The 
 Maid He Married 
 
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 fiLUE CLOTH BOOKS
 
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 THE MAID HE MARRIED
 
 BLUE CLOTH BOOKS 
 
 OLIVER IVERSON 
 
 His adventures during four days 
 and nights in the City of New 
 York in April of the year 1890 
 by Ann Devoore 
 
 A LITTLE LEGACY AND OTHER STORIES 
 by Mrs. L. B. Walford 
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 by Harriet Prescott Spofford 
 
 A JUNE ROMANCE 
 
 by Norman Gale 
 
 A HEAVEN-KISSING HILL 
 
 by Julia Magruder 
 
 HERBERT S. STONE AND COMPANY 
 CHICAGO AND NEW YORK
 
 The 
 
 Maid He Married 
 
 Harriet Prescott Spofford 
 
 HERBERT S. STONE AND COMPANY 
 
 CHICAGO AND NEW YORK 
 
 MDCCCXCIX 
 
 /T3 
 
 is-\ 
 
 jT
 
 COPYRIGHT 1899, BY 
 HERBERT S. STONE & CO 
 
 THANKS ARE DUE TO MESSRS. HARPER 
 
 AND BROTHERS FOR THE COURTESY OF 
 
 REPUBLICATION
 
 The Maid He Married 
 
 One world is as large as another to 
 those that are in it, and events of the 
 smallest nature, if they are close 
 enough to the eye, can shut off the 
 great sun himself. 
 
 It was not, however, by any means 
 a small event that had made a stir in 
 Mrs. Grey's family. It was one with 
 far-reaching results. For Joseph- 
 ine's Aunt Josephine had committed 
 the inconceivable folly of marrying 
 again. Inconceivable because, as 
 Mrs. Grey said, a woman past forty 
 could not expect and need not pre- 
 tend love, especially for a person 
 she did not know six weeks ago ; and 
 she had already sufficient income for 
 the narrow village life, and was not
 
 2 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 driven to the crime, as her sister 
 phrased it, through want. 
 
 But Josephine's aunt did not look 
 at the affair at all in that light. She 
 had been a good wife to the shop- 
 keeping deacon, who, if he filled her 
 small early ideal, had, on the whole, 
 been a disappointment to her ca- 
 pacity for growth. She had saved 
 and spared with him for years, years 
 in which, however, she had always 
 pitched her housekeeping on a some- 
 what higher key than that of any one 
 else in the place; where Dr. Madden, 
 and the minister had always found 
 her companionable. But, neverthe- 
 less, she was dissatisfied. She had 
 desired something beyond this, a 
 different life ; one, at any rate, that 
 could better meet her instinct for 
 the beautiful, her fancy for luxury. 
 The monotony of the years, the 
 poverty of thought and of occurrence 
 were stupefying. She felt herself 
 sinking to the level of an animal
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 3 
 
 existence. She saved herself, she 
 imagined, by letting the larger life 
 of the world of wealth and state con- 
 trol her thoughts. 
 
 She had had time to read much of 
 this great world, and she knew how 
 one should conduct one's self in it, if 
 one were only there. And now, 
 having taken the bold step of going 
 to a not very distant town to collect 
 a small debt, she had found herself 
 in the house with a something more 
 than middle-aged gentleman of 
 leisure, whose carriage had broken 
 down while he was driving through 
 the hills with a party, the others of 
 the party having gone on and left 
 him with his servant, and a fracture 
 of the ankle, and a very sore and 
 angry spirit. 
 
 That Frances had not waited for 
 him was a source of indignant feel- 
 ing with Mr. Applegate; that she 
 could have been so indifferent to 
 his pain and his loneliness out-
 
 4 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 raged him. It is true that Daniel 
 was of far more service. But it 
 was the duty of Frances. Yet, of 
 course, it was not to be expected that 
 she would leave a company where 
 an English earl made one, for the 
 sake of any old father. Mr. Apple- 
 gate revised his politics on the spot, 
 and if there had been a faction with a 
 platform proposing the abolition of 
 English earls, he would have voted 
 its straight ticket. As he could not 
 do that, he did the next best thing, 
 and made Daniel's life a burden to 
 him, although previously he had felt 
 it greatly to Daniel's credit that he 
 was an Englishman. 
 
 Straightway, when Josephine's 
 aunt had taken in the situation, she 
 saw her opportunity. She delayed 
 in the place beyond her first inten- 
 tion. She showed a kindly sympathy 
 in a gentle, womanly way that was 
 very acceptable. She amused Mr. 
 Applegate with a gift of mimicry she
 
 5 
 
 had. She told him stories. She let 
 him tell stories to her. She flattered 
 him quietly, and more by hint than 
 by token. She read to him. She 
 commented on the daily news in a 
 rather large-minded fashion. She 
 made him feel awake and alive and 
 pleased with himself pleased, too, 
 with a certain piquancy in her rustic 
 air, and her still rather remarkable 
 beauty. She brought him wild flowers 
 from her rambles, and knew things 
 about them unknown to him. And 
 when he made a wry face at his 
 tisanes and potages, she begged to 
 be allowed to oversee the preparation 
 of certain toothsome messes after her 
 own recipes. In fact, she rendered 
 herself so agreeable, prolonging her 
 own stay as if she were there only 
 for the mountain air, that he asked 
 himself seriously why he should not 
 secure such a pleasant, cheerful, 
 wholesome, capable companion for 
 the remainder of his rather lonely
 
 6 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 days, pestered out of his life as he 
 was by Frances and Laura. It is 
 true that Frances and Laura were 
 married, and off his hands ostensibly ; 
 but, for all that, they had not 
 relinquished their old rule, and their 
 father frequently had occasion, re- 
 membering his youthful studies in 
 physics, to recognize that, so far as 
 the government of him and his house 
 was concerned, what was lost in 
 velocity was gained in force by them 
 through the possibilities of their 
 marriages. And presently he asked 
 Josephine's aunt the same question 
 that he had asked himself, pressing 
 his suit as she retired from it, and 
 although finally carrying the day, 
 yet feeling that he did so with diffi- 
 culty. 
 
 "It is not," said Mr. Applegate, 
 "as if I were a poor man. My 
 children will have no right to object 
 to anything I do. There is plenty 
 for all. Fortune has been kind to
 
 7 
 
 me fortune, and my father, and my 
 grandfather, and the stock market. 
 I am a very rich man, you know ' ' 
 
 "You are not rich enough to buy 
 me," said Josephine's aunt. 
 
 "By Heaven!" said Mr. Apple- 
 gate. "It takes a woman to twist a 
 man ' s meaning ! I said nothing of the 
 sort! Do you suppose " 
 
 "I suppose," she said, laying her 
 soft, cool hand on his, "that you will 
 never get well if you excite yourself 
 in this way. ' ' 
 
 ' ' You excite me ! I beg you to 
 share my home, my fortune ; I offer 
 you settlements, and you say ' ' 
 
 "No, indeed, I don't say " She 
 interrupted him, smiling. 
 
 "That is the truth," he muttered. 
 "You don't say!" And then she 
 brought him a light for his cigar. 
 
 "I am an old man," said Mr. 
 Applegate, presently, looking at the 
 end of his cigar a little sadly. "I 
 mean, I I am getting to be an old
 
 8 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 man. My daughters Well, love 
 goes down, not up, you know. Not 
 that I complain. They are good 
 girls, well established. But I con- 
 fess I have thought what home 
 might be in these coming days if a 
 woman, a cheery, happy woman, 
 pleasant to the eye, whose voice was 
 music, whose touch was like velvet, 
 as yours is ' ' 
 
 ' ' Ah, yes, ' ' she sighed. " It is not 
 natural. It is so sad to be alone. I, 
 too, have had dreams dreams of a 
 home," she said, resting her hand- 
 some head on her shapely hand, as if 
 looking into the heart of the dreams, 
 "where I was the sunshine " 
 
 "Yes, the sunshine," said Mr. 
 Applegate. 
 
 And neither of the reprobates 
 remembered just then their youth. 
 
 "It is absurd," said Josephine's 
 aunt. "At my age." 
 
 "I do not consider it absurd at my 
 age," said Mr. Applegate.
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 9 
 
 "With all the world laughing," 
 said she. 
 
 "Let those laugh that win," said 
 he. 
 
 And Mr. Applegate won. And he 
 called in the clergyman, and mar- 
 ried her upon the spot; a little afraid 
 of Daniel, but warmed by that func- 
 tionary's apparent approval, and 
 possibly the least in the world grati- 
 fied by the thought that Frances 
 would rue the day when she drove 
 on and left him alone. He was 
 obliged for some weeks yet to 
 remain where he was, weeks in 
 which he found himself very well 
 pleased with his quite debonair and 
 delightful wife, going abroad with 
 her afterwards for a rather extended 
 European tour, where, taking hold 
 of the new life with all the grace 
 and strength that might have be- 
 longed to her youth, she made fine 
 friends, managed to have herself 
 presented at more than one court,
 
 IO THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 and saw and absorbed much that 
 stood her in good stead when they 
 returned and she was installed among 
 the lares and penates of her hus- 
 band's home. 
 
 Triumphant and happy as she was 
 in many ways, yet Mrs. Applegate 
 did not find that the roses strewing 
 her path were without thorns. Her 
 husband's people did not receive her 
 with open arms, so to say. Frances 
 had had to take her family out of her 
 father's house, where she had lived 
 since her marriage, in order that 
 Mrs. Applegate should come into it ; 
 and she was so decidedly inimi- 
 cal as to make it unpleasant; and 
 none of the other gentle-mannered 
 and distant individuals gave her 
 much chance of conquering them 
 with kindness, as she had meant to 
 do. But as Mr. Applegate an- 
 nounced with emphasis that those 
 who did not like his behavior could 
 drop his acquaintance, and as few, in
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED II 
 
 view of future financial possibilities, 
 wished to follow that course, there 
 was an adaptation to circumstances 
 with sufficient outward show to 
 escape his criticism. But Mrs. 
 Applegate had a certain comfort in 
 knowing that it was not those old 
 days of stiletto and goblet, when the 
 grasp might press the spring of 
 Borgian rings with unpleasant re- 
 sults upon the unwelcome hand. 
 Not that any of these good people 
 would have done such a thing for 
 the world and all the worlds; but 
 their tears, had some one else done 
 it, were problematical. 
 
 Although it was not to be open 
 war, still this sort of armed neutral- 
 ity was not what a social, cheerful 
 person like Mrs. Applegate coveted. 
 And, moreover, she had to confess, 
 Mr. Applegate himself was not all 
 that fancy had painted him when it 
 had seemed worth while to make 
 herself so invaluable to him in the
 
 12 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 mountain cottage, where the vast 
 purple masses stood like a wall be- 
 tween them and the world and its 
 carping. If, indeed, she had not 
 painted anything very godlike, yet 
 she had hardly dreamed he could be 
 so abrupt, so lordly, so changeable. 
 For what Mr. Applegate wanted, he 
 wanted now ; he stormed on occasion, 
 and exploded in strong language fre- 
 quently. Sometimes he hated his 
 people; but it was not safe to pre- 
 sume on that, for just as often he 
 loved them. Sometimes his sons-in- 
 law were reckless spendthrifts who 
 should not have a dollar of his money 
 to throw away ; and sometimes they 
 developed such a love of money, in 
 his view, that he was resolved his 
 property should never be turned to 
 their miserly uses. He bemoaned 
 the absence of young life in the 
 house, threatened to adopt a son or 
 a daughter ; and always seemed to be 
 capable of doing something rash,
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 13 
 
 whether it were to bury himself in 
 the depths of the country or to go 
 up in the first balloon coming handy. 
 Perhaps she had expected more 
 flattery than she received; hardly 
 more caresses ; but she certainly had 
 supposed that wealth meant the 
 ability to spend money ; and although 
 in the beginning she had intended 
 to give her little income to her dis- 
 approving sister Maria, struggling 
 with her growing family, she had 
 found herself obliged to reserve it 
 for her own use, in order that she 
 might have more independence. 
 Everything was very fine in the 
 house, which was little less than a 
 palace; and her husband had pro- 
 vided for her with such liberal pro- 
 vision as became his wife. But he 
 required every month a strict render- 
 ing of account. It was his habit ; and 
 as he had grown older and a little 
 testy with the gout; all his habits 
 asserted themselves more sharply.
 
 14 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 Still, that was only vexatious. And 
 in the meantime there were all the 
 luxuries that used to be dear to her 
 imagination, and now were dear to 
 her soul the spacious house and its 
 sumptuous belongings ; the rich silks 
 and velvets, furs and jewels, that 
 made her wonder if it were really 
 she wearing them; the silent and 
 obsequious servants; the carriages 
 and horses ; and all the equipage of 
 wealth. And if the family were 
 distant, so was not the world of 
 her husband's acquaintance; Mrs. 
 Applegate was made welcome in 
 society, to whose methods and man- 
 ners she accommodated herself in a 
 way that won her husband's com- 
 plete admiration. And she was 
 always more fortified than otherwise 
 by the fact that Daniel was her 
 friend. 
 
 Wise in her day and generation, 
 too, Mrs. Applegate was not content 
 now with any subordinate personal
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 1 5 
 
 position. Her new acquaintances 
 presently found her at the front in 
 various of their concerns. The Hos- 
 pital for Forsaken Babies had her 
 regularly appointed mornings; the 
 Assembled Alms hardly conducted a 
 meeting without her; and her 
 carriage was as often seen before 
 the door of the Burden Bearing 
 Home, and that of the Middle 
 Aged Ladies' Rest as at those of the 
 great entertainers. She had private 
 instruction, that she might lead the 
 applause intelligently at the Sym- 
 phonies. She became the patron of 
 a young violinist and an old artist 
 who dangled in her train. She had 
 a pew at the Incarnation and made 
 Mr. Applegate occupy it with her, 
 and embroidered for the altar a 
 jeweled cloth too splendid for any 
 but splendid occasion. She gave a 
 collection of casts from the antique 
 to the neighboring Woman's Col- 
 lege, and was the grande dame of the
 
 l6 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 occasion on its first public holiday. 
 She persuaded her husband to 
 endow a scholarship in the Univer- 
 sity, and she was much more the star 
 at the next Commencement than 
 any of the young orators there. Her 
 theatricals, and her very select and 
 secluded nights after the play, when 
 some great dancers gave pavanes 
 and corantos in a wonderful way to 
 wonderful slow music, were full of 
 ideas ; and she was the commanding 
 force of certain phantasmagoric 
 festivals intended to promote the 
 love of art. "What Mrs. Applegate 
 says, goes," her husband declared; 
 and he felt himself pleased with her. 
 But when the novelty had dulled, it 
 remained that she was rather a soli- 
 tary woman. She had hardly more 
 than a friendly regard for her hus- 
 band; and when he was crusty with 
 his lame leg, or tyrannical with the 
 servants, or accurate about her 
 money matters, she had hardly that.
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 17 
 
 The acquaintances she had were glad 
 to come to her regal dinners, to drop 
 in for five-o'clock tea and gossip, to 
 join her theater parties. But, inter- 
 ested in the people they had always 
 known, not one among them would 
 have received her confidences with 
 sympathy had she been willing to 
 make them. And then, too, there 
 was none of the satisfaction that 
 might be hers had any of those who 
 had once known the deacon's wife 
 been among these to estimate the 
 apparent triumph of it all. Her 
 sister Maria had thought so ill of 
 her for marrying, and had so plainly 
 said so, that she did not feel like 
 telling Maria that she was right ; and, 
 moreover, Maria was not a person 
 to understand her. She herself had 
 read books all her life that Maria 
 had never had time to read. And 
 she had always had a daily city paper. 
 She had made the poor deacon take 
 her, every year, for one or two
 
 l8 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 short journeys where a day and 
 night in a hotel gave her familiarity 
 with a great deal of splendor for her 
 money, and an evening at the theater 
 had given her hints as to how fine 
 people comported themselves, and 
 had enlarged her point of view. And 
 she and Maria looked at the world 
 quite differently, anyway. And as 
 Maria would not have understood 
 her, and might have remarked that 
 as she had made her bed so she must 
 lie in it, there was no use in telling 
 Maria that, 'after all, the deacon's 
 widow in the little country town was 
 happier than Mr. Applegate's wife in 
 the great city, with an overflowing 
 share of the great city's splendor. 
 Once, in an access of the inner 
 lonesomeness, she had asked Maria 
 to visit her, in spite of the fact that 
 Maria, good plain woman as she 
 was, with her hard life and her 
 restricted views, had not the ap- 
 pearance which would be of advan-
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 19 
 
 tage to her among fashionable folk. 
 But Maria had the sense, as she 
 assured herself on reading the letter, 
 to know when she was well off; and 
 she declined the invitation, but told 
 her sister to run up to her whenever 
 she felt as if blood were thicker than 
 water. 
 
 One day Mrs. Applegate did so, 
 walking from the station to Maria's 
 door, and noting curiously how 
 small and worn things looked to her, 
 things that once had seemed fine 
 enough. When she went into her 
 sister's house her ample proportions 
 and flowing draperies seemed to fill 
 it; and she felt that she had never 
 realized how low the room was, 
 how narrow; how old were the 
 chintz lounges and chairs, how dull 
 were the frames of her father's and 
 her mother's wooden-looking por- 
 traits on the wall! And yet, if she 
 should send up new frames for them, 
 what a contrast they would make
 
 2O THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 with all the dingy habit of the place ! 
 Her flowing skirt with its fur 
 borders, her sables, her plumes, 
 seemed to her perception to fill the 
 room; but to that of her nieces it 
 was as if a goddess in a Worth gown 
 had come among them. And then 
 her sister hurried in, and they fell 
 upon each other's neck, and neither 
 thought whether the one was fine or 
 the other shabby. It was "Jose- 
 phine dear!" and "Maria darling!" 
 and all the years between were gone, 
 and all the difference in the way of 
 life, and they were girls again 
 together. 
 
