safe, small nestling-place. But how long could she 
 stay there ? How long before the wind would all 
 rush by ? 
 
 " It goes down with the sun," she had heard the 
 country people say, in such a fair-weather blow. If 
 it would only calm so that she might crawl over ! 
 
 She studied out a possible pathway in the cracks 
 and windings that she could see, from rock to rock. 
 If there came any cessation she must try, she must 
 begin. 
 
 At the outset of a pain or a peril, it never seems 
 that it can last. It had not been blowing like that 
 a half hour before. Why should it blow on a half 
 hour longer ? But every minute that she waited 
 there seemed ten. 
 
 For a good while she did not give way to abso 
 lute terror. But it came at last. She trembled 
 
240 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 all over as she sat there. What if it should last 
 all night? 
 
 She bent her head down upon her knees, and 
 prayed to Him who ruleth the storm. 
 
 She never knew how long it had been, when she 
 caught a distant sound borne toward her by the 
 very blast the sharp, quick bark of a dog ; the 
 voice of a man who cheered him on. They were 
 coming for her. 
 
 Who was coming? And how had anybody 
 known ? 
 
 She stood up and watched along that rugged 
 side-slant. Between the wall of wind and the wall 
 of cliff she was held, with only a half yard s width 
 for her feet. 
 
 Upon the broader, humping shoulder of the 
 huge ledge-form, she saw, presently, the man. A 
 tall, strong figure that advanced just under the 
 crest, the wind holding him, as it did her, away 
 from the descent. He could not come much 
 further, so. 
 
 She cried out to him to stop; but the wind 
 whirled her voice off into the great spaces with its 
 own. She stretched out her arms, her hands held 
 up, palms forward, bidding him back with the ges 
 ture. Then she sat down, quietly, to show him she 
 was safe and self-possessed. 
 
 The dog stood and bayed at her, half in triumph 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 241 
 
 half at fault. She could only guess what his mas 
 ter said to him, and interpret it by the dog s ac 
 tion. 
 
 " Down, Sachem ! Charge ! " and the docile, 
 sagacious creature crouched and planted himself 
 at Dr. Griffith s feet, his nose level toward Jane, 
 his bright eye fixed on her, she knew, as in his 
 keeping. 
 
 Dr. Griffith leaned back against the shelving 
 bank, and took his memorandum book from his 
 pocket. He wrote a few lines upon a bit of paper, 
 and tucked this tightly into the little red shawl 
 bundle which he had tied round with a bit of 
 string. The ends of the string he fastened to the 
 dog s collar, and put the soft roll into Sachem s 
 mouth. " Now, give it to her ! " he shouted, and 
 pointed over at Jane. 
 
 Where two feet and greater height could not 
 have gone through gullies and crannies, choosing 
 the safest track, sometimes scrambling along under 
 the overhanging edge upon the island side, his tail 
 held gallantly aloft, with silken fringes that the 
 wind blew like a cavalier s plume came Sachem, 
 struggling, proud, hilarious, and laid his muzzle, 
 presently, with the burden in charge, upon Jane s 
 knees. 
 
 On the slip of paper was written, again it was 
 a recipe blank that he had taken, " Keep as you 
 
242 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 are until I come to you. Make Sachem stay. I 
 will wait and watch my chance ; the wind will lull. 
 Do not be afraid." 
 
 Jane laid her hand on the dog s head. " Charge, 
 Sachem ! " she said softly. And Sachem, obeying 
 the gentle breath as if it had been the sternest or 
 der, laid himself down beside her, his chin across 
 her feet. 
 
 Jane wrapped the red shawl around her, crossed 
 it over her breast, and tied it fast behind. 
 
 On each side the intervening danger, they waited. 
 They bided their time in each other s sight, each 
 still and patient that the other might be likewise. 
 
 In this parable of circumstance, thoughts per 
 haps they were hardly definite moved between 
 them that they might never speak. They were 
 separated; but the very separation drew them 
 close. 
 
 Jane felt in a strange peace. He was there ; he 
 would come to her. He would not be in any reck 
 less haste. He would do the right thing. When 
 it was time, he would be by her side. 
 
