BONNIE MACKIRBY.
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY 
 
 An International Episode 
 
 BY 
 
 LAURA DAYTON FESSENDEN, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 A COLONIAL DAME," " A PURITAN LOVER," ETC. 
 
 CHICAGO AND NEW YORK: 
 RAND, McNALLY & COMPANY, 
 
 PUBLISHERS.
 
 Copyright, 1898, by Rand, McNally & Co.
 
 To my little daughters, ALICE and DOROTHY, who 
 have listened with such loving interest to this story 
 as it came to me bit by bit from the world of fancy, 
 I dedicate my work. May they, as they grow out 
 of childhood and into womanhood, cultivate the 
 constant companionship of Mercy, the crown jewel of 
 womanhood as well as of nations. 
 
 LAURA DAYTON FESSENDEN, 
 
 " HAPPIEGOLUCKIE," 
 Febriiary 16, 1898. Highland Park, Illinois. 
 
 2227841
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " My Bonnie lies over the ocean, 
 My Bonnie lies over the sea, 
 My Bonnie lies over the ocean, 
 Oh, bring back my Bonnie to me," 
 
 Sang Mr. Talbot Germond, as he stood beside 
 the window of his smoking-room, looking 
 out into the winter's dusk, a dusk pregnant 
 with a storm of snow, whose birth hour was 
 close at hand. 
 
 4 ' I say, ' ' he remarked, turning as he spoke 
 to address himself to a man who was 
 leaning against the mantel-shelf, and barely 
 out of reach of the scorch of the real log 
 fire burning brightly on the polished 
 brass andirons. "What do you think of her
 
 6 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 marriage, anyway? She was a sweet, 
 pretty, gentle little girl, and no mistake! 
 And I for one can't help wishing that the 
 bridegroom had been twenty odd years 
 younger, the nuptial day May instead of 
 December, and the sky bright rather than 
 threatening. ' ' 
 
 The other man laughed a trifle bitterly (too 
 bitterly for a perfectly disinterested critic). 
 "Mere vagaries of a distorted fancy, old 
 boy," he said; "sure evidence of a fit of 
 indigestion! Too much champagne and 
 pat6 de f oie gras at the wedding breakfast ! 
 That is all ! A good sleep to-night, and a 
 brandy and soda cocktail in the waking 
 moments of to-morrow morning, and you 
 will be able to see that Bonnie's mother 
 was wise when she made an English alliance 
 for her daughter. What does it matter that 
 the duffer the girl has just been tied to 
 is fifty, and shows his years? What does it 
 matter if, during his somewhat protracted 
 bachelor existence, he has been pleased to 
 live in open defiance of moral decency? He 
 has, I grant you, the manners of a hog and 
 all the qualifications of a fully-fledged boor ; 
 but, then, he belongs, we are told, to the
 
 ONNIE MACKIRBY. 7 
 
 4 ' English upper class, ' ' and that assurance 
 in itself, even when the foundation for the 
 assertion is a trifle obscure, seems to blind 
 the eyes of American parvenus, not only 
 to a multitude, but to the whole category of 
 written and unwritten sins. 
 
 "You are to always bear in mind, my dear 
 fellow, that Mr. Mackirby's grandfather on 
 his mother's side was a brewer! Brewers, you 
 know, are something set apart in England ! 
 They are not 'in trade' to begin with! 
 Anything that combines vats and hops gives 
 entre'e into the most exalted strata of 
 Albion's rank and fashion. And should any 
 particular brewer's ale, porter or beer please 
 the royal palate or agree with the royal 
 stomach, why a coronet is not unlikely to be 
 the reward. ' ' 
 
 "But this Mackirby is not a brewer. He 
 is in trade, personally and individually. 
 He haggles and shouts, with all the rest of 
 us, on 'Change." 
 
 "Well, what of that? If dukes' younger 
 sons no longer decline positions of emolu- 
 ment in big mercantile houses, a baronet's 
 grandson may safely venture. And what's 
 the matter with cotton? Cotton is all right,
 
 8 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 and it's cleaner than either pork or crude 
 oil to handle, you know. But come and 
 lookout! See, there they go! How like 
 a child she looks, to be sure!" 
 
 "Yes, I agree with you! Beauty and the 
 Beast is a fitting and appropriate title, 
 although Madame Me*re" calls it playfully 
 4 Una and her Lion!' God grant that 
 Madame may have no remorseful nights 
 and bitterly repentant days. How they are 
 showering the rice ! Mackirby is everlast- 
 ingly having a time of it to look pleasant 
 and keep from swearing (rice stings!). 
 They are in the carriage. They are off! 
 Not a shoe has hit its mark! Listen how 
 the wind is moaning!" 
 
 "Well, Talbot, pull down the shade, 
 draw the curtains, and light up. That 
 girl's life history has closed, so far as we 
 are concerned. Let's take cigars and talk 
 about the horse show, or the dog show, or 
 something that is yet to be." 
 
 Talbot Germond drew one end of his mus- 
 tache slowly through his fingers, as he said, 
 reflectively: "Rand, did you ever, in your 
 happy-go-lucky life, feel as you have looked 
 upon some one a sense of forebodement? A
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 9 
 
 sort of conviction that their part in the play 
 was to be tragic? Well, whether you have or 
 not, I tell you, and I want you to remember 
 what I say, that the little girl whose mother 
 has to-day sold her (from God knows what 
 insane motive) has a dark path ahead of 
 her!" 
 
 Rand laughed. "The fact of the matter 
 is, Talbot, " he said, "that we were, my lad, 
 both very fond of Bonnie. Her sweet, pure 
 soul appealed to our better natures; she 
 was the girl that made us think oftenest of 
 our mothers ; her influence made us go home 
 and write to our sisters. Did you ever think 
 of Bonnie as a rich girl? I never did, in 
 spite of her poor Anglomaniac of a mother. 
 "Bonnie was a lady by the right of both 
 birth and breeding; her money was always 
 in abeyance ; it had nothing to do with her ; 
 it never presented itself in any act of her 
 life, in any outward expression; her per- 
 sonal adornment was distinctive and har- 
 monious, but it gave evidence of neither 
 display nor extravagance; and that great 
 underbred fellow can no more appreciate 
 her delicacy or daintiness than he could 
 enjoy the color of a rose or the subtle fra-
 
 io BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 grance of a violet. He got access to her bank 
 account, he found out the actual value of 
 her stocks and bonds ; he acquainted himself 
 with the number of pieces of property that 
 she held title to, and then he talked up his 
 English aristocracy with her mother!" 
 
 "It is little more than a year," said Ger- 
 mond, "since Bonnie used to go by here 
 every morning on her way to school, her 
 books under her arm, her child voice (a 
 sweet, clear treble) trying to make itself 
 heard through the babble and chatter of 
 her girl companions, as they made merry 
 over innocent nothings. ' ' 
 
 There was a silence, and then Rand said : 
 "Bonnie comes of a long line of honorable 
 men ; her ancestors on her father's side were 
 gentlemen of birth and station. They came 
 from England in the early Colonial days to 
 hold positions of trust in church and state. 
 They were men who learned to love New 
 England so well that they never returned 
 to the Old World, and in time their sons' 
 sons fought a brave fight for liberty, and 
 their names and deeds are written upon the 
 list that records the patriots of the Ameri- 
 can Revolution. So, whatever Bonnie may
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. n 
 
 suffer, whatever her awakening may be, be 
 sure that she will do her duty bravely, be 
 sure that she will be a faithful wife and a 
 loving mother. "
 
 12 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Charnley Street West was one of the most 
 desirable residence quarters in all the great 
 city of Ploverlie ; to live in Charnley Street 
 one must have money, money to deck its 
 excrescences called "residences" with fur- 
 nishings of lace and velvet, rare woods and 
 massive silver, exquisite china, and accred- 
 ited works of art, gorgeous footmen and 
 bishop-like butlers, fine horses and garish 
 equipages money for lavish displays of 
 hot-house flowers and fruits, for fabulously 
 expensive wines, and a constant succession 
 of dinners, teas, receptions and routs during 
 the conventional season ; money wherewith 
 (at a given signal from the social auto- 
 crat) to swathe all the gorgeous furniture 
 in Holland; swathe the pictures and bank 
 the plate, and then hie away to some 
 country-house or shooting-box. 
 
 At No. 6 1 Charnley Street West lived Mr. 
 and Mrs. William Harcourt Wiggins Mac- 
 kirby. Everybody, it was said, knew the
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 13 
 
 Mackirbys or wanted to know them, because 
 Mr. Mackirby was "in" with the best set. 
 William Mackirby was grandson to dear old 
 Sir William Wiggins, who did make the 
 most delightful stout, you know. It was a 
 dead pity that William Mackirby had 
 married an American; but then the dear 
 man had been a business failure, and he 
 needed a lift. It was also supposed at one 
 time that he was rather rapid too fond of 
 cards and betting at races, and (bend your 
 ear, and let me whisper), but then boys will 
 be boys, you know. Besides this William 
 Mackirby had younger brothers, and so the 
 American wife's money had been very use- 
 ful very useful, indeed. 
 
 It was, of course (the marriage, don't you 
 know) a great trial to dear Madame Mac- 
 kirby, but she bore it beautifully, and had 
 even put herself out to receive once or 
 twice with young Mrs. Mackirby, who was 
 wofully wanting, don't you know, in 
 appreciation, young Mrs. Mackirby being so 
 awfully American, don't you know." 
 
 The Mackirbys had been married, when 
 our story opens, ten years. 
 
 Three times upon Bonnie Mackirby's
 
 14 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 breast had been laid a little head, over which 
 she had showered words of mother wel- 
 come and tears of joy. And in those quiet 
 hours she had asked God to give back to her 
 some remnant of faith in the father of her 
 children. She did not ask "to love him," 
 but she asked for courage to meet and to 
 pass over in quietness his lack of courtesy, 
 kindness, and many other things that are so 
 necessary to a happy wifehood. She prayed 
 "to be able for her children's sake to 
 believe it was her duty to live on and out a 
 life of self-repression and self-renunciation 
 until the end." 
 
 The youngest child was now a little maiden 
 of two, and there was no longer any excuse 
 for Mrs. Mackirby's not participating in the 
 giddy whirl of social events that were crowd- 
 ing and jostling upon each other's heels, 
 and wearing out the souls and bodies of the 
 men and women who were trying to live up 
 to the pace of the hour. 
 
 On this particular day of this particular 
 year, Mrs. Mackirby stood before her mirror, 
 making the finishing touches to her after- 
 noon toilette, preparatory to driving to a 
 round of "TV and "at-homes," when her
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 15 
 
 maid entered and handed her a note. It 
 was evident that the handwriting was not 
 unknown to Mrs. Mackirby, for a deeper 
 flush came to her cheeks, and there was a 
 perceptible tightening of her red lips, as 
 she drew the paper from the unsealed 
 envelope and read its contents. The maid, 
 meanwhile, stood, white-capped, white- 
 aproned and respectful, watching every 
 movement of her mistress' face. 
 
 Mrs. Mackirby read the note over twice, 
 then going to the mantel she took a match, 
 struck it, and twisting first the letter and 
 then the envelope into a curl of paper, let 
 them burn in the grate to a dull gray ash. 
 Then taking the poker, she distributed the 
 ashes until she was assured that not a ves- 
 tige remained. 
 
 Just as this task or whim had been accom- 
 plished, Mr. Mackirby made his appearance. 
 He was short-breathed, and was puffing 
 audibly from the effects of climbing the 
 stairs, and his usually white face had a pur- 
 ple flush on it. "Going out?" he managed 
 to gasp. She turned toward him as he 
 spoke; her fine nostrils were dilated, her 
 beautiful dark blue eyes looked straight into
 
 16 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 his. "Yes, " she answered, quietly. "I had 
 expected to make some visits, but I have 
 changed my plan. I shall spend the after- 
 noon with your mother. I have some things 
 to say to her thtit it may be for her future 
 interest to hear. ' ' His color went and came 
 under her fixed gaze. His sixty years of life 
 furnished him with no reserve of even brute 
 courage wherewith to look into her eyes. So 
 he took refuge in vulgar banter. "You had 
 better put on a little rouge, ' ' he said, with a 
 laugh. "You are growing too white for 
 even your fetching style of beauty. Amer- 
 ican women fade early, but, like many other 
 dried-up things in nature, they hang on, for- 
 ever and a day. A woman's good-looks and 
 her life should be given their conge" together. ' ' 
 For answer, Mrs. Mackirby looked quietly 
 toward the motionless, expressionless maid. 
 "Tell Thomas, " she said, "that I shall not 
 want him for this half-hour. I will ring for 
 you if I need you. Close the door." She 
 was at the lock as the maid gained the cor- 
 ridor. She turned the key, then walked 
 back to where her husband was standing, 
 and stood so close to him that her breath 
 fanned his face.
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 17 
 
 "Do you think," she said, slowly, "that it 
 is an evidence of birth or breeding to speak 
 to a wife as you have just spoken to me 
 before a servant? Do you think, even if you 
 do not love me or cherish me, that I deserve 
 such discourtesy at your hands? Do you 
 not realize what financial comforts I have 
 brought to you, your mother and your 
 brothers?" 
 
 "How dare you!" he said, thrusting his 
 face still closer to hers. "How dare you, 
 you young upstart! How dare you! you 
 who offered yourself to me body and soul, 
 say that I am beholden to you for any- 
 thing?" His last words were less vehement, 
 less threatening. He felt the unmoved 
 steadiness of her gaze, the quiet, fearless 
 dignity of her presence. 
 
 "If," she said slowly, as though continu- 
 ing the speech he had broken in upon, and 
 quite unconscious of his interruption, "if 
 you had remained decently loyal to your 
 obligations of husband and father, I should 
 have considered it best to have continued, 
 for the childrens' sake, the support to your 
 mother, yourself and your brothers. As it 
 is, I shall make it my duty to go to London
 
 1 8 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 and consult with a lawyer whom I know 
 as to the most speedy way of securing a 
 separation from you and obtaining the 
 guardianship of my little girls." 
 
 Before she could realize his intention, 
 perhaps before he was conscious in the 
 blind, mad anger of his action, the man, 
 with all the force at his command, had 
 struck the woman standing before him a 
 blow in the face. She neither cried out 
 nor fainted. She showed no evidence of 
 shock or anger. She stood still and looked 
 at him, and he looked with something akin 
 to horror at the white welts his fingers had 
 made. 
 
 "May I suggest," he said, at last, in a 
 voice meant to be lightly scornful, "that it 
 would be wise if in the future you reserve 
 your indelicate insinuations for other ears 
 than mine? Remember, I do not permit 
 my mother to be spoken disrespectfully of, 
 even by my wife. As for your threat, it will 
 never be more than that. You are too vain 
 to let the world know that you were 
 weighed in the balance and found wanting. 
 My chastisement has been severe, but it 
 was justly inflicted.
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 19 
 
 "Arnica is recommended to reduce inflam- 
 mation and swelling; pray send to the 
 chemist for some if you have not any by 
 you; and now I wish you good-after- 
 noon. ' ' He walked to the door and unlocked 
 it. As he was about tD pass out, he added 
 suavely : ' ' Perhaps you would better dilute 
 with one part of water; the crude arnica 
 might be too severe, ' ' and he was gone.
 
 20 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Bonnie Mackirby walked to the long 
 mirror and looked critically at her face. It 
 was beginning to swell and look dark, and 
 she felt a strange stiffness in the muscles. 
 She went to her bureau, and took from one 
 of the drawers a black Spanish lace veil, 
 and proceeded to tie it over her face and 
 bonnet. Then she rang the bell. "Tell 
 Thomas," she said to the proper maid, 
 who appeared before she had taken her 
 fingers from the knob, "to bring the carriage 
 at once." 
 
 "It is at the door now, mem." 
 
 "So much the better; but, Elizabeth, 
 where are the children?" 
 
 "The young ladies are hout with Parks, 
 mem." 
 
 "When they come in, tell them that I 
 asked for them, and say that I shall surely 
 be home in time to take tea in the nursery. ' ' 
 Then she walked past the prim maid, went 
 down the stairs and out to her carriage.
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 21 
 
 The footman stood holding the brougham 
 door open. Mrs. Mackirby paused with one 
 foot upon the step. "James," she said, 
 "tell Thomas to drive to the bank in Pan- 
 cross Street. I shall be detained some time ; 
 so you may leave me there and go home. ' ' 
 
 James touched his hat, saw that all Mrs. 
 Mackirby 's skirts were carefully put out of 
 che way of the carriage-door, shut her 
 softly in, gave his orders to Thomas, 
 mounted his seat, folded his arms, and they 
 were off. In due time Mrs. Mackirby 
 reached Pancross Street and entered the bank. 
 
 "I wish," she said to an usher, "to see 
 Mr. Prindle. I am Mrs. Mackirby." 
 
 "Ah, indeed ! Pray step this way, this was 
 Mr. Prindle's room. Mr. Prindle, Mrs. 
 Mackirby. ' ' 
 
 Mr. Prindle, brisk, dry and varnished (not 
 polished) lost no time in getting out of his 
 high wheel-about, counting-house chair 
 placid, beaming and effusive he was say- 
 ing, "Now, really, what could he have the 
 pleasure of doing for Mrs. Mackirby?" and 
 "Wouldn't Mrs. Mackirby be seated?" 
 "Really, he would be glad if she would." 
 
 Mrs. Mackirby "wanted Mr. Prindle to
 
 22 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 call her up a messenger;" she "wanted 
 pen, ink and paper that was all." 
 
 These requests were speedily acceded 
 to, the note was written and directed, the 
 messenger dispatched, and then, thanking 
 Mr. Prindle for his courtesy, Mrs. Mackirby 
 left the bank and walked to a chemist's 
 shop, a shop at which she was in the habit 
 of making any medicinal purchases neces- 
 sary for herself or her household. 
 
 To the man who came forward to serve 
 her she said: "I scarcely think you will 
 recognize Mrs. Mackirby through this heavy 
 veil, Mr. Tinker. I am obliged to wear it 
 because I have bruised my face, and I have 
 come in to have you give me the ingredients 
 to form a lotion which my grandmother 
 and my mother both used for whitening the 
 skin. If you will write down the names 
 and quantities as I give them to you, you 
 may send them home for me, as my carriage 
 is not here." 
 
 "How," asked Mr. Tinker, looking up 
 from reading over the list of ingredients, 
 "how, may I ask, do you use the fly-paper?" 
 
 "Why," said Mrs. Mackirby, "I lay it in 
 a saucer, and pour on about four table-
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 23 
 
 spoonfuls of water. When the fly-paper 
 has been thoroughly soaked it contains 
 enough arsenic to give the lotion a bleach- 
 ing effect; the rest of the things, like 
 glycerine and elderflower, soothe and heal." 
 
 "Oh, I see," said Mr. Tinker, and he 
 bowed Mrs. Mackirby to the door. 
 
 Once outside the chemist's, she took her 
 way to a street somewhat removed from the 
 busy center of trade and traffic, in which 
 there had long been established a quiet, 
 respectable hotel, much frequented by coun- 
 try merchants and progressive farmers and 
 their families. She went through the door 
 of the private entrance and up the stairs, 
 and into the public parlor or reception-room. 
 
 A few people were sitting in groups by the 
 windows and near the door. One man was 
 seated at a table, pretending to be interested 
 in a copy of the "Illustrated News." As 
 Mrs. Mackirby entered, he looked up, laid 
 down his paper, rose, and, hat in hand, came 
 toward her. There was no cordiality in 
 his manner, he looked both perplexed and 
 annoyed ; but he was evidently too well bred 
 to be anything but formally polite and gra- 
 cious.
 
 24 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 Motioning him to take a chair and 
 seating herself upon another, Mrs. Mackirby 
 lifted her veil. 
 
 "I received your note," she said, and 
 I have asked you to meet me here 
 to tell you that every accusation your 
 letter contained against my husband 
 has been known to me for a long time, but 
 until your note came I had always supposed 
 you to be his particular friend, his boon 
 companion ; but even believing this, I have 
 never been able to understand for what pur- 
 pose Mr. Mackirby has brought you so con- 
 stantly into his private life, has thrust you 
 so insistently upon me, has left you to be my 
 companion through long evenings, has left 
 me dependent upon your escort from theaters 
 and balls; but through it all, you cannot 
 say that any act or word of mine has been 
 disloyal to my vows of wifehood and mother- 
 hood. And now has come a time when I 
 decline to endure longer your presence in 
 my home, and I have come to ask you 
 to-day to decline Mr. Mackirby's invita- 
 tions. This is all, save to request you to 
 return to me now the note written you from 
 the bank."
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 25 
 
 He took the note from his pocket and 
 handed it to her, with a bow. 
 
 "1 should," he said, "be greedy indeed if 
 out of my abundance of love-letters from the 
 charming Mrs. Mackirby I refused her 
 this proper little note. ' ' 
 
 "What do you mean?" she said, leaning 
 toward him, "What do yon mean?" 
 
 "I mean," he answered, in a voice as 
 cold and calm as hers was hurried, "I mean 
 that your love-letters to me exceed in num- 
 ber those said to have been written by Van- 
 nessa to Swift. ' ' 
 
 She looked about her in a dazed, stupid 
 way, she put one hand to her temple, and 
 then sank back into her chair. 
 
 He leaned toward her. "If," he whis- 
 pered, "you deny me admission to your 
 house, you will wish before many days are 
 over that you had never been born. Your 
 husband is a puppet in my hands. I have 
 been useful to him in procuring a certain 
 drug that it is difficult to purchase, even 
 with much American gold. If you are not 
 more than kind to me, I will gather the 
 letters 1 have alluded to together and give
 
 26 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 them personally into your husband's hands!" 
 She said no word in reply. She simply 
 rose and left the room and the hotel, and 
 hailing a cab, drove directly home.
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 2? 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 As she drew up at No. 61 Charnley Street, 
 Mrs. Mackirby noticed that a doctor's gig 
 was before the house, and to her question as 
 to who had been taken ill, she was informed 
 by the butler that "the master was very 
 bad" ' and was "groanin' and takin' on awful. " 
 
 With all speed Mrs. Mackirby hurried up 
 the stairs, and entered her husband's room. 
 One glance in his face told her how ill he 
 was, and with this knowledge she forgot 
 resentment, forgot her recent encounter, 
 forgot everything but that the father of her 
 children was sick and suffering. She had 
 taken off her bonnet, and she was conscious 
 that the strange doctor who lived near by, 
 and whom the servants had called in as the 
 nearest practitioner was looking in aston- 
 ished fashion at her swollen, discolored face ; 
 but the knowledge of the fact was very 
 fleeting, for her husband's voice recalled all 
 her interest to him and to his sufferings. 
 
 "Oh, Bonnie! Bonnie!" he said. "lam
 
 28 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 so glad that you have come! The doctor 
 does not seem to understand. It is the old 
 trouble, Bonnie, the pain, the thirst, the 
 nausea." 
 
 ' ' Dear ! " she said, bending over him , ' ' have 
 you been buying and taking more patent 
 medicines and dangerous drugs at the office?' ' 
 
 He answered "Yes" to her with his eyes; 
 he was too weak and sick to speak more 
 words. 
 
 "I think, doctor," she said, looking up, 
 "that we had better use an emetic." 
 
 The doctor was a young man, and but 
 recently received into the medical ranks, and 
 he took umbrage at any suggestion made to 
 him concerning the treatment of a patient 
 under his care, and particularly to advice 
 given by a woman, who evidently was ad- 
 dicted to drink, and who in one of her 
 recent debauches had fallen and badly 
 disfigured her face. 
 
 ' ' I am not in the habit, madame, ' ' he said 
 severely, "of applying remedies that are 
 not applicable to the condition and the 
 symptoms of my patient. I perfectly 
 realize Mr. Mackirby's cause of illness 
 indigestion takes on many forms and
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 29 
 
 guises. Mr. Mackirby, madame, has an 
 acute attack of what we know in the profes- 
 sion as cardalgia, and perhaps gastralgia, of 
 the stomach. ' ' 
 
 "I do not question your ability," said Mrs. 
 Mackirby, gently; "but for more than ten 
 years my husband has been subject to just 
 such attacks as these some more, some less 
 violent and I have come to know that the 
 best method of relief is that which I intend 
 to apply. Nothing else has saved him from 
 death many a time before; nothing else 
 will save him now. Our family physician, 
 who is absent from the city, would convince 
 you that I am correct if he were here. ' ' 
 
 "Ami, then, to imply, madame, that your 
 husband is in the habit of feeding himself 
 on poisons, and that he is sometimes careless 
 and overreaches the dose?" 
 
 "You may imply what you choose," she 
 said, in answer, "but I shall apply my 
 remedy. ' ' 
 
 Her manner quieted the young man, but 
 his pride was wounded, and he held Mrs. 
 Mackirby a grudge, and he did not fail to 
 use it to her disparagement when time and 
 opportunity gave occasion.
 
 30 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The treatment prescribed by Mrs. Mac- 
 kirby to Mr. Mackirby was so eminently a 
 success that the gentleman in question, a 
 little weak and a trifle less pugnacious than 
 usual, went down to his office the next day 
 and brought back his bosom friend and boon 
 companion, Mr. Jack Thornely, to luncheon. 
 They had a mutual engagement for the 
 afternoon and evening, and proposed to 
 drive to the rendezvous together. 
 
 Mrs. Mackirby presided at luncheon. 
 The swelling on her face had considerably 
 moderated, but the purple streaks still 
 remained. 
 
 "Mrs. Mackirby had a bad slip-up yester- 
 day, ' ' said Mr. Mackirby, helping himself to 
 ham and lettuce; "isn't she fetching, Jack? 
 Aye?" 
 
 Mr. Thornely allowed his bold black eyes 
 to search the face of his hostess in a way 
 that should have made her husband rise up 
 and kick him from the room and the house.
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 31 
 
 But as it was, he merely smiled as he saw 
 the hot blood and the faint paleness succeed 
 each other in his wife's bruised face. 
 
 "Bonnie," he continued, "knows all 
 manner of lotions and balms to hide blem- 
 ishes. What did you put on this time, 
 Bonnie?" 
 
 "It is a lotion that grandmother used to 
 use," she answered, "and really it is a won- 
 derful thing. I suppose the arsenic that is 
 one of the ingredients is answerable in large 
 measure for effacing discolorations. ' ' 
 
 "I should think," said Mr. Thornely, 
 "that arsenic would be a very unsafe thing 
 to have about, particularly where there are 
 little children." 
 
 He looked at Mr. Mackirby, but Mrs. 
 Mackirby answered: "I do not use crude 
 arsenic; I get it by buying fly-paper and 
 soaking it in water, and it is not often, I am 
 thankful to say, that I have to use the 
 remedy; and when it is necessary and I am 
 steeping the fly-paper, I put it on a shelf, 
 out of reach of the children, and caution 
 everybody else about it. ' ' 
 
 " But, " said Thornely, "suppose Mackirby 
 should get hold of it. Mackirby is rather
 
 3* BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 fond of testing the effect of arsenic in its 
 various forms upon himself. ' ' 
 
 "I think," answered the wife, "that it 
 would take more than one dose of steeped 
 fly-paper to seriously trouble Mr. Mackirby, 
 and if such a thing did occur, there is always 
 the mustard water, you know. ' ' 
 
 Her words seemed to anger Mr. Mackirby, 
 but she, who was used to his moods and 
 words, saw nothing to heed or to remember 
 in the remarks he flung at her from the 
 opposite end of the table, but the servants in 
 the room found salable worth in every 
 syllable in an hour and a day that was yet to 
 come. 
 
 "Bonnie, this talk of arsenic and poison is 
 no laughing matter ; and you make a grave 
 mistake in letting it seem as though you 
 were indifferent at leaving about anything 
 that can kill at sight as easily as a pistol 
 Now, let us suppose that you were 
 just for argument, you know a vicious- 
 minded and fast young woman, rather than 
 the dear domestic dove that you are ! Let 
 us suppose that you had grown weary of 
 your middle-aged husband, and had fallen 
 in love with a younger man. Let us sup-
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 33 
 
 pose that the man to whom you had osten- 
 sibly given your heart and hand should die 
 suddenly. And suppose, my darling, it 
 should be known that you had been in the 
 habit of dabbling in poisons. Wise people 
 would put two and two together, and the 
 result might not be pleasant. Circum- 
 stantial evidence is an elastic condition ; add 
 to this a lover who could be proved, and a 
 beauty, which, whether real or manufac- 
 tured, answers one and the same purpose 
 for the majority, and what a case you have ! 
 
 "Robert, another roll! Ah, mother," 
 for into the room had come a little old lady, 
 very youthfully and fussily dressed, who 
 went directly up to Mr. Mackirby's chair 
 and gave him a bird-like, pecky kiss on his 
 forehead, shook hands with Mr. Thornely, 
 who came effusively forward, and then tak- 
 ing a chair beside her son, nodded toward 
 his wife in half-unconscious token of recog- 
 nition, as she said: 
 
 "I heard that you were at the bank yester- 
 day, Bonnie. If you remember I asked 
 you, as a particular favor, as I did not wish 
 to bother dear William, to cash me five hun- 
 dred pounds. Yes, William, I actually took 
 3
 
 34 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 the trouble to write this request to your 
 wife, and yet she obliges me, a woman 
 nearly eighty years old, to come here and 
 complain to you of her remissness ! It has 
 always been a matter of wonder to me that 
 people speaking the same language, people 
 supposed to be an offshoot of our own race, 
 should be so completely lacking in every 
 trait that is pre-eminently English. When 
 has this American wife of yours ever shown 
 me respect, courtesy or attention?" 
 
