.-
 
 NANCY THE JOYOUS 
 
 ** OP CALIF. LIHUBY. las 4SOKUB8
 
 (d 
 
 Nancy thejoyous 
 
 By 
 Edith Stow 
 
 Frontispiece by James McCracken 
 
 Decorations by 
 Joseph Pierre Nuyttens 
 
 The Reilly & Eritton Co. 
 Chicago 

 
 Copyright, 1914 
 
 by 
 The Reilly & Britton Co. 
 
 NANCY THE JOYOUS
 
 2132878
 
 NANCY THE JOYOUS 
 
 ANCY LYNN was not 
 
 really so pretty as she 
 had the reputation of 
 being. But a subtle 
 something in her, of 
 which she was quite un- 
 conscious, stirred the 
 blood the way it responds 
 to the first subtle touch 
 of spring. Other girls have tendrils of wood- 
 brown hair that stray down across their cheeks, 
 but with Nancy you had to fight down an impulse 
 to touch them wonderingly. Her eyes were that 
 violet blue of twilight, when the insistent voice of 
 adventure whispers softly to you from behind 
 the hills. It was, most of all, this distant, mock- 
 ing call in her eyes that set men struggling to 
 unhamper their feet and follow her. It made
 
 8 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 other girls seem too tryingly near to a man; in 
 fact, around in his way. 
 
 In his contemplative fashion, John Carter 
 feasted on the sight of Nancy Lynn perched high 
 on the arm of an old-fashioned mahogany sofa 
 in order to catch the waning daylight on the book 
 she was reading aloud. He was seated at the 
 other end of the sofa listening dividedly. Mostly 
 he was wondering how he had ever won the love 
 of such a girl, or was planning ahead for the days 
 that would give her to him. Meanwhile, Nancy 
 read blithely on, tilting the sentences up at the 
 end in a cheerful fashion of her own. 
 
 The room about them was the staid village par- 
 lor of an elderly spinster cousin with whom, for 
 the time being, Nancy Lynn was living as a kind 
 of companion. It had haircloth furniture and a 
 Brussels carpet with large figures designed in the 
 spirit of miniature formal gardens. The mahog- 
 any center table was littered with a couple of 
 books, a box of candy and a quantity of maga- 
 zines, pamphlets and letters which Carter had 
 brought with him from the afternoon mail. The 
 books bore difficult technical titles concerning 
 commercial and diplomatic conditions in the Far
 
 Nancy the Joyous 9 
 
 East, for Carter was waiting an appointment to 
 an under-secretaryship in the legation at Peking. 
 The subject of which these two talked oftenest 
 was the home-spot they were to build together. 
 That it was to be far off on the other side of the 
 world was unimportant to the girl. She had 
 youth and health and her first taste of love. 
 Therefore all other circumstances life offered 
 her seemed both trivial and satisfactory. 
 
 So Nancy from her high seat on the arm of 
 the sofa read buoyantly on: 
 
 * The Chinese are past masters in the culinary 
 art, and the delicacies seen at a good Chinese 
 table are fit for a repast of Lucullus. Bird 
 nests, shark fins, deer sinews, bird tongues, fish 
 brains, shrimp eggs and many other extraordi- 
 nary dishes make up the everyday menu.' ' 
 
 Nancy dropped the book into her lap. 
 
 " How " she began emphatically. Then 
 she caught sight of the abstracted expression 
 with which Carter was enveloping her. 
 
 " I don't believe you heard a word," she 
 accused him. 
 
 " Not much," in his candid way. 
 
 She reread the paragraph.
 
 10 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 " Do you really think, dear, you'll enjoy see- 
 ing your wife eating a bird's nest? " 
 
 Carter slipped along the sofa and gathered 
 her hands into his. Apparently Nancy took no 
 notice of this. 
 
 " And won't you get nervous watching her 
 balancing a fish's fin on a chopstick? " 
 
 "I'll enjoy her " he began gently. 
 
 But here she interrupted him. Nancy Lynn 
 interrupted a man whenever she felt so inclined. 
 This was one of the rare moments in which she 
 gave expression to her tenderness. She laid her 
 soft cheek down against his forehead. 
 
 ' To think," she whispered, " of going off 
 with you into a fain r land of birds' nests and 
 fishes' fins " 
 
 He was sometimes vaguely worried by her 
 fancies. 
 
 " You must not expect too much, little girl. 
 Life is life," he warned. 
 
 " and temples and heathens and diplo- 
 mats," she continued in the same level tone. 
 
 Then, having been perverse as long as she 
 cared to, she raised her cheek from where it 
 rested and gazed into his face.
 
 Nancy the Joyous 11 
 
 " Don't worry for fear I can't meet realities," 
 she assured him. " You forget that most all my 
 life I have been an orphan handed from relative 
 to relative. The one main thing orphans have 
 to learn is to be adaptable. They do it by seeing 
 things just as they are and fitting themselves in. 
 So don't worry about the birds' nests, dear." 
 
 Then her underlip began to tremble. She 
 glanced out the window. 
 
 " Everything in my life has had to be whittled 
 down so as to fit into someone else's rough 
 edges," she said huskily; " and then I'd move 
 on and have to whittle it down some more. 
 Even my father and mother have had to change 
 to suit what the people I happened to be with 
 remembered of them." 
 
 John Carter gathered her hands in his with a 
 closer pressure. Nancy responded to his sym- 
 pathy with a plucky readjustment of her mood. 
 
 " The one thing I have had all for my own 
 was David, because none of them had ever heard 
 of him. They thought I made him up, but I 
 didn't. David? No, of course you don't know. 
 He is someone I can remember father and 
 mother talking about. They used to say that
 
 12 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 they would have him plan for me in case they 
 were both taken. He was the fortress of my 
 soul. When life grew too prickly for a very 
 little person to bear alone, I'd swing on the gate 
 and think of David. The winter I stayed with 
 Cousin Sarah I remember threatening my doll 
 to leave her behind when he came for me unless 
 she'd say * God bless all the relatives ' at the 
 end of her prayers. But she wouldn't. How 
 could she God-bless a woman that sewed differ- 
 ent sorts of buttons up the back of your pina- 
 fore when she had enough of one kind saved 
 away in her sewing basket? " 
 
 He drew her down beside him into his arms. 
 
 * You'll never again be lonesome, dear," he 
 whispered. 
 
 ' Won't I ? " she whispered back, so slowly 
 that it sounded like a doubt. " Won't I ? "
 
 F you have ever been in love 
 you will understand that 
 Carter succeeded in con- 
 vincing Nancy Lynn that 
 she would " never again 
 be lonesome." When the 
 outer door had closed 
 behind him, she stood in 
 the hall listening to his 
 receding footsteps and smiling softly. The par- 
 lor, when she crossed to it, seemed still to hold 
 his presence. The littered table suggested him, 
 the disordered sofa, the angle at which he had 
 pushed a chair in passing. She felt his voice 
 whispering to her from out the shadows and in 
 the air of the room his arms seemed wrapped 
 about her. The most precious part of girlhood is 
 its dreams. She dropped into the chair he had so 
 lately vacated, laid her arms along the edge of 
 the table and her face down upon them, com- 
 pletely enthralled by a sense of the present 
 sweetness of living. 
 
 13
 
 14 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 It was half an hour before she raised her 
 head. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes 
 starry with happiness. She stretched her arms 
 out across the table, rejoicing in a little easeful 
 strain that ran along them. 
 
 Her eyes caught sight of the staid row of 
 elderly, joyless portraits looking down from 
 Cousin Eliza's walls and she waved them a kiss 
 from her fingers. 
 
 " God bless all the relatives," she said out of 
 the fullness of her happiness. 
 
 Cousin Eliza's complaining voice called 
 querulously from above. 
 
 " Nancy, it does seem to me it's about time 
 you were coming up to bed." 
 
 " All right, cousin," she answered cheerfully. 
 " As soon as I straighten this room." 
 
 Nancy set the furniture back in prim lines, 
 all the time pleasantly conscious, as though her 
 heart hummed a little tune to itself, that it would 
 not be long before she would have a home of her 
 own. 
 
 ' You won't be there," she said decidedly to 
 the portraits 
 
 She straightened into its place on the sofa a
 
 Nancy the Joyous 15 
 
 cushion covered with black haircloth and stuffed 
 hard with curled hair. 
 
 " There will be soft colors and rugs and bare 
 floors," thought Nancy. 
 
 Last of all she rearranged the mahogany cen- 
 ter table, neatly stacking the magazines left for 
 her to read and tossing into the wastebasket 
 some worthless pamphlets and letters John 
 Carter had left behind. She drew from the 
 volume she had been reading aloud a letter that 
 Carter had torn in two and thrust into it for a 
 bookmark. Instead of tossing it at once into 
 the basket, Nancy unfolded it. 
 
 " Perhaps it is something I should save," she 
 thought, glancing along the typewritten lines. 
 
 Directly under the rough edge where it had 
 been torn across were the words: 
 
 " Your cousin, being summoned out of town 
 when on the point of writing you, wished me to 
 forward the following message at once, because 
 he has your future very much at heart." 
 
 " ' Because he has your future very much at 
 heart,' " she reread. She bent upon the paper a 
 grateful smile. " I have, too," she whispered 
 softly; " so I think we'll be friends when we
 
 16 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 meet. Perhaps I'll even hang your portrait on 
 the wall." 
 
 She bent to toss the paper into the waste- 
 basket but some impulse prompted her to look 
 again to see if this were really something that 
 should be destroyed. 
 
 " John didn't read it. He must have thought 
 it a typewritten circular. I don't think he knew 
 it was a letter." 
 
 As she read further down the sheet the girl's 
 face turned suddenly white. It was from some 
 cousin through whose influence John Carter's 
 appointment was to come. This cousin inti- 
 mated that he suspected Carter of having 
 become interested in some girl in Chatterton. 
 Then it went on to warn him that while he had 
 shown marked gifts for such work as he was 
 being sent to, he had not yet proved his ability; 
 it was still in the promise. The East just now, 
 it said, is a land full of new opportunities ; there 
 are careers in the making there; but in order to 
 fit himself to its conditions the young, untried 
 man must not go hampered. The government 
 requires that its new men in the consular service 
 in the East shall be unmarried and shall not
 
 Nancy the Joyous 17 
 
 marry for four years. But the cousin insisted 
 upon more than this. He demanded that Carter 
 should refrain from binding himself with any 
 ties which might later, in the sweep of new and 
 wider opportunities, be found irksome. Carter 
 would have to choose between " this girl " and 
 his cousin's influence in getting the appointment 
 to a secretaryship. ' Your cousin wishes me to 
 assure you that he takes this stand because he 
 has your future very much at heart." 
 
 Nancy Lynn's flesh slowly stiffened to her 
 bones as though it had frozen there. She slipped 
 sideways into a chair and stretched out her 
 hands, with the letter shaking in them, across the 
 table. She read it and reread it. Her teeth 
 began to chatter. Then suddenly she clenched 
 her hands into two fierce little fists, crumpling 
 the paper between them. 
 
 " Because you have his future so much at 
 heart ! " she panted. " If I had your heart here, 
 I'd dance on it and I'd dig my heels in! " 
 
 After which burst of passion she laid her head 
 down on the table and sobbed huskily. But 
 slowly her sobs quieted. She did not raise her 
 head but thought and thought heartbrokenly
 
 18 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 until her flesh shivered and a fine ache came into 
 her wrists and ankles and between her shoul- 
 ders. Carter must not lose his chance in life for 
 her sake. It took her a long time to work it 
 all out, because her mind fumbled so. There 
 were lapses when she only thought stupidly how 
 cold she was. 
 
 At last Nancy Lynn must have fallen asleep, 
 for she awoke with a start when the clammy 
 morning twilight was creeping in at the windows. 
 She was still cold, and the ache was still between 
 her shoulders, but now she wanted passionately 
 only what would be best for him. Now that 
 anger and surprise had passed and she could 
 reason clearly, she saw that she could not trust 
 Carter to choose for himself; he would cling to 
 her, of that she was certain. On her part it 
 could not be mere passive giving up, but active 
 renunciation. 
 
 She drew a sheet of paper toward her to 
 write to whom? The cousin? She did not 
 even know his name. The secretary then. " I 
 am the girl you wrote about to Mr. Carter. He 
 did not read your letter. I got it by mistake 
 fortunately." Then she offered to make a bar-
 
 Nancy the Joyous 19 
 
 gain. She would give him up if in return they 
 would promise that he should never know. " I 
 would not spoil his career," she ended with a 
 sigh that threatened to turn into a sob. 
 
 " He has not read this letter and he must 
 never learn of it," thought Nancy. " It would 
 not do for him to grow to hate the man who can 
 give him his chance in life." 
 
 At the end she signed the single letter " N." 
 ' Then they can't answer it," she thought 
 with a scornful sob. ' Think if they should try 
 to thank me ! "
 
 FTER the mail box had 
 irretrievably swallowed 
 her letter, Nancy Lynn 
 turned back up the 
 street, nodding a white 
 face to her neighbors. 
 At home, her feet 
 dragged so on the stairs 
 that she could not have 
 mounted to her bedroom had it not been for the 
 assisting pull of her hand along the banister. In 
 a kind of daze she removed the pretty dress she 
 had put on for John Carter's call the afternoon 
 before and hung it away. Then suddenly with 
 a blind rush she crossed the room and threw 
 herself face downward on the bed. Her body 
 was shaken by sobs which she fought back by 
 pressing her wrist against her lips. 
 
 Human nature is made in layers that work 
 largely independent of one another. Now and 
 then some earnest man, like Savonarola, by the 
 
 heat of a single purpose, fuses his whole nature 
 
 20
 
 Nancy the Joyous 21 
 
 and loses his sense of humor. Then, there 
 are women whose emotionalism soaks into their 
 upper crust of spirituality and their under crust 
 of brains until they become like unpalatable, 
 juice-sogged pies. But, God be thanked, there 
 are in this fine old world innumerable men and 
 women who live true to pattern. Such was 
 Nancy Lynn. 
 
 Time passed. At last from some hidden cor- 
 ner within the girl spoke up a fresh, brave little 
 voice. 
 
 " All the same you've got to send him away," 
 the voice said. " It was a straight bargain." 
 
 Nancy did not respond. 
 
 " You've got to do it," it said a little louder. 
 
 Nancy stirred. 
 
 " How are you going to do it? " it asked next. 
 
 Nancy turned over and lay face upward, gaz- 
 ing quietly at the ceiling. She had merely 
 moved out of her emotions to another layer of 
 her being where the brain functions. 
 
 To be sure, she asked herself, how was she 
 to do it? And to her surprise she found it was 
 not such an easy thing as it had appeared the 
 night before.
 
 22 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 Suppose, for instance, that alone in the heart 
 of a desert were you and a man who knew you 
 loved him. Not an easy matter to jilt him! 
 You might say that you had grown to care for 
 someone else; but there would be no sign of 
 another man along the sky-line. You might 
 feign to be jealous; but of whom? Or you 
 might quietly run away. Where could you go 
 in the desert that he could not follow and find 
 you, and having found you, what reason could 
 you give? 
 
 The hamlet of Chatterton was not, strictly 
 speaking, a desert, being composed of flag pave- 
 ments, slant-roofed wooden houses and a row 
 of stores offering various kinds of merchandise. 
 Notwithstanding, in some ways it closely enough 
 resembled a desert for the parallelism to remain. 
 
 A starving girl who pushed back food and 
 accepted the state of starvation again, such was 
 Nancy Lynn; for as we humans need food, we 
 need love and a home wherein to shelter love. 
 With one of the strange paradoxes of life, 
 the thing that enabled Nancy to bear the first 
 days of her renunciation was the fact that she 
 could devise no plausible method of carrying
 
 Nancy the Joyous 23 
 
 out her promise. She brought all of her ingenu- 
 ity with which she was amply endowed 
 to bear upon it. Sometimes she thought futilely 
 until her head ached; and sometimes, pushed 
 to the edge by her problem, she turned like an 
 animal at bay and was amused by the difficulty 
 of her situation. 
 
 " It's as though Nancy Stark had been pre- 
 vented from going to battle because she couldn't 
 find her sunbonnet," she laughed with a catch 
 in her voice. 
 
 In this mood Nancy Lynn fled one morning 
 from under Cousin Eliza's querulous exactions. 
 The main street of the village merged into a 
 rutty highway, muddy in spots where the 
 branches arched above it and hard-baked where 
 it lay under the open sun. It was bordered on 
 each side with a tangle of coarse, dusty grass, 
 but the air above it was pierced by bird calls and 
 sweet with the breath of clover. The road passed 
 tilled land and small, moderately comfortable, 
 moderately tidy farmhouses. Here and there 
 some back-lying field sent out to it a lane, bush 
 bordered and cut by the infrequent wagon 
 tracks into lush ribbons of green grass. Nancy
 
 24 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 went a short distance into one of these lanes and 
 sat down on a granite boulder lying half grass- 
 embedded in an angle of the rail fence. 
 
 The warm sunshine lay upon her hair and 
 spread across her young shoulders like a tender 
 arm laid over them. Its warmth began to send 
 a sense of rest along her nerves. Her taut 
 muscles relaxed in response. For the first time 
 in many days she gave up passively, as a tired 
 child does. 
 
 The problematical aspect of her sacrifice had 
 engrossed her for too many days and nights to 
 be shaken off; but now instead of groping back 
 and forth along the blank wall of an impossible 
 situation, Nancy sat in the sunshine drawing 
 caricatures of her problem. Suppose, for 
 instance, that she should some day meet the 
 Crusty Old Party who had rejected her. She 
 devised for him a series of highly picturesque 
 discomfitures, each one terminating in some 
 triumph of her own over him. She even thought 
 up bits of conversation to be used by her on 
 these gratifying occasions. Nancy decided, 
 since this person was enough of a man of posi- 
 tion to keep a secretary, her only chance of meet-
 
 Nancy the Joyous 25 
 
 ing him was through her great-aunt, Mrs. 
 Amelia Crubb. This relative, whom Nancy had 
 never so much as seen, was the wealthy member 
 of the family, a childless woman who some 
 twenty-five years before had introduced Nancy's 
 pretty mother into society, with the idea of 
 arranging for her a wealthy marriage. The 
 plan worked pleasantly until the first Nancy fell 
 in love with gentle, studious, impecunious, 
 unpractical Herbert Lynn, and insisted on mar- 
 rying him in defiance of her aunt's wishes. 
 Thereupon Mrs. Crubb summarily dropped her 
 offending niece. 
 
 As Nancy sat in the sunshine, devising pleas- 
 ant, triumphal situations, two gypsy women 
 came towards her down the lane. One was an 
 old woman with bent shoulders. The other held 
 herself erect and carried on her arm a basket of 
 laces and notions covered with a red bandanna 
 handkerchief. 
 
 The relaxation in the open sunshine had 
 brought back the light to Nancy's face. She 
 regarded the two gypsies calmly and in return 
 the elder of the pair studied Nancy shrewdly 
 out of the corner of her eye. After she had fully
 
 26 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 passed, she turned and approached Nancy. 
 
 " Would the pretty lady like to know her 
 future?" she asked. 
 
 Nancy turned her hands over in her lap and 
 gazed down at the lines of her palms, wiggling 
 her fingers over them tantalizingly. 
 
 ; ' There's nothing in the world she'd like so 
 much," she replied in an even tone. 
 
 " I'll tell you what you're going to do," per- 
 sisted the gypsy woman. 
 
 ' You couldn't possibly," returned Nancy in 
 the same even voice. " I haven't an idea myself 
 what I'm going to do." 
 
 The elder gypsy laughed ; the young one with 
 the basket smiled. 
 
 " Someone loves you," coaxed the fortune, 
 teller, peering down into Nancy's palms. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And you love someone." 
 
 " I certainly do." 
 
 " And I see a journey." 
 
 " Oh, no, you don't. I'm not going." 
 
 " Not for you for him," amended the 
 
 gypsy. 
 
 Just then, outside on the highway into which
 
 Nancy the Joyous 27 
 
 this lane ran, sounded the rattle of an automo- 
 bile. It stopped at one side of the entrance to 
 the lane, so that it was hidden from view by a 
 fringe of bushes, but the voices of its occupants 
 could be plainly heard. 
 
 " Man," called out a woman dictatorily. She 
 was evidently speaking to someone walking 
 along the road and the pause indicated that he 
 had stopped in response to her salutation. 
 
 " Is this the road to Chatterton? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Can you tell me where I can find Miss Annie 
 Laird Lynn? " 
 
 " Never heard of her." 
 
 " Oh, yes you have," commanded the voice. 
 "I'm summering over at the hotel in Fair View 
 and I've come all this way to look her up. I'm 
 her great-aunt. You have certainly heard of 
 Miss Annie Lynn." 
 
 " Never knew of any such person," responded 
 the man with rustic finality; and continued on 
 his way. 
 
 Miss Annie Laird Lynn, hidden from this 
 authoritative person by the bank of elderberry 
 bushes, gasped in astonishment.
 
 28 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 " That must be my Great-aunt Crubb," she 
 cried, throwing out her hands. 
 
 Nancy's grasp of the situation was both 
 prompt and final. First, it was impossible for 
 her to step out and make known her identity, 
 accosting her unknown wealthy relative along 
 a country road, like a rustic, with rumpled hair 
 and dusty shoes. Loyalty to her dead father 
 and mother forbade it, for this gentle pair had 
 made Mrs. Crubb their one point of pride. At 
 the same time it was equally impossible for 
 Nancy to let slip an opportunity for studying at 
 closer range this legendary person. 
 
 She sprang to her feet. 
 
 " Trade," she whispered hurriedly, thrusting 
 into the basket of laces the silk scarf knotted 
 around the sailor collar of her dress and taking 
 in exchange the red handkerchief. Drawing her 
 curls down in a tangle about her face, she bound 
 the bright cotton square about them. The loos- 
 ened neck of her dress fell open, showing her 
 slender white throat. As a final touch she tucked 
 up one side of her skirt under her belt, like a 
 stage gypsy. 
 
 " She'd never recognize me if she saw me
 
 Nancy the Joyous 29 
 
 again," she cried, delighted at the adventure 
 of it. 
 
 She ran down the lane, beckoning to the 
 others to follow. 
 
 " Come on," she called to them. 
 
 The auto stood at the side of the road. It 
 was a clumsy old car kept to rent to summer 
 boarders. To-day it was being run by a country 
 boy of about fourteen, reduced by his present 
 patron to a spiritless condition. Beside him, 
 with one ungloved hand resting on the steering 
 wheel, sat Mrs. Amelia Crubb. She was a large, 
 solid woman, handsomely gowned with the quiet 
 perfection of good taste. Had life placed her 
 in narrow circumstances, she would probably 
 have nagged. As it was, being wealthy and 
 generous, she merely domineered. Managing 
 the affairs of others was to her a kind of fountain 
 of youth. Her large flat face was sallow, but it 
 gleamed with the light of her keen, not unkind, 
 gray eyes. 
 
 Nancy, bent on mischief, advanced to the 
 auto. 
 
 ' Would the pretty lady like to have her for- 
 tune told? " she pleaded softly.
 
 30 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 Her voice and manner were a delicious imita- 
 tion of humble petitioning. 
 
 " Is this the road to Chatterton? " demanded 
 Mrs. Crubb. 
 
 Nancy disregarded the question. She laid 
 two slim hands on the car and raised to Mrs. 
 Crubb a pair of pensive eyes. 
 
 " I can tell the pretty lady what will happen," 
 she pleaded. 
 
 Mrs. Crubb was a woman of too much good 
 sense to dress younger than her years ; but of all 
 things, she most loved girlhood. Her interest 
 was at once attracted. 
 
 Standing on tiptoe, Nancy leaned over into 
 the auto so that she could gaze on the hand laid 
 on the wheel. 
 
 " I see that someone loves you," she began. 
 
 " Oh, pshaw! " laughed Mrs. Crubb. 
 
 Nancy, herself, felt inward quivers of mirth; 
 but she tilted her chin and gazed up reproach- 
 fully. This brought her face close to Mrs. 
 Crubb's ample shoulder. It was a witching face. 
 Even framed in its tangle of disordered hair 
 and bound with red cotton, it suggested a flower. 
 But rarest and most compelling of all were the
 
 Nancy the Joyous 31 
 
 girl's deep violet eyes with their lurking hint of 
 mockery. Her coquetry was so spontaneous 
 that it fell alike on men and women, on young 
 and old. Mrs. Crubb had a moment's benefit 
 of it. 
 
 Nancy drew back so that she stood with the 
 other women. Meanwhile the idea was occurring 
 to her that if she could only induce her great- 
 aunt to retrace the road she had taken, to a cer- 
 tain crossway, and to come into Chatterton by 
 a highway parallel to the one she was now on, 
 she, herself, would have time to run home cross- 
 lots, slip into a fresh dress and receive her 
 august relative ceremoniously. This seemed to 
 her a fit ending for the adventure. 
 
 " It would even look well if I kept her wait- 
 ing for a few minutes," she considered. 
 
 " Were you going to Chatterton? " she ques- 
 tioned. 
 
 Mrs. Crubb replied that she was and asked if 
 they could give her any directions how to find 
 the young woman whom she wished fo meet. 
 
 ' You won't find Miss Lynn if you go this 
 way," said Nancy with decision. " You'll have 
 to go in by the other road if you get her." And
 
 32 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 then she gave Mrs. Crubb directions for her cir- 
 cuitous route. 
 
 The conviction in Nancy's voice was evident 
 and Mrs. Crubb acted on it without hesitation. 
 
 As the boy climbed out to crank the auto Mrs. 
 Crubb demanded, " Have you ever seen Miss 
 Lynn?" 
 
 " I've heard of her." 
 
 " What have you heard? " 
 
 Nancy lifted her eyes devoutly. 
 
 " That she is gentle and pious and good." 
 
 The auto began to move. 
 
 " Humph," said Mrs. Crubb.
 
 N" the best of spirits Nancy 
 bade good-bye to the 
 gypsies and started out 
 to reach the village 
 speedily. While she 
 crossed the road her 
 hands searched for the 
 knot of the handkerchief. 
 Failing to find it, she ran 
 on, still wearing the bright kerchief bound about 
 her curls. 
 
 In order to make a shortcut she followed the 
 lane in which she had met the gypsies, until this 
 opened into a grassy meadow. Across it she cut 
 diagonally. This brought her to a worked corn- 
 field where her haste was impeded by her feet 
 sinking in the ploughed ground. But at last she 
 reached the opposite highway at a point half- 
 way up a long hillside. Here was a rail fence 
 to climb. As Nancy laid her hands on its top 
 rail she saw that they were grimy. She turned 
 them over critically and found their palms 
 
 33
 
 34 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 traced with delicate brown lines gathered from 
 similar fences. A downward glance showed 
 that her shoes and stockings were spotted with 
 mud. Obviously it was impossible for her to 
 reach the village in time properly to freshen and 
 gown herself to meet her relative. Nancy's 
 hands gripped the top rail rebelliously. 
 
 In a deep-seated way Nancy Lynn knew that 
 she was not really so thoroughly disappointed. 
 Already a bodily sense of relief ran through her 
 sagging nerves and muscles because now they 
 would not be forced through the little scene of 
 vainglory which Nancy would certainly have 
 enacted before Mrs. Crubb in loyal memory of 
 her parents. But here was the last straw. The 
 last straw is seldom either dignified or pertinent. 
 She crossed the fence and stood irresolutely in 
 the wayside grass. 
 
 ' Then why hurry so! Why do anything! " 
 Nancy dropped down on a boulder and wrap- 
 ping her arms about her knees, buried her face 
 in them. With a fierce joy in the abandon of it, 
 she held it up as a grudge between her and God 
 that she had not been allowed to meet her great- 
 aunt again. Throughout the past anxious week,
 
 Nancy the Joyous 35 
 
 Nancy Lynn had known scarcely one selfish 
 thought, but now selfishness claimed its own from 
 her. 
 
 " Good morning, Miss Nancy." The voices 
 sounded just above her head. 
 
 She looked up and saw two workingmen stand- 
 ing in the road in front of her. 
 
 " Good morning, Tom. Good morning, Mr. 
 Martin." Half the people of the countryside 
 were her friends. 
 
 " You weren't planning to go back by way of 
 the bridge, were you? " suggested one of the 
 men, nodding towards a wooden structure that 
 spanned a river below the hill; " because it isn't 
 safe. It wouldn't hold up a child. It'd break 
 through like a shavin'." 
 
 He went on to explain that some of the 
 stringers had rotted and had been removed in 
 order to be replaced. 
 
 " If you see anybody coming this way you'll 
 warn 'em, please, miss." 
 
 " But you have left some danger signal, 
 haven't you? " 
 
 The men looked guilty. 
 
 ' We're coming back directly," said one of
 
 36 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 the pair. " We're just going up here to get the 
 stringers. It takes the two of us to handle 'em." 
 
 " We didn't have the makings of a danger 
 sign. But nobody hardly ever comes this way," 
 added the other. 
 
 They plodded on, making as good speed as 
 possible on the up-grade, their humble figures 
 fitting into the quiet country landscape. Two 
 facing hillsides sloped together. Through the 
 narrow valley between them a little river flowed 
 towards a hamlet whose rounded treetops were 
 pricked through by a pair of church spires. 
 Close at hand, the trees bordering the road filed 
 majestically up the hillside on which Nancy sat. 
 There had been a day when she and John Carter 
 had ridden horseback beneath these same trees 
 and the very ground had sung beneath their 
 feet. Nancy buried her face again at the mem- 
 ory of it. What was she to do with the empty 
 years ahead? How was she to meet them? 
 With what was she to fill them? Here was a 
 selfishness so august that it quieted her. 
 
 A rattling sound broke in on these thoughts. 
 A big, clumsy old car came toiling over the crest 
 of the hill. It was Mrs. Crubb again.
 