 John Griffith waited but to claim his own. He 
 knew now that it was his own ; that it should be, 
 through whatever stress, whatever forces of inter 
 ruption. 
 
 On either side a deeper abyss, with fiercer blast 
 even the rushing, invisible mights that part the 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 243 
 
 worlds between them, they would yet stay but 
 for the moment that should bring them hand to 
 hand again, ay, soul to soul. 
 
 Had they not found each other in all the won 
 derful stretch and surge of time and mystery of 
 causes, the seeming random of birth and place 
 and incident, and how should anything fail them 
 now? 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE muteness and the pause were deep and 
 grand with meanings that no easy lover s talk 
 could ever touch. The power about them that 
 held them so that with its own great voice 
 hushed theirs was not a dread or threat ; it was 
 assurance, promise. 
 
 The gale began to catch its breath. As the sun 
 went lower, and the air cooled over the sea, it came 
 less impetuously down into the ocean spaces from 
 its mountain heights ; it rested ; it panted ; then 
 for an instant it would sweep on again. But its 
 velocity was less terrible ; down in the low places 
 it would be but a lively breeze. 
 
 At the first real check, Dr. Griffith moved. He 
 had made cool calculation ; he had mapped his 
 track, partly following Sachem s instinctive lead. 
 He knew where he could plant his alpenstock, 
 in those rough slants and crevices, and keep his 
 feet this side the perilous crest-edge. He had 
 strapped his soft felt hat tightly to his head ; he 
 would have no absurdities of inconvenience here. 
 He could stoop, or creep, if need be ; he would set 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 245 
 
 his strong limbs and stalwart frame compact 
 against the danger ; he would grasp the very hill 
 side and get over there to Jane. 
 
 And so he did get over. And down beside the 
 dog he sat himself, on what length was left of the 
 rock-shelf; his feet and alpenstock holding him 
 against a break of the ledge below. 
 
 " Jane ! " He said the little name boldly, and 
 looked up at her face with something of fun in his 
 eyes, now that he had found her and they were 
 both safe. For he was sure, now, that he could 
 help her across ; now, he could do almost anything. 
 
 " Jane ! " He said it twice. She looked at 
 him, and a brightness broke all over her face. 
 
 "Dr. Hansell! " she answered, with a timid 
 ripple in her voice. 
 
 " A high wind seems to be an essential element 
 in our history." 
 
 " It is growing calmer now." 
 
 " Yes ; every moment. It will be beautiful 
 soon. Come, will you trust yourself with me ? " 
 
 He got up as he spoke, braced with one knee 
 against the rock ; he put the strong oak staff into 
 her right hand ; changed his alpenstock into his 
 left ; reached up to her with his right arm, and 
 lifted her along beside him. 
 
 " Go, Sachem ! " he ordered. " Back, sir ! " 
 
 He could not point his command ; neither hand 
 
246 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 was free. But Sachem knew well enough; the 
 bright fellow set his plume on high, and was off. 
 And they two followed. 
 
 Carefully, holding her close to himself on the 
 one side as he bore against the still vigorous wind 
 on the other, bidding her where to step and where 
 to set her stick, he conquered the difficult way with 
 her and for her, point by point. 
 
 He only spoke the few words of guidance that 
 she needed, until he had her beyond the pass ; then 
 he seated her for a moment, took a handkerchief 
 from his breast-pocket, tied it in a knot, and called 
 Sachem. 
 
 The dog, careering back and forth upon the 
 broader height, came close. His master put the 
 handkerchief between his teeth. " Go home ! " he 
 said. " Carry ! " Sachem looked wistfully an in 
 stant, then turned and sped. 
 
 "That is to let Margaret know that you are 
 safe," he told her. 
 
 He had called her Jane ; speaking to herself, he 
 called his sister Margaret. There was some quite 
 new assumption, some strong, gentle claim, in 
 word and tone. 
 
 " I shall take you by another path, a down 
 ward climb ; we will go home by the shore, where 
 it is still. A little further we shall find the way." 
 