 "It's only a matter of long removal from 
 the center of civilization, mother," said Mr. 
 Mackirby, buttering his roll. "Turn any 
 species of tame animals into the wilderness 
 long enough, and they will lose every trace 
 of obedience and submission. ' ' 
 
 "Well," cried the old lady, "I thank God 
 on my bended knees every day of my life 
 that you, William, have had the good sense 
 not to bring a man child into the world. ' ' 
 She stopped and glared indignantly at her 
 daughter-in-law. "No, madame," she con- 
 tinued, with added fervor, "my son's name 
 will never descend through you; no base 
 American strain will mingle with our honor- 
 able pedigree. But, Bonnie, why did you
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 35 
 
 not get that money for me yesterday? 
 You were out for a long time, and you 
 didn't spend your entire afternoon at the 
 bank, either!" 
 
 Mrs. Mackirby was spared answering by 
 a little shrill scream from madame. 
 
 "Whatever have you done to your face?" 
 she cried, holding her lorgnette in her 
 palsied fingers, to her eyes, and gazing with 
 an expression of entertaining interest into 
 her daughter-in-law's disfigured counte- 
 nance. "Not burning it with some vile, 
 home-made cosmetic, I hope! It is vulgar 
 enough to use those that are skillfully pre- 
 pared and sold in shops, but such bungling 
 creations as you are forever puttering in 
 are sure to end disastrously, if not fatally!" 
 
 It takes but a straw, they say, a straw 
 more to make the burden too heavy for the 
 camel's back. 
 
 "I use no cosmetics," answered young 
 Mrs. Mackirby. "I do not need them; you, 
 madame, use enough for the entire family. " 
 
 The old lady dropped her eye-glasses with 
 a clatter upon the plate before her. 
 
 "William!" she cried, working her mouth 
 and nodding her head, "do you hear this?
 
 36 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 Did you ever expect to be witness to such 
 an insulting of the mother that bore you? 
 In your own house and at your own table!" 
 and then she fell to weeping softly, behind 
 the corner of a small lace handkerchief. 
 
 Perhaps the unusual evidence of bravery 
 of speech in his usually submissively silent 
 young wife touched some sense of admira- 
 tion in Mr. Mackirby; perhaps the memory 
 of the blow that he had given her gave him 
 a tinge of shame, perhaps he recalled her 
 attendance upon him in yesterday's illness 
 perhaps a great many things, but at all 
 events he rose, threw down his napkin, 
 walked over to the mantle, took a cigar from 
 his pocket and lighted it, and after the fire 
 was well started, and he had thrust a hand 
 into each of his breeches pockets, he said, 
 addressing himself to Thornely: 
 
 "If heaven means wife and mother-in-law 
 for me, I prefer to be excused! Just fancy 
 this accompaniment to one's meals on an 
 average of once or twice in a week the year 
 round! I say, Bonnie, you go up to the 
 library and write mother out her check. It 
 is a big one, but it will do you no harm to
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 37 
 
 sacrifice some bonnets and gowns, and per- 
 haps their loss will teach you to guard that 
 too out- spoken tongue of yours. Come on, 
 Jack, it is quite time that we were starting. ' '
 
 38 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The twilight was fading into the gloom of 
 night, as Mrs. Mackirby sat in the school- 
 room with her children gathered about her. 
 The two older girls were on footstools at her 
 side, and baby Bonnie was cuddled into her 
 mother's arms, her head pillowed upon 
 her mother's breast. 
 
 "Mother, dear," said Marion, the oldest, 
 "tell us about the time that you had the 
 tableaux at school, and most about the ones 
 that you took part in. " 
 
 "Well," said Mrs. Mackirby, "once upon a 
 time " "Mother," said eight-year-old 
 Esther, breaking in upon the recital, "Parks 
 says that her cousin, Bridget Hogan's second 
 cousin's uncle was named Patrick Hennesy 
 and that he went over in the steerage to 
 America and that he joined a great Indian 
 society. What is the name of it, sister?" 
 
 ' ' Tammany Braves. ' ' 
 
 "Yes. Too Many Braves that's it! 
 And, mother, he comes back to Ireland now 
 on visits, and he scatters gold ! And Parks
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 39 
 
 says that he's a real blooded American 
 gentleman ! that he keeps his hat on all the 
 time! Parks says he wouldn't take it off to 
 her Majesty! And she says the 'Queen's 
 Own' daren't lay a finger on him to make 
 him!" 
 
 "Oh, never mind what Parks says, 
 Esther," says Marion, reprovingly. "Let 
 mother tell about the tableaux." 
 
 "Well," proceeded Mrs. Mackirby, "some 
 very beautiful tableaux were arranged." 
 
 "Mother," breaks in Esther again, "did 
 your grandfather come over from Ireland 
 in the steerage to America? and did he get 
 to be a boss? And is that the way you came 
 to have all the money to take care of us and 
 grandmother and Uncle Fred and Uncle 
 Dick?" 
 
 "I take care of grandmother and Uncle 
 Fred and Uncle Dick ! Who told you so?" 
 
 "I did," says Marion, looking up into her 
 mother's face. 
 
 "I was over at grandmother's the other 
 day, and she fell asleep, and Kittie, her 
 maid, asked me if I would be a good 
 girl, and go and sit behind the window- 
 curtain and be as quiet and still as a mouse,
 
 40 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 until she came back. So I said yes, 
 I would, and in a little while Kittie went 
 away, and in a little while more Uncle Fred 
 came in, and grandma woke up; but I 
 staid behind the curtain, because I had 
 promised Kittie that I would, and it did 
 seem as if they grandma and Uncle Fred 
 would never stop talking. Uncle Fred said 
 he believed father's habit was getting 
 worse and worse, and he was sure it 
 would get him some day, and then that even 
 the squaw couldn't pull him through. What 
 is a habit, mother, and who is the squaw? 
 And grandmother called father a poor, dear 
 boy, and said who could blame him ! And 
 Uncle Fred said father was heavily insure ! 
 What does heavily insure mean, mother? 
 And he said the police was all made out for 
 the brats, and he said that the squaw's dot 
 was fixed in the same way, and that when 
 father was drug drunk he had made him 
 write a good thing on a paper, and that the 
 rest of the squaw's money she could do as 
 she liked with if she wasn't trapped. And 
 that as soon as William was dead she would 
 marry her sweetheart Jack. What did they 
 mean, mother? I couldn't understand
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 41 
 
 much, but I seemed to know that they were 
 talking about you and your money. ' ' 
 
 "You were quite mistaken, dear," said 
 Mrs. Mackirby, as she tenderly smoothed 
 the soft-braided hair. 
 
 "You did not hear Uncle Fred and 
 grandma say these things. I will tell 
 you what happened. You fell asleep 
 behind the window-curtains! Don't you 
 remember the odd things that Alice in 
 Wonderland dreamed about the March hare 
 and the mad hatter, and the rest? And 
 you know she was lying all the time 
 dreaming on her sister's lap. " 
 
 "I don't think I was asleep!" says Marion, 
 gravely. "And besides, mother, I have 
 heard them talk about you before. I have 
 heard them say that " 
 
 But her mother's hand was put gently over 
 her lips. "Never mind what they say, or 
 have said, my little daughter. It is wrong 
 to listen to what is not intended for our 
 ears; it is still more wrong to repeat that 
 which we have heard. And now listen, and 
 don't interrupt me again until I have quite 
 finished my story about the tableaux we gave 
 in the dear homeland across the sea. ' '
 
 42 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 But Bonnie Mackirby did think of what 
 Marion had said to her. She thought of it 
 all the evening, as she sat in her box at her 
 husband's side at the play; she thought of 
 it through what seemed to her the intermin- 
 able hours of a night. When she met her hus- 
 band at the breakfast-table next morning, 
 she was dressed for the street, and she told 
 him that she was going to take the morning 
 train to London. 
 
 Mr. Mackirby was interested in his 
 "Times," and acknowledged her offer of 
 information by gruntingly remarking that 
 he "supposed it meant a fresh supply of 
 bonnets and frocks. ' ' 
 
 So Mrs. Mackirby, having finished her 
 coffee, went out, and walking to the station, 
 took a train and arrived in due time at 
 her destination. 
 
 Taking a cab she directed the man to drive 
 her to a quarter of the city occupied by 
 one of the prominent government offices.
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 43 
 
 On reaching the gray building she paid 
 and dismissed the cab, mounted the steps, 
 and was about to enter when she came 
 face to face with an old gentleman, evi- 
 dently on his way to a much -coronated 
 coupe" that was drawn up before the door. 
 This old gentleman bore evidence in his 
 furrowed face, in his carriage and bearing, 
 of birth and breeding. And the timid 
 woman, whose heart was beating wildly 
 with the daringness of her undertaking, had 
 an impulse to speak to him. 
 
 "Pardon me," she said, slowly (for it was 
 hard for her to utter words), "but could you 
 tell me at what hour it would be possible for 
 me to*fmd the Honorable Lord Blank Blank- 
 shire in his office?" 
 
 She had raised her veil, and was looking 
 the old gentleman straight in the face. He 
 lifted his hat. 
 
 "I am the man you name," he said, 
 gravely, and looking a second time into her 
 face. "I am at your service. Will you 
 come with me?" 
 
 He stepped aside, still hat in hand, for her 
 to precede him across the threshold; then 
 preceding her he led the way through a
 
 44 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 series of busy rooms, and paused before a 
 door at which stood a liveried servant. 
 
 ' ' Do not allow me, ' ' said the gentleman to 
 the servant, "to be disturbed. This way, 
 madame. ' ' 
 
 Once within the handsome room he drew a 
 chair for his guest, and when she was seated 
 he took one himself. He saw that the beau- 
 tiful young face was troubled ; that it was 
 difficult for her to secure sufficient control to 
 speak calmly, so he said some conventional 
 things about the recent unusual weather, 
 and that he feared the continual dampness 
 would affect the health of the city; would 
 perhaps be productive of loss to trade. As 
 he talked he noted a tinge of color coming 
 back to the fair skin with a real pleasure, 
 and a pity for her sorrow (though it was 
 unknown to him) was strong within him. 
 
 "You do not know me," she said at last, 
 "and for reasons which I will try to explain, 
 I should not have made myself known to you 
 if there had been any other help this side of 
 heaven. I never wished until last night to 
 be a Roman Catholic. I then envied those 
 who when their minds are burdened and 
 heavy laden, could go and pour out their
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 45 
 
 cares and troubles and perplexities into some 
 human ear, with the blessed assurance that 
 their thoughts and words were as sealed 
 books to the one who listened, his only 
 mission in listening being to pour comfort and 
 peace upon the downcast and downtrodden ; 
 to make them look up, and see not the dark- 
 ness, but the light. 
 
 "I have always said my prayers, but I 
 never prayed until last night. I had to find 
 God. And my poor tossed soul finally 
 reached somewhere a place that for a better 
 word I will call home, and then, my lord, I 
 repeated over and over this childish request, 
 'Find me one friend! one friend! one friend!' 
 and as I knelt, saying again and again this 
 childish petition, your name came to me, 
 and I seemed to understand that it was Our 
 Father who had put it in my mind. I was 
 afraid to go to sleep, lest it should slip away 
 from me (my mind is very weary, my lord, 
 and my recollection is less keen than it used 
 to be). So I kept repeating your name over 
 till day and then I came to you. I am 
 here!" 
 
 No tears, no trembling; a parched, hungry 
 soul, looking up at him through sad, sad
 
 46 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 eyes. His keen gray eyes felt a mist before 
 them; this man of iron nerve, this states- 
 man, noted for his force, will, and haughty 
 reserve. 
 
 He said gently as though to a child whom 
 he cherished, "Do not doubt that Our Father 
 guided you in this decision, and speak to me 
 freely. My time and my earnest attention 
 are at your service. " 
 
 It was then that the storm broke. The 
 tortured soul bowed her head within her 
 hands and sobbed such sobs as only come 
 when one who has endured a life's hell 
 bravely is lifted up, and breathes the air of 
 mercy, which is a bit of heaven come down 
 to earth. 
 
 He said no word to her of comfort he 
 took a book from the table and began to 
 read ; he never looked toward her ; he seemed 
 quite unconscious of her presence ; but she 
 knew this was not really so, she felt his 
 strong unspoken sympathy, and at last she 
 spoke, and at the sound of her voice he 
 laid down his book, but he did not look at 
 her; he listened. 
 
 "It is a rather long story," she said, 
 "and in order that I may justify myself
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 47 
 
 in forcing my affairs upon your time 
 and attention, I want to tell you that which 
 I think no one else in England knows that 
 is, that I am, through my father's family, 
 lineally descended from a certain Lord Blank 
 Blankshire, who was sent by the Crown to 
 New England to fill an official position in 
 Colonial days. My father, my grandfather, 
 my great-grandfather were all intensely 
 patriotic Americans, and for some rea- 
 sons best known to themselves they made 
 this fact of caste as much a matter of oblivion 
 as possible. I do not think my mother, 
 (for whom everything representing a 
 title had a powerful fascination), possessed 
 the slightest clue to this ancestral link of my 
 father's. The story, or history of genealog- 
 ical record, he left under seal to me, his 
 only heir, to be opened when I was twenty- 
 five. With this record was an old ring it 
 seems to be emblematic." She took off her 
 glove, and pulled from her finger a strange 
 circlet of beaten gold. Upon its wide outer 
 surface in enamels there was a triangle 
 with the figure '32' in it, and pillars, squares, 
 and other Masonic emblems. She then 
 pointed to the inside of the ring in which
 
 48 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 was engraved the arms of the Blankshires, 
 and these words, in old English lettering, 
 "Defende thyne owne to the deathe. " 
 
 The old man took from his own finger this 
 ring's mate and laid them side by side; then 
 he took her ring, raised it to his lips, and 
 slipped it back upon her ringer. 
 
 "If," he said, slowly, "at anytime during 
 my life, you need my help, send this 
 ring to me, and should trouble come to you 
 when I am gone, my oldest son will under- 
 stand. This circlet possesses a double 
 power it bears the emblems of Masonry 
 without, it holds the motto of our house 
 within."
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 49 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 "My lord," said Mrs. Mackirby, "I 
 wish to exact a promise from you, that 
 for the present, you will keep silence 
 regarding my visit and all that you 
 have discovered through it, and that 
 you will never, under any stress of circum- 
 stances or conditions (no matter how urgent 
 they may be), unless I give you permission, 
 seem to have ever heard of me." 
 
 "And why this request, little cousin?" 
 said the old gentleman. "I have a good wife, 
 who would gladly welcome you as kins- 
 woman, and daughters who would enjoy 
 meeting you, and re-opening a discussion 
 pro and con as to the causes that led up to 
 our estrangement through and by the Ameri- 
 can Revolution. ' ' 
 
 But Mrs. Mackirby shook her head. "My 
 lord, ' ' she said, ' ' I have known of this rela- 
 tionship for more than a year ! And I have 
 not breathed it to a single soul ! I have kept 
 the papers sealed, with instructions that in 
 4
 
 50 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 case of my death the package should not be 
 opened until my youngest daughter was of 
 age. I have worn the ring on a chain, 
 about my neck, having had a jeweled shell 
 made (like a locket) to fit over it. And I 
 have done all this because the family into 
 which I have married would not appeal to 
 you and yours, my lord. 
 
 "I 'was married when I was scarcely 
 sixteen, to Mr. Mackirby; he was then in 
 business in America ; he was a friend of my 
 mother's (my father was dead). My mother 
 was ambitious for me, her only child. I had 
 a large fortune, and the investments made 
 by my father were so wise that the income 
 continues to grow. I was a very childish 
 girl, my lord, very inexperienced and 
 simple-hearted; therefore the awakening to 
 a realization of much that life means 
 was a shock, from which I shall never 
 recover. My husband had lived nearly fifty 
 years in the world when he married me, 
 and I think all my childish expressions of 
 surprise and disapproval were most annoy- 
 ing and distasteful to him. My mother told 
 me that Mr. Mackirby's family were people 
 of exalted rank and fashion ; that his grand-
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 51 
 
 father, William Wiggins, was a peer of the 
 realm. But a title founded on excellent 
 brewing does not insure to the brewer, or 
 his heirs, savoir-faire. 
 
 "I do not wish to discuss the father of my 
 children, my lord, or his relatives, and I 
 should not have said so much as this did I 
 not wish you to understand the principal 
 reason for my being here, to know the some- 
 thing you can, I feel -sure, do for me." 
 
 "I appreciate all that you have so gra- 
 ciously and delicately implied, my dear Mrs. 
 Mackirby, " said his lordship, "and I beg 
 that you will understand me as not being 
 disloyal or discourteous to you when I say 
 that I entirely agree with you in believing 
 that the Mackirbys are not desirable addi- 
 tions to certain forms of what is called con- 
 ventional life. 
 
 "We Blankshires are not, as you probably 
 know, a rich family ; our names are seldom 
 recorded in the lists of those who frequent 
 Vanity Fair. We have a good, ample 
 income, a home in the country unincumbered 
 by debt, its grounds are kept up, its tenantry 
 self-respectful and thrifty, its cottages clean, 
 modern and sanitary. We have a shooting-
 
 52 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 lodge, with plenty of land for sport and 
 plenty of sport on the land. We have an 
 old town house, with its old furniture, 
 old plate, and old pictures, and in town and 
 country we entertain our old friends ; and 
 in other words, we Blankshires live the lives 
 of old-fashioned gentlemen and gentle- 
 women. 
 
 "We have never had a scandal, or pro- 
 duced a sensation; our men have been 
 upright, decent, and God-fearing, our 
 women modest, moral and domestic. True 
 the head of our house has always been 
 assigned to some place of governmental 
 honor and trust, but then we have been 
 faithful stewards; so the honor conferred 
 upon us does not seem to have been mis- 
 placed; all this to show you why I so 
 readily comply with your request, but it 
 is with this proviso: that you will never 
 fail to let me be of service to you, or to 
 your children, if I can." 
 
 "I thank you, my lord," she said. "I 
 think we perfectly understand each other, 
 and now to come to my particular reason for 
 troubling you. My husband, my lord, is 
 not, I fully believe, responsible for much
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 53 
 
 that he says and does ; he has been a dys- 
 peptic for many years, and after dosing 
 himself with every quack medicine that he 
 has seen advertised, or has been told of, he 
 has finally come to taking crude arsenic; 
 he mixes it, in ever-increasing quantities, in 
 his food and drink, and I have reason to be- 
 lieve it is affecting his brain as much as 
 though it were alcohol. He grows more 
 and more impatient with me ; he has become 
 a monomaniac on the subject of my being 
 an American. He seems to believe that I 
 induced him to marry me. He seems to 
 consider that I have no rights to even my 
 own independent income. 
 
 "The Mackirby family have an intimate 
 friend, my lord (a Mr. Jack Thornely), who I 
 have often heard them say is related 
 to your wife's family. This man, for 
 what purpose I cannot say, is constantly 
 forced upon me as escort abroad, as com- 
 panion in my own home. Not long 
 since, my lord, he (Mr. Jack Thornley) com- 
 pleted his insulting attentions by sending 
 to me, through my maid, an unsealed note. 
 Its written contents were couched in the 
 most endearingly familiar terms. It told
 
 54 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 me shameful truths truths, my lord, 
 of my husband's daily life it offered 
 me opportunity to engage in liaisons with 
 this friend of the Mackirby family. I 
 burned the note, and then, my husband 
 coming in, I was unable to restrain my 
 pent-up indignation. Shame kept me from 
 speaking of the insult I had just received, 
 but I told my husband that I should divorce 
 him and take my children. Then I did that 
 which I was heartily sorry for, my lord ; I 
 told my husband that I had supported him 
 and his family for ten years, and " she 
 paused. 
 
 "He struck you," said the old gentleman. 
 "He struck you across your face." 
 
 She did not answer; she could not. 
 
 "That same afternoon, my lord, I went to 
 my bank, and from there sent, by special 
 messenger, a note to Mr. Thornely at his 
 club. I asked him to meet me on its receipt 
 at a respectable hotel, in the public parlor. 
 
 "He was there when I reached it, and I 
 pleaded with him never to come to my house 
 again. I asked him to give me back 
 the note that I had written to him, and oh, 
 my lord, he asked me why I was so anxious
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 55 
 
 to retain this one formal epistle, when he 
 had in his possession innumerable love- 
 letters from me, he said he would, if I 
 attempted to thwart his coming and going, 
 send them with a note of explanation to 
 my husband. My lord, I never wrote that 
 man one line in my life, except the note I 
 have mentioned, and I have come to you to 
 ask if there is any way in your power by 
 which you can remove Mr. Jack Thornely 
 from Ploverlie." 
 
 The white-haired gentleman sat looking 
 down at his desk for some time in silence. 
 
 "I am sorry," he said at last, "that you 
 asked him to meet you at the hotel ; it was 
 a foolish and most unwise thing to do. 
 Women, young and old, are too apt to be 
 governed by impulse. Dickens never gave 
 a better piece of advice than that which he 
 puts into Mr. Meagle's mouth, when he 
 advises Tattycorum 'to count five and 
 twenty, ' my dear. If in your first impulse 
 you had stopped to count five and twenty, 
 you wouldn't, I know you wouldn't, have 
 found courage to do such an unwifely thing. 
 Nay, nay, little cousin; don't be grieved; 
 the truest friendship and the most loyal is
 
 56 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 that which uncovers its real thought. 
 But I shall make, at once, an arrangement 
 to send my wife's nephew to look after 
 some personal business of mine in Wales. 
 I shall take him completely out of your 
 life and he never shall know why I became 
 interested in his welfare. ' ' 
 
 "I wish," said Bonnie Mackirby, rising, 
 and laying her hand in that of her kins- 
 man, "I wish that you might understand all 
 that the simple 'I thank you' that I now 
 utter, implies. I wish you might know all 
 the gratitude that is in my heart! Oh, I 
 wish you could know. ' ' 
 
 And so they parted.
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 57 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Twenty-four hours later Mr. Jack Thorn ely 
 and Mr. Frederick Mackirby sat together 
 in an alcove, in one of the lounging-rooms 
 of the Fraternity Club. Jack, calm, com- 
 placent, and nonchalant; Frederick, fussy, 
 fuming and fidgety. 
 
 "And you don't know how this sudden 
 placing of you by your uncle came about?" 
 Frederick said, fixing his snake-like eyes on 
 Jack's face. "It seems to me a something 
 resulting from more than mere chance. You 
 couldn't possibly put the old man off for a 
 few weeks, could you? It is a pity not to 
 finish the thing up. ' ' 
 
 "You d d fool!" interrupted Jack, in a 
 
 pleasant, cheerful, jolly, good-fellowship 
 tone, "you don't suppose, do you, that I am 
 going to lose a life-position, which entails 
 little work and a good income, for the chance 
 of a few thousand pounds that I may gain 
 by hunting down your game for you? You 
 don't think for a holy minute that I would
 
 58 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 allow myself to be mixed up now in a divorce 
 scandal? No, sir! I burned every one of 
 those letters last night. I burned every 
 trace of the whole business, but your letters 
 to me; for, mark you, if I were supposed to 
 have been diverting myself in any such 
 direction, the sanctimonious and honorable 
 mummied kinsman would not take me up 
 with a pair of tongs. ' ' 
 
 "But," said Frederick, "I can't get it out 
 of my head that the squaw went up to Lon- 
 don for some purpose. She is a clever one, 
 Jack. She might have suspected and gone 
 to him." 
 
 The look of scorn that Jack Thornely cast 
 upon Frederick had its effect upon that 
 man; he winced and looked out of the 
 window. 
 
 ' ' Bonnie Mackirby go to the office and ask 
 for Blankshire! You might better try to 
 convince me that she mounted to the gates 
 of heaven and consulted Saint Peter. The 
 way to his lordship's official presence is like 
 the way of the transgressor, it is hard (to 
 get at) ; it is hedged about with letters of 
 introduction and appointment ; it is a matter 
 of ways and days to compass, and besides a
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 59 
 
 woman that lets her husband beat her, and 
 disgrace her ; that lets her relatives by mar- 
 riage insult her, and live off her bounty, 
 hasn't enough spirit to do more than make 
 lotions to heal her bruises. The squaw visit 
 my uncle! Frederick, I have long since 
 paid you the compliment of being the clever- 
 est knave of my acquaintance; but I did 
 not know until this afternoon, that you 
 were the biggest fool, as well. ' ' 
 
 "Well," said Frederick, more meekly and 
 amiably than his companion's eulogy would 
 seem to merit, "we won't go into further 
 discussion. All that you can do for me now 
 is to kindly return those letters which 
 you have just mentioned, as having in 
 your possession." 
 
 Jack laughed. "They have their price," 
 he said, slowly. "If you cannot pay me 
 for them your sister-in-law can. I will take 
 them to her to-morrow morning unless you 
 redeem them this evening with five hundred 
 pounds. 
 
 "If I give those letters to Mrs. Mackirby 
 and she pays me for them, I will go to her 
 husband, and so help me God, I will unfold 
 to him all your damnable plot! I will con-
 
 60 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 fess my part in it, and brute and arsenic- 
 eater though he is, he will collect enough 
 remnants of scattered manhood to resent 
 what you have done and hope to do. 
 
 ' ' If you pay me, the game, so far as I am 
 concerned, is still yours to lose or win. One 
 woman more or less does not matter, and 
 what you do with her is nothing to me. 
 What I want is five hundred pounds for the 
 services I have rendered you in the past; 
 for my silence in the future. ' ' 
 
 "But how the devil am I to get the money? 
 Forging love-letters is one thing! Forging 
 a check is another ! Now, how am I to get 
 this five hundred pounds?" 
 
 "That is a matter for you to evolve, my 
 dear fellow, and I shall do myself the pleas- 
 ure of waiting upon you for your answer a 
 pecuniary answer at, say, nine this evening. 
 I must tear myself away now. There are 
 calls to make and notes to write, for Blank- 
 shire expects me to report for duty speedily. 
 
 "Listen; a suggestion; it may be helpful ! 
 Mrs. Mackirby drew a check for five hundred 
 pounds for your mother the other day. She, 
 your mother, has been to the bank and has 
 had it cashed. Probably, like a great many
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 61 
 
 other dear old ladies, she has taken it home 
 and hidden it away in the bolster-case, or a 
 stocking-foot, or under the carpet; get her 
 to tell you where it is, and then it will be an 
 easy matter for you to transfer it from its 
 hiding-place to me. ' '
 
 62 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Madame Mackirby was in a particularly 
 happy mood. She had heard, through her 
 second son Richard, or Dick, as he was 
 familiarly called, that Mr. Jack Thornely 
 had been made the recipient of a good 
 income, with a trifling amount of work at- 
 tached to it. But Mr. Jack Thornely's inter- 
 ests for better or worse had nothing to do 
 with Madame Mackirby's present buoyancy. 
 
 She was gloating over the thought of the 
 sorrow this transplanting of the man in 
 question would bring to her daughter-in-law, 
 whom, she had been brought to believe (by 
 her son Frederick, by her own maid 
 Kittie, and by Mrs. Mackirby's maid, Eliza- 
 beth) , was carrying on a flagrant flirtation 
 with Jack. She really should have been 
 mourning, instead of rejoicing at Jack's 
 going, but in her present excitement she 
 did not realize how much she would miss the 
 scandalous reports that had been served up
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 63 
 
 to her with her afternoon's cup of tea. These 
 interesting recitals had been better than a 
 tonic to her poor old body, but now she only 
 knew or believed that she knew that 
 William's wife was suffering; that her 
 heart would ache ; that she would shed tears 
 and perhaps, oh joyous thought, that she 
 would pine away, and lose flesh and color. 
 She felt herself growing quite juvenile and 
 kittenish at such a prospect, and she 
 hummed what she intended to be a tune, 
 which proved itself a something more 
 resembling in sound a death-rattle than 
 anything else. 
 
 Then both her boys had come to pay her 
 a visit they were in her sitting-room, and 
 Bonnie was the theme of her mother-in-law's 
 conversation, and what so natural as that 
 from Bonnie, Frederick should be brought 
 to think of sneak-thieves, and the successes 
 they were having in private houses, and how 
 powerless the police seemed to be to stop 
 their depredations. 
 
 "Of course, mother," said Frederick, with 
 a reverential sort of gentleness in his voice 
 and manner, "you never leave your jewels 
 out of the safe, and you only keep sufficient
 
 64 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 money in your purse for ordinary daily 
 demands?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," she said; she "was very 
 particular; very careful;" but she made a 
 motion to Frederick, unseen by Dick, to the 
 effect that he was to change the subject, and 
 that she would explain something to him 
 when they were alone. 
 
 Frederick was her favorite child ; she ex- 
 plained this by saying that they had so much 
 in common. Now on this particular afternoon 
 Richard was obliging he got up and without 
 the ceremony of a leave-taking made himself 
 conspicuous through his absence. 
 