 Nancy the Joyous 37 
 
 Mindful of the bridge, Nancy waved her hand 
 and stepped out to the edge of the road. 
 
 " You! " exclaimed Mrs. Crubb. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " How did you get here? " 
 
 " I came crosslots." 
 
 " Well, you can tell me. I say that we are 
 not on the right road." 
 
 " This isn't the way I told you to come," 
 agreed Nancy. 
 
 " There," said Mrs. Crubb to the boy. 
 
 They had been having trouble with the car 
 and altogether she was disgusted with her 
 errand of hunting up an unknown relative with 
 the mild reputation of being " gentle, pious and 
 good." Now this gypsy girl 
 
 But at that moment, under her gaudy, scar- 
 let kerchief, the gypsy girl's face turned ashen. 
 On the crest of the opposite hill, silhouetted 
 against the pale sky, sprang up the figure of a 
 horseman who sat his saddle with the ease and 
 bearing of the riding schools. The clear-cut 
 vision dropped from the sky-line and became a 
 brown spot riding down towards the death-trap 
 awaiting him at the bridge.
 
 38 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 "Oh!" gasped Nancy huskily. "Oh! 
 Quick! " she cried, turning to the occupants of 
 the car. 
 
 Her alarm was hieroglyphic but contagious. 
 Thinking the danger theirs, the boy promptly 
 jumped over one side of the car and Mrs. Crubb 
 rolled out the other. There it stood, empty, in 
 the road before Nancy. Into it Nancy leaped, 
 her hand reaching for the brake. She slipped it 
 and waited. " He's riding down to the bridge, 
 the broken bridge!" she whispered dryly. 
 Would the car never move! It began to roll 
 under gravity; then she felt a tug beneath her 
 and knew that she was on power. 
 
 Down the opposite slope dashed the horse and 
 man, both keenly alive with youth and energy, 
 spinning out the road behind them with desper- 
 ate steadiness. 
 
 The heavy gypsy wagons which had passed 
 that way in the morning had cut deep ruts in 
 the highway. Following in these, the machine 
 lurched from side to side. Nevertheless Nancy 
 stood up, one hand on the steering gear, the 
 other high above her head, waving the red 
 kerchief.
 
 Nancy the Joyous 39 
 
 "Back! Go back!" she shouted, trying to 
 force her voice above the clatter of the car. 
 There was no thought of self now. 
 
 The man on horseback waved back a signal 
 and doubled his speed. With a pricking sense of 
 dizziness, Nancy knew that she could not make 
 him hear could not warn him. He would ride 
 onto the bridge and go down before her eyes. 
 
 Then she saw the way. Amid all the quiver 
 and rattle of the machine, with fear trem- 
 bling in her fingers and chattering her teeth, her 
 soul grew a lake of peace and resolution. She 
 would make the bridge first and he would see 
 her fall. Not even the bravest can look death 
 in the face and not feel a pang of anguish; and 
 Nancy Lynn was not one of the bravest. But 
 with a steady pressure of the lips she answered 
 the chill which ran through her. After all, what 
 what was her life to his! She was only Nancy, 
 with whom no one had ever been able to live. 
 
 She sat down and threw the car into high 
 speed. With a fresh spurt it bounded forward. 
 The race was really on now, with death waiting 
 at the goal as the prize. Aside from its violent 
 pitching in the ruts, the car vibrated in every
 
 40 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 part. It kept on gaining speed terrifically, but 
 every minute was precious. She must make the 
 bridge, she reckoned, at least twenty feet ahead 
 of him. The trees were in front of her; with a 
 single leap they stood alongside. The bushes 
 were a blurred green ribbon. The current of air 
 stifled her and blurred her eyesight. So she 
 dashed down to the bridge that was to " break 
 through like a shavin'." 
 
 The car struck the planks with a leap and 
 skidded, reaching midstream. There was a crash 
 behind. The engines raced madly as the hind 
 wheels hung over the splintered edge. There, for 
 a flash of time the car wavered. Upright in it 
 stood Nancy Lynn, her face glowing with vic- 
 tory, one hand holding a flutter of red lifted high 
 above her head. In the instant during which the 
 car hung down, driven in like a peg between the 
 broken sections of the bridge, Nancy seized the 
 opportunity to throw herself over its side into 
 the stream to escape being drawn under with the 
 wreckage. With a great rending of timbers and 
 splash of water, all went down together. 
 
 The distant hamlet with its rounded treetops 
 pricked through by a pair of church spires,
 
 Nancy the Joyous 41 
 
 looked as if it had been cut out of paper and 
 pasted against a wall. A flock of sparrows, 
 drinking along the river, fluttered up to the 
 bushes with a brief chorus of protests. But soon 
 they dropped back to their drinking and bath- 
 ing, for those drifting timbers, so they decided, 
 would not harm them; neither would that occa- 
 sional gleam of scarlet. 
 
 By the time Mrs. Crubb, panting heavily, 
 reached the foot of the hill, Nancy was on the 
 bank held close in a pair of stalwart arms as 
 though they would never again let her go. Her 
 face was radiant with love. 
 
 " I had to do it," she was answering him. " It 
 was the only way to save you." 
 
 Then she caught sight of Mrs. Crubb and drew 
 herself up lithely beside him. 
 
 " Aunt Crubb," she announced proudly, " this 
 is a friend of mine, Mr. Carter." 
 
 Then at that lady's look of amazement, Nancy 
 gave a quick, soft laugh. 
 
 " Oh, yes; and I'm Nancy Lynn." 
 
 "You are!" gasped Mrs. Crubb. "Then 
 you're a fool. He isn't worth it. No man living 
 is."
 
 42 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 But however brusque her tongue, her gray 
 eyes gleamed with pride. She turned with 
 delighted fierceness on the boy who stood gap- 
 ing at her side. 
 
 " It's worth the price of the car to know that 
 one of my blood had it in her. Do you hear? 
 You go home and tell your master that."
 
 HERE is a type of Ameri- 
 can business man who 
 works himself up to suc- 
 cess because he has the 
 virtues of aggressiveness 
 and fineness of feeling. 
 He is also nervous, sensi- 
 tive, egotistic and na- 
 tional. When one of 
 these men is at the head of a business system, his 
 personality permeates down through its parts, 
 making it all aggressive and high-strung. 
 
 There is still another type of eminently suc- 
 cessful man who is both American and universal. 
 His fundamental qualities are health, intelli- 
 gence, honesty and industry. To these are added 
 the virtues of imagination, courage, sense of jus- 
 tice, the desire to serve his times and the ability 
 to deduct judgment from experience. It is a 
 list of high qualities and men of the type are 
 rare. The combination, when it occurs, is gener- 
 ally found in men of middle years. This is 
 
 43
 
 44 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 because men of this kind make a late meta- 
 morphosis from their chrysalis state of earnest, 
 thorough, intelligent young fellows with high 
 personal ideals. 
 
 The cousin whom Nancy Lynn had dubbed 
 the Crusty Old Person, being versed in men and 
 affairs, believed with deep-seated satisfaction 
 that he discovered promise of such things in John 
 Carter. As yet Carter was only the earnest, 
 thorough, intelligent young fellow with high 
 ideals. His friendships were mostly with older 
 men. If he had had less foundation on which to 
 build, John Carter would have been a plodder. 
 As it was, he was what is called solid; a quality 
 that the world admires yet somehow bewails in a 
 young man. 
 
 Some ten years or so ago America discovered 
 the weakness of her consular system, especially 
 in the Far East. To remedy this she established 
 in Peking what might be called a consular col- 
 lege. Picked men go there, receive instruction 
 in diplomacy and are sent to various consular 
 posts of the East. John Carter selected this as 
 his field of endeavor and in his thorough way 
 planned a university and graduate course to that
 
 Nancy the Joyous 45 
 
 end. Then, instead of going on through the con- 
 sular instruction at Peking, which is under the 
 Civil Service, he was offered an under-secretary- 
 ship in the Peking legation, which comes by 
 appointment. When he concluded to adopt this 
 change of plans, he selected Chatterton as a quiet, 
 uninterrupting corner of the earth in which to 
 work out certain statistics of the American mar- 
 ket which he had been asked to tabulate in order 
 to bring with him recent, definite information. 
 In Chatterton fate lay in wait for him in the 
 guise of Nancy Lynn. He maintained a high 
 level of ideals as to the attitude of men towards 
 women; but after he met Nancy Lynn these 
 generalizations went to the four winds of 
 heaven. When he thought of Nancy Lynn he 
 thought of just Nancy Lynn. He was desper- 
 ately in love. There are innumerable ways of 
 being in love; probably just as many as there are 
 different kinds of girls. In his case it was as 
 though the well of life, which had always been 
 monotonously thirst-quenching, had suddenly 
 pumped up a single glass of sparkling cham- 
 pagne. He found Nancy confusing but alto- 
 gether adorable.
 
 46 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 He did not suspect her of being the imme- 
 diate cause of the variety of trivial circumstances 
 that had arisen to prevent his seeing her during 
 the two days that had passed since the incident 
 at the bridge. When he lamented them over the 
 telephone, so did Nancy. The thought of her 
 wild down-hill ride to save him stirred him to the 
 depths, yet that was now two days back and he 
 had not succeeded in seeing her alone. 
 
 At last fate favored him. But hungry as he 
 was for the blue of her eyes and the touch of her 
 lips, as he walked to her through the dusk along 
 the village streets, he was inwardly repeating, 
 " Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay 
 down his life " 
 
 The door of the house stood open to the sum- 
 mer night. Nancy Lynn was moving restlessly 
 about the mahogany and haircloth parlor when 
 she caught the sound of Carter's quick, eager 
 step. 
 
 " Come in," she called blithely. 
 
 The next minute his arms were about her and 
 his lips bent to hers. But there's many a slip 
 'twixt the cup and the lip, John Carter! Quick 
 as a flash, Nancy, with her two palms laid against
 
 Nancy the Joyous 47 
 
 his chest, had pushed herself away from him and 
 had tilted up her face mockingly. 
 
 " Good evening, Mr. Carter," she remarked 
 leisurely in a delicious imitation of Mrs. Crubb's 
 heavy voice. 
 
 The husky tones, coming from Nancy's fresh 
 lips, were ludicrous. He laughed outright in 
 sheer surprise. She laughed, too; and slipped 
 from him around the corner of the claw-legged 
 mahogany table. When he started to follow, 
 she reached out her hand to him across it. 
 
 " Good evening, Mr. Carter," she repeated 
 with bewitching drollery. Only, somehow, it 
 was pathetic to find Nancy brought to mere 
 repetitions. Suddenly she bent and laid her 
 cheek on the back of her hand as it rested in his. 
 Her eyelashes brushed his wrist. But the next 
 minute she was ornamentally entertaining him 
 with a rollicking account of the call she had that 
 day paid Mrs. Crubb. 
 
 ' You certainly won her. She told me she had 
 no idea there were such quite presentable country 
 fellows in this back section of the state." 
 
 Once more they laughed together. 
 
 Nancy explained how she had taken the train
 
 48 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 to the station nearest Fair View, where Mrs. 
 Crubb was summering, and had there hired a 
 conveyance to drive her over. 
 
 " It was costly," she conceded in a lavish tone, 
 " but it had to be done. For my mother's sake I 
 had to show her that I understood the correct 
 social courtesies. I sent up my card and she 
 hurried right down. I think she was not yet con- 
 vinced that I was not really a gypsy. She was 
 afraid she might find me downstairs selling laces 
 to her friends." 
 
 Here Nancy's manner changed. 
 
 " But I did manage to please her," she 
 faltered. 
 
 She drew a piece of typewritten paper from 
 under a book and stood rolling it between the 
 table and the palm of her hand. 
 
 " I promised to go to the city and live with 
 her." 
 
 " Do you think that is wise, dear," he objected. 
 " She impresses me as a most difficult person to 
 live with." 
 
 Without replying in words, Nancy raised to 
 him a flushed face on which was written a set 
 determination.
 
 Nancy the Joyous 49 
 
 "Of course, a winter in New York would be a 
 big experience," he conceded, " but I'm afraid it 
 would end in trouble for you. I'd rather think 
 of you, those years that I am away from you, as 
 waiting safe and happy up here among these 
 good village people." 
 
 Still Nancy's only answer was the established 
 purpose suggested by her whole lithe figure. 
 Carter was vaguely troubled by it. 
 
 " I'm only thinking of your happiness, my 
 dear. You know your mother could not get along 
 with her." 
 
 " Yes, but Aunt Crubb may have mellowed 
 since then." 
 
 "Mellowed!" 
 
 They looked into each other's eyes and burst 
 out laughing together. 
 
 " Oh, she might be worse," insisted Nancy, still 
 laughing. 
 
 " Yes. She might carry a bayonet." 
 
 Then Carter waved the whole matter aside. 
 There came into his voice the note of strength 
 and tenderness that a big, clean man saves for the 
 woman he loves. 
 
 " We have plenty of time to decide that. I
 
 50 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 want to talk about that day at the bridge. When 
 I think of it " 
 
 " No," interrupted Nancy steadily, " we 
 haven't plenty of time. I'm to leave day after 
 to-morrow." 
 
 "Day after to-morrow! But I don't go for 
 six weeks yet ! " 
 
 Now that Nancy had made her opportunity, 
 she persevered relentlessly. Womanlike, she 
 began far off on the outer edge of the situation. 
 
 " I'm sure I don't know why she wants me. 
 There does not seem to be a thing about me that 
 suits her. She said my dress was a fright but 
 that she'd order me some new ones ; and my hair 
 has no style, but she will have her maid do it." 
 
 Nancy tried to smile at these sallies but the 
 muscles of her face were stiff. 
 
 " She says that she has not a doubt in the 
 world that she can marry me to a million." 
 
 " But you are going to marry me! " 
 
 " No. No, I'm not. I've changed my mind. 
 Aunt Crubb says I don't know the world. She 
 says that every girl ought to see something of the 
 world before she is in a position to decide." 
 
 This was so unlike Nancy that try hard as
 
 Nancy the Joyous 51 
 
 she might to speak naturally, she said the words 
 in a tinkling, ineffectual tone that failed to con- 
 vince Carter. He was perplexed and stern. 
 Both of Nancy's palms were braced on the table 
 now to steady herself. 
 
 " Aunt Crubb promised to let me wear some 
 of her diamonds," she persisted. 
 
 Carter's voice was low, controlled and very 
 patient. 
 
 " Nancy, I know you too well. You can't 
 make me believe it of you. Why, my dear, it 
 would be nothing more nor less than selling your- 
 self." 
 
 She gulped and nodded her head. 
 
 " Yes, I know it." 
 
 "Nancy!" 
 
 She began again rolling the typewritten paper 
 under her ringers. 
 
 " I asked her if I could wear silk stockings and 
 she said yes. Just think, I've never owned " 
 
 " This is no time for levity," he said sternly. 
 
 " No," she agreed. She was so anxious to 
 agree with him in all that she could. 
 
 " Put that paper away," he commanded. 
 
 She slipped it under a book.
 
 52 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 " Thank you." Once more his voice was low, 
 controlled and patient. " Now listen. I want 
 you to follow me." 
 
 There was a magnetism in his quiet intensity 
 which held her eyes fixed on his. 
 
 " If you think, Nancy, that you could do such 
 a thing, I understand you better than you under- 
 stand yourself. It is just a sudden, present 
 temptation. Some day, when you are your bet- 
 ter self again " 
 
 " I haven't any better self," she answered with 
 a little wry smile. 
 
 His voice dropped a note lower. 
 
 ' Then I have more faith in you than you have 
 in yourself. You think you mean this, but you 
 don't." 
 
 ' Yes, I do mean it. I've promised not to 
 marry you." 
 
 " Promised! " he exclaimed. 
 
 Nancy nodded her head. 
 
 " I promised I'd have nothing more to do with 
 
 you." 
 
 Carter's words came quicker. His next remark 
 was merely the leader for a line of argument. 
 ' You had given me your promise. You know
 
 Nancy the Joyous 53 
 
 you had no right to make another while that 
 holds." 
 
 It was an excellent line of argument; but 
 in a way thoroughly characteristic of her, 
 Nancy's answer held a surprise which scattered 
 it to the winds. An expression of conviction 
 quivered across her face. Her eyes looked into 
 his with absolute honesty in their purple depths. 
 
 " That's so. I never thought of that," she 
 said simply. 
 
 His voice rose in pitch. The flesh of his face 
 turned gray. 
 
 " You never thought of it ! You mean that 
 you made such a promise without even thinking 
 that you were breaking your word to me? " 
 
 " Yes," she answered with a truthfulness that 
 could not be doubted. " I never once thought of 
 it. If I had, of course I wouldn't have done it 
 that way." 
 
 " May I ask what you were thinking of? " he 
 inquired with ironical courtesy. 
 
 Nancy shuddered. She drew out the paper 
 again for the support the sight of it gave her. 
 Then, remembering that her fumbling had dis- 
 pleased him, she slipped it back.
 
 54 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 " I was just thinking about what I was buy- 
 ing y about what I was buying." 
 
 " And planning how to get me off your hands, 
 I suppose." 
 
 " No," she said truthfully, " I didn't think 
 about that either. I didn't think about that until 
 later. It's been harder than I thought it would 
 be." 
 
 Carter softened. It would be difficult for a 
 man's heart not to soften toward her with that 
 beautiful, honest, steadfast face before him. 
 
 "Harder than you thought to give me up? 
 That's because down in your heart " 
 
 " No, that isn't what I mean. I mean that it 
 was harder to find a way to " 
 
 ' Well, you have found one," he answered, 
 recoiling with a bitter laugh. 
 
 They both waited. The clock on the shelf 
 ticked loudly. 
 
 " So this is what love means to you," he began 
 again scornfully. 
 
 She flushed but made no answer. 
 
 " And you are the girl I believed Shall I 
 tell you what I was thinking about you as I came 
 here to-night? I was saying to myself, ' Greater
 
 Nancy the Joyous 55 
 
 love hath no man ' Oh! " he ended contemptu- 
 ously. 
 
 Nancy swayed towards him and whispered, 
 " ' than this, that he lay down his life ' 
 She spread her arms wide in a sudden appeal. 
 " That's so. Greater love hath no man." She 
 caught hold of the back of a chair and gave a 
 heart-breaking laugh. 
 
 " What do you know about it? " he said bit- 
 terly. 
 
 Nancy made no reply, pressing her lips 
 together to keep them silent. She rubbed the 
 back of her hand across her eyes as one with a 
 headache does. When she looked again he was 
 standing with his hand on the doorknob. At this, 
 the purpose she had reared seemed all to crumble 
 and fall within her. Her blue eyes grew wide 
 with anguish. 
 
 " Nancy, you don't mean this. Think once 
 more." 
 
 " Yes, I mean it." 
 
 The knob turned in his hand with a click. She 
 reached out her hands impulsively. 
 
 " Say good-bye to me," sJie begged. 
 
 A red surge of anger swept across his face.
 
 56 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 " Good-bye. A man's lucky to be rid of you." 
 " Oh, don't! Don't say that! " she cried out 
 piteously. 
 But the door had closed between them.
 
 RS. AMELIA CRUBB 
 
 returned from a summer 
 in the country, bringing 
 Nancy Lynn with her. 
 
 " I can't bear to get 
 old," she announced in 
 her hard, dry voice at the 
 reception given to intro- 
 duce her pretty relative, 
 " so I brought the girl back with me for the sake 
 of having the young set come to the house. They 
 wouldn't do it to see an old woman like me. My 
 elderly banter is too sage for them. Young fun 
 is so frothy," she ended enviously. 
 
 This remark was audible to Nancy, standing 
 on the opposite side of the drawing room with a 
 group of stalwart young men gathered about 
 her. 
 
 " So you see," she commented amusedly, " I'm 
 merely a voice crying in the wilderness. You're 
 the wilderness." 
 
 To her friend, the Bishop, Mrs. Crubb dilated 
 
 57
 
 58 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 on the subject of her newly acquired guardian- 
 ship even more intimately. 
 
 " I had practically forgotten there was such 
 a child," she remarked in the running tone 
 of a showman. " She is my niece's daughter. 
 Named after her, Annie Laird Lynn. You 
 remember Annie? Why, yes, of course; you 
 were around the summer she spent with me at 
 the coast." 
 
 Mrs. Crubb now focused on the subject remi- 
 niscently. 
 
 " It would have been a good deal better for 
 Annie Laird if she had taken you," she said in 
 her harsh way. " I told her so at the time. I 
 used to say, ' Hubert may be nothing but a 
 young minister but he isn't over-sanctified and 
 he is the kind to make good in even a poor busi- 
 ness.' But after she had once set her heart on 
 Herbert Lynn there was no talking her out of it. 
 A tramp's life he led her, too; always moving 
 on from place to place with the wolf at their heels. 
 I remember telling him once, ' If you haven't any 
 consideration for Annie, do think of the wolf. 
 It's getting hard on him.' I will say though," 
 she added, with a touch of generosity for the
 
 Nancy the Joyous 59 
 
 dead, " that to the end they both kept up the 
 ' loaf of bread, the jug of wine and thou beside 
 me ' attitude." 
 
 The Bishop's thoughts trailed backward with 
 distaste over solitary years of ceremonious din- 
 ners served him by the wives of church officials. 
 Slightly as his face contracted at this vision of 
 the loaf, the wine and the voice singing on the 
 wilderness' edge, Mrs. Crubb detected it. 
 
 " Oh, nobody minds what I say," she com- 
 mented. " But to come back to Nancy," she 
 continued briskly. She was a woman much more 
 interested in the present than in the past. " I 
 found her living with some of her father's people 
 in a village near our hotel. There was only one 
 eligible man in the place so far as I could learn. 
 I told her, ' For goodness sakes, don't think you 
 are in love with him. Wait until you see some 
 of the rich young men I've picked out for you.' ' 
 
 She folded her hands and smiled complacently 
 over the vision of what she intended to do for 
 her new protegee. Mrs. Crubb's complacency 
 was the kind that argued ill for any difference 
 of opinion on the part of her niece. At this par- 
 ticular moment, however, that young lady's ideas
 
 60 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 appeared to be entirely in harmony with her 
 aunt's. 
 
 The Bishop's eyes sorted over Nancy's beauty, 
 making comparisons. Even where he noted dif- 
 ferences from the Annie of other days, he con- 
 ceded with a glow not unlike the pride of father- 
 hood that the living girl was rarely beautiful. 
 
 Mrs. Crubb followed the Bishop's gaze across 
 the room. 
 
 " Reminds one of her mother, doesn't she? 
 The same zest for happiness, the same original- 
 ity, and such an appreciation of the flesh-pots 
 of Egypt. Half rations in the wilderness has 
 worked her up an appetite." 
 
 She threw up her heavy chin with a laugh. 
 
 " Her first real tailor-made suit was sent up 
 this morning. When she saw herself in it in the 
 mirror she cried, ' Oh, Aunt, I didn't expect any- 
 thing to fit like this till I got to Heaven and 
 wore feathers ! ' 
 
 Mrs. Crubb gave another short laugh. 
 
 ' You can't blame the young folks for clutch- 
 ing at the good things of life," she chuckled 
 condoningly. " What do they care about the 
 kind of sentiment folks talked in my generation
 
 Nancy the Joyous 61 
 
 and that was still popular in yours. Nowadays 
 it's success that counts. It is all they hear about. 
 Take Nancy, now. With her good looks she'll 
 cut a path straight through to marrying a mil- 
 lion. And I stand ready to back her in it." 
 
 The Bishop was shocked by this open avowal 
 of worldliness. He felt an aversion for this old 
 woman who was more modern than the youngest 
 person in her set. 
 
 ' You do the girl an injustice; you misinter- 
 pret her nature." 
 
 " And I'm not a fit old person to be entrusted 
 with the keeping of the young," Mrs. Crubb 
 chuckled. 
 
 ' This is merely a temporary phase with her, 
 a first feeling of largess," he insisted. " She is 
 her mother's daughter." 
 
 " Also, she is my great-niece." 
 
 The Bishop merely shrugged his shoulders at 
 this indisputable fact. 
 
 " And her father, if ineffective, was still a 
 remarkably fine man," he argued. 
 
 Instantly Mrs. Crubb changed into quite 
 another woman and there leaped between them 
 a feeling of old comradeship which kept them
 
 62 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 friends in spite of what at times amounted almost 
 to dislike. 
 
 ' You certainly have grown in grace, 
 Hubert," she said. 
 
 The man would rather not have put their 
 friendship to the test of words. Nevertheless he 
 replied, 
 
 " The hand of the Lord is full of compensa- 
 tions." 
 
 ; 'What was it in your case? A bishopric?" 
 slipping back into her other self. 
 
 He paused before he answered. " Well, for 
 one thing, here's Nancy."
 
 S a voice crying in the 
 wilderness, Nancy Lynn 
 succeeded even beyond the 
 exactions of her great- 
 aunt. 
 
 " I never knew a 
 girl so popular," she 
 boasted. "And she doesn't 
 seem to try, either." 
 For nearly two years now that is, ever 
 since Nancy came to live at her great-aunt's 
 the Bishop had dropped in almost daily. 
 Out of these two people Nancy made for her- 
 self a kind of family circle. She insisted, for 
 instance, on the Bishop's taking a personal 
 interest in her new gowns and her social 
 triumphs; and he dotingly allowed himself to 
 be dragged by her along the paths of 
 her enthusiasms. 
 
 " She is a lovable girl," he remarked during 
 a visit when Nancy chanced to be absent. He 
 missed her lyric presence in the house and was 
 
 63
 
 64 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 trying to fill the void he felt by talking of her. 
 
 " She is a girl who wears her faults on the 
 outside, exactly as though they were pieces of 
 jewelry," answered Mrs. Crubb, with fine 
 appreciation of faults. 
 
 ;< That has nothing to do with it. She is just 
 lovable." 
 
 "Oh, you men!" expostulated Mrs. Crubb. 
 " See here, Hubert," she explained philosophic- 
 ally, " if a girl chooses her faults with discre- 
 tion it amounts to the same thing." 
 
 ' What is this I hear lately about Peyton 
 Williams?" he questioned sternly. 
 
 " Her latest," announced Mrs. Crubb with a 
 triumphant wave of her hands. 
 
 The Bishop had a vision of a bullet-headed 
 American business man, wealthy beyond all 
 reason. 
 
 ' You don't mean Nancy considers him 
 seriously! " 
 
 " I don't know anything about her plans. 
 That is why I respect the girl. But I'm back- 
 ing him." 
 
 " She wouldn't think of marrying him. He is 
 too old for her; and there is nothing in him to
 
 Nancy the Joyous 65 
 
 answer the call of her spirit or call to hers." 
 
 The poetry of this was beyond Mrs. Crubb. 
 
 " I should not have said that he had it in him 
 to fall in love, either," she said in a tone of 
 agreeing. " But it seems he could not resist the 
 sight of Nancy talking to the younger men. It 
 will be a great triumph for her." 
 
 " I am going to talk to her about it," said the 
 Bishop severely. 
 
 " So am I," chuckled Mrs. Crubb. 
 
 But the Bishop never had an opportunity for 
 his fatherly counsel, for only a week later whilet 
 off on a diocesan visit, he read in his home paper 
 the notice: 
 
 Mrs. Amelia Crubb, at a reception held this after- 
 noon, announced the engagement of her great-niece, 
 Miss Annie Laird Lynn, to Mr. Peyton Weston 
 Williams of this city. 
 
 The newspaper dropped from the Bishop's 
 hands. He removed his nose-glasses with delib- 
 eration and with deliberation snapped them into 
 their case. Then he sat looking off stupidly, 
 while a wave of protest rose within him. Fi- 
 nally, since he realized that he was helpless
 
 66 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 against such a combination as Mrs. Crubb and 
 Nancy, manlike he determined once for all to 
 wash his hands of both ladies. But it is not 
 such an easy matter, he found, for one to whom 
 she had shown favor to flick Nancy Lynn off the 
 surface of his thoughts. 
 
 On his return it hurt him to discover her 
 apparently without emotion in regard to her 
 engagement. The matrons of her aunt's set said 
 she was gaining poise. Everyone remarked on 
 the wonderful physical endurance with which she 
 was meeting a continued round of ante-nuptial 
 functions. Later, the Bishop, practiced ana- 
 lyzer of souls, detected a slight pressure of her 
 lips when she was silent and by this he knew that 
 she was keeping her mind concentrated on cer- 
 tain financial facts of her engagement. Her 
 fiance she favored with a sweeping, impersonal 
 graciousness. 
 
 No one but Nancy noticed that the Bishop 
 absented himself almost entirely during this sea- 
 son of complimentary functions; but even she 
 did not realize how closely he was following them 
 from a distance. " The pageantry of the sacri- 
 fice," he called them.
 
 Nancy the Joyous 67 
 
 It was like an Indian summer in the life of 
 Mrs. Amelia Crubb. She was radiant and viva- 
 cious concerning all this feting. Nancy always 
 referred to the functions as though they were 
 given in honor of her aunt. 
 
 ' They give Aunt Crubb a luncheon and a 
 reception this afternoon and a dinner-dance to- 
 night," she explained to the Bishop during a 
 short, unsatisfactory call. 
 
 The Bishop paid little heed to this remark. He 
 was noticing that her face had grown thinner. 
 
 ' Yes, but being a society girl is hard work," 
 she explained to him. " You see, the upper circle 
 depends for its very existence on the number of 
 social functions it gives. We would not dare 
 stop, because if we did we would just cease to 
 be; we would become the middle class again." 
 
 A fine scorn ran through her words. 
 
 " At first I enjoyed sitting in the ' horseshoe ' 
 at the opera so much, but I soon discovered that 
 to most of Aunt Crubb's set the music is a bore. 
 And then I learned why we go to the opera. If 
 we just maintained ourselves in complete and 
 princely seclusion, the lower classes might forget 
 that we were excluding them. Awful thought!
 