 But, after all, it was a pleasant 
 room. Although the carpet was old 
 and the chintz was faded, yet all was 
 old and faded together; an English 
 ivy latticed the east window and 
 met the long stem of a wax-plant, 
 whose fragrant clusters shed over 
 the place their faint, delicious breath, 
 and the sun sifted in a radiant mass
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 21 
 
 of color through the geraniums and 
 carnations in the south window, 
 which were Josephine's care and 
 pride. The dark old bookcase, the 
 dim portraits, the quaint looking- 
 glass, the valanced rocking-chair, the 
 ancient low-boy, gave the place a 
 look of rather refined comfort. For 
 a moment Mrs. Applegate longed 
 to throw off the whole Worth 
 business, and sit down in one of 
 Maria's wrappers and feel at home, 
 as she had never felt since she 
 left her little brown house across the 
 way a pleasant little house with its 
 bay-window and piazza, with its 
 front yard and garden; it had 
 seemed a paradise when she went 
 into it a bride. This pretty Jose- 
 phine, her niece, was her very 
 picture, she said to herself, as she 
 looked in the old glad days. A 
 pretty, pretty girl, this Josephine, her 
 namesake, with her soft hair, thick at 
 its parting, in a great knot behind,
 
 and like a gold cloud over the white 
 forehead. Why, what an extraor- 
 dinarily pretty girl she was! What 
 eyes those were great lucent hazel 
 eyes, trusting eyes, not quite so 
 dark, you saw, when they glanced 
 up appealingly, as the brows and 
 lashes made them look. The lines 
 of the straight nose and its lightly 
 curving nostrils, of the cheek melt- 
 ing into the chin where the dimple 
 continued the cleft of the curling 
 upper lip above the full red lower 
 one what delicacy there was in 
 those lines as she smiled, as she 
 laughed; what a sweet, half-mel- 
 ancholy thing was the wistful look of 
 her face in repose! How like tiny 
 pale pink shells were the close-set 
 ears! Tall for her years; how old 
 was she? She must be somewhere 
 about twenty sweet and twenty. 
 Well, tall enough; and the shape- 
 supple, lithe, well-rounded perfec- 
 tion. A small hand, too; rings
 
 23 
 
 would look well on it; to be sure, 
 she had done no work except her 
 school-teaching. A pretty foot, if it 
 were well shod. 
 
 All this had swept through Mrs. 
 Applegate's mind in the time that 
 3he was kissing her niece, holding her 
 off, and kissing her again. Here 
 was a find, here was a treasure, she 
 said to herself; but she did not say 
 it to any one else. "Oh, she is very 
 fit!" And while the young girl, 
 filled with a sense of undreamed 
 wealth in the touch of the thick furs, 
 the delicate gloves, in the waft of 
 violet fragrance among the chiffons, 
 in the soft pressure of the cool rich 
 cheek, admired and loved her aunt 
 upon the spot, the younger ones 
 looked with speechless awe at this 
 beautiful being, this fine lady, who 
 had done something, they had heard, 
 something of which their mother dis- 
 approved, something which their 
 mother now so evidently forgave
 
 24 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 that it could not be anything very 
 untoward. 
 
 But the pretty Josephine under- 
 stood very well what her aunt had 
 done. She had married a rich man 
 for whom she did not particularly 
 care ; but then, it was not to be sup- 
 posed that as a rule people did par- 
 ticularly care when they were near 
 fifty; and, in fact, dim in interior 
 consciousness lay the belief that 
 when people were near fifty they 
 were little more than figure-heads, 
 anyway, to fill the scene for those 
 that were not twenty. She had 
 become the mistress of a splendid 
 house, such as Josephine had read of 
 in forbidden novels; she had horses 
 and carriages; she had money to 
 spend, and nothing to do; and she 
 wore Russian sables and Josephine 
 felt like blowing into those sables to 
 see how deep and soft and silkily 
 the fur parted. But she did nothing 
 of the kind of course. No one knew
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 25 
 
 better than Josephine how to behave 
 was she not a little school-ma'am? 
 And she had a native instinct of 
 good manners, a tuneful voice, a 
 gentle movement, an innocent qual- 
 ity, and as much tact as belongs 
 righteously to any young girl. She 
 took the furs from her aunt and 
 carried them off ; and the other girls, 
 used to Josephine's ways, discreetly 
 withdrew with her, and left their 
 mother and aunt together, while 
 they spread a luncheon table, as 
 their aunt had said her visit was but 
 for an hour or two, with the best 
 they had and in the best way they 
 knew. 
 
 It pleased Mrs. Applegate to see 
 the natural aptitude for fine things 
 and polite ways that Josephine evi- 
 dently possessed. The snowy cloth 
 and the simple table ornaments, the 
 flowers hastily cut in the window, 
 the appetizing dish, the daintily 
 dressed salad, all so prettily served
 
 26 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 on what was left of the china that 
 she remembered herself when a 
 child, Mrs. Applegate appreciated 
 it. She went soon afterwards; but 
 she left behind her a fund of interest 
 and gossip for many a day thereafter ; 
 and she had given Josephine such a 
 careful, searching measurement with 
 her well-trained eyes that Josephine 
 was not exactly surprised when, a 
 week or so afterwards, a big box came 
 to her, and in it was a winter suit of 
 dark green cloth edged with seal, a 
 deep seal cape, and a hat whose dark 
 green plumes waving round her face 
 made her look as lovely as any 
 picture ever painted. 
 
 At least her mother thought so, 
 gazing at her with a look of some 
 alarm over the possibilities that 
 struck her at the moment; and Will 
 Marley thought so, too, without an 
 alarm or a misgiving of any sort. 
 Why should he have a misgiving? 
 Had it not been so long understood
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 27 
 
 between Josephine and himself that 
 they belonged to each other since 
 his early days at the Medical School, 
 indeed that it was now like one of 
 the facts of the universe, no more 
 to be changed than the rising and 
 the setting of the sun they who 
 had walked together, talked to- 
 gether, grown together, sat on the 
 doorstep together with the rose 
 over the lattice making the night 
 sweet about them, silent with that 
 fullness of joy which may not say a 
 word lest some of the happiness spill 
 over and be lost? 
 
 Not that this blissful condition had 
 been reached without struggle. The 
 young medical student who was one 
 day to take old Dr. Madden 's place, 
 was not an unimportant person in 
 the small community, and this 
 mother had smiled on him, and that 
 aunt had bade him to tea, and that 
 father had asked his advice and con- 
 sulted him as to the real value of a
 
 28 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 horse-chestnut or a small potato 
 carried in the pocket for rheuma- 
 tism. Nor they alone; but Mary 
 Madden had repeated her father's 
 invitation to use his books when he 
 would, and the skeleton hanging in 
 the study there; and Julia Lands 
 had knit him a pair of silk stockings 
 with her own fingers, which, owing 
 to their usually rough condition, had 
 caught so badly in the silk as to 
 make the result a very personal 
 memento; and Amelie Browne had 
 opened a dispute with him and had 
 written him little notes on pink 
 paper with a spray of roses in the 
 corner, winding them up with a 
 French phrase, and sealing them 
 with wax, which, in the hateful way 
 wax has in the hands of a novice, 
 blotched itself far outside the seal 
 the seal of a heart and arrow, that 
 in the dark red wax had a frightfully 
 realistic suggestion for the young 
 surgeon. And even Miss Pearson,
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 29 
 
 the Academy preceptress, who it 
 was well known could speak Pata- 
 gonian, had there been any one to 
 understand her, had said that it gave 
 her more pleasure to talk with Will 
 Marley than with any one but the 
 minister. She talked with him in 
 English, however.
 
 II 
 
 It might have turned the head of 
 any one else, this popularity and 
 kind attention; but Will Marley's 
 head was a very level one. In fact, 
 when he accepted Mary Madden's 
 invitation, and turned over the 
 doctor's books, finding them rather 
 out of date, he only thought how 
 good-natured she was to add her in- 
 vitation to her father's, and won- 
 dered, very privately, and as it were 
 in the dark, how a girl could be so 
 stupid who had the advantages of 
 those books and that skeleton. As for 
 Julia's knitting, the articles were so 
 much too small that he was sure she 
 had knit them for her young brother, 
 and made a misfit, and given them 
 to himself only to prevent waste; 
 31
 
 32 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 and disliking such obligation, he 
 had wagered a half-dozen balls of 
 silk with her on a dead certainty, 
 and lost them. And neither Amelie 
 Browne's notes nor any of the sig- 
 nificant flutterings of the rest of the 
 girls in their totality, were of any 
 more meaning or worth to him than 
 the floating of motes in the sunbeam 
 the great sunbeam of his passion 
 for Josephine. 
 
 And Josephine, going and coming 
 from her school with the children 
 hanging about her, had seemed at 
 first fine, remote, unapproachable. 
 He wondered where his eyes had 
 been that he had not seen how 
 fair she was years ago, forgetting 
 that probably years ago she had not 
 been so fair, and that he had been 
 more occupied with baseball and 
 football than with any girl's beauty, 
 were she as fair as Fair Rosamond. 
 But from the moment the gleam of 
 that soft, sweet face of hers first
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 33 
 
 touched him, the world, he felt, 
 would be a blank to him if Jose- 
 phine did not smile on him, and on 
 him alone of all the world of men. 
 
 It was in the meeting-house that 
 fate thus overtook him. He had 
 gone to church that first Sunday of 
 the vacation, and had heard a voice 
 singing the solo of the hymn, during 
 which the people were accustomed 
 to keep their seats. He had turned 
 quickly for a glimpse of the face, 
 and all the rest of the service the 
 prayer, the reading, the sermon he 
 heard that voice go on fluting, 
 
 "As when the weary traveler gains 
 
 The height of some commanding hill, 
 His heart revives if o'er the plains 
 He sees his home, though distant still. " 
 
 But when the last hymn was to be 
 sung, and the congregation stood up 
 and turned, facing the singing seats, 
 and there, beneath the brim of the 
 little white chip hat with its pink
 
 34 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 roses and black velvet bows, he saw 
 the face for more than a glimpse, it 
 seemed to him that nothing but the 
 hymn which she was singing ex- 
 pressed the beauty of it, 
 
 "By cool Siloam's shady rill 
 How fair the lily grows, 
 How sweet the breath beneath the hill 
 Of Sharon's dewy rose!" 
 
 Could it be possible that this was 
 Josephine Grey little Josephine? 
 
 Nothing is of much use in this 
 world if courage does not go with it. 
 Will Marley called his courage to 
 the front, and on the strength of old 
 acquaintance in pinafores, accosted 
 this young woman when they had 
 both reached the vestibule. And he 
 was none the less charmed with her 
 for her half-frightened air, like that 
 of a startled fawn, the head held 
 high, the quick averted glance, the 
 rising color. And directly a flock of 
 the children that she taught on
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 35 
 
 week-days gathered around her, 
 claiming her as their own, with 
 delight in her pretty Sunday trim ; 
 and although Will walked home 
 beside her, it was with the perpetual 
 interruption of this fluttering crew, 
 one demanding her left hand, and 
 another pushing in between them to 
 get her right one, and a third skip- 
 ping backward before them, and 
 stumbling and falling, and having 
 to be picked up and brushed off and 
 soothed, so that by the time she 
 reached her gate, Will, in desperate 
 mood, declared that he wished there 
 wasn't a child in the world. 
 
 "Then what should I do?" asked 
 the little school-teacher, looking up 
 archly, "without a hat to my 
 head," adjusting the ribbons the 
 last child had set awry, "or a shoe to 
 my foot," and she thrust out the 
 prettiest little foot before she 
 thought, and drew it back again as 
 quickly, and laughed and blushed,
 
 36 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 and went in and left him standing in 
 the street, feeling in the first 
 moment as if something before un- 
 seen by mortal had but just passed 
 by, and in the next as if he were a 
 gaping fool. 
 
 That did not hinder Will's return- 
 ing in the twilight to go to evening 
 meeting with her. But her mother 
 and the younger girls were with 
 them also, and Will found it use- 
 less to try for the place beside her. 
 Now Ellie's shoe was untied, and 
 Josephine had to stoop and tie it for 
 her, and she took the place then on 
 the other side of her mother ; or else 
 Agnes came between them with a 
 persistence that demanded punish- 
 ment all the more punishment that 
 it did not seem to trouble Josephine ; 
 or else both Ellie and Agnes insisted 
 on taking their sister's hand. And 
 it was no better coming home; for 
 that great lout of a Rob Campbell 
 stepped boldly up before him and
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 37 
 
 asked to see her home, and that was 
 the end of it. Will had some con- 
 solation in thinking of Ellie and 
 Agnes; but that was nipped in the 
 bud when Mrs. Grey took Ellie by 
 one hand and Agnes by the other 
 and trudged off with them ; and dark 
 were the imprecations then which he 
 hurled upon the head of the happy 
 and unconscious Rob, who, if he had 
 known of it, would have let him hurl 
 on with pleasure, so long as he him- 
 self walked by Josephine's side. 
 
 The next day it was no better. 
 Rob, who served in the village 
 variety store, was at the gate on 
 some errand when Will came 
 sauntering down, whipping off the 
 tops of the tall grasses with his 
 stick; and when at evening he 
 nerved himself to call, Rob was there 
 before him, with all the ease of an 
 old acquaintance. It was idle for 
 Will to throw himself on his college- 
 bred dignity; Rob's jokes brought
 
 38 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 him out of it with surprising swift- 
 ness ; and after less than a half-dozen 
 such encounters Rob and Will were 
 peacefully walking home together, 
 and Will was offering to lend Rob 
 his books and help him in his am- 
 bitions. "I'd rather have an educa- 
 tion than any girl that goes," said 
 Rob, in one of his confidences. And 
 when Will got out his old lesson- 
 books and prepared to give Rob his 
 tutoring, he felt that he had paid a 
 price for Josephine, and she be- 
 longed to him by right. 
 
 Not so felt Josephine. The air of 
 assumption worn by Master Will was 
 not at all to her mind. And if Will 
 had found it difficult to win a smile 
 before, he now found it impossible. 
 She was like a little wild brier rose, 
 full of color and bloom and perfume 
 and honey, but the sweetbrier grew 
 far up the face of a cliff, and was 
 full of thorns, moreover. Should he 
 make some breathless endeavor, per-
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 39 
 
 haps he might clutch the rose, per- 
 haps the thorn. Ah, indeed, it was 
 the thorn ! And Will returned to his 
 medical professors in a condition by 
 no means favorable to his studies. 
 
 But, for all that, Will Marley was 
 not the one, as Rob said, to go back 
 on a promise; and he sent Rob 
 Campbell all the books needed, and 
 wrote him pages of instruction, be- 
 sides, in a letter sent twice a week, 
 half-maddened by Rob's matter-of- 
 fact replies, in which not the most 
 eager scrutiny could find a word or 
 a thought of Josephine Rob simply 
 lost now in the dust-cloud of his 
 education. 
 
 Yet, as all good actions have their 
 reward, in one shape or in another if 
 not in that expected, so Will's faith- 
 fulness to Rob bore very unlooked- 
 for fruit. For, studying early in the 
 morning, at odd moments behind the 
 desk or the counter, and as long as 
 the kerosene lamp held out to burn
 
 4O THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 at night, Rob had no time to devote 
 to pleasure, and Miss Josephine 
 found herself, for all her pretty face 
 and charming ways, apparently quite 
 set aside. For Rob constituted 
 himself the watch-dog of Will's 
 interests, and it having been under- 
 stood long ago by other admiring 
 youths that, so far as this little maid 
 was concerned, she was a garden 
 enclosed, few ventured to encroach 
 on what they thought Rob's privi- 
 leges; and the moment that one more 
 daring than the rest did so, ever so lit- 
 tle, the watch-dog showed his teeth, 
 and the trespasser retired, and Miss 
 Josephine was left alone, since Rob 
 did not presume upon his alleged 
 privileges and very dreary she 
 found it. It was vain for her to put 
 on the rosy head-gear that she had 
 knit herself to go to lecture in no 
 one joined her on the way ; to sing 
 her sweetest in the choir no one 
 waited for her at the door no one
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 41 
 
 but Rob, who stalked along silently 
 beside her, or else talked of sines and 
 cosines, principalities and powers, 
 till she felt she was a fool. She saw 
 from the window the parties go 
 sleighing when the moon was high, 
 for the dance and the supper at the 
 head of the lake; but no one had 
 asked her to go. She had to drop 
 the village sociables, for Rob had no 
 time for them, and there would be 
 no one to come home with her. And 
 she began to get melancholy and 
 moping, to feel her school an oppres- 
 sion, the children a vexation, and to 
 find the days long and dismal, with 
 no sort of pleasure in them to look 
 forward to, except now and then a 
 magazine, a book, a photograph of 
 something, that Will sent by post. 
 And then Agnes and Ellie were so 
 afraid that Josephine was going to 
 -die she was so still, so different 
 from the laughing, dancing Jose- 
 phine that had been the joy of the
 
 42 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 house that they watched her with a 
 tearful anxiety that made her feel as 
 if she should have to go outdoors 
 and scream. 
 