 Richard was a conundrum to his family, 
 from the fact that while he lived at home he 
 kept his affairs his goings and comings 
 strictly to himself, and never expressed the 
 slightest interest in what concerned anybody 
 else. He was said to be "blase"," "born 
 tired," and all that sort of thing. It was 
 said that "everything bored him, and he 
 bored everybody. ' ' At all events, he rarely 
 talked, and seldom listened. He slept a 
 great part of his time, cared nothing for 
 books, seldom played cards or discussed 
 politics. He was very fond of horses, and
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 65 
 
 had the reputation among horsey people of 
 having horse sense and a betting-head. He 
 was very successful in his racing ventures, 
 and in this way was, with his own small 
 income as a nest-egg, able to be quite 
 independent of any support from his mother, 
 which meant taking charity from his Ameri- 
 can sister-in-law. 
 
 Another thing, in the family discussions 
 and conversations concerning "William's 
 wife" he took no part, and because silence 
 was the habit of his life his mother and 
 brother never doubted that his feelings and 
 sentiments, in this respect, accorded with 
 their own. 
 
 As soon as Richard's footsteps were heard 
 going down the stairs, Frederick fell fiercely 
 upon his mother. 
 
 "Do you mean to tell me," Frederick 
 began, fixing his eyes on the withered, 
 trembling creature before him, "do you 
 mean to tell me, mother, that you took all 
 the money Bonnie gave you the check for 
 out of the bank? Now you need not go to 
 whining and crying! It won't touch me! 
 Not a bit of it! How many times have I 
 told you that it was impossible to trust the 
 5
 
 66 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 best servants that ever lived? Now speak 
 up! Where is that money?" 
 
 "Frederick, my dear boy, do not be so 
 severe!" said the old lady, with a piteous 
 second-childhood quiver of grief on her lips. 
 "I took it all out because at my time of life 
 one never can tell what might happen, and 
 if I should die suddenly the law would 
 divide everything into three parts. Now 
 William does not want anything, and Dick 
 does not need anything ; but you, dear, with 
 your delicate, refined and expensive tastes, 
 do, and I thought I would give it all to you 
 for a birthday gift. Don't you see, dear?" 
 
 "Not a bit of an excuse, mother!" said 
 Frederick, more severely if possible than 
 before, "but the question is, where have you 
 hidden the money? Let me take it and put 
 it in the safe for to-night, and to-morrow 
 morning I will go with you and deposit it." 
 
 "Oh, it's all right. I assure you it's all 
 right, dear," she said, more cheerfully. "I 
 was very clever, and I'll tell you about it. 
 When Kittie went down for my tea (the day 
 that I brought it home) I pulled out the 
 drawers of my closet and made a ladder of 
 them, and I climbed up and put the bank
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 67 
 
 notes on the top shelf, in the corner under 
 the paper." 
 
 Frederick went at once to the place 
 designated, and he found the crisp bills 
 where his mother had put them. He 
 leisurely tucked them under his cuff and up 
 into his shirt-sleeve. 
 
 ''They are gone, mother," he called out to 
 her; "not a trace of them on the shelf. In 
 all probability you dreamed that you put 
 them there. You are always dozing after 
 you have been out in the air. You probably 
 dropped them in the street or left them in 
 the cab. " By this time he was back and by 
 her side. "Oh, mother, mother! when will 
 you ever learn to leave your money matters to 
 me? I won't scold you, dear scolding does 
 no good ; but do try to learn a lesson from 
 this experience. Now, won't you, mother?" 
 
 The shriveled arms wound themselves 
 about her boy's neck, and she laid her 
 plumpered and painted and powdered face 
 against his. 
 
 "My darling," she said, "how patient you 
 are with your foolish old mother, how gentle 
 and kind. The loss of the money is more
 
 68 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 than repaid to me through this evidence of 
 filial devotion. ' ' 
 
 Frederick patted the thin, dyed hair gently. 
 He had a slim, delicate-fingered, flexible 
 hand. 
 
 "Well, well, mother," he said, "we won't 
 break our hearts over the loss, even if five 
 hundred pounds does not grow on every 
 bush; so promise me, dear, promise me 
 really and truly to keep this matter a secret 
 between you and me. If you were to tell 
 Kittie it would go straight to Elizabeth, and 
 Bonnie would find it out and tell William, 
 and he might get it into his fast softening 
 brain that you were growing childish and 
 not to be trusted, and if he believed that he 
 would order the squaw to dole out money to 
 us, and where would I be then, mother? 
 You will be silent for my sake, won't you?" 
 
 "Yes, my precious boy," said Madame 
 Mackirby, humbly. "What wouldn't a 
 mother be willing to do for such a son?"
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 69 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Mr. William Mackirby sat alone in his 
 private office one pleasant day at the noon 
 hour. He was doing rather an unusual 
 thing for a gentleman of independent means 
 to trouble himself about, particularly when 
 his home was only a short distance in one 
 direction, his club only a short distance in 
 another. 
 
 He was cooking something that looked like 
 a farina, or white cornmeal porridge, over 
 an oil stove. A tap was heard upon the 
 door, and before he could rise or say "Come 
 in, " a burly figure of a seafaring man was 
 framed in the open doorway, and a gruff, 
 hearty voice was calling out: "Hello, 
 Mackirby, old man! How goes it?" 
 
 A gleam of real pleasure lit up Mr. 
 Mackirby 's fishy eyes. "Well, captain," he 
 cried, leaving his chair and coming toward 
 the man with both hands extended, "I never 
 expected to see you again. Where did you 
 blow from?"
 
 70 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 "Oh," said the big, cheerful, red-faced 
 tar, "from here and there and everywhere. 
 The bark 'Blanche' is like all the rest of her 
 sex contrary and uncertain. See? Ha, ha!" 
 
 "But," says Mr. Mackirby, infected into 
 a sort of jollity, "what, I repeat again, 
 brings you here?" 
 
 "A cargo," answered the captain; "it's 
 unloaded, and I'm going to start for home 
 (wind and waves permitting) to-morrow. I 
 never feel a bit of comfort in foreign parts, 
 Mackirby; I never can draw a full, deep 
 breath under any monarchy. No Yankee 
 ever can it's against the grain ; but I didn't 
 want to be so near and not drop in to ask 
 after the pretty little American wife, my 
 townswoman, and the babies." 
 
 "Mrs. Mackirby is quite well, and there is 
 another child. There are three little girls 
 now, and I hope you can find time enough 
 to go up to the house it's only a short walk 
 from here and pay them a visit. Mrs. 
 Mackirby will be very glad to see you and 
 show you the babies." 
 
 "Well," said the captain, taking out a huge 
 watch and studying its face as though he 
 looked to it not only to tell him the time,
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 71 
 
 but to decide his acceptance or declination 
 of engagements, "well, I guess I will. I 
 have nothing pressing to do for two or three 
 hours. Yes, I'll go up; but say, William, 
 what are you puttering with?" 
 
 Mr. Mackirby stopped stirring the por- 
 ridge, blew out the flame, and poured the 
 white mixture he had been cooking from 
 the saucepan into a deep saucer; then he 
 took a little paper out of his vest-pocket, 
 opened it carefully, and deposited its con- 
 tents into the porridge. 
 
 "You would be horrified," he now said, 
 turning to the captain, "if you knew what 
 this powder was that I have just been sprink- 
 ling into the dish. " 
 
 "No, I wouldn't," answered the captain. 
 "Why should I? There is no harm in white 
 pepper." 
 
 "But this isn't pepper. It is arsenic!" 
 
 "Good God, man!" cried the captain, 
 turning pale under his tan, "that is a deadly 
 poison!" 
 
 "Deadly to some, life-giving to others, 
 my dear captain. We all take poison in 
 some form, some more, some less, and 
 always with beneficial results. Now I have,
 
 7* BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 by years of cautious administration, accus- 
 tomed myself to eat, with perfect safety, a 
 quantity of arsenic mixed with my food. 
 That gives me new life, and yet would 
 undoubtedly kill you ; but taste a little bit of 
 this porridge. A little couldn't hurt you." 
 
 "No, I thank you," said the captain. 
 "Plain, wholesome vituals are good enough 
 for me. I don't meddle with stuff that I 
 don't understand what it's given for and 
 what it's going to do to my insides, which 
 are, I am free to confess, unknown continents 
 to me. Of course, there are a few things I 
 can tend up to personally. If I have a pain 
 in my pit, I swig Jamaica ginger, strong 
 and hot, and maybe I plaster on wet 
 mustard. If I get a queer feeling in my 
 throat, I chuck in camphor water ; if it gets 
 further down and there's a cough, I try 
 onion syrup (prime, sir, prime). But beyond 
 the symptoms I have named, what's left of 
 darkest Africa is not to be mentioned side 
 by side with my ignorance of what's under 
 my skin. So, when I feel anything grum- 
 bling or gnawing, I go to a regular out and 
 out pilgarlic, one of the kind that has a 
 pretty typewriter, and a boy in buttons, and
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 73 
 
 a reception room, and rooms with several 
 other names that you have to pass through 
 before you get to the man you are after. 
 And then he asks you: 'Where is it?' and 
 you tell him that she is here, or there, or 
 somewhere else, as the case may be, and of 
 course he puts one of them barometers under 
 your tongue, and counts your wrist, and 
 thumps your chest, and listens to your back, 
 and then stops and looks d d wise. Then 
 he writes out some Latin words on a paper, 
 and he says, 'Take this to the druggist, ' and 
 you says, 'How much?' and he says, with a 
 gentle sigh, as though he was devoting his 
 life to charity and found it a tax on his 
 constitution, 'Ten dollars, if you please.' 
 And you give it to him, and he bows, and 
 touches a bell and says to some unseen lis- 
 tener, 'Next.' And as you pass out, another 
 ten dollars walks in it may be in petticoats 
 or it may be in trousers. 
 
 "Then you go to the druggist and you 
 hand him the paper, and he says, 'All right, 
 sir, ' and he leaves you alone with the bottles 
 and the smells, and then he comes back and 
 says, 'A dollar and a half, please; take as 
 directed, and be sure to shake.' Now,
 
 74 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 William, like as not the shake that I have to 
 take has poison in it; but I don't know it, 
 and don't want to know it. " 
 
 The captain here came to an abrupt pause 
 and he began to look confused and uncom- 
 fortable, as we see children do who have 
 bravely spoken their pieces and then fall into 
 a stage fright and so do not seem to be able 
 to make their bow to the audience or get back 
 to their seats. 
 
 The captain fumbled with his hat for a 
 minute and then he said (apropos of nothing) : 
 "Jim Wilkins, my first mate, got married 
 last week. He married a pretty young Irish 
 girl. He's old enough to be her father; 
 but then there is no fool like an old fool. " 
 Here an idea struck him of the personality 
 of his remark, and he took recourse in his 
 hat. He again found inspiration there, and 
 it was happier. 
 
 "My old first mate, Joe Fay the one 
 that used to be with me when I shipped 
 cotton for you, is dead. He was just about 
 your build and complexion, and he went 
 off one day with a stroke of apoplexy." 
 
 Meanwhile Mr. Mackirby had eaten all the 
 porridge, even to permitting himself the
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 75 
 
 inelegant privilege of scraping the dish. 
 There was a pink flush on his cheeks now, 
 and his eyes were very bright. "Well, old 
 fellow," he said, "now do go up to the 
 house, Mrs. Mackirby will be more than 
 delighted to see you. "
 
 76 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 "So these are your little girls, Mrs. Mac- 
 kirby. Well, they are as pretty as pictures, 
 and as fat as porpoises. As for you, " said the 
 captain, with an honest disregard of his 
 hostess' vanity, "I never would know you if 
 I met you on the street. I don't believe," 
 said the captain, studying her earnestly, 
 "that the English climate agrees with you 
 any better than it does with me. " 
 
 "It was very kind of you," said Mrs. 
 Mackirby, "to come. It is most delightful 
 to see anyone from home, and you won't 
 mind if I ask you some questions, will 
 you?" 
 
 "Lord, no!" said the good-natured sailor, 
 taking a chair and getting all three of the 
 little girls upon his knees. "Now, if there is 
 anything you'd like to know about lineals or 
 collaterals or family trees, I'm primed. The 
 whole country over yonder has suddenly 
 waked up to a sense of the honor it means 
 to be a son, grandson, or great-grandson of
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 77 
 
 some man who fought in the American 
 Revolution. If you will believe it, down in 
 our cemetery there isn't a lichen left on a 
 tombstone. All of them have been literally 
 scraped off by grandfather hunters. ' ' 
 
 Mrs. Mackirby smiled. "I suppose," she 
 said, "if I were at home I should catch the 
 inspiration and be interested in this gene- 
 alogical research, too, and I often wonder if I 
 were at home again how I should stand 
 regarding the suffrage question. " 
 
 "You'd stand up for suffrage, you would; 
 of course you would," said the captain, 
 beaming all over with the brilliancy of his 
 suggestion. "No woman with a grain of 
 sense could have been married to an English- 
 man for ten years and think of rejecting 
 suffrage rights. No, sir! 
 
 "There was a time when I laughed at 
 suffrage ; but I don't laugh any more. No, 
 sir! There came a day when I said to my 
 wife: 'Jane,' says I, 'I believe in suffrage 
 for women. Because why? Take the school 
 question to begin with. I'm off eleven 
 months out of very twelve hunting a living 
 for you and the kids. You stay close to 
 home, you watch the children, you take 'em
 
 78 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 to school, and you know all about the school- 
 house, and whether it's warm or cold, well 
 ventilated or full of foul air. You know 
 what manner of women folks and men folks 
 the trustees is histin' in onto us. I wouldn't 
 know if I stayed at home and fixed my mind 
 onto it. If a girl was darned pretty I'd be 
 apt to think she had all the educational 
 requirements. ' You see, that's the man of 
 it. 'And besides,' I says, 'if I was to die, 
 they'd tax you just the same. It's a queer 
 law,' I says, 'that takes and gives to man 
 and takes and don 't give to woman. ' 
 
 "So I says, 'You walk up and don't you 
 be afraid to put in your slip. 1 Well, Jane 
 went. 1 drove her to it ; but she voted all 
 right, and her man got in, and I 'm inclined 
 to believe, good wife as she was before, that 
 voting has improved her. Her bread rises 
 just as well, her house is as tidy, the stock- 
 ings are all darned and the clothes mended ; 
 but besides this, she finds time to be inter- 
 ested (with a great many other good women) 
 for order, uplifting, and broader and better 
 methods of what she calls citizenship." 
 
 "But, captain, tell me something about the 
 dear old town. I suppose the streets are as
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 79 
 
 shady in summer as ever and the snow. I 
 suppose the snow in winter looks just as 
 white on the hills. Do the birds gather in 
 the spring in the thicket near Pingree's 
 hollow? Dear, dear! what a chattering they 
 used to keep up at sunset and sunrise. And 
 has Judge Brown still a big gold-fish pond 
 in his garden? Tell me something about our 
 old house. " 
 
 The captain looked at her keenly, he 
 cleared his throat of a lump, took out his 
 handkerchief and blew such a blast upon it 
 that the children still upon his knees vibrated 
 perceptibly. 
 
 "Nothing is so pretty as it used to be," he 
 said, gently. "The town is past its prime; 
 it is better to remember it as you do than 
 to see it as it is." A bright and cheering 
 idea struck him. "You would be pleased to 
 see your ma's tombstone, Mrs. Mackirby. 
 It beats your father's all to nothing." 
 
 Then seeing that, with the best intentions 
 in the world, he had made a mistake, the 
 captain pulled out his watch. It evidently 
 told him that it was time to go, so he rose, 
 and with hearty handshakes all round found 
 his hat and took himself off.
 
 8o BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 There was a house party down at Glen 
 Hall, my Lord Blankshire's place in the 
 country. 
 
 The situation of the house and grounds was 
 unusually secluded, and the scenery unlike 
 Mrs. Browning's description, which says: 
 "The English ground is cut up from fellow- 
 ship with verdure, field from field, until you 
 come to understand how Adam lived in a 
 garden, for all the fields are tied up fast with 
 hedges, nosegay-like. The hills are crumpled 
 plains, the plains parterres, the trees 
 round, and woolly ready to be dipt all 
 nature tamed. ' ' But all about Glen Hall was 
 exceedingly wild. In the foreground 
 there were a succession of lofty emi- 
 nences, a portion of a chain of hills that 
 extended into the next county, where 
 they assumed a more rugged aspect, and 
 still further north grew into mountains. 
 The old house stood in a glen or dell, and it 
 was built of such dark-colored stone that it
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 81 
 
 was not observable until one approached 
 very near, for it was screened by the high 
 ground of the park and backed by the noble 
 woods. 
 
 Before the front was a large entrance 
 court, encircled with iron palisades, and 
 entered by an ancient gate, ornamented on 
 its piers by cumbent birds and beasts. 
 There was a center compartment with stone 
 seats on either side, and all the architectural 
 ornamentation, was of that mixed, gro- 
 tesque kind which prevailed so universally 
 in the Elizabethan period. Above the porch 
 were the nine chief armorial bearings of the 
 family, with this motto, carved in old 
 English lettering into the stone : ' ' Def ende 
 Thine Owne to the Deathe." 
 
 The interior of the house was in keeping 
 with its exterior, from the great hall, hung 
 thick with arms and ancient trophies of 
 battle-field and chase, and the richly stained, 
 mullioned windows, to the gallery and 
 drawing-rooms, filled with the rare treasures 
 of art and vertu that centuries of abundant 
 means and intelligent appreciation had 
 gathered into one stately home. 
 
 The estate lay about five miles from the 
 6
 
 82 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 nearest railroad station (the village of 
 Dingley Dell), and the road from thence all 
 the way to the park gates was under an arch 
 of grand old trees. 
 
 The family of Lord and Lady Blankshire 
 consisted of two daughters and four sons. 
 The girls had arrived first. They were 
 still "ungathered roses" upon the family 
 tree. The sons, even to the heir, were 
 busy men, occupying positions of trust 
 and honor; married and keeping homes 
 of their own, and down at the hall now 
 for the purpose of wishing all sorts of 
 glad and good things to the dear gentle 
 mother, whose returning birthday had 
 brought them together. Not only the boys, 
 but the boys' wives and one or two favorite 
 and favored relations were at the hall. 
 
 The Blankshire girls (the father and the 
 mother and the brothers spoke of them as 
 the girls) had been presented at a drawing- 
 room some twenty-two or three years before 
 the time in which we write. They were 
 then typical English maidens of sixteen, 
 with stout, healthy figures, pink and white 
 faces, clear brown eyes, dark brown hair, 
 white teeth, and red lips. They were so
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 83 
 
 nearly fac-similes that it was difficult for 
 any but their nearest and dearest friends to 
 tell them apart, and a facetious gentleman, 
 whose small wit was much appreciated by 
 the exclusive rank and file, dubbed the fair 
 debutantes ' ' Number Eleven, ' ' a soubriquet 
 that had remained theirs ever since, until, 
 in their own particular world, they were 
 never mentioned in their absence in any 
 other way. Why they had never married 
 was one of those puzzling questions which 
 we are always asking ourselves when we see 
 charming, clever, capable girls left un wooed 
 and unwedded, while little heart-and-soul- 
 lacking, empty-headed females of the human 
 species go off, to use a vulgar but trite 
 expression, "like hot cakes," in the matri- 
 monial market. 
 
 But although the springtime of the lives of 
 these women had passed and midsummer 
 had come, they were in truth and reality girls 
 still, through a sheltered and protected 
 living, through the quiet round of doing 
 good with which they filled their leisure 
 hours. Their home had always been in the 
 country, each year had a few duty weeks in 
 town ; but when the passing show was over
 
 84 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 they had gladly returned to pastoral occupa- 
 tions and interests. 
 
 The Ladies Abigail and Deborah were 
 fine horsewomen, experts at tennis and golf, 
 and so it had come to pass that their com- 
 panions were not exclusively matrons of 
 forty who had been girls twenty odd years 
 ago, but girls who were twenty years old 
 to-day. 
 
 The three older brothers, Rupert, Harold, 
 and Gordon, were married to typical, well- 
 bred, well-portioned English women; but 
 Gerald's wife (Gerald, the youngest of the 
 flock) had come with the force of an explod- 
 ing bomb into the old-fashioned family, 
 whose laws concerning marriage and giving 
 in marriage seemed to have been as fixed 
 and unalterable as those ascribed to the 
 Medes and Persians. 
 
 Gerald had been a frail child, and 
 there were many years of his boyhood 
 all strewn with physical pitfalls for the 
 darling of the household. Thus it came to 
 be that Gerald's word was law, that any- 
 thing possessible under the sun, moon, or 
 stars that he asked for was at his service. 
 He was educated exclusively by tutors; his
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 85 
 
 mother and sisters constantly hovered 
 about him and cared for him. 
 
 When Gerald was twenty-three a maiden 
 sister of his mother's died, and she left all 
 her entirely independent property of every 
 description to her nephew and godson, Gerald 
 Blankshire. The family unselfishly rejoiced 
 in Gerald's good fortune, and they 
 applauded his wisdom in deciding to 
 take a trip round the world, via the 
 United States of America. So one day he had 
 said good-by, promising his mother and the 
 girls to bring them back many curious and 
 charming things. How well he kept his 
 promise, in one particular at least, we shall 
 see.
 
 86 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Gerald had found New York an at- 
 tractive place to tarry in, with beautiful 
 homes and charming hostesses, and he 
 had never in all his life seen so many lovely 
 girls ; but, having the entire globe to wander 
 through before he should again see England's 
 cliffs, he tore himself away from all 
 the beguilements of modern Gotham and 
 passing by many cities, arrived at Chicago, 
 the wonderful young queen who rules her 
 million subjects in her kingdom by the inland 
 sea, the broad highway of water that marshals 
 on its stormy bosom a vaster tonnage to the 
 great city at its feet than to any other port 
 in the New World. 
 
 There had been a wreck of such magni- 
 tude on the road over which the "limited" 
 train bearing the Hon. Gerald Blankshire 
 had to pass that his entrance was made into 
 Chicago hours after the scheduled time 
 in the early evening of what had been a 
 drizzling November day.
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 87 
 
 Taking a cab, he was driven at once to the 
 Elizabeth, a hotel which had been recom- 
 mended to him by a New York acquaintance 
 as "the least bad of the lot." He meant 
 simply to stay long enough to take in what 
 he had been told were the objects of interest 
 the Stock Yards and the tall buildings 
 and then he intended to hurry on to the 
 Pacific slope; but fate had other intentions 
 for and toward the honorable young English- 
 man.
 
 88 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The elevator man had gone down into the 
 basement to help the engineer fix the shift- 
 ing and rigging valve, leaving word with a 
 clerk whose desk was directly across from 
 the elevator to see that no one got into the car 
 in his absence. Upon being assured by the 
 elevator man that he had provided against 
 such a possibility the engineer started the 
 machine to run to the top into the auto- 
 matic. 
 
 The car kept going for two or more 
 stories, and then suddenly dropped, coming 
 to an abrupt stop. The engineer looked 
 perplexedly at the elevator man; then he 
 tried to get the car to descend, and finding 
 it would not come down, he tried to get it 
 to go up. 
 
 "Say, John," he cried, "some infernal 
 fool is monkeying with that elevator. Go 
 up and see where it is. ' ' 
 
 The man came running back pale and 
 breathless. "Come up right away!" he said
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 89 
 
 between his gasps. "She is stuck between 
 the third and fourth floors, and there are 
 people in her. ' ' 
 
 The engineer looked down from the land- 
 ing on the fourth floor and through the top of 
 the car. He could see three people a bell- 
 boy, a gentleman, and a young lady. The 
 bell-boy was on the verge of hysterics. The 
 gentleman was shouting out a series of 
 incoherent questions. The young lady was 
 sitting quietly and composedly on the seat. 
 
 The engineer managed to explain to the 
 gentleman that there was no danger, that 
 the safety plank was set securely ; but that, 
 part of it being broken, the car could not be 
 released until it was repaired, which, of 
 course, would take some time. 
 
 Being thus advised and relieved, the 
 Honorable Mr. Blankshire (for it was the 
 Honorable Gerald) began to breathe more 
 freely, began to realize the close-at- 
 hand proximity of a very charming girl. 
 She was a little woman, childishly small; 
 she had a fair, clear skin, light, wavy hair, 
 and large, black-lashed gray eyes; her 
 delicately-formed nose was a trifle too tip- 
 tilted to be named Grecian, and her red-
 
 90 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 lipped mouth was too firm and full of 
 expression to be called pretty. 
 
 She was evidently boarding in the hotel, 
 and coming up from the dining-room to 
 her apartments when the accident trans- 
 pired, for she had on neither hat nor 
 wrap, and her gown suggested a rather 
 elaborate house costume. Her white 
 hands were loaded with glittering rings; 
 the tiny watch and other chatelaine adorn- 
 ments suspended from her waist were 
 also gem encrusted. She had pinned 
 upon the breast of her gown no less than 
 five brooches all emblematical in design 
 and significance. 
 
 As the Honorable Gerald looked at her 
 the young lady returned the attention, and 
 then, without any stumbling or hesitation, 
 said in a kindly voice, which had neither 
 diffidence nor boldness in its make-up : 
 
 "You had better come and sit down here, 
 and you, too, John" (speaking to the bell- 
 boy), "for it is evident, from what the 
 engineer says, that it will take him some 
 time to get us out. " 
 
 The bell-boy and the son of the great 
 English lord obeyed her behest, and thus
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 91 
 
 she sat in the semi-twilight between 
 them. 
 
 "I think," she continued, pleasantly, 
 "that all three of us have nobody to blame 
 but ourselves for the predicament we are in, 
 for whoever, with a grain of sense in his 
 entire composition, would think of getting 
 into an elevator when the man that runs it 
 was not at the rope? Of course nobody will 
 say anything to us (she nodded toward 
 Gerald), but John will suffer; poor John!" 
 
 John hastened to disclaim this assertion. 
 
 "No, I won't neither, miss," he said, 
 confidently; "the clerk didn't see you get 
 in, but he seen the gentleman, and he told 
 me to run and fetch him out, and before I 
 could get to the words we was a-flying. ' ' 
 
 The young lady laughed. "Oh, you were 
 both so funny!" she said, with a perfect 
 impartiality of mention. "John crossed 
 himself and said his prayers, and you (to 
 Gerald) began jumping at the iron gate and 
 pulling at it and going through such a series 
 of antics that I couldn't help thinking of the 
 monkeys in Lincoln Park. ' ' 
 
 John grinned and the Honorable Gerald 
 paled and flushed, then grew indignantly
 
 92 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 rigid, and looked anywhere and everywhere 
 but at the pretty,rude young woman; but she 
 seemed quite unconscious of having been 
 impolite, quite unconscious of the Honorable 
 Gerald's haughty attitude. She seemed to 
 have entirely forgotten that he was in the car. 
 
 "Now, miss," said John, "weren't you a 
 bit afraid?" 
 
 "Afraid!" said the small woman. "No; 
 it was too quick, and unusual, too novel, 
 and thrilling, and funny, and besides I knew 
 it was a good elevator and well put in and 
 carefully looked after. You know, John, 
 father is a machinist by trade, and he has 
 never lost his interest in anything of the 
 sort, so, as he has many a time for want of 
 a better listener, explained all the ins and 
 outs of this particular elevator's working to 
 me, when it flew up I just supposed that the 
 engineer was trying it, and I don't doubt 
 but that we should have been all right if you 
 had left the lever alone. ' ' 
 
 "I am afraid that is so, miss," said John, 
 submissively. "I wonder will they ever 
 know that I done it? I would lose my place 
 if they did, and I have a widowed mother, 
 miss, and some brothers to help."
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 93 
 
 "A widowed mother!" With an energy 
 and enthusiasm better witnessed than 
 described the young lady whipped out a 
 note-book and pencil from her pocket. 
 
 "Yes, miss, a widowed mother." 
 
 "Name and address, John?" 
 
 John gave it with rather a puzzled and 
 anxious expression. Was she going to tell 
 his mother about the lever or what? 
 
 "Age (if you know it) and occupation (if 
 any)." 
 
 "She was born," said John, slowly, "in 
 the County Cork in 1852 " 
 
 "There, there, John, that's enough," said 
 the young lady, shaking her pencil and 
 making a severe wrinkle between her eyes. 
 
 "She is a washerwoman, and a devout 
 member of Father Kelley's church. John, 
 now listen. You go to confession the first 
 day you get an hour off, and you tell Father 
 Kelley all about the lever that will forgive 
 you the sin, and at the same time take it off 
 our consciences, and we won't tell of him, 
 will we?" She leaned forward and put 
 this pleading question directly to the 
 Honorable Gerald. 
 
 He forgot that he had been angry with
 
 94 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 her as he hastened to answer: "Of course 
 not; most certainly not Let's you and I 
 promise the boy that we'll be mum, and if 
 the lever is insisted on, why I will take the 
 blame, ' ' and so they made their everlasting 
 peace. 
 
 "Are you staying in Chicago?" she asked. 
 
 He explained his intention of leaving it, 
 if not to-night, by the earliest possible train 
 in the morning. 
 