 68 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 So we go and give them a demonstration of the 
 fact to keep it before them." 
 
 The natural democracy of the girl was rebel- 
 ling after two years of being stifled and con- 
 cealed. Save the Bishop, there was no one in 
 her present life before whom she dared to be her 
 full self. 
 
 She brushed both hands across her eyes as 
 though to clear their vision and then let them 
 drop wearily into her lap. 
 
 " But the old society veterans and the people 
 in the younger set that were bred for this kind 
 of life have developed a sixth sense that helps 
 them, a sense of exhibition. I haven't it yet ; but 
 by the time Aunt Crubb has finished giving her 
 wedding I think it will have sprouted." 
 
 Some days later the Bishop sat alone in the 
 library of his big, silent house. He had a fire 
 burning on the hearth, for he was forced to 
 acknowledge that of late he had grown to find 
 comfort in palliating physical ease. He could 
 not have told you the details of her entrance 
 perhaps that was because for an hour back he 
 had been thinking of her but suddenly he 
 realized that on the hearthrug before him stood
 
 Nancy the Joyous 69 
 
 Nancy Lynn. Her coat lay over the arm of a 
 chair as though tossed there with some vigor, and 
 she was resolutely drawing off her long gloves. 
 
 " I have come for some of the sustaining grace 
 you preach about," she greeted him. 
 
 ; ' What is the trouble? " he questioned. 
 
 " Breaking my engagement." 
 
 "Thank God!" 
 
 Half an hour later she sat before him in a 
 straight-backed chair. 
 
 " I had to come," she was saying. " I couldn't 
 seem to think it out around Aunt Crubb." 
 
 She outlined a pattern in the hearthrug with 
 her foot. 
 
 " It happened yesterday," she explained 
 slowly, as though confidences were difficult for 
 her. " I ran upstairs and when I opened the door 
 of my sitting room, there, spread out over a chair 
 in all its trailing white glory, lay my wedding 
 dress. You see, I came on it suddenly! I think 
 I must have fainted, because the next thing I 
 knew I was down on the hearthrug crying rust 
 spots all over the brasses." 
 
 She glanced up bravely. Then, without an 
 instant's warning, her eyes welled full of tears.
 
 70 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 The Bishop's glance dropped. It was as though 
 that elusive spirit in Nancy that called laughingly 
 to men from a distance had crept close to him for 
 sympathy. 
 
 " There's another man," she whispered. 
 
 She traced with the toe of her shoe upon the 
 rug. When she looked into his face again, that 
 something in Nancy had fled once more into its 
 solitude behind the hills. But it left this middle- 
 aged man humbled by the vision she had granted 
 him of her essential womanhood. 
 
 The present Nancy Lynn sat smiling at him 
 with whimsical practicality. 
 
 rf What am I going to do? " she asked.
 
 RS. AMELIA CRUBB 
 
 scolded the Bishop over 
 the telephone as though 
 he had been a schoolboy. 
 " I hold you respon- 
 sible in this business. 
 You encouraged her in 
 it." 
 
 " I told her if she had 
 any misgivings by all means to withdraw." 
 
 " Well, then, you had no business to inter- 
 fere. She is my niece." 
 
 " She is more than that to me," he answered 
 
 gently. " To me she is like a daughter." 
 
 " Humph! " said Mrs. Crubb. 
 
 Life is not to blame that it grows commonplace 
 
 to us. We are insentient to so many of its joys. 
 
 For instance, the Bishop thought that he was 
 
 anxious. In reality he was tasting a sweetness 
 
 like rare wine in the way Nancy placed herself in 
 
 his hands, relying on his judgment. It was not 
 
 that his pulses quickened, as would a young 
 
 71
 
 72 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 man's. Rather, the cooling blood in his middle- 
 aged veins warmed again. He felt, as near as a 
 childless man could feel, as though Nancy were 
 of that blood. As with a real father, the difficul- 
 ties of churches and ministers were for the time 
 being overtopped by her perplexities, which he 
 carried around uppermost in his thoughts. 
 
 He realized that her present position in her 
 aunt's house was a trying one. 
 
 " I'm like a sheep at a shooting match," she 
 exclaimed. 
 
 " It is no place for you at least not at pres- 
 ent. I shall have to send you away," he an- 
 swered thoughtfully. 
 
 During the first days of Nancy's broken en- 
 gagement a kind-faced, gray-eyed woman wear- 
 ing out-of-date clothes passed through the city 
 and stopped over a couple of hours, as was her 
 custom, to call on the Bishop. He greeted her 
 cordially. 
 
 " I am so glad just now to have a woman to 
 confer with, Miss Schuyler," he said, and 
 explained to her the situation. 
 
 " Her mother was an unusually fine woman. 
 In fact, I never knew a finer woman. And the
 
 Nancy the Joyous 73 
 
 daughter is like her, only she has never had a 
 chance to expand naturally. Her childhood was 
 spent among narrow-minded people who re- 
 strained her, and these past two years she has 
 been with Mrs. Amelia Crubb. You know Mrs. 
 Amelia Crubb? What Nancy needs now, more 
 than anything else, is the opportunity to find her 
 real self." 
 
 At the end of half an hour he concluded 
 thoughtfully, " Yes. To spend the next three 
 months with you would be the best possible 
 thing for her." 
 
 So they arranged it between them and at his 
 bidding Nancy went. 
 
 Hers was a vivid young personality that 
 left behind it a sense of emptiness when she 
 departed. This had been true even as a small 
 child. By the death of her parents she had been 
 left in a flock of Puritan souls, drab of wing. 
 Her imagination, which made them preach to 
 her luridly concerning the Prince of Liars, and 
 her childish bursts of temper induced by their 
 constant curbing of her temperament, made the 
 succession of severe spinsters and elderly matrons 
 who undertook her upbringing, despair and shift
 
 74 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 her on. But each of them had felt a void when 
 she had gone. 
 
 The Bishop missed her he would not have 
 believed how much he missed her. His house 
 seemed empty ; his work seemed empty ; his heart 
 seemed empty. As he sat in his library with his 
 books unread about him, he realized that the 
 3 r ears were creeping on him. He needed her 
 lyric youth. 
 
 The Committee on Diocesan Finances was 
 seated one evening about the Bishop's library, 
 smoking and discussing division of funds. The 
 head of the diocese was sunk deep in his chair, 
 his loneliness prevailing even in the midst of this 
 thick cigar smoke and interchange of men's talk. 
 Into that loneliness had come a tinge of appre- 
 hension. Could it be that his judgment had mis- 
 carried in the new, strange life he had forced 
 upon Nancy? As chilly and damp we wait 
 beside a slow hearth for the fire to blaze up and 
 warm us, so he waited for some reassuring mes- 
 sage from her. 
 
 More than one member of the committee 
 noticed his preoccupation. " Work is beginning 
 to tell on him," they concluded.
 
 Nancy the Joyous 75 
 
 When the maid entered with a tray of mail, 
 one letter addressed to him in a crisp, round 
 hand caused him to brighten visibly. An un- 
 wonted flush came into his cheeks. With fingers 
 trembling with anticipation and apprehension 
 he slit open the envelope. It was a let- 
 ter from companion-loving, laughter-seeking 
 Nancy Lynn on her way to a lonely mis- 
 sionary station in the heart of the Tennessee 
 mountains. 
 
 He drew out the sheets. 
 
 " Gentlemen, excuse me."
 
 Dear Bishop, 
 
 The clock has struck twelve. With the fid- 
 dlers three playing and the prince's ball at its 
 height, I am changed back, like another Cinder- 
 ella, and flee out into the darkness. You must 
 have faith in your judgment, my fairy god- 
 father, or you would not work such a change 
 and send a girl like me off into an isolated 
 mountain settlement. I have no courage of my 
 own that it is wise; I am just trusting in yours. 
 
 Only I have been passed on so often that I 
 make no protest. So here at a bend of the road 
 I stop to wave good-bye and play you a gay 
 little snatch of tune on my pipes, like any other 
 true gypsy. 
 
 This has been a day of creaking up into the 
 mountains on the stray raveling of a branch 
 
 76
 
 Nancy the Joyous 77 
 
 railroad. Towards dusk it ran its nose into a 
 cliff and stopped. I climbed down and found 
 myself in an upland hamlet which clings to the 
 side of the mountain. To-morrow I take horses. 
 To-night I am staying at the village inn, a 
 decrepit old hostelry with grooves worn in the 
 tread of the stairs. When I mounted them and 
 closed my door behind me, there was a clammy 
 mustiness and an uncanny sense of presence in 
 the room as though I had just frightened away 
 a ghost. I drew a chair up in front of the table 
 and sat down to wait until bedtime. Too much 
 silence is over-stimulating; it is as bad as cham- 
 pagne. It was comforting, then, through the 
 fog of my thoughts to hear the voice of my 
 good angel speaking beside me. You know she 
 is the only person I have in all the world who 
 has the right to scold me. That makes me fond 
 of her. 
 
 " Nancy," she began, " you've taken the trail 
 again." 
 
 " And you have, too," I told her. " People 
 who wear glass slippers mustn't kick." 
 
 " But it was not my choice," she protested. 
 
 And for a good angel she did look so worn
 
 78 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 and so bedraggled that I really had to laugh. 
 
 " It is hard on you," I acknowledged. 
 
 " It is telling on my nerves," she complained, 
 being a woman. " Consider now : Only two 
 years ago you had never heard grand opera nor 
 worn silk stockings, nor met a divorced person, 
 nor eaten pate de foie gras. Just as you get all 
 the advantages of higher society and I think I 
 can settle down for a bit of a rest, away you 
 start again across the world." 
 
 " I couldn't help it," I pleaded. " When the 
 missionary woman with the kind eyes asked me 
 to visit her, and the Bishop told me to go, I 
 had to. Even a good angel," I reminded her 
 severely, " has to mind a bishop. 
 
 " Do you remember," I asked her, " how he 
 patted me on the shoulder when he said good- 
 bye at the station, and told me to come back to 
 him such a woman as my mother was ? " 
 
 " Nancy, I believe you're homesick," she said 
 sternly. 
 
 And at that I put my head down on the table 
 and laughed until I cried at the idea of a girl 
 that has been handed on all her life being home- 
 sick.
 
 Nancy the Joyous 79 
 
 " Now tell me," I taunted her, " whom have I 
 to be homesick for? Aunt Crubb? You know, 
 yourself, that she isn't exactly what you hanker 
 for." 
 
 " It's the Bishop," she cried, as though she had 
 made a discovery. 
 
 " Didn't you know that before? " I asked. 
 
 But to drop the nonsense my good friend, 
 I want to be honest with you. Don't deceive 
 yourself in me. It is not courage that is sus- 
 taining me to-night. It is not even the gentle 
 memory of you. Off here alone in this eerie old 
 building I acknowledge that I'm a coward. I 
 had to desert the firing-line or run straight across 
 to the enemy. The enemy in this case is the 
 other man. 
 
 That is a riddle but please don't try to solve 
 it. To guess a riddle is so rustic, like cracking 
 nuts with your teeth. 
 
 Good night. 
 
 Nancy. 
 May 22.
 
 Dear Bishop, 
 
 Here I am in Swaggerty Cove. 
 
 At five forty-five yesterday morning a group 
 of people full of friendly discouragements gath- 
 ered to help me into my vehicle. They were 
 undisguisedly perplexed that I should be going 
 to Swaggerty. But then, so was I. 
 
 Yesterday I accomplished thirty-five miles of 
 mountain road, most of the way clinging desper- 
 ately to the side of the carriage in a vain effort 
 to keep stationary upon some one spot of the 
 seat. Great boulders lay in the middle of the 
 road. Rock ledges shouldered arrogantly into 
 it from the sides. Mountain streams flowed 
 down and absent-mindedly occupied it. The 
 carriage would give a wild jolt and send me 
 
 springing into mid-air. Then, as I came down, 
 
 so
 
 Nancy the Joyous 81 
 
 by some strange gyration the seat would jump 
 forward and slap me soundly on the back. But 
 the worst of all was a biasing skid of the wheels 
 down some ledge, that gave the whole vehicle a 
 side twist which snapped me from the waist 
 upward as you snap the head off a snake. That 
 changed my spine into a funny bone. 
 
 By the time we reached the people with whom 
 Miss Schuyler had arranged for me to pass the 
 night, the sun had begun to drop down in the 
 sky and the first vague thoughts of night filled 
 the air. The great mountain-tops gathered up 
 purple shadows from the edge of the world and 
 wrapping these about their shoulders, crouched 
 down for the night with their heads on their 
 knees. I thought I could almost hear them 
 breathing. 
 
 To-day I mounted " Wings-of-the-Morning " 
 and made Swaggerty Cove. " Wings " is a mule. 
 I named him that because of his mighty spread 
 of ears ; though along towards noon when he dis- 
 closed a fondness for clinging musingly over the 
 edge of precipices, I wished I had christened 
 him " Parachute." 
 
 My dear Bishop, this place to which you have
 
 82 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 exiled me is nothing but a handful. When I 
 come home I'll slip it into my pocket and bring 
 it back to show you. Two long, green, timbered 
 mountain ranges stand side by side like two 
 loaves of bread, with just enough space squeezed 
 down between them for a narrow ribbon of bot- 
 tomland, a slow valley creek and a stretch of vil- 
 lainous mountain road. Scattered along this are 
 a dozen log houses. Behold Swaggerty! Hon- 
 estly, now, do you think that is big enough to 
 satisfy me? Every one of the dozen cabins is 
 exactly like every other one. Suppose some day 
 I should get to hankering for variety. But you 
 have vouched for me and so for your sake I'll 
 try. 
 
 Wings and I found the entire settlement out 
 waiting for us. Miss Schuyler had been called 
 off to the mountain-top to nurse a sick man, but 
 she left word with them to care for me. She 
 must have suggested something about my being 
 tired or homesick, for Swaggerty took me to its 
 arms. One old mountain woman lifted me down 
 bodily out of the saddle and the rest gathered 
 round, addressing to one another, sotto voce, 
 such remarks as, " How snug she be built!'*
 
 Nancy the Joyous 83 
 
 " Law, but ain't her hair pretty! " It wasn't 
 " What piffling little feet! " 
 
 After they had taken my points old Aunt 
 Hiley Ann, the mother in Israel who took me 
 in charge, swept me away from them into her 
 own cabin. 
 
 " Don't you know the young-un is all petered 
 out?" she cried shrilly. 
 
 She seated me before her fireplace in a 
 straight-backed splint chair while she stirred up 
 with her leathern hands an awful dough of corn 
 meal and water and baked it in a bed of ashes. 
 All the time my fascinated eyes watched her, 
 knowing I was doomed to eat it. But worse 
 than that, the sense of homesickness I have been 
 fending off every moment since I took my hand 
 out of yours, was drawing in closer about me. 
 It had me cornered. I couldn't seem to fight it 
 inside those log walls with patch-quilts grinning 
 from the beds and shotguns aiming at me from 
 their pegs. 
 
 Do you know this was to have been the day 
 for Aunt Crubb's bridal dinner? The "walls were 
 to be veiled with smilax and orchids, fragrant as 
 spring and beautiful as the bosom of a sunset.
 
 84 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 The centerpiece was to be a bank of orchids and 
 grapes; and there wasn't to be a thing on the 
 menu you could pronounce. I was to wear a 
 " creation " no, Bishop, that's not Biblical ; 
 it's a dress. I've worn creations for nearly two 
 years now. This one was violet chiffon over 
 pink messaline, designed, so Madame announced, 
 with special reference to my complexion and 
 eyes. Aunt Crubb told the Desirable Party 
 what Madame said and he remembered it. I, 
 myself, have only an impression that she con- 
 sidered me becoming to it. Aunt Crubb was to 
 resign her place to it and it was to sit at the 
 head of the table. As I sat there, watching that 
 awful hoecake brown on top, I could have put 
 my head down on my knees and cried for it. 
 
 What I want to-night is to lean my head 
 against someone and sniffle. The Desirable 
 Party is a good man, friend o' mine; he would 
 have answered beautifully, and so I am almost 
 lonesome for him. I do not dare want you, for 
 you are the one that sent me away. When I 
 think of that it is a challenge and it stiffens my 
 back. Only I distinctly don't want my back stif- 
 fened; I want to cry. But I shan't.
 
 Nancy the Joyous 85 
 
 After I had eaten the hoecake yes, I did 
 - it was time for bed. Miss Schuyler had said 
 that she might have to sit up all night, but that 
 I was to make myself at home in her cabin and 
 she would be back in time for breakfast. So here 
 I am alone. She left word that I wasn't to be 
 afraid. 
 
 When I was a little child and everything was 
 at ebb, father and mother used to talk about 
 some person they called David. Father would 
 put his arms round mother and tell her if he were 
 like David she would not have had to work so 
 hard. Mother would smile and say that David 
 was the best balanced man she knew and that she 
 would put me in his care if they two were taken ; 
 but that it was his dear faults she loved father 
 for. Afterwards, when they were both gone, I 
 honestly believed that David would come for me. 
 That first winter at Jones' Corners I remember 
 threatening my doll to leave her behind if she 
 kept on being saucy to Cousin Eliza. While I 
 brushed and braided my hair to-night it all came 
 back to me; and I wished, just as I used to, that 
 he would sweep in and carry me away. But 
 instead, here is a trifling legacy of his preparing
 
 86 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 to spend the night alone among the moonshiners 
 in a log cabin that has not even a lock on the 
 door. I guess I'll hurry into bed. I'm tired. 
 
 Nancy. 
 May 24.
 
 T WAS the day set for 
 Nancy's wedding. But 
 instead of being in the 
 center of a kind of white 
 satin flurry, with a circle 
 of smiling, tearful friends 
 running at her least 
 request, she was wander- 
 ing aimlessly about a 
 cluster of log houses. She had a feeling of lack 
 of adjustment to Swaggerty Cove and to this 
 particular day. 
 
 Nancy stood in the highway looking towards 
 the mountain-tops as Aunt Hiley Ann came 
 along from the spring carrying a pail of water. 
 Setting the bucket down in the road, she doubled 
 her fingers into her palms and rested her knuck- 
 les on her hips. 
 
 " You wouldn't have anything like this if you 
 was back where you come from," she remarked 
 with a kind of possessive pride in the land- 
 scape. 
 
 87
 
 88 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 As Aunt Hiley Ann reached down again for 
 her pail she added, as though condoning with 
 Nancy for the disadvantages of her former life: 
 
 " But if us were all alike we'd get so tired 
 of living we'd wish the old world'd sink." 
 
 Nancy laughed. 
 
 " Let me carry your pail for you." 
 
 " But I'm heartier'n you be! " 
 
 Then it came to this good old mountain 
 woman that the offer was a mark of respect to 
 her years. Years are no dishonor in Swaggerty 
 Cove. She handed over the bucket and walked 
 along by Nancy's side, her head held proudly as 
 though it had been crowned. 
 
 About this time there jogged down the road 
 a lank mountaineer on muleback, in one arm 
 carefully carrying a large package. He was a 
 messenger come all the way from the railroad, 
 where he had been warned that the box was 
 billed fragile. The man drew rein alongside and 
 handed it down to Nancy. 
 
 " I reckon this be your'n." 
 
 " How did he know me? " Nancy asked Aunt 
 Hiley Ann. 
 
 " Law, child, you ain't like us. YouVe got a
 
 Nancy the Joyous 89 
 
 different kick to your heels when you walk." 
 
 Nancy began tearing off the wrappings, scat- 
 tering them about her in the road. From out 
 them she brought forth a rarely beautiful bride's 
 bouquet of roses encircled by a shower of lilies- 
 of-the-valley and orange blossoms. 
 
 " What be it? " asked Aunt Hiley Ann with 
 awe. 
 
 11 1 should call it a silent reminder." 
 
 Nancy stood looking down at her flowers. A 
 flock of bramble-scratched children had gath- 
 ered and were shoving about her feet for the 
 florist's wrappings, A cow that was wandering 
 at large along the roadway stopped, pushed its 
 nose in under her elbow and nibbled at the 
 streamers. 
 
 " Shoo! " from Aunt Hiley Ann. 
 
 Then a sudden whim, half pain, half humor, 
 filled Nancy. She gathered the bouquet up 
 against her breast and spread mockingly across 
 her face that rapt, far-seeing look of brides. 
 
 " Tum-tum-te-tum," she hummed. " Fall in 
 behind, children." 
 
 Glancing back over her shoulder at them, she 
 caught sight of the cow at the end of the line,
 
 90 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 a bunch of lilies-of-the-valley, all slobbery, hang- 
 ing out each side of her mouth. 
 
 "If only Aunt Crubb could see my wedding 
 procession!" she cried. 
 
 So they marched up to the door and into Miss 
 Schuyler's cabin, the last youngster kicking 
 backward with his heels to drive off the cow. 
 
 "See my wedding bouquet!" cried Nancy 
 handing it over. 
 
 In the center of the room stood Miss Schuyler 
 in one of her plain, straight calico gowns. She 
 held the flowers off from her in order to view 
 them better, smiling softly as one smiles upon an 
 old photograph. 
 
 :< To think that I used to live in the midst 
 of such beautiful things! What's this?" draw- 
 ing out a card embedded in the flowers. " ' Mr. 
 Peyton Weston Williams/ ' 
 
 She drew his wedding bouquet up into her 
 arms and stood with its streamers swaying about 
 her. " I used to know him. He is a very fine 
 man, my dear." 
 
 ' What am I going to do with it? " inquired 
 Nancy. * You can't just throw your wedding 
 bouquet away but " glancing around the plain
 
 Nancy the Joyous 91 
 
 little log room "I could never live in the house 
 with it. It looks so worldly and extravagant." 
 
 " Flura Jeems is to be married this after- 
 noon," Miss Schuyler suggested. " You might 
 take it up to her." 
 
 Nancy nodded assent. 
 
 " Good-bye, friends," she laughed, waving the 
 little children out through the door. *' I'm sorry, 
 but you will have to excuse me. I'm going to a 
 wedding." 
 
 The trail to Flura Jeems' led up from the 
 valley road to a cove on the mountain-side, end- 
 ing at the threshold of a single cabin. The door 
 stood open but Nancy knocked which was a 
 very polite thing to do. The rest of Swaggerty 
 would have walked right in. A stocky man 
 bound about the brows with a strip of dirty 
 cloth, and an apathetic little bride were waiting 
 inside. They had heard about Nancy Lynn and 
 were flattered by her coming. As an inducement 
 to keep her for the wedding they assured her 
 that a real preacher was " to do the j'ining," and 
 not the usual justice of the peace. 
 
 Soon Aunt Reesy Devin, the mother-in-law- 
 to-be, came up the trail to the cabin. Aunt
 
 92 
 
 Reesy was a lank, grizzled old woman with keen 
 blue eyes and an exaggerated spryness of move- 
 ment which is elderly coquetry. Behind her 
 walked the mountaineer bridegroom and a nice, 
 black-garbed, earnest young fellow fresh from 
 the divinity school. Aunt Reesy was too ener- 
 getic for mere greetings. She stepped aside and 
 hurried her followers into the house before her. 
 
 The young divine entered with a swinging 
 stride. " Howdy," he called out cheerily in local 
 parlance. But when inside the low-raftered, 
 dirty little log cabin he discovered a girl, with a 
 pair of wonderful violet eyes, holding a kind of 
 floral monument, he stopped short and blinked 
 hard. Nancy watched him do it. 
 
 " I'm the wedding guest," she explained 
 softly. 
 
 He advanced with his hand extended frankly. 
 
 " And I'm the minister." 
 
 It at once occurred to Nancy that he would 
 have amused her Aunt Crubb, but she liked him. 
 
 " Oh, please let me help you with the marry- 
 ing. I've been making a special study of wed- 
 ding functions." 
 
 He smiled his consent; in fact he smiled sev-
 
 Nancy the Joyous 93 
 
 eral things, including his good fellowship and 
 his admiration. 
 
 The mountaineers, who are wary and silent, 
 watched with interest this offhand way of get- 
 ting acquainted. 
 
 " All right, then," cried Nancy companion- 
 ably; " you take the speaking part and I'll do the 
 stage directing." 
 
 First she gave the bride the flowers to hold. 
 This made Aunt Reesy so envious that Nancy 
 took off her embroidered collar and pinned it 
 around Aunt Reesy's neck. 
 
 " You're the bridesmaid and you're the 
 groomsman," she explained to the elderly pair. 
 
 " What be they? " asked Aunt Reesy. 
 
 Nancy shook her head dubiously. 
 ' What are they? " she asked, turning to the 
 young preacher. 
 
 He was not taking the wedding as seriously 
 as he should, for Nancy's spirit was contagious. 
 
 " The end men," he replied promptly. 
 
 " Exactly," agreed Nancy. " You stand at 
 this end and you stand at that." 
 
 She arranged the four mountaineers, hitching 
 and shoving one another, in a row, the bridal
 
 94 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 couple in the middle. After she had them sta- 
 tioned to her satisfaction, the attending couple 
 leaned forward and gazed into each other's faces, 
 Aunt Reesy palpitating with excitement. 
 
 " Now mayn't I sing the wedding march? " 
 begged Nancy. " Somehow I always felt that 
 the organist is really the man that does the 
 marrying." 
 
 " But this isn't your wedding," he answered, 
 flushing around the ears. 
 
 " It came mighty close to being," she returned. 
 
 Already the young minister hated to deny her 
 anything. 
 
 " I'm afraid we could not keep them in place 
 long enough," he said gently. 
 
 He was right about it. The row of moun- 
 taineers was shuffling restlessly. 
 
 "I'll ride over some other day and hear you 
 sing it," he suggested. 
 
 Then resolutely focusing his attention away 
 from Nancy, he adjusted his ministerial voice. 
 
 But the bridesmaid interrupted him. 
 
 " I reckon, preacher, I be-n't in the right 
 place," she said, slipping round to the other end 
 of the line.
 
 Nancy the Joyous 95 
 
 Nancy lead her authoritatively back and he 
 began once more. Again the bridesmaid took a 
 determined stand by the old man's side. 
 
 " Seems like this be the right place," she 
 stated with a show of argument in her voice. 
 
 Nancy shooed her back into position. 
 
 " Go on," she said to him. " I'll keep her fixed 
 with my eye; but be quick about it." 
 
 A chorus of voices gave the responses, the two 
 lusty old ones leading. In vain they remon- 
 strated. Aunt Reesy Devin was gleeful to the 
 point of frivolity. But when the Reverend Mr. 
 MacDonald was gathering up his hat and his rid- 
 ing whip, her movements grew perceptibly 
 slower. Finally she faced him determinedly. 
 She pointed a lean hand towards the groomsman. 
 
 " See here," she announced, " I don't want no 
 halfway work. I wants to know whether him and 
 me is really married." 
 
 Nancy coughed back a laugh. 
 
 " And that's what I wants to know," she 
 demanded. 
 
 They two left the cabin and followed the trail 
 together down to the point where it was joined 
 by a little threading by-path that ran off along
 
 96 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 the bench of the mountain. He had come by 
 that trail and had tied his saddle horse at the 
 heading of the ways. 
 
 It was just the hour when the bridesmaids and 
 ushers were to have stepped back and Nancy 
 Lynn was to have turned and walked down the 
 aisle with her train and her veil and the man she 
 had married and all his riches dragging like 
 weights on her soul. 
 
 Alec MacDonald held the hand she offered 
 him at parting and said something about mar- 
 riage being the most solemn thing in the world. 
 To his complete astonishment she cried bitterly, 
 " I know it! " and turning, fled from him down 
 the path. And as she ran the awfulness of the 
 thing she had come so near doing beat like wings 
 in her ears. 
 
 "Thank God I didn't," she whispered. 
 " Thank God that at least I have a right to my 
 dreams!"
 
 HE Bishop carried 
 Nancy's next letter 
 around in his pocket 
 until the envelope grew 
 frayed. When he was 
 alone he would read it, 
 smiling to himself and 
 saying, " Well, well, 
 well." Sometimes he 
 added, " Her mother might have written that let- 
 ter." Sometimes, " All that about her caring for 
 someone is just a notion of hers. She is virtually 
 nothing but a little girl; this letter shows that. 
 All she needs is a chance to expand." And then 
 he would reread: 
 
 J. 
 
 My dear Bishop, 
 
 Do you remember how it felt to be young and 
 happy? I wake in the morning carrying a joy with 
 me but of my dreams and I go to sleep with it at night. 
 I wander in and out of the houses singing love-songs, 
 which is scandalous in a land wholly given up to hymn- 
 tunes. And everywhere, everywhere, opposite me on 
 
 97
 
 98 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 the other side of the hearthstones, out in the field-rows 
 where the men and women work, I seem to catch the hint 
 of a face and sometimes I hear a voice. 
 
 This handful of log houses, instead of being monot- 
 onous, is as droll and varied as a child's story. Think 
 of a land where a woman who wants a new broom goes 
 out into the woods, fells a sapling and splits up an end 
 of it into a brush; or a man who needs shoes like as 
 not sits down before his hearth and makes them himself. 
 I feel convinced that in the days when Mercury wan- 
 dered the earth in disguise among the little old Roman 
 settlements, the sandals he wore were of his own making. 
 That would be part of his fun in pretending he was 
 human. 
 
 Don't worry about me. The entire settlement is tak- 
 ing care of my mortal frame and the young minister 
 is in charge of my soul. He has been over, thirty miles 
 on horseback, three times since I wrote you last. My 
 chances of Heaven look bright. 
 