 And one day Will came home on a 
 week's vacation. And he drove to 
 the door in a sleigh, and asked her, 
 rather casually, to be sure, if she 
 would like to go over the hill, as he 
 had an errand there. It was the 
 half -holiday; and the air was clear, 
 the sun bright, the snow crisp, the 
 sky a dazzle of blue; and she was 
 at first a little high and mighty, and 
 then a little resentful, and then a 
 little relenting, and then too greatly 
 tempted all in a moment and 
 then she was tucked up in the sleigh 
 and spinning along with a color in 
 her cheek and a light in her eye and 
 a laugh on her lip that made it evi- 
 dent to the rest of the world that 
 Will Marley had won the prize to- 
 the rest of the world, that is, except 
 Will Marley.
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 43 
 
 But faint heart never won fair lady. 
 And after this Will Marley again put 
 on a bold front and asked her to go 
 to the lecture with him. And how 
 delightful that walk was to him; 
 and how he longed to know if it were 
 a twentieth part as pleasant to her, 
 or if it only meant to her that she 
 was not left out while all the other 
 girls were taken ! But although that 
 may really have had a great deal to 
 do with Josephine's pleasure, yet she 
 felt so genial that she even asked 
 him to come in when he brought her 
 home. The little girls were making 
 candy, and clamoring for Josephine 
 to help them pull it; and a merry 
 hour it was before Mrs. Grey took 
 them off to bed, and left him alone 
 with Josephine, a great joy and a 
 great hesitation battling in his heart, 
 and reducing him to sudden silence 
 and early departure. He went 
 home from church with her when 
 Sunday came; and he called on
 
 44 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 Monday morning, before she went 
 to school, to bring her a paper novel 
 he had spoken of, and strolled along 
 with her, to the great and mysterious 
 satisfaction of the school-children, 
 who kept her cheeks the color of 
 carnations all the forenoon. And 
 when school was over on Tuesday he 
 asked her for a walk just as the late 
 day was reddening the snow. And 
 Wednesday afternoon he brought 
 round a little pair of skates, and as 
 they went slipping along the crystal 
 floor of the lake, hand in hand, far 
 into the sunset, there seemed to be 
 a meaning in life for Josephine 
 that she had never seen before. 
 And on Saturday there was another 
 sleighing party up the lake in the 
 big swan-boat sleigh. Will men- 
 tioned their going as a matter of 
 course; and when the sleigh with 
 its great horses came round, Will 
 was driving it in as masterful a way 
 as he did everything else; and he
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 45 
 
 swung Josephine up beside him, and 
 if she herself drove now and then a 
 mile or two, with laughing enjoy- 
 ment, no one else knew it; and when 
 they reached the place none of all the 
 girls looked so distractingly lovely 
 as Josephine did in her white wool 
 dress with its multitude of pink 
 ribbons, no one danced so lightly, so 
 blithely, so full of an unconscious 
 interior joy, with the burning tint on 
 her cheek, the burning light in her 
 eye; and no one showed such a 
 radiant sort of life as Will, silent, 
 watchful, but now and again clasp- 
 ing Josephine in the dance as if he 
 would never let her go. 
 
 It was no matter how much the 
 others surrounded and crowded 
 them by-and-by in the big sleigh, 
 starting for home after the moon had 
 gone down. Will had given up the 
 reins, and had planted Josephine in 
 the warm spot directly under the 
 shelter of the high box-seat in front
 
 46 TH KM AID HE MARRIED 
 
 of them ; and in vain Reuben flour- 
 ished his long whip and shouted at 
 the horses Josephine never heeded ; 
 and in vain Mary Madden held out 
 that lantern to light the way for 
 Reuben, that Will might see her 
 slender hand prettily gloved and 
 half frozen Will never knew it. 
 Close together there in the long side- 
 seat, with the others all around them 
 laughing, talking, singing, it was his 
 arm about her that kept her safe, it 
 was his shoulder against which her 
 little head rested, it was his hand 
 that held hers and kept it warm. 
 And once once when it was dark- 
 est, and all the rest were gayest 
 his face had bent to hers, and the 
 cold cheeks had touched, and for a 
 swift silent moment his lips had met 
 her own, and he felt her trembling, 
 and held her closer ; and then pres- 
 ently, as if to keep the secret to him- 
 self, he also began to sing, rolling 
 out the college songs he knew in his
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 47 
 
 strong, rich barytone; and the music 
 of his voice and of the tune, and the 
 bells and the horses' feet, all seemed 
 to Josephine to be keeping time to 
 the song the stars sing together. 
 And if, when Will lifted her out of 
 the sleigh at last, and ran with her 
 up to the door, and stood an instant 
 within the dark porch, their lips 
 found each other again a sweet mad 
 instant, who was there to say? 
 
 Snow came next day, after the 
 starless night; but there was not 
 snow enough in heaven to keep 
 Josephine at home from church. 
 Never had such music filled the 
 little house of praise as in that morn- 
 ing hymn, when her voice thrilled at 
 least one of her hearers through and 
 through. Nothing but a soul filled 
 with effulgent happiness could make 
 such melody as that. Will thought 
 of larks and bobolinks, of the night- 
 ingale and the mocking-bird, of 
 singing women and of angels' songs,
 
 48 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 and ended all by thinking only of 
 Josephine. If love wrapped him, 
 rather than the atmosphere of the 
 place, it was perhaps the manifesta- 
 tion of the best and richest that as 
 yet he knew or could dream of in the 
 universe. But when the congrega- 
 tion turned for the last hymn, and 
 again that sweet voice soared and 
 sang, her eyes, lifted from the 
 book, met his, and suddenly the color 
 surged up and dyed her face, and the 
 voice faltered and trembled and 
 ceased, and the rest of the choir sang 
 on as best they could 
 
 "The dearest idol I have known, 
 
 Whate'er that idol be, 
 Help me to tear it from Thy throne, 
 And worship only Thee!" 
 
 And if some of the congregation 
 were inclined to be scandalized, yet 
 I think there was not one among 
 them, such is human nature and its 
 silent sympathy, who did not know
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 49 
 
 that morning what was the matter 
 with the voice of little Josephine 
 Grey. 
 
 It was four years since the cold 
 sweetness and wild heart-throb of 
 that blissful sleigh-ride. Will, who 
 had entered college in advance and 
 had studied with diligence, had 
 taken his medical degree, and had 
 come to practice at last, finding it 
 hard and slow work between the 
 knowledge of the young doctor's 
 youth and the remarkable general 
 health of the community. He was 
 out in storm or shine, with long and 
 lonely drives at dead of night, with 
 irregular meals, with broken sleep, 
 with reluctant pay. But he was full 
 of the sacred zeal of his profession, 
 pouring out the wine of life, bring- 
 ing healing as it were with his 
 touch, giving himself lavishly, mak- 
 ing now and then a marvelous cure, 
 coming slowly to be known among
 
 50 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 the good country-folk as a worker 
 of miracles; and happy, glorioiisly 
 happy in it all, for Josephine was 
 his, and every day brought him 
 nearer the time when he should 
 wear her as a seal upon his arm. 
 
 But Josephine herself was perhaps 
 not so happy. She was tired, very 
 tired tired of the routine and 
 racket of the school, that she had 
 begun to keep when only a child 
 herself; tired of the work that fell 
 to her at home, too, while trying to 
 spare her mother, with Agnes and 
 Ellie studying and eager for pleas- 
 ure as girls of twelve and fourteen 
 sometimes are ; tired of the pinch of 
 poverty; tired, it may be, of the 
 long waiting and suspense of her 
 engagement. She loved Will, per- 
 haps, as ardently as ever his hearty, 
 joyous nature, his upright spirit, his 
 generous temper, his frank, bright 
 face, all his great warmth and cor- 
 dial feeling himself! But in some
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 51 
 
 mysterious way nothing seemed 
 worth while; here in the midst of 
 happiness, and on the brink of her 
 marriage, she was oppressed with 
 nameless melancholy. Trifles irri- 
 tated her ; tears came at a word. 
 
 "In fact," said Will, when various 
 potions proved of no avail, "the dear 
 nerves need rest. You must have a 
 change." 
 
 "How am I to have a change?" she 
 answered, peevishly. 
 
 "You must!" said Will. "Great 
 heavens!" starting to his feet and 
 walking up and down the room, and 
 rumpling his hair to fresh brightness 
 with every turn. "What makes the 
 people here so healthy? Does every 
 doctor have to wait so long for pay- 
 ing patients? To think that I, whose 
 business is to heal the sick, should 
 be eager for sickness to come ! Oh, 
 I'm not, I'm not! But" 
 
 "I don't know what patients have 
 to do with my having a change,"
 
 52 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 she said, hanging listlessly over the 
 arm of the sofa. 
 
 "At least it could be a change then 
 from one house to another. And I 
 could send you South, if I couldn't 
 go with you " 
 
 "As if as if I would go! Oh, I 
 mean I never supposed you would 
 be willing to have me go away from 
 you!" the tears spurting. 
 
 "Josephine! My darling! Only to 
 make you well and strong, that we 
 may be together always! I have 
 enough now for some such journey if 
 you will only take it and use it so, 
 my little dear " 
 
 ' ' The money you've saved towards 
 our furnishing! Oh, I don't believe 
 you care for me at all ! You are worn 
 out with me! I oh " And all 
 Will could do was to take the 
 unreasoning little thing in his arms, 
 and hold her close, and pity and 
 love her with all his might. 
 
 "You dear Will!" she said then,
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 53 
 
 when the sharp nerves were sheathed 
 again. "If yon were always here, 
 always holding me so, I should not 
 be so wicked!" 
 
 "It is that abominable school!" 
 said Will. "It would wear a stone 
 image to a pebble. It must be given 
 up!" 
 
 And things were at this pass, when 
 Mrs. Applegate made her sister the 
 morning visit which has been 
 mentioned, returning by the after- 
 noon train, and although a little late 
 for dinner, and finding Mr. Apple- 
 gate somewhat indignant over her 
 delay, coming in so bright and 
 cheery, with regrets that she had 
 lingered but when you were with 
 pleasant people you sometimes for- 
 got how time was passing, even 
 when pleasanter people were waiting 
 for you at home going upstairs 
 before he could retort, making her- 
 self ready in a twinkling, and coming 
 down handsome and unruffled, and
 
 54 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 with a spicy anecdote about the For- 
 rester's last affair, that she had kept 
 for a bonne bouche at some bitter 
 moment, that she caused him quite 
 to forget that he had been out of 
 sorts, or to ask her where she 
 had been calling, especially as the 
 sherry was just cold enough, and 
 there was plenty of green fat in the 
 soup. 
 
 But fate and fortune always favor 
 the bold; and so Mrs. Applegate 
 found when, the next morning in the 
 breakfast-room, her husband asked 
 her to write a note for him, the 
 gout having disabled his fingers that 
 day sufficiently to make the use of 
 them more than commonly uncom- 
 fortable. 
 
 Now Mrs. Applegate 's handwriting 
 had not been a strong point in the 
 early years, and she had been wise 
 enough to know it. But she had 
 locked herself up in her room with 
 pen and paper, and had written
 
 THE MAID HE M A R R I K D 55 
 
 laborious copies . day after day ; she 
 had written out, moreover, whole 
 romances of high life from the print, 
 and the Polite Letter-Writer's Man- 
 ual into the bargain. She had at- 
 tained, however, only a large, 
 scratchy script, whose haste and 
 boldness disguised its want of early 
 culture and grace. But she wrote 
 the desired note for Mr. Applegate 
 with great ease and pleasantness, of 
 course. 
 
 "What an infernal hand you 
 women of fashion do write!" he 
 growled as he looked it over. "Two 
 words to a line, and a page and a 
 half to a paragraph ! ' ' 
 
 "I know it," she said, sweetly. 
 "But if I employed a secretary to 
 write my notes, as Mrs. Devonshire 
 and Mrs. Longwood do, I should be 
 more expense to you than I am 
 now." 
 
 "A secretary, indeed!" he ex- 
 claimed, tossing her the note to seal.
 
 56 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 "I wonder what you'll be setting up 
 next?" 
 
 "Oh, I've no idea of it. Unless 
 unless, that is, you go to work 
 again on that genealogical story of 
 your family ; and then why, then I 
 might have to do so. Although really 
 I should like to have a hand myself in 
 that story of the Applegates. There 
 is no family with so much romance 
 in it, with such fine Colonial hap- 
 penings. But my own fingers are so 
 stiff some days that I don't believe 
 I could keep pace with your rapid 
 dictation," she said, opening and 
 closing her plump white hand with a 
 shower of sparkles. "I know I 
 couldn't." 
 
 "Well," said Mr. Applegate, as he 
 picked up his morning paper again, 
 after a glance at the portrait of a 
 dignitary of the old Province days 
 upon the wall " I am going on with it. ' ' 
 
 "I do hope you will." 
 
 "It has to be done," he said, a
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 57 
 
 little pompously. "And there is no 
 one else to do it. Frances never 
 will. Laura never can " 
 
 "Then," said Mrs. Applegate, "I 
 will tell you what we might do. I 
 have a little niece, a little rose-bud 
 well, I can't say what I think of her, 
 for she is the very image of what I 
 was at her age ' ' 
 
 "A niece?" 
 
 "Yes. I have never troubled you 
 much, you know I have never 
 troubled you at all about my 
 family " 
 
 "I didn't know you had a family!" 
 exclaimed the courtly gentleman. 
 
 "Yes. Quite as good a family as 
 the Applegates," she replied, se- 
 renely. "Such of the Applegates 
 as I have seen," she added. "They 
 have not much money " 
 
 "A not unusual circumstance." 
 
 "But what they have answers their 
 needs. This little damsel has kept a 
 school the pretty baby! And she
 
 58 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 writes a very plain and agreeable 
 hand " 
 
 "Oh, I see! And you propose to 
 bring her down here?" 
 
 "Why, if we need a secretary, and 
 can get one for nothing " 
 
 "I don't know about the 'nothing.' 
 High-toned articles always fetch 
 their price. What sort is she? Fit 
 to associate with my daughters?" 
 
 "She is fit to associate with your 
 wife," said Mrs. Applegate, with 
 gentle dignity. 
 
 "By Jove, you're a stunner!" said 
 her husband, in a glow of apprecia- 
 tion. He had always had an amused 
 pleasure in seeing Mrs. Applegate 
 carry things with a high hand. He 
 liked sometimes to give her the 
 opportunity. 
 
 "She is much prettier than my 
 step-daughters. Excuse me, dear, 
 if I say much more amiable, ' ' said 
 Mrs. Applegate, who had discovered 
 that her husband was sometimes
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 59 
 
 more easily directed when she chal- 
 lenged him than when she submitted 
 to him. "She is a little sunbeam. 
 I don't think I am prejudiced or 
 partial " 
 
 "Not in the least." 
 
 "I have not been with her enough 
 of late years to be greatly concerned 
 about her. I haven't done quite 
 right. It must be a half-dozen 
 years since I have seen her, till 
 lately. But I can assure you she 
 would be an ornament to your house, 
 and bring life and youth and health 
 into it. And it would not be a bit of 
 a bad thing for either of us if she 
 came for a little stay. ' ' 
 
 "Do you want her?" 
 
 "Why, yes, I think so." 
 
 "Humph! Who is going to dress 
 her?" 
 
 "Who has always dressed her?" 
 said Mrs. Applegate, with a glance of 
 indignation. "She will have clothes 
 enough. ' '
 
 60 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 "Well, 7 shan't pay for them. 
 Mark that. But I'd just as lief she 
 came for a season or so. A pretty 
 girl's a pleasant thing to have round. 
 And if she's a success, she'll bring 
 some fresh life into the house, as you 
 say. And if it doesn't work, she 
 needn't stay." 
 
 "If you remember," said Mrs. 
 Applegate, with a slight flush on the 
 still rare moulding of a dimpled 
 cheek, "the insinuations made to you 
 by Frances, concerning marrying a 
 cook ' ' 
 
 "Pshaw! pshaw! You've much 
 too long a memory. That was in her 
 first raptures. ' ' 
 
 "Then I should like to have her 
 see my pretty Josephine, with the 
 refinement of a flower in every 
 line " 
 
 "And you'll try your fist at bring- 
 ing out a beauty! By Jove, I'd like 
 to see you ! You can do it ! You can 
 do it!" he chuckled. And the fancy
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 6 I 
 
 so pleased him that he had to lay 
 down his newspaper and gaze at her 
 a moment and have another laugh. 
 "Well, perhaps I will pay for them," 
 he said.
 
 Ill 
 
 As Mrs. Applegate was human, 
 she would have liked at that moment 
 to take off the rings he had given 
 her and throw them at him, or to do 
 some other violent thing showing him 
 she did not care for his money. 
 
 But she did care for his money. 
 And there was Josephine for yester- 
 day's touch of mother earth had 
 given her family feeling fresh 
 strength. And after all he was 
 kind, in some ways he was fine, he 
 was handsome, she was fond of him ; 
 and her swift anger subsided. He 
 was still looking at her and smiling, 
 for with all his grumbling the fact 
 remained that he admired her, ad- 
 mired her good-nature and natural 
 grace, her tact and talent; the way 
 she surmounted obstacles, carried 
 63
 
 64 THEM AID HE MARRIED 
 
 herself, carried all before her when 
 need was, justified him, too. And she 
 made him very comfortable. On the 
 whole, the day he married her was 
 a day to be marked with a white 
 stone, he felt. And if now and then 
 her pretensions gave him amuse- 
 ment, he enjoyed the amusement; 
 but otherwise he was loyal to her and 
 let no one else know it, enjoying it 
 all the more that he had to enjoy it 
 by himself. "You are a trump, 
 Mrs. Applegate!" said he. "You're 
 a trump ! You know how to make a 
 man young again! It's a pleasure to 
 have you round!" And then Mrs. 
 Applegate stepped across the rug 
 and bent and kissed him; and he 
 really considered that he had done a 
 good thing for her, and had done it 
 graciously, and had won her grati- 
 tude. And he went down to his club 
 with a warmth at his heart that made 
 him whirl his cane and step out 
 briskljT, notwithstanding his gouty
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 65 
 
 foot, and made the Chauncey- 
 Bedfords, who happened to drive by, 
 remark, after their smiling nods 
 and his lifted hat, that really it 
 would be a long day before Frances 
 Boylston and her sister divided those 
 millions they were waiting for. 
 "His wife certainly makes him very 
 content. By-the-way, has one ever 
 discovered where she came from?" 
 "My dear," said Mrs. Chauncey- 
 Bedford to her young daughter-in- 
 law, "I know her very well, and 
 have the highest regard for her. I 
 often use her horses when ours are 
 lame. Frank Applegate told me 
 himself that she belonged to one of 
 the oldest families in the country. 
 They lost a great deal of money 
 when the turnpikes were thrown 
 open. But any one can see that 
 she is a gentlewoman. She has 
 some old diamonds set in silver a 
 brooch surmounted by a coronet I 
 think she said something about her
 
 66 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 mother once when I admired it. ' ' If 
 Mrs. Applegate had heard her, so 
 effusive would have been her satisfac- 
 tion that she would gladly have given 
 her the diamonds, but for that con- 
 jured apparition of her mother in 
 the place of the old pawnbroker 
 of Prague of whom she bought 
 them. 
 