 "Oh, you must not do anything of the 
 kind," she said, earnestly, "for really there 
 is no place like it in the world. Of course, if 
 you have just come from New York, you 
 are under the impression that it's a smoky, 
 noisy city, menaced continually by Anarchists 
 and the Clan-na-Gael. Of course there are 
 a few of them here. We couldn't with any 
 sort of decency ask New York to keep all 
 the disreputable element. We are willing 
 to do our share of home missionary work. 
 Oh, I've heard Eastern people talk about us. 
 They say we shoot off our R's like fire- 
 crackers that our women are all feet! 
 
 "When a Western girl goes East in 
 summer this is about what they say of her : 
 'Oh, yes, that is Flora McFlimsey, from
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 95 
 
 Chicago. She represents millions made out 
 of pork, or lard, or the Stock Yards,' and 
 they assume an expression of the nostrils that 
 suggests Bridgeport to a Chicagoan, and all 
 the same I would just as leave have a pig 
 rampant on my coat-of-arms as a wild boar, 
 now wouldn't you?" 
 
 Oh, if my lady could have heard the 
 Honorable Gerald reply if the twins could 
 have heard him say: "Oh, yes, of course I 
 would. A wild hog and a tame pig are 
 brothers, you know," and he beamed and 
 gleamed as though he felt a glow of sterling 
 satisfaction with himself. 
 
 "Now, what I love Chicago principally 
 for," said the witching girl, changing her 
 smile into a subdued expression that hid one 
 dimple and left the other but a faint, 
 shadow)* thing, "are our women's clubs; 
 they open for us such unlimited vistas of 
 thought. ' ' Then she sat very still and looked 
 into space. 
 
 "I suppose," said Gerald, "since you 
 admire literary women's clubs so much, that 
 you must belong to one of them?" 
 
 "One!" she said, scornfully; "one! Why, 
 I belong to ten ! I am not mentally capable
 
 96 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 of doing much, so I confine myself to such 
 introductory thoughts as may in time 
 broaden my intellectual horizon. 
 
 "On Mondays I attend a united study 
 class. Our subjects are light, although not in 
 the least frivolous. The subjects we have 
 discussed since we opened in October are: 
 'What Does Economic Science Mean, and 
 How is it Relegated to Modern Life?' 'Ethics 
 and Taxation,' 'Democratizing Industry,' 
 and 'Capitalism Triumphant.' Next week 
 I am to lead the topic the subject, 'The 
 Climax of Individualism.' " 
 
 "You must be awfully clever," he burst 
 out. "One wouldn't think it to look at 
 you." 
 
 Instead of taking offense, she laughed as 
 though quite agreeing with his sentiments. 
 
 "When they first gave the subject to me," 
 she said, "I was frightened to death; but it 
 would never have done to have declined, 
 and really there isn't a bit of trouble about 
 it. First go to an unabridged dictionary (if 
 it's an old-fashioned one, so much the 
 better) and look up the leading words of 
 your subject. Give their roots and deriva- 
 tions, and look indifferent and blas6 if there
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 97 
 
 are any dead language pronunciations to 
 reveal. Then look up these same leading 
 words in a book of familiar quotations, and 
 the mustier and more remote the saying 
 and the man who said it, the more your 
 audience will account it to you for brilliancy. 
 Then go to the Newberry Library and ask 
 the attendant there to lend you his or her 
 brains and give you pointers on books and 
 papers that treat of what you want to know. 
 Copy off indiscriminately thirty or forty lines 
 here and there and everywhere, and then go 
 home and put them together. 
 
 "I find that the papers that elicit my 
 most ardent admiration are the perfectly 
 unintelligible ones. All intellectual atmos- 
 phere, you know, and no comprehension. 
 They must, of course, differentiate a great 
 deal. (That word always makes me feel 
 crushed and small. I've put it in five times 
 in my paper. ) 
 
 "But I must tell you about the other 
 clubs. The Millais Art Club meets on 
 Tuesdays. We've done an enormous amount 
 of work among the old masters, and now 
 we are doing the symbolistic and impres- 
 sionist schools together, because there are 
 7
 
 98 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 such quantities about both of them that we 
 find it best to, as father says (father isn't 
 cultured), 'change off.' 
 
 "On Wednesday comes the kindergarten 
 study. Dear me ! whatever did our grand- 
 mothers and our mothers do without 
 Froebel? My grandmother (who was born 
 in New England) says they used common 
 sense, the Westminster Catechism, and birch 
 rods. What an awful contrast to the dear 
 games and plays? As I have told grand- 
 mother often, if I have twenty-five children, 
 they shall all go to kindergarten, the 
 dear, sweet things. 
 
 "Well, on Thursday we meet to discuss 
 civic things. Oh, it is so interesting to hear 
 the girls tell how they would conduct this 
 great city if once the ballot was put into 
 their hands. They never will believe that 
 they wouldn't be able to recreate Chicago, 
 and, in fact, the whole United States, until 
 they have been allowed to try, and I for one 
 wish Illinois would grant us State suffrage, 
 and by so doing settle the matter. 
 
 "On Fridays we are patriotic. We are 
 Colonial Dames and Daughters of the 
 American Revolution The field we are
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 99 
 
 supposed to sow in is broad, our objects of 
 organization are grand, but as yet we have, 
 in the main spent eleven months in every 
 year in arranging for the next year's election, 
 and having receptions, and wearing our best 
 clothes. And then there are little unimpor- 
 tant but pleasant clubs that we all belong to 
 'girls' friendly societies,' and 'sewing 
 schools,' and 'cooking schools,' and 'musical 
 clubs.' I think settlement sewing schools 
 are the most fun. Lots of the children come 
 from awful homes, filled with microbe germs 
 that haven't even been discovered yet, and 
 you are always wondering what sort of an 
 unseen monster you are carrying back to 
 present to the bosom of your family. Oh, 
 I think microbes are so fascinating, don't 
 you?" 
 
 "And," said the young Englishman, 
 unable to keep silence and breaking in upon 
 the current of her narrative, "do you never 
 long for society? At your age it seems 
 rather sad for a girl to go in exclusively for 
 this sort of thing. " 
 
 "Go into society! Why, what made you 
 think I didn't? I'm simply devoted to it. 
 Last week I went to five coming-out teas,
 
 loo BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 three breakfasts, two luncheons, a matinee 
 musicale, three dances, a theatre party, and 
 four dinners. Why, what are you staring 
 at? Is there anything remarkable in a 
 girl's having a good time?" 
 
 "No, no! of course not," said the young 
 man, slowly. "Only I should think you 
 would be dead. I don't see where you get 
 the physical endurance to stand it." 
 
 "Oh, that's easily explained. I row and 
 play golf and tennis from May to October. 
 I I" 
 
 Her dimples fled, utterly fled! Her 
 smile became a memory. She sprang upon 
 the seat with one piercing little feminine 
 shriek. "Don't let it climb up here!" she 
 cried, and forgetting the time and peculiar 
 circumstance, she put her hands through 
 the Honorable Gerald's arm, and clung to 
 him piteously, imploring him not, oh! not 
 to let it climb up, for it was "one of those 
 long-whiskered ones that wiggle their noses 
 so awfully." 
 
 Then she cried: "John! oh, John! catch 
 it!" 
 
 With one fell swoop the valiant John 
 cornered the tiny quivering little gray
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 101 
 
 mouse, and all unconscious of the depravity 
 of his action, he held out his wriggling prey 
 at arm's length by the tail. 
 
 No scream issued from the firm lips of 
 the girl, no longer a look of terror pene- 
 trated the sweet gray eyes ! For the modern 
 Minerva had fainted, and was lying prettily 
 unconscious in the willing arms of the 
 Honorable Gerald. And- all this rambling 
 talk has been introduced in order to explain 
 how it came to be that Gerald's marriage 
 and Gerald's American wife had come with 
 the force of an exploding bomb into this old- 
 fashioned English home.
 
 102 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 The birthday dinner at Glen Hall was in 
 progress, and never had the old room looked 
 more beautiful than it did on this early 
 spring evening, decked out with flowers and 
 tropical plants, all in honor of the gentle 
 spirit who represented in herself the dearest 
 and the best attributes of wifehood and 
 motherhood. 
 
 Besides the husband, daughters, sons and 
 sons' wives gathered around the board, 
 there was the rector and the rector's wife, 
 and a godson and nephew of Lady Blank- 
 shire's, the Honorable Mr. Harcourt Vane, a 
 gentleman of large landed estate, who, to 
 while away his unincumbered leisure, had 
 cultivated a taste for mildly "going into 
 things," from which he was constantly 
 emerging with various and varied results. 
 
 Quite on in the dinner there was a pause 
 in the ripple of small talk, and my lord, 
 turning to the Honorable Harcourt Vane,
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 103 
 
 said: "And how is the ramie grass product 
 doing, Harcourt?" 
 
 "Oh," said the honorable gentleman 
 addressed, "it is going, sir, going," leaving 
 it to be decided by his hearers whether it 
 was going up like a rocket or down like a 
 stick. 
 
 ' ' Speaking of the ramie grass product, ' ' he 
 proceeded, "reminds me of rather an inter- 
 esting experience I had not long since. I 
 know a man in Ploverlie, a grandson of old 
 Wiggins, the brewer his name is Mackirby. 
 
 ' ' Mackirby and I were in college together 
 that is, I entered in his last year, and I 
 happened to fag for him. He went into 
 business, the cotton business in America; 
 lived there a good many years in a state of 
 single blessedness, and then, madame," 
 bo wing to the bride, "was fortunate enough 
 to win the heart and hand of a very beauti- 
 ful Yankee girl. I happened to be travel- 
 ing in the States just at that time, so he 
 asked me to be best man. Shortly after his 
 marriage, Mackirby came back to England, 
 and established himself in the cotton busi- 
 ness in Ploverlie. Now, it occurred to me 
 that Mackirby might be a good man to
 
 104 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 be interested in my 'ramie grass product. ' 
 So I made him a call at his office. He 
 seemed very much interested in what I had 
 to say, and examined my exhibit carefully, 
 and then he said: 'Vane, I don't wish to 
 pry into your secrets concerning the process 
 of manufacture of this product, but tell me 
 one of the most powerful and distinctive \ 
 ingredients. ' I thought a moment, and 
 then I said: 'Why, I should think I might 
 name arsenic as the most necessary, for it 
 is very largely employed.' 'Oh, is it!' says 
 Mackirby. 'What a wonderful thing 
 arsenic is ! Have you never heard, Vane, ' 
 said he, 'that in certain parts of the world 
 people take arsenic not only as a tonic, but 
 as a condiment with their food as freely as 
 we take pepper or sauces and,' he added, 
 'thrive upon it?' I said that I had heard of 
 such uses of poison, but that I could not bring 
 myself to believe it any more than I could 
 believe that De Quincey took nine hundred 
 drops of laudanum a day. Mackirby 
 laughed. 'There is more truth than fiction 
 in the old proverb that "What is one man's 
 poison is another man's meat." Now,' 
 said Mackirby, 'I am going to tell you some-
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 105 
 
 thing that will stagger you. There is, Vane, 
 a so-called poison which keeps me strong 
 and well. When I am weak or weary or 
 down-hearted I take it, and presto! I am 
 myself again. This poison is arsenic. 
 When I lived in America I had far less 
 trouble in getting it, and if it were not for 
 an intimate friend of my brother's, who has 
 what the Americans call "a pull" in certain 
 quarters, I should have died for lack of the 
 only stimulant that builds me up. Now/ 
 he continued, 'since you use arsenic, can't 
 you get me some?' I said 'All right,' that I 
 would ; that I had been able to secure quite 
 a lot for certain experiments which were 
 now finished, so that I had no further use 
 for what was left, and that he was more 
 than welcome to it. 
 
 "You never can imagine a man more 
 delighted. He offered to pay me anything 
 that I cared to ask for it, but I told him 
 that I had no license to sell drugs and I 
 promised to bring it to him. ' ' 
 
 "But you never did!" The bride, Gerald's 
 bride, had broken in upon his recital; her 
 face was a little pale, and her eyes full of 
 astonished reproach.
 
 io6 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 Mr. Vane laughed lightly. "Yes, indeed, 
 I did," he said. "I took it to him a week 
 ago. There were one hundred and fifty 
 grains in all. Some of it was white and 
 some black arsenic. It was in two packages, 
 but I assure you, Mrs. Blankshire, I 
 warned him to be careful. I said to him, 
 'Mackirby, you have almost enough poison 
 by you to kill a regiment!' He said he 
 realized that, and that he should take it 
 home and hide it away in a place only known 
 to himself and perhaps his brother, to whom 
 he confided everything. He said it would 
 never do to let his wife suspect his having 
 it, as she wouldn't give him a minute's 
 peace until it was out of the house. 
 
 "Well, I think it was simply awful of 
 you!" It was young Mrs. Gerald again. 
 "There is no excuse for you whatever! I 
 should consider that I was doing a less 
 vicious thing if I made Xmas presents of 
 loaded revolvers and bowie knives to the 
 inmates of Elgin, Kankakee and poor dis- 
 tressed Dunning our lunatic asylums at 
 home as for you, an intelligent man, to 
 give even one grain of arsenic to that Mr. 
 Mackirby."
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 107 
 
 The silence was breathless, for this was 
 the first inning of advanced womanhood 
 under the Glen Hall rooftree. 
 
 "That man," she continued; "have you 
 stopped to consider what he will do? He 
 will and he has carried that dreadful death- 
 dealing stuff home! He will hide it some- 
 where, of course, where nobody but his 
 brother I feel sure his brother is horrid 
 and himself knows anything about it. Well, 
 this arsenic fiend will get reckless some 
 day, and take an overdose, and he will die. 
 And the coroner will be called. Of course, 
 the verdict will be death by poison, and 
 then this arsenic will come to light. I don't 
 know how, but it will. And if the brother 
 don't tell, and you don't tell, a victim may 
 be looked for to lay all the blame upon, for 
 no one will believe the man did it himself. 
 
 "Now, what you ought to do is to go 
 straight to that man's wife, and tell her all 
 about it; and if you don't I shall never, 
 never like you as long as I live ! ' ' 
 
 Mrs. Gerald was so little and so childish 
 looking, and so more than lovely, that the 
 big Englishman beside her was only amused, 
 and the rest were entertained. It
 
 io8 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 was so novel ! So bright ! And fortunately 
 there was no one but the family present 
 for the rector was a cousin, too. 
 
 But the bride would not accept their light 
 view of the matter, and she turned appeal- 
 ingly to her father-in-law. 
 
 "You who are so wise," she said, "you 
 who have been a student of life for so many 
 years, you know that Mr. Vane did wrong 
 to give that unnatural man all that arsenic, 
 don't you?" 
 
 And everybody said afterward "How 
 touching it was," "How it must have ap- 
 pealed to Gerald to have the stern, unbend- 
 ing old statesman say gently to his newest 
 daughter-in-law: 'Yes, my dear, I quite 
 agree with you; I quite agree with you.' "
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 109 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Richard or Dick Mackirby, as we have 
 said, had an intense love for horses. Let it 
 be added in justice to the young man that 
 this fondness extended to children and to 
 dogs. Probably next to their own mother, 
 whom they adored, nobody was so dear to 
 the little Mackirby girls as "Uncle Dick." 
 This naturally made Richard a frequent 
 guest at his brother's house, and gave him 
 opportunity, had he so desired it, to 
 make himself conversant with all the goings 
 and comings in Charnley Street. What it 
 had given him was a feeling of real affection 
 for his brother's young wife. 
 
 Perhaps Dick was like many silent and 
 outwardly unemotional people, a keen 
 observer of human nature. At all events, as 
 we have said, he lounged about his brother's 
 house, smoked his brother's cigars, and 
 generally made himself at home, and he 
 rarely went away without paying a visit to 
 the nursery or the schoolroom.
 
 110 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 If the mother happened to be with her 
 children, it did not prevent Dick's staying 
 as long as it pleased him to do so, for she 
 always had a kindly, courteous welcome for 
 "Uncle Dick." Madame Mackirby and 
 Frederick Mackirby hailed Richard's atti- 
 tude with undisguised approbation. They 
 agreed together that dear, silent Dick was 
 deeper than he seemed ; that he was gather- 
 ing evidence against the squaw to be handed 
 over in the family interest when William 
 was dead and it became necessary to show 
 cause why the Mackirbys should control the 
 disbursement of much of the American 
 woman's large income; but for some reason, 
 perhaps they themselves could not have told 
 why, they never alluded to this matter of 
 Richard's visits in their conversations with 
 Richard. They contented themselves with 
 hearing about them through Mrs. Mackirby 's 
 maid a paid spy, in Frederick Mackirby's 
 employ. 
 
 It was on a blustery, gusty afternoon, full 
 of shower and shine, that Dick Mackirby 
 mounting the stairs of the Charnley Street 
 house, came unannounced into the school- 
 room, to find his sister-in-law and the little
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. in 
 
 girls gathered close together, all intently 
 interested in the contents of a small box 
 Mrs. Mackirby held in her hand. 
 
 "Oh, Uncle Dick," cried Marion, jumping 
 up from her knees and running to meet him, 
 "I am so glad that you have come, 
 mother is talking to us about her grand- 
 father. He was such a delightful man, 
 and he used to tell her such beautiful 
 stories. When we ask mother about 
 great-grandfather, she always gets out 
 the watch-charm he used to wear, for she 
 says when she looks at it it brings back the 
 stories he used to tell her. Esther 
 and I call it the magic charm. We pretend 
 we think if we wished anything on it 
 it would come true." 
 
 Mrs. Mackirby raised her head and nodded 
 and smiled to the newcomer. "Do come 
 and see this wonderful charm," she said, 
 gently. She was always gentle, always 
 painfully quiet in manner of late years. "It 
 is really a Masonic charm, or emblem, that 
 belonged to grandfather, and his father 
 before him. My father's family were 
 intensely devout Masons. For three or four 
 generations they had reached what I believe
 
 112 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 is the most exalted rank the thirty-second 
 degree. This, of course, is just the ordi- 
 nary Master Mason insignia, with its jeweled 
 cross and crown, and there being no male 
 heir, after my father' s death, it came to me. ' ' 
 
 Dick leaned forward, took the charm from 
 the box, and held it in his hand. "I have 
 never heard you mention this fact before, " 
 he said. "It would have interested me, and 
 does interest me, for I am a Mason. I am 
 more interested in Masonry than anything 
 else, and I have taken this degree," and he 
 looked down again at the glittering bauble 
 in the palm of his hand. 
 
 "When I was a little girl," said Mrs. 
 Mackirby, addressing the children, "my 
 grandfather, as I have often told you, 
 used to wear this charm on his watch-chain, 
 and it always had a wonderful fascination 
 for me ; and I used to climb onto his lap, 
 and take the emblem in my small fingers and 
 look at it, and then ask questions ; and finally 
 grandpapa would take off his spectacles, and 
 lay down his paper, and proceed to gratify 
 my request. 
 
 " 'Oh, please do tell me, grandpa, what 
 the Masons can do for one another. '
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 113 
 
 "Of course, he had a great many inter- 
 esting and touching incidents to tell, but he 
 knew which two I liked best, and so, no 
 matter how many others he told me, my pet 
 stories were always included. The first 
 was about a man who was captured in mid- 
 ocean by pirates, and how one day, 
 while he was working up among the sails, 
 he saw a ship in the distance, but quite near 
 enough to discern the figures on her deck, 
 and he gave a Masonic sign, and the Masons 
 on the other ship knew that there was a 
 brother in trouble, so they came and rescued 
 him, and took him home to his wife and his 
 little children. 
 
 "The other story was about an American 
 soldier in the War of the Revolution. He 
 was captured by the British and condemned 
 to be instantly shot as a spy. The poor man 
 was not a spy at all. He had been sent with 
 a flag of truce and a message into the 
 enemies' ranks ; but some bad men had met 
 him on his way and robbed him of his pass- 
 ports. He tried to make them believe this, 
 told them all he asked was to have them 
 hold him a prisoner until they could send 
 
 8
 
 H4 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 someone to his general to find out if he was 
 not telling the truth. But the men would 
 not listen to anything he said, and just as the 
 rope was being put around his neck, another 
 British officer rode up, and the man made a 
 Masonic sign to him, and the officer stopped 
 the execution, and the man's innocence was 
 soon proved. 
 
 ' ' Then I used to say : ' Dear me, grandpa, 
 I wish I could be a Mason,' and he would 
 shake his head and say sadly: 'When the 
 Lord took that rib out of Adam he converted 
 the vacancy into a pouch for man to keep 
 his secrets in. ' " 
 
 "But I used to say, 'Wasn't there ever a 
 woman or a little girl that found out?' and 
 then grandpa would say, 'Now, little 
 Bonnie, I am going to tell you all about it; 
 breathe softly and as seldom as you can, so 
 you won't miss a single word. ' 
 
 " 'Once upon a time there lived in a great 
 castle in Scotland a gentleman of title who 
 was grandmaster of a Masonic body, and as 
 the homes of the men who belonged to this 
 lodge surrounded the castle on all sides, a 
 lodge-room was fitted up in the grand-
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 115 
 
 master's own house. Now, this grand- 
 master had a dear little granddaughter, his 
 only son's only child; and instead of her 
 having been born with a silver spoon in her 
 mouth, what do you think the doctor and 
 the nurse did find? Why a large interro- 
 gation mark ! The first thing she ever said 
 was 'Ah ta, ' which being interpreted by her 
 mother, who understood the 4 Ah-goo' lan- 
 guage, proved to be 'What's that?' " 
 
 " 'Oh, grandpapa!' I used to cry out, 
 'that is just exactly what I used to say when 
 I was a baby! Isn't it funny that the 
 princess should have said it, too?' 
 
 " 'Well,' grandpa would continue, 'this 
 little princess, as you call her and by the 
 way her name was Bonnie, too ! Yes, it was ! 
 If you don't believe me, go and look in 
 Webster's Dictionary this Bonnie, I say, 
 kept on asking questions. She "wanted to 
 know" and she "wanted to see" from one 
 day's end to the other, until she might just 
 as well as not have been the heroine of the 
 piece that my grandmother gave me a silver 
 six-pence for committing to memory when I 
 wore pinafores! It was about
 
 1 16 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 "Matilda, who was a pleasant child, 
 
 But one bad trick she had, 
 That e'en when all around her smiled, 
 Oft made her friends feel sad. 
 
 And how 
 
 "Sometimes she'd lift the tea-pot lid, 
 
 To peep at what was in it, 
 Or tilt the kettle if you did 
 But turn your head a minute !" 
 
 " 'This conduct, Bonnie, resulted in a 
 severe switching 
 
 "And then while smarting with the pain 
 
 From birch-rod, sick and sore, 
 Matilda promised to refrain 
 From meddling any more." 
 
 "Or, grandpapa would add, 'From asking 
 questions. ' 
 
 "But I would say, putting my arms coax- 
 ingly round his neck, and laying my face 
 against his: 'What about the little girl in 
 the castle? Did she do like Bluebeard's 
 wife? Did she unlock the door and peep in? 
 And did they catch her? And ' 
 
 "But grandpa would look very, very 
 wise, and shaking his white head gravely, 
 he would say, 'To be continued in our next,
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 117 
 
 Bonnie,' but our next never came, for 
 grandpa always continued it until he died. ' ' 
 
 "Mother," said Esther, "I should like to 
 recite to Uncle Dick that beautiful piece of 
 poetry that your grandfather taught you. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, do let her, mother!' pleaded Marion. 
 "It is so lovely! Pray do!" So gaining 
 consent, the little elocutionist rose, walked 
 to the center of the schoolroom and made 
 her bow, and repeated in her sweet, earnest 
 child voice: 
 
 Why, Phoebe, are you come so soon? 
 Where are your berries, child? 
 
 When the long piece was finished, little 
 Esther paused. "I think," said Marion, 
 with a perfect imitation of her superiors in 
 age who discuss literature, "that the Black- 
 berry Girl is one of the cleverest of stories. 
 We like it so much that sometimes I say it 
 to Esther, and then she says it to me." 
 
 Just at this juncture Elizabeth appeared. 
 "Miss Starling, the dressmaker is here, 
 m'am," she said, "to take your measure for 
 your new dinner dress. " "Very well; go 
 down and tell her that I shall be there 
 presently." Mrs. Mackirby then gave some 
 directions to Parks, the nurse, but seeing
 
 n8 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 Richard turn to go, she called to him to 
 wait for her as she had something to say 
 to him, and when she had finished her 
 instructions to Parks, she joined him and 
 they walked through the hall together. 
 She had the little jewel-box in one of 
 her hands; she laid the other hand on his 
 arm. "Dick," she said, "I want to know 
 if you will accept this Masonic trinket 
 in trust for Marion until she grows up. 
 I should like very much if you would wear 
 it. You have always been kind and friendly 
 to me, and I am fond of you. Only, Dick, 
 if you do care to take it and wear it, do 
 not let anyone know from whom you got 
 it." 
 
 He took the box from her hand. "You 
 are very good," he said, "and I will accept 
 your offer, and it shall come safely into 
 Marion's hands when she is of age. And 
 let me assure you that I am, and always 
 have been, your friend. I am sorry to be 
 forced to say that both my mother and Fred- 
 erick dislike you. For this reason it has 
 seemed best to me to take a negative posi- 
 tion ; to say nothing for or against you ; to 
 listen and to be silent. ' '
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 119 
 
 "Then, Dick," she said earnestly, "you do 
 not believe that I have been flirting with 
 Jack Thornely, do you? You surely do not, 
 Dick?" 
 
 "No," he said, "I do not, for I have 
 made it my business to find out the truth 
 of that matter ; and listen, Bonnie, irritable 
 and unreasonable as William often is, 
 much as he seems to like to hurt and 
 perhaps, so far as words go, abuse you, he 
 holds you in the highest respect, and noth- 
 ing that Frederick or anyone else could 
 say to him would make him believe the con- 
 trary. I do not see what Frederick can say 
 or do that can hurt you now or hereafter. 
 But be careful in all that you do or say 
 before Elizabeth, for it is all repeated, 
 probably with many additions, at our house. 
 Remember, that if at any time I can serve 
 you, you must not fail to call upon me. 
 Remember, I am always at your command. ' ' 
 
 Then they reached the door of her room, 
 they said an indifferent good-by in the 
 presence of the watchful Elizabeth, and 
 parted.
 
 120 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 "Craigie Glen. 
 "My own dear Nell: 
 
 "I wonder if you and the entire family at 
 home enjoy getting my letters as much as I 
 love writing them? You will see by the 
 heading of this epistle that I have tempo- 
 rarily abdicated from Glen Hall, and am 
 with Bettie. Dear me ! When Bettie and I 
 used to sit in our own room at Ogont2 
 
 "In robes of white, prettiest nightgowns under the 
 
 sun, 
 Stockingless, slipperless, sit in the night when (our 
 
 boarding-school) revel was done, 
 Sit and talk of waltz and quadrille, gallop and glide, 
 
 like other girls 
 Who over the fire, when all is still, comb out their 
 
 braids and curls." 
 
 "We never dreamed what fate had in 
 store for us. Bettie had decided to marry 
 an out-and-out cowboy on her own West- 
 ern frontier ! She scorned civilized life as a 
 miserable husk and wretched sham! She
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 121 
 
 proposed to ride up and down canons, 
 shooting off pistols and killing wild things 
 while she was young, and she arranged to 
 die when her first gray hair appeared ! And 
 I used to think if I could only be a second 
 Susan B. Anthony I should reach the high- 
 est zenith of my ambition. And now Bettie 
 is a duchess, and she has a young duke and 
 a little dukeling, and a brace of castles, 
 which to do her credit she has 'done over' 
 with excellent taste. And I am the Honor- 
 able Mrs. Gerald Blankshire while I'm on 
 my wedding visit in England. We will 
 leave the 'honorable' in father-in-law's safe 
 when we start for home. 
 
 ' ' But I know you are all dying to hear about 
 Bettie. Well to begin with, Bettie belongs 
 to what is called 'the smart set' over here, 
 which means a good many things that 
 would never be even dreamed of at father-in- 
 law's! Bettie 's duke is comparatively new 
 to his honors not more than three or four 
 hundred years old! Father-in-law dates 
 back to thirteen hundred and something, 
 and a king and a battlefield I'm going to 
 look it up some day. When Bettie wrote 
 and begged me to come and make her a
 
 122 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 visit, I could see that the twins looked 
 blushey, and that father-in-law and mother- 
 in-law didn't approve; but of course I 
 accepted, and then Gerald fell ill with some- 
 thing that his mother called a 'malarial 
 condition,' which didn't affect his energy or 
 his appetite, but which rendered it neces- 
 sary for me to go alone with my maid. 
 
 "We arrived at the little way station just 
 at twilight, and there was a closed carriage 
 waiting for me and some sort of an open 
 wagon for Martha and my luggage. And 
 then we drove and bumped and drove along 
 a muddy, uninteresting road for five or six 
 miles, so of course it was pitch dark when 
 we arrived for Martha followed right be- 
 hind with the luggage, as if for all the world 
 I were the hearse and she was the funeral! 
 