 He says that gladness like mine is religion. I tell 
 him it is no such thing; that it is fixing your eyes 
 obstinately on love and stirring up your relations. He 
 does not understand, the way you do, that when a girl 
 gives you a peek into her heart that way, the comfort- 
 able thing all round is to change the subject at once. 
 He would rather sit on the doorstep and talk encourag- 
 ingly. But by the time he gets to be a bishop he will 
 probably know better, too. In the funny old days
 
 Nancy the Joyous 99 
 
 when you were carrying the dignity of your first min- 
 isterial black suit and the other Annie Laird wore 
 sprigged muslins, you may have counseled her wisely 
 and at length between father and David. I reckon 
 your influence must have leaned towards father or you 
 would not have written me that my old friend David 
 had been " neglectful of a precious legacy." Neglect- 
 ful? Never! What could he have done with a very 
 little person that kicked when she got mad? 
 
 The sun is setting and I hear my friend Marget 
 shouting her way down the road and singing out of 
 tune at the top of her lungs. She is teaching me to 
 milk and I can work both hands now, though I can't 
 make them go at the same time. I see that in time I 
 shall become competent and versatile. Now I am, 
 
 Your happy, 
 
 Nancy. 
 June 10.
 
 O THE weeks passed, 
 bringing Nancy Lynn 
 new insight. Among 
 other things, she learned 
 that she was living in the 
 house with a celebrity. 
 Every now and then an 
 earnest soul from some 
 distant station rode into 
 this valley for a conference with gentle, far- 
 sighted Miss Schuyler. She would lay her hand 
 on Nancy's arm and say, 
 
 " This is the little friend the Bishop sent in to 
 brighten Swaggerty for us." 
 
 Then they would make a tapioca pudding, take 
 down something from their shelf of precious 
 canned goods and pretend they were having a 
 party. You would not believe how festive they 
 grew over a stray brother or sister of the fold and 
 a stew of canned oysters. 
 
 But when Miss Schuyler and the visitor settled 
 
 down to a discussion of the problems of their 
 
 100
 
 Nancy the Joyous 101 
 
 work, Nancy sat listening in her corner, awed by 
 the quiet enthusiasm of these people. 
 
 One day Miss Schuyler came in wearing a smile 
 that made her plain face beautiful. 
 
 " A man over from Lonesome Creek has just 
 brought me word that a friend of mine will be 
 here for the night." 
 
 '* Who is it? " asked Nancy eagerly. 
 
 " I am going to keep that a surprise," returned 
 Miss Schuyler. 
 
 So they brushed and brightened the cabin until 
 it took on a look of welcome and anticipation. 
 Then they waited while the dusk thickened. 
 
 Nancy grew disappointed. 
 
 " She could not ride over as late as this." 
 
 " Oh, yes, she will. Riding in the dark never 
 daunts her." 
 
 Soon they heard hoof-beats along the road 
 and hurried out. 
 
 "I was late in starting," explained the guest, 
 after the preliminary greetings were over. 
 
 In the dusk Nancy could know nothing of this 
 woman's personality except the touch of her 
 hand and the sound of her voice ; but she was won 
 by these. It was a voice that suggested organ
 
 102 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 music; soft and strong, womanly yet full of 
 vitality. She seemed to catch you up and bear 
 you adrift on the full-flowing tide of her cheer- 
 fulness. 
 
 " I was late in starting. At the last minute I 
 had to go over and doctor Aunt Letty. She sent 
 word that she had * the flippin' disease.' ' 
 
 " Nervous indigestion? " 
 
 ' Yes. I dosed her a bit and told her she must 
 be careful what she eats. But Aunt Letty says 
 ' I don't wanter eat what I oughter; I wanter eat 
 what I wanter.' ' 
 
 When they had pastured the horse and were 
 near the cabin door, this woman waited a minute 
 in the dark. 
 
 " I want one more breath before I go inside. 
 I have had to be away from all this so long." 
 
 Nancy thought that in the " horseshoe " at the 
 opera she had never seen a woman with so fine a 
 carriage. But when the lamplight inside the 
 cabin fell on the woman's face Nancy shrank 
 back from it! 
 
 It had one time been a beautiful face but was 
 now hopelessly burned and scarred. 
 
 " Oh, how did it happen! " cried Nancy in a
 
 Nancy the Joyous 103 
 
 distressed whisper. Miss Darrit had gone into 
 her sleeping room to freshen up after her ride. 
 
 Miss Sehuyler explained. Miss Darrit lived 
 in a valley buried farther from the world, more 
 deeply poverty-ridden and ignorant than theirs. 
 Her home was an isolated, windowless log cabin. 
 There had been much sickness on her mountain 
 and once, when she came home from a night of 
 nursing, she fainted and fell with her face in the 
 ashes of the fireplace. The pain of it finally 
 brought her to. Then she dragged herself up 
 and, alone, ministered to her wounds until morn- 
 ing. Following this came weeks of suffering in 
 a hospital. She had now just left the world 
 again and brought the poor, marred ruins of her- 
 self back to her post. 
 
 " I did not tell you about her before for fear 
 you would pity her." 
 
 " I would not dare pity a woman like that." 
 
 The bedroom door opened and Miss Darrit 
 entered with a fine unself-consciousness that a 
 queen might envy. 
 
 They drew the supper table up in front of 
 the rude hearth of the cabin and sat talking about 
 it until late in the night.
 
 104 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 " I have been needed so badly while I was 
 away," smiled Miss Darrit. " For one thing, 
 the children have got into the ' church-house ' and 
 almost ruined my organ. As Aunt Letty says, 
 ' You can't make much fuss on it any more. 
 Some of the keys don't make any fuss at all.' ' 
 
 Then, as usual, as the hours wore on they 
 began to talk seriously and Nancy was but an 
 outsider to it. Something gripped her heart 
 when she realized that she was living among 
 people who met life in this spirit. Nancy Lynn 
 knew about sacrificing greatly for a person one 
 loves, but these women were doing it for human- 
 ity. And humanity is such a vast, formless, 
 cumbersome thing! 
 
 " Oh, yes, Miss Schuyler," remarked the guest 
 as they rose at last from the table, " I have a 
 message for you from a friend, a Mr. Peyton 
 Williams. He was introduced to me while I was 
 waiting at the gate to take my train, and he put 
 me on." 
 
 " For me? " asked Miss Schuyler in surprise. 
 
 "Yes, he " 
 
 " Are you sure it was for me? " 
 
 ' Yes. He said, ' I have a friend down there
 
 Nancy the Joyous 105 
 
 at a place called Swaggerty Cove. If you hap- 
 pen to meet her tell her I am always at her 
 bidding.' " 
 
 Miss Schuyler's cheeks flushed slightly. 
 Nancy bent her head over the table where she 
 was gathering up the plates. 
 
 " I knew Mr. Williams once, but I think that 
 was probably intended for Nancy." 
 
 " Possibly. You see I knew nothing then 
 about Miss Lynn's being here." 
 
 Nancy raised her eyes to Miss Schuyler. She 
 felt as though she had stolen the sacred silver 
 vessels from an altar to play with. 
 
 That night when the lights were out and the 
 cabin stood a formless shadow in the wide, lonely, 
 formless darkness that spread out over the moun- 
 tains, Nancy lay awake. 
 
 " I know now why the Bishop sent me in here," 
 she thought. " It was to show me how trivial I 
 am." 
 
 After an hour of wakefulness Nancy Lynn 
 decided, just as many another young girl who 
 carries an ache in her heart has done, that since 
 these women had found peace, the way to ease 
 her own pain was to stretch her soul out to the
 
 106 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 proportions of theirs. She pulled away at it, 
 the way you lay a carpet, and tacked it down all 
 around with good resolutions. There was a 
 stretch and a strain across the middle of it that 
 hurt, but at last Nancy Lynn fell asleep, con- 
 fidently believing that it would hold.
 
 ANCY LYNN honestly 
 believed that the beauti- 
 ful flower of renunciation 
 had taken root in her soul. 
 She thought the tacks 
 would hold ; but suddenly, 
 about three days later, 
 pop! up they all pulled, 
 and Nancy shrank back 
 to her natural proportions. 
 
 Incidentally, a good deal of original sin had 
 accumulated during those soul-stretching days 
 and had to be worked off. The store-keeper of 
 Swaggerty Cove was the first one to suffer. She 
 seemed never to see the little store quietly locked 
 up that she was not possessed with a desire to 
 buy something. It stood in the heart of the 
 settlement and to the uninitiated looked like a 
 shed. Buying and selling in Swaggerty is largely 
 a matter of barter, with eggs and chickens 
 for legal tender. Nancy bought up a flock of 
 her own she opened a bank account, as it 
 
 107
 
 108 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 were. She learned to pass an egg across the 
 counter and ask for an egg's worth of matches 
 while she gazed nonchalantly at the three bolts 
 of calico on the shelf. She got positive joy from 
 snatching up a live chicken by the legs and 
 swinging it, squawking and protesting at her 
 side, down the road to the store. There she pulled 
 a bell-rope and sat down at the foot of the bell- 
 pole with her hen for company until the store- 
 keeper, who was primarily a farmer, finished his 
 plough row or his pipe or his bit of gossip, and 
 sauntered down the road to wait on her. 
 
 To this much-tried man's relief the young 
 minister from Dry Branch arrived on horseback 
 to spend a week in Swaggerty. He had lately 
 been appointed in charge of a large belt of this 
 country and had come over, as he said, to get 
 acquainted with his people. He was to lodge 
 with Aunt Hiley Ann and dine around among 
 the folks. What he really did was to take Mon- 
 day dinner with Marget. The rest of the time 
 he spent at Miss Schuyler's " so as to discuss 
 plans." 
 
 Young Alec MacDonald thought that it 
 would also be well for Nancy to get acquainted,
 
 Nancy the Joyous 109 
 
 so one day they sauntered together up the gully 
 to call on Betsy Jane Skidmore. Betsy Jane 
 was not exactly an exemplary character, but the 
 social lines lie out broad and flat in that world. 
 At the end of the call young Alec MacDonald 
 glanced twice uneasily at Nancy and then, fol- 
 lowing circuit-preacher etiquette, asked if they 
 might have a short season of prayer. 
 
 Betsy Jane was sitting tilted back on the hind 
 legs of a straight, splint-bottom chair, smoking 
 her pipe. She spread out her hands in cordial 
 expansiveness and answered, quite as though he 
 had asked for a drink of water. 
 
 " Jes' he'p yourself; he'p yourself." 
 
 Betsy Jane kept her seat. Alec MacDonald 
 and Nancy knelt down on the puncheon floor 
 and he got through with it somehow. He was 
 embarrassed and Nancy liked him for it. For 
 that matter, she was embarrassed too, for it was 
 the first time she had ever walked into a woman's 
 house and offered to pray for her. 
 
 After that Nancy decided to stay home and 
 make the desserts and let Miss Schuyler go off 
 with him rounding up the flock. But there were 
 slow strolls through the lush grass of the creek
 
 110 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 bottom in the purple twilight, during which 
 Swaggerty, undisguisedly sitting out on its 
 thresholds to watch them, concluded that they 
 must be " fixing their love " on each other. And 
 there were long quiet talks, sitting together on 
 the cabin doorstep while the lights of Swaggerty 
 one by one went out and the night became theirs. 
 Sunday morning Alec MacDonald held his 
 first sendee in Swaggerty Valley. It was a beau- 
 tiful, clean summer day, so the folks came down 
 out of the coves and ridges and sat in rows across 
 the little log " church house," their solemn faces 
 raised to him. He had put thought into his ser- 
 mon, in his thorough Scotch way; and he had 
 put into it also a young man's enthusiasm for 
 his own century. It was a good, logical discourse 
 on the modern movement towards the brother- 
 hood of man. He led them on with words and 
 illustrations vividly objective, ending with a 
 realistic description of the sinking of a ship at 
 sea. These mountaineers had never seen the sea ; 
 in fact they had never seen more water than the 
 creek and the mill pond held; but the stolid folk 
 sat spellbound under the magic of his words 
 which painted the line of men drawn up on deck
 
 Nancy the Joyous 111 
 
 with the captain standing, pistol in hand, threat- 
 ening to shoot down any man of them that stirred 
 hand or foot until the sailors had put off the 
 women and children. 
 
 Nancy felt the atmosphere of public opinion 
 was a trifle too rarified but Alec MacDonald was 
 gratified to the point of self -congratulation on 
 the impression his sermon seemed to have made. 
 
 That afternoon Miss Schuyler had gone up 
 into the mountain to visit one of her sick. 
 MacDonald was sitting in the open doorway, 
 not reading, but looking down at a book he was 
 holding. Inside, Nancy's footsteps sounded 
 back and forth across the cabin floor. Later, 
 while thus busying herself, she caught the sound 
 of protesting voices outside and looking up, dis- 
 covered four of the Swaggerty men standing in 
 a semicircle before the young minister. It was a 
 delegation of the citizens. 
 
 ' We come to say that throwing the women 
 and children overboard and saving the men don't 
 look right to us, preacher." 
 
 Nancy chuckled audibly; but when she saw 
 poor Alec MacDonald sit resourceless before 
 this mistrust of his chivalry, she realized that the
 
 112 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 situation was grave. It was a question of sav- 
 ing his future influence in Swaggerty Cove. 
 
 She stepped forward and stood with her slim 
 figure framed by the doorway. 
 
 " Uncle Lemmie," she began, " do you remem- 
 ber that the other day I called your sled a stone- 
 boat and you didn't know what I meant ? " 
 
 Nancy turned to the other end of the semi- 
 circle where stood the much harassed store- 
 keeper. 
 
 " And, Mr. Teeter, you know yesterday you 
 handed me down a horse collar when I went to 
 the store for some paper and asked for a pad. 
 ' Put off ' to us folks doesn't mean to throw the 
 women and children overboard. It means to put 
 them into the lifeboats and save them." 
 
 " Now, Mr. MacDonald," continued Nancy, 
 " you tell them how last summer, when your 
 steamer went down, you held up a perfectly 
 strange girl with one hand and swam with the 
 other for an hour until a boat picked you both 
 up just as you were going down together." 
 
 Nancy disappeared, but a moment later 
 stepped again to the threshold. 
 
 " He was out on a lake. That is a pond deeper
 
 Nancy the Joyous 113 
 
 than the tallest pine tree and as broad as from 
 here to the railroad. Think of starting out to 
 swim to the railroad and dragging a girl along, 
 besides. Make him tell you about it, Uncle 
 Lemmie." 
 
 And once more Nancy retreated from the 
 meeting. 
 
 Alec MacDonald took it so much to heart that 
 after they had gone, Nancy went out and sat 
 on the doorstep beside him. She began talking 
 a long way off from the subject. 
 
 " Beautiful old mountain," she murmured, her 
 eyes resting on the great ridge that reared itself 
 up from the opposite bank of the long valley. 
 
 " I went up it again yesterday to see Betsy 
 Jane Skidmore. Betsy Jane paid you as high a 
 compliment as is possible in this belt of country. 
 She said, ' I'd git up and quit eatin' fried chicken 
 any day to hear the new preacher talk.' ' 
 
 She was careful not to glance his way but let 
 her gaze drop to the lean, brown highway that 
 ran through the long valley. 
 
 " I used to think that was a villainous piece of 
 road but now I've got feelings about it. It seems 
 august to me, like the old Roman roads that
 
 114 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 used to join the scattered parts of the world." 
 
 Having thus shied off again from the tender 
 point, she allowed herself to scan him warily out 
 of the corners of her eyes, and noted signs of his 
 being reconciled to life again. 
 
 Uncle Lemmie was riding along the road 
 below them. 
 
 " Uncle Lemmie must be going to see his son- 
 in-law. Son-in-law has a sick horse. Uncle 
 Lemmie says, ' The new preacher has sense. Us 
 folks round here know a few things when we 
 can think of 'em ; but he has sense.' ' 
 
 Then Nancy cast tact to the winds. 
 
 " There is one thing we have to remember in 
 here," she began earnestly so earnestly that 
 she laid her hand on his arm. He quickly covered 
 it with his. Nancy snatched her fingers away. 
 
 " Oh, say, no; let's not," she said boyishly. 
 
 " The thing to remember is that their mental 
 store is limited to just what eyes can see, hands 
 touch and souls reach towards, up and down our 
 valley road. You have to pack away in your 
 wardrobe trunk all your furbelows of thought 
 and just gather about your feet this little heap 
 of worn, patched ideas. And you have to keep
 
 Nancy the Joyous 115 
 
 your eyes sighting along the line of their point of 
 view. I discovered that lately when we cele- 
 brated Fourth of July here in Swaggerty. We 
 held strictly to the purpose originally designed 
 for the day. You would have thought that the 
 British were stationed up there on the top of the 
 ridge w r ith cannon and bayonet, ready to descend 
 at any minute. But I just followed around with 
 the crowd and whooped her up with genuine 
 enthusiasm because we had whipped the English. 
 You have to keep not so much within their 
 vocabulary as within their ideas." 
 
 Then Nancy's voice grew tender. 
 
 " It is just like talking to a child," she said 
 softly. She stretched her hands out over her 
 knees into a kind of cup, as though a child were 
 kneeling there and she gathered its little face 
 between them. 
 
 " Just play house and doll babies with broken 
 heads; but within that little circle you can reach 
 out and lay your hands on all the biggest things 
 in the universe." 
 
 Nancy's voice trailed away into silence. She 
 crossed her arms on her knees and laid her cheek 
 down on her wrists.
 
 116 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 " Did you know," she asked softly after a 
 time, " that the Chinese are past masters in the 
 culinary art ? Bird nests, shark fins, deer sinews, 
 bird tongues, fish brains, shrimp eggs and many 
 other extraordinary dishes make up the every- 
 day menu."
 
 UNT HILEY ANN was 
 taken sick. This fact 
 spread an air of impor- 
 tance through the settle- 
 ment. For one thing, 
 the doctor from Salt Lick 
 came dashing in on his 
 thoroughbred mount with 
 a quick beat of hoofs. 
 For an eighty miles of country the mountaineers 
 proudly claimed the doctor from Salt Lick, yet 
 drew back timidly from him. He swung himself 
 out of his saddle in his hurried way and tossed 
 the bridle to one of the bystanders ; but he entered 
 the cabin leisurely, as though he had merely 
 dropped in from an afternoon saunter. 
 
 He was sitting by Aunt Hiley Ann's bed, 
 counting pulse beats and looking at his watch, 
 when he detected a kind of official stir and shuffle 
 of feet among the mountaineers crowding the 
 cabin behind him. He felt the presence of some- 
 one at his side, but waited until he had finished 
 
 117
 
 118 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 counting before he looked up. There stood a 
 girl whose slender figure conveyed an impression 
 of worldliness. 
 
 " Is she very sick? " asked the girl. 
 
 "Yes; she is." 
 
 " But Miss Schuyler has gone off to a con- 
 vention. I shan't be able to get her back for five 
 days." 
 
 The doctor from Salt Lick grew stern. 
 
 ' There is no need to send for Miss Schuyler. 
 It is a bad case of pneumonia; but if you do just 
 as I tell you to, I think we can bring her 
 through." 
 
 His eyes did not swerve from their first focus 
 on Nancy's face. They gave her no quarter. 
 Moreover, their expression came close to being 
 antagonistic at her dread of responsibility. 
 
 "All right; I will," she promised, squaring 
 herself to meet his gaze. 
 
 " Then get me a kettle of hot water the first 
 thing," he ordered turning a blank shoulder 
 towards her. 
 
 Nancy was humbled. 
 
 Among the mountaineers it is the custom for 
 the kinfolk to the most distant family ramifica-
 
 Nancy the Joyous 119 
 
 tions to move in and camp around a sick bed 
 with much gossiping and frying of chickens, 
 smoking of pipes and fretting of visiting babies. 
 Then the " lovering couples " of the settlement 
 sit up nights with the invalid to do their courting. 
 This is not heartlessness, but just the etiquette of 
 sympathy and the old human hunger for excite- 
 ment. Sickness in an isolated world is exciting. 
 
 With directness and authority, the doctor from 
 Salt Lick sent all that cabin-full of people away 
 with definite orders that they were to stay away. 
 Marget was to have the care of Aunt Hiley Ann 
 daytimes and Miss Lynn was to nurse her nights. 
 There were to be medicines every fifteen minutes 
 night and day and all manner of disagreeable 
 duties. 
 
 When he had established this order of things 
 and was prepared to leave, he asked for a drink 
 of water and Nancy obediently brought him a 
 dipperful from the bucket. He drank half of 
 it, tossed the rest out into the yard, and flung 
 himself into his saddle. As his horse started at 
 a gallop, he turned and lifted his hat. In the 
 door-yard of the cabin he was leaving stood a 
 slim little figure, all its worldliness dropped from
 
 120 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 it, watching after him with a pair of anxious 
 violet eyes. 
 
 When he stopped for his professional visit 
 the following day, he cast a scrutinizing glance 
 around the place. The pile of ashes on the hearth 
 showed that a fire had been kept burning there 
 all night, according to his orders. A big iron 
 kettle of hot water hung on a crane above it, 
 ready for use in case the patient's temperature 
 fell to sub-normal. The doctor was satisfied. 
 
 'What is this?" he asked, pushing his feet 
 into a litter of whittlings on the floor. 
 
 Nancy smiled in a tired way but her voice was 
 steady. 
 
 ' Those are mine. I found that if you whittle 
 it helps. I whittled most all night long. Looks 
 like a cooper shop, doesn't it?" 
 
 " Good idea," he returned professionally. 
 
 Then he examined his patient, gave fresh 
 orders and hurried away. 
 
 On his next call he inquired of Nancy how she 
 was standing up under the long night watches. 
 
 " I met MacDonald on his way over here and 
 I told him he must not come. I said Miss 
 Schuyler was off and you had your hands full
 
 Nancy the Joyous 121 
 
 now and needed all the sleep you could get." 
 
 "What did he say?" 
 
 " What does anyone say to the doctor's 
 orders? Nothing. Just follows them." 
 
 " I like Mr. MacDonald," volunteered Nancy 
 with a note of comparison in her voice. 
 
 "Do you? So do I." 
 
 On the following days Nancy was sleeping 
 when he came, so he did not see her again until 
 the early dawn of the seventh morning. Then 
 one of his long, hard rides took him down through 
 Swaggerty Valley in the gray morning twilight. 
 The cabins lay silent and smokeless in this pocket 
 of the big, mountain world. Only in the open 
 doorway of one of them crouched a solitary lit- 
 tle figure. It was Nancy Lynn. The doctor 
 from Salt Lick saw her there, dismounted and 
 sat down on the threshold beside her. They 
 could scarcely discern each other's faces through 
 the dusk. 
 
 " You need a wrap around your shoulders. 
 This air is damp." 
 
 Nancy shivered but did not move. He slipped 
 off his coat and laid it carelessly around her 
 shoulders.
 
 122 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 " Been whittling? " he inquired, smiling at the 
 pile of shavings on the ground before her. 
 
 " Yes ; only these last few nights I have sat 
 out here on the step and whittled. I have been 
 having the wide, soft, wonderful darkness all to 
 myself and I've learned the faces of the stars." 
 
 " What do you think about? " 
 
 " About a bishop and a diplomat, mostly. I'm 
 in good company." 
 
 ; ' The hardest part of sitting up is after mid- 
 night. The strain is from then on until you 
 begin to get the feel of the morning in the air." 
 
 " Yes ; that's true," cried Nancy with convic- 
 tion. " You are firm and set of purpose until 
 the turn of the night and then something within 
 you has worn out. About that time I seem to 
 lose my hold on the bishop and the diplomat." 
 Nancy laughed nervously. ' Then every night 
 a girl named Nancy seems to come laughing and 
 mocking down the valley. She finds me sitting 
 here alone on the doorstep, the way you did, and 
 she tilts her chin and asks: 
 
 " Who are you? ' 
 
 " ' I'm Annie Lynn,' I answer. 
 
 " ' For goodness sakes,' she laughs, ' then you
 
 Nancy the Joyous 123 
 
 must be a relative of mine. But someone told 
 me,' she goes on pestering, ' that you were 
 planning to spend this summer in a villa of your 
 own on the Italian lakes. What are you doing 
 here ? ' 
 
 " ' As I'd be done by,' I tell her. 
 
 " And then the horrid thing does a little 
 shuffling dance in the road and says: 
 
 * Well, then you're having a good time. You 
 always did enjoy new sensations.' 
 
 " And I give the jackknife a fling out into 
 the yard and put my face down on my knees and 
 wonder if that is all there is in it for me. There's 
 the jackknife out there." 
 
 The doctor took out his watch. 
 ' You need sleep," he stated. " You go home 
 and go to bed and I'll wait here till Marget 
 comes." 
 
 Nancy demurred. 
 
 " I'm not a quitter," she answered stiffly. 
 
 " No, you are not. I've discovered that. But 
 still you must go to bed. I'm looking for the 
 crisis to-night. If we can pull her through that 
 I think we have her safe. I am going to come 
 back and stay and I want you in good form
 
 124 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 because I'm going to send them all away but 
 you. I can't have anyone around to excite her." 
 
 So that night they watched together beside 
 Aunt Hiley Ann. They spoke to each other of 
 definite things in low, serious tones. 
 
 " I have got to save her ; she's a good woman," 
 said the doctor from Salt Lick. " The people 
 need her." 
 
 And Nancy, being a woman, answered, " I 
 need her. She's been my friend." 
 
 Along about midnight, as the doctor had fore- 
 seen, the decisive crisis came. The fever which 
 had been burning through the woman, dropped 
 suddenly from high to below normal, accompa- 
 nied by a collapse of exhausted nature. The 
 doctor grew terse. 
 
 '* We have got to work quickly now. The 
 thing is to stimulate the heart action and keep 
 up her temperature." 
 
 So through the thick of the night they two 
 fought death, he issuing his short orders and she 
 following them unquestioningly. But still the 
 old mountain woman lay without rallying. 
 
 "No hope?" 
 
 " Not much."
 
 Nancy the Joyous 125 
 
 They fought on. 
 
 " Have you ever seen anyone die? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 Nancy reached under the bedding. 
 ' This flask of water is growing cold. Shall 
 I fill it again?" 
 
 She crossed towards the fireplace where the 
 iron kettle filled with water hung on its crane. 
 He followed and halfway across the room took 
 the flask out of her hand. 
 
 ' You go down to the spring and get me a 
 pail of water." 
 
 The spring was an eighth of a mile away along 
 a rough trail. 
 
 ' You're just sending me away. I'm not 
 going. I'm not afraid to stay." 
 
 She took the bottle from him and refilled it 
 from the kettle, using a gourd dipper and a 
 funnel improvised out of stiff paper. 
 
 Later, in reward for their efforts, the sick 
 woman's temperature began to rise. She wak- 
 ened from her stupor, smiled wearily and 
 then quickly dropped off into a natural, restful 
 sleep. 
 
 Then Nancy began to tremble.
 
 126 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 " There is nothing more to do now," said the 
 doctor from Salt Lick. 
 
 He drew Nancy towards the hearth so that the 
 light from the flames burning upon it fell directly 
 on her face and stood with both hands laid upon 
 her shoulders. 
 
 ' You've got a smudge on your face," he com- 
 mented. 
 
 Nancy tried to smile but she was too tired. 
 
 " She's safe if everything goes well. And 
 you've been a brave girl. If it hadn't been for 
 your care this past week I couldn't have done it. 
 But don't do any more. They can nurse her 
 now. I've got to save you for some more hard 
 work. I'll call Marget as I ride by and send 
 her here and then you go home to bed." 
 
 Still holding her by the shoulders, he stood for 
 a minute studying her. Then he took out his 
 handkerchief and flicked the smudge off her face. 
 
 " It's just some ashes."
 
 HE Bishop dropped in 
 to call on Mrs. Crubb. 
 " Have you heard from 
 Nancy lately? " was al- 
 most his first remark. 
 There was enough of 
 eagerness in it to suggest 
 that it was the object of 
 his visit. 
 
 " Yes," returned Mrs. Crubb severely, " and 
 I'd like to have you tell me more about this 
 Schuyler woman. Are you sure she will take 
 good care of Nancy? " 
 
 " Oh, Miss Schuyler is pure gold; she is one of 
 God's saints." 
 
 " Well, my opinion is that God's saint is let- 
 ting Nancy associate with people who are not 
 proper for her to know. Take that Betsy Jane 
 Skidmore person, for instance! I got worried 
 for fear the saint hadn't good judgment and 
 showed the letter to Mr. Williams. He used to 
 know Miss Schuyler, and seems to think she is 
 
 127
 
 128 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 all right one of the finest women he ever knew. 
 But that doesn't count for anything; you men all 
 say that. Why, I dare say that when I'm gone 
 you'll even be saying that I was one of the finest 
 women you ever knew." 
 
 " Heaven forbid," smiled the Bishop with a 
 shake of the head. 
 
 " Oh, I'm not such a bad sort," chuckled Mrs. 
 Crubb with appreciation. 
 
 ' The thing that worries Mr. Williams," she 
 continued, " is this young minister she keeps 
 writing about. And I don't wonder ! ' It would 
 be just like a silly, romantic-headed girl,' I told 
 him, ' to fall in love with a penniless missionary 
 and turn down a good chance like you. She's 
 got it in her blood.' And probably God's saint 
 would encourage her in it ! " 
 
 " Oh, you people need not trouble yourselves 
 about that. But the thing that worries me is hav- 
 ing her ride around alone on that mule. Why, 
 she might be thrown or " 
 
 " Mule ! If you had ever seen her drive an auto 
 downhill the way I have, you'd never worry about 
 a mere mule. Don't be so foolish, Hubert; I'll 
 guarantee that she can manage the mule."
 
 Nancy the Joyous 129 
 
 " But I wish when you write her you'd warn 
 her against being too venturesome. I have 
 spoken of it but perhaps if you were " 
 
 "Me! She'd never mind me. I'm only her 
 aunt, you know, while she is some kind of make- 
 believe daughter of yours. There isn't a girl in 
 the city that would not have jumped at what I 
 planned out for her, but I couldn't make her 
 heed me. I hand it over to you now; perhaps 
 you'll have better success." 
 