 And so that very day came the 
 letter that made a fluttering in the 
 dove-cote of the Greys, asking Jose- 
 phine to spend the winter with her 
 aunt, and telling her to come at once 
 and come as she was, and her aunt 
 would see to her wardrobe after- 
 wards. And Mrs. Grey said she 
 didn't know how she could spare 
 her; but Will said go she must, and 
 Agnes could take her school she 
 was older now than Josephine was 
 when she first took it. And then he 
 held her as if it were impossible for 
 him to open his arms and release her, 
 filled with the sense of danger, yet
 
 sure that what was best for her was 
 best for him. 
 
 The day that Mrs. Applegate re- 
 ceived her reply was Monday ; it was 
 a saints' day, too; but she sacrificed 
 her feeling in that direction and 
 went out early to the bargain sales ; 
 and a number of bright remnants of 
 China silks and crapes, of cloth, of 
 ribbons, came home later in the day. 
 She contemplated them with satis- 
 faction, for they were paid for from 
 what she used to call her own little 
 scrap of money. She doubted if her 
 gloves would not be too large; 
 but her foot was an uncommonly 
 small one, and she was sure that 
 certain very pretty high-heeled 
 affairs of her own would do for 
 Josephine till she was in funds again. 
 
 Mr. Applegate had had to go out 
 of town for a directors' meeting the 
 day that Josephine came ; and with a 
 dressmaker and two seamstresses 
 upstairs the next two days, several
 
 68 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 of Mrs. Applegate's gowns were cut 
 over and made up with new bodices 
 and youthful colors and garnishings, 
 till a street suit and a dinner dress 
 and an evening gown were completed 
 and others were planned, the dress- 
 maker and her women employed for 
 some days subsequently on further 
 achievements, and Mr. Applegate 
 none the wiser when he returned, 
 as lunch was sent up to the sewing- 
 room, and he was not down in the 
 morning when they came, and he 
 was dressing for dinner or was in 
 the library when they went. 
 
 Mr. Applegate had reached home 
 late, the train having been detained ; 
 he was chilled; he had not carried 
 his point at the directors' meeting; 
 and he was decidedly cross w r hen he 
 came in ; and after a few words he 
 went to his room and summoned 
 Daniel. Mrs. Applegate had sent 
 him up a cup of hot bouillon, 
 although she had discreetly with-
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 69 
 
 drawn after brief greeting. And an 
 hour later, rested and refreshed, he 
 opened his door to descend to dinner 
 in a somewhat less grumpy frame, 
 and stopped surprised, bewildered, 
 charmed, at what seemed to him the 
 sweetest sound he had ever heard in 
 his life. 
 
 It was Josephine singing singing 
 an old German hymn. He did not 
 understand the words sooth to say, 
 the singer did not either but he 
 knew the tune; it was one his 
 mother used to sing. But what a 
 flute of a voice ; how sweet, how rich, 
 how fresh ! Josephine did not know 
 he had come back ; she was singing 
 to herself and letting out her heart 
 to the music a trifle homesick, 
 thinking of her mother and the 
 girls, greatly longing for Will, a little 
 awed by all this unusual splendor, 
 somewhat pleased to think it was 
 her aunt's, vaguely feeling it was 
 too much like the fortunes of a
 
 70 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 Gurtmdeel in the Arabian Nights not 
 to be a dream, and all the time lov- 
 ing the music of her hymn. She 
 had on a soft gray long-skirted silk, 
 the waist covered with a pointed cape 
 of Irish lace that fell over the 
 shoulder puffs, and long close cuffs 
 of the lace ending at the elbows; 
 there were some bows of pink ribbon 
 on it. Nothing could have been 
 simpler, nothing more picturesque in 
 its way. 
 
 Mr. Applegate had quite forgotten 
 about Josephine; but he recognized 
 that cape. He had a talent for 
 millinery. He remembered, how- 
 ever, in the same flash that a footman 
 at the Herefords' had spilled coffee 
 on the lace when it was a front 
 breadth, and he was rather pleased 
 with his wife's ingenuity in using it 
 now. That was all right ; she might 
 turn her old clothes to what account 
 she pleased. But that voice had 
 stopped as he waited between the
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 71 
 
 portieres surveying the singer. She 
 stood up, the blush mounting her 
 face till it looked like a rose indeed. 
 
 "So this is Josephine, is it?" he 
 said. "Where's your aunt? Why 
 isn't there some one By Jove, you 
 don't know who I am!" 
 
 "I suppose," said Josephine, 
 timidly, the color going and coming, 
 "that you are my Uncle Apple- 
 gate." 
 
 "That's it! By Jove, she's charm- 
 ing! Come here and kiss your Uncle 
 Applegate!" 
 
 And Josephine, in a sudden access 
 of gratitude and pleasure, ran for- 
 ward and put her arms round his 
 neck and kissed his plump red cheek. 
 "Oh, how kind you are to me!" she 
 whispered. And the old fellow 
 enjoyed the swift, impulsive act so 
 much that he would have liked to 
 ask her to repeat it, if, being an 
 epicure in his pleasures, he had not 
 known that would have spoiled it all.
 
 72 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 "Well," he said, "my wife was 
 right. She always is. She said you 
 would be an ornament to the house. 
 Has she taken you out yet? Seen the 
 city? Been to the State House?" 
 
 "Now you are laughing at me," 
 said Josephine. 
 
 "No," said Mr. Applegate, plant- 
 ing himself in front of the fire, and 
 looking at her where he kept her 
 standing for the pleasure of the 
 sight. "I want to see if you are one 
 of the degenerate girls that care for 
 balls and calls and fripperies, and 
 have no interest in " 
 
 "Yes," said Josephine, lifting her 
 great lucid eyes a moment and then 
 dropping them, the smile on her 
 lips lovely in its arch audacity, "I 
 am." 
 
 "By Jove, then you shall have 
 them !" cried Mr. Applegate. "Know 
 any of the college chaps?" 
 
 "One," said Josephine. "Rob 
 Campbell."
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 73 
 
 ' ' Campbell Campbell the Vir- 
 ginia Campbells?" 
 
 "Oh, no; he is from our place; a 
 nice fellow. He is studying hard, 
 and he has won a scholarship, and 
 we are all so proud of him " 
 
 "Oh, he's a grind. Yes. Do you 
 know, you're precious green?" 
 
 "Oh, I suppose so!" said Jose- 
 phine piteously. 
 
 "To think that sort of fellow good 
 as a dancing-man. Of course you're 
 out?" 
 
 "Out?" said Josephine. 
 
 "Come, come, not so green as all 
 that ! You'll have to learn the jargon. 
 But you're as good as a play. I am 
 going to renew my youth with you. 
 Here sit down. I mean, if you 
 please. Not there opposite, where 
 . I can look at you. ' ' 
 
 "That is my aunt's place." 
 
 ' ' All right. That little chair, then. 
 There. Has any one ever told you 
 that you are very pretty?"
 
 74 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 "Oh, yes, indeed! I mean that 
 is I" 
 
 "That's all right, too. Always 
 tell the truth. There's no harm in 
 your being pretty. No harm in your 
 knowing it. A prince should always 
 know his kingdom. The harm is in 
 your pluming yourself, generically 
 speaking, because you are better 
 looking than I am " 
 
 "Oh, I'm not!" cried Josephine, 
 before she thought again. "My 
 aunt said you were very very 
 fine looking, " and she stopped, catch- 
 ing her breath in a frightened way. 
 
 "And what do you say?" 
 
 Josephine looked up again through 
 the long lashes, a swift, sparkling, 
 sidelong glance. ' ' You said my aunt 
 was always right, you know. ' ' 
 
 "That's good! That's good! Here 
 she comes. My dear, I have been 
 making acquaintance with our little 
 niece. She'll do. She'll do. We 
 must make it gay for her. ' '
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 75 
 
 Mrs. Applegate flashed her hus- 
 band a look that made him feel as if 
 he were very fond of her. 
 
 "Does Frances know she is here? 
 Has Laura called? Frances must 
 give her a luncheon at once, and 
 Laura a high tea. I'll speak to 
 them. I'm glad I told Gervais to 
 come round to dinner to-night. You 
 had better send out cards for a 
 dancing party in her honor. Got 
 everything to wear, my dear?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Mrs. Applegate, 
 blandly, before Josephine could 
 reply. "Her little white dress is 
 just the thing." 
 
 "Beads and things?" 
 
 "Young girls don't wear jewels, 
 you know," said Mrs. Applegate. 
 
 "A pearl or two '11 do her no 
 harm. I'll see to that. She's a 
 little flower. And she sings like a 
 bird. Well, you must take her 
 about all you can; you won't expect 
 me to go a great deal. But I'll be
 
 76 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 on guard now and then. And she is 
 to write for me in the morning. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, may I?" cried Josephine. 
 
 "Mrs Applegate," said her hus- 
 band, "when you said she was a sun- 
 beam you showed yourself a woman 
 of discretion. And I might know 
 that the child of any sister of the 
 woman I saw fit to marry would be 
 as much a treasure as her aunt. ' ' 
 
 "Oh," said Josephine to her aunt, 
 half under her breath, "how good he 
 is!" 
 
 ' ' He is a prince among men ! ' ' said 
 Mrs. Applegate, following the com- 
 plimentary mood of the moment. 
 And just then Mr. Gervais was 
 announced. 
 
 "May I trust you were alluding to 
 me?" said Mr. Gervais, as he bowed 
 over the hand of his hostess. And 
 directly afterward the soft-shod 
 Daniel, who filled many capacities, 
 murmured to his mistress that 
 dinner was served.
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 77 
 
 You may be sure that Josephine 
 made the most of the week that 
 followed, in getting her bearings, as 
 Mr. Applegate said, with driving, 
 the theater, a morning concert, an 
 afternoon of receiving calls, and a 
 guest or two at dinner every day, 
 where, prepared by her aunt's hints 
 on the days they had dined alone 
 together, there was no fault to be 
 found with her. "The little maid is 
 under full sail, ' ' said Mr. Applegate. 
 "She has caught the spirit of the 
 thing. Now let her have her way. ' ' 
 And she was presented to the world 
 at her aunt's dancing party, about as 
 dainty an object, her aunt thought, 
 as ever gladdened eye, in her white 
 crepe, out of whose wreaths of white 
 ostrich feathers rose the whiter 
 throat and shoulders and the head 
 of a young goddess a young god- 
 dess whose rosy flush, whose 
 luminous eyes and dimpling smile 
 and golden aura of hair, made her
 
 78 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 seem the very keeper of happiness. 
 And evidently aunt and uncle were 
 of one mind here; for just as she 
 came into her aunt's sitting-room to 
 be inspected, Mr. Applegate him- 
 self clasped a string of pearls about 
 her throat, in what seemed to his 
 wife a freak of such unprecedented 
 prodigality that for a moment she 
 was almost apprehensive, till, taking 
 counsel with herself, she remem- 
 bered that for whatever Mr. Apple- 
 gate thought righteous expenditure 
 he was always willing to spend, only 
 preferring to spend the money him- 
 self. This the jewels he had given 
 her testified, although Mr. Applegate 
 had merely felt in that matter that 
 as Frances and Laura had their 
 mother's jewels, the equity of the 
 thing, independently of the splendor 
 belonging to his name and house, 
 made it right that his second wife 
 should have no less. If he locked 
 them all up in his safe every night,
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 79 
 
 it was not because he distrusted their 
 nominal owner, but because it was 
 his habit, and it was best. Now, 
 when he had clasped those pearls 
 about her white throat, well pleased 
 with himself, in spite of his lame 
 foot Mr. Applegate whirled Jose- 
 phine the length of the hall, to the 
 waltz which one of the violinists was 
 trying over in the distance to see, 
 he said, if her step was right. "Now 
 I shall have a good clip of the 
 gout to pay for that," he cried. 
 "But it was worth it! You little 
 witch, you are like that old witch 
 Medea you make a man young 
 again!" 
 
 "Why do you say so much about 
 being young again?" she asked. 
 "Do you feel old? You don't look 
 old at least, ' ' as she saw his look of 
 surprise, "not so very old." 
 
 "Ah, there now!" he exclaimed. 
 "To ruin it all! But I like your 
 truth. And, on the whole, it is good
 
 8o THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 to find that I don't strike a little 
 stranger as so very old. ' ' 
 
 "But you're not, you know!" 
 
 "That's right. Keep it up. Now 
 for a turn back!" And just then 
 Mrs. Frances Boylston stood at the 
 head of the stairs, dropping her 
 long cloak, and looking at her father 
 with eyes of displeased amaze- 
 ment. 
 
 "At your age!" she said. 
 
 "There, Mrs. Applegate," he 
 cried rather breathlessly, as he 
 regained his wife's side, "how is 
 that for an old man?" 
 
 "I don't allow any one to call you 
 an old man," said Mrs. Applegate. 
 "Good-evening, Frances. I am glad 
 to see you. I hope Willis is com- 
 ing?" And she descended with her 
 husband in stately fashion, Josephine 
 waiting to go down with Mrs. Boyls- 
 ton. 
 
 "Your father is so kind to me!" 
 she said, timidly. "I should be
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 8l 
 
 very homesick if he were not ; it is 
 all so strange here. ' ' 
 
 "Homesick?" said Mrs. Boylston, 
 in a tone as cold and distant as the 
 snow on the top of the Himalayas, 
 and quite as if she wondered had 
 the girl a home to be homesick for, 
 and said no more, although she 
 lingered with one of the maids re- 
 jDairing some injury to her lace, 
 till people began to come, whom 
 Josephine of course did not know, 
 and to whom she was talking as if 
 Josephine did not exist; so that at 
 last the little maid went down alone, 
 Mrs. Boylston, not daring fully to 
 disobey her father's behest that she 
 should receive with his wife, finally 
 following, but paying no further 
 attention to Josephine whatever. 
 
 But nothing did Josephine know of 
 it the men surrounding her like 
 humming-birds round a blossom; 
 not even the girls jealous of such 
 radiant loveliness, as girls never are
 
 82 THE MAID HE M A R R I E 1) 
 
 when the loveliness is real, of such 
 compelling sweetness. Nor had 
 the dowagers anything at all to say, 
 for she spoke to them artlessly, as 
 if, although immensely respectable, 
 they were her own age. If now and 
 then she caught Mrs. Boylston's dark 
 glance, or the slight scornful sneer 
 on the face of the sister Laura, it 
 never occurred to her that with all 
 the world their own, in the way of 
 station and income and pleasure, 
 they could be grudging her the 
 excitement of her brief visit, or have 
 any fear of her, a little country girl, 
 or feel any concern because she could 
 give pleasure to the father whose 
 house they had left empty. 
 
 "Your mother has done this very 
 well," said Mr. Applegate to Laura, 
 as she was about to leave. 
 
 "Your wife has," said Mrs. Laura, 
 majestically. 
 
 "Tush! tush!" said Mr. Apple - 
 gate. "Your father's wife is your
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 83 
 
 mother, to all intents and purposes. 
 And it will be better for you to con- 
 sider her so. She would be a good 
 mother if you two simpletons allowed 
 her to be. I have been quite as 
 patient, Laura, as I intend. You 
 have had plenty of time to correct 
 erroneous impressions ; and if there 
 is any more of this Goneril and 
 Regan business, you will hear some- 
 thing break ! Now I want you and 
 Frances, each of you, to give this 
 little rose-bud a luncheon next 
 week. ' ' 
 
 "It is out of the question, father! 
 I" 
 
 "Then it must be put in the ques- 
 tion. Bulfinch, I want your wife to 
 give my little niece a luncheon early 
 next week. A fine one. She can 
 choose her own day." 
 
 And a luncheon she gave a pink 
 luncheon and with her husband's 
 wiser eye upon her preparations, 
 and her father on the alert, it had to
 
 84 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 be a fine one. And Frances con- 
 tinued the festivity with another a 
 few days later, making it a prim- 
 rose occasion; not entirely without 
 thought that primrose-color, which 
 suited herself, would be particularly 
 unbecoming to so fair a creature as 
 Josephine. But Josephine, in her 
 green cloth and its seal borders, and 
 a great bunch of yellow primroses in 
 her dress, looked as if primrose-color 
 were the one thing she ought to 
 have about her to set her beauty 
 off. 
 
 "How becoming this soft tint is 
 to you!" she said to the dark and 
 dour Frances. "You should always 
 wear primrose. I am very fond of 
 it, too," she went on, with that sun- 
 beamy effect of hers that ought to 
 melt a rock. "I don't know what 
 makes you all so kind to me," she 
 said. "You give me so much to re- 
 member when I go home. It is the 
 great world I have read about, you
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 85 
 
 see. ' ' But it did not melt Frances. 
 The girl was really too charming ! 
 
 But after the dancing party, of 
 course, there were swarms of calls 
 on Mrs. Applegate's day; and Mr. 
 Applegate made a point of being at 
 home, and was not in the least dis- 
 satisfied to see how very well his 
 wife's niece acquitted herself, and to 
 have it evident that he had married 
 no adventuress or woman without 
 name or family his daughters' 
 intimation to that effect now and 
 again ringing in his ears like a dis- 
 turbance of the hearing but a 
 woman whose kindred had the gentle 
 graciousness of this beautiful girl. 
 