 He held her fast again as they crossed obliquely 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 247 
 
 to the seaward brow, and lifted her there into the 
 entrance of a long gully, whose rough depth gave 
 them shelter as they followed it down the broken 
 scrag toward the narrow strip of beach where the 
 hungry sea was lapping. 
 
 Alternately leading and lifting her, or giving 
 her hands a strong grasp for a spring across from 
 rock to rock, he piloted her safely till they stood 
 upon the rim of sand, behind which the whole tow 
 ering ridge stood guard between them and the de 
 feated northwest wind. 
 
 The warmth of the sunny day was sleeping here 
 still ; they had but to walk in the sweet stillness 
 upon which the low whisper of the slow-curling 
 comb was the only break, till they came to the 
 spur of rock around or over which they would 
 reach the sandy cove. 
 
 Dr. Griffith did not mean to be in any haste. 
 He made Jane sit down at the foot of the cliff, 
 and stood beside her while she rested. 
 
 " Jane," he said again, " why did you do all 
 this ? " He asked as if he meant to know. 
 
 And Jane knew he never put a question lightly. 
 She looked at him with clear eyes, and answered 
 with gentle bravery, 
 
 " I wanted to get away." 
 
 " From what, please ? " 
 
 " I think from myself, as much as anything." 
 
248 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 "And did you?" 
 
 "Yes. Myself was scattered into spray and 
 carried off out of me, over that great sea." 
 
 John Griffith looked down into her face until 
 her face looked down again from him. 
 
 " Well, I forgive you, since it has given us this, 
 together," he said. " This is nearly our last day 
 with the sea, you know." 
 
 " I know." 
 
 " It is hard to give the New England grandeur 
 up, and go off to bury one s self in the heart of 
 the continent." 
 
 " Except that there is, I suppose, a motive, a 
 work to do that could not be done here," said Jane. 
 " There are such strong motives for men in a 
 world that wants men all over it ! " 
 
 " Can you think of any motive that would take a 
 woman there, a woman who loved the sea and 
 hills as you do ? " 
 
 Hesitation was committal. If this were an or 
 dinary question, the answer must be instant. 
 
 A color crept up over Jane s throat and cheek 
 and brow ; she dared not even turn her head aside, 
 that the gypsy hat might screen it. She kept her 
 eyes quiet and steadfast, looking out upon the level 
 water. 
 
 "I can think there might be motives that would 
 take a woman anywhere," she said, strong and 
 low. 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 249 
 
 " I can think of but one woman that I would 
 ask to go. Could you will you go to Sunny- 
 water with me ? Will you belong to me, Jane ? " 
 
 Jane sat still ; utterly silent. The greatness of 
 that which had come to her hushed her held 
 her motionless. 
 
 " Am I asking too much? " said Dr. Griffith. 
 
 Then she rose up and stood before him, as Ruth 
 might have stood before Boaz. 
 
 " You are giving me more than I could think 
 God ever meant for me," she told him. 
 
 They reached the cottage in the dim twilight, 
 and Margaret met them at the porch. 
 
 " She is your sister, Margaret," said John ; and 
 Margaret took her in her arms, and held her close, 
 and kissed her. 
 
 The next morning was full of peace and sun 
 shine. The Sunday blessedness was in and over 
 everything. 
 
 " I am going to take you to the undercliff again, 
 Jane," Dr. Griffith said, after the breakfast was 
 finished, and they were out in the fresh air before 
 the door. " I want a clear, sure daylight talk with 
 you, and I want it there." 
 
 The last sentence was for her ear only. 
 
 The children caught the word of the walk. 
 " May we go too ? " cried Alice. 
 
250 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 Margaret took the little girl s hand. " Not this 
 time, Alice. Uncle Hans wants your White 
 Queen all to himself." 
 
 The child looked wonderingly from one to 
 another, weighing the meaning of the answer. 
 Her mother ft ever made her an evasive one. 
 
 Something who shall say what touched the 
 hidden woman-heart in her, and gave her a vague, 
 sweet apprehension. She came and stood close 
 before the two. 
 