 The Bishop was immediately on the defensive. 
 
 " Nancy is a thoroughly dutiful, biddable girl. 
 Only I wish she would be a little more cautious 
 about the way she rides around," he allowed, ris- 
 ing to take leave and at the same time feeling in 
 his pocket to make sure that Mrs. Crubb had 
 returned his last letter. 
 
 It ran : 
 Dear Bishop, 
 
 It is no use trying; I can't make myself into a 
 missionary. After I had Aunt Hiley Ann off my con- 
 science I slept and slept. I would wake, drink a glass 
 of milk and then sleep some more; until early the 
 second morning I opened my eyes, suddenly wide awake. 
 I felt newly made and more than that ; I wanted a good
 
 130 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 time. It seemed as though there was a circus in town 
 and I had no admission ticket. I knew that somewhere 
 out in the crowded places of the world there were 
 people just confessedly enjoying themselves; that there 
 were, so to speak, the flap of flags, the blare of 
 trumpets, the calls of the lemonade man, the jolly 
 clown and the girl in tinsel riding horseback and throw- 
 ing kisses to the crowd. At the thought of the girl I 
 could stand Swaggerty no longer but mounted Wings 
 and fled out of the valley and up the mountain-side. 
 I think I had a vague notion that I might be able to 
 find the tentful of happy people and at least get down 
 on my knees and peek under the canvas at them. I 
 could have wept at the picture of Nancy kneeling out 
 alone in the mud and the peanut shucks. 
 
 But morning was lovely on the mountain-top. It 
 was wide and free like a great adventure; so I swung 
 along taking my chance on strange trails and trusting 
 to find my way home again. By mid-morning I was 
 following a bridle path at the top of the ridge into a 
 pocket lying so high that the headlands sloping down 
 to it seemed only like little hills. The good soil had 
 been mostly washed out of it. It lay ribbed with 
 bleached hummocks of rocks so sharp that you could 
 not walk on their backbones. Among these stood a set- 
 tlement of four log houses. Scattered here and there 
 wherever was a foothold of good soil, grew a few stools 
 of corn. Compared with this place Swaggerty is a
 
 Nancy the Joyous 131 
 
 flourishing city. Swaggerty is rising in my esteem. 
 
 Before one of the cabins I slipped down out of my 
 saddle. A mountain woman, Mittie Jeems, came out to 
 tie my mule. After a parley of greetings I went to 
 visit the other houses. As soon as a stranger was 
 sighted, every woman, it seems, had started at a trot to 
 prepare a dinner. At one place I found a meal waiting 
 me set out on the table with one whole plate, two half 
 plates and a tin tomato can. But I had promised to 
 dine with Mittie Jeems. 
 
 She, in the meantime, had made the most of this 
 opportunity to trim up her house and family. I found 
 her flock of children with their faces freshly washed and 
 their hair tied with strips of calico. As for the house ! 
 In it stood a table covered with an old sheet on which 
 had been laid in state, surrounded with three postcards, 
 the family hatchet. The eternal feminine longing for 
 nicknacks ! 
 
 If I could not dine with the folks of all four houses, 
 they at least could gather round Mittie's door and 
 watch me eat. It is disconcerting to have people stand 
 by with interest and watch you chew, but I am growing 
 used to it. And, then, that day we were all friends. 
 They had, it seems, heard of me and some of them had 
 seen me on the Fourth. Mittie said that she was " set- 
 ting under a bush and my man came up to me and said, 
 ' Come here, Mittie, and jest hear this girl talk. Law, 
 ain't she the talkin'est thing ! ' " which was intended
 
 132 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 for a compliment. One rheumatic old fellow who moves 
 with difficulty confided to me that he had followed me 
 round all day to listen to what I said, and at leaving 
 had told Aunt Hiley Ann that he was coming back 
 again to Swaggerty because he'd " just natcherly got 
 to hear that girl talk some more." 
 
 The entire place dropped work and gave itself up to 
 a gala day. The children took turns riding Wings. 
 Then I taught them some games : " London Bridge " 
 and " A Trisket, a Trasket, a Green and Yellow 
 Basket." We had such genuine fun that their elders 
 wanted to join in; so it was not long before the entire 
 citizen body of the hamlet was holding hands and cir- 
 cling round on the village common. When we were all 
 tired I told them stories, with the children gathered up 
 around my knees and their parents standing back in a 
 wondering circle. 
 
 When we left they all clustered round Wings and me, 
 full of kindly helpfulness to get us started. 
 
 One old woman, as she buckled the stirrup strap, 
 said, " People must remember that we're just folks ; but 
 we're always glad to have 'em come up and see us." 
 
 As Mittie handed up my whip she said, " We've had 
 a plumb pretty day. We'll all be talkin' and braggin* 
 about it. There's poor folks, and folks that has; but 
 I've noticed that them that has is the grippin'est. We 
 was born poor and we s'pect to die poor and all we 
 can get out of the world is satisfaction."
 
 Nancy the Joyous 133 
 
 As I drew rein at the edge of the pocket to look back, 
 I saw them standing there still, waving to me. 
 
 You ask me to tell you how I should like to have you 
 find my old friend David for me. Please don't. I have 
 costumed him for such a variety of roles since my child- 
 hood that I should not feel acquainted with him if he 
 were to take substance and insist on looking always the 
 same. You are doing nicely as a substitute. And 
 please, dear Bishop, make Aunt Crubb understand that 
 I meant every word in the letter I sent her. I asked 
 her to try to forgive me, for I am truly sorry at the end 
 of all her generosity to disappoint her in just the way 
 my mother did. Aunt Crubb was so disgusted with 
 mother that she would never talk with me about her; 
 but I have a notion that David was the desirable party 
 Aunt had selected for her. Tell her " we're just folks," 
 all of us, and that " all we can get out of the world is 
 satisfaction." If I had taken Mr. Williams without 
 caring, whatever satisfaction I could get out of an 
 Italian villa would be stolen. I would rather pick up 
 what of it I can here in Swaggerty by honest effort. 
 
 Nancy Lynn. 
 August 15.
 
 ANCY'S next letter set 
 the Bishop worrying 
 from a different angle. 
 
 " I don't like the first 
 part of this letter," he 
 muttered. " It is sweet 
 and womanly but what I 
 want is to keep her just 
 a girl as long as I can. 
 Dear, dear! Possibly Mrs. Crubb is right; per- 
 haps it was a mistake to send her off where she 
 is thrown so much on herself. 
 
 " Anyway," he concluded, " I am glad there 
 is a good doctor at hand. I think I shall have to 
 drop him a note and ask him to keep an eye on 
 her." 
 
 Then he reread: 
 
 Dear Bishop, 
 
 I do believe you are worrying about me. You warn 
 me against riding off alone and I think I detect an un- 
 bishoply desire to go out and fight my David. My 
 coat-of-arms is now a bishop rampant in an azure field. 
 
 134
 
 Nancy the Joyous 135 
 
 The magic of life here is that it strips from one all 
 that is trivial, like the foolish little leaves the trees have 
 done with and shed. That gives the big things space 
 in which to be. My love for just a few of you out 
 there I count the big things of life. The thought that 
 off alone in the world there is someone facing the weight 
 of each day bravely silent, just as I am trying to face 
 each day bravely here, is more precious to me now than 
 any touch of hands or lips. One can do without those ; 
 I have learned to. But I don't think I could ever again 
 live without the silent, steadying love which keeps a girl 
 like me all day joyfully at unpleasant tasks and sends 
 her singing to bed at night because 
 
 Nonsense ! What I meant to say was that Saturday 
 I went with Aunt Hiley Ann, Uncle Lemmie and some 
 of their kin to an all-day preaching. We drove up 
 the creek bottom in a buckboard filled with straight- 
 backed, splint chairs, then turned at an angle; and by 
 digging their hoofs in, the mules succeeded in dragging 
 us through what looked like the washout of a spring 
 freshet. To me that pair of mules was accomplishing 
 an astounding feat, but this aspect of the situation did 
 not appeal to Aunt Hiley Ann. She leaned back in her 
 splint chair, dipping snuff and gazing round on her 
 buckboard of kinfolk with an automobile expression of 
 pleased proprietorship. 
 
 When the mules scrambled up with us over the top 
 of the ridge, there, facing a dip of open ground, yet
 
 136 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 backing into the trees that rose behind it, stood a little 
 plank meetinghouse, unadorned and looking like one of 
 the sanctified, humble poor. It was a lonesome little 
 structure. Just then, however, it wore an expression 
 of restrained and pious festivity. Four or five buck- 
 boards flanked it ; horses and mules stood hitched about, 
 with their saddles empty and their harness hanging 
 looped; from within it came a droning sound, for 
 preaching had already begun. Inside it was bare, un- 
 painted and time-stained. The men, grizzled and 
 scraggy, sat on one side ; on the other the women, rang- 
 ing all the way from soft girlhood to the drooping chin 
 and cheek muscles of old age. A wood stove in a shal- 
 low, tray-like box, occupied the center of the floor. 
 High up against either wall, perched there on wooden 
 brackets, stood a chimney-less kerosene lamp of the 
 size known as bedroom lamps, the wall about each 
 smoked in a fan-shape to a rich ebony. Seated in front, 
 behind a rail not unlike an elevated foot-bench, were 
 eight solemn, opinionated, ignorant exhorters, who 
 snorted, wheezed, puffed and agonized in turn. Before 
 them on the railing stood a tin bucket of water and a 
 gourd towards which flowed steadily a little line from 
 the congregation. 
 
 Aunt Hiley Ann went click-clacking in her brogans 
 up to a seat on the far, holy side of the wood stove. I 
 followed, tiptoeing reverently. 
 
 Soon we were all swaying on our benches and singing
 
 Nancy the Joyous 137 
 
 through our noses with a melancholy lilt and sob of the 
 voice : 
 
 " Conceived in sin (O wretched state !) 
 
 Before we draw our breath, 
 The first young pulse begins to beat 
 Iniquity and death " 
 
 One woman suddenly gave forth a piercing shriek 
 that loosened her back hair; she leaped into the air off 
 both feet and clapped her hands together high above 
 her head. For a full minute she kept up a shriek and 
 a leap, a shriek and a leap, like a good working engine ; 
 until, quite as suddenly, she sat down to receive the 
 congratulations of her friends. 
 
 My interest in this performance was so genuine and 
 unfeigned that the youngest exhorter, a really brainy, 
 good-looking, lithely graceful young fellow, thought 
 that I, too, hung on the verge of " an experience of 
 grace." Later, when we went out on the grounds to eat 
 dinner and he joined the circle of Aunt Hiley Ann's 
 kinfolk, I felt that my soul was being stalked like game. 
 
 When for the time being we laid aside religion like a 
 cloak and the all-day preaching settled down to its 
 dinner, corn pones, fried chicken, four-story apple 
 pies, strewed the ground like autumn leaves; and the 
 kin belonging to the different connections were gathered 
 up as though in windswept circles around different
 
 138 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 centers of bounty. But such is mountaineer hospitality 
 that the stranger in their midst is provided with food 
 from every basket. One could not offend by refusing 
 their tentatively offered gifts. Rather the stomach 
 ache than hurt one of their simple, generous hearts ! 
 So first came my bounden duty to Aunt Hiley Ann. I 
 took that sitting on a rock near her kin. Then they 
 began to levy on all the other baskets on the grounds 
 to satisfy what they must have considered an all-con- 
 suming appetite. I stood with my back against a pine 
 tree and bravely found room for choice bits of chicken, 
 slices of boiled ham and hunks of corn bread. The 
 young exhorter stood by and watched me with a stead- 
 ily growing interest and respect. I was struggling with 
 a great, juice-soaked section of dried-apple pie, a big, 
 limp triangle which gave in the middle when you 
 grasped it in both hands by the sides, and when you 
 braced its center with the palm of your hand, sprinkled 
 juice down on you from its edges. I had been consider- 
 ing its engineering possibilities and had concluded the 
 only way was to take it boldly like a dive into deep 
 water, when I felt someone's eyes fastened compellingly 
 on me; and looking across the heads of the seated 
 people, I saw the doctor from Salt Lick leaning against 
 his horse, grinning with silent mirth. A sudden anger 
 burned up through me. He recognized this but it only 
 amused him the more. Away fled my former considera- 
 tion for the people. I gave that piece of pie a level
 
 Nancy the Joyous 139 
 
 fling which sent it skimming into the pawpaw bushes. 
 Then my sense of humor came to the rescue. My 
 fingers were sticky with apple juice and I had lost my 
 handkerchief. There was nothing to do except put 
 them in my mouth like a schoolgirl, but he crossed 
 through the people and considerately offered me the use 
 of his handkerchief. 
 
 When we climbed into our buckboard and started 
 home, we discovered the young mountain preacher rid- 
 ing alongside. Aunt Hiley Ann's automobile face was 
 transported to aeroplane pride, for this was a great 
 distinction. With Alexander MacDonald, I now have 
 two men holding flirtations with my soul. 
 
 Write me whenever you can, friend o' mine. On 
 days when the mail is brought into our settlement I go 
 out to the road with my throat tickling and a hollow 
 ache in my chest. I come up close beside the carrier's 
 horse and follow the handwriting on the envelopes that 
 he shuffles, so I know, even before he hands them down 
 to me, what letters have not come. Perhaps there is 
 one I have greatly hoped to get, and my heart whispers 
 up to me that this time it has come. Yours are always 
 welcome. 
 
 Loyally, 
 
 Nancy. 
 September 4.
 
 OR some time back Alec 
 MacDonald had been 
 prophesying the visit of a 
 sister in whom Nancy was 
 to find a " Soul Compan- 
 ion." Nancy thought 
 probably she would like 
 her. She thought it, 
 however, without much 
 enthusiasm, because she and Miss Schuyler were 
 too busy to think of much aside from Swaggerty 
 and its needs. 
 
 Then he sent word that she had come ! 
 " Do you catch the huzzahs ringing through 
 it? " suggested Nancy as she read the note over 
 Miss Schuyler's shoulder. 
 
 Swaggerty, so he planned, was to hold an 
 all-day picnic for her in a cave on one of the 
 mountain-sides. " Knowing how busy you two 
 are," he wrote, " I have asked her to make a 
 cake, some sandwiches and some deviled eggs 
 for the general dinner." 
 
 140
 
 Nancy the Joyous 141 
 
 They spread the news and the settlement was 
 delighted. It was a busy season but they finally 
 arranged for Jock, a lean youth with the hook- 
 worm, to ride Wings over for her and walk back 
 himself. 
 
 It was dusk when the Soul Companion 
 arrived. They had been watching and ran out 
 to the road to meet her. Through the twilight 
 they spied on Wings' back a dump, squat vision 
 under a big hat trimmed with a collection of 
 artificial flowers. Otherwise she was all in white, 
 even to her shoes. 
 
 Nancy grasped Miss Schuyler's arm. 
 
 " Spy the shoes," she whispered. 
 
 Miss Schuyler was more dignified but none the 
 less concerned. 
 
 " I do hope she has brought others to wear 
 to the cave. I suggested what she had better 
 wear." 
 
 Meanwhile Miss Schuyler had introduced her- 
 self and the affinity whined something from 
 Wings' back. She permitted Jock, the youth 
 with hookworm, to lift her down bodily, and fol- 
 lowed them inside. 
 
 With a stranger beside her, Nancy seemed to
 
 142 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 look about upon the little cabin with a clearer 
 focus. 
 
 " Isn't this a beautiful little nest? " she asked 
 lovingly. 
 
 Blouzabella that was not her name but by 
 that time Nancy had presented her with it 
 merely remarked by way of reply : 
 
 " Did you notice how interested Jock was in 
 everything I said? " 
 
 They had on their pantry shelf a can of 
 lobster and a can of oysters. The oysters they 
 had planned to offer up in the form of a stew. 
 
 " I propose," threatened Nancy, when they 
 had a minute alone, " that we go right out on 
 the wood-pile and eat them up." 
 
 " Your Blouzabella," stated Miss Schuyler, 
 " is the kind that has never had any attraction 
 for men and feels, as the years come along to 
 her, that her last feeble grip on them is slipping. 
 She takes no interest in women and is too selfish 
 to pretend any." 
 
 " And she acts as though this were a hotel and 
 we were the dining room girls," added Nancy. 
 " If she gives me a tip I promise to put it in the 
 collection."
 
 Nancy the Joyous 143 
 
 Miss Schuyler relented and served the oysters. 
 One cannot comprehend the magnitude of this 
 generosity until he has lived forty-five miles 
 from the railroad. After Blouzabella had them 
 nearly eaten, she announced, sotto voce, that she 
 had changed her mind and did not care to go to 
 the cave after all. 
 
 Miss Schuyler grew stern. 
 
 " You will have to," she said. ' You cannot 
 disappoint the people." 
 
 When they had got Nancy's soul-mate to bed 
 they sat down and looked into each other's eyes. 
 A wrathful missionary is a very human thing. 
 Miss Schuyler declared she would make Blouza- 
 bella work, and Nancy, remembering " how inter- 
 ested Jock was in everything I said," vowed as 
 soon as Blouzabella got her eyes fastened on a 
 man to swoop down like an eagle and carry him 
 off. 
 
 The next morning she kept breakfast waiting 
 an hour and then she appeared in white, some- 
 what soiled by yesterday's trip on Wings, with a 
 pompadour as big as a bolster. 
 
 They had been so busy papering Aunt Hiley 
 Ann's cabin with old newspapers that they had
 
 144 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 worked on until " lightin' time," counting on 
 Blouzabella's offerings for part of the picnic 
 dinner. At breakfast they discovered that she 
 had not brought a thing. Meanwhile, Swag- 
 gerty, being early risers, had been ready and wait- 
 ing none too patiently to start for some three 
 hours. 
 
 Miss Schuyler, true to her word, set her to 
 making sandwiches. Then, when they got out 
 into the road and Blouzabella inquired if there 
 was not something she could help carry, in that 
 tone that implies of course there is not, the quiet 
 missionary handed her a lantern with a tendency 
 to drip kerosene. 
 
 They left the cabin with eight in the party but 
 by the time they reached the mountain there were 
 forty. First Marget and her brood joined. 
 Then they came along to the gully that led up 
 to Betsy Jane Skidmore's and found her sitting 
 along by the road edge. Betsy Jane had not 
 planned to go but the sight of them on their way 
 proved too great a temptation. She rose to her 
 feet and did some effective shouting up the 
 gorge in regard to her change of plans. They 
 next came to some men laying pump-logs down
 
 Nancy the Joyous 145 
 
 the slope, who had not heard the news of the 
 picnic, so all stopped and explained where they 
 were going. The men laying pump-logs con- 
 cluded to join in. There was a man by the road- 
 side hewing out runners for a sled, but he decided 
 that he might as well go along too. So the crowd 
 grew. 
 
 All along the way the men were speechless at 
 Blouzabella's whiteness, but when she began to 
 pick her way across the soggy creek-bottom, the 
 humor of it came to them. 
 
 'What do you think of her gyarments?" 
 Nancy overheard one man remark. 
 
 " I suppose we'll have to take her in," sug- 
 gested a man tentatively to another at the mouth 
 of the cave. 
 
 The throat of the cave was not only covered 
 with slime, but there were places where one had 
 to get down on one's knees and crawl. 
 
 " I'd hate to get her clo'es muddied," 
 drawled the other. 
 
 Its entrance was large, like a room; but soon 
 came a little arch not unlike the door of a dog 
 kennel. Here one had to creep for some dis- 
 tance. By the time the last ray of daylight was
 
 146 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 left behind it was just a big cleft deep in the 
 earth, wide and high above but narrow and rough 
 round one's feet, which led up hill and down in 
 the dark. Far in one came up against a smooth, 
 perpendicular wall like a closed door, up whose 
 face one must somehow mount. Then the same 
 cleft went on at a higher level. They carried 
 torches of red cedar, their flames lighting up the 
 white crystal walls. A film of water trickled 
 over them in places, glistening; and pendants 
 like chandeliers hung overhead. 
 
 It had been difficult to mount that smooth, 
 upright rock; but dropping down it was even 
 harder. Two of the men discovered places to 
 brace their backs against the side walls of the 
 cave and so were able to set their feet against the 
 face of the rock. Down these Nancy walked as 
 down a flight of stairs. No trained society man 
 could have found gentler ways of showing her 
 consideration than these rude mountaineers. 
 
 " And out there at the mouth of the cave sits 
 Blouzabella sniffing down on Swaggerty Valley," 
 thought Nancy in a passion of protest. 
 
 She was still voicing this sentiment when she 
 returned home. Miss Schuyler had preceded
 
 Nancy the Joyous 147 
 
 her; Blouzabella had departed on Wings and 
 they once more had the little house to themselves. 
 
 " And I shall have to spend the next three 
 days wandering around among the cabins prais- 
 ing Mr. MacDonald so as to make sure her un- 
 popularity does not injure his influence. And 
 by that time," cried Nancy in mock despair, 
 " they will be * plumb sure ' I've fixed my love on 
 him." 
 
 " Swaggerty has satisfied you, hasn't it, dear? 
 There is no other place you'd rather be just 
 now? " 
 
 " China." 
 
 Miss Schuyler smiled. 
 
 " No, seriously." 
 
 " Seriously," returned Nancy cheerfully. 
 
 They ate their simple supper. Then Nancy 
 discovered a package of mail that had been left 
 for them during the morning. She tossed it 
 on the table between them and began sorting it. 
 
 " You have a letter from the Bishop," she com- 
 mented handing Miss Schuyler a fat envelope. 
 
 Miss Schuyler slit the envelope with a hairpin 
 and carefully readjusted the pin in place. Then 
 she began perusing her letter, reading discon-
 
 148 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 nected phrases aloud after a habit she had 
 formed during lonely years as a mission worker. 
 
 " May arrange for you to come north for a 
 few months lecture about among churches 
 such a change would do you good thank 
 you " 
 
 These snatches of words were from her Bishop, 
 so Nancy stood listening to them. She and Miss 
 Schuyler shared a common life together. 
 
 The reader turned a page and went on mur- 
 muring, " Knew you would be interested one 
 of the highest honors conf errable has been 
 transferred from China considerable personal 
 danger intrigues " 
 
 " Some missionary? " 
 
 " No; a friend of the Bishop's in the consular 
 service." 
 
 Miss Schuyler laid down the sheet and picked 
 up from the table a letter that had been enclosed 
 with it. The heavy, round handwriting that cov- 
 ered the paper was as familiar to Nancy Lynn as 
 though it had been John Carter's face. 
 
 " Been transferred from China one of the 
 highest honors conf errable considerable per- 
 sonal danger " the words ran through Nancy's
 
 Nancy the Joyous 149 
 
 brain, and yet she asked no question. When she 
 found herself spelling out the sheet from across 
 the room, she shuddered and dropped her eyes. 
 For a strange, new crisis had come to Nancy. 
 Those Puritan relatives that had brought her up, 
 those birds of drab wing at whom the mirth-loving 
 Nancy Lynn had mocked, at last claimed her as 
 one of their own. Their blood ran in her veins 
 and hers began now to beat to the measures of 
 their pulses. Nancy Lynn knew that even 
 though she lived in the house with one who could 
 inform her, no questions concerning John Carter 
 would ever pass her lips. It would only be tak- 
 ing down the barriers she had been so long in 
 rearing and she would have to begin the long 
 struggle over. Then here the Puritan in her 
 was strong she had given the Crusty Old Per- 
 son her promise that once for all she was done 
 with John Carter. 
 
 Miss Schuyler was long cruelly long 
 in reading the letter but at last she laid it down 
 on the table between them. Nancy picked up 
 her own mail and attempted to lose herself in 
 it ; but whenever she turned her head which 
 was repeatedly that sheet with its bold, firm
 
 150 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 script struck her like a blinding flash of white 
 light from an electric wire. She winced 
 physically. 
 
 The Puritan in Nancy was still only a little 
 naked, fledgeling bird. It had not yet grown 
 strong in fortitude. She felt passionately that 
 it was not possible for her to live in the same 
 house with that letter. With a sudden impulse 
 for self preservation she laid her hand down over 
 it, crumpling it up into her palm. 
 
 ' You don't want that any more," she said 
 with a piteous little attempt at nonchalance, and 
 crossing to the hearth, dropped the paper on the 
 embers. She turned her back so as not to see it 
 burn. 
 
 :< Uh?" murmured Miss Schuyler without 
 looking up. 
 
 That night Nancy Lynn, chill of body, lay 
 awake and gazed wide-eyed into the dark. 
 Transferred from China. Gone. Gone where? 
 It was so like death. She remembered how when 
 a little child she had been told that her father 
 and her mother were " gone." 
 
 At length she fell asleep and dreamed that 
 she was again a lonely little child without com-
 
 Nancy the Joyous 151 
 
 panionship, swinging on Cousin Sarah Sperry's 
 gate and watching down the road for David to 
 come for her. 
 
 The next morning when she knelt on the fire- 
 stone to brush up the hearth she found among 
 the ashes a charred scrap of paper on which John 
 Carter's hand had written " Tibet."
 
 A 
 
 ND so you ha.ve planned 
 for Miss Schuyler to 
 come out on a three 
 months' leave and for 
 Nancy to stay in there 
 as her substitute ! " ex- 
 claimed Mrs. Crubb. 
 
 " No, I can't say that I 
 planned it. They planned 
 it between them. But after looking at the mat- 
 ter from all sides, I have agreed to it." 
 
 " You may call it safe to leave a young girl 
 all alone back in that nest of moonshiners, but 
 I consider it distinctly imprudent. All alone f 
 remember! Suppose she should be taken sick! " 
 " There is a good doctor within reach. You 
 forget, Mrs. Crubb, that we have a number of 
 women and girls working that way through the 
 mountain regions." 
 
 Mrs. Crubb sniffed contemptuously. 
 * Yes ; lean souls with no thought except to 
 work out their road-tax to Heaven." 
 
 152
 
 Nancy the Joyous 153 
 
 " Noble women," corrected the Bishop. 
 
 " But Nancy isn't a noble woman. That is 
 just where the danger lies. She's all fire and 
 spirit and she's beautiful beautiful ! Perhaps 
 you have never noticed it, but she is. And there 
 is something about her I don't know what 
 but there is certainly something about that girl 
 that turns people's heads. Why, my good man, 
 she has yours turned clean around. That is the 
 thing that makes it so unsafe for her. I tell you 
 that to leave that kind of a girl in there unpro- 
 tected is nothing more nor less than tempt- 
 ing not Providence it's tempting the devil 
 himself." 
 
 The world, including the Bishop, was in the 
 habit of accepting extremes from the hands of 
 Mrs. Crubb ; but now his spirit, which was quies- 
 cent rather than acquiescent in the presence of 
 his hardy old friend, straightened its shoulders. 
 
 ' You refer to her personal safety. Certainly 
 I did not give my consent for her to stay in there 
 during Miss Schuyler's absence until I had care- 
 fully investigated that. She wants to do it and the 
 doctor assures me that she is in no slightest per- 
 sonal danger. Miss Schuyler writes that Nancy
 
 154 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 is absolutely safe in Swaggerty; that she holds 
 the whole valley in the hollow of her hand; that 
 there is not a man in it who would not fight to 
 protect her. Nancy herself says, ' They regard 
 me as a kind of civic possession. When we are 
 alone they treat me like a pampered child. 
 Before the neighboring settlements they wear 
 me proudly on their front like a filigree breast- 
 pin.' " 
 
 " I can't see why she should want to stay." 
 
 " She writes that it is because she has seen the 
 light on the morning hills." 
 
 " Humph ! If you think this whim of hers to 
 play missionary-substitute is an outward and 
 visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, 
 you are mistaken. She's just got a hankering to 
 try it. I discovered while I had her here that 
 she is a regular tea-taster of life. Why, it was 
 all I could do to keep her from talking to the 
 butler. No, my dear sir, the idea of staying 
 appeals to her sporting blood. She's starting 
 out to do it just as most people start to a ball 
 game." 
 
 The Bishop read from a letter he took out 
 of his pocket:
 
 Nancy the Joyous 155 
 
 " ' I want to fill in my days with work, work, 
 work, until at night I am so tired I slip into 
 bed, turn over with my face in my arms and 
 fall asleep without a thought.' That does not 
 sound much like play." 
 
 " No," agreed Mrs. Crubb. Then she burst 
 forth vehemently, " And I suppose you wrote 
 her to put on the whole armor and work her- 
 self to death." 
 
 The Bishop looked conscious. 
 
 "I did quote " 
 
 "Of course you quoted it! Don't I know! 
 But, my good friend, if you think the whole 
 armor was built to fit a girl like my niece, you're 
 wrong. Why, she's wearing a twenty dollar 
 corset this minute and the whole armor wasn't 
 designed on those lines. Nancy Lynn is satu- 
 rated with the love of luxury, mockery, original- 
 ity; that's why she is so refreshing; that's why 
 I like the girl. This whim won't last. I'd be 
 willing to wager that right now she is sitting 
 out somewhere in the sun with the helmet cocked 
 down over one eye, beating a tattoo on the front 
 of the breastplate and singing college songs." 
 
 Mrs. Crubb's voice caught impatiently.
 
 156 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 "And here I've been planning that it was 
 getting time for her to come home. I had even 
 got to the point of saying that if nothing but 
 that young minister in there would suit her, to 
 bring him along." 
 
 " It seems to me your head is turned, too," 
 smiled the Bishop. 
 
 " No, it isn't," dissented Mrs. Crubb. " But 
 sometimes I think she has given it a bit of a 
 twist." 
 
 Now that she had been disarmed, Mrs. 
 Crubb's voice took on a note of personal 
 grievance. 
 