 Mrs. Applegate always made it a 
 point, wherever she went, to be at 
 home in the late afternoon. It had 
 usually been with some foreign or 
 domestic lion, who roared gently. 
 But Josephine was sufficient for the 
 moment ; and the people who dropped 
 in for a cup of tea at that hour evi-
 
 86 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 dently found it very agreeable, so 
 many came, and came so often, and 
 stayed so long. And when they were 
 gone Josephine sang to her uncle; 
 and the only drawback then, he said, 
 was that she sang so like a seraph 
 that he could not go to sleep, and so 
 lost his usual nap. But that voice 
 must be attended to, he declared; 
 and he ordered her to have a daily 
 lesson with the Madame the Ma- 
 dame, however, who had trained 
 many a noble voice, saying the 
 lessons were only practice, as the 
 singing-teacher had already given a 
 correct method, and done all that 
 was necessary for the voice a voice 
 it would have been a pleasure to 
 train. And Josephine did not an- 
 nounce the fact that her teacher was 
 only the master of the country sing- 
 ing-school, although he was an 
 enthusiast who had made the tour of 
 Europe on foot for the sake of the 
 Baireuth festival, and old Robert
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 87 
 
 Franz had written a song for him, 
 and Miss Pearson had more than 
 once remarked upon his being a 
 genius. 
 
 "It would be folly to deny it, Jose- 
 phine," said Mrs. Applegate, before 
 they came down to dinner together 
 one day, "you are going to be the 
 beauty next season. It's too late this. 
 I wish I had gone up for you last 
 November instead of in February. 
 Mr. Gervais says there isn't one 
 among them that can keep step with 
 you. You are going to have it all 
 your own way. There's something 
 about you that is even more fetching 
 than beauty that air of not caring, 
 of knowing something better than 
 this" 
 
 "But I do care, Aunt Josephine. 
 I care immensely. If there's any- 
 thing better than this " She 
 stopped, and shut her eyes, for 
 Will's face floated just before them. 
 "I was dizzy," she said, smiling.
 
 88 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 She knew, by this time, as well as 
 Mr. Gervais did, how enchanting 
 that smile was. 
 
 Mr. Gervais was already in the 
 drawing-room when they came in, 
 a fat little gourmet for whom a 
 pretty girl was an attraction, but a 
 very minor one in comparison with 
 a good dinner. 
 
 "Pray, will you tell me, Mr. 
 Gervais, how you came here?" said 
 Mrs. Applegate. "I did not expect 
 you before the game. Weren't you 
 over in New York?" 
 
 "How I came here? It wouldn't 
 interest you in the least. Beacon 
 Street is the most commonplace of 
 highways. ' ' 
 
 "Come, let us see if his gondola is 
 tied to a post out there on the 
 water," cried Josephine. And on 
 her way she caught a glimpse of 
 herself in a mirror, and paused 
 before the lovely reflection of rosy 
 crape, and a fluff of pale ostrich
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 89 
 
 tips, the damask cheek, the white, 
 full throat, the tangle of gold hair, 
 the great starry eyes, the lips, whose 
 fine curves melted into dimples as 
 they parted over teeth like rice pearl. 
 "It isn't half bad!" she said, laugh- 
 ing across her shoulder at Gervais 
 as she went down the room. 
 
 "By George!" he said to Mrs. 
 Applegate. "Was it a month ago 
 that this little witch came out of the 
 woods? Was it out of the woods she 
 came? The town will never take the 
 wild flavor out of her ! She will be a 
 high stepper; but she wants a gold 
 harness. ' ' 
 
 Mrs. Applegate 's smile said many 
 things. 
 
 "You see," said the wise man, 
 answering it, "this thing called love 
 is the beginning of trouble. But to 
 look at it rationally now, a brilliant 
 and agreeable young woman at the 
 head of one's house, of good birth, 
 perhaps, but without a penny to her
 
 90 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 name, so that she shall feel a sense 
 of obligation for all the luxuries and 
 enjoyments with which one has sur- 
 rounded her " 
 
 "That is your idea of marriage?" 
 said Mrs. Applegate. "I doubt if 
 Josephine has not quite a different 
 one!" 
 
 Whether Josephine had or not, 
 Mr. Gervais had an opportunity of 
 finding out presently, as he joined 
 her at the great window looking out 
 at the bay dark and dim in the 
 twilight, the distant lights shining 
 like scattered jewels on its purple. 
 
 "When I see you in white," he 
 said, ' ' it gives me the impression of a 
 Mabel Morrison rose, when a Mabel 
 Morrison is without a flaw. When 
 I see you in green, it is something 
 delicate and yet pronounced, as a 
 maidenhair fern. When I see you 
 in bloom-color " 
 
 "Really," said Josephine, "you 
 have a right to your impressions.
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 91 
 
 But I don't know that you have a 
 right to impart them to me. ' ' 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 "I like them with some spirit," 
 said he. 
 
 "Certainly, Mr. Gervais" began 
 Josephine. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I know all about it," he 
 said, with a penitential gesture. 
 "Mea culpa. That's all right. 
 Shall I sit down? Who's the dinner 
 for? What 'she done?" 
 
 "Discovered a new orchid, I 
 believe, " said Josephine, in a demure 
 wonder at his manners, before doing 
 what he would have called catching 
 on. 
 
 "You don't say so! Epiphytal?" 
 
 She laughed. 
 
 ' ' I knew you had an orchid house, ' ' 
 she said. "I suppose," grown bolder, 
 "you spend on it every year what 
 would maintain and educate a dozen 
 families in moderate circumstances. ' ' 
 
 "I dare say," he said, with a slight
 
 92 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 yawn. "Tell me about this fel- 
 low." 
 
 "The orchid man? Oh, I don't 
 know much about him," she said, 
 calmly, still buttoning her glove. 
 "I believe this orchid was found in 
 a jungle in the heart of the tropics 
 somewhere, and cost the lives of a 
 troop of soldiers, and the sanity of 
 several others, and a war to the 
 death between three or four wild 
 tribes." 
 
 "And the slavery and slaughter- 
 ing and eating of several tender 
 young girls " 
 
 "Mr. Gervais!" 
 
 ' ' Not that you mean to say all this 
 was done for the sake of getting the 
 orchid." 
 
 "Only the orchid seems to be all 
 that came of it," said Josephine. 
 "Oh, of course, it's unpleasant. 
 One oughtn't to mention it," she 
 continued with a manner in which 
 she did not know herself. "But
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 93 
 
 you've only to look at the flower to 
 see all the wickedness there is in its 
 red and yellow flaunting. ' ' 
 
 "It seems to me you are a little 
 savage yourself." 
 
 "I think you are very rude to call 
 me a little savage. ' ' 
 
 "I mean slightly disaffected as to 
 orchids and the raison d'etre of 
 dinner parties. You don't like our 
 mode of attack on life here?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, I do; some of it. I like 
 these houses, " 
 
 "Palaces reduced to the ranks, the 
 rank and file of the people." 
 
 "Yes, I like this one, these great 
 suites of rooms, this ivory finish, 
 these rugs made for Indian princes. 
 I like the paintings that Corot, 
 that Millet, that little Rousseau ; you 
 see I have learned " 
 
 "Oh, yes; you caught the step in 
 no time." 
 
 "That looks as though I had no 
 ear, then?"
 
 94 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 "On the contrary, you are all ear. " 
 
 "Things one would rather not have 
 said!" 
 
 "I mean the ear of Fine Ear. But 
 you were saying you like this house?" 
 
 "Yes the ample draperies, the 
 little room with the Luca della Rob- 
 bia panels, and the faded Boucher 
 tapestry ' ' 
 
 "It isn't faded. It is fade. The 
 colors sublimed in the beginning to 
 their highest power of tender mel- 
 ancholy " 
 
 "I didn't know you were a poet, 
 Mr. Gervais. " 
 
 "Let me tell you in that ear of 
 yours, Miss Josephine, if there is 
 anything in the world I despise it is 
 a poet and his poetry. My house, 
 too, is one of these palaces " 
 
 "Apropos of what? I don't believe 
 there's a Corot in it," she inter- 
 posed, a little startled by her suc- 
 cessful assumption of a too flippant 
 ease.
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 95 
 
 "Well, no," he said, staring at 
 her. "How did you know? But 
 there are a Vibert, and a Zamacois, 
 and an Escosura, and a Bougereau ' ' 
 
 "Really," said Josephine, "when 
 I was a child we used to play with 
 bits of broken crockery. And how 
 proud and loud and mad and glad 
 we were if we found a piece that had 
 a whole flower on it ! " 
 
 He laughed. "Different places, 
 same manners," he said. "Play- 
 things for this age, and playthings 
 for that. But that plaything came 
 to me without finding; it was my 
 father's before me all but a few can- 
 vases and curios and is about com- 
 plete. It it only wants a mistress. " 
 
 "Indeed?" said Miss Josephine, 
 coolly. ' ' Something not hard to find 
 in this ' ' 
 
 "Something deuced hard to find 
 and exactly suit ! ' ' 
 
 "Strange," said Josephine, ab- 
 sently, with an air of reflection, her
 
 g6 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 finger on her lip. "They want 
 beauty, wit, charm, all the virtues, 
 all the graces ; in short ' ' 
 
 "Perfection," said Mr. Gervais, 
 gravely, looking at her. 
 
 "And they will give in return a 
 house full of curios. ' ' 
 
 "More than that," said Mr. 
 Gervais. "An honorable name, a 
 bank account, limitless luxury, the 
 ransacking of the world for pleas- 
 ures ' ' 
 
 "And love?" said Josephine. 
 
 "By heaven!" he said, stooping 
 over her, "you almost make me 
 think so." 
 
 But here Mrs. Applegate, gracious 
 in purple velvet and old lace, was 
 welcoming her guests, and Mr. 
 Gervais obeyed her slight but im- 
 perious gesture, and went forward. 
 
 Josephine watched him the short, 
 rotund and full-fed shape, with the 
 gait which belongs to such; the 
 small bald head ; the fat, red, rather
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 97 
 
 genial face as he turned about ; the 
 air of a little portly puffing pasha 
 who could buy slaves, as he stood 
 there ; the air of a big gourmet as he 
 sat beside her at the dinner table 
 afterward, mightily pleased at the 
 entremet he liked, a little irritated 
 that the sherry was not properly 
 cooled. 
 
 "And he wants perfection," she 
 sighed aloud. 
 
 "Miss Josephine," he murmured, 
 "you are perfection." 
 
 She looked at him with a sidelong 
 gaze under her white, downcast lids 
 he a little flushed with his wine, 
 the truffled turtle's fin disappearing 
 in large gobbets. She was angry 
 with herself for her familiarity, her 
 impertinence. This, then, was what 
 the possession of one of the great 
 fortunes, of one of the old names, 
 of one of the fine houses, one of 
 the summer palaces by the sea, of 
 a stable full of racers, of the most
 
 98 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 and best there was in the new life 
 that had seemed so rich and inex- 
 haustible to her, made them ! And 
 then as if an electric spark had 
 touched her, another face filled her 
 vision for a moment, as once before 
 it had done, in place of this puffed, 
 rubose countenance, with its only 
 half-veiled grossett, dark, pale, 
 starry, the face of one who had a 
 soul ; and a song that she had heard 
 Will sing- seemed to be sounding in 
 some far distance, as if a voice called 
 to her. She knew the lights were 
 not dim, although they seemed so. 
 She was afraid she might be going to 
 make a scene. She leaned back in 
 her chair, and began to fan herself. 
 "Do you call this dining?" said 
 Mr. Gervais. "The room's too 
 warm? I was just thinking that 
 your aunt is the only person I know 
 whose dining-room doesn't heat you 
 and make you lay the blame on the 
 wine. What ! ' ' as he looked at her
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 99 
 
 now "Are you ill? Here!" with a 
 motion to a servant "drink this. I 
 I was too precipitate. That's 
 right. The color's coming back. 
 No one has observed you, ' ' he said, 
 kindly. 
 
 Of course, the color was coming 
 back? What had she said, what 
 had she done, that gave him this 
 right of proprietorship? No one 
 had observed, indeed! What was 
 thereto observe? "How do you like 
 this Rudesheimer?" she heard him 
 run on. 
 
 "Isn't it the wine Coleridge speaks 
 of?" she asked. 
 
 "By Jove, I say! I envy you!" he 
 broke forth. "Here you bring a 
 fresh palate to all the new savors, 
 the infinitely delicate variations of 
 taste absolutely new sensations. 
 To have them all over again I would 
 give well, we can't live two lives 
 in one. Only I didn't make the 
 best of mine. No boy does.
 
 IOO THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 Rushed it, and dulled the sensitive- 
 ness before I knew enough to ap- 
 preciate the difference between 
 Johannisberg and Chianti, except 
 for the color. Well the next best 
 thing will be the training of an 
 untried taste like yours. I shall live 
 my green and salad days over again, 
 and enjoy them, vicariously to be 
 sure, but with more " 
 
 Ah, heavens, what stuff was this 
 creature talking? Why did she need 
 to remember so well just then a 
 moment of the summer twilight 
 when she and Will sat by the woody 
 wayside, and a late bee went by, and 
 he hushed her to hear the sound of 
 its wings and compare it to that of 
 the wasp following a difference too 
 fine for human music to note. And 
 then he had wondered, if the great 
 ether of space really existed, whether 
 it were absolutely incapable of sound 
 as of heat; and, if the movements 
 of the stars called out a rush of
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 101 
 
 tones, at what lofty and all but 
 infinite distances those tones be- 
 came braided into harmony, and at 
 what half-way star one might hear 
 the great song of Lyra just shining 
 faintly overhead then in the deep 
 blue. 
 
 "Well, what if she did recall that 
 moment?" she asked herself. It was 
 the heavy smell of all these flowers 
 bringing back the odor of that sweet- 
 brier vine behind them. "What of 
 it? What higher were sounds than 
 tastes? Wasn't one just as much of 
 the body as the other?" But she 
 knew, as she looked at the little man 
 maundering on between the lus- 
 ciousness of his morsels, whether or 
 not one was of the body and one was 
 of the soul, or of the effort toward a 
 soul whether one was of the earth 
 earthy, and the other of heaven 
 heavenly. 
 
 A prickling sensation, that Mr. 
 Gervais would have called indiges-
 
 102 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 tion, suddenly set all her nerves 
 dancing with anger. She avenged 
 herself by bending and listening 
 eager-eyed to Mrs. Jack Pepperidge, 
 who across the table was sparkling 
 out in a diatribe upon the wine Mr. 
 Gervais preferred, the town he called 
 his sacred city, the people with such 
 an inherited instinct for migration 
 that, as they could not leave the 
 town, they had taken the town up 
 and set it down somewhere else, and 
 had moved bodily from a hillside to a 
 swamp ; upon the poverty of imagina- 
 tion, in their architecture, the shab- 
 biness of the very street they were 
 on, the folly of having closed a water- 
 side where Venetian merchant 
 princes, with such a chance to drive 
 spiles, would have built their sepa- 
 rate palaces, set in blossoming 
 gardens, all the way up bay and 
 river. 
 
 "Oh, this will never do," said Mr. 
 Gervais. "I can't have you enjoy-
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 103 
 
 ing this sort of thing about the town 
 where you're to live " 
 
 "I don't know that I'm to live in 
 it," she said. 
 
 He stared at her with his round 
 eyes; but other people broke in 
 then, and he could only say to her 
 before he went away that night say 
 in a high-handed way: "Is it the 
 Hunt Ball to-morrow night, or the 
 small and early german? I am com- 
 ing first to know if you are going to 
 live in this town " 
 
 "Or die somewhere else? Does it 
 really amount to that?" 
 
 And Josephine knew in that 
 moment that, with Daniel's assist- 
 ance, Mr. Gervais would never find 
 her again within these doors unless 
 surrounded by a crowd. 
 
 There were not many nights of the 
 season left now ; but those were so 
 filled with gayeties that Josephine's 
 sleep only began perilously near day- 
 light. All the same she knew why
 
 104 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 she was there, and she was ready 
 to write at her uncle's dictation 
 whenever he took out his papers. 
 
 "Come, come," said he. "This 
 won't do. In bed at three or four in 
 the morning, or worse, and out of 
 it at this hour? Where's the beauty- 
 sleep? We won't have any more writ- 
 ing at present, and when we begin 
 again it shall be for the hour before 
 lunch. That will be better for me, 
 too. And, my dear," to his wife, 
 "I am rather tired of those little 
 street suits. Have another for her. 
 Have a pearl gray, very light and 
 dressy ' ' 
 
 "With little capes then, a quantity 
 of them, lined with rose pink!" cried 
 his delighted wife. 
 
 "And edges of marabout, down, 
 feathers, something fluffy, you know 
 what," said Mr. Applegate, waving 
 his hands airily. "And a big gray 
 hat with plumes, and all that, you 
 know. Don't mention the expense!
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 105 
 
 I'll have our little girl dressed as 
 becomes her, if it breaks a bank!" 
 
 Mr. Applegate did not suspect that 
 this sunny thing had, with the melt- 
 ing power of her sweetness, her 
 happiness, her success, her com- 
 panionship, broken a stouter bank 
 than one with vaults of chilled steel. 
 And when she burst into nervous 
 tears of excitement and gladness, 
 her uncle hardly knew when he had 
 had a keener pleasure than in kissing 
 off the salt drops, and assuring her 
 that she was his own pet, his pretty 
 dear, his little new daughter, wonder- 
 ing then to hear his own voice, and 
 leaving off in a startled way. 
 
 "Mr. Applegate," said his wife, 
 somewhat solemnly that night, 
 ' ' when the Lord made you he made a 
 good man!" And Mr. Applegate 
 began to think so himself.
 