 "Uncle Hans," she said, "I ll lend you my 
 White Queen. Queen, I 11 lend you uncle Hans. 
 But you must be very particular of each other, for 
 I m very particular of you both ! " 
 
 The little rowboat came round into the cove, 
 while Jane and Dr. Griffith were far out toward 
 the lighthouse point. 
 
 Matt had come to see Mrs. Sunderland, and he 
 found her with her book in a sunny corner of the 
 rocks. 
 
 " Do you know what I want to know ? " he 
 asked her. " Have you come to tell me ? " 
 
 " Yes, Matthew. We shall all be your friends, 
 always. But you will have to give it up." 
 
 The young fellow crushed his hat as he held it 
 between his knees, and said never a word. 
 
 " It has only been a few weeks," said Margaret 
 kindly. " All your life is behind it, and all that 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 251 
 
 is to be your life is before. You must not let this 
 one point be all to you, or spoil it all." 
 
 " It might have made it all ! " exclaimed Mat 
 thew bitterly. "And now it may never be 
 made. May I not say anything to her ? " 
 
 " It will make you more sorry if you do," said 
 Margaret. " I am dealing truly with you. for I 
 know." He felt that there was something behind 
 her words. 
 
 " You have been kind to me, at any rate," he 
 said to her. 
 
 "Yes, we have both tried to be kind my 
 brother and I. Whatever happens, believe that." 
 "What will happen?" he demanded quickly, 
 grasping the truth that she would fain not have 
 given him all at once. " Where is she now ? " 
 
 Mrs. Sunderland laid her hand on his. " They 
 are away walking to the lighthouse rocks," 
 she said. 
 
 He sat still for several moments ; he held him 
 self so, for pride s sake and for the sake of that 
 sweet, womanly touch, slowly withdrawn. Then 
 he got up, and she stood also. 
 
 The little boat, lying dragged up on the sand, 
 lifted her pretty, painted bow toward them. The 
 Dragonfly. The name and the winged creature 
 named for were on the prow, in brilliant, delicate 
 color-drawing. 
 
252 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 " You find such pretty things to call your vessels 
 by," said Mrs. Sunderland, in the way one does 
 say a pleasant irrelevant word, to escape a relevant 
 one, or a hard silence. 
 
 Matthew Morse shot a glance at her, which she 
 answered as she interpreted it. 
 
 " Don t think I don t care, Matt ; you have a 
 way of finding right things ; you will find right 
 things in your life." 
 
 A moment more and he had gone, with her 
 words like arrows in his heart. 
 
 " Eight things." 
 
 And Dorothy Serle had found the pretty names 
 for him. And Dorothy Serle had painted the 
 slender, gauze- winged dragonfly for him, that no 
 coarse, common workman could have done. 
 
 Jane went back to Ascutney Street. She ful 
 filled her ten days with Mrs. Turnbull. When 
 she had sewed the last tape loop inside the waist 
 band of the last completed garment, and had hung 
 it in the spare-chamber closet where Mrs. Turnbull 
 kept the " poor sheep and silkworm " part of her 
 as in a shrine, she said to that lady that she had 
 finished. 
 
 " Well, what now ? " was the rejoinder. Mrs. 
 Turnbull had decided that she would keep Jane, 
 on the old terms, manage it as she might ; but she 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 253 
 
 left it to Jane herself to say some word to lead to 
 it. 
 
 Jane s answer took her by surprise, now that 
 the Sunderlands had gone home " to the coun 
 try," Jane had said. There was no other place, she 
 thought, for the girl ; and she credited herself with 
 magnanimity in holding her own door open after 
 all. 
 
 " I am going to Bay Hill," Jane said. 
 
 "Where s Bay Hill?" 
 
 " Out beyond Exham." 
 
 " Who lives there ? Who do you work for ? " 
 
 " Myself, I think, this time. Mrs. Sunderland 
 lives there. Mrs. Turnbull, I am going to be mar 
 ried." 
 
 " Married ! " It was not a question. Jane re 
 plied nothing to the mere explosion. 
 