 "I suppose I might as well describe the 
 exterior of Craigie Glen before we go on. 
 It isn't one of the castles, it's just 'a place.' 
 The house is a protracted affair, two 
 stories and a half high. Of course, it's 
 Elizabethan ! It occurs to me that architec- 
 ture as a profession must have starved to 
 death previous to this era, and been mendi- 
 cants ever since; for every house I have
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 123 
 
 seen or have heard mentioned is Eliza- 
 bethan. But Bettie's house is "fetching. " 
 There are any number of bewildering wings 
 and protruding casements and little-paned 
 windows on hinges, and doors that open and 
 shut in the middle, and such lots of Vir- 
 ginia creeper that it makes me feel homesick ! 
 
 "Well, when I got to Bettie's door it was 
 thrown open by a footman. I don't mean, 
 Nell, anything like those promoted hotel 
 waiters that we see walking through foot- 
 men's parts in Chicago. These English 
 footmen are born so, not made to fit an 
 occasion of wealth or pomp or circumstance. 
 They have not a particle of expression ; they 
 only move at their joints, and their speech 
 has all the charm that a mechanical doll has 
 when you pull a string and it says ' Mama. ' 
 
 "First, you enter a great hall with a lot of 
 armor on the walls ; but I am used to armor, 
 father-in-law has enough to stock a museum 
 with. But I didn't have much time to look 
 around, for I heard a well-known voice cry- 
 ing: 'Oh, Nan! Nan!' and a pair of arms 
 were around my neck, and my arms were 
 around Bettie's neck, and we were looking 
 at each other with quivering lips and real
 
 124 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 old-fashioned American school-girl tears 
 running down our cheeks. The footman 
 never moved, and unless he had eyes in the 
 back of his head, he never saw our weeps, 
 but he must have heard them, they were so 
 genuine and unrestrained. 
 
 "Bettie looked just the same, only a trifle 
 stouter. 'You dear old Nan,' she said, hug- 
 ging me again, 'I am so glad to have you 
 first all alone by myself ; the others are in 
 the ballroom playing what we would call in 
 America, "tag." So come and have some 
 tea before we go to dress for dinner. ' Then 
 she took her arm and wound it round my 
 waist. ' It seems so good to see you, Nan, ' 
 she said, 'and we must have lots of talks 
 together you and I about people and 
 things in the dear home land over yonder, 
 mustn't we, Nan?' 
 
 "Out of the big hall she led me, and into a 
 little one with a stone floor. Then we turned 
 a corner and went into another narrow 
 hall, and then up some steps, and so at last 
 to a cosy sitting-room mother would never 
 stay in this house five minutes ; it gives you 
 the impression of being impossible to get 
 out of in case of fire.
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 125 
 
 "The room we now entered was so cosy and 
 quaint, it looked just like those you see in 
 colonial Virginia houses. There was a glo- 
 rious fire on the andirons no asbestos logs ! 
 that make you shiver, not only with cold 
 but with thoughts of the next month's gas 
 bill. And I did feel happy sitting in one of 
 the big, soft, cushiony chairs, with Bettie in 
 just such another soft cushiony one, sipping 
 our tea, and all the while we were sitting 
 tete-a-tete the strangest series of sounds were 
 greeting my ears. It occurred to me, 
 among other mental solutions that some back 
 portion of the mansion had tumbled in, 
 engulfing a multitude of shrieking servants 
 in its ruins. But I dismissed this sugges- 
 tion, as Bettie, who is not in the least deaf, 
 took it placidly and without comment. 
 
 "Finally, I couldn't stand it any longer, 
 and I said : ' I suppose a haunted chamber 
 is the correct thing to have in an Eliza- 
 bethan house, particularly now that they say 
 that Queen Bess has taken to walking, but I 
 really should, Bettie, insist upon my ghosts 
 making less noise. I thought at first that a 
 part of your house that you hadn't gotten 
 round to repairing yet had tumbled in, but
 
 126 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 you couldn't sit unmoved sipping your tea if 
 it was anything like that that was creating a 
 yelling pandemonium. It must be the lively 
 Elizabeth at skittles or broad sword exercise, 
 or something of the sort ! ' 
 
 "Bettie laughed, and she said, 'Oh, dear, 
 dear old Nan ! Just the same as ever ! Not 
 an R softened ! Not a bit of wit and bright- 
 ness gone! And to think,' she said, 
 slowly it seemed to me sadly 'that all 
 this fine humor should be lost on an 
 Englishman!' Then we both said noth- 
 ing for a little while. I suppose she was 
 casting a wistful look back upon her ideal 
 cowboy ; I know I thought of Miss Anthony. 
 
 "And finally she said and if you will 
 believe me, she was as solemn as possible, 
 there wasn't a grain of mirth in her voice, 
 there wasn't a twinkle of it in her eyes 'I 
 think I told you, Nan, that my house party 
 were playing tag. ' 
 
 " 'Oh,' I said, 'I see. I understand now 
 that you explain it to me ! But mother-in- 
 law's guests don't play "tag" at Glen Hall. 
 They don't play anything, in fact, but whist 
 and the piano. ' 
 
 " 'House tag is rather noisy,' said Bettie,
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 127 
 
 'and it breaks the furniture in the music-room 
 and when they jump on and off the billiard 
 table too much it isn't good for it. So I 
 rather suggest, so far as I may, the ball- 
 room. They are up there now. But the 
 floor is so slippery we had it waxed yester- 
 day for a dance last night that I am afraid 
 they are falling a good deal. But here they 
 come ! ' 
 
 "And into the room they flocked 'my 
 ladies' and 'my lords, ' 'honorable misses' 
 and 'honorable misters,' and some American 
 men and women who had gotten themselves 
 up to look English, but to be truthfully and 
 expressively slangy, hadn't caught on yet, 
 and like Peter of old, everything from the 
 crown of their heads to the soles of their 
 feet betrayed them. Well, tell grandmother 
 they all looked like those people that used 
 to dress up and ride about on horseback on 
 Thanksgiving days long ago, when I was a 
 little girl, and used to go and visit grand- 
 mother in the East those people that called 
 themselves 'ragamuffins.' 
 
 "The men's hair was all tousled, and those 
 that didn't have their neckties untied or off, 
 had them bowed under their ears or at the
 
 128 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 back of their necks; the ladies all looked 
 like 'Madge Wildfires,' but they exclaimed 
 in chorus that they 'had been having no end 
 of a good time ! Jolly fun, you know!' The 
 men looked at me en passant; the women 
 overlooked me altogether until I was pre- 
 sented. Then they were all civil and pleas- 
 ant except the American women, whose icy 
 glares and stares were delightfully funny 
 experiences. 
 
 "Bettie had told me that these two pro- 
 ducts of mining speculations had recently 
 been presented at court. If bending over 
 the queen's hand has such a freezing effect, 
 I am glad I have not had the honor. 
 
 "Father-in-law's guests are never frowsy 
 or draggled. They keep themselves in their 
 own apartments when not on dress parade. 
 
 "I have seen a great deal of Bettie's dear 
 little addle-headed duke. How a girl of 
 her brains and beauty and sense ever came 
 to marry such an it in pantaloons I don't 
 see ! But Bettie is true ; she has taken him 
 for better or for worse, and she makes the 
 best she can of him ; and he adores her, and 
 why shouldn't he? She takes such good 
 care of him !
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 129 
 
 "I shall be glad to go back to Glen Hall, 
 not that I don't love Bettie ; but I think 
 Gerald was right in getting malaria and 
 staying at home. The atmosphere here is 
 not sweet and pure, and everything is con- 
 ducted on such a different scale of morals 
 and manners. The dinners, for instance, 
 are very unlike the stately, ceremonious feasts 
 at father-in-law's. They are exquisitely 
 served and provided, but there are a great 
 many things discussed besides politics, flower 
 shows and religion. Some of the things 
 they talk about would bring crimson blushes 
 to the cheeks of Number Eleven ! 
 
 "But Bettie is a duchess, and on state 
 occasions she wears a coronet of golden 
 strawberry leaves. And over the water you 
 and I and everybody else clutch every item 
 of news the papers give concerning her. I 
 like Bettie best, and I think she likes her- 
 self best, when she is up in the nursery sit- 
 ting in a little plain, every-day American 
 rocking-chair, feeding her baby from her 
 breast, holding him close and telling him 
 sweet, simple nothings that make him stop 
 and look up into her face to smile and coo. 
 These are the times that Bettie and I have 
 9
 
 130 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 our best talks, and they are always about 
 home our America, our motherland. 
 
 "Before I close I want you to know that 
 the Honorable Mr. Vane, who presented all 
 that arsenic to the arsenic eater in Ploverlie, 
 has gone off on a voyage to the antipodes. 
 He sent me word by Gerald that he really 
 hadn't had time to see the man's wife, as I 
 asked him to. I wish he had taken that 
 arsenic with him. Nan. ' '
 
 ^BONNIE MACKIRBY. 13* 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Young Mrs. Mackirby had been to a 
 luncheon, and the absorbing topic of conver- 
 sation had been "Malchias, " the palmist, 
 whose art, it was generally conceded, was 
 simply preternatural. 
 
 So strongly had Mrs. Mackirby been 
 impressed by what she heard that she 
 decided to go to him on her way home and 
 personally test his skill. A servant in Ori- 
 ental costume opened the door and bowed 
 her into an apartment from which all natural 
 light had been excluded a room that was 
 Eastern in all its accessories and furnishings. 
 She seated herself upon a divan, and laid 
 upon the salver presented by the servant 
 the golden fee required by the palmist. It 
 was not many minutes before into the 
 room came a tall, fair, well-dressed gentle- 
 man, whose excellent English left one ques- 
 tioning why he introduced so conspicuously 
 Persian hangings and costly Indian shawls 
 and the odor of sandalwood into his apart-
 
 132 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 ments' make-up. "May I see your hands?" 
 he said, bowing slightly. She drew off her 
 gloves and held them palm up before him. 
 
 He took first one and then the other in his 
 own hands, then he took them both together, 
 but he uttered no word, and she fancied that 
 his hands shook. At last, after what seemed 
 an inexcusable silence, he spoke: "I shall 
 have to beg you," he said slowly", "to receive 
 back the fee, for I find myself unable to 
 read your hand. ' ' 
 
 She was such an unusually gentle, quiet- 
 looking woman that he was unprepared for 
 the penetration displayed in her reply. 
 
 "You mean," she said, "that you read in 
 my hands that which you do not wish to 
 tell me. If it has been given you to know 
 much that is withheld from the majority of 
 human kind, you must have it in your power 
 to be most helpful. For example, if j^ou 
 read in my hand anything that shows you 
 that sorrow or trouble is coming to be my 
 portion, do you think it would be right to 
 withhold it? 
 
 "I am quite alone in the world that is, I 
 have no father, mother, brothers or sisters. 
 There is no one in England who cares for me
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 133 
 
 or my interest. I have three children, but 
 they are part of myself. Individually, I 
 think I care little for anything, and fear 
 less. But these children are all girls. 
 They will be women by and by, and I do not 
 want any sorrow to come into their lives 
 through me. So I am sure you will read 
 my hand, and tell me all that its lines show 
 to you, and please believe that I am neither 
 a physical nor a moral coward. ' ' 
 
 She looked at Malchias, and he looked at 
 her. "As you will," he said finally, and 
 added : "I think you are right ; you should 
 know. It is always best for the strong in 
 soul to be forewarned or prepared to meet 
 the inevitable. I think that you should 
 know. ' ' 
 
 He then studied her hands carefully over 
 and over again. At last he said: "You 
 were born and reared in a large town or 
 small city by the sea. You married through 
 and by the suggestion of others a man 
 much older than yourself. You seem to 
 have been ver} 7 young, little more than a 
 child. You had in youth a fine constitution 
 and great recuperative powers. The only 
 shock to such splendid physical construction
 
 134 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 as yours that could have been possible, 
 then, would have come through some sor- 
 row, disappointment or perhaps physical 
 abuse. So delicate, so fine was, and is, 
 this mental make-up, that any abuse too 
 long resorted to could have but one result, 
 one outcome ; it would be a species of help- 
 lessness, a mind paralysis. 
 
 "Your husband is feeble, it would seem 
 to be, through some sort of intemperance. 
 This condition increases rapidly; it will, 
 before long, cause his death. You have 
 incurred the dislike of some woman, on 
 whom you have conferred many favors, but 
 these will all be forgotten by her if any 
 opportunity occurs in which she may do you 
 injury. There is a man who is planning 
 and plotting night and day to make you the 
 instrument by which he shall be enabled 
 to carry out his selfish, vicious and con- 
 temptible purposes. 
 
 "I am afraid I cannot show you that any- 
 thing which you might now do would avert 
 that which is soon to come to you, which is 
 predestined ; but I would advise you, if you 
 have any man friend who exerts a powerful 
 public influence, to tell him of this visit to
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 135 
 
 me. He may laugh at what you relate to 
 him concerning our conversation to-day, but 
 he will appreciate my foresight in some 
 near-at-hand to-morrow. ' ' 
 
 He took her hand again, and studied it 
 thoughtfully. He grew white and faint. 
 She felt an intense sense of gratitude to this 
 stranger whom she knew was moving the 
 heavens and the earth to help her in what 
 he believed her hour of need. 
 
 At last he said ' ' Thank God ! " He looked 
 up into her face, and the drops of sweat 
 stood upon his broad forehead, and he 
 breathed like one who has been running 
 hard and fast. "There is hope at least 
 against the greatest shame that is threaten- 
 ing you ! Take the old ring that you wear 
 on a chain about your neck it is a Masonic 
 ring, a very old one and send it to the man 
 who has its mate. Send it to-day. Within 
 an hour let it be on its way. There is no 
 time to lose. You are surrounded by spies, 
 you are so hedged in, as it were, that it 
 almost seems even now a pitiful hoping 
 against hope. However, dismiss your car- 
 riage and walk home. Turn into Rosebush 
 Street, and the man whom fate sends to
 
 136 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 meet and to greet you is the one to whom 
 you may freely intrust your ring, by whom 
 you may safely send your message. God be 
 with you!" he said, and then dropped her 
 hand, and was silent. 
 
 She bent her head in a wordless good-by 
 and passed out, and the palmist threw him- 
 self upon the divan, face downward, and 
 prayed for her.
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 137 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 The April day had lengthened into late 
 afternoon. A cool breeze was coming up 
 from the sea, and it set the branches sway- 
 ing and the young leaves rustling all along 
 the tree-shaded street. 
 
 The sparrows were gathering in little 
 groups, as sparrows have a way of doing 
 toward sundown, and they were chattering 
 in noisy, quarrelsome fashion. 
 
 Young Mrs. Mackirby walked slowly along 
 Rosebush Street ; she looked such a peaceful, 
 quiet bit of womankind. If one had felt her 
 pulse or listened to the beating of her heart, 
 the rhythm would have been found to be 
 normal ; but had one who made a life study 
 of the human mind looked into Bonnie 
 Mackirby 's face, he would have found oppor- 
 tunity for interesting research and con- 
 clusion. 
 
 Bonnie Mackirby was one of those women 
 who, without being startlingly beautiful, was
 
 138 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 noticeably attractive. Her head was nobly 
 shaped, its development symmetrical. Her 
 forehead was full at the dome, a trifle less 
 so at the eyebrows, as one is apt to find it 
 where the eyes are large and deep set. She 
 had a beautiful nose, neither large nor small, 
 decidedly Grecian in its contour ; the nostrils 
 were fine and thin and sensitive, suggesting 
 spirit and quick intelligence. It was the 
 mouth that gave the student the most posi- 
 tive clew to this individual bit of human 
 history. The mouth had never lost the 
 symmetry of its early perfection in both color 
 and shape. At sixteen it had been a 
 Cupid's bow, a laughing mouth, showing 
 the beautiful, firm, white teeth, but at six- 
 and-twenty time and circumstance had 
 dried up all the springs of mirth, and it had 
 come to be that the still red lips found 
 nothing mirthful in life, and, knowing noth- 
 ing but bondage, only smiled now at the 
 bidding of the will a smile so piteous and 
 yet so sweet that it was like the wraiths we 
 women cherish of our bridal roses. She 
 wore her heavy auburn hair drawn back from 
 her brow, and its wealth was twisted into a 
 coil at her head's crown her queenly little
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 139 
 
 head that held itself so regally that made her 
 seem to others just what she was, a gentle- 
 woman. 
 
 Emerson tells us that "all the angels that 
 inhabit the temple of the body appear at the 
 windows." 
 
 From young Mrs. Mackirby's eyes looked 
 out not angels, but ghosts, the ghost of a 
 disillusioned youth, the ghost of disap- 
 pointed hopes, the ghost of a wronged 
 womanhood, but oftenest there came the 
 spirit of an almost-spent endurance an 
 apathy which was taking from her the last 
 remnants of courage and of hope. They 
 were such sad, hopeless, beautiful blue 
 eyes. It was such a sad, sweet face. 
 
 She walked on in a sort of trance-like 
 indifference to her surroundings. She did 
 not hear the sparrows' shrill chatter in that 
 quiet, unfrequented street, but she did hear 
 the leaves rustle, and she felt gratefully the 
 cool, salt breath of the sea, and so walking 
 on she came face to face with her brother- 
 in-law, Richard Mackirby. 
 
 He was walking briskly along and so 
 absorbed in his own thoughts that he would 
 have passed her if she had not called him by
 
 140 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 name. He turned and walked along beside 
 her. 
 
 "So," she said, "you are the man 
 Malchias, the palmist, the mind-reader, sent 
 me to meet?" 
 
 "Malchias, the mind-reader!" he said. 
 "I don't understand?" 
 
 "Why," she said, "haven't you heard of 
 Malchias, Richard? The mysterious man 
 from the unknown who reads such wonder- 
 ful things concerning the individual, from 
 the individual's hand? They talked so much 
 about him at the luncheon that I was 
 attending to-day that I decided to go and 
 hear what he would say to me, ' then she 
 laughed, in mirthless fashion, and added: 
 "The man evidently believes in himself. He 
 was really afraid to tell me what he fancied 
 he saw in the to-come of my life page. He 
 offered to return me my fee, he tried to 
 make me believe that my hand was a blank 
 to him, but I knew better, and I told him so, 
 and finally he permitted hjmself to say that 
 I was soon to be in great peril. He said 
 if I had a friend who was prominently 
 forceful, I must communicate what he 
 had said to me at once to him. He told me
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 141 
 
 to send to this friend a ring which I wear 
 about my neck. He told me to send home 
 the carriage, and to walk through Rosebush 
 Street, and a trusty messenger would meet 
 me who would take this ring to my friend. 
 And here you are, and here is the ring." 
 
 There was something uncanny in her great 
 quiet eyes, in her immovable smile, in her 
 lack of interest, in her unemotional voice. 
 She seemed so altogether far off. 
 
 "Bonnie," said Richard Mackirby, gently, 
 as he took the ring from her hands, "I hope 
 you are not allowing yourself to be made the 
 victim of a clever trickster's art." He said 
 this, but he did not believe what he uttered ; 
 on the contrary, he felt that the man was a 
 prophet, and that every word of his advice 
 was precious to foil some unknown and cruel 
 purpose soon to be brought to bear upon the 
 woman beside him. "But, Bonnie, I am 
 your friend, and whatever you bid me do 
 with this ring, I will do it. ' ' 
 
 "Then listen," she said. "Take the first 
 train to London and go directly to Lord 
 Blankshire's house. I saw by the morning 
 paper that he was in town. Take this card 
 of mine, and send it in with yours, and he
 
 142 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 will see you. Give him the ring. Tell him 
 all that Malchias said to me about my need- 
 ing a strong friendship in the future, in the 
 near future. 
 
 "You see the ring is Masonic. You will 
 perhaps for this reason be even more zealous 
 to be helpful to me; and please tell him 
 how the children love you, and how fond 
 you are of them. Tell him that I can't think 
 what can be going to happen to me. I seem 
 to be well and strong, but of course dreadful 
 accidents come when one least expects them. 
 And so I do not dare to ignore this advice 
 on the children's account. That is all that 
 there is to say to my lord. But Richard, ' ' 
 she laid her hand on his arm, "I know that 
 you are so truly my friend that you will not 
 ask me to explain anything. I had rather 
 whatever his lordship wishes you to know 
 concerning his interest in me should come 
 from him to you. And now our road parts, 
 and I must go on alone, for we are nearing 
 home, and it is best that we should not be 
 seen together. I should like to shake hands 
 with you, Dick, if you don't mind, and I 
 should like to ask you, if I am going to be
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 143 
 
 killed soon by some accident, that you will 
 not let the babies forget me. ' ' 
 
 She did not wait for his answer. She 
 turned and went back a few steps to a cross 
 street, and left him standing there, looking 
 after her.
 
 144 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 "Glen Hall. 
 "My own dear Nell: 
 
 "I suppose you have all seen accounts in 
 the Chicago papers of the sensational poison- 
 ing case that is stirring us up over here. It 
 would, I think, be a matter of interest to me 
 if the accused was an English woman, but 
 she is something more ; she is an American, 
 and oh, Nell, Nell! why didn't I pursue 
 that misguided Vane until I made him tell 
 the wife about that poison! For the man 
 who is supposed to have been poisoned by 
 arsenic is the man Mr. Vane told us about at 
 the dinner party, and the woman who is 
 accused of doing it is his wife. 
 
 "Of course, the poor woman her name is 
 Mrs. Mackirby will get free. All the 
 papers but one say that she will, for to begin 
 with everybody who knew this Mr. Mackirby 
 intimately knew that he was a confirmed 
 arsenic -eater. The papers are full of letters, 
 written by well-known and highly respect-
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 145 
 
 able people, saying that they are willing 
 under oath to attest to this fact. 
 
 "It seems that in the last part of April this 
 Mr. Mackirby went down to his office as 
 usual, and while there was taken suddenly 
 ill with nausea, but he dosed himself up so 
 as to go off to some pleasure party in the 
 afternoon. The next day this nausea 
 returned with pain. He went home and 
 his wife gave him a dose of mustard water, 
 and as he still kept complaining, she sent 
 for a doctor. Between Mrs. Mackirby 's 
 mustard and the doctor's treatment, the 
 sufferer was relieved, and felt quite as well 
 as usual for a week or more. 
 
 "But in early May he had another attack 
 and his old physician was called in. Now, 
 this doctor decided to be homeopathic in his 
 treatment. He knew Mr. Mackirby ate 
 arsenic, so he gave him arsenic to counteract 
 the effects the habit had produced, and for 
 some reason it didn't work. It one of the 
 papers said, so I am safe in copying it dis- 
 tressed the whole mucous membrane, and at 
 Mrs. Mackirby 's request the doctor stopped 
 giving the arsenic mixture and tried some- 
 thing else. 
 10
 
 146 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 "Mrs. Mackirby never left Mr. Mackirby. 
 Nobody else could do anything with him. 
 
 "So she was with him night and day, 
 taking what snatches of sleep she could by 
 lying down beside him when he was too 
 exhausted by impatience and fretting to ask 
 for anything more to be temporarily done for 
 him. 
 
 "This constant and unremitting attendance 
 began to tell upon the wife. She had sev- 
 eral fainting turns and she looked like a 
 ghost. 
 
 "So she was particularly grateful to Mr. 
 Frederick Mackirby, her husband's brother, 
 when he brought in a trained nurse from 
 London, but the nurse when she had taken 
 off her bonnet and put on her cap 'insisted,' 
 in that authoritative manner which some of 
 them, even in Chicago, attempt upon occa- 
 sions, and this naturally annoyed a woman 
 of Mrs. Mackirby 's intelligence and refine- 
 ment, and every hour the woman grew more 
 and more impertinently indifferent to Mrs. 
 Mackirby in her attitude, whenever Mrs. 
 Mackirby offered a suggestion or made an 
 effort to be helpful. 
 
 "In two days after the nurse's arrival her
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 147 
 
 ministrations were at an end. Mr. Mac- 
 kirby died of what the attending physicians 
 then seemed satisfied was heart failure. 
 
 "Those last two days had been awfully hard 
 for the poor young wife. She was simply 
 forbidden by the brother and the nurse to do 
 anything for her husband. But he the 
 husband refused to be taken care of by 
 anybody but his wife. So they insisted 
 that she remain in the room, a lay figure, to 
 open her mouth and lift her hands or her 
 feet at their bidding. Dear me ! The whole 
 scene makes me wild ! How I should love 
 to scratch them both ! 
 
 "As I have said, the husband wanted to 
 hold his wife's hand; he wanted her to lay 
 her head on the pillow beside him ; he kept 
 whispering to her with his lips quivering 
 and tears in his eyes, and she would kiss 
 his cheek and pat him gently, and say: 
 'There, there, dear, don't grieve; it is all 
 right,' and 'I have quite forgotten all 
 about it. ' 
 
 "He wouldn't take any medicine or any 
 food from doctors, brother or nurse. They 
 poured it out and handed it to the wife and 
 she gave it to him ; and if she left the room
 
 148 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 for a moment, he repeated her name over and 
 over and over again. It was 'Bonnie, Bonnie, 
 Bonnie!' until she was back at the bedside. 
 
 "Do you think it is any wonder that after 
 being without any regular sleep for seven 
 nights and days, that when the final hour 
 came, and he the husband was gone, that 
 she fell senseless upon his breast? It is an 
 awful hour, Nell. It takes more than 
 human courage to meet it bravely. Talk 
 about witnessing gladiatorial contests! To 
 see a tiny baby die is as awful a sight. The 
 spirit and the body wrestling for the mas- 
 tery, the enslaved soul trying to tear itself 
 from the cruel clay master and take its way 
 home these are sights which make one turn 
 aside, sounds which shake the stoutest 
 endurance. So when the death damps had 
 ceased to pour, when the strong man's chest 
 had ceased to strain and struggle, when the 
 last effort was over, and the sting of death 
 had been thrust, this wife swooned. 
 
 "Her mother-in-law and brother-in-law, 
 the trained nurse that had been in the house 
 two days, and Mrs. Mackirby's maid say 
 that Mrs. Mackirby did not love her hus- 
 band, and that for some time before her
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 149 
 
 husband's death she had been openly carry- 
 ing on a flirtation with oh, it is such a lit- 
 tle world, Nell! mother-in-law's nephew, 
 whose name is Jack Thornely. I don't 
 believe a word of it; for I have seen Mr. 
 Thornely, and what is more I have talked 
 with him ! And you may take my word for 
 it, that no one but his own mother could ever 
 have loved him and she didn't have the 
 chance of trying; she died when he was 
 born! 
 
 "And what business is it of those people 
 whether Mrs. Mackirby loved her husband 
 or not? It is said on excellent authority 
 that he had been sapping her youth, her 
 vitality, her pity and her patience for ten 
 long years; that he was a drunkard and a 
 libertine ; that she found that he, a man of 
 over forty, had married her, a girl of sixteen, 
 for her money money, not only to support 
 him in luxury, but to keep his mother and 
 brothers as well. She bore this man three 
 children, thus mingling for all time his 
 name and nature with hers; and so while 
 probably she did not loye him, in the sense 
 of honoring or respecting him, there was 
 the link of motherhood and fatherhood
 
 ISO BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 between them, and it bound them close 
 together. It was probably strong within 
 them both in that parting hour. Have you 
 never heard a white-haired woman say that 
 when the partner of her life had breathed 
 his last, that she lost all memory of the 
 querulous, feeble man, and mourned for the 
 love of her youth? 
 
 "Nell, dear, perhaps you can not under- 
 stand what I mean, but mother and grand- 
 mother will, and you will, too, when he wins 
 who now comes a-wooing, for there is 
 something in marriage that brings a new 
 love to light, a love that man and wife 
 feel is immortal. It is often covered with a 
 veil here, but when death's hand tears the 
 earthly fabric away, it comes back and 
 dwells with the one that remains. And so 
 may not this wife, kneeling beside her dying 
 husband, have gone back into her past? 
 May she not have believed that she held in 
 her arms the man who wooed her? How- 
 ever that may be, when the spirit of William 
 Mackirby returned to the God who gave it, 
 the spirit of Bonnie Mackirby went, too; and 
 she followed him on his way for thirty-six 
 long hours, and when she awoke to time she
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 151 
 
 found herself a prisoner, guarded by officers 
 of the law ! She has been removed to jail. 
 She has been remanded for trial. She will 
 be free, of course ; but just think of what this 
 must mean to her a delicate, gentle, inno- 
 cent woman ! Just think of it ! 
 
 "Nan."
 
 152 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 When young Mrs. Mackirby fell into the 
 deep swoon beside her husband, Mr. Fred- 
 erick Mackirby tenderly lifted her up and 
 carried her in his arms from the room. He 
 did not convey his unconscious burden to her 
 own apartments, which were close at hand, 
 but took her to a small room at the back of 
 the house, and laid her on the bed. 
 
 It was a room no larger than a good-sized 
 closet, and was only used as an overflow 
 when the house was more than full. The 
 little window looked out upon a blind wall, 
 and even in the brightest days of summer 
 it was cool and dark. 
 
 The nurse and Elizabeth, the maid, fol- 
 lowed Mr. Frederick Mackirby, and as soon 
 as he had left the room they proceeded to 
 undress the unconscious woman, jerking her 
 about with no tender hands, the maid in 
 particular being viciously rough. The 
 nurse, a big, powerfully built woman, paid
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 153 
 
 little heed to the ;maid or her actions, save 
 to order her to do this or that. The maid 
 was servile and fawning toward the nurse, 
 and tried to win her into a conversation. 
 