 IV 
 
 Mrs. Applegate, very well satisfied 
 with things as far as they had gone, 
 took her prize out of town early. 
 She said to herself that Josephine in 
 the effort to overcome and conceal 
 her shyness was just a little fresh, 
 and that the experiences of a short 
 European trip might be useful. It 
 was no matter about mistakes over 
 there. They would go in a fast boat 
 with the Jack Pepperidges, who were 
 off for a six weeks' trip, just to look 
 over a foreign cutter. It would be 
 too early for London, but they could 
 do a little something in the way of 
 finery in Paris, acquiring some 
 
 savoir-faire on the way. As Mrs. 
 107
 
 108 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 Applegate said, so was it done. They 
 would return just as the trial races 
 were on at Newport. There were 
 opportunities in the trial races. Law- 
 rence Berkeley, for instance, who 
 all last year had been at the ends of 
 the earth, was interested in one of 
 the yachts, and the perspicacious 
 lady knew that where a dot was 
 indispensable with the European 
 lover, with the American lover it 
 was quite another affair. 
 
 The Neckan lay on the edge of the 
 fleet. They had just made colors 
 aboard, and fired the sunset gun, 
 and were anchored some cable 
 lengths away from another yacht on 
 either side. All the inner harbor, 
 indeed, was gay with the lesser craft, 
 waiting for the work of the next 
 day. The town sparkled in the 
 evening light behind them, but the 
 White Ladye when she came in left 
 the sea outside lying high and dim, 
 where the black and gold line of the
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 1 09 
 
 Valiant made relief, and the outlines 
 of the Neckan, of the Powhatan, and 
 of the big man-of-war were like 
 phantoms. Lettuce leaves and fruit- 
 parings floated by the little launches 
 that were darting all about like 
 caddis-flies on the inside water, with 
 the boats of the navy yard. There 
 was an agreeable sense of stir and of 
 impending dinner in the air; pres- 
 ently, there would be toilettes of a 
 sort, and night on the dark, still 
 water-world, and sleep after toil. 
 The Mayflower crept in like a ghost 
 in the purpling air, and all her white 
 array slid down and left her. And 
 then the lights began to twinkle out, 
 and, as if by signal, the whole inner 
 fleet put on a myriad of other 
 twinkles with electric bulbs and green 
 and red sparks, till the harbor was 
 a sheet of jewels. 
 
 Through all this cheerful prepara- 
 tion for pleasure, now sliding along 
 the dark, oily swell, and now break-
 
 110 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 ing the wake of light of this and that 
 boat, into their life a moment and 
 gone again, seeing the faces of the 
 men in their sea ne'glige'e, and of the 
 women, these trim in yachting suits 
 and those wearing big flower-laden 
 hats and gorgeous gowns, slipped 
 the launch of the Neckan, carrying 
 various stores from town, the mail, 
 and Mrs. Applegate and her niece, 
 who had come down to join the yacht 
 outside. 
 
 "Oh!" cried Mrs. Applegate, as 
 they welcomed her on the Neckan, 
 "this is solid comfort," and she 
 looked along the deck while drawing 
 off her gloves. "I declare I dared 
 not move on the little Minnow for 
 fear of upsetting the whole business. 
 I assure you when we came round 
 the Point and she stood on end at 
 every big wave and made a spring 
 over into the next, I felt of no more 
 worth than a bubble." And mov- 
 ing easily on her way with saluta-
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED III 
 
 tions to Mr. Applegate's friends, she 
 disappeared after Josephine. 
 
 When they came on deck again, 
 under the awning with its fringe of 
 lights, a white apparition loomed 
 some way off, a yacht that had come 
 to anchor while they were at dinner, 
 "The Pendragon, " the sailing- 
 master said in answer to Mr. Ap- 
 plegate's inquiry, "Mr. Lawrence 
 Berkeley's Pendragon." 
 
 Mr. Lawrence Berkeley was at 
 that moment leaning on the rail of 
 the Pendragon, nothing of him 
 visible but the spark of his cigar, 
 and looking down and across at the 
 Neckan. "By Jove, Gervais!" he 
 exclaimed, "do you see that?" and 
 the movement of his cigar indicated 
 the lighted deck of the Neckan and 
 the beautiful girl standing there 
 while some one dropped a wrap over 
 her shoulders. She wore a white 
 Venetian silk, which she had brought 
 along, in case they dressed for
 
 112 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 dinner, because it would not cockle 
 in the sea-air, and she had a bunch 
 of green leaves on her breast. 
 
 "Do I see what?" said Mr. Gervais, 
 lighting another cigar before he 
 threw away the last and watched its 
 little spark hiss and quench in the 
 water. 
 
 "That!" 
 
 "That," said Mr. Gervais pres- 
 ently, "is a demonstrative dangerous 
 pronoun, relating in this case to Miss 
 Josephine Grey, the ingenue" of last 
 season, the toast of the next, and 
 Mrs. Applegate's great card. If you 
 know what's good for you, you'll put 
 on steam and be out of this by day- 
 break. ' ' 
 
 "Run away from danger, eh?" 
 
 "Gad, there's some dangers a man 
 had best pass by on the other side." 
 
 "I don't know but you're right. 
 Circe turned her men to beasts. 
 This damsel seems to sour the milk 
 of human kindness. Come, it's
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 113 
 
 rather interesting. There's a pleas- 
 ure in deserving victory if you don't 
 get it, ' ' said Mr. Lawrence Berkeley 
 lightly. "Worthy antagonist, don't 
 you know; a shiver of danger, a 
 trembling on the edge of triumph. 
 I'm feeling fairly fit. Suppose we 
 are set over there to-morrow. ' ' And 
 he looked again for the girl in 
 the light with the green leaves 
 on her breast. But she was lying 
 back in her chair near the side, 
 almost out of sight, and letting the 
 cool air blow over her. Perhaps in 
 the gloom his fancy magnified the 
 beauty he had seen, and as he leaned 
 toward it he could not tell whether 
 he saw or dreamed its loveliness. 
 
 The great Sound Steamer went 
 puffing and panting by with emerald 
 and ruby glints, laying golden organ- 
 pipes down the dark waters, a mov- 
 ing pavilion of light. The yachts 
 rose and fell in the slow swell of the 
 slipping tide ; the stars looked faintly
 
 114 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 out behind a veil of haze ; now and 
 then through the wide spaces long 
 wafts of the perfume of flowers 
 streamed past by way of the land, 
 now and then by way of the sea came 
 a strong fanning of its chill salt 
 breath. From a distant deck a 
 woman's voice rose and filled the 
 dark hollow of the heaven with the 
 sparkling deliciousness of Manon's 
 drinking song. In the following 
 silence only the chimes of the clocks 
 from far-off towers fell, and the bells 
 of this ship and of that sounded the 
 hour; and there seemed to be in all 
 the atmosphere of the summer night 
 and sea a certain waiting and 
 expectancy of pleasure if not of joy. 
 As for Mrs. Applegate, she knew 
 that when Josephine stood up in the 
 glow of the electric lights, with her 
 white gown and her green leaves, 
 while the wrap was dropped on her 
 shoulders, the fleet was not so widely 
 scattered that she was not the center
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 115 
 
 of many eyes, with or without a 
 glass, in that circumambient dark- 
 ness. It gave her a thrill of the joy 
 that she felt ought to have belonged 
 to her own youth. She liked it all 
 the better that Josephine was utterly 
 unconscious. And she was not at 
 all surprised when at an early hour 
 next morning Mr. Lawrence Berke- 
 ley and Mr. Gervais and some others 
 presented themselves both to pay 
 their compliments and to make 
 arrangements for seeing the day's 
 race to better advantage than on 
 board the big Pendragon. 
 
 Breakfast was still on; and the 
 young men did not seem to be 
 unkindly disposed to a little com- 
 pound of cracked ice and something 
 else, that was brought them; and 
 they were already quite well ac- 
 quainted with the wife of Jack Pep- 
 peridge, whose boat was to follow 
 the race, and who had come back 
 on the steamer with Mrs. Applegate
 
 Il6 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 and Josephine when Josephine ap- 
 peared, clad in a close-fitting white 
 water-proof stuff, little rings loosed 
 from her hair that was bound away 
 in braids beneath the visored cap; 
 and no one looked at any one else. 
 
 "We were all saying," said Mrs. 
 Applegate, "that this is perfect 
 madness. " 
 
 "Perfect sport!" said Mrs. Pepper- 
 idge. 
 
 "Perhaps it is a little rash," said 
 Josephine. "But I find I am a sea- 
 bird, and one may never have an- 
 other chance at such a delightful 
 madness." 
 
 "We are just two of the crew," 
 said Mrs. Pepperidge. "Obey orders, 
 and be animated 'ballast. I always 
 go with Jack, you know ; and he has 
 let me fetch Josephine for a mascot," 
 the intimacy of the sea-voyage still 
 lingering. 
 
 ' ' I shall make him a flag with my 
 own hands," said Josephine.
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED Il"J 
 
 "Fortunate fellow," said Law- 
 rence Berkeley with some audacity. 
 And as Josephine looked at him she 
 saw one of those men, tall, sun- 
 burnt, with the dark eye now having 
 the glint of mockery and now the 
 melancholy droop that belong in the 
 young girl's fancy to Hamlet, to 
 Hassan, to Lucifer. 
 
 "I only wish Jack had built a 
 boat as he first intended, ' ' said Mrs. 
 Pepperidge. "But, as it is, I sup- 
 pose we are not in it on the Flying 
 Scud, although Jack says we are. 
 He takes odds we shan't be far 
 away. You're racing, Mr. Berke- 
 ley?" 
 
 "I could wish I were to-day," he 
 said. 
 
 The lady looked at him a moment. 
 ' Able seaman?" she asked. He 
 nodded. "Come on then. I'll make 
 it right with Jack. We'll send a 
 hand ashore. But you know what it 
 is? Under water half the time
 
 Il8 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 rather nerve -bracing. Josephine 
 hasn't any nerves." 
 
 And rather wondering about the 
 nerves, Mr. Berkeley went for his 
 wet weather rig and found himself 
 before long on his way to the Flying 
 Scud, where she hung, dipping her 
 pretty nose in the water, impatient 
 as a tethered wild creature, with the 
 wind blowing, the water curling, and 
 all the fleet of sails spreading, chang- 
 ing, skimming and maneuvering, 
 and all the steam yachts purring and 
 signaling and shrieking, and the 
 three towering white beauties get- 
 ting into line as they could for the 
 hindering boats, only one crossing 
 the line on the second, off at the gun- 
 shot like three arrows from the bow, 
 past the Reef and out to open sea. 
 In a moment or two the Flying Scud 
 was swelling out her linen and after 
 them ; and not all the interest of the 
 fleet, by any means, centered on the 
 three other racers.
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED II(J 
 
 "I have shipped as able seaman, 
 Pepperidge," said Mr. Berkeley. 
 ' ' And as such you must command me. " 
 
 "I think you'll earn your passage," 
 said Mr. Pepperidge. "It's going to 
 be a wet trip. But if the Flying Scud 
 doesn't show them all a clean pair of 
 heels she'll be in close alongside the 
 winner. There's some money up. 
 Of course, you know, we've got to 
 keep our distance, but we're going 
 to make our time!" 
 
 Under no better circumstance 
 could Mr. Lawrence Berkeley have 
 opened more favorably the little 
 campaign he had promised himself; 
 for when he was not occupied doing 
 seaman's duty, he was beside Jose- 
 phine with a freedom it might have 
 taken weeks of more formal acquaint- 
 ance to win. 
 
 "Well, you like it?" he said, 
 as a wave poured over her, the sun 
 struck it, and she emerged shining 
 in a perfect halo of iridescence.
 
 120 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 "The next best thing to being a 
 wave yourself!" she said. And 
 there was something as splendid as 
 the sea and wind and sunshine in the 
 girl's intrepidity. As for Mrs. Pep- 
 peridge, she was more at home at 
 sea than on shore ; but this girl could 
 hardly have seen the sea a year ago. 
 
 The wind freshened. They almost 
 forgot about the other yachts in the 
 delight of their own sailing as, 
 beating up to windward, they 
 mounted and soared like a bubble 
 on the great waves that hammered 
 the bows and broke beneath the keel, 
 as they dipped into green hollows 
 and the crests powdered over them, 
 as they forged on with the lee rail 
 under water and lay flat along the 
 windward rail to trim the boat, and 
 saw the huge wave towering over 
 them, stooping and lifting them in 
 its grasp, and now felt like a straw 
 lost in the power and play of the 
 elements, and now challenged them
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 121 
 
 with gay defiance ; on one side, the 
 sea a waste of weltering gray and 
 white waters, and on the other a 
 stretch of tumbling sapphire and 
 silver some sense of danger and 
 some pride of daring and overcom- 
 ing, the tonic of the strong air, and 
 a keen exhilaration, making their 
 spirits rise and race with the boat 
 and the billows. And then they 
 lifted their heads and lost them- 
 selves as the three beauties before 
 them swept round the stake-boat, 
 and with the breaking of the thread 
 outswelled the spinnakers in vast 
 opaline clouds that took a rosy tint, 
 sweeping on and up like gigantic 
 mothlike creatures of some other 
 atmosphere dropped on the waters 
 here with widespread wings. And 
 at the instant every valve of every 
 whistle in the boats waiting on their 
 coming sprang open, and a chorus 
 of hoarse and of shrill blasts scattered 
 the air.
 
 122 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 "Hark!" cried Josephine. 
 
 "Do you hear it?" cried Mrs. Pep- 
 peridge. "It is the hunt-music in 
 Tristan!" 
 
 "By Jove, so it is !" said Mr. Berke- 
 ley, as the wonderful chorus rose 
 and fell and rose again. "And quite 
 on the scale of the occasion. Ah, 
 here we go ourselves!" And round- 
 ing the stakeboat in their turn, their 
 own spinnaker caught the wind, and 
 they followed full-breasted as a 
 mighty swan. 
 
 "We shall make it," said Mr. Pep- 
 peridge. "This settles it. There's 
 nothing beats the Flying Scud before 
 the wind ! ' ' And they rushed along 
 with the wind blowing rainbows out 
 of the water and the following sea 
 seething and hissing behind them in 
 a vast sweet resonancfe. 
 
 "Oh!" cried Josephine, glittering 
 and streaming with the spray, "I 
 wouldn't have missed it for a year of 
 my life ! The great sea balloon ! The
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 123 
 
 rush of it ! The music of the tremen- 
 dous murmur!" 
 
 ' ' You should be a daughter of the 
 Vikings." 
 
 "I suppose it isn't a great way 
 from the Viking to the Puritan," said 
 Josephine. "And then I can claim a 
 little of the Dutch, who were born, 
 you know, like the halcyon, in a nest 
 upon the water." 
 
 "And while you are looking up 
 your sea people, remember some 
 gold-haired Venetian grandmother 
 or other, ' ' said Mr. Berkeley, looking 
 at the bright and dripping braids. 
 
 "Does the prow of the gondola strike on the 
 
 stair? 
 Do the voices and instruments pause and 
 
 prepare? 
 Oh, they faint on the ear as the lamp on the 
 
 view, 
 I am passing prem6 but I stay not for 
 
 you, 
 
 Preme not for you!" 
 
 sang Josephine.
 
 124 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 ' ' Perhaps sometime, ' ' he said, with 
 a sudden daring which she knew she 
 had brought upon herself by her 
 song, "I may hear you sing the rest 
 of it. 
 
 "I am coming sciar and for you and to 
 you, 
 
 Sciar and to you!" 
 
 Josephine hesitated, an angry 
 word on her tongue, a thought of 
 Will, and of his right to resent this 
 flashing into her eyes. But she 
 looked directly before her and said 
 nothing. And Mr. Lawrence Berke- 
 ley thought he had never seen so 
 radiant a beauty as hers was in the 
 virgin flush of her indignation, the 
 blue of the skies and the seas mir- 
 rored in her topaz eyes with a swift 
 green splendor. And then the 
 necessity of putting himself right 
 with her made his heart beat more 
 than any plunging into any hollow 
 of the sea, or swelling of spinnakers,
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 125 
 
 or unison of steam whistles making 
 Wagnerian music, had done. 
 
 4 ' I forgot myself, ' ' he said. ' ' You 
 are enough to make a wiser man do 
 so. And as for you, come," he 
 said, "you must forgive a moment's 
 presumption that borrowed some of 
 the freedom of all this freedom of 
 sea and air and camaraderie!" 
 
 "How long have you known me, 
 Mr. Berkeley?" 
 
 "Forever!" he exclaimed. 
 
 "Oh, thank you," she laughed; 
 4 ' I am not so old. ' ' 
 
 44 A goddess is neither old nor 
 young. ' ' 
 
 4 'Would you speak this way to a 
 Boston girl on a half-day's acquaint- 
 ance?" she asked, and she rose a 
 little, for they were still half-lying 
 along the deck, the wind that was 
 with them meeting the running tide 
 and making a sea whose spray swept 
 them fore and aft. 
 
 It was just then that one of the
 
 126 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 huge chance seas that wind and tide 
 sometimes roll up between them 
 caught and distracted the helms- 
 man's eye for half an instant. In 
 that instant the boat had broached 
 to, and, although only a second was 
 lost in putting her before the wind 
 again, the helm down, the crew 
 scrambling to trim the ship, and the 
 air lurid with Mr. Pepperidge's 
 vo.ciferations, yet they had seemed 
 to drop down some sinking depth 
 and one of the long, furiously chas- 
 ing waves had leaped on board, 
 and Josephine's hold loosened and 
 her feet unbraced by her movement, 
 in another moment she would per- 
 haps have washed off with the wave, 
 or, at any rate, have been struck 
 violently against the rail, had not 
 Mr. Berkeley put out an arm and 
 caught and kept her. 
 
 "I would speak to her that way," 
 said he. 
 
 "And she would say: 'Thanks,' '
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 127 
 
 she replied with a laugh, readjusting 
 herself. 
 
 'Do you mean to pretend you 
 weren't afraid?" he exclaimed. 
 