 " She's taken up solid reading. She wrote me 
 to send her all the books, magazines, and news- 
 papers I could find that contained anything 
 about Tibet. Tibet! Think of a girl as pretty 
 as Nancy Lynn taking to solid reading! " 
 
 "Tibet? That's a strange subject to choose; 
 but I think it is a good idea for her to do some 
 reading. It will keep her from being lonesome." 
 
 The Bishop took a memorandum book out of 
 his pocket and wrote in it : 
 
 "Nancy Tibet."
 
 RS. CRUBB was mis- 
 taken. Nancy was not sit- 
 ting out in the sunshine 
 humming popular airs. 
 Rather, when the respon- 
 sibility she had assumed 
 actually fell on her 
 shoulders, she was so 
 overpowered by it that 
 the temptation was just to curl up her fingers in 
 her lap and look down at them helplessly. 
 
 But she could not sit and curl her fingers. 
 Only the very rich or the very poor can do that. 
 What Nancy had pledged herself to was not a 
 life of idleness. Day varied from day, but the 
 duties of one of them, for example, ran thus : In 
 the morning she slipped out of bed without a mur- 
 mur at half past five; did the housework; enter- 
 tained a Primitive Baptist minister who called 
 " to have some Christian conversations " ; rushed 
 down at Uncle Lemmie's earnest solicitation just 
 in time to prevent Aunt Hiley Ann from eating 
 
 157
 
 158 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 beans, which didn't agree with her; walked two 
 miles down the valley to make a missionary call ; 
 and climbed the gully on the way home to do up 
 Betsy Jane Skidmore's chest in mustard. The 
 waning of that afternoon was spent in making 
 out mission reports. Nancy sighed laboriously 
 over these. 
 
 " It aways makes my back itch to add." 
 
 On one of these busy mornings Nancy was 
 resting along the way three miles down the road 
 when the carrier came riding up the valley with 
 the mail. 
 
 " Howdy," called up Nancy in local parlance. 
 
 " Howdy," responded the man, reining in his 
 mule. " Will you have your mail here, Miss 
 Nancy, or shall I carry it along for you? " 
 
 " What have I? " she asked curiously, coming 
 up close to the mule's side. 
 
 " Oh, right smart," he answered, drawing out 
 of his saddlebags her letters and a large package. 
 
 " I'll take them here," decided Nancy. 
 " Somebody will be going along my way and 
 carry them for me." 
 
 " 'Bye," she called after the man. 
 
 " 'Bye," he answered.
 
 Nancy the Joyous 159 
 
 Nancy seated herself along the highway and 
 undid her package. It contained the books on 
 Tibet sent in by the Bishop. She looked at their 
 titles and then, without choosing among them, 
 picked up the volume that lay uppermost on her 
 lap and began to read. There was no need to 
 choose, for she knew that she would devour every 
 word of every book. The sun swung in an arch 
 through the sky towards its afternoon time of 
 shadows, but Nancy took no heed of the hours. 
 She was no longer among the green mountains 
 of Tennessee with their lines patted round and 
 smooth by God's hand as little children pat their 
 sand hills. She was a hemisphere away where the 
 crowded, unspeakable mountains of Tibet rear 
 themselves out of infinite abysses. With heart 
 and brain functioning together as is the way 
 with women Nancy gathered bits here and 
 there from the pages and fitted these together. 
 She caught the glint of sunlight on lofty, per- 
 petual snows. She peered down over mountain 
 precipices into purple voids where no foot of man 
 could penetrate. On her shoulders she felt flay- 
 ing winds that focus in the high passes and spread 
 out again on the plateaus into sudden, gusty
 
 160 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 storms that hurl one from one's feet. And 
 because the man she loved was there, it seemed to 
 her of all lands the most desirable. She pictured 
 herself on its high, waste moors where stolid, cred- 
 ulous little folk shift their black tents ; in the cow- 
 herders' villages of three or four mud hovels built 
 on the lip of some tremendous precipice. She 
 wandered the stone-built towns where the fanati- 
 cal priesthood has collected the sparse w r ealth of 
 the country. She followed beside the traders 
 driving down to India and China their flocks of 
 tiny sheep, each bearing its little sack of borax 
 or wool or gold dust. The Crusty Old Person 
 might pledge the lips of Nancy Lynn to silence 
 but not Heaven itself could keep the loyal heart 
 of her from following him whom she loved. 
 
 Among the letters which lay unread in Nancy's 
 lap was one addressed in the Bishop's fine, dis- 
 membered, clerical hand. It was high noon 
 before she turned from the printed pages long 
 enough to open this. She did so dutifully but, it 
 must be conceded, with just a shade of impa- 
 tience. Forgive her the disloyalty. She was a 
 far traveler that day. The Bishop commended 
 her resolution to do some sound reading and
 
 Nancy the Joyous 161 
 
 trusted that she would find her chosen subject 
 interesting. Then, in order that she might get 
 a better grasp of it, he painstakingly outlined 
 for her the actual, existing political situation of 
 Tibet. In doing so, he explained, he was trusting 
 her with certain unpublished, inside information 
 with which he had recently been favored, as 
 he thought she would find these facts helpful and 
 illuminating. Nancy did find them illuminating. 
 It was at this point that she grasped the Bishop's 
 letter with both hands. 
 
 Over the vast, isolated country of Tibet, China 
 exercises suzerainty. However much China may 
 be torn by internal strife, the warring factions 
 recognize that it must still keep its hand heavy 
 upon Tibet, because here is a long monopolized 
 market for its merchandise. But other powers 
 have sniffed in it the scent of a new bone. China 
 is suspicious of the interest of Russia, which 
 hangs like a vague black shape along the border 
 of Tibet. She resents the intrusions of the Eng- 
 lish. So up into that remote, hidden country 
 China has sent a little company of men so to 
 shape affairs for her that when the crisis comes 
 she will be ready to meet the clash of events.
 
 162 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 These are two governors with their staffs, who 
 supervise Tibetan military and foreign matters. 
 And since the great arch-enemy of China is the 
 slowly encroaching British, it is necessary for 
 this band of workers to include someone who can 
 interpret events from the occidental viewpoint. 
 Therefore they have taken along with them a 
 young American, a former under-secretary of the 
 legation at Peking, who has severed his diplo- 
 matic connections and comes as a private citizen. 
 He is a quiet, earnest, thorough man by the name 
 of Carter, who has burst his chrysalis, as quiet, 
 earnest, thorough young men sometimes do, and 
 stands revealed to a small inner circle as a man 
 with the wings of ability. 
 
 It was late in the afternoon when Reverend 
 Alec MacDonald rode by and found Nancy 
 still sitting by the roadside. When, in response 
 to his greeting, she rose and came out into the 
 highway, she staggered a little as though she were 
 just emerging from a deep dream. Her face was 
 pale from the long strain of concentrated read- 
 ing, but her eyes were luminous. 
 
 The world does not realize to what an extent 
 the spirit of motherhood in some of its secondary
 
 Nancy the Joyous 163 
 
 forms is the prompting motive of its women. 
 Nancy Lynn was rejoicing that she had made 
 the sacrifice and given this man to the times. 
 This was the radiance that shone out from her 
 face. 
 
 " Why, what has happened ! " exclaimed Alec 
 MacDonald. 
 
 Nancy reached out her hand and stroked the 
 horse's neck. One does not hurry in the telling 
 of such news. An inward light it was far 
 more than a smile trembled upward across her 
 face from her lips. 
 
 " I have just been presented at court," she 
 answered softly. 
 
 " What do you mean by that? " 
 
 " I mean that I have just learned," she an^ 
 swered slowly, " that someone I once knew has a 
 voice in the making of nations." 
 
 Alec MacDonald blanched. 
 
 " Is it someone you care for? " 
 
 Nancy rubbed her hand along the satin of the 
 horse's neck, smiling softly at the childishness of 
 the phrase. Then she lifted her eyes and looked 
 them full into his. 
 
 " It is someone I love."
 
 164 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 Alec MacDonald gripped the pommel of his 
 saddle until his knuckles turned white. 
 
 " Good-bye," he said, lifting his hat; and rode 
 on.
 
 Dear Doc, 
 
 Your letter deserved to have been answered 
 some time back but you know yourself how such 
 things go. Since hearing from you I have moved 
 back into the interior. Am now in Tibet. For 
 awhile at first this high altitude keeps the low- 
 lander lying night after night wide awake in his 
 bed. When a man strikes half a dozen such 
 nights on a stretch out here in the east, it sets him 
 thinking about home. How you big-brothered 
 me when you were an upper classman and I was 
 nothing but a heady young cub. The Lord 
 knows why you did it. 
 
 Thanks for your congratulations. Same to 
 you for I hear that you are doing things in 
 your Tennessee mountains. Some of us can't 
 help feeling that you are hiding your light, for 
 
 165
 
 166 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 you were the biggest man in the round-up. But 
 you know best, of course. 
 
 I am here as an unofficial member of the staff 
 of the Chinese governor at Shigatse. Picture 
 your friend Carter living a life of imperial mag- 
 nificence. My section of the palace is more like 
 stage setting for light opera than a man's living 
 quarters. I don't think that I should be much 
 surprised if at any time a curtain should ring 
 up and I found myself standing before an audi- 
 ence with the orchestra below working away for 
 dear life. 
 
 The only person that could really appreciate 
 this place would be some nice, fresh-hearted 
 American girl, the sort of girl the Lord makes 
 only in the States, the kind that would be out- 
 wardly a bit prideful but inwardly amused by 
 it. And if He were in a particularly gracious 
 mood, He'd give her brown hair and blue eyes, 
 for I'm dead sick of sleek little black heads eter- 
 nally salaaming. The most mercenary Ameri- 
 can girl I ever met at least stood straight up on 
 her feet. Take my word for it, Doc, and make 
 the most of the blessings at hand. If by any far 
 chance one of them should wander into Tibet, I
 
 Nancy the Joyous 167 
 
 foresee that there are spells when, resolutions to 
 the contrary, I'm hers for the taking. 
 
 But, joking aside, I don't know when I shall 
 be able to set foot back there with you again. 
 Sometime, I hope. Good luck to you. 
 
 Cordially, 
 
 John Carter.
 
 ANCY saw the doctor 
 from Salt Lick every day 
 or so. Whenever he was 
 called east into the moun- 
 tains he rode there by the 
 way of Swaggerty Val- 
 ley. She knew when he 
 was coming by a clatter 
 of hoofs down the road, 
 for he always rode at breakneck speed. He kept 
 three horses and sometimes was scarcely off them 
 for days, catching snatches of sleep in the saddle. 
 When he was very hurried he stopped only long 
 enough for a minute's talk from horseback. 
 Other days he had time to sit on the doorstep 
 awhile; and when he was very tired they went 
 inside and made coffee. Then Nancy had the 
 feeling of being at a party, he was so alive and 
 companionable. There was something about this 
 doctor from Salt Lick that converted her into a 
 listener. As he told her from day to day the 
 humorous experiences of his practice, she sat 
 
 168
 
 Nancy the Joyous 169 
 
 looking at him with lips apart like a child's and 
 eyes steady with wonder, for underneath his jest- 
 ing she caught the same seriousness that she had 
 found in all the outsiders that lived in here. 
 
 ' They are all wrestling with the angel," she 
 thought. 
 
 Shortly after the settlement was left to 
 fancy's care the doctor rode over to see how she 
 was getting on as a missionary. He came pre- 
 pared to scold her in case she had lost her nerve. 
 
 He found Swaggerty full of civic happenings. 
 Aunt Hiley Ann had her brass kettle boiling 
 over a wood fire beside the creek, doing some 
 dyeing. It was such a good opportunity that the 
 entire settlement had brought articles to be 
 dipped and these hung about her over the heads 
 of the bushes. There was another center of ex- 
 citement down the road apiece where the Jeems 
 family was holding a house-raising. 
 
 " Ten by twelve and there are only three in 
 the family," cried Nancy palatially. Her enthu- 
 siasm was genuine. 
 
 " Then, too," she gossiped, " Old Man Devin 
 has moved his cow from his east pasture lot to his 
 lot at the west of the settlement. I have been in
 
 170 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 here so long now that it requires concentration 
 for me to realize that the President's trip is any- 
 where near as important as this journey of the 
 Devin cow." 
 
 She raked the coals of the fireplace forward on 
 the hearthstone into a hot bed of embers and set 
 the kettle in them to boil. Then she rose from 
 her knees and faced him. 
 
 " Two years ago, if anyone had told me that 
 the land of my heart would be just a knot of 
 smoky log houses with chimneys biasing up one 
 gable end, that I'd get down on my knees to 
 show the women how to scrub the floor, and 
 snuggle and sing lullabies to babies dressed in 
 unspeakable red calico, with my heart just break- 
 ing with pity, I should have called it a horrible 
 dream and tried to pinch myself awake. Now 
 I feel that I am beginning to discern the durable 
 satisfactions of life." 
 
 " And if anyone had told me, back in medical 
 school, what my practice was to be, I think I 
 would have thrown it up and been a professional 
 pitcher. Take the patient I have on my hands 
 now over on Indian Back. That girl had the 
 toothache, so her father took a hammer and a
 
 Nancy the Joyous 171 
 
 shingle nail and knocked the tooth out. The 
 folks over there consider the extraction an entire 
 success, but I'm afraid the girl is going to die." 
 
 " How did you happen to settle in here? " she 
 asked. 
 
 He explained simply how it had started from 
 hunting trips; but as he realized the ignorance 
 of the section, he could not escape the feeling 
 of its need of his profession. 
 
 " If you stay in here long enough you won't be 
 able to leave, either. But I am going to send 
 you out for the holidays," he said, a note of 
 seriousness coloring his voice. 
 
 " By what authority? " 
 
 " Oh, I have the authority; I've been told to 
 take care of you." 
 
 She was still sitting at the table from which 
 she had been serving him coffee. Nancy rested 
 her elbows on it and slipped her chin into the 
 cup made by the palms of her hands. She 
 scanned him mockingly. 
 
 " Then you must be my David. Can it be pos- 
 sible that I am to find David in Swaggerty? " 
 
 "Who is he?" 
 
 Nancy related to him the little story of this
 
 172 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 friend of her childhood, her face growing wistful 
 as she talked. The doctor from Salt Lick appre- 
 ciated as he watched her that this legendary per- 
 son was woven more closely through the fibre of 
 her thoughts than the girl herself realized. He 
 rose and turned slightly from her. 
 
 " No ; I don't think David is quite the role to 
 suit me. 
 
 " Nevertheless," he added in his positive way, 
 turning towards her again, " I have had orders to 
 take care of you and so I am going to send you 
 out for the holidays." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 ' Well, for one reason, it isn't fair for us 
 people in here to take advantage of you. Such 
 a thing might happen. You say that you are 
 growing to like us and our mountains you see, 
 I've amalgamated; I am part of it now. That 
 may be only because of your gift of adaptability. 
 It may be just because you are shut in with us 
 so far off from the rest of the world. We 
 mustn't be unfair to you. Go back, little girl, 
 and renew your standards of comparison and 
 then come again and judge us. That is only 
 being honest with you."
 
 Nancy the Joyous 173 
 
 " But my affections are not matters of com- 
 parison." 
 
 " Nevertheless," he insisted, " I think you 
 should go. For another reason, there is none of 
 the Christmas spirit in here ; and it would be too 
 bad for a girl like you to lose that out of the 
 year." 
 
 He went on to explain at length the nature of 
 the Christmas they keep back in the mountain. 
 He pictured to her how only ten years ago this 
 whole belt of country was a hotbed of moonshin- 
 ing, with her own settlement as its focal point. 
 Even in broad noonday the stranger who had to 
 cross the county gave Swaggerty a wide berth, 
 making a long detour of other roads rather than 
 ride through this valley. The revenue officers 
 came in squads of six or eight with some one 
 of the Swaggerty folk captured and carried 
 along as a protection against bullets fired down 
 on them on a chance from the mountain-sides. 
 
 He told her how at holiday time the old moon- 
 shine spirit always broke out. They would bring 
 in quantities of Christmas whiskey which they 
 referred to metaphorically as " Old Corn." He 
 told of such pranks as capturing folks and leav-
 
 174 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 ing them tied all night to a tree on the mountain- 
 top, of dragging people out of their beds and 
 making them dance in the road while the " pr ank- 
 ers " stood around in a circle and shot their 
 " Christmas guns." 
 
 ' Then that is all the more reason for me to 
 stay and show them what a real Christmas is," 
 insisted Nancy. 
 
 She rose and began moving about the room. 
 
 " I'd like to spend the holidays with the 
 Bishop and Aunt Crubb. As Betsy Jane says, 
 ' If I had my ruthers, I'd ruther.' " 
 
 She threw out both hands with that quick little 
 gesture of hers. 
 
 " It seems wrong not to end the year in a blaze 
 of candles and carols and Christmas greens; of 
 white tissue paper and evening dresses and light- 
 hearted people talking all at once. What I 
 should like would be Aunt Crubb's beautiful, big 
 house filled with my own kind of girls and men. 
 Sometimes it's hard for me to be a steady, plod- 
 ding example-for-good. But " 
 
 Nancy smiled upon him the particular smile 
 that meant that she was going to have her own 
 way. She was the only person who ever dis-
 
 Nancy the Joyous 175 
 
 obeyed him, which was one reason he liked her. 
 
 " But I'm not going." 
 
 To the Bishop she wrote, " Light a candle for 
 me on Christmas Day and set it in your library. 
 That will stand for Nancy." 
 
 Then she went among the people, scattering 
 suggestions, until she had all Swaggerty agog 
 talking plans for the approaching holidays.
 
 T is not often that dreams 
 come true more wonder- 
 fully even than one 
 visioned them; but this 
 was so of Nancy's Christ- 
 mas in Swaggerty. 
 
 As holiday time drew 
 near she thought more 
 and more wistfully of the 
 swell of Christmas feeling that was rising like 
 a glad tide over the world outside. A week 
 before Christmas she wanted to ride over into 
 the next valley; but they were already drinking 
 and shooting on Possum Creek and Uncle Lem- 
 mie did not think it safe to let her go. The fol- 
 lowing day there came down from the settlement 
 in the gap above them the sounds of shouting 
 and shooting, proving that the holiday " Old 
 Corn " had arrived there and the pranking 
 begun. What could one girl do at the center of 
 such a maelstrom! 
 
 If only we trust it, life always sends us what 
 
 176
 
 Nancy the Joyous 177 
 
 we need. This is a truth to hold to. In her mail 
 there chanced to be a magazine article describing 
 how a New England town hung its Christmas 
 greens on the outside instead of the inside of its 
 dwellings as a means of radiating Christmas 
 cheer. Something in the idea quickened Nancy's 
 courage. Swaggerty, she determined, should be 
 a radiating center, a luminous spot, which would 
 show this drunken, roistering mountain country 
 the true way to keep the festival of the Christ- 
 child. 
 
 First she offered three prizes fifty, forty 
 and thirty cents ! for the houses within a five- 
 mile limit whose exteriors were most attractively 
 trimmed. Not only choice but necessity de- 
 manded that the decorations should be hung on 
 the outside, for where a family of from six to 
 twelve live in a one-room cabin, the Christmas 
 " bush " must stand in the dooryard and the 
 decorations be hung on the outer walls. Her 
 plans grew. The meetinghouse was to be opened 
 and warmed as a kind of clubhouse for the 
 younger men with adventuring blood who were 
 to take charge of mounting a Christmas tree. 
 
 With the abrupt, whole-hearted enthusiasm of
 
 178 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 children Swaggerty started out to set the county 
 an example in Christmas keeping. They had 
 never before heard of such a thing as decorating 
 their houses, but they went at it with the will to 
 do. Each house was first flanked on the outside 
 with green boughs and these hung with scraps of 
 paper, bits of cloth, dead rabbits, tobacco signs, 
 anything that came to hand, provided only it had 
 color. Each house had its Christmas bush 
 standing in the yard. This did not hold the 
 family gifts there were none but just 
 formed a kind of storm center in the whirlwind 
 of decorations. 
 
 Betsy Jane Skidmore worked two days and 
 two nights without taking off her clothes, to 
 make up old newspapers into trimming for her 
 house, snipping the whole night through by the 
 light from her hearth. The art-child of her brain 
 was a newspaper rose formed of three paper 
 disks of decreasing size, notched around the edge 
 and fastened flat one upon the other. These in- 
 spired such enthusiasm that they spread like a 
 contagion. 
 
 She said, " While I set there working, I'd get 
 so happy that I'd find myself a-mumblin' and
 
 Nancy the Joyous 179 
 
 a-singin' and a-laughin' and a-shoutin' to myself." 
 
 An old woman came walking down the valley 
 to " take Christmas " with her folks. 
 
 "Sakes!" she cried, "what's took Swag- 
 gerty? " 
 
 Aunt Hiley Ann replied with lofty unconcern, 
 " Oh, we're just prettyin' up for Christmas." 
 
 The rumor of what they were doing spread 
 through the county. A man riding through by 
 the way of their road carried the news that all 
 Swaggerty was trimmed up, adding with rustic 
 humor that he " even met an old hog running 
 down the road with a twig sticking out of each 
 ear." 
 
 By this time not a soul in the settlement would 
 have got drunk. They felt that they were set- 
 ting the county an example. 
 
 So Christmas morning came and the sun looked 
 down upon them out of a clear, crisp sky. None 
 but a mountaineer mind could set a relative value 
 on the decorations, so Nancy chose three old men 
 to act as judges. By nine o'clock they started 
 out on muleback for their round of inspection, 
 wearing a pleasant touch of self-consciousness. 
 In the meantime the younger men had gathered
 
 180 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 at the " church-house " to hang the gifts. They 
 had the walls wreathed and festooned with holly 
 and a whole gleaming holly tree standing ready 
 for its load of presents. 
 
 At noon Nancy selected two of the girls and 
 three young fellows who might prove dangerous 
 ringleaders and swept them in to Christmas din- 
 ner with her. It was canned corn beef; but never 
 mind that. She did not dare let them go to 
 their homes. She had to keep her hands on them 
 all day. When the plum pudding Aunt Crubb 
 sent was brought on, wreathed in holly, she sup- 
 plied some of her guests with horns and the oth- 
 ers, at her request, whistled lustily while it was 
 cut. This shed a fascination over what they 
 knew only as the commonplace business of eat- 
 ing. A stimulating sense of danger ran through- 
 out the day. Would it be possible, Nancy won- 
 dered, to hold Swaggerty to its high standard 
 through those empty, unsatisfying hours of early 
 afternoon? 
 
 Just as her guests were scraping their saucers 
 for the last drop of pudding sauce, outside rose 
 suddenly a din and clamor. Apprehension 
 gripped at her heart. They all rushed for the
 
 Nancy the Joyous 181 
 
 door. Without adieus the three men guests broke 
 past her for the road, for there before the house 
 trooped a loose procession, shouting and chatter- 
 ing. It was Swaggerty marching down to meet 
 the judges. Such a democratic throng it was; 
 some afoot, some muleback; men, women, chil- 
 dren ; hunting dogs flanking the march with quick 
 yaps of excitement ; a cow that had got herded in, 
 and a nervous, excited hen or two that had 
 dodged in and was squawking forward in terror 
 of being trodden underfoot. They passed on, 
 leaving Nancy weak from the stress of fear 
 turned suddenly to joy. 
 
 Three quarters of an hour passed before she 
 heard the sound of their returning; shouts of 
 triumph, the shrill notes of a mountain song; the 
 punctuating blare of a tin horn. Then some- 
 where down the road broke in the ringing of a 
 dinner bell. This caught from cabin to cabin for 
 five miles up and down the valley. 
 
 Betsy Jane Skidmore said, " I was never so 
 happy in all my life. I jes' wanted to yell but I 
 thought every body 'd think I'd gone plumb crazy, 
 so I choked and swallowed it down till I thought 
 I'd bust my bosom. Then I heard the bells a-
 
 182 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 ringin' and the Lord put it into my head to sing 
 an old song my pap used to sing, ' The Heaven 
 Bells is Ringin'.' And I said, ' Children, we ain't 
 got no bell to ring but let's sing her.' So we sang 
 her: ' Oh, the heaven bells is ringin'.' It just 
 fitted the 'casion and before I knew it, I was 
 flappin' my arms and shoutin'. 
 
 ' When Uncle Lemmie come ridin' along with 
 the flag, his face just shone as he will never 
 face it to the world again. ' Children,' I said, 
 ' just look at Uncle Lemmie's face.' 
 
 " ' Oh, the heaven bells is ringin' ! ' When I 
 heard that thar horn I said, ' That's Gabriel 
 blarin' his trumpet. Seems like Swaggerty is 
 just Heaven and he's blowin' his horn. Sure the 
 Lord is in Swaggerty this day.' He was right 
 here, walkin* up and down the road. I said, 
 ' Children, why shouldn't He be here as well as 
 anywhere else? ' 
 
 The procession came up a little knoll in the 
 road to Nancy's house, the flag and the judges 
 ahead, with the crowd following; men, women 
 and children, dogs and chickens, with " Miss 
 Lynn " that was a cow named after her in 
 the center, joyously switching her tail.
 
 Nancy the Joyous 183 
 
 The Christmas bush that night was a whole 
 holly tree, the lighted candles glittering on its red 
 berries and on the gifts sent in. Nancy could not 
 reconcile herself to having it at any time but 
 night; though Swaggerty warned her that with 
 all the drinking and roistering going on in the 
 mountains this would not be safe, because of the 
 strangers who would ride into the settlement to 
 view it. Her foolhardiness prevailed; though 
 she did not realize how great a danger they 
 accepted for her sake until she learned that every 
 man in Swaggerty came to the Christmas bush 
 with a loaded revolver. For miles and miles 
 strangers came to keep Christmas night with 
 them. Perhaps they guessed at those hidden 
 revolvers; but she liked to believe that they, too, 
 caught the clean joy. However that may be, 
 from the entrance of the first visitor to the last 
 sound of a departing hoof -beat, there was never 
 a more orderly gathering than the one that 
 crowded the festive little meetinghouse to its 
 utmost. 
 
 Santa Claus was there on his first visit, in all 
 the friendly joviality of his red suit and white 
 beard. It was a part the settlement wit had
 
 184 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 never seen played, but his clumsy antics met with 
 uproarious enthusiasm. He held complete sway 
 and beamed on the little children. 
 
 Santa Claus held sway until the time came to 
 close with Christmas carols, the first carols that 
 ever Swaggerty had sung upon a frosty Christ- 
 mas night. The settlement had gathered at 
 Nancy's cabin and practiced them for days back. 
 They had been a strong bond to hold them to 
 their standard. The strength of these venerable 
 songs is in their objectiveness. Swaggerty Cove 
 really saw the guiding star; it journeyed with the 
 " three wise men from afar." If it was a trip 
 by muleback over mountain roads, what matter 
 so long as they brought the true gifts of the 
 spirit to the new-born king. But the most deeply 
 of all they loved : 
 
 " Once in royal David's city 
 Stood a lowly cattle shed, 
 Where a mother laid her Baby 
 In a manger for His bed." 
 
 To them it was no tradition dulled by repeti- 
 tion; it was fact. They knew out of their own 
 experiences the insufficiency of such shelter.
 
 Nancy the Joyous 185 
 
 They heard the rustle of the fodder and the slow 
 munching of the cattle in the dark. They knew 
 the pang and the joy of it. With tears rolling 
 down their faces they sang: 
 
 "And His shelter was a stable, 
 And His cradle was a stall." 
 
 Betsy Jane Skidmore was right. The Lord 
 that day did walk up and down the road in Swag- 
 gerty; and life after was always different to 
 those who heard the sound of His garments as 
 He passed.
 
 Dear Bishop, 
 
 I guess the whole armor was too heavy for me. 
 My poor little body is like a horse fagged into 
 balkiness. I can't make it get up and move. I 
 lie all day on a cot in front of the fireplace but 
 the flames that leap up the chimney do not bring 
 me dreams. I can't seem to care about them. 
 This is Sunday morning and my people are sing- 
 ing in the " church-house " next door, Marget 
 yelling her words chestily and Betsy Jane drawl- 
 ing three notes behind the others in her fervor 
 and croaking in her throat. But I can't even be 
 amused. 
 
 The Christmas gifts sent in to me still lie on 
 my table in their tissue paper. I just have not 
 got round to open them, because when I see them 
 I shudder and turn away. All except the locket 
 
 186
 
 Nancy the Joyous 187 
 
 with your picture in it that I asked for. I hold 
 that closed in my hand. It makes you seem 
 nearer me. 
 
 The doctor-man " stopped by " a week ago and 
 found me sitting alone in my cabin hi all the 
 glory, of my pink and violet gown, elbows on the 
 table, chin in my palms, looking straight before 
 me. But he wasn't amused at the incongruity of 
 it as I had thought I should be when I dressed 
 up. His eyes were stern from the first minute 
 they rested on me. He asked me how long I had 
 been sitting there and I said I didn't know. He 
 declared this was no place for me ; that he would 
 come himself in the morning to drive me out to 
 the railroad and send me back to the life to which 
 I belong. Then, suddenly, though really I was 
 feeling hollow and absent from myself, I began 
 to laugh and talk foolishness. I insisted that I 
 wouldn't go; that I was getting full swing of a 
 sanctified vocabulary and if I could only get in 
 three minutes' conversation with Saint Peter at 
 the gate he would let me in on my phrases alone. 
 He looked so stern that I remember getting 
 frightened and laughing and asking him if he 
 supposed the gate was a turnstile, for then I
 
 188 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 didn't stand a chance. But he just turned on his 
 heel without a word and the next thing in came 
 Marget with orders from him to put me right 
 to bed. 
 
 He has been very good ; he has been over every 
 day and sometimes his rides are so he can stop 
 twice during the day; so you must not worry; 
 and, then, I am much better. You would be sur- 
 prised, for instance, how much strength I have 
 in my hands. I can keep my fingers closed over 
 your locket the whole day without once opening 
 them. 
 