 " You ! " The second exclamation had the as 
 tonishment of the impossible in it, as if Jane must 
 be making plans all by herself in life, which ordi 
 narily took two to accomplish. 
 
 "I and another person," Jane explained ac 
 cordingly, with a smile. 
 
 " Of course. Who is it ? " 
 
 "John Griffith. He is Mrs. Sunderland s 
 brother." 
 
 "H m! H m! H m! T/iat sitl I dare 
 
 say you 11 do very well, Jane ; very suitably. I 
 
254 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 hope so, I m sure. But you ve been very quiet. 
 
 Where did you ever see John Griffith ? " 
 
 " At Leeport. And before that, two years ago." 
 " All that time ! Well, it s unriddled now," 
 
 said Mrs. Turnbull sharp-pointedly. 
 
 Jane did not open matters further by asking 
 
 what was unriddled. She thought she had been 
 
 explanatory enough. 
 
 Mrs. Turnbull told the news to her husband, 
 with her usual involutions. 
 
 " I suppose she thinks she s bettering herself. 
 They all do," was her preliminary. 
 
 " It s a human delusion," said Mr. Turnbull. 
 
 " And it s been going on these two years, and 
 she never said a word ! " 
 
 " Waiting for the last word, I suppose, so that 
 she could put it in good shape first," responded 
 the gentleman. " It would n t do to begin at the 
 beginning." 
 
 " I wish you d listen ! It s Jane Gregory ; she 
 won t come here any more ; she s going to Bay 
 Hill, wherever that is, with Mrs. Sunderland ; she s 
 going to be married to Mrs. Sunderland s brother, 
 a man by the name of John Griffith ; there ! " 
 
 " Wh e ew ! " 
 
 " Whatever are you whistling at ? It is n t any 
 thing very extraordinary, after all." 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 255 
 
 "Griffith! Sunderland! Bay Hill ! " ejacu 
 lated Mr. Turnbull. " Old lady, you Ve just 
 missed the best chance you ever had in all your 
 life ; and Eebecca Louisa Rickstack s got it ! " 
 
 Now Mrs. Turnbull had never been near Re 
 becca Rickstack since the latter came home from 
 Leeport. 
 
 " Do you know Jane Gregory s going right 
 slap in amongst the very first chop A 1, 
 registered at Lloyd s ? " demanded Mr. Turnbull, 
 who liked to be mercantile, but who mixed his 
 phrases. 
 
 " No ! How ? " gasped Mrs. Turnbull, reduced 
 to simplicity and directness. 
 
 " Griffith and Sunderland. Old L Wharf. 
 
 Griffith of Wall Street. Boston and New York. 
 Rich as thunder. Biggest swells going. What in 
 time brought any of em to Ascutney Street ? " 
 
 " I don t believe the girl knows it herself. I 
 don t believe it s them," panted Mrs. Turnbull, 
 losing both breath and grammar. 
 
 " True as revelation. She s got the dead wood 
 on you, Lorry-Laviny ! " And he left Lorry-La- 
 viny to recover, and went off to bed. 
 
 Jane stayed till early spring at Bay Hill. 
 When it came to the trousseau, Mrs. Sunderland 
 said that was to be her part. Jane put her arm 
 
256 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 round her, and thanked her with kisses, but de 
 clared there was no need. " I have nearly six hun 
 dred dollars for it," she told her ; " and I m so 
 glad!" 
 
 But more than six hundred other dollars were 
 dropped in, in casual contributions, besides the 
 stated, stately bridal gift in orthodox silver. 
 
 Miss Rickstack came to the wedding. The 
 Turnbulls were invited. Do you think they went ? 
 
 Mrs. Turnbull did ; her husband could not leave 
 his business in the morning. 
 
 " Of course ; why should n t I ? " the Ascutney 
 Street lady said. " I was her first friend. I 
 picked her up when she was nowhere. If it had 
 n t been for me, she would n t have been anywhere 
 now. I shall send her a butterknife." 
 
 So she did ; and a week after the wedding-day, 
 she went out to Bay Hill again, and called on Mrs. 
 Sunderland. 
 