 "Afraid? Of what? You don't fear 
 till you lose hold of yourself, and I 
 have never yet felt as if any harm 
 could befall me." 
 
 " By Jove ! " said he. " Not all the 
 waters of all the seas can quench the 
 fire in you!" 
 
 "Oh!" cried Mrs. Pepperidge, 
 before Josephine, who did not un- 
 derstand or like some things in 
 her new life, and who wondered 
 if the men in it must be either like 
 this or like Mr. Gervais, could 
 express her resentment. "I can't 
 hear what you are saying, but I 
 don't see how you can talk at all 
 when it's getting so exciting, and 
 it's now or never with the Flying 
 Scud! I am just holding my 
 breath!" 
 
 "Keep on holding it," cried Mr.
 
 128 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 Pepperidge, his eyes fixed on a point 
 in the distance. "I wouldn't have 
 you lose it for a farm. ' ' 
 
 A few moments of silence as they 
 swept on with their mad rush. It 
 seemed to Josephine as if the world 
 were holding its breath, as well as 
 Mrs. Pepperidge. "Oh!" she cried 
 again, presently, "I don't know that 
 I wouldn't give a great deal more 
 than a year of my life to have the 
 Flying Scud come in " 
 
 "When one saves another's life," 
 asked Mr. Berkeley, "has he any 
 rights in it?" 
 
 "When he saves it?" said Jose- 
 phine. "Why, you would save a 
 fly's! And if you hadn't hindered 
 me, one of the crew would I don't 
 know that Mr. Pepperidge would 
 would " 
 
 "Have come about with the boat?" 
 
 "But he would have tossed me the 
 life-preservers, and there are all the 
 steamers following; and you must
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 129 
 
 take into account, too, that I can 
 swim, a little." 
 
 "There they are!" exclaimed Mr. 
 Pepperidge. "Make a note, Pinky!" 
 And a gun boomed, the wind 
 carrying the report in-shore, and 
 only the atmospheric echo reach- 
 ing them strained and refined away, 
 followed by the tutti of all the 
 whistles and calls in a pandemonium 
 of sound as the winner crossed the 
 lines. "Now, if all holds," he said, 
 "we shall have made the distance 
 ourselves in but ten seconds less 
 than the winner, in spite of that 
 dashed blunder just now. That 
 means a lot of money, Mrs. Pepper- 
 idge." 
 
 "Why didn't you enter?" asked 
 Mr. Berkeley. 
 
 "Because I was acquainted with 
 those ten seconds," said Mr. Pep- 
 peridge. "Beastly bore." And 
 while he held his stop-watch, they 
 swept on with every inch of canvas
 
 130 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 spread, with every rope and bolt 
 strained; and deck wet and mast still 
 feathered from the sea, they crossed 
 the line and had their own ovation. 
 " Part of that's for Miss Josephine, " 
 said Mr. Pepperidge. 
 
 There was dancing that night on 
 shore in one of the great villas where 
 the tapestried walls and the bowery 
 recesses under the lofty palm-trees 
 made it seem as if the rout of a sum- 
 mer palace had emptied itself into 
 the forest; and as the soft folds of 
 Josephine's misty raiment touched 
 Mr. Berkeley while she swept by, he 
 was conscious of a sudden fullness 
 at his throat, she was so beautiful, 
 so full of life and sweetness, so like 
 the roses she wore, whose fra- 
 grance drowned out the breath of all 
 those other flowers, so radiant, 
 flushed with dancing and pleasure; 
 he felt like closing his eyes as if 
 it were too much to see, or would 
 not be the same if he looked the
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 131 
 
 second time. And then he was 
 angry with himself, he could not have 
 said why. 
 
 " 'When you do dance, I wish you 
 A wave of the sea, that you might ever do 
 Nothing but that,' " 
 
 he said, when he asked for a dance. 
 
 "All in the day's work," she re- 
 plied. "I was wishing I were a- 
 wave this morning, you know. But I 
 am sorry that I haven't a dance left 
 till very late. ' ' 
 
 "Let me have that," he said. 
 
 He had thought at first that when 
 the time came for his dance they 
 would wander out and listen to the 
 sea together under this great blotch 
 of a waning moon high in the dark 
 heaven. But now everything was 
 dew-drenched and, besides, if it 
 were only for once he was going to 
 have this dance, he was going to 
 clasp and hold her for his own, des- 
 pite herself, a dance's while. But
 
 132 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 our very wishes give us not our 
 wish; and the dance with this now 
 rather silent and distrait little girl 
 holding him almost at arm's length, 
 was not at all the dance which he had 
 imagined. 
 
 They came out after awhile, and 
 lingered where a rug lay on the 
 grass by a fountain that tossed its 
 jet high in the air with a dreamy, 
 indifferent sway, and where a lemon 
 tree in its tub sweetened the air. 
 The tinkle of the fountain, the 
 patter of the lemon leaves on the 
 rising breeze sounded with an infinite 
 triviality against the long, deep 
 breathing of the sea. 
 
 " 'The unquiet, bright Atlantic 
 plain,' " said Josephine, putting up 
 the cape of white fur he had brought 
 her. The pallid moonlight and the 
 sea-charged air became her, for 
 either they toned down her vivid 
 color or she was tired and the color 
 had fallen, and with her fatigue some-
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 133 
 
 thing a little more tender than bril- 
 liant was in her eyes. "I suppose 
 you'll be tempting it again now?" 
 
 "Yes. Mr. Applegate has asked 
 me to tempt it with him to Mount 
 Desert and perhaps Labrador while 
 the Pendragon makes repairs. You 
 go along, of course?" 
 
 "No. My aunt takes me now to 
 the country. She needs the rest 
 she says I do, too." 
 
 And Mr. Berkeley had ' a sudden 
 picture before his eyes of Josephine 
 leaning forward over a balustrade he 
 knew at the Applegate place at 
 Beverley Farms, a trellis above her 
 waving its white York roses in the 
 sunny wind everywhere against blue 
 sky above her and around her, red 
 roses clasped on her breast, while 
 her hair escaped from a white scarf 
 blown off from her head like the 
 scarf of Iris, her color rose and 
 dimpled and deepened, her wide, 
 open eyes reflected the gleams of the
 
 134 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 sea, and her smile the intensity of 
 the sunshine; and in view of the 
 vision he resolved on the spot that 
 if he were aboard the Neckan should 
 lower its peak before the flagstaff of 
 Beverley Farms. 
 
 Every one was tired on returning 
 to the Neckan, and Josephine was 
 almost alone upon the deck where 
 she lingered. Perhaps it was be- 
 cause she was tired herself that a 
 vague melancholy possessed her, 
 that pleasant melancholy which has 
 no source but languor and a sense of 
 too much sweetness in life. A little 
 uncertainty, too, was in it. She was 
 not sure if one man's love were 
 better than another's; if, after all, 
 things were worth while; if she 
 knew herself and her own wishes. 
 She had neglected to write to Will 
 in these weeks that by sunlight and 
 midnight were burning out life as if 
 in a splendid funeral pyre fed by 
 spices and fragrant oils ; but if she
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 135 
 
 had in any slight measure forgotten 
 him the knowledge of his existence 
 and affection had been something 
 like a subliminal consciousness, and 
 to-night all the tenderness in her 
 heart leaned towards him. She said 
 to herself that she was very weak- 
 minded. The brooding darkness of 
 the heavens, the glimmer over the 
 long swells of the paler sea, the 
 shadow of the low coast, all lent 
 themselves to this gentle melan- 
 choly. Occasionally a strain of band 
 music came on the fitful wind, 
 now full of dancing measures, now 
 far and fine as elfin horns. A little 
 remote she divined the great yachts 
 lying like darker darknesses, be- 
 trayed only by their colored lights. 
 She wondered if any one there felt 
 doubt or indecision or sadness. 
 
 A wonderful hush seemed almost 
 to muffle the soft wash of the waters. 
 Far away was any thought of ship- 
 wreck and drowning and the dark
 
 136 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 caves of death, but what one might 
 call the atmosphere of such a thought 
 was there. A puff of land breeze 
 came down and brushed by with a 
 remembrance of gardens and flowers 
 and was gone; and from one of the 
 nearer yachts, where some prima 
 donna was entertained, again the 
 music of Manon came, as it had 
 done earlier, only it was no longer 
 the cry of joyance, but the sobbing 
 song at the convent gates. 
 
 "Is it not my hand that thine own 
 now presses?" sang the singer. "Is 
 it not my voice? Am I not Manon?" 
 And Josephine felt that if she aban- 
 doned herself a moment longer to 
 the spell, tears would be a luxury.
 
 V 
 
 Mrs. Applegate was far too astute 
 a manager at this crisis to let Jose- 
 phine become in the least degree an 
 old story; and she took her away 
 the next day at the moment that 
 should cause her to be remembered 
 as a beautiful phantom flashing across 
 the vision of the summer world. 
 
 They went first to Josephine's 
 mother, who received her with open 
 arms, and surrendered her with mis- 
 giving and regret. Her sisters, in 
 spite of Josephine's sweetness, felt 
 somewhat as if in the presence of 
 some foreign visitor, hardly recover- 
 ing their poise before her departure. 
 It so chanced that Dr. Will Marley 
 was away with a traveling patient ; 
 but Mrs. Applegate was quite inno- 
 137
 
 1 3& THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 cent in that regard, having hardly 
 heard the name of Dr. Will Marley. 
 
 Gentle and delightful as she was 
 to them, they all felt a little dif- 
 ference in Josephine, as if she 
 were no longer quite the simple 
 girl who had left them six months 
 before; or else their own imagina- 
 tions surrounded her with an 
 atmosphere that made her seem re- 
 mote. It was, however, only with 
 difficulty that Mrs. Applegate carried 
 her point in relation to keeping 
 Josephine with her a while longer, 
 pleading her own poor health and 
 her real loneliness. "You can't con- 
 jecture what it is, Maria," she said, 
 "to be a childless old woman. You 
 are really so solitary ; and you have 
 no bond upon the future. ' ' 
 
 "You should have thought of that 
 twenty years ago," said Mrs. Grey, 
 grimly. 
 
 "I have grown so fond of Jose- 
 phine," urged Mrs. Applegate.
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 139 
 
 "And you have the others. You 
 can't begin to be selfish, Maria, at 
 this time in your life. ' ' 
 
 If Josephine said nothing it was 
 because she hardly knew which way 
 to turn between her diverging 
 inclinations ; and then she was a little 
 sore that the unwitting Dr. Will 
 should have chosen this time for his 
 absence. So she went down with 
 her aunt to the Farms; and there 
 Mrs. Applegate gave out that she 
 herself was too ill to see people, 
 remarkably blooming invalid that 
 she was and kept Josephine in such 
 rest and quiet as she might till 
 Mr. Applegate 's return, when he 
 took them on a journey to the 
 Pacific coast before returning to 
 town. 
 
 Once again in the house in town, 
 Mrs. Applegate felt a keen relish 
 for the work she had laid out for 
 herself; and under Mr. Applegate 's 
 surprising encouragement, and her
 
 140 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 own gentle flattery of the society 
 reporters, her entertainments, as 
 Mr. Gervais phrased it, made the 
 town hum. One gayety followed 
 another, and although she knew 
 nothing of it, Josephine's was the 
 name to conjure with. She was 
 engaged long beforehand for every 
 germ an ; she was asked to name her 
 convives at dinner; and to be seen 
 with her was almost enough to make 
 any other girl the fashion too. She 
 did not dress a great deal one nicer 
 gown, and the rest furbished and 
 made over from her aunt's former 
 toilettes, answered all purposes still ; 
 but whether she was going out in the 
 carriage in the white cloth trimmed 
 with sables, or down to dinner in the 
 palest of pale green sea-nymph 
 tulle, or in the white silk covered 
 with old blonde, never with any 
 jewel but her pearls, but always 
 with myriads of roses, she was some- 
 thing distinctly different from the
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 141 
 
 other girls, and distinctly sweeter 
 than any of them. 
 
 The first time that Josephine wore 
 her pretty white cloth suit was at 
 Mrs. Boylston's musicale ; for music 
 being much the fashion, that lady 
 was very musical, and a world- 
 known prima donna who had social 
 relations, being in town, had 
 promised to make a couple of her 
 songs the feature of the occasion, 
 which was a matter of great gratula- 
 tion. Of course, it was impossible 
 for Mrs. Boylston to leave out her 
 father and his family; and entirely 
 unconscious how unwelcome she 
 was, Josephine appeared, and 
 Harry Gardner, and Harry Here- 
 ford, and Otis Mason, and Lawrence 
 Berkeley, and Tom Scollay, and 
 the others were in her train at once, 
 as bees appear out of an empty 
 horizon when sweets are exposed. 
 
 Mr. Applegate, in his genial mood, 
 had ordered to his daughter's house
 
 142 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 some magnificent palms, a blossom- 
 ing orange, and a white azalea- bush 
 that filled a whole window, with a 
 world of Madame de Waterville 
 roses those beautiful things blush- 
 ing all along the edges, but so pure, 
 so white, so more and more delicate 
 at the heart. "They are like you, 
 those roses," whispered Mr. Law- 
 rence Berkeley. It was Lawrence 
 Berkeley who, the first night she 
 danced with him that winter, had 
 murmured, 
 
 " 'Pearl-white, you poets liken Palma's neck, 
 And yet what spoils an orient like some 
 
 speck 
 Of genuine white turning its own white 
 
 gray?' " 
 
 "Even the dancing-men, half out 
 of breath, talk Browning here, ' ' she 
 told her uncle afterward, to his 
 chuckling delight. 
 
 "Lawrence Berkeley is hardly 
 what you might call a dancing-man,"
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 143 
 
 said her aunt. "He is past his first 
 youth. He has " 
 
 "Had his nights in Egypt," 
 said Mr. Applegate. "When he 
 dances now, some one else pays 
 the piper." 
 
 But Josephine had disliked the 
 familiarity of his compliments since 
 she had first received them. It was, 
 she felt, only a somewhat more 
 refined type of the Gervais business. 
 And she moved away now, taking a 
 low seat in a corner, half -hidden by 
 the palms there, to listen to the 
 pianist, who, in a circle of breathless 
 women leaning forward like pale, 
 panting maenads, was tearing the 
 piano to pieces as fast as he could, 
 and to enjoy the rich breath of the 
 flowers and the lovely room; and 
 finding little Bertie Boylston there 
 with his white face and starry eyes, 
 who, after a grave survey of her 
 smiling beauty and her toilette, 
 slipped his little hand in hers and
 
 144 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 leaned his pretty head on her 
 shoulder. 
 
 It was not so simple, however, 
 escaping Lawrence Berkeley. 
 
 "Is it difficult, do you know?" said 
 he, leaning over her, with one hand 
 on the pedestal that held up a bronze, 
 and sure that his voice should make 
 no marked increment to the noise. 
 "You remember what Dr. Johnson 
 said?" Josephine laughed. "It is 
 heresy," he said. "But keep my 
 secret. Why? Oh, there are all 
 sorts of inquisitions, you know. ' ' 
 
 "There ought to be for those 
 that don't love music," she whis- 
 pered. 
 
 "Well, Liszt played this once to 
 me." 
 
 "Liszt!" 
 
 "Ah, when one is young one ven- 
 tures, one exploits the matter, one 
 wants to satisfy one's self, to know 
 the thing at its best!" 
 
 "But did Liszt unlock his treasures
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 1 45 
 
 to one who wishes they were impos- 
 sible?" 
 
 "Oh, there are golden keys!" 
 
 "What did he care for golden 
 keys?" 
 
 "All the same, they unlock every- 
 thing. I am not sure they would 
 not unlock the treasures of the 
 heavens. However, all golden keys 
 are not necessarily connected with 
 the jingling of the guinea." He 
 looked at her horrified face and 
 laughed. "I did not say I didn't love 
 music," he said. "Do you recall 
 the people in Venice when Galuppi 
 plays? 'I can always leave off talk- 
 ing when I hear a master play. ' But 
 for my part the voice, the singing 
 voice divine, is the delicious thing " 
 
 "This is delicious to me," she 
 said, drawing Bertie a little closer. 
 "And, if you please, I want to hear 
 it." 
 
 But the pianist had done his best, 
 and the violin and piano sonata was
 
 1 46 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 at an end, and the prima donna had 
 not appeared. The violinist played 
 a short Vieuxtemps solo, and the 
 pianist a wonderful Rubenstein 
 "Portrait"; and, with no prima 
 donna yet, the people began to look 
 about them questioningly. 
 
 "What's the matter, Frances?" 
 said Mr. Applegate, as his daughter 
 brushed by. " Where's your singer? 
 Any hitch?" 
 
 "Oh, I'm half beside myself!" 
 Mrs. Boylston exclaimed. "She 
 hasn't come. I don't know what to 
 make of it! I've sent the carriage 
 for her." And just then a note was 
 put into her fluttering hands. "Oh ! 
 oh!" she whispered, her whisper 
 really almost sepulchral. "She 
 isn't coming! The day is so damp 
 and raw she doesn't dare venture. 
 Oh, the treacherous thing ! She never 
 meant " 
 
 "Tut, tut! Let her alone. Let 
 her stay and take care of her pre-
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 147 
 
 cious voice. She's no loss, with 
 Josephine at hand. Josephine can 
 sing her off her feet." 
 
 "Oh, father, you don't know! The 
 Van Schermers are here; and it is 
 so mortifying " 
 
 "Pshaw! Just ask Josephine to 
 take her place, I tell you. ' ' 
 
 "Josephine! "with an infinite con- 
 tempt. 
 
 "Yes, Josephine." 
 
 "Oh, you're gone daft over that 
 girl!" 
 
 "I overlook your impertinence, 
 Frances, on account of your excite- 
 ment. Do you suppose I know 
 nothing about music? You haven't 
 heard Josephine. Well, you'll never 
 have a better chance. Here, where 
 is she?" 
 