 "Do you think, now, she could be taking 
 on?" she said, jerking as she spoke at Mrs. 
 Mackirby's sleeve. 
 
 "Taking on!" answered the nurse. "No; 
 anyone but a fool or a blind person could see 
 that she is perfectly unconscious! And why 
 shouldn't she be? She has kept herself up 
 on black coffee to my certain knowledge for 
 the last two days. And during that time 
 she has neither slept nor tasted food, and 
 her husband did die hard! And he was a 
 long time in getting through with it! She 
 did a lot of quiet suffering. She is clear 
 grit, that woman is!" 
 
 ' ' Shall I take her rings off?" said Elizabeth. 
 
 "Yes," answered the nurse, "those are 
 young Mr. Mackirby's orders, and wait, 
 please, before you begin ; I will count them, 
 as I shall be held responsible for them." 
 
 Elizabeth shot an angry glance at the 
 nurse, and mumbled something; but the 
 nurse did not seem to see or hear her. She 
 was taking off Mrs. Mackirby's shoes and
 
 154 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 stockings. Elizabeth now pulled off the 
 rings all but the wedding ring; it still 
 circled the finger from which it had never 
 been removed since the bishop who had 
 baptized and confirmed Mrs. Mackirby had 
 entrusted this pledge to William Mackirby 
 at the altar rail, instructing him to say, 
 "With this ring I thee wed." 
 
 Elizabeth paused. "Would you mind 
 taking this here one off?" she said. "It 
 might bring me bad luck. I have often 
 heard tell that it did." 
 
 The nurse looked at her contemptuously. 
 "Step out of my way," she said, and she 
 took the little frail white hand into her 
 large work-strengthened one, and she tried 
 to force the ring off. But it had wedged a 
 place for itself, and the finger above where 
 it circled had grown fuller. "Bring me 
 some warm, strong suds," said the nurse. 
 And the suds being brought, she held the 
 finger in it until she was enabled to put the 
 wedding ring, with the others, in the pocket 
 of her apron. "Now," she said to Eliza- 
 beth, "bring a nightgown. " 
 
 Elizabeth speedily returned, bearing upon 
 her arm a coarsely made garment of
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 155 
 
 unbleached muslin, and on its front were 
 four large porcelain buttons. 
 
 The nurse took the garment from Eliza- 
 beth's arm and surveyed it critically. It 
 appealed to her sense of humor. She almost 
 laughed. "Aren't you a trifle previous, 
 Elizabeth?" she said. "This is your night- 
 gown, and not Mrs. Mackirby's." 
 
 "Well, suppose it is my gown, and not 
 hers," said Elizabeth, fiercely. "It's good 
 enough for her where she is going, and it's 
 all she'll get, if I can help it! Mr. Fred- 
 erick and Madame Mackirby have promised 
 me I should have her clothes, and I'm not 
 going to waste any of those good things on 
 her! Not much!" 
 
 The nurse was holding the helpless head 
 in her strong arms, and putting the gown 
 on. "Was she a severe mistress to you?" 
 she said. "You seem to hate her so!" 
 
 "Severe!" snorted Elizabeth. "No, 
 indeed! Trash like her! American trash! 
 Doesn't know how to treat a servant. She 
 was always giving me things and letting 
 me off. But she was mean! Downright 
 mean! She kept all her affairs to herself, 
 and when Mr. Mackirby would be after strik-
 
 156 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 ing her or anything, do you suppose she 
 would take on, and cry, and talk to me 
 about it? Bless me, no! You would have 
 thought I was nobody. She never so much 
 as mentioned it. And, as sure as you are 
 born, for all that, we can swear that her 
 and Mr. Jack Thornely was as thick as two 
 thieves. I never read but one note he ever 
 sent her, and when she got that she acted like 
 a regular play actress. If I hadn't a-known 
 from Mr. Frederick what sort she was, I'd 
 have thought she was as innocent as a 
 lamb!" 
 
 They had tucked Mrs. Mackirby into the 
 straw-ticked little iron bed now, and they 
 both stood looking at her. 
 
 "She may be the fiend that her brother-in- 
 law swears to me that she is," said the nurse, 
 "and she certainly did act queerly toward 
 me. No woman who hadn't an object would 
 have dictated to a trained nurse what to do 
 and what not to do ; but she is beautiful to 
 look at, and even that guy of a gown of 
 yours does not make her look anything but a 
 lady. I suppose we had better straighten 
 up the room, and take her clothes out and 
 lock the door."
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 157 
 
 "But," said Elizabeth, when the tidying 
 had been completed, "suppose she should 
 wake up? Mr. Frederick says it's a God's 
 blessing that she is off in this faint. " 
 
 "I don't think she will wake up," said the 
 nurse. But she took out her watch and 
 counted the pulse. "Well, there is no 
 knowing what she might do, and if Mr. 
 Mackirby thinks it better that she shall stay 
 asleep all night, I'll give her a hypodermic." 
 
 She did not take long to prepare the needle, 
 nor to thrust it into the delicate arm. 
 "Now," she said, "let your soul rest in quiet- 
 ness. She shan't wake until it is time. I 
 will look out for that." Then she pulled 
 down the window almost to a close, pulled 
 down the shades, thereby shutting out what 
 little air could find its way into the close 
 room. ' ' Come along, " she said to Elizabeth. 
 
 Elizabeth looked back over her shoulder. 
 "You don't think," she said, "that she will 
 die? It would be very much against Mr. 
 Frederick's wishes if she did!" The nurse 
 vouchsafed no reply. She motioned to 
 Elizabeth to pass out before her, and then 
 she closed and locked the door.
 
 158 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 During the thirty-six hours that elapsed 
 after the death of William Mackirby, Mr. 
 Frederick Mackirby, with the assistance of 
 Elizabeth and the nurse, arranged every- 
 thing in and about the apartments of his 
 late brother and his late brother's wife to 
 produce the effect he desired. 
 
 Arsenic was stored away in one of Mrs. 
 Mackirby' s hat boxes, arsenic was put into a 
 jewel case bearing the name of an Ameri- 
 can firm, arsenic was sprinkled into jugs 
 and dishes containing food particles, some 
 arsenic was dropped into a half-used bottle 
 of meat extract. There was arsenic put on 
 the linen closet shelf, and arsenic put into 
 an empty trunk, a trunk with Mrs. Mac- 
 kirby 's maiden name printed upon it. There 
 were arsenic pills put in a washstand 
 drawer, and finally a saucer of steeping fly- 
 paper conspicuously placed on the mantel- 
 shelf. Then Frederick Mackirby retired to 
 the library, where his mother had installed
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 159 
 
 herself, and sent a messenger for the 
 police. 
 
 He received the man at once upon his 
 arrival. His mother, Madame Mackirby, 
 was weeping piteously; Richard, pale and 
 distressed, was standing beside her chair. 
 Frederick had a rumpled handkerchief in his 
 hand. He had the appearance of one who 
 has recently wept. 
 
 "I," he began slowly and with an effort, 
 "I have, after long deliberation, decided 
 that it is my duty to ask an inspection of 
 my late brother's apartments. For several 
 days before my dear brother's death, it was 
 forcibly borne in upon me that his illness 
 was most unnatural. I had many startling 
 incidents brought to my attention ; poisoning 
 was suggested ! 
 
 "My sister-in-law is a young woman, not 
 thirty yet ; my brother was much past fifty. 
 She is an American, and she married my 
 poor brother in America some ten years ago. 
 
 "She has to my certain knowledge been 
 recklessly intimate with a man of good 
 family. They have corresponded, for he 
 has shown me, since my brother's death, her 
 letters to him, and the tone of these letters,
 
 160 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 while not absolutely criminating, show evi- 
 dences of an unguarded, reckless attachment. 
 I have proof that my sister-in-law visited this 
 man at a public house, a small hotel ! 
 
 "Besides this, I am ready to swear, the 
 nurse who took care of my brother is 
 ready to swear, and every servant in this 
 house is ready to take oath of Mrs. Mac- 
 kirby's suspicious and unwifely conduct, save 
 one, the nurse of Mrs. Mackirby's children, 
 who is blindly devoted to her mistress, who 
 certainly was most kind to her." 
 
 Here Frederick buried his face in his 
 handkerchief, and the officer turned to the 
 younger brother. "And you, sir," he 
 said, "have you anything to tell me?" 
 
 ' ' No, ' ' answered Richard, quietly. 4 ' Noth- 
 ing, but that I believe my brother's suspicions 
 to be utterly absurd and without a vestige of 
 foundation. My sister-in-law was a good, 
 faithful wife, a loving and devoted mother. 
 I was not here at the time of my brother's 
 illness and death. Indeed, I am but just 
 returned. I have nothing to say, but that as 
 my sister-in-law's friend, I scorn this atti- 
 tude taken by my brother as a shameless, 
 baseless accusation."
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 161 
 
 ' ' Mr. Mackirby, ' ' said the officer, address- 
 ing Frederick, "didn't the doctor give a 
 certificate of natural death, and the cause?" 
 
 "The doctors," said Frederick, stifling a 
 sob, "were inclined to think the death 
 resulted from heart failure at first, but since 
 then," another prolonged sob, "they have 
 become convinced of their error. They 
 insist that it is my duty to call you in. ' ' 
 
 "And what, " said the officer, beginning to 
 be impatient of Mr. Mackirby's prolonged 
 sentimentalism, "what do they, the doctors, 
 suspect?" 
 
 "I suspect," he said, "poison. The nurse 
 I brought up from London told me that she 
 felt quite sure my poor brother was dying 
 from poison that was being administered to 
 him in small doses by his wife. ' ' 
 
 "Very well," said the officer. "We will 
 proceed at once to examine the room or 
 rooms, but where is the widow? Where is 
 young Mrs. Mackirby?" 
 
 Frederick looked unflinchingly into the 
 officer's eyes as he said: "Mrs. Mackirby 
 fell unconscious beside her husband when he 
 died. But she recovered at once. I got her 
 out into the entry, and she insisted upon 
 ii
 
 162 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 going into a little closet of a room at the 
 hall's end. I tried to persuade her to go to 
 her own apartment, but she cried out in 
 terror: 'Not there! oh, not there! 'and ever 
 since she has kept herself in a dead condition 
 with morphine, poor soul! poor soul!" he 
 said, and shook his head. 
 
 He seemed so reluctant to tell anything 
 concerning this evidently erring woman, it 
 seemed so much a matter of duty, that the 
 officer was drawn toward him. He thought 
 how much more of a man he was than his 
 brother. 
 
 So he laid his hand on Frederick's shoulder 
 and said: "I wouldn't be sure that she is 
 guilty, sir, until you get some real proof. 
 Things often look black, and then the sky 
 clears and there is nothing in it after all. 
 Would it be asking too much of you to go 
 with me?" 
 
 Frederick half rose, and then staggered 
 back into his seat. "I cannot," he said, 
 hoarsely. "No, it is impossible! I will call 
 Elizabeth." He touched a bell, and Eliza- 
 beth appeared. 
 
 The officer looked at her interestedly; 
 looked at her thin, pale face, her small,
 
 BONNIE MACK1RBY. 163 
 
 uncertain colored, white-lashed eyes, her 
 thin lips and her long, prong-like teeth. 
 "Very well," he said, slowly. "Lead the 
 way, Elizabeth. ' '
 
 164 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Once in the hall, the chief motioned to two 
 of his men who were standing there to 
 follow him, and Elizabeth leading the way 
 they were soon within the room where Mr. 
 Mackirby had died. 
 
 "Now, boys," said the chief, briskly, 
 "make a thorough search through this 
 room, the next room and the bath-room. 
 We are after poison. Find it! And while 
 you are hunting, this young lady will sit 
 down beside me and rest herself, for she 
 looks worried and tired. Are you a house- 
 maid, my dear?" 
 
 He and Elizabeth were quite alone now, 
 the men having begun in Mrs. Mackirby 's 
 room, and the chief who had managed never 
 to quite take his eyes off her face, thought 
 that she looked for all the world like a child 
 who was playing at "search and find." It 
 seemed as though when the men, whom 
 they could distinctly see through the wide 
 communicating door, were in some places,
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 165 
 
 that Elizabeth was going to cry out, "You 
 are hot!" and at other times, "You are 
 cold!" 
 
 "Are you the housemaid?" he repeated 
 again. 
 
 "No," she said, "I am not." 
 
 "What are you, then?" he asked. 
 
 "I don't see what business it is of yours," 
 she said, sullenly. 
 
 "Well, I wouldn't get mad about it if I 
 was you," he answered, pleasantly. "But 
 all the same, my girl, it is my business, and 
 I'll ask you the question again. Now, if you 
 are not a housemaid, what are you?" 
 
 "Oh, if you must know, I'm young Mrs. 
 Mackirby's maid. Now I hope you feel 
 satisfied ! ' ' 
 
 "And why are you not with your mistress?' ' 
 
 "Didn't Mr. Frederick Mackirby say that 
 she was asleep?" 
 
 "Oh, but suppose she should wake?" 
 
 "Let's suppose something that will hap- 
 pen; she's doped herself good." 
 
 The expression of the woman's face as she 
 said this was so distinctly cruel that the 
 officer felt a new interest ih her, as a student 
 feels when he discovers some new departure,
 
 166 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 some new development in his particular 
 course or line of thought. The officer, an 
 advanced student in the study of human 
 degeneracy, felt that close beside him was an 
 excellent example of the stuff from which 
 criminals are made. But he was well drilled 
 in his craft ; he was a clever detective, as the 
 records of the "Yard" would show. So he 
 nodded in good-comrade manner to the 
 woman, he laughed a knowing laugh, and 
 he said, appreciatively: "That's all right, 
 my dear, let her sleep! Sleep's a good 
 thing! Let her sleep!" 
 
 Just then one of the men came up. He 
 was a young man, with a sharp, clear-cut 
 face a face that through some vigilance or 
 alertness of expression made one think of a 
 fox terrier. 
 
 "There is arsenic scattered everywhere," 
 he said. "It is all done up in packages, 
 and is labeled in clear, distinct handwriting. 
 Besides the arsenic there is rat poison and 
 cat poison and belladonna and aconite. 
 There is enough of the stuff lying loosely 
 around to kill a thousand men, let alone 
 one!" 
 
 The chief rose, "I'll come and check it
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 167 
 
 off for you, ' ' he said. Then turning to 
 Elizabeth, he added in a voice that she under- 
 stood: "You sit still where you are, my 
 dear, and don 't you move until I tell you to. ' ' 
 And then he went about jotting down the 
 finds in a book, but he never was so intensely 
 occupied as not to see the woman sitting 
 upon the lounge. 
 
 But Elizabeth, being fully impressed that 
 she was under no inspection at all, when the 
 chief and his men were in the linen closet 
 between the rooms, got up, took a small 
 pitcher with some water in it that was stand- 
 ing on a table, went to the mantelshelf, and 
 poured some of it into a saucer that con- 
 tained a bit of dried fly-paper that had evi- 
 dently had water on it before because there 
 was a dried yellow-brown sediment on the 
 china's surface. She was back in her place 
 before it seemed possible that she had had 
 time to accomplish the act. But she was not 
 a second too soon, for the detective was 
 beside her, and she paled and reddened in 
 nervous terror at the thought of her narrow 
 escape from detection, for he seemed all 
 unconscious of the fact that she had moved 
 an inch since he left her.
 
 i68 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 He sat there looking into vacancy and 
 beating a devil's tattoo on the wooden 
 edge that finished the sofa. Then the 
 men came out of the closet and stood 
 like a pair of mutes waiting further or- 
 ders. The officer stopped beating the 
 devil's tattoo. 
 
 "Just take another look around this 
 room," he said. "Look on the table and 
 the chiffonier top." "And, " suggested the 
 demure Elizabeth, "on the mantelshelf." 
 
 "Now, my dear," said the chief, grate- 
 fully, "I call that kind; for I should never 
 have thought of the mantelshelf ! Don't ever 
 tell me that women folks couldn't make 
 good detectives!" 
 
 Elizabeth bridled and looked indignant. 
 "Dear me," she said, tartly, "I'm no 
 detective, I'll have you understand! And 
 I'd like to get through with sitting here, I 
 would. " 
 
 "Of course, you would," said the officer 
 sympathetically, "for I know that such a 
 loving, honest little woman as you are must 
 be suffering tortures to be kept so long away 
 from your poor, sick mistress. What is that 
 on the shelf, Tom?"
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 169 
 
 "It is some fly-paper, "said the fox terrier, 
 bringing the saucer up to his chief; "but it 
 has been soaked and dried up before, and 
 it's just had some fresh water poured 
 upon it. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, you must be mistaken about it's 
 being freshly poured, Tommy," said the 
 chief. 
 
 "Well, I ain't," answered the fox terrier. 
 "For they spattered drops on the marble, 
 and they are there yet ! " 
 
 "Well, well!" said the chief, looking 
 gravely perplexed. "Now, my dear, did 
 anybody come into the room while I was out 
 of it?" 
 
 "No," said Elizabeth, doggedly. "How 
 could they? You locked the door, and you 
 have got the keys." 
 
 "We don't need you any more now," said 
 the chief, and he unlocked the door for her. 
 Then when she had passed out, he locked it, 
 and remained for a long time in closeted 
 consultation with his assistants.
 
 170 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 As the detective left the library, Frederick 
 Mackirby raised his head and looked over to 
 his brother. 
 
 "Why didn't you speak up and say some- 
 thing to that man?" he snarled. "You know 
 as well as I do what sort of a woman Will- 
 iam's wife is, and has been. You must 
 realize that her course of conduct, her open 
 and flagrant flirtation with Jack Thornely, 
 her letters to him, which are now in my 
 possession, breathing the most ardent and 
 undying affection, and the fact that she 
 met him by appointment in a hotel, and now 
 William's peculiar and sudden taking-off, all 
 point to one awful thought ! A crime which 
 I cannot bear to mention!" 
 
 "Well," said Dick, dryly, taking one of 
 his late brother's cigars from a freshly 
 opened box and lighting it. "Have you 
 finished? Or is there more? If you have 
 finished, I wish to say to you that I consider 
 the attitude that you have taken not only
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 171 
 
 wickedly contemptible, but sublimely ridicu- 
 lous, " and as he said it he looked straight 
 into Frederick's face, and Frederick, for 
 some reason, changed his tune from his 
 former snarl to a propitiating whine. 
 
 "If there is any time in life," he said, 
 "when relatives should stand shoulder to 
 shoulder, it is under such circumstances 
 as these, when a family of position and 
 prominence, a family who have always 
 maintained an exclusive position, are 
 forced to proclaim publicly a disgrace and 
 a shame. " 
 
 Richard still kept his blue gray eyes fixed 
 upon his brother's face, but he did not open 
 his mouth, save to relieve it of an over-abund- 
 ance of smoke. 
 
 "Why don't you say something, Dick?" 
 said his mother, peevishly. "Why didn't 
 you tell the man that you knew Bonnie was 
 a bold, bad, unprincipled woman?" 
 
 "Because, mother," he said, "I know her 
 to be nothing of the kind. And it seems 
 hardly the part of the prominent, exclusive 
 and noble family that Frederick denomi- 
 nates us to fall to reviling the hand that has 
 fed us bounteously for so many years!"
 
 172 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 Then Madame Mackirby fell to weeping 
 and to crying out: "Oh, my Willie! Oh, 
 my boy ! To think that you should die such 
 a death! Oh, my Willie! my Willie!" and 
 the old woman sobbed aloud, rocking her- 
 self to and fro. Richard turned from look- 
 ing at his brother to looking at his mother. 
 
 "Don't cry any more, mother," he said. 
 "It will do William no good, and whoever 
 has told you that he died from anything but 
 a natural cause has lied to you. I wish 
 instead of feeling as you do, you would go 
 upstairs to poor Bonnie, and rouse her up 
 and make her dress, and come over to our 
 house, where the little girls are. She needs 
 their comforting arms about her neck, their 
 comforting voices in her ears. Bonnie has 
 been a good wife to your son, mother, and 
 you would know this if you had not listened 
 to the idle, vicious chatter of servants. 
 Come, mother, let you and I go up to 
 poor Bonnie." 
 
 "Go up to her! Go up to that vile 
 creature!" The old lady rose with energy 
 from her chair. "No!" she cried. "I will 
 stay here, here in this room until I know 
 that another murderess is in the hands of the
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 173 
 
 law! I want the joy of taking that news 
 back to my son's children!" 
 
 Strangely enough, it was Frederick who 
 spoke. "Mother," he said, "look at me and 
 listen to me. I had rather Richard would 
 have learned of the poor creature's evident 
 guilt from the police discoveries and from 
 the many witnesses, rather than from you or 
 from me, because he is not with us, and is 
 therefore against us. But it would be 
 madness to let the children know a breath 
 of this sad, sad condition! They must be 
 kept in ignorance of anything concerning 
 this matter. Even Dick will see the wisdom 
 of this from a humanitarian standpoint. And 
 when he comes to know the truth as we do, 
 when her guilt is forced upon him, he will, 
 with us, do all that he can to shelter the little 
 lives which an adverse fate has com- 
 mitted to our care and guardianship. And 
 remember, these children blindly worship 
 their mother. And should we seem to be 
 doing her an injustice, the two oldest chil- 
 dren would be able to give us a great deal of 
 trouble, for public opinion is a great thing, 
 and I want the guardianship. This will 
 enable us three to have each a princely
 
 174 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 income for years, because, whether she is 
 hung for her crime or sent into penal servi- 
 tude for life, her entire means will be 
 her children's. And that, with the large 
 insurance that her money permitted William 
 to carry, is no small matter, I can assure 
 you ! No. What we will all do, mother, is 
 to say to the children that their mother is 
 terribly ill at a hospital, and then, after the 
 trial is over, that she is dead. " 
 
 "But suppose," it was Dick who broke in, 
 "suppose, even with all the proof you pre- 
 tend to have, which is purely circumstantial, 
 the case goes against you, and Bonnie is 
 adjudged innocent, as, before God, I know 
 her to be. What will your condition be 
 then? Where will be your present sup- 
 port?" 
 
 Frederick smiled. "Bonnie will give us 
 little or no trouble personally. Doctor 
 Worthey, her physician, tells me that the 
 shock of William's death, added to many 
 other shocks, for we all know William led 
 her a dog's life, will about complete her 
 mental wreckage. 
 
 "I'm not in the least afraid of what Bonnie 
 will do. That does not trouble me. But it
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. i?5 
 
 is the damned, infernal, meddling news- 
 papers that we have to look out for ! It is 
 the cursed free press, that calls no man mas- 
 ter, that dares to express its unvarnished 
 opinion upon anything and everything, that 
 cannot be kept out, that finds its way into 
 the remotest parts of the earth, that has 
 power to hold up the most secret thoughts 
 of men and of nations! It is the news- 
 papers that trouble me, for they form and 
 generally settle public opinion!" 
 
 "You are quite right to fear them," said 
 Dick, ' ' and in view of the free press I have 
 grown most hopeful for Bonnie. While 
 you have been speaking it has occurred 
 to me, if I am not incorrect, that when an 
 Englishman who has married an American 
 woman dies, the woman again becomes 
 an American, and can claim the protection 
 of the country in which she was born. And 
 as our brother's wife was an American, she 
 will elicit much sympathy from our cousins 
 on the other side of the big pond. 
 
 "Give it up, Frederick! You will find 
 this advice wise. You wish to believe this 
 woman guilty, but you will never, never be 
 able to prove it. But they are coming
 
 1 76 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 back, ' ' said Dick, as he threw his cigar into 
 the grate, "and I see by your pleased 
 expression that they are bearing sheaves for 
 your harvest with them."
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. i?7 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 The duties of the magisterial office had 
 been accomplished. They were convened, 
 performed and concluded, around the bed 
 of the semi-unconscious woman, for she, 
 while able to speak and answer questions, 
 was still dazed through the mingled agency 
 of weakness, nausea, bewilderment and 
 morphine. 
 
 In this condition she was unresistingly 
 lifted out of her bed, dressed in her plainest 
 black gown, and carried down in the arms of 
 an officer of the law to a carriage, and held 
 up by two strange men in officer's uniform, 
 in the carriage, and carried by one of these 
 men into a cell in the jail. 
 
 Mr. Mackirby had made his final exit at a 
 very convenient time for legal adjustment! 
 One of the quarter sessions of the county 
 was about to begin, and the case only waited 
 its turn on the calendar. Never before in 
 the histofy of the county in question had
 
 1 78 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 such a concourse of people turned out to 
 witness the arrival of the judges; never had 
 the formal reception of them by the mayor 
 and the escort been so impressive. 
 
 One of these judges, the ablest one of 
 them all, or rather one who had been the 
 ablest in times past, was going to try the 
 young American woman for the murder of 
 her husband. 
 
 It was noticeable to the newspaper report- 
 ers who, by the way, when they are experts, 
 have wonderful skill in feeling the pulse of 
 the masses and diagnosing the mental senti- 
 ment of the people that the masses were 
 one and all in favor of the innocence of the 
 American woman, but that the tiny so-called 
 patrician minority were lying back in their 
 luxurious ease and saying, "It was a 
 shame that there was no law, no power, no 
 force to trample on and out the incendiary 
 socialistic and anarchistic utterances of the 
 press regarding poor, dear, afflicted Madame 
 Mackirby and her noble son, Frederick, 
 when they had simply done a duty to society, 
 a duty commendable and worthy of highest 
 praise! That this vulgar uproar about the 
 woman's youth, her beauty, her wifely
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 179 
 
 and motherly devotion, her Christian charity 
 and the rest would, of course, be looked for 
 in the American papers, who made it a point 
 to pedestal criminals awaiting trial. But in 
 England, and Ireland, and Scotland, really 
 the majority of the press had gone mad. 
 They had caught the epidemic from the 
 American papers as surely as one catches la 
 grippe from his neighbor. ' ' 
 
 They said this awesome, self-sufficient 
 minority that they were appalled yea, 
 appalled to discover that the woman had 
 secured great, powerful counsel; but then 
 she was very rich, and of course the law 
 would allow her to use her own money in 
 her own defense. The law was merciful, 
 but, thank God, and again thank God! said 
 the minority, all the wisdom of her counsel 
 will not be able to cover her sin. In Amer- 
 ica she would cheat justice, but she was in 
 England! And a little time would prove to 
 the press and to the rabble generally that 
 the woman was to hang. They never said, 
 did the aristocratic minority, "Mrs. Mac- 
 kirby.' ' She had lost her name with them, 
 quite as much as though she had received 
 her sentence; and it was imprisonment for
 
 i8o BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 life, and she was "murderess number such 
 and such a succession of units!" 
 
 They called her woman, and in so doing 
 paid her unintentionally the highest tribute 
 of honor the world, in giving crowns, can 
 bestow. "Man was made from the dust of 
 the earth, but woman from the image of 
 God. " So woman has ever been divine. With 
 the ancients the symbol of beauty, purity 
 and wisdom, Minerva, all perfect, comes 
 with her sheaf of wheat; Diana with her 
 bended bow. "Woman, behold thy son," 
 were the words uttered by our Christ, as he 
 hung upon the cross. 
 
 The name the minority gave the prisoner 
 in the Wilton jail was a royal one. It was 
 being worn in all honor by the guardian 
 spirit of the English nation; and it seemed 
 fitting and appropriate to the prisoner, for 
 her jailer said that she bore herself like a 
 lady, and that she was kind and gentle and 
 untroubled. 
 
 The humble, but unextinguishable major- 
 ity said, and the newspapers said, "That 
 even if Mrs. Mackirby had not secured an 
 attorney to defend her, her case upon its 
 hearing would be dismissed;" the majority
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 181 
 
 said the whole thing was a "cooked-up 
 farce," a travesty on common sense. And 
 so the days came and went, and trial time 
 drew near.
 
 i8z BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 And what of the prisoner? She had 
 recovered sufficient strength by this to rise 
 from her cot each day, and, with the assis- 
 tance of the matron of the jail, to dress, and 
 then sit in the rocking-chair which they had 
 brought into her cell. 
 
 It was known to the world that she had 
 never uttered one word of protest against 
 her arrest and imprisonment. She had 
 never asked a question ; she had never made 
 but one request, and that was for yarn and 
 knitting-needles. And as she was watched 
 and guarded night and day, this unusual and 
 what the minority called "unnatural and 
 suspicious " request was permitted her. 
 The minority considered these needles and 
 the yarn a grave breach of prison discipline. 
 They suggested that it had a deep and seri- 
 ous significance. They said that it 
 betokened partisan feeling on the part of 
 the officials, and suggested that the whole
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 183 
 
 force of the jail should be removed, and with 
 them the yarn and the needles, and that 
 other and more loyal guardians should be 
 appointed. But the majority and the press 
 stood by the jailers. And it came to be 
 that the silent prisoner knitted all day long ; 
 knit lengths upon lengths of narrow strips 
 until the wool failed. Then she unraveled 
 her work, and carefully wound the wool into 
 balls to set the stitches to begin again. 
 