 My doctor is a great man, friend o' mine, and 
 nobody knows about him. The love of a girl 
 doesn't hinder his kind from being great. There 
 are different kinds, I find. I have another friend 
 who is going to be famous some day. I know 
 he is a busy man but yet I couldn't help believ- 
 ing that at Christinas time he would 
 
 I'm too tired to write any more; only, please, 
 Bishop, ask Aunt Crubb if she will look over her 
 Christmas mail again and see if she has not over- 
 looked something for me ; just a note or a card or 
 even a newspaper. I asked her once and you 
 please ask her to do it again.
 
 Nancy the Joyous 189 
 
 I'm in good hands, don't worry; and when I 
 get strong again I shall have nothing in my 
 heart but my work. 
 
 Annie. 
 Jan. 2.
 
 Dear Friend o' Mine, 
 
 Would you really have cared so much? Think 
 of your not going into your library for three days 
 because of the sight of a half -burned candle 
 standing there. I am nearly myself again and 
 am looking at the moon over my right shoulder. 
 
 Please tell Aunt Crubb I have that piece of 
 mail. It is just a little parchment volume, hand- 
 tooled, of glad, brave poems. I must not 
 acknowledge it; but I put it among my Christ- 
 mas gifts and they all looked so beautiful. 
 
 I have smiled over the consternation the book 
 has caused in the settlement. Marget was here 
 when I opened the package. " From the Heart " 
 is the name of the book. That does not signify 
 that they are love poems. It means only that 
 each comes as a direct, glad impulse from some 
 
 190
 
 Nancy the Joyous 191 
 
 brave heart. These are the ones he knew I would 
 enjoy: I understand. But Marget is one of the 
 few in Swaggerty who can read, and when she 
 saw the title, her jaw fell under the weight of 
 sundry conclusions which I have been unable to 
 dispel. Later in the day when I crept down to 
 Aunt Hiley Ann's cabin, I found the whole set- 
 tlement there singing, as it were, a dirge with the 
 refrain that I was going away to be married. I 
 find myself the victim of what might be termed 
 funeral obsequies. Saturday Aunt Hiley Ann 
 kills six chickens and invites everybody in. 
 
 " I love the very ground you walk on," sniffles 
 Uncle Lemmie, " and if we've got to lose you, we 
 must cook for you." 
 
 Doctor looks perplexed and says I do not 
 recuperate the way other people do but am just 
 smiling myself back into health. I wrap up in a 
 long coat and sit out in the sun looking about 
 me on the singing land. When the afternoon 
 turns to purple the valley fills up with shadows. 
 Then I have a feeling that the smile sinks quietly 
 down into the depths of me and that it will lie 
 there and grow old-fashioned, the way Miss 
 Schuyler's did. For there is style in the way
 
 192 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 of smiling. Mine won't be chic when I come 
 back. 
 
 Since I have been sick the people have treated 
 me like a pampered child. Only a few minutes 
 ago Marget came in with a bit of hard pink 
 candy. She is the grand lady of the section 
 and had bartered a half dozen eggs for some 
 sweets for herself and her brood of seven. 
 
 " But I couldn't enjoy it without I saved you 
 a piece," she said, thrusting her head in the door. 
 " I counted seven of 'em but it seemed like I 
 had eight." 
 
 So don't again dread the sight of the half- 
 burned candle, but light it and say, " That's 
 Nancy ; a f oolish little taper moulded for worldly 
 uses but trying to shine in a dark corner." 
 
 From the Heart, 
 
 Nancy. 
 January 25.
 
 SUNDAY morning came, 
 when the doctor gave his 
 permission for Nancy to 
 go back to the little 
 " church-house." It was 
 good to stand again 
 between the rude walls, 
 the mountain folk sitting 
 before her, their faces 
 lifted in rows, each lighted from within by a smile. 
 She was a girl who talked little about herself; 
 but she pictured for them something of her lonely, 
 shifted childhood; how she had grown to love 
 them in here; how this was the first place that 
 had ever held for her a feeling of home. Her 
 three months were over; Miss Schuyler was not 
 to come back and the Board had said that Nancy 
 Lynn might contract for the coming year. She 
 told them honestly how some woman fitted to 
 help them might be sent in, while now it was they 
 who were teaching her. 
 
 Betsy Jane Skidmore leaped to her feet, ten- 
 
 193
 
 194 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 derly defiant, crying, " I nigger dare 'em to take 
 you away." 
 
 They all huddled about in a close cirele, their 
 eyes caressing her and their lips trembling with 
 feeling. Aunt Hiley Ann held both her hands 
 in a hard grip. 
 
 " We'd rather go on taking care of you." 
 
 So Nancy Lynn stayed. 
 
 After the year makes the turn at Christmas, 
 the suffering in the mountains is from the cold. 
 It is not the snow that harasses, but the frosts 
 and the biting winds. They keep the flames roar- 
 ing in the fireplaces but these warm only a small 
 circle of the dead cold that lies in the houses. 
 Most of the cabins have no windows, so it is nec- 
 essary to leave the door open all winter to let in 
 the light. It was bleak and cold in the mornings 
 when at five o'clock Nancy crept out of bed. She 
 did her morning housework, tiptilting on her toes 
 to keep the blood in them, constantly blowing on 
 her fingers to keep them warm. But her dis- 
 comfiture was nothing compared with that of the 
 women and children who went up before the 
 break of dawn to pull fodder or break new 
 ground in the steep-sloping fields. Many of
 
 Nancy the Joyous 195 
 
 them walked barefooted through the frost. 
 When Nancy looked out of her windows in the 
 morning dark, high up in the clearings the bon- 
 fires at which they warmed themselves gleamed 
 like low-hung stars. 
 
 So the winter wore on. 
 
 One afternoon in the early dusk the doctor, 
 who had stopped in passing, had risen to take 
 leave. 
 
 " You never told me whether or not you like 
 my book," he suggested, pausing by the table. 
 
 "What book?" 
 
 He lifted a volume just high enough to slant 
 its title towards her. 
 
 She read, " ' From the Heart.' 
 
 " Did you send me that book? " 
 
 " Yes. I expected you to go for the holidays, 
 you remember, and I planned it so you would get 
 it at Christmas-time." 
 
 Nancy stood silent, looking down at the vol- 
 ume, which had come to her readdressed in Mrs. 
 Crubb's handwriting. 
 
 " Didn't you like it? " begged the doctor. " I 
 thought it would appeal to you." 
 
 "Yes; I did. It cured me. That was what
 
 196 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 I was thinking about the days I sat out in the 
 sun getting well." 
 
 " I felt sure it would please you dear," he 
 added tentatively. 
 
 But Nancy Lynn did not hear him. 
 
 She threw a long coat around her and walked 
 down the path with him to where his horse was 
 tied. Here she delayed his leave-taking. She 
 felt a sudden dread of being left alone. When 
 finally he had mounted, she laid her fingers 
 lightly over his bridle-hand. Her face looked 
 up at him through the dusk like a flower. 
 
 " If a girl told a man, straight-out, that she 
 jilted him because someone else could give her 
 silk stockings to wear, she needn't expect to hear 
 from him, need she? " 
 
 " Hardly." 
 
 "Of course not; she just mustn't expect it." 
 
 The doctor from Salt Lick smiled down at 
 Nancy's little feet clad against the cold in home- 
 knit woolen stockings and heavy shoes. 
 
 " Would you like silk stockings? " 
 
 " No, I loathe them ! I loathe silk stockings ! " 
 
 There was nothing melodramatic about Nancy 
 Lynn. Her strain of Puritan blood, which was
 
 Nancy the Joyous 197 
 
 beginning to assert itself, would not have per- 
 mitted her to indulge in heroics. After he had 
 gone, she fastened the long coat about her and 
 went on down the trail in the dusk, seeking 
 human companionship. The child she found 
 strayed and crying in the dusk, she gathered up 
 and quieted in her arms. 
 
 " No, I can't come in," she called, setting the 
 little one on its own threshold. 
 
 She untangled a hunting dog that had got 
 knotted up in its leash. So she worked her way 
 a mile down the valley road. 
 
 Here she came on a group of folks at the 
 mouth of a gully, burning out some limestone 
 for the lime. But their axes lay idle, and no one 
 was minding the pile rearing its brilliant crest 
 of flames in the dark. A common curiosity hud- 
 dled them all into a close knot which was sil- 
 houetted against the orange flare. 
 
 Nancy pushed her way in among them, 
 
 ' What is the matter? " she asked as one with 
 authority. 
 
 "It's a letter " 
 
 " to all us folks." 
 
 " about you."
 
 198 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 " from somebody who calls hisse'f David." 
 Nancy snatched the white sheet from the man 
 who was laboriously trying to read it aloud. She 
 did not even turn to the beginning but com- 
 menced to read where her eyes first fell. 
 
 " When her father and mother died they gave 
 her to me. She is the most precious thing I have. 
 It is because she loves you that I am letting her 
 stay there; but I charge you to watch over and 
 keep her for me ; and God will bless you in doing 
 it, even as He has richly blessed me in her. 
 
 " Hubert Davidson."
 
 /3/<: /^- 
 
 Right Reverend Hubert Davidson. Dear 
 
 I don't know what to call you. I am a little 
 afraid of you to-night, with the joyful fear of a 
 beautiful vision. So you are David! 
 
 Are you really David? Then as a lonely child 
 I have kicked my cousins in the shins in your 
 name and cried myself to sleep with your name 
 between the sobs. And now a grown girl I hold 
 out both my hands to you. 
 
 I shall try harder for your sake to grow such 
 a woman as mother was. 
 
 Annie Laird Lynn. 
 February 12. 
 
 199
 
 Dear Doc, 
 
 You remember the silver-mounted medicine 
 case you sent me just before I came out. You 
 will be interested to know its fate. But first 
 I'll have to explain a bit. 
 
 The situation here is grave, with an inevitable 
 crisis not so many years ahead. It is a big coun- 
 try with undeveloped mines and a considerable 
 market for trade. England and Russia are each 
 trying to reach in and get a hand clutched before 
 the rest of the world wakes up to what they have 
 been doing. On account of the suzerainty of 
 China over Tibet, our staff superintends its mili- 
 tary and foreign affairs, while its civil and 
 religious departments are in the hands of a 
 cabinet of priests. These priests distrust the 
 
 Chinese, so between the two departments there 
 
 200
 
 Nancy the Joyous 201 
 
 is little cooperation; in fact, smothered hostility. 
 From the first I have maintained that this is 
 the gravest peril; that it is necessary at all costs 
 to establish internal peace founded on confidence 
 and fair play. 
 
 To accomplish this our department needs to 
 win over the backing of the priesthood. There 
 are two Holy Men; though, as a matter of fact, 
 since his flight before the English, the Dalai 
 Lama does not count with the people. That 
 leaves only the Tashi Lama. He is what the 
 Pope is to the Romanists, only he controls a 
 greater number of people and controls them more 
 entirely because they are so blackly ignorant. 
 He resides here at Shigatse. I chose this town 
 instead of Lhassa, where the other Chinese gov- 
 ernor is stationed, in hopes of opening a way 
 towards effecting a union. 
 
 On our arrival both the Governor and I sent 
 messengers of state asking for audiences but 
 received no recognition. I came near to accept- 
 ing this move as blocked, but yesterday, to 
 my great satisfaction, the Tashi Lama's chief 
 munshi came with the announcement that he 
 would give me an audience to-day. The escort
 
 202 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 arrived for me about mid-morning. We rode up 
 the mountain for a quarter of an hour, came to 
 the main entrance in the wall surrounding the 
 lamasery, dismounted and proceeded on foot 
 through a village of monastery buildings to the 
 Tashi Lama's dwelling. His chief secretary re- 
 ceived me in a room full of idols in cases of solid 
 gold. He is a man with a manner of solemn 
 dignity and conviction, helped out by his gor- 
 geous robes. 
 
 From there we went into a dim main hall where 
 we waited the summons. Through a central 
 opening in the high ceiling the daylight crept in. 
 In the shadows along the walls stood cases of 
 gold. At the far end of the hall were idols before 
 which stood a long table with sacrificial offerings, 
 lamps and burning incense. Now and then bare- 
 headed, barefooted lamas in red togas crept 
 around to snuff the lamps and set the incense 
 sticks straight. I tell you, Doc, the overpower- 
 ing mystery of such a place in time could drug a 
 man. 
 
 Finally we were summoned and made our way 
 along stone corridors to the anteroom where the 
 secretary whispered in my ear to prepare myself;
 
 Nancy the Joyous 203 
 
 then he left. The door ahead swung open. For a 
 minute I couldn't see a thing. 
 
 In there I found a man. 
 
 In contrast to the magnificence we had been 
 through, here was a great, bare room, half roofed 
 over and half open to the sky like a yard. There 
 were no idols, no furniture; just the stone floor. 
 In one of the window recesses was fixed a bench 
 and on this sat a figure in the coarse red gar- 
 ments of his humblest monks. 
 
 I bowed in the doorway and advanced until I 
 stood before the bench where sat the most vener- 
 ated person in the whole world. Imagine my sur- 
 prise to find him a young man of my own age. 
 It took me some time to grasp this because of his 
 smile the most penetrating, the gentlest smile I 
 have ever seen on a man's face. 
 
 He held out both hands and motioned me to 
 be seated on a bench near. Then he began to 
 talk through the interpreter. He inquired about 
 our journey in from China, about America and 
 about the countries of Europe, especially about 
 their kings and emperors. He was so simple, sit- 
 ting there in his window recess and looking out 
 over the valley of Shigatse, that it was hard to
 
 204 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 keep in mind that he has more power than any 
 king on earth. He governs the thoughts of all 
 the Buddhists. 
 
 We had the Tibetan ceremony of tea drinking 
 and exchanged gifts. He is believed by the 
 people to be the reincarnation of the great doctor, 
 Tsong Kapas, so I had brought your medicine 
 case as the most appropriate article in my pos- 
 session to offer. While I held it in my hands 
 explaining its parts, he held both of his under- 
 neath them. As we bent over it together, such is 
 his gentleness and simplicity, it seemed merely 
 that we were two young men of an age interested 
 for the time in the same thing. 
 
 I repeatedly rose to leave but each time he 
 motioned me to be seated, until I had been there 
 three hours. He has ordered another audience 
 for next week. 
 
 Of course it stands for a good deal politically 
 but I don't seem to focus on that phase of it 
 yet. That extraordinary quiet man up there lays 
 hold upon one personally. He braces one to go 
 ahead and do things. And primarily he gives 
 one poise ; a determination to slough off whatever 
 engenders bitterness. " If thy right hand
 
 Nancy the Joyous 205 
 
 offend thee, cut it off," is the thought his pres- 
 ence seems to breathe. 
 
 I wish you could have been there. 
 Here's to the success of the thing you want 
 most. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 John Carter.
 
 HE year wore on towards 
 spring. It was different 
 now that Nancy was 
 really the " worker " in 
 Swaggerty. As Mrs. 
 Crubb had said, for three 
 months she had merely 
 played a game, just as 
 she had played games all 
 her life. But now when she tried to pray she 
 was not very good at it she put her face into 
 her hands and then found herself repeating 
 that she had Swaggerty to lead for a year. It 
 quieted her. The doctor understood the differ- 
 ence. Instead of setting her tasks among his 
 sick, he kept begging her not to work so hard. 
 But the people did not realize that she had 
 changed, for her feet still danced in the sunshine 
 and her quick, glad young laughter sounded up 
 and down the mountain road. That was, per- 
 haps, most of all the miracle that she worked, 
 for Swaggerty became a center of happiness, of 
 
 206
 
 Nancy the Joyous 207 
 
 good will. This was the rumor of it that spread 
 abroad throughout the county. The little moun- 
 tain children, who had never known what or how 
 to play, had singsong games to weave and chant 
 in the sunshine. Their elders caught the habit 
 of joviality over their work. The mail carrier 
 began to smile expectantly when he turned into 
 the long road down Swaggerty Valley. Even 
 the doctor no longer hurried through but would 
 sit sideways in his saddle and laugh until the set- 
 tlement rang. 
 
 Marget was one of Nancy's especial friends, a 
 big woman with the complexion and eyes of a 
 girl. She was twenty-eight and had seven chil- 
 dren whom she managed without any particular 
 sense of responsibility. You could hear her a 
 quarter of a mile down the road, laughing care- 
 freely or singing out of tune at the top of her 
 voice. For one whole day she and Nancy 
 amused themselves in off moments by stealing 
 Aunt Hiley Ann's preserves. Besides Marget, 
 Aunt Hiley Ann had another daughter with 
 whose help they so arranged it that each time 
 they would be caught just as they were depart- 
 ing with the jars.
 
 208 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 " They're such foolish little jokes," said Nancy 
 to the doctor almost beseechingly. " But these 
 are my children and it's just a little woman- 
 knack of making them happy. I do it just as a 
 mother puts her hands up before her face and 
 plays ' Boo.' " 
 
 Swaggerty took the Bishop's charge to care 
 for her literally. One day a man who came 
 down from off the ridge was ordered out of the 
 settlement for " profane cussin' and swearin'." 
 
 " It's not for the like of Miss Nancy's ears 
 and we won't have it in Swaggerty," they said. 
 
 " Sometimes I feel sorry for the Crusty Old 
 Person," thought Nancy. " I wish I could take 
 him among the cabins and show him that after all, 
 life with all its efforts and ambitions is just our 
 chance of winning love." 
 
 About a mile down the road a steep gully cuts 
 down the side of the ridge, meeting the highway 
 at right angles. It is a barren, worthless tract, 
 with scrub trees growing among its profitless 
 ledges and a tiny thread of water trickling down 
 in the steep, sharp bed of it. Here in a kind of 
 sub-settlement by themselves lived Betsy Jane 
 Skidmore and three other families of her kind.
 
 Nancy the Joyous 209 
 
 Aunt Hiley Ann and M^rget represented social 
 position but Nancy Lynn clung equally to the 
 gully folk. They were crop-sharers; that is, 
 they owned no land but squatted in the hollow 
 and worked on shares anywhere up and down the 
 mountains. 
 
 The imaginations of the gully folk took for 
 their special possession Nancy's aunt, Mrs. 
 Amelia Crubb, raising her to dizzy heights of 
 elegance. It came through Nancy's giving one 
 of their children a red-globed lantern such as 
 Mrs. Crubb used to decorate the verandas of her 
 summer home. He was a sorry little chap with a 
 hip disease. When all the other children trooped 
 off with their elders into the fields to crop it or 
 up into the mountain to break ground, he stayed 
 alone in the gully crippling over the rocks. It 
 kept Nancy anxious for fear he might stumble 
 on the ledges when he was alone in the early 
 morning dark. This lantern was so light that 
 he could carry it in his hand against the stick of 
 his crutches. It wrung her heart to see him, with 
 his new feeling of possession and expansion, lord- 
 ing it over the gully. 
 
 The morning she carried it up to him they
 
 210 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 sat side by side on the doorstep of his home, for 
 all the world like two rock birds on the edge of 
 a high-perched nest. The land fairly slid away 
 from under their feet in the dizzy slope it made 
 to the valley. When they raised their eyes and 
 set them to level gazing, it was like taking flight 
 into a sky filled with purple mountain-heads. 
 
 As they sat thus, warming themselves in the 
 noon sunshine, she told him the story of how her 
 Aunt Crubb had many such lights as the one he 
 held swung down in between his knees, and how 
 on summer evenings she hung them up in rows 
 around her house. 
 
 A couple of days later when Betsy Jane Skid- 
 more dropped in to pay Nancy a visit, this story 
 returned to her, like bread cast on the waters; 
 but so thoroughly had it been adapted to the con- 
 ditions of gully life, so clipt of wing, that Nancy 
 scarcely recognized it. In the center of an extra 
 large log house sat Mrs. Amelia Crubb in a 
 straight- backed, splint-bottomed chair in a state 
 of extreme elegance, too haughty even to cross 
 the floor and poke her own back-log. Betsy 
 Jane went so far as to put it, " or knock the 
 ashes out'n of her own pipe." The four walls
 
 Nancy the Joyous 211 
 
 about her were starred with colored lanterns. 
 They could not conceive of anyone's hanging 
 them on the outside of a house. 
 
 Every evening for many nights this one little 
 red-globed light was hung on a peg and as many 
 of the gully folks as could crowd into the cabin, 
 sat down to look at it in imitation of Mrs. Crubb. 
 
 "Just listen," commanded Mrs. Crubb; and 
 read the Bishop an account of it. This picture 
 of herself amused Mrs. Crubb. 
 
 " c Too proud to knock the ashes out'n her own 
 pipe,' " she chuckled with appreciation. Yet 
 somehow she was flattered. 
 
 ' You might call me the cherubim of the gully. 
 Their idea of me is just about as close as the cher- 
 ubim come to reality. But think of that child 
 telling them about me! " she added wistfully. 
 
 " Let me tell you what I have been thinking 
 over lately, Bishop. To build " here Mrs. 
 Crubb went off into a rehearsal of plans. " It 
 would cost about " and she gave a schedule of 
 sums which showed that she had already been 
 consulting some professional. "I'm going to 
 make Mr. Williams help me. We two could do 
 it and never miss the money. The next time
 
 212 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 your Miss Schuyler comes to the city, bring her 
 over and I'll call Mr. Williams and we'll talk 
 the matter over with her."
 
 T WAS a wild Wack night 
 with a hurricane of wind 
 blowing down the valley. 
 Nancy drew the curtain 
 aside and peered out, but 
 not a single light gleamed 
 back at her from the 
 blackness. 
 
 " I must be the only 
 one astir in the settlement," she thought. 
 
 She drew her table out into the center of the 
 room and set herself to cutting out some sewing. 
 She was not often nervous but that night 
 possibly because of the all-predominating rush 
 of the wind down Swaggerty Valley a sense 
 of apprehension and a womanish craving for 
 strong arms of protection dried her eyeballs and 
 tightened at the muscles of her throat. 
 
 She was working with her face towards the 
 firelight and her back to the storm. With a sud- 
 den flap the door behind her swung open and a 
 draft of wind rushed past her up the chimney 
 
 213
 
 214 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 flue. She turned quickly to close it so that the 
 smoke would not be sucked back into the room, 
 and found herself confronting two strange men. 
 Back in there, folks enter a house without 
 knocking. 
 
 ' What do you want? " she demanded appre- 
 hensively. 
 
 " Old Pete Crodell is sick. He wants you 
 to come pray over him." 
 
 Pete Crodell was a mountain roustabout, one 
 of those insidious middle-aged characters who 
 cling on to the spirit of youth and by some per- 
 sonal charm make themselves the moving spirit 
 in the carousals of their juniors. The doings 
 and the misdoings of him and his followers were 
 known to Nancy by report. But the mountain 
 mind is a breeding place for sudden religious 
 spasms ; so she felt no further mistrust. 
 
 Slipping on a long coat to shield her from the 
 storm, Nancy Lynn lighted her lantern and went 
 with the two strangers down the big road. They 
 kept it for two miles along the valley and then 
 began to climb the ridge up the cleft of an old 
 washout. The night was of the thick blackness 
 into which one would put out the hand to feel
 
 Nancy the Joyous 215 
 
 a way as along a blind wall. A sudden heighten- 
 ing of the wind at times seemed to snatch the 
 very breath out of the mouth and rush away 
 with it. The trail up the old torrent bed was 
 merely a succession of jagged, unexpected foot- 
 holds. Here the lantern was an imperative ne- 
 cessity. Because she needed both hands for climb- 
 ing, one of the men carried it for her, holding 
 it low so as to show her places to set her feet. 
 Sometimes when they came to the flat face of a 
 precipice, she gave him both her hands to help 
 her up. So at last they topped the ridge and set 
 their feet into an easy winding path. Then 
 she saw she was being led to " the pond." 
 
 Up where the mountain-tops cluster together 
 like low, rounded hills lies a shallow pond of 
 water and about it, in the pockets of the hills, 
 are three or four cabins. The last moonshining 
 and consequently the high carousing of the 
 immediate section was carried on here. The 
 Swaggerty folk knew all about it and sometimes 
 late in the night they heard young fellows 
 screaming and shooting down their valley from 
 the pond. But the mountain folk never inter- 
 fere with one another's affairs.
 
 216 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 In the wild blackness before them, Nancy saw 
 a red square of firelight that designated the open 
 door of a house. As they neared it, she could 
 even see the play of the firelight on the walls and 
 catch the urge of voices. This picture ahead of 
 them, like something anticipated, filled one of 
 her two guides with haste and elation. The other 
 the one that had carried her lantern and helped 
 her climb the gully stopped, foot-still, in the 
 path. 
 
 " I say, Miss "he began penitently. 
 
 The silhouette of a man came anticipatingly 
 into the glare of the door and the volume of 
 voices increased. Nancy was swept along into 
 the house as though a demon of the wild night 
 had laid hands on her and pushed her in. 
 
 The hearth was piled dangerously high with 
 firewood and Nancy Lynn stood blinking in 
 the middle of the room until the sudden hurt of 
 the light in her eyes eased down. Then, backed 
 around the walls of the room, she discovered a 
 solid phalanx of strange men, grinning at her, 
 and she knew that she was caught in the trap of 
 some horrible mountain joke. 
 
 " Here's the man what wants you to pray over
 
 Nancy the Joyous 217 
 
 him," said one from along the wall, impatient 
 for the fun to begin. 
 
 A loud guffaw followed his remark. 
 
 He kicked forward. Nancy followed the 
 direction indicated by his boot and looked down. 
 Against her very feet lay old Pete Crodell, dead 
 drunk. His coat had been put on him wrong 
 side out; chicken feathers had been twisted into 
 his hair; one half of his face had been blackened 
 with charred wood and the other half painted 
 red with mountain clay. 
 
 " He's the man who wants you to pray over 
 him," repeated a voice at her back. They seemed 
 obsessed with this one sentence. 
 
 Nancy turned her head in the direction of the 
 last speaker and in so doing, swept with a glance 
 a whole half circle of them, their eyes focused on 
 her, their faces leering. 
 
 The line of men had now shifted across the 
 doorway. The only spot of refuge free from 
 them was the hearth, blazing high with flames. 
 Nancy shrank towards this, cowering before the 
 sudden revelation flung up into her very face of 
 the polluting depths of hellishness that exist in 
 human nature.
 
 218 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 A low laugh ran round the circle. 
 
 At the sound something whether anger or 
 fear or courage rose within her. She slipped 
 off the long coat she wore and threw it over Pete 
 Crodell, covering him from head to feet and blot- 
 ting out from sight one object of their wild, cruel 
 humor. Thus she stood, its sole victim. Then she 
 stretched out her trembling hands above him and 
 prayed. 
 
 Nancy Lynn did not know what words she 
 used any more than she knew what was the next 
 step they had planned for their terrible comedy. 
 Even while she spoke, horrible black rumors of 
 things done in the drunken mountain frolics 
 filled her mind. She caught the play of the fire- 
 light on the white dress she wore and remembered 
 with a pang the half-burnt taper in the Bishop's 
 library. 
 
 In their midst, with hands outstretched, Nancy 
 Lynn pleaded the cause of them that mocked. 
 
 The grimaces died on their faces, like lights 
 blown out. She heard a half-drunken sob beside 
 her. 
 
 " And me oh, save me, too! " she cried sud- 
 denly, closing her fingers over her palms con-
 
 Nancy the Joyous 219 
 
 vulsively; and darted between them out into the 
 night. 
 
 Flying down the footpath, she brushed against 
 the man with the lantern. His stomach had sick- 
 ened of the joke and he had not gone inside. 
 
 " Wait, wait, miss. I'll see you get back safe." 
 
 She ran only the faster from the sound of his 
 voice, her feet catching and stumbling. Her one 
 blind desire was for home. He strode along, 
 keeping pace with her and swinging the light so 
 that the rays fell before her feet. When they 
 came to the gorge, he held out his hand and she 
 put hers into it, though she could not have 
 spoken to him. She half ran, half slipped down 
 the old torrent bed, so that she was bruised and 
 torn before she reached its foot. As soon as she 
 dropped down into the big road with Swaggerty 
 ahead, she began to run again as though she were 
 alone. 
 
 When he handed the lantern back to her at 
 her door, he said repentantly, 
 
 " Us fellows hate it that we plagued you. 
 You needn't be feered of us nary again." 
 
 But it was all too fresh for assurances to salve. 
 She threw herself face down on her bed, her eyes
 
 220 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 hidden in her arms, and lay there till daybreak. 
 
 By that time Swaggerty had heard the news 
 and gathered at her door in a wrathful group. 
 
 " And us promised him we'd take care of her," 
 sobbed Aunt Hiley Ann. 
 
 The men wanted to ride at once up the ridge 
 and do some shooting; but standing pale in the 
 doorway before them, Nancy insisted on their 
 civic responsibility; that they should forget her 
 and think only of the welfare of the section. 
 Swaggerty was bent on having the moonshining 
 center raided, but agreed to leave it to the courts. 
 It was a new state of mind for Swaggerty, but 
 she held them to it. 
 
 " Perhaps I have given them a bad case of self- 
 righteousness," she thought. " They are step- 
 ping high and looking down on less law-abiding 
 settlements."
 
 OR a week Aunt Hiley 
 Ann had been ailing. 
 The doctor from Salt 
 Lick and Nancy fought 
 shoulder to shoulder but 
 this time without avail. 
 One morning she died 
 and that afternoon they 
 buried her. 
 
 By one o'clock the fence across the road held 
 a row of grizzled men, whittling solemnly and 
 gazing unswervingly in through the open door 
 at the preparation. Nancy's place was over by 
 the doorstep with the women and children. At 
 last Betsy Jane Skidmore thrust her head out 
 and beckoned. The men slid down off the fence, 
 closing their jackknives with a snap. The women 
 hushed the little children against their breasts. A 
 solemn hush fell over all. 
 