 Mrs. Turnbull really thought Ascutney Street 
 did it ; and that henceforth Ascutney Street might 
 claim relationship with Bay Hill. Through Miss 
 Rickstack it did ; she was never " set down " again, 
 or forgotten. And through Miss Rickstack and 
 The Crocus crept an inner influence that made a 
 link of reality. 
 
 The good ladies were gradually less afraid of 
 the honest truths of their existence ; less eagerly 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 257 
 
 anxious about the visible aspects. "Miss Kick- 
 stack did thus and so ; " and Miss Rickstack stayed 
 at Bay Hill days and days together, and had the 
 Sunderlands to take tea or stay to lunch, without 
 ever making either " teas " or " lunches." 
 
 They began to find out that a mere shell of cus 
 tom, precisely like that convenient to their own 
 living, was not the thing these truly fine people 
 always looked for, by which to fasten their best 
 associations with the lives of others. 
 
 Mrs. Sunderland had caught the right one in her 
 little " trap " of genuineness, and had let her go to 
 good result among her comrades. Miss Rickstack 
 ruled Ascutney Street, and was uplifting it ; but 
 there was never a meeker, more unconscious poten 
 tate. 
 
 Mrs. Turnbull thought things were growing very 
 common there. It was a failure for her, and in a 
 year or two she moved awa}^. 
 
 Mrs. Sunderland had received her wedding-party 
 call politely, but had never initiated further civilities. 
 
 I had to come back to Ascutney Street at the 
 end, for we began there, and it is there the little 
 moral of my story lies, if it has one ; but I should 
 like to take you all the way out to Sunnywater. 
 
 I should like to show you the long, low house 
 from which the beautiful turf spreads away in 
 
258 ASCUTNEY STREET. 
 
 slopes and swells under the great black-walnuts; 
 I should like to show you the rooms inside, lovely 
 with every touch and sign of heart-abidingness, 
 but not " decorated " with anything. 
 
 I should like to have you see Dr. Griffith come 
 riding home at night on his fine bay that he calls 
 Sagamore, for Sachem s brother, with Sachem 
 bounding at his heels ; see the doctor fling the 
 bridle on the horse s neck, while Bat Knutsen 
 takes him by the bit to lead him to his stable ; 
 while John Griffith puts his arm round Jane, wait 
 ing for him at the door, and they go off together to 
 watch the sunset at a certain point where it blazes 
 across a distant, wonderful vista ; while Mrs. Knut 
 sen gets the tea upon the table " the yems and 
 the yonny-cake and the yinyer," with a steak or a 
 prairie chicken for substantial to have all ready 
 when the two shall come in again, happy with hun 
 ger, and hungry with happiness. 
 
 " Is it as good as it may have been among the 
 islands, two hours ago ? " asks Dr. Griffith, stand 
 ing with his wife in the glory that sweeps from a 
 far horizon line, over one knows not what between, 
 into this noble woodland colonnade, to drop at their 
 feet its long-sped, splendid shafts. " Is it as good 
 for you as that, or must we go to Sheepscote 
 River?" 
 
 And Jane says, in that peculiar way of hers, as 
 
ASCUTNEY STREET. 259 
 
 if thought felt itself carefully into the truest 
 words, 
 
 " Everything is as good as everything. The day 
 is n t over till it has all got lighted up ; the world 
 is round, and life is as round as the world, John ! " 
 
 THE END. 
 
MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY. 
 
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of fiction 13 
 
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OTorfes of jftctton* 15 
 
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OTorhtf of JFiction 17 
 
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OTorfes? of jfietton 19 
 
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of jfictton 21 
 
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22 Storks; of jfictton 
 
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of jftction 23 
 
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OTorfe0 of fiction 25 
 
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OTorfes of Jftction 27 
 
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OTorfes of fiction 29 
 
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OTotfes of jftctton 31 
 
 William Makepeace Thackeray. 
 
 Complete Works. Illustrated Library Edi 
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32 OTorks of jftction 
 
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of jFtcttott 33 
 
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of jFittton 35 
 
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