 Her lawyer came to her often. She 
 received him kindly and was very gentle in 
 her replies to his questions, but she 
 answered the questions of the guard and the 
 matron in the same fashion. She never 
 failed to thank anybody for the simplest 
 service rendered to her, and she never com- 
 plained. 
 
 When the prison physician, who had orders 
 to do everything that he could to make her 
 physically ready to appear in court, paid her 
 a visit, she answered all his questions con- 
 cerning herself truthfully and intelligently. 
 She was faithful in taking the medicine that 
 he left her, often reminding the attendant 
 that the mixture or powder was due. She 
 tried to force herself to eat the food that was
 
 1 84 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 brought to her, although it was an effort 
 even to look at it. 
 
 To her lawyer she insisted that there was 
 nothing to tell ; that, of course, she did not 
 know where the arsenic came from, but Mr. 
 Mackirby could tell him Mr. Mackirby, 
 her husband. 
 
 But Mr. Mackirby was dead! Her 
 brother-in-law, Frederick Mackirby, and her 
 mother-in-law, Madame Mackirby, had had 
 her arrested for poisoning her husband with 
 some of this arsenic. They were going to 
 bring witnesses to prove where she bought 
 it all and how she used it. Her former 
 maid, Elizabeth Pith, had already told a 
 great many criminating things, and had 
 more to relate at the trial. She remem- 
 bered Elizabeth Pith, didn't she? 
 
 She laid her knitting down and put her 
 hands to her temples. "I am trying to 
 think!" she would say, looking at him 
 piteously. "I want to think of a great many 
 things, but everything is so confused in 
 these days that I. even forget sometimes my 
 own name. I have to say the alphabet I 
 am so glad I don't forget that! until I come 
 to the first letter, and then I have to go back
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 185 
 
 and find the second in the same way, and 
 then suddenly it comes to me! And just 
 wait a minute! Just a minute!" and he 
 would wait and wait. Finally she would 
 take her hands from her head, take her eyes 
 from his face, take up the knitting that she 
 had laid upon her lap, and go on again ; and 
 he knew that she had quite forgotten his 
 question and his presence. 
 
 Then came his one rousing question. He 
 had learned much about this woman's na- 
 ture this poor, desolate cast-away, for 
 whose sake, aye, not whose money, he was 
 making ready for the most masterly legal 
 encounter he had ever engaged in. ' ' How, ' ' 
 he would say, "are the children?" 
 
 Then her eyes would brighten and her 
 grave lips would smile, and a dimple would 
 come into her pale cheek. "The children 
 were never so dear and sweet as they are 
 now," she would say. "They never leave 
 me day nor night. They are always with 
 their mother. It is such a blessing to be a 
 mother! God has given us earth's most 
 precious gift in our children, for whatever 
 should we do, when trouble and sorrow 
 come to us, without them?"
 
 186 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 "And what has little Bonnie been saying 
 to you?" he would a'sk. Then a wonderful 
 brooding tenderness would come into the 
 wan face. "Oh, she is so sweet!" she would 
 say. "She doesn't say much. She just 
 rests me and comforts me. She nestles, 
 you know. I can feel her golden head on 
 my breast, and she is always putting up her 
 little pink fingers to my lips to be kissed. 
 If God should take baby Bonnie away from 
 me, my heart would break. ' ' 
 
 "And what is Esther up , to?" Then she 
 would laugh. "Oh, Esther is such an odd 
 child ! She is always reciting poems to me, 
 poems that I used to know when I was a 
 little girl. And I didn't suppose she 
 ever had been told about them. And she has 
 such strange dreams! She told me to-day 
 that her great-grandfather came to her the 
 other night and said: 'Esther, remember 
 that right is might. Tell your mother that 
 this right will bring to her defense from an 
 unseen host ! Tell her that God is on her 
 side. ' She said that her grandfather bent 
 down to her and whispered, 'There is a 
 brotherhood among the sons of men whose 
 number is countless. In the ranks of this
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 187 
 
 great and honorable order I and my father 
 served faithfully and well on earth, and 
 now that but one remains of our race, a 
 frail, broken woman, to represent our name, 
 the brotherhood will watch over your 
 mother, little Esther, these living brother- 
 workers of mine.' " 
 
 The lawyer looked keenly at her; the 
 guard, all unconscious of his action, drew 
 near; the lawyer and the guard looked at 
 each other. What their thoughts were, 
 what this woman's words meant to them 
 individually, we cannot know. Perhaps 
 they meant nothing at all; perhaps they 
 thought them the wanderings of a clouded 
 brain. But if it had any meaning to them, 
 they knew it had none to the woman. She 
 was an instrument handled by unseen 
 powers, the words came floating through 
 her lips like a thousand other vagrant 
 spoken fancies that the imagined children 
 brought to her. 
 
 But might not the Christ, the Savior of 
 mankind, who raised Lazarus from the dead, 
 who bade the little daughter of Jarius to 
 "Arise and walk," who gave back to the 
 widow of Nain her only son, might not He,
 
 l88 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 the all-merciful, the all-compassionate, have 
 bidden her dead to rise? She was one of 
 God's children, consecrated through bap- 
 tism, received into the body of Christ's 
 church by the laying on of hands. She had 
 lived honorably and uprightly in the sight of 
 man. She had been accused, but not proven 
 guilty. She was far from her country. She 
 was orphaned, widowed, bereft of her chil- 
 dren and friendless. Might it not be that 
 in her need, through God's grace, the life 
 principle of that which had been her father, 
 and her father's father, and her father's 
 father's father, was permitted the power to 
 speak through her unconscious lips to cry 
 out to brothers still in the flesh, "Come 
 and help us?" 
 
 Mrs. Mackirby had fallen back into her 
 old attitude again. She was knitting. The 
 lawyer bent down and said softly, "Good- 
 by." "Good-by," she answered, not look- 
 ing up. "She is with the children," said the 
 lawyer to the guard. ' ' She is always with 
 the children," answered the guard to the 
 lawyer, and the lawyer passed out into free- 
 dom.
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 189 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 The little Mackirby girls were looking out 
 of the one window that the room assigned to 
 them for a nursery in their grandmother's 
 house afforded. It was raining heavily. 
 There were dashes of hail against the pane 
 and flashes of lightning running through the 
 leaden sky, and great peals of echoing 
 thunder. 
 
 Little Bonnie was in her oldest sister's 
 arms; Marion was rocking her. "I want 
 mother," she said fretfully. "Get mother, 
 Marion." 
 
 "Hush, dear," said Marion. "You know 
 what Uncle Frederick and grandmother tell 
 you every day, that our poor dear mother is 
 very ill!" 
 
 "I don't see why we can't go and see her 
 if she is," said Esther, who was close at 
 hand. "They let us run in and out of 
 father's room all the time, and he was so 
 sick that he died ! And they didn't take him 
 to any hospital!"
 
 190 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 "I know it," said Marion, gravely. "I 
 often think about that, too ; and the more I 
 think the more I get confused, for it doesn't 
 seem a bit like mother not to want us to 
 come to her, and it's so long ! ' ' 
 
 " I do wish she would hurry up and get 
 well!" said Esther. "I hate grandmother's 
 house. It smells so of the cooking, and I 
 hate this nursery, and I hate, oh I hate our 
 bedroom ! The paper on the wall has grin- 
 ning faces all over it, faces of tigers and 
 witches ! Grandmother may think they look 
 like roses if she likes, but it's a witch paper, 
 all the same!" 
 
 "Parks," said Marion, stopping in her 
 rocking to address the nurse, who was at 
 the other end of the room, putting away 
 the clothes from the laundry, "Parks, do 
 you know which hospital mother is at?" 
 
 "No, miss, I don't," said Parks, in the 
 distance. 
 
 "Do you know what's the matter with 
 mother, Parks?" 
 
 "Well, miss," said Parks, gravely, "I 
 might give it to you in Latin, but there isn't 
 any real out-an'-out English name for it; 
 and I wouldn't be askin' questions. Ques-
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 191 
 
 tions is perplexin' to grown folks, let alone 
 children. And, besides, if yer ma knew 
 you was all worriting about her, it 
 would make her worser. So just leave her 
 with God and the blessed saints, the way I 
 do, Miss Marion." 
 
 Parks was a thin, middle-aged woman, 
 with a flat chest and a red nose. She had 
 come to Mrs. Mackirby when Esther was 
 born, and had been regent of the nursery 
 ever since. People who interested them- 
 selves in Mrs. Mackirby' s private affairs had 
 often wondered why Mrs. Mackirby had 
 selected such an unattractive nurse; but 
 Mrs. Mackirby had kept Parks, and Parks 
 had proved herself to be an invaluable 
 servant. The children were always looked 
 after and watched over, and in spite of her 
 plain face they the children loved her 
 dearly. 
 
 When Mr. Mackirby died and Mrs. Mac- 
 kirby was removed to the jail, Frederick and 
 his mother decided to dismiss Parks and 
 install Elizabeth in the nursery, but Richard 
 protested. Yet, in the face of this protest, 
 the twain, when Richard was absent, 
 summoned Parks and told her to go. Parks
 
 192 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 was little, and her voice was as small 
 as her body was short, and she gave the 
 impression of meekness. But on this occa- 
 sion she proved herself more than a match 
 for the enemy. 
 
 "It shall be as you like, of course," said 
 Parks, "but I think it would be better for 
 you and Mr. Frederick, mem, to let me stay 
 with the children. 
 
 "To begin with, my poor mistress 
 in her prison cell is not the only per- 
 son that the people are discussing in the 
 Mackirby murder case! Folks are ask- 
 ing each other such questions as these, 
 'If there wasn't money to be taken care 
 of until the children are old enough to 
 be of age is it likely that Mr. Frederick 
 would have made up his mind that his 
 brother's wife was so wicked?' That is only 
 one of the things they are askin'. Now, 
 listen, mem, and you too, sir. I stands up for 
 my mistress first, last and every time, and 
 I think she would tell me that I was serving 
 her best by staying with the children and 
 caring for them as she would wish me to do. 
 She will be coming out soon, for you can't 
 prove anything against her; and then the
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 193 
 
 tables can be turned on you, for she is as 
 innocent and pure-hearted as baby Bonnie 
 upstairs. 
 
 "Now, as I'm going away I want to say 
 that I hope the time will come when you 
 will both feel sorry for what you have done, 
 not that she won't forgive you she's that 
 gentle and forgiving that she could never 
 bear malice toward even her worst enemy ! 
 Look at the way she always treated Mr. 
 Mackirby! When he was feelin' the want 
 of pizen he would get awful riley ; he would 
 come into her room, and just try hard to get 
 her to answer him back. He would say 
 mean things to her, mem, she the mother 
 of his little girls and when she would rouse 
 up now and then to answer him back, Lord ! 
 what blows he would give her ! In the face 
 sometimes, but oftenest on her tender 
 breast ! Along at first she used to faint, and 
 when it was over she would threaten to 
 leave him; but that was all it amounted 
 to, she always forgave him. I have never 
 heard her, in all the years that I have been 
 her servant, say a mean word against you, 
 mem, or Mr. Frederick. 
 
 "Perhaps, mem, you never heard how she 
 13
 
 194 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 came to take me. She was a visitor in a 
 hospital where I was laid up. I had a man 
 that abused me, but then my man wasn't no 
 gentleman like Mr. Mackirby, and it was 
 natural for him, when he was in drink, to 
 be kinder free-like with his hands; but he 
 had a real good heart, and when he was sober 
 he used to cry because he had beat me, 
 and he would ask me to forgive him. 
 Well, mem, once he got on an awful 
 spree, and he made out to nearly kill 
 me, and then he killed hisself. Mrs. 
 Mackirby, she heard my story, and she 
 took a great interest in me, and she found 
 out that I come of decent, honest folks ; for 
 she writ to the country-place I came from 
 for my character, and she got a letter back 
 from our priest. My name was McFadden 
 before I was married, mem, to Parks. 
 
 "I had had children of my own and lost 
 "em, so she knew I would be good to hers, 
 and my greatest desire is to continue to be. 
 But if I can't care for her children, I can 
 work for her, and I'm thinkin' I'll travel 
 the kingdom over, telling all the newspaper 
 folks the story I have told you, and many 
 things besides, for I know much, mem, that
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 195 
 
 is neither to your or to Mr. Frederick's 
 credit indeed, I do!" And Parks had 
 staid. 
 
 And now to go back to Marion Mac- 
 kirby's question. Parks' answer did not 
 seem to satisfy her. She was a clever child, 
 and she knew that Parks was only trying to 
 keep something from her. She rocked 
 Bonnie softly, and her little face was full of 
 grave thought. It was Esther, however, 
 who broke the silence. 
 
 "Do you believe in dreams, Parks?" she 
 said. 
 
 "Well," answered Parks, guardedly, 
 "sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't; it 
 all depends on what the dream is, miss." 
 
 "Well, "said Esther, slowly, "I do believe 
 in them, because mother comes to me so 
 often in my dreams, and I wish that the 
 next time I am with her I could die, and 
 then I wouldn't wake up without her any 
 more!" Esther was only eight years old. 
 It was a piteous thing to see so young a 
 breast bearing bravely such a burden of 
 sorrow. 
 
 ' ' But tell me about your dream last night, 
 dear, " said Parks, "do, pray."
 
 196 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 "At first," said Esther, "after you had 
 tucked me into the cot, I couldn't go to 
 sleep; Marion did and Bonnie did. But I 
 lay wide-awake ; it was so warm out of doors 
 and our bedroom is so little and hot ! Oh, 
 Parks, I wish we could go home!" Then 
 she looked at her own and her sister's black 
 dresses, and sighed. "We have no home," 
 she said, slowly. 
 
 "Well, well, are you never coming to the 
 dream, Miss Esther?" said Parks. "Let's 
 have it; there's a love." 
 
 "Why, at last I fell asleep, and I dreamed 
 that an old witch had stolen me from 
 home, and had taken me to live with her in 
 a castle that was ever and ever so far away. 
 And I used to wait till the old witch fell 
 sleep after her afternoon tea just, you 
 know, as grandmother does, and this witch 
 looked exactly like grandmother, only she 
 had a nose and eyes like Uncle Fred- 
 erick and when the witch was asleep, 
 I would creep softly down the stairs 
 and go into the garden. It was such a 
 strange garden; all the flowers and trees 
 and even the birds talked just as we do! 
 And they were all so kind and friendly, and
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 197 
 
 felt so sorry for me because I was homesick 
 
 for my mother. And " The rain had 
 
 ceased, and Parks, longing to give the room 
 some fresh air, went to the window and 
 opened it wide. It was still in the street 
 below, and a boy's shrill, clear, distinct 
 voice was heard crying: "T'ree o'clock 
 extra! Full particulars of the first day's 
 trial of Mrs. Bonnie Mackirby for the mur- 
 der of her husband!" 
 
 "The boy is calling the paper, nurse," 
 said Bonnie, looking up and smiling. 
 Unloosing Bonnie's arms, Marion put her 
 sister from her lap, and rose to her feet. 
 Her face was very white, and her eyes had a 
 new look in them. Marion's childhood was 
 dead ; her womanhood had been born ! 
 
 She opened the nursery door and went 
 down the two nights of stairs, and 
 gained the drawing-room. Her grand- 
 mother, with her bonnet on, was taking a 
 cup of tea; her Uncles Frederick and Dick 
 were both present. Not one of the three, 
 to the days of their deaths, will ever forget 
 what passed, will ever be able to drive the 
 haunting presence of that child's face from 
 memory.
 
 198 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 ' 'Did you hear him? ' ' she said. ' ' Did you 
 hear what that newsboy cried out just now 
 as he passed under our window? Did you 
 hear him say that my mother had killed my 
 father? Who dared to say such a wicked, 
 cruel thing! Who did it? Oh, grand- 
 mother, I am afraid it was you and Uncle 
 Frederick, for I heard you talk unkindly 
 about mother one day when I was behind 
 the curtains, and you have both of you told 
 Esther and me such wicked, wicked stories, 
 and I will never believe you or love you 
 any more, and Esther will not either! 
 
 ' ' I am going upstairs to get on my bonnet 
 and cloak, and I am going straight to Lon- 
 don to see the queen. She is such a good, 
 kind woman that she will let me come into 
 the palace, and tell her, I know; and then 
 she will take me by the hand, and unlock 
 the door of the room you have shut mother 
 up in, and let us go home together!" 
 
 Neither Madame Mackirby nor Frederick 
 moved nor spoke. The two hardened, cruel- 
 hearted plotters were frightened as they had 
 never been before. But Richard Mackirby 
 rose and came forward, put his arm around 
 the child, and laid her head upon his breast.
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 199 
 
 "Marion," he said, gently, "it is best that 
 you should know the whole truth of this 
 matter ; it is best that you should hear me 
 tell it now. Your grandmother and your 
 Uncle Frederick believe that your father died 
 from poison; that it was given him in his 
 last illness by your mother. They had the 
 house searched, and a great deal of poison 
 was found in many places. They believe 
 that your mother bought it and put it where 
 it was found. They believe a great many 
 other things, and have sworn to them, and 
 so your mother is being tried for this crime 
 now. " 
 
 "Uncle Dick." 
 
 "What, dear?" 
 
 ' ' Suppose that the people should think as 
 grandmother and Uncle Frederick do? 
 What would they do with my mother then? 
 Why don't you tell me, Uncle Dick?" 
 
 "They would they would , " Richard 
 
 Mackirby broke down. He put his hands 
 before his face and sobbed. 
 
 The old grandmother leaned forward in 
 her chair. She looked like the witch in 
 Esther's dream. "Do you want to know 
 what will be done with your mother?" she
 
 200 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 said. "Well, I will tell you. She will be 
 hung for killing my boy. ' ' 
 
 Had the child heard? Did she understand? 
 
 She put her hand into her Uncle Rich- 
 ard's, and she stood looking at the old 
 woman and the man beside her for per- 
 haps a minute or more. It seemed an 
 eternity to them. And then she said: 
 "Grandmother, I think you and Uncle 
 Frederick are the wickedest people in 
 the whole world! And nothing you 
 can ever do will make me love you! 
 You have taken mother away from us, and 
 now you tell me, her little girl, that you are 
 going to kill her. Oh, mother, mother! 
 come back to me! I want you, mother! 
 come back to me!" The child swayed and 
 would have fallen had not Richard caught 
 her in his arms. 
 
 After much effort they restored her to con- 
 sciousness, and then she begged that "Uncle 
 Dick would carry her upstairs to the 
 nursery."
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 201 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 Esther had followed Marion down the 
 stairs to the drawing-room door, and 
 there she remained and heard all that trans- 
 pired in the preceding chapter. 
 
 Who can tell what it meant to this child 
 of eight? At all events, it is known that 
 when Marion fainted, Esther, with a firm 
 resolve written on her little face, betook 
 herself to the library. , Once there, she pro- 
 ceeded to collect around her, upon the table, 
 pen, ink, paper, envelope and stamps, such 
 stamps as she knew her mother used when 
 sending letters to America. She stuck two 
 of these stamps upon the envelope, and then 
 stood in deep thought for a minute. Then 
 she took up the pen, and slowly and pains- 
 takingly she printed out this address : 
 "TO UNKLE SAM, 
 IN THE CARE OF 
 THE PRESEDUNT, WHO 
 LIVES IN WASHINGTEN IN 
 AMERIKA."
 
 202 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 The envelope being addressed to her 
 satisfaction, she blotted it, and then began 
 her letter, and this was it : 
 
 "DEER UNKEL SAM. 
 
 "MY MOTHER IS A CRELASAN OF 
 YOURS, AND MY GRANMOTHER 
 AND MY UNKEL FREDRIK ARE 
 GOING TO KILL HER. WILL YOU 
 PLEAS COME AND GIT HER QUICK 
 BEFOR SHE DISE. YOUR LOVING 
 
 NICE 
 
 "ESTHER MACKIRBY." 
 
 Esther folded and sealed her letter, and 
 then unnoticed and unheeded, for Marion's 
 fainting fit was claiming the attention of 
 the entire household, the child slipped out 
 and dropped her letter into the postbox. 
 Then she came in again, and mounted the 
 stairs to the nursery. 
 
 Marion was lying on the sofa, and Parks 
 was sitting beside her, with Bonnie in her 
 arms. Esther came and knelt down close 
 to Marion, and took one of Marion's hands 
 in hers. 
 
 "Esther," said Marion, gently, "Parks 
 says that you followed me downstairs.
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 203 
 
 Esther did you hear what grandmother told 
 me?" 
 
 Esther nodded yes. 
 
 "Esther, dear," said Marion, with a real 
 little mother tenderness threading her 
 words, "you needn't be afraid of grand- 
 mother or Uncle Frederick because I won't 
 let either of them touch you or Bonnie or 
 Parks, and besides Uncle Dick is our friend ; 
 but, Esther, we must pray, pray all the time 
 for mother. If we pray hard enough and 
 long enough, perhaps we have still time to 
 save her!" 
 
 "Well," said Esther, "I will, of course, 
 pray every minute that I can make myself; 
 but, Marion, I guess if God won't help 
 mother, her Uncle Sam will!"
 
 204 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 "My own dear Nell: 
 
 "You know and I know that if I am a 
 new woman, I am no crank; that I detest 
 the sensational, and have only contempt for 
 those of my sex who wish to make themselves 
 vulgarly conspicuous. So when I tell you 
 that I am actually attending all the sessions 
 of the Mackirby trial, you and mother will 
 kindly ascribe this performance to some 
 earnest and honest and unselfish motive. 
 
 "Remember that this Mrs. Mackirby is an 
 American woman; that she is on trial for 
 her life, and that she has not a relation or 
 friend near her. When I had thought the 
 matter over pro and con, I went to father-in- 
 law, and I laid the whole subject before him. 
 I told him, however, that while I respected 
 his opinion, I should abide by my own 
 decision, and that I wanted him to make it 
 possible for me to attend the trial and 
 that I should also consider it a favor 
 if he would corral family opinion and
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 205 
 
 confine its criticisms to the home cir- 
 cle and bless him! he not only patted 
 me, figuratively, on the back, and called 
 me a 'good fellow,' but he fixed it so 
 that the entire establishment have never 
 uttered one bleat of protest. 
 
 "Father-in-law, in some way best known 
 to himself, arranged, through the fact of my 
 being a good stenographer, a place for me 
 at the reporters' table, and the espionage of 
 a charming fossil, highly connected in the 
 journalistic inner circle, who is doing the 
 case 'on his own hook,' for what good and 
 holy purpose I have not been able to dis- 
 cover, and I am supposed by the men and 
 women round me to be in the same busi- 
 ness. 
 
 "Nell, tell father that he will have to give 
 in about fads being foolishness. Do you 
 remember how he used to read us long lec- 
 tures about taking bread out of the mouths 
 of self-supporting women when you and I, 
 for lack of something better to do, took a 
 six-months' course at a business college? 
 and then, for fun, have chosen ever since to 
 write to each other in this charming cipher! 
 
 "Here I am, Nell, in a lovely, gray-
 
 206 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 sprinkled wig, that makes me look for all 
 the world as pretty and unnatural as the 
 child in Southey's poem! I suppose the 
 people about me think that I am an intel- 
 ligent widow, for I have adopted plain black 
 and unsmilingness, and my eye-glasses I 
 had them made to order for the purpose 
 complete my entire disguise. I'm not going 
 to describe the court-room and the detail. 
 Detail and descriptions of scenery always 
 bore me dreadfully. The court-room and 
 court manners are vastly different from 
 ours. Everything is far more dignified. 
 
 "Our judge, the one that is trying Mrs. 
 Mackirby, is a splendid old wreck. His 
 manners are the only thing left of what 
 must have been a fine and forceful person- 
 ality. Now he is, in a perfectly gentle- 
 manly way, restless, vacillating and 
 childishly petulant. The idea has struck me 
 several times since the trial began that the 
 judge and the prisoner were both more 
 appropriate subjects for a mad-house than a 
 court-room. I hope I shall be able to show 
 you why as I go on. 
 
 ' ' Next comes the jury. They are less than 
 mediocre. Where they found twelve such
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 207 
 
 miserable looking specimens I can't imag- 
 ine ! They make up for their lack of intelli- 
 gence in bodily ponderosity. They look for 
 all the world like twelve well-fed oxen, who 
 are chewing the cud, not of sweet, but of 
 bitter fancy. A very chatty newspaper man 
 who sits next to me I am the rose between 
 him and Papa Methusaleh tells me that 
 these jurors are allowed to go to the 
 theatre, that they have conversed with the 
 public, and are seen perusing the daily 
 papers! Which, if true, is certainly most 
 reprehensible ! 
 
 "And the prisoner! Oh, Nell, Nell! 
 When I look at her the shame, the cruelty of 
 it all, makes me want to bury my head in 
 my arms on the table before me and cry. 
 She is all but carried in to her place every day, 
 and when the man has put her into her 
 chair, she never fails to look up and thank 
 him. Then she leans back, folds her hands 
 in her lap, and looks straight before her. 
 She must have been more than a pretty 
 woman once; her face is very sweet now, 
 but it is colorless, and her eyes have such a 
 far-off look. She has a great lawyer, and 
 several lesser, although most brilliant, legal
 
 208 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 lights to defend her, and it really did seem 
 before and it does seem now, as though 
 there was no case at all. 
 
 "The real battle began when the crown 
 called Mrs. Mackirby'smaid, Elizabeth. She 
 was a mean, contemptible-looking creature ! 
 and I noticed that while she swore her 
 mistress' character away, she never once let 
 her glance stray toward the prisoner. She 
 told a great many unbelievable things, and 
 she was so overflowing in personal venom 
 and spite, so anxious to send her mistress to 
 the gallows, that the crown, seeing it, had 
 the good sense to make quick work of her. 
 
 The defense handled Elizabeth without 
 gloves, and made a pitiable spectacle of her, 
 and when she got down and out of the case 
 she left the impression upon all intelligent 
 minds, I am sure, that she was a paid spy 
 in the past, a disgrace to her sex in the 
 present. 
 
 "Then came the brother. I can't bring 
 myself to talk about that man! I believe 
 I actually believe, Nell that when he dies, 
 the devil, really, will give him a basketful of 
 brimstone and matches arid send him off to 
 make a little one of his own! I can't write
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 209 
 
 about him! The blackest ink is white in 
 comparison to the darkness of that man's 
 sin-stained soul. If there was a 'Judas 
 society, ' he would be the present president 
 of it. 
 
 "Then the poor old mother was lifted up. 
 But she proved unintelligible, for when she 
 saw Mrs. Mackirby she went off in as wild 
 a tangent as 'Mr. F. 's aunt' ever did at 
 sight of 'Arthur Clennam!' So they had to 
 give her up as an impossible witness. 
 
 "Then came the doctors, the chemists and 
 the toxicologists ! And we laid Mr. Mac- 
 kirby's internal organization out flat, and 
 put our (figurative) fingers on him generally. 
 We discussed dyspepsia, chronic and the 
 other kind ; we dipped deeply into headaches 
 and pains in the stomach, and numbness, 
 and foul tongues! We lived in an atmos- 
 phere of badly smelling bottles bottles of 
 all sizes and descriptions, from the Mac- 
 kirby residence and the Mackirby office. 
 One of the jurymen at this period evinced a 
 lively interest; he had intense color and 
 breathed hard. I think he was in the junk 
 business, and that naturally his mental feet 
 were upon his native heath! Mr. Mac- 
 14
 
 2io BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 kirby must have literally bathed himself in 
 'skeery' patent medicines. He must have 
 gone on regular drug sprees ! 
 
 "And during all this time, if you please, 
 nobody for the crown said anything about 
 Mrs. Mackirby, and in the cross-examin- 
 ation by the defense, they said less; but 
 they did say to both sides that Mr. Mac- 
 kirby had boasted to them individually 
 of eating arsenic. 
 
 "Did the doctors think, while they were 
 attending Mr. Mackirby in his last illness, 
 that the sick man's manner indicated that 
 he suspected that his wife was trying to 
 poison him? 
 
 "Oh, no! Nothing in Mr. Mackirby 's 
 manner suggested such a condition of mind 
 to them; indeed, he seemed to place all 
 confidence in his wife. He was very rest- 
 less, very unhappy when she was absent, 
 and was not content until she returned to 
 him, and they talked much together in low 
 tones. 
 
 "Did they think, from anything they had 
 observed during Mr. Mackirby's illness, that 
 Mrs. Mackirby knew anything about 
 poisons? Did she ever speak of having read
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 211 
 
 books on the subject, or had she made any 
 intelligent remarks in this connection? 
 
 "Oh, no! Oh, never! 
 
 "Now, about the mysterious fly-paper, 
 with which her brother-in-law felt sure Mrs. 
 Mackirby had killed her husband. Could 
 the fiber of the fly-paper be gotten rid of 
 without careful filtering, and straining? 
 
 "No. Certainly not. 
 
 "Would an inexperienced young woman 
 be likely to think of this straining and filter- 
 ing? (Crown objected.) 
 
 "Now, to the best of these doctors' knowl- 
 edge and belief, was any fiber found in any 
 of the arsenic discovered in the body? 
 
 "No. 
 
 "How many of the bottles out of the 
 hundred and more collected at the house 
 had been found to contain arsenic? 
 
 "One. 
 