 The coffin, nailed over with an old black dress 
 skirt, passed out the door through an aisle of 
 waiting folk, and turned up the road, borne on 
 
 221
 
 222 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 the shoulders of four men. The rest dropped 
 into an irregular line behind it, swaying from 
 foot to foot because of the slow pace it set them. 
 They were awe-struck, all of them, by the mys- 
 tery of the thing that moved ahead. 
 
 Suddenly, like the snap of a pistol, a shriek 
 arose, then another and another. The swayings 
 of the marching people grew wilder. A low 
 moan rumbled in their throats, gathering volume 
 and rhythm. A voice in high falsetto broke 
 out into a fierce dirge and others followed. It 
 was a frantic, primitive lament rising naked to 
 Heaven in jagged, precipitous notes, with omi- 
 nous pauses, tightening the throat. 
 
 ' We are traveling to the grave 
 For to lay this body down. 
 Our fathers say they're happy, 
 Oh, they're happy in the Lord ! 
 For the last time that we heard them speak 
 'Twas about their Heavenly home, 
 'Twas about their Heavenly home. 
 Oh, the new Jerusalem." 
 
 The coffin was brought to a halt along the 
 road ; someone let down the bars and they began
 
 Nancy the Joyous 223 
 
 climbing a steep mountain slope where one must 
 husband the breath. The singing stopped. They 
 climbed up the slippery, sunburnt grass and over 
 the ledges, minding their steps until in the corner 
 of an airy clearing they came upon a burying- 
 place. 
 
 There they found a man standing up to his 
 shoulders in an open grave. He had thrown his 
 mattock out on the mound of new earth and was 
 eating an early apple from the tree above him. 
 The people set down the coffin and seated them- 
 selves around on the rocks, waiting while he 
 nipped the last bite off the core and tossed it 
 backward over his shoulder. A branch broken 
 from the apple tree measured the coffin and the 
 grave, which was found short. Swaggerty 
 focused its interest on the practical and watched 
 while all was made fit. 
 
 Then once again they turned from the com- 
 monplace and faced death. The coffin lay open 
 on the ground, the kinfolk kneeling about it. A 
 mountain exhorter stood over them and preached. 
 It was unguided ignorance looking up into the 
 face of God leaning close down above them. 
 
 Gray rainclouds, gathering, festooned them-
 
 224 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 selves from mountain-top to mountain-top. 
 Lifting his perspiring face, the mountain ex- 
 horter discovered these. 
 
 " Folkses, it's going to rain," he exclaimed. 
 ' We must hurry about this. If any of you want 
 to look your last at her, come on." 
 
 With the contracting circle Nancy Lynn drew 
 near. There on a patched bedquilt, her sunbon- 
 net on her head, lay Aunt Hiley Ann. Along 
 beside her lay her knife, her pipe and some bits 
 of candy. Nancy turned away with a tightening 
 at her heart. There lay one who had been her 
 friend. 
 
 Through the long, slant rain they groped 
 their way back down the mountain-side, leaving 
 Aunt Hiley Ann swung into her grave on run- 
 ners of wild grapevine. The rush of the storm 
 was still beating down upon it when N ancy Lynn 
 reached her own lonely cabin. She found the 
 fire out on the hearth and the room cold and 
 smelling of ashes. Not even a letter from David, 
 as she now called the Bishop, could make the 
 place cheerful. She stirred the embers until 
 a few blue tongues of flame shot up. Then she 
 rose and looked quickly about her as though
 
 Nancy the Joyous 225 
 
 somewhere present in the chill damp of the place 
 stood a Crusty Old Person. 
 
 " Our chance to live before we go down to the 
 grave, that is what we all ask," she cried rebel- 
 liously. " No one has the right to take that away 
 from us humans. It is what we are here for. 
 There is nothing in all eternity that can make 
 up for the loss of loving down here on the green 
 fields of earth." 
 
 She threw out both her hands appealingly. 
 
 ' Why mayn't I climb the heights to my great 
 man and build a little fire at his feet so when 
 he is tired he can bend and warm his hands beside 
 mine ! How has anyone the right to tell me that 
 I must not! "
 
 HE months rolled by and 
 brought again the season 
 of tawny, sunburnt grass 
 and low-hanging hazes. 
 
 One morning Nancy 
 opened her eyes while 
 day was still purple. She 
 stretched up her arms, 
 rejoicing in a little 
 wakening strain that ran along them. 
 " It's Thanksgiving Day," she cried. 
 When she had done combing her hair, she 
 leaned towards the glass, giving the braids a few 
 last pats into shape. 
 
 " And my David will slip his sanctified feet 
 under somebody's dinner table and eat some- 
 body's turkey. Being a bishop, he'll probably 
 have the white meat." 
 
 She drew a quick, anticipative breath and 
 resolved to keep the whole day for herself. To 
 Nancy Lynn, even being selfish carried with it 
 a sense of adventure. 
 
 226
 
 Nancy the Joyous 227 
 
 In the early morning she closed her door 
 behind her with a pleasant, running-away-from- 
 school excitement and leaving Swaggerty behind 
 climbed up across an open field of broom sedge. 
 At a cabin which stood in front of the lowest 
 fringe of timber, she stopped long enough to 
 snuggle the newest settlement baby. Its mother 
 greeted her eagerly with the news that they had 
 named it Castoria. She had found the name on 
 a bottle and thought it pretty. 
 
 Nancy allowed that it was. " And it encour- 
 ages such a breadth of selection. * Vanilla ' 
 would be good, or * Tapioca.' ' 
 
 Then up, up, up, she climbed among the 
 timbered ledges, the dried leaves singing under- 
 foot, the water oaks and gum trees rustling their 
 brown leaves against her shoulders, the crisp, 
 blue, friendly sky looking down into her face 
 between the pillars of stark timber. By mid- 
 morning the rises and dips of the trail brought 
 her to where Betsy Jane Skidmore's house stood 
 with one foot swung rakishly over the bluff of 
 the gully. 
 
 Betsy Jane exclaimed softly with delight when 
 she saw her coming. Being an early riser, she
 
 228 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 was just setting out her midday meal. As they 
 two together spread out hoecake, molasses, but- 
 termilk and dried beans cooked in lard, Nancy 
 smiled to herself, rejoicing with a kind of deep- 
 seated joy, as though it were a pleasant secret, 
 that this was to be her Thanksgiving dinner. 
 She had a knife and spoon to eat with ; Betsy had 
 a fork and Timothy, the son, used his jackknife. 
 It was not at all bad, except for the taste of 
 raw lard in the beans. 
 
 " And that's a mere trifle," thought Nancy ex- 
 pansively. " All one has to do is to specialize 
 on hoecake." 
 
 They lingered long over the scrapings of 
 molasses on their plates, for she and Betsy Jane 
 had so many things close to their hearts to talk 
 about. 
 
 A rollicsome spirit filled Nancy Lynn that 
 morning. She grasped her knife and spoon, one 
 in each hand, like an unmannered three-year-old 
 and beat a noisy tattoo up the table in the direc- 
 tion of Betsy Jane. 
 
 "This is Thanksgiving Day!" she cried 
 jubilantly. 
 
 "What's that?"
 
 Nancy the Joyous 229 
 
 " It's a Yankee day, when we stop and count 
 our blessings. What are your blessings, Betsy 
 Jane?" 
 
 "We-ell," deliberately, "I reckon that this 
 here valley is the civilizest country of any to live 
 in. You hear of shootin's and killin's all 'round. 
 You can't have a newspaper read to you that you 
 don't hear about 'em. But we haven't any sich 
 goin's on. Folks is all alike 'round here. All we 
 want is something to eat and something to wear. 
 I'd like a good dress to put on but if I ain't got it, 
 it don't worry me none. I tells myself you might 
 just as well keep handy and happy with the Lord 
 as to drag along 'cause of sich." 
 
 Nancy's eyes glowed on her with appreciation. 
 
 Betsy Jane warmed up to the subject of 
 blessings. 
 
 " And I hear Preacher MacDonald has a new 
 call," she gossiped. 
 
 "A fine, big one!" replied Nancy, who had 
 secretly bespoken it from the Bishop. 
 
 " He's a likely young exhorter but looks like 
 he took a turn and this here climate didn't seem 
 to agree with him." 
 
 " No," agreed Nancy profoundly. " And now
 
 230 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 listen, Betsy Jane, while I tell you my latest 
 blessing! " 
 
 She went on eagerly to relate how the Bishop 
 had written her that he was going to send a friend 
 of his in to visit her. " She can stay only a fort- 
 night," he wrote, " but I think the companion- 
 ship will do you good. She has just returned 
 from abroad, where she has been studying music, 
 and I suggested that she bring her violin in with 
 her." 
 
 " After Europe I don't know how I shall 
 manage to entertain her; but it will be so cozy 
 to have another girl facing me across the table. 
 I grow so enthusiastic planning for her." 
 
 " So that's why you are so happy to-day," 
 said Betsy Jane Skidmore shrewdly. 
 
 Nancy nodded her chin and beat two noisy lit- 
 tle fists on the table again. 
 
 " Yes, that's why I am so happy," she cried 
 joyfully.
 
 S THE doctor rode along 
 Swaggerty Valley in the 
 windy dusk, the flare of 
 Nancy's hearth shining 
 through the windows 
 beckoned him off his 
 horse. In response to his 
 knock, came the cheerful 
 lilt of Nancy's voice. 
 Inside he stopped short. There was the log- 
 sided room whose every detail he knew by heart, 
 the rag rugs, the few bright pictures pinned 
 against the walls, the two blue platters on the 
 hearth-shelf. That night he found there a 
 strange young woman with a figure moulded 
 in long, lithe, deliberate lines. Her poise was 
 the expression of an unconsciously conscious 
 feeling of her personal distinction. It sug- 
 gested that she was in the midst of her 
 surroundings but not of them, as a princess of 
 the blood is trained to hold herself. 
 
 The doctor from Salt Lick looked quickly 
 
 231
 
 232 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 around the room to make sure that it held for 
 him Nancy's good comradeship. He found her 
 buttoned up in a long apron, kneeling before 
 the fireplace at some cooking. 
 
 " Good evening, Sunnyside." That was his 
 name for Nancy. 
 
 She sprang to her feet, holding out a hand. 
 
 " You'll have to take the left one. The 
 other's smudgy." 
 
 After he had been presented to Margaret 
 Lincoln, they two stood looking down upon 
 Nancy browning turnovers in a hearth baker. 
 Nancy, with her head bent down, was secretly 
 smiling with pride. She had never before seen 
 the doctor in the role of a society man and she 
 felt a sense of personal gratification in his ease 
 and surety of manner. 
 
 " He never did that for me," she thought with 
 a chuckle not unlike her Aunt Crubb's. 
 
 Miss Lincoln had one arm outstretched in a 
 delicate curve, so that it rested by the merest 
 touch of the fingertips upon the mantel. She 
 bent slightly so as to follow Nancy's move- 
 ments. 
 
 A fireplace baker is made with three iron legs
 
 Nancy the Joyous 233 
 
 so as to stand in a bed of hot embers drawn 
 forward upon the hearth-rock. Its cover has a 
 
 ""* 
 
 basin-like depression into which hot coals are 
 shoveled from time to time so that it will get 
 an even heat above and below. 
 
 " It is like making mud pies," suggested Miss 
 Lincoln, watching Nancy filling a fresh supply 
 of embers into the cover. 
 
 Nancy lifted a flushed face. 
 
 " Yes," she agreed cordially, " only there's 
 more responsibility and it's warmer," rubbing 
 the back of her wrist across her forehead. 
 
 " Here, let me lift that for you," said the 
 doctor, reaching for the pothooks. 
 
 He removed the cover and they bent their 
 heads together and peered in. 
 
 " Done." 
 
 " Done." 
 
 They two were versed in fireplace cooking. 
 
 " How interesting," said Miss Lincoln. 
 
 " They taste good," answered the doctor, 
 hanging the pothooks back on their nail. 
 
 But the meal that followed was not in all 
 respects a success. Society life is made up of 
 social rites, which are a passing good substitute
 
 234 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 for the real thing life. The chance meals the 
 doctor and Nancy had eaten together in that 
 little room had been made gracious and orderly 
 by a feeling of comradeship ; but by some strange 
 alchemy Miss Lincoln managed to convert this 
 dinner into a social rite. Every time Nancy 
 lifted her teacup, she set it down gingerly lest it 
 should rattle. And yet she had conceived a 
 genuine admiration for the stranger. When 
 Nancy was not waiting on her, she was covertly 
 admiring her and her clothes. Simple as Miss 
 Lincoln's dress was, it was a wonderful revela- 
 tion of her figure and her personality. Nancy 
 had forgotten that there were such clothes. 
 
 Miss Lincoln and the doctor talked easily of 
 Europe, where each had done considerable 
 traveling. 
 
 " But I have just come back from the East. I 
 have been spending a little time in Japan." 
 
 " Oh, did you go to China? " cried Nancy. 
 
 " Yes. I had such interesting letters of 
 introduction that I went over for a little while. 
 The Bishop got them for me. I was surprised 
 to find " here she turned her attention from 
 the doctor to Nancy " what a man of influ-
 
 Nancy the Joyous 235 
 
 ence, secular influence, the Bishop is. I had 
 understood, of course, that he is widely known ; 
 but I had always thought of him merely as an 
 ecclesiastic. But I have been discovering that 
 he has influence in educational affairs and in 
 matters of state. He has a large circle of in- 
 fluence in appointing young men to fill different 
 positions. They tell me that he is extremely 
 severe in his exactions. They say he recom- 
 mends none but absolutely the right man for the 
 right place and that when once he has used his 
 influence for a young fellow he is really merci- 
 less in the way he holds him up to standard. 
 Ultimately, of course, it is best for the man and 
 for progress in general." 
 
 Nancy's cheeks flushed. It sounded like a 
 criticism of her Bishop. 
 
 " I have never found him exacting," she 
 answered. 
 
 ' These gentle souls are apt to be severe," gen- 
 eralized Miss Lincoln, dismissing that phase of 
 the subject. 
 
 She smiled upon Nancy with an extra touch 
 of sweetness in her aloofness. 
 
 " I am engaged to one of his cousins. That
 
 236 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 is why he has taken such an interest in me." 
 
 " You have my good wishes," answered Nancy 
 genuinely. " Mine always follow where the 
 Bishop's go." 
 
 Miss Lincoln now turned to the doctor. She 
 managed, somehow, to convey an impression of 
 gentle reproof to Nancy, as though she felt that 
 their conversation had grown over-personal and 
 had excluded him. 
 
 " I ran over to Japan to prepare for the 
 coming season. I have my first engagement to 
 sing in opera this winter a Japanese theme 
 and I thought it well to go and get the local 
 color." 
 
 Miss Lincoln was too much of a woman of 
 culture to say this egotistically. She was offer- 
 ing it asr interesting conversation. She gave a 
 quick sketch of the plot of the opera. 
 
 ' Would you like to get an idea of the music? " 
 she asked graciously, rising and glancing 
 towards her violin. While they two drew the 
 table back against the wall, she tuned her instru- 
 ment, fingering it lovingly. Nancy turned out 
 the lights. Miss Lincoln fitted the violin under 
 her chin and touched two or three first bird-notes
 
 Nancy the Joyous 237 
 
 from it with her fingers. She moved dreamily 
 towards the hearthside through the great rays 
 of light and shadow which fanned across the 
 ceiling and walls. Then the notes of her music 
 began to rise through them, filling the room with 
 the mingled beauties of sight and sound. Now 
 and then she sang softly as she played. 
 
 For an hour, as one wrapt, Nancy Lynn 
 listened and looked. This young woman was a 
 product of human culture, a generalization. 
 Her form was corseted into lines that repre- 
 sented a generalization of womanly beauty. 
 The expression of her face was held in a gener- 
 alized graciousness and repose. The very artis- 
 tic emotions that floated upward on the wings of 
 her music were generalizations of human experi- 
 ence. For the time being Nancy lost sight of 
 the fact that God, who stands beyond human 
 culture, is a particularizer. She felt rustic 
 in her individualized interest in Marget and 
 Betsy Jane and Betsy Jane's son, Timothy. 
 
 When the doctor rose to leave, Nancy fol- 
 lowed him out into the dooryard. 
 
 " Doctor-man," she said with a shake of the 
 head, " you and Swaggerty and the good Bishop
 
 238 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 have been making me vain; but I'm cured. I'm 
 stubby and over-enthusiastic and I give instead 
 of accepting. It isn't ladylike." 
 
 The doctor took this for a joke and laughed. 
 
 ' Yes," she continued convincedly, " only this 
 morning on the upper trail Mittie Jeems stopped 
 me and said, ' Law, I don't see how you can stand 
 it to comb your hair every day. It almost kills 
 me to comb mine once a month.' I can look 
 back now and see that I actually felt flattered. 
 And just look at it!" she cried, rumpling it 
 viciously under her two palms so that a mist of 
 little curls came tumbling down around her face. 
 
 She drew him forward a couple of steps so 
 that he could look with her through the window 
 at the girl within. 
 
 " That's the way it ought to be done. I glory 
 in her. If I were a man I'd be wild about her." 
 
 " Would you? " he answered. " I wouldn't." 
 
 The two girls left alone together, talked for 
 an hour in the wavering firelight, seeking com- 
 mon interests and reaching out tendrils of friend- 
 liness. Then the fire had died down to a glow- 
 ing bed of embers. While Miss Lincoln packed 
 her violin back in its case, Nancy slipped into
 
 Nancy the Joyous 239 
 
 the guest chamber to fold down the bed covers. 
 There on the dressing table, amid a litter of 
 toilet articles, stood the photographs of two men 
 the Bishop and John Carter.
 
 My dear Bishop, 
 
 You could not help it, either of you I know 
 that because she is lovely. I don't blame you ; 
 Oh, I don't! But why didn't you tell me before 
 you sent her in? 
 
 I am going to run away from Swaggerty. It 
 is cowardly, but I don't care. I guess I've used 
 up all my pluck. 
 
 I 
 
 How would I have hindered his progress more 
 than she? And why haven't you told me that you 
 are the Crusty Old Person? 
 
 I played you a square game. 
 
 Nancy Lynn. 
 
 240
 
 HY, what is the matter?" 
 exclaimed the doctor a 
 couple of mornings later 
 when he stopped for a 
 few minutes in Swag- 
 gerty Valley. 
 
 He closed a lean 
 brown hand over Nancy's 
 wrist and drew her off 
 into the sunshine at the side of the house. 
 " Now tell me all about it." 
 The sunshine was clear, unfriendly and piti- 
 lessly revealing. It poked its fingers along the 
 clay daubed in between the logs of the house- 
 walls, hunting for places where the mud had 
 begun to fall out in ragged chunks. It threw a 
 searchlight on the hard-baked earth of the door- 
 yard, bald of any single spear of grass. It 
 showed where the chickens had scratched for 
 worms and where they had burrowed holes in the 
 yard in which to dust and sun themselves. 
 " Now tell me all about it." 
 
 241
 
 242 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 " I'm jealous," whispered Nancy huskily. 
 " She's stolen my bishop and my diplomat." 
 
 " There is a bishop, of course; but do you 
 really mean there is a " 
 
 Nancy's eyes welled full of tears. 
 
 Brusque man as he was, work among his sick 
 had taught him the tenderness of a woman. The 
 doctor took Nancy's face between his two hands 
 comfortingly, as though she might have been a 
 child ; but as he looked down into it, gradually his 
 own grew tense. He bent and kissed her once on 
 the hair just above the line of the forehead. 
 
 The doctor's practice was shamelessly neg- 
 lected the fortnight following. He brought over 
 one of his saddle horses and left it in Swaggerty 
 for Miss Lincoln's use. They spent hours 
 together in a sheltered nook in the bottom land 
 where the creek flows through the settlement. 
 Here she brought her violin and played for him. 
 Swaggerty watched with an interest, not alto- 
 gether approving. 
 
 " The doctor seems to have taken a loving for 
 the foreign woman," they commented, " and we 
 all thought he had fixed his heart on Miss 
 Nancy."
 
 Nancy the Joyous 243 
 
 In this way Miss Lincoln was in the cabin with 
 Nancy only long enough to eat and sleep; and 
 at last a morning dawned when the doctor drove 
 her out of the valley to the railroad. 
 
 Then Nancy dragged out her trunk and began 
 taking her pictures down from the walls. It 
 was slow work, for she moved listlessly. She 
 made innumerable journeys from her book- 
 shelves, her dressing table, her clothespress, to 
 the open trunk. Sometimes she seated herself 
 on the edge of it, wondering where to go with it 
 when finally she had it packed. Evening found 
 her still at her task. 
 
 Then Betsy Jane Skidmore came bustling 
 excitedly in with the news that Marget's boy was 
 dying; so Nancy left everything and went. 
 
 She found the dusky little cabin blurred with 
 awe-struck faces and stifling with the odor of 
 human bodies. For the first time since she had 
 been in the mountains her whole soul revolted. 
 
 They had the little fellow terrified. Oh, why 
 do people make things that cannot possibly be 
 helped, harder than they have to be! She made 
 them all move back against the walls and knelt 
 down by the bedside, lifting the little fellow into
 
 244 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 her arms. She could not have said to him the 
 solemn things they wanted of her. His was 
 only a little bud of a soul and she could not pry 
 it open with her fingers. So she told him in 
 whispers about Boy Blue and Bo-peep and about 
 the sleepy sheep that come over the hill, over the 
 hill. One by one they watched them over the 
 brow and down the slope until he raised himself 
 with a little shudder and fell back dead in her 
 arms. 
 
 Nancy would not have lost control of herself 
 if she had not been so very tired. Then, too, the 
 Bishop had hurt more deeply than she knew. 
 With her arms stretched out across that little 
 dead baby she sobbed aloud. She could hear the 
 people shuffle back from her against the wall, 
 whispering. She cried and cried until she felt 
 that her heart broke. After that one doesn't 
 cry. When she staggered to her feet it was all 
 different. She had let go her hold on every 
 dream she had ever dreamed since first she 
 hugged a doll up in her arms. As she stumbled 
 across the room with her hands held out to 
 Marget, the mother, it did not seem to matter 
 much where she went or where she stayed.
 
 My dear Bishop, 
 
 I am sorry I was rude to you. You did play 
 square. 
 
 At first when I discovered that you are the 
 one who forced me to give him up, it made my 
 hands unsteady and my head dizzy to think that 
 you would hurt me so. But now I can look at 
 it as a bargain and see that you have kept your 
 half of it. And I give you my word of honor 
 that I have never once failed to keep mine. 
 
 When I think of you and these last days I 
 think of you most all day long my heart gets 
 shouting up at me that you were honest in it, 
 until I say, " Yes, yes, I know it. Only do keep 
 quiet." It may even be that you did not know it 
 was I, for I wrote only to your secretary. Per- 
 haps he thought I was just a high-tempered girl 
 
 245
 
 246 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 and spared you from hearing about my letter. I 
 know I should have saved you all I could. 
 
 I'm not going to run away. I'm going to stay 
 right on in Swaggerty. They are so good to me 
 in here. 
 
 Annie Lynn.
 
 HE settlement that lies up 
 in the far pocket of the 
 mountain sent a hurried 
 rider down to Nancy 
 Lynn with word that a 
 tree had fallen on Mittie 
 Jeems' husband while he 
 was out logging; so she 
 saddled Wings at once 
 and started on the long climb over the ridge. 
 
 On her way down again the darkness over- 
 took her; but she and Wings rode on through 
 it, trusting to their homing instinct to guide 
 them. But when she found Wings standing 
 nose to nose with a cliff she realized that they 
 had strayed off the trail into the timber. She 
 did not dare press on through the blackness, for 
 Wings was such a sentimental old mule with a 
 fondness for hanging musingly over the edge 
 of precipices. As the snakes were numerous 
 that season, the only thing for Nancy Lynn to 
 do was to hitch Wings and climb into the 
 
 247
 
 248 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 branches of a tree to spend the night. She made 
 herself as comfortable as possible with her back 
 against the big trunk and her hair coiled around 
 her throat for warmth. It was not so cramping 
 along at first; but as hours wore on she decided 
 with a wry smile that as a matter of practical 
 details, the life of a bird is not all that poets 
 sing it. A host of unused muscles began to feel 
 sore from the long strain of balancing herself. 
 
 Through the all-enveloping darkness she 
 heard over the crest of the hill on its opposite 
 slope, the cries of men's voices and the yelping 
 of dogs, so distant that the sounds came to her 
 thin and sweet. It may be that Nancy Lynn 
 dropped off into a doze, for the next thing she 
 knew they had topped the ridge directly above 
 her and she caught the snap of undergrowth and 
 the yip of dogs pottering around on false trails. 
 
 Then a hound began to whimper and cry. 
 Nancy knew the meaning of that as well as did 
 the dogs. It was the alarm signal of a fresh 
 scent. Its effect was instant and electric. The 
 hounds bunched and then scattered, heads down, 
 through the underbrush. Instantly the night 
 was filled with frenzied music, the cries of men,
 
 Nancy the Joyous 249 
 
 the half-wail, half-yelp of dogs. Down the 
 ridge they came straight for Nancy Lynn. She 
 drew her skirts up about her and peered down 
 into the blackness below her, which had now 
 become a circle of clamoring yelps. As a torch 
 drew near, her eyes picked out of the dark a 
 ring of open red mouths baying up at her excit- 
 edly. Then someone thrust a torch up into the 
 branches to see the opossum they had treed. 
 
 "Why, it's Miss "Nancy! Law, Miss 
 Nancy! " they shouted. 
 
 But Nancy Lynn saw only one face among 
 them. She blinked hard, suddenly afraid that 
 she had become a vision-seeing saint. The next 
 minute she slipped down out of the branches 
 into the arms of her dream and found them very 
 real. 
 
 " John Carter! " she cried. 
 
 It was inconsiderate of the hounds to hit 
 another scent at that particular minute, for the 
 mountaineers were torn between two centers of 
 interest. But the urgent barking of the pack 
 won out and they two were left with only a four- 
 teen-year-old standing open-mouthed under a 
 torch.
 
 250 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 Her cheek was pressed against his ; they spoke 
 with their lips close together. 
 
 " And you cared all the time, Nancy? " 
 
 "I've hungered and thirsted for you," she 
 whispered. 
 
 "But you told me " 
 
 ' That I wanted to wear silk stockings," with 
 a sobbing laugh. " Oh, had they only let me, I 
 would have followed you barefoot over the 
 rocks." 
 
 He drew her forward into the circle of torch- 
 light where he could scan each dear, remembered 
 feature. 
 
 " They're still just as blue." 
 
 " But what brought you in here? " 
 
 " You." 
 
 Then he began to explain in his thorough 
 way. 
 
 " I came out to try to get hold of some maps 
 of Tibet. We have got to get maps of the 
 country. France has some and Germany; and 
 Sweden has nearly a thousand sheets of survey. 
 Then, of course, when I was as near as Sweden, 
 I ran over to the States. But it was really due 
 to a friend of mine over at Salt Lick. He wrote
 
 Nancy the Joyous 251 
 
 the Bishop there was some misunderstanding 
 that was wearing on you. You had said some- 
 thing about a secretary and the Bishop got the 
 story from him. And there was I, already on 
 my way home. I came through with the hunters 
 so as not to lose an hour's time in reaching you." 
 
 " The doctor! " murmured Nancy. 
 
 " As fine a man as walks the earth! " 
 
 The note of hearty, untroubled friendship in 
 which these words were spoken told her that 
 neither Carter nor the Bishop had detected the 
 doctor's sacrifice. It was not Nancy Lynn's 
 right to break the man's silence. So this much 
 at least life gave these two to share alone 
 together. Nancy drew away and stared into 
 the darkness in the direction of the lonely man 
 among his books and drugs at Salt Lick. 
 
 " Greater love hath no man than this, that he 
 lay down his life " she whispered to herself. 
 " Oh, before I leave, I must go to him and tell 
 him that I understand; that I, myself, know 
 what that means." 
 
 " I have some good news to take Doc," con- 
 tinued Carter, drawing her back to him. " Mrs. 
 Crubb and Mr. Williams are planning to build
 
 252 Nancy the Joyous 
 
 a hospital in here and endow it. There are to 
 be two nurses, one for the ward and one to go 
 around among the cabins. They have been 
 planning it out with Miss Schuyler." 
 
 The small boy under the torch wished they 
 wouldn't get together that way and whisper. 
 
 " And I thought you were going to marry 
 
 Miss Lincoln," murmured Nancy contentedly. 
 i 
 
 " But she's engaged to my cousin, Arnold 
 Carter. I sent that photograph to Arnold by 
 Margaret and she kept it around because she 
 thought it looked like him." 
 
 The small boy could restrain himself no 
 longer. 
 
 " Where y'u goin', Miss Nancy? " 
 
 Nancy turned with a quick gasp of surprise. 
 
 "Oh!" she said, "I'm going to Tibet for 
 awhile, I suppose. It really doesn't matter 
 where." 
 
 Just then the figures of the hunters loomed out 
 of the darkness. Against the black wall of the 
 night they stood in a friendly, curious circle. 
 The dogs nosed a way in between them and lay 
 down on the ground at Nancy's feet, with 
 tongues lolling out.
 
 Nancy the Joyous 253 
 
 " Be y'u goin' away from us, Miss Nancy? " 
 asked one of them. 
 
 Nancy Lynn looked around upon the ring of 
 mountaineers with a warmth of genuine friend- 
 ship. She stood lithely straight like a gypsy in 
 the flare of the torch. Deep in her eyes lay a 
 subtle something all her own that beckoned to 
 men, luring them on like an adventure, to the 
 fresh, glad joys of living. 
 
 " Yes," she answered. " My feet are in the 
 trail again; only now it is just a long, straight 
 path leading across the world to the sunset."
 
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