 "Was there any trace of filtered fly-paper 
 solution in this bottle? 
 
 "No. 
 
 "One particular doctor had prescribed a 
 dietary for his patient, had he not? 
 
 "Yes. It was prepared in the kitchen by
 
 212 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 the cook, from the doctor's own recipe, was 
 it not? 
 
 "Yes; and this was taken down to the 
 office by a footman, after the cook had sealed 
 it up. 
 
 "The cook swore to making the food and 
 tying it up; footman to taking it from 
 cook's hands directly to the office. 
 
 "A chemist was called who had sworn to 
 having found arsenic in food particles in a 
 jug at the office. Chemist rather rattled, 
 and not so sure about particles to the defense 
 as he was when the crown had him. 
 
 "Another doctor called. This was a 
 young man that knew everything! He was 
 one of the crown's star witnesses. He 
 swore that he believed that Mr. Mackirby 
 had taken his fatal dose of arsenic on the 
 third 'at the office.' As I have said, he 
 was a very wise young person. He spoke 
 pointedly to the jury, and talked with 
 charming irrelevance about sherry. He 
 might have said 'damn!' just as well, he was 
 so fierce over it ! But he grew rocky when 
 the defense got him, and he changed from 
 sherry to morphia, which really seemed to 
 have the effect of putting the jury to sleep.
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 213 
 
 The junk man absolutely snored, and had to 
 be waked up. 
 
 "A chemist another one was called. 
 Mrs. Mackirby had bought a package of fly- 
 paper from him, likewise elderflower and 
 glycerine, and some other herbs and things. 
 She told him that she had bruised her face, 
 and explained how she was going to pre- 
 pare the lotion. He thought it a very sens- 
 ible prescription ; she had had it sent home 
 in an unsealed package, and the boy had 
 delivered the package to Mrs. Mackirby's 
 footman. 
 
 "Then came the nurse! Her testimony 
 made me tired. She was one of those awful 
 stone women that you hate as a matter of 
 principle. She implied so much to the 
 crown, and the defense sifted it down to 
 this: 
 
 ' ' Did any of the physicians suggest to her 
 (the nurse) in any way, or at any time, 
 before Mr. Mackirby's death, that they sus- 
 pected Mrs. Mackirby was trying to poison 
 her sick husband? 
 
 "No. 
 
 "Had they at any time cautioned her
 
 214 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 against permitting Mrs. Mackirby to feed or 
 give medicine to her husband? 
 
 "No. 
 
 "Had anyone cautioned her? 
 
 "Yes. 
 
 "Who? (Objected to by the crown; over- 
 ruled by the judge. ) 
 
 "Mr. Frederick Mackirby. She had said 
 to the crown that Mr. Mackirby knew that 
 his wife was poisoning him. 
 
 "How did she know it? 
 
 "Because he (Mr. Mackirby) said: 'Now, 
 Bonnie, be sure not to give me the wrong 
 medicine. ' 
 
 "Who was pouring out the medicine at 
 this time? 
 
 "She (the nurse) was. 
 
 "Why did she (the nurse) pour the medi- 
 cine out and then give it to Mrs. Mackirby 
 to give her husband? 
 
 "Oh, well, because Mr. Mackirby was 
 stubborn; he wouldn't take anything from 
 anybody but Mrs. Mackirby. 
 
 "Then if any wrong medicine had been 
 administered it would have been the nurse 
 who would have made the mistake, would it 
 not?
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 215 
 
 "Yes, she supposed it would. 
 
 "Then is it not more than probable that 
 Mr. Mackirby, knowing that the nurse was 
 pouring out the medicines, might have said : 
 'Bonnie, be sure the nurse does not give 
 me the wrong medicine?' 
 
 "The nurse looked huffy, and said she was 
 sure she didn't know what he meant, or 
 didn't mean, which answer was so unsatis- 
 factory to the crown that they had quite a 
 lengthy sputter over it, and came out second 
 best with our side. 
 
 "A farce, Nell! A piteous farce! but the 
 defense had not finished with the nurse. 
 
 "What other reason had she for thinking 
 Mr. Mackirby was being poisoned by 
 Mrs. Mackirby? 
 
 "Oh because when he was delirious he 
 said, 'Oh, Bonnie, how could you do it!' over 
 and over again. 
 
 "Do what? 
 
 "The nurse did not know what, but sup- 
 posed 'poison me.* 
 
 "The nurse had just said Mr. Mackirby was 
 delirious. Was she (the nurse) in the habit 
 of regarding the remarks of her delirious 
 patients as intelligent conversation?
 
 216 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 "No. She didn't know as she was. 
 
 "She (the nurse) had administered meat 
 juice to Mr. Mackirby. Did she give Mr. 
 Mackirby the meat juice at Mrs. Mackirby's 
 request? 
 
 "No. Mrs. Mackirby insisted that Mr. 
 Mackirby was too weak to take anything so 
 strong into his stomach. She (Mrs. Mac- 
 kirby) forbade the nurse to give it to him. 
 
 "But the nurse gave it to Mr. Mackirby, 
 did she not? 
 
 "Yes. * 
 
 "With what result? 
 
 "Mr. Mackirby vomited and had violent 
 pain. 
 
 "Did anything else happen to the meat 
 juice? 
 
 "Oh, yes. Mrs. Mackirby was very angry 
 about it. She got up and took it away from 
 the table by the bedside and carried it off 
 into her room. 
 
 "Did she not bring it back and put it 
 where she found it? 
 
 "Yes. 
 
 "How long was she gone? 
 
 "The nurse did not know.
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 217 
 
 "Did she not come directly back? 
 
 "Yes. 
 
 "Did the nurse mention to Mr. Frederick 
 Mackirby or to the doctors her suspicions 
 that the meat juice had been tampered with 
 by Mrs. Mackirby before Mr. Mackirby's 
 death? 
 
 "No. Not until after his death. 
 
 "Then the handwriting on the packages 
 of arsenic were brought and specimens 
 of Mrs. Mackirby's handwriting too. But as 
 nobody had come forward to prove that 
 Mrs. Mackirby had bought a grain of 
 poison; as the police had not been able to 
 trace a grain to her purchase or procure- 
 ment, the fact that the handwriting on the 
 packages did look like her handwriting 
 did not seem to be a powerful argument 
 pointing to her guilt. 
 
 "Mr. Frederick Mackirby looked, all the 
 time this writing was on exhibition, as 
 though he were the artistic arranger of 
 the affair, and he seemed rather ashamed 
 of his work, not because it was so bad, 
 but because it wasn't up to what he had 
 intended it to be. 
 
 "Then came the analysis. And it was
 
 218 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 proved by specialists for the crown that 
 although the man was a confirmed arsenic- 
 eater, that his wife had killed him with an 
 infinitesimal dose. It was proved by special- 
 ists for the defense, that the man, being a 
 confirmed arsenic-eater, and being deprived 
 of the drug in his last illness, he died 
 from lack of poison ! How more than stupid 
 of Mr. Frederick Mackirby ! He should have 
 accused his sister-in-law of wickedly keep- 
 ing arsenic from his brother. 
 
 "And I must not forget to tell you some- 
 thing awfully funny. The crown accounted 
 for Mrs. Mackirby's allowing so much 
 arsenic to be about by saying that ' She was 
 an incautious and artful woman!' I wonder 
 if these two words were ever harnessed 
 together before? 'Incautious and artful!' 
 Poor soul ! What an unhappy combination ! 
 It makes one feel weak-minded to contem- 
 plate its possibility! They also said, 'She 
 was cunning and artful to a degree,' and 
 added in the same breath, that she exhibited 
 an extraordinary want of caution by buying 
 the fly-paper (to kill her husband with) 
 openly, and leaving it steeping on saucers 
 under people's noses!
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 219 
 
 "Of course this account would be madden- 
 ing to a man to read, but I am writing to 
 mother and grandmother and you; and if 
 you hear father grunt or sniff, or if he 
 begins to argue, just stop short and don't 
 read him another word. Mother never did 
 sit on father enough, and it has made us 
 girls no end of trouble ! 
 
 "Well, I want to talk about one of the 
 post-mortem-star witnesses. He said, in 
 substance, for the crown, that mineral sub- 
 stances have a tendency to preserve the 
 human body ; that when Mr. Mackirby died 
 the weather was cool, and then he swore 
 that within forty-eight hours after Mr. Will- 
 iam Mackirby' s death his body began to 
 decompose! He said about one-tenth of a 
 grain of arsenic was discovered in the body ; 
 he swore that two grains was the smallest 
 fatal dose recorded. He said that a man 
 who had been in the habit of eating arsenic 
 for years could not be fatally affected by 
 even an ordinary killing dose. 
 
 "It was no use, Nell, not a bit of use! 
 The poison theory was knocked higher than 
 Gilroy's kite ! And the crown knew it ; so 
 they brought in a lot of love-letters supposed
 
 220 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 to have been written by Mrs. Mackirby to 
 her lover mother-in-law's nephew. 
 
 "They were the sort of love-letters one 
 finds in the ' Model Letterwriter. ' A great deal 
 of 'love' and 'dove' and 'darling.' I don't 
 believe that she ever wrote them. If she 
 swore that she had, I wouldn't believe her, 
 for I think she has lost her mind ! But what 
 these letters were brought into the case for 
 is a question. There is not the slightest 
 allusion in them to getting rid of Mr. Mac- 
 kirby by poison, nor about buying poison nor 
 soaking fly-paper. Mrs. Mackirby is not at 
 the bar of justice for disloyalty to her hus- 
 band, but for murdering him. If all the 
 married women who have written love- 
 letters to men who were not their husbands 
 were to be ferreted out and sent to jail, and 
 then tried for murder, I am afraid that the 
 wailing and gnashing of teeth would be 
 more general than proper. And I am also 
 sure that the prison accommodations in the 
 United Kingdom would be uncomfortably 
 filled. 
 
 "The crown contented itself with the love- 
 letters and a hotel porter. This porter 
 swore to having seen Mrs. Mackirby and a
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 221 
 
 man in his hotel, but he was evidently a 
 stupid fellow and had gotten his lesson so 
 badly that he was made very little of indi- 
 vidually, although he was used in the sum- 
 ming-up as an oratorical flight. 
 
 "Mother-in-law's nephew did not appear. 
 They hinted at him the crown did, I mean 
 and suggested him and generally coquetted 
 with him, but they never produced him. In 
 fact, he couldn't have done anything to help 
 the crown hang my countrywoman, so they 
 let him go. 
 
 "The family physician of the Mackirbys 
 has sworn that he has known for years that 
 Mr. Mackirby ate arsenic and drank arsenic ; 
 that fully realizing this state of things in 
 Mr. Mackirby's last illness, he gave him 
 arsenic as a counteractant. He swore that 
 Mrs. Mackirby had never to his knowledge 
 or belief done anything for her husband that 
 was not for his benefit. He swore he never 
 suspected, never dreamed of such a thing as 
 Mrs. Mackirby's poisoning her husband 
 until Mr. Mackirby's brother, Mr. Frederick 
 Mackirby, and the trained nurse told him of 
 some suspicions they had. He swore he was 
 present at the post-mortem examination,
 
 222 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 and he said the stomach contained only a 
 very small portion of arsenic, not possibly a 
 fatal dose; and he thought the arsenic 
 found was resultant from his (the phy- 
 sician's) prescribing. 
 
 "Then more witnesses were called 
 doctors, chemists, servants and friends of 
 the late Mr. Mackirby who swore to sell- 
 ing him poisonous medicines, to giving him 
 poison, to seeing him eat and drink poison. 
 
 "There were people who came forward to 
 give many proofs of Mrs. Mackirby 's good- 
 ness, kindness, gentleness and generosity; 
 to tell of her faithful wifehood, her tender 
 motherhood, and then the defense rested. 
 
 "The crown did not shake in the least 
 the testimony of Mrs. Mackirby's witnesses 
 in their cross-examination. 
 
 "This has all been written, Nell, on va- 
 rious days and at various times. It is all 
 mixed up as to tenses and parts of speech, 
 and it will probably be worse than ever 
 now, for the trial is drawing near its close. 
 I have left out all the detail and probably 
 much that is important besides; but home 
 folk are apt to be gentle critics. I don't
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 223 
 
 mean to say much about the summing-up on 
 either side. 
 
 "The crown, of course, was eloquent in 
 its denunciation of the prisoner, but to any- 
 one with a grain of humor it was a roaring 
 farce to see a great, big, clear-headed, free man 
 stand up there and call the pale, semi- uncon- 
 scious little woman prisoner a modern Borgia, 
 steeped to the throat in blood! To hear 
 him appeal to those pigs in pantaloons and 
 coats, 'to look at the prisoner, to mark her 
 cruel smile, the brazen effrontery of her 
 stare, her hardened, vicious expression!' It 
 is such a gentle face, Nell; it would look 
 like a benediction under a nun's cap! It 
 was grimly funny to hear this man ask the 
 junk-dealer and his eleven brethren to 'mark 
 with shame how brazenly she listened to the 
 name of "scarlet woman" when applied to 
 her;' also that 'black were the thoughts of 
 Bonnie Mackirby, and dark as hell the soul 
 of Bonnie Mackirby!' 
 
 "I thought of Hawthorne's 'Hester 
 Prynne,' as she stood high above her stern, 
 cruel Puritan persecutors with the scarlet 
 letter upon her breast. If the woman in the 
 prisoner's chair has ever been untrue to
 
 224 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 her marriage- vow, which she has not 
 it has been because the man who had 
 married her had driven her out of his 
 heart, had left her outcast and desolate! 
 It was because numbed and chilled and 
 frightened by the blackness into which she 
 was cast some door suddenly opened and a 
 kindly voice offered her shelter and warmth 
 and light. Is that sin? If it is, the good, 
 good God who called a human woman 
 'Mother' will have a welcome and a robe and 
 a loving forgiveness for such a gentle prodi- 
 gal daughter. 
 
 "Of course, the defense spoke as the 
 defense always does, for the prisoner. But 
 the dreadful charge! For oh, Nell! Nell! 
 it has been given ! It startled us all. The 
 man must be mad! For he instructed his 
 jury as to their verdict! Listen to this: 
 'It is essential,' he said, 'to this charge that 
 the man died of poison, and the poison sug- 
 gested is arsenic. And the question that 
 you will have to consider is and must be the 
 foundation of a judgment unfavorable to the 
 prisoner; that is, your verdict must be that 
 he died of arsenic. ' 
 
 "I looked at the prisoner; not a muscle of
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 225 
 
 her face had moved. I looked at the jury ; 
 they looked like a lot of stupid schoolboys 
 that had been given a hint as to the answer 
 that would be required of them. And I 
 knew through my womanly intuition what 
 they would say. I looked at the little com- 
 pany of bloodhounds who were running this 
 poor creature to her death. The brother- 
 in-law could hardly keep from openly show- 
 ing his joy! The other brother-in-law 
 looked faint and distressed. He is a friend 
 to this poor woman; he is known to have 
 done everything in his power to serve her. 
 
 "The prisoner, as I have said, looked 
 happy. She seemed quite unconscious of her 
 present surroundings; she was wrapped 
 about by a world of sweet and tender mem- 
 ories. 
 
 "I looked at the reporters about me; they 
 seemed to me to be startled and unable to 
 collect their thoughts. 
 
 "Then I looked at the people; and I took 
 heart, I took courage. I found hope, for I 
 saw a strong wave of disapprobation. The 
 intelligent public were not with the judge 
 who instructed his jury; they would not be 
 with the jury who would follow blindly the
 
 226 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 biased instructions of the judge. Abraham 
 Lincoln knew whereof he spoke when he 
 said, 'For the people, of the people, 
 and by the people.'' The people have 
 always ruled; the people always will rule 
 with the laws! Arbitrary triumph may 
 endure for a night, but the people, God be 
 praised! win the victory in all Time's 
 mornings. 
 
 "Then, Nell, came the last act, the closing 
 scene; for of course the jury came back with 
 a verdict of guilty. The judge wrote out 
 their copy for them; they went out, and 
 came back, and announced their unanimous 
 decision. 
 
 "And, Nell, the only one who did not 
 expect this verdict was the judge. He 
 looked startled and roused and aston- 
 ished. For a few brief moments there 
 was a force and an intelligence in his 
 face that had never lighted it before 
 in all the trial. But he rose, he held 
 the black cap in his hands the black 
 cap which the judges in England always put 
 over their wigs when they pass the death 
 sentence. It is supposed to be a symbol of 
 sorrow, this cornered 'sentence cap,' but
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 227 
 
 when I saw the old man raise his trembling 
 hands to put it on, my first impulse was to 
 turn away, my second to turn to her. The 
 prisoner stood up, the courtroom was very 
 still, and, Nell, as I raised my head and 
 looked into her face I found her eyes fixed 
 upon me, and somehow I felt as though my 
 soul had gone out of my body had gone and 
 put its protecting arms around this sister 
 soul, and was holding her close and was 
 comforting her. 
 
 "The minority said afterward that the 
 prisoner was so hardened, so indifferent to 
 her fate, that she smiled as the judge pro- 
 nounced sentence! The great majority 
 drowned the shrill piping of the sleek- 
 coated minority. They said 'that the pris- 
 oner looked like one translated! That a 
 look too fair to be earthly dwelt upon her 
 quiet, gentle face.' They said that as 
 the judge gravely and impressively and 
 euphoniously repeated the words, 'Prisoner 
 at the bar, you have heard the verdict 
 pronounced by your fellow-countrymen! and 
 if there is any just cause why sentence 
 should not be pronounced upon you, 
 you may now state it,' that the prisoner
 
 228 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 looked up quietly into the judge's face, and 
 answered, 'I have nothing whatever to say, 
 my lord, except that I am not guilty. ' 
 
 "And then, Nell, came the doom. It was 
 in substance that within one month Bonnie 
 Mackirby should be taken to the gallows 
 and hanged by the neck until she was dead, 
 the judge kindly adding that he hoped 'God 
 would have mercy on her soul. ' Nell, I was 
 very near her. I saw her lips move, and 
 not only I, but the jailer and her lawyer 
 caught the words, ' I thank you, my lord. ' 
 
 "The British lion has ceased to play with 
 the American mouse! The prisoner has 
 been removed to a cell in the prison set 
 apart for condemned criminals. She is 
 permitted to see nobody, but her lawyer, 
 and then it must be in the presence of the 
 governor or some high jail official. There 
 seems to be nothing more to do. The 
 minority have won! The majority, in this 
 instance, may howl themselves hoarse as 
 they are doing, God bless them ! but it will 
 do no good. 
 
 "The. papers are full of appeals, of pro- 
 tests, nay, of demands for the woman's 
 release. There are letters printed from
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 229 
 
 noted scientists, noted lawyers, noted phy- 
 sicians, noted toxicologists, from clergymen 
 and laymen, and from women of rank and 
 of intellectual prominence, all asking for 
 mercy in the name and for the sake of 
 Justice. 
 
 "Days and more days have come and gone 
 since I put aside my letter, too sick at heart 
 to finish it or send it unfinished. The days 
 are nearly accomplished in which Bonnie 
 Mackirby is to make herself ready to die. 
 And a strange thing has come to pass, the 
 judge has been adjudged insane! He has 
 been taken to a retreat. The physicians 
 announce that the man has been suffering 
 for a long time with softening of the brain. 
 They say he is now upon the verge of 
 imbecility. But do you suppose that the 
 fact that the judge who tried Mrs. Mackirby 
 was insane will stay the hand of the English 
 law in its course? No! The gallows is 
 being built, the rope tried. There is in 
 English criminal law no possibility of 
 rehearing a case when a verdict has been 
 found by what is considered a properly con-
 
 230 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 structed jury, upon an indictment which is 
 correct in form. There is, Nell, no court of 
 criminal appeals in England. There is 
 nothing to do but to make appeals to the 
 crown. And do you suppose they will listen 
 to any of these appeals? Well, we shall see. ' '
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 231 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 Closely watched, jealously guarded by 
 warder and governor, Bonnie Mackirby sat 
 in her prison cell, waiting for the day to 
 dawn on which she should mount the scaffold 
 and be strangled to death in a hangman's 
 noose. They had taken her knitting-needles 
 away, and so there was nothing for her to 
 do but to sit with folded hands, to answer 
 courteously all questions addressed to her, to 
 obediently and cheerfully submit to all rules 
 and regulations, to ask no favors, to send no 
 messages, to make few requests. 
 
 One day she startled her guard by asking 
 what he thought would be done with her 
 body? He answered her question by asking 
 why she wanted to know. Because, she 
 said, if there was no legal reason to the 
 contrary, she should like it cremated, and 
 then perhaps her lawyer would be willing, 
 for he seemed a kind man, to take the ashes 
 (she had heard that they could be com- 
 pressed into a small urn), and going out
 
 232 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 with them on some tug, way out, so 
 that the shore line would not be very 
 distinct, that he could throw them into 
 the Atlantic when the tide was going 
 out. She said that she supposed it was 
 a foolish fancy, but she had come to 
 believe that a merciful wave would take 
 those ashes and carry them swiftly back to t 
 the New England coast. So that something 
 that had once been her would really be at 
 home again, would touch the hem of Lib- 
 erty's garments! 
 
 Again she asked him if it would be pos- 
 sible to have the execution at twilight. He 
 asked her, as before, why she asked. And 
 she said she should like to go away with the 
 sun as it sank into the west. 
 
 Her lawyer asked her if she had any 
 wishes with regard to her children and her 
 property. 
 
 She shook her head sadly and replied : "I 
 have no power to will or to do. I gave my 
 youth and all that I possessed to England. I 
 leave to her mercy my orphaned children, 
 and all that once was called mine of this 
 world's goods. " 
 
 The lawyer asked if she knew that the
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 233 
 
 judge who had sentenced her had gene mad. 
 
 She seemed quite roused up by this. She 
 said, oh, no, she had not heard ! and it was 
 very sad! and poor soul! She hoped it 
 was really true, for if he were not mad, 
 and he was only being locked up by some 
 one who wanted his money or his children, 
 it would be a terrible thing. She hoped 
 they did not bring up his conduct in her 
 case as a proof of his insanity. She would 
 not like to be even the innocent means of 
 bringing trouble upon him ! 
 
 And so the days came and went, and into 
 the cell there often came now the prison 
 chaplain, to read and to pray, to admonish 
 to confession and repentance; but the 
 studied, professional, stereotyped voice 
 robbed the words of any holy meaning. 
 She listened, but she made no answer. She 
 did not kneel or say amen, for this man had 
 never been chosen by an all-merciful God to 
 minister to those in prison. So the chap- 
 lain let fall his opinion that ' ' Mrs. Mackirby 
 was a hardened woman, a woman with a 
 sinful soul, a heart of stone !' ' He said that 
 she had no remorse for her terrible deed. 
 
 But in spite of the priestly verdict, heaven
 
 234 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 was merciful and sent down a peace that 
 passed the understanding of narrow human 
 minds. She was comforted ; she leaned on 
 the angel that she could not see, and she 
 felt no fear of what man should do to her. 
 She knew that somewhere, somewhere in 
 the beyond, there was a kingdom of glory, 
 and in the thought of it she could smile and 
 say "Amen!" 
 
 The time drew very near, and the 
 jailers- were more watchful and if possi- 
 ble more kindly. The lawyer came 
 often and went away grief-stricken, and 
 it had come to be the day before. The 
 chaplain was wearisome in his atten- 
 tions, and after he had gone the mar- 
 tron had a duty to perform. One of the 
 prison rules -had as yet been unfulfilled. 
 They had until now spared the beautiful 
 gold-glinted chestnut hair. It had been 
 unbraided and brushed out for the last time 
 and the woman, with her shears in her hand, 
 felt reluctant to fulfill her task. Mrs. Mac- 
 kirby spoke. 
 
 "Do you suppose, matron," she said, "that 
 the queen would mind if you saved three 
 locks of this, that I will kiss, for my little
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 235 
 
 girls? I do not mean to give it to them now, 
 but when they are older and better able to 
 bear it all. " 
 
 "I'll see if I can save some," said the 
 matron, sobbing audibly. 
 
 "Don't cry," said Mrs. Mackirby, gently, 
 "don't cry. It really isn't so bad as it seems, 
 you know. I have done no wrong and I 
 fear no evil." 
 
 The woman had not as yet touched the 
 beautiful hair, and she threw down her 
 shears upon the floor, and she came and 
 knelt at Bonnie Mackirby's knees. 
 
 "Dear, dear lady," she said, "I have a 
 baby girl up in heaven, and I'm always 
 grieving about her because she seems so 
 alone up there. She was such a mother 
 child ! Always clinging to my gown, always 
 wanting me to take her in my arms ! Would 
 you mind looking for her? Her name is 
 Annie Cummins; and would you mind 
 cuddling her a wee bit for me?" 
 
 Bonnie Mackirby stooped down and kissed 
 the tear-stained face. "I will find her," she 
 said. "Yes, I will find her." 
 
 Just then there was a noise of opening 
 doors in the corridor, and Dick Mackirby
 
 236 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 and the lawyer appeared, and the governor 
 was with them. 
 
 ' ' Bonnie !" said Richard Mackirby. ' ' Bon- 
 nie, my sister!" She looked at him, but 
 said no word. "Bonnie, the Home Secre- 
 tary has commuted the sentence of capital 
 punishment to imprisonment for life. 
 Thank God! thank God!" 
 
 In the silence that followed the prisoner 
 spoke. She addressed the governor of the 
 prison. "Do you think, sir," she said, 
 "that the queen will let me have back my 
 knitting?"
 
 BONNIE MACK1RBY. 237 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 "My dear Nell: 
 
 ' ' This is the last letter I shall write to you 
 before we sail, or rather steam, for home, 
 and between ourselves I can't get back quick 
 enough. And, oh, I want to stay in Amer- 
 ica for ever and ever, amen! Bettie can 
 have her duke, and welcome. And as soon 
 as I get into Sandy Hook, if I am not too 
 seasick, I am going to read the riot act to 
 Gerald. I'm going to tell him that I 
 couldn't respect a man who expected to live 
 in a country, and yet who declined to become 
 naturalized. And I'm going to keep at him 
 from that time on until he does! 
 
 "Mind you, I think England is fair and 
 delightful at her greatest and best, but she 
 is dark and dreadful at her lowest and worst. 
 I never witnessed such poverty! I never 
 imagined such wealth and magnificence ! I 
 never saw broader philanthropy or more 
 heavenly charity. I never could imagine 
 such an enlightened nation as being able to
 
 238 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 hold itself in such bondage to fixed out- 
 of-date laws which they say came in with 
 Edward and will remain to cumber the Eng- 
 lish earth until doomsday. 
 
 "I like mother-in-law and I love father- 
 in-law. If he had been an American, he 
 would have been either President of the 
 United States or a chief-justice. I haven't 
 yet quite settled which. I like the twins, as 
 I do all well-preserved Dresden china. I 
 like the brothers-in-law because they are 
 high-minded, quiet-lived gentlemen. I like 
 the sisters-in-law a little. I am sure that I 
 should like them less if I knew them better. 
 And I like going home to my own dear Cook 
 County best of all! 
 
 "Nell, please don't laugh. But ever since 
 that poor, innocent American woman was 
 convicted of nothing at all, ever since her 
 children were taken from her and she was 
 cast into prison and barely escaped hanging, 
 I have in spirit been a perfect Afferly Flint- 
 witch. I have gone about with a figurative 
 apron over my head! I have felt like Cain 
 as if every man's hand was against me! 
 
 "I don't think the queen approves of 
 American women. I fancy she dislikes
 
 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 239 
 
 seeing her titled earls and dukes supported 
 by the money our fathers over the water 
 have earned by honest toil. Of course, 
 pedigree is all limited. Even kings and 
 queens go back to humble beginnings. But 
 then it is more agreeable to have sloop cap- 
 tains and fur peddlers and the like several 
 hundred years off than only the day before 
 yesterday. 
 
 "Well, I won't trouble her majesty. I'll 
 turn the tables, and take instead of give! 
 I'll make a rousing Yankee of Gerald, see if 
 I don't! 
 
 "I suppose you are as thankful as lam 
 that Mrs. Mackirby did not hang. But I do 
 not think the -woman who is sitting to-day 
 in the solitude of her prison cell cares 
 for the life they have given her. I know 
 that she expressed no gratitude to Eng- 
 land when it stayed its hand. I know 
 that she seems to have neither past nor 
 future, hope nor fear. When she can see 
 to knit, she knows that the sun has risen ; 
 when the stitches in the needle cannot be 
 counted, she knows that night has come. 
 
 "She has no name any more. She is called 
 'murderess such a number,' and this will be
 
 240 BONNIE MACKIRBY. 
 
 her portion until a time when it shall please 
 the All-Wise to call her to appear before that 
 higher tribunal whose judgments are just 
 and when there shall be awarded to Bonnie 
 Mackirby a new name. Then she shall 
 know why all this sorrow has been her por- 
 tion, and she, with a higher wisdom, shall be 
 glad to have been accounted worthy to 
 suffer, as many saints have done through all 
 the ages. Then she shall hear the voices 
 of the angels, saying in their song of wel- 
 come, 'This is one who has come out of 
 great tribulation ! ' 
 
 "Your Sister Nan." 
 
 THE END.
 
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