 "But, father! father!" she ex- 
 claimed, bewildered, and vainly fol- 
 lowing him as he moved off. "I 
 can't have any such nonsense. Your 
 little singing country girl "
 
 148 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 "Josephine," Mr. Applegate was 
 saying, "will you sing for Mrs. Boyl- 
 ston? It seems to be rather neces- 
 sary ' ' 
 
 "Really?" said Josephine, with 
 hesitation; and then rising slowly. 
 "Do you want me to, uncle? Why, 
 yes, certainly, if you will stand 
 beside me." And in spite of Mrs. 
 Boylston with her two outstretched, 
 trembling hands, Mr. Applegate was 
 leading Josephine to the piano. And 
 there was a moment or two of mur- 
 muring with the accompanist, and 
 then the voice broke forth, and 
 swelled, and filled the rooms with an 
 unutterable sweetness, and seemed 
 only not to mount to heaven because 
 the place was heaven now, with the 
 blushing face, the shining eyes, the 
 open mouth, the silver voice of an 
 angel. 
 
 "The musicale went all to pieces," 
 said Mr. Applegate, afterwards, to 
 his wife, who had not gone.
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 149 
 
 "They wanted no more fiddling or 
 tinkling, nothing but that singing. 
 And Frances never got so much for 
 so little in her life. I'm glad you 
 didn't go; something would have 
 happened to you. Frances was just 
 in the seventh heaven, if she could 
 be there and groveling with grati- 
 tude at the same time. I hope it 
 will last. As for Josephine, when it 
 was all over she was just little Jose- 
 phine, so used to singing that she 
 didn't know she had done anything 
 extraordinary. I heard one of the 
 Vassall-Royals say it was 'almost 
 almost too professional, you know.' 
 Vassall-Royal deteriorated that race 
 when he married an idiot. What has 
 become of Josephine's nerves, by- 
 the-way? Didn't I hear you say 
 something about their being all tired 
 out once?" 
 
 "Oh, but this is a new set of 
 nerves in use now, you know," his 
 wife replied. "The nerves of
 
 150 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 novelty and pleased excitement, and 
 freedom from care, and all that. 
 The old nerves are resting " 
 
 "Well, I hope the new nerves 
 won't tire, then. Otis Mason is 
 simply beside himself about her, I 
 hear, and he is yes, he is a noble 
 fellow. And Billy Somerset is 
 engagt, too. By Jove! if she sees 
 anything to like in Billy Somerset I 
 shan't think so well of her! And 
 Lawrence Berkeley has " 
 
 "Ah! Lawrence Berkeley?' Yes." 
 " Has asked to see me on some 
 particular business to-night. He's 
 a man in a thousand. And, by Jove ! 
 my dear, with his family and his 
 money why, his income his in- 
 come alone is close on a half -million 
 a year. He could marry a royal 
 princess. Though, to be sure 
 However, all that's a great while 
 ago. It's forgotten long ago. 
 That's what you've done for your 
 niece, Mrs. Applegate!"
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED !$! 
 
 Mr. Applegate and Dr. Will 
 Marley were not at all of the same 
 mind as to what had been done for 
 the niece. As Will read Josephine's 
 last letter late that night one of the 
 letters he had waited for and ex- 
 pected and longed for, coming far 
 less frequently now than in the 
 beginning, covering fewer pages, 
 dwelling more on the gay life than 
 on her love he had a great sinking 
 at his heart. And driving his lonely 
 way over the hills by the flying 
 moonlight of a dry and wintry gale, 
 he was full of melancholy and fore- 
 boding. That aunt and uncle, he 
 felt; must have other plans for Jose- 
 phine than that she should become 
 the wife of a poor country doctor. 
 Not that he distrusted the faithful- 
 ness of his darling, but he distrusted 
 himself; he had so little to offer. 
 And, alas! if Josephine, weighing 
 these things and those things in the 
 balance, found these things wanting !
 
 152 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 Poor little Josephine! With all the 
 success that befell her, and the royal 
 progress she was making, in the view 
 of her aunt and uncle, she was in 
 reality hard bested in those days. 
 
 "I hope," Mr. Applegate had said 
 to his wife, "that there is no country 
 lover to complicate things now. ' ' 
 And although Josephine heard him, 
 she said nothing. All the world at 
 home knew what Will and she were 
 to each other; and she had never 
 thought about it, but had uncon- 
 sciously taken it for granted that all 
 the world here knew, too. And thus 
 she had received most of the atten- 
 tions paid her as meaning just the 
 kindly liking and friendship that 
 Rob Campbell's was poor dear 
 Rob Campbell, working might and 
 main at college, where he had 
 chosen to starve his way through 
 rather than take a lesser chance at 
 learning. But before she could 
 command her blush and speak, if she
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 153 
 
 had intended to do so, Lawrence 
 Berkeley had been announced, and 
 she was to thank him for the flowers 
 he had sent on some pretext, 
 wonderful white orchids. And then 
 there must be singing. And he was 
 still there when it was time for 
 lunch ; and he went out with them 
 to the reception and the tea ; and she 
 danced with him at the Devonshire's 
 german ; and if she slept the greater 
 part of the next day, he was beside 
 her at Mrs. Dartmouth's dinner; and 
 his seat was next her own at the 
 theater party afterwards ; and it was 
 he that wrapped her cloak about her 
 and put her in the carriage with her 
 chaperon, and who came in for five- 
 o'clock tea next day to inquire for 
 her, and was to be found there by 
 the other swains as they arrived 
 those youths beginning to think that 
 Lawrence Berkeley was something 
 too much in evidence, unless their 
 part in the play was over.
 
 154 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 For if there were a private view 
 at a studio, or a rare collection of 
 curios to which scarcely any one had 
 access, it was Lawrence Berkeley 
 that took her there. If there was a 
 more delightful concert than ordi- 
 nary, the empty chair beside her own 
 was in some mysterious manner 
 always taken by Lawrence Berkeley. 
 It was he, now that Lent had come, 
 who met them just on the church 
 steps, and took her from her aunt for 
 a long walk up the windy avenue 
 under the cold blue sky. It was he 
 who went with her to see the great 
 library before it was opened to the 
 world and explained to her the 
 scheme of the frescoes where the 
 pristine simplicity of art on the first 
 floor led to the graphic interpreta- 
 tion of romance on the next, and, 
 still mounting, to the utmost com- 
 plexity of decoration and of religion 
 on a flight higher. It was he that 
 she turned to for sympathy in
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 155 
 
 delight at some phrase of music, 
 with some picture that led your 
 feeling and your fancy into the 
 depths. It was he whose quiet 
 smile told her if she had admired 
 with too much of the newness of 
 youth. It was he who, apropos of 
 everything, had the amusing story, 
 the ready reminiscence; he who, 
 having been the world over, had 
 gleaned something from everywhere 
 that had escaped the eyes of others, 
 who, if he were simply blast and 
 commonplace to the rest of the world, 
 seemed to her the most new and 
 original person she had met, ac- 
 quaintance with him being like a 
 doorway into a life of which she had 
 never dreamed till she came to her 
 aunt's house. 
 
 Mrs. Applegate had conquered her 
 prejudices in favor of a chaperon 
 sufficiently to allow Mr. Berkeley to 
 take Josephine out on the Road one 
 bright day with his horse Wotan,
 
 156 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 the powerful white creature flashing 
 along in his gold trappings, the 
 embodiment of the force and fury of 
 a wintry gale. Wrapped in the 
 white bear-skins, the bells them- 
 selves seeming to flash with sound, 
 cutting the wind as they went, Jose- 
 phine was so lost in the delight of 
 swiftness that she felt as if she were 
 a spirit fleeing through space. The 
 splendid scene of the long shining 
 road under the blazing blue sky, 
 the lines of sleighs dashing along 
 behind the great hackneys and 
 the thoroughbreds, the rosy faces, 
 the rich furs, the gay greetings, 
 the bells, the cries it made the 
 country sleigh-ride seem like plod- 
 ding along on an ox sled. Ah, 
 no ! Only for a moment ! There was 
 one sleigh-ride she remembered with 
 a sudden thrill; there were many 
 sleigh-rides that it warmed her heart 
 to remember. And then, in the 
 excitement of the dash, she felt in
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 157 
 
 some nameless way that she had 
 done her duty in remembering; and 
 she abandoned herself to the pleas- 
 ure of this moment, when it seemed 
 as if the superb teams on either side 
 divided to make way for them, and 
 they were flashing down the road 
 like living light. For half a minute 
 Josephine shrank as though she were 
 being taken for a circus girl ; but the 
 next, the strife, the speed, the 
 magnificent moment, overcame her, 
 and she would have left Harry 
 Hereford's Peg behind if the effort 
 had thrown them into the nearest star. 
 
 "That was fine," said Lawrence 
 Berkeley, when they had forsaken 
 the splendors of the Road, and 
 were going more quietly homeward. 
 "It makes a fellow feel immortal, 
 by all that's good! This horse is 
 Wotan himself, but Pegasus gave 
 him a close call ! ' ' 
 
 "It is like a dream," said Jose- 
 phine. "All the faces, the color, the
 
 158 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 motion. I feel as if I had been 
 inside of a bubble. ' ' 
 
 "It is the most brilliant scene in 
 the world," he said. "It beats the 
 Prado, and that beats Europe. I 
 don't know of a keener excitement, 
 unless it is when on a sledge behind 
 six great black Hungarian horses on 
 a wolf hunt in the mountains over 
 there. ' ' 
 
 "Oh!" shivered Josephine. 
 
 "Yes, there is a tang which gives 
 flavor the icy air, the loneliness, 
 the vastness. As for the danger, I 
 don't know if it is any more danger- 
 ous than our drive to-day. " 
 
 "To-day!" 
 
 "Well, than a tiger ^hunt in an 
 Indian jungle; not the sort I saw 
 them whip up for the Prince, but the 
 real man-eater whose tooth ripped 
 my arm up to the shoulder once. I 
 had the tooth cut for a seal, though. ' ' 
 
 "Oh!" shivered Josephine again. 
 
 "Come, this is too bad, " he laughed.
 
 159 
 
 "It makes my blood run cold." 
 
 "More than this blast from the 
 bay? But it wasn't half so blood- 
 curdling as when a fellow on the 
 bank of the Hoogly walked up the 
 sky on a thread he threw before 
 him, and disappeared there. Be- 
 cause I walked up with him, and 
 hung there alone in mid-air, scared 
 out of my wits, till I gently sank to 
 earth again." 
 
 "It isn't possible!" she cried. 
 
 "No, I don't suppose it was. I 
 suppose the scamp hypnotized me. 
 But it was all the same as possible. 
 And as for possible, who can say 
 what is or what is not? There is no 
 marvel the size of th'e fact that we 
 are here on this ball swinging in 
 space to-day. For my part, I some- 
 times doubt that. ' ' 
 
 "I don't know what you mean!" 
 cried Josephine. 
 
 "Here we are at the door," he 
 said. "I don't doubt that I have had
 
 160 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 as glorious an hour to-day as I ever 
 had in my life!" 
 
 "Oh, it was fine!" said Josephine. 
 
 And then little Bertie, with his 
 nurse, was waiting for her on the 
 steps, and there was a minute of 
 gay snowballing with the child, and 
 there was the excuse of taking him 
 round to his own door, for a con- 
 tinuation of the hour. 
 
 " 'And what if heaven prove that she and I 
 Ride, ride together, forever ride!' " 
 
 said Lawrence. 
 
 ' ' But that, ' ' for the sake of saying 
 something, "was on horseback," said 
 Josephine. 
 
 "This is a white horse," said 
 Bertie, seeing his moment to join the 
 conversation. "And it makes music 
 wherever it goes. ' ' 
 
 "I thought it was the lady who 
 made the music, Bertie," said Law- 
 rence. "This lady does." 
 
 "Yes, I guess she does," Bertie
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED l6l 
 
 replied, slowly, turning the thought 
 over. "I call her the singing lady. 
 I go to see her, and she sings to me. 
 She sings about 'I have to go to bed 
 by day. ' I love her very much. ' ' 
 
 "Out of the mouths of babes and 
 sucklings!" exclaimed Lawrence. 
 
 "Don't you?" said Bertie, gravely. 
 
 "Oh, to be a child again! With 
 liberty to speak your mind!" said 
 Lawrence, glancing over at her 
 boldly, and dropping his eyes swiftly. 
 
 And then they were at Bertie's 
 door, and Mr. Applegate was just 
 coming out, and Josephine walked 
 home with him.
 
 VI 
 
 On the street, or in the nouse, now, 
 in some way Lawrence Berkeley 
 managed albeit possibly with some 
 quiet assistance to be with Jose- 
 phine almost every one of her wak- 
 ing hours that she was not writing 
 for her uncle whose determination 
 towards authorship was, he said, 
 something in the air of the place so 
 that she had no time to think or to 
 remember, except under the force of 
 a sort of magnetism ; for he had some 
 magnetism of his own. It was he 
 whose atmosphere was surrounding 
 her and overpowering her, till, sud- 
 denly recalling those words of 
 her uncle, she began to see what 
 they meant. They they meant 
 nothing! She was not a simple- 
 ton ! As if she could not take care 
 163
 
 164 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 of herself! She was not going to 
 think at all ! The present was sweet, 
 was full, was delightful; by-and-by 
 it would all be so dull, so small, so 
 poor. Will, to be sure But she 
 was not altogether certain Would it 
 be Will? Hush, hush! say nothing, 
 think nothing, feel nothing! Only 
 just here, and now, and the things of 
 to-day, were so pleasant! 
 
 Yes, they were very pleasant. 
 Her aunt was so happy in her, her 
 uncle was idolizing her, she was re- 
 ceiving tribute from the whole world. 
 No charity concert, no musical event, 
 and no affair of any other kind was 
 complete without her. She, who had 
 pinched along on a little iwenty- 
 dollar-a-month school salary, could 
 command the income of a fortune in 
 a church choir if she wished ; could 
 possibly command, she had dis- 
 covered, a fortune itself on the stage, 
 with but little training ; but was put 
 beyond all need of anything but
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 165 
 
 singing for singing's sake by the 
 love and prodigality of those about 
 her. In fact, the presence of this 
 sunbeam in his house had so warmed 
 Mr. Applegate's heart that his habits 
 were revolutionized, and life was a 
 much more serene thing there than 
 it had wont to be. He had not 
 only opened his purse, but he had 
 forgotten to close it, and did not 
 seem to know how to lavish enough 
 just now. Mrs. Boylston and Mrs. 
 Bulfinch might wonder where all 
 this young splendor came from, but 
 they could not be sure; and as, 
 whenever anything very superior 
 was bestowed on Josephine, some- 
 thing very fine was apt to come to 
 one of them, by means of Mrs. 
 Applegate's tact, they kept their 
 suspicions to themselves, and, 
 anxious as they were concerning the 
 future, bided their time in what 
 patience they might. 
 
 "Father's fads always occupy him
 
 166 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 for a while," said Frances, in the 
 depths of the sisterly council, "and 
 then they go up in smoke. " 
 
 "I should agree with you if he 
 hadn't married the last one," said 
 Laura. 
 
 "I sometimes think, " said Frances, 
 "that he might have done worse." 
 
 Mrs. Applegate understood the 
 world around her in most directions ; 
 but it is not to be wondered at if she 
 thought that perhaps she had builded 
 better than she knew for the child in 
 asking her here, and that if Mr. 
 Applegate should incline eventually 
 to bequeath her a portion of his 
 wealth it would do no harm to 
 Frances and Laura, who already 
 had great abundance, and for whom 
 there would still be abundance left. 
 And if he did not, she might need 
 nothing, should Lawrence Berkeley 
 win. 
 
 Nothing was farther from Jose- 
 phine's thoughts than the gaining
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 167 
 
 of bequests or the possession of 
 wealth. In her outer consciousness 
 she had come down here again be- 
 cause her aunt had no daughter, 
 because she was to go on regaining 
 her nervous equilibrium by bring- 
 ing into action powers and sensa- 
 tions and emotions nerves hitherto 
 unused by her ; to please her uncle, 
 moreover; and she was to go back 
 in the spring and marry Will; 
 rather hoping, too, when she first 
 came, that her aunt would feel like 
 giving them the little house with 
 the piazza and bay-window even 
 sometimes furnishing it in her 
 fancies, but giving that up impa- 
 tiently some time since the rooms, 
 she would have said now to herself, 
 had she said anything about them, 
 where you could stand in the middle 
 and touch the four walls! If in her 
 inner consciousness anything else 
 was beginning to shape itself as to 
 the pleasure of this sort of life of
 
 168 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 the yachting and coaching in the 
 summer that she heard about, of the 
 foreign travel of which people spoke 
 casually as of this or that dinner, and 
 a glimpse of which she had had, of 
 moonlight nights in Venice, of a 
 dahabeeyah on the Nile, of all the 
 pleasures that become a man of 
 millions she was not yet aware of 
 it, or only so vaguely that she was 
 neither startled nor self-reproached. 
 She was having a wonderfully 
 delightful season, drinking this cup 
 of success to its sweet rich lees, and 
 she had even forgotten to write to 
 Will and tell him of it this last two 
 weeks and more. How could she 
 tell him, indeed, that Lawrence 
 Berkeley was such a pleasant fellow ; 
 that he was so friendly, so charm- 
 ing, so entirely a man that any 
 unsophisticated girl might fall in 
 love with? that more than one girl, 
 had Josephine but known it, had 
 fallen in love with, to her sorrow!
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 169 
 
 She was half- waked from this 
 pleasant, trance-like condition one 
 afternoon at the Symphony, but only 
 half. The soloist had been satisfac- 
 tory ; there had been some catching 
 lighter numbers, f nil of caprice and 
 melody and witchery, the wildness 
 of a dance of death without the 
 wickedness. Mrs. Applegate had 
 gone to a meeting of the Zenana. 
 Flock, expecting to be late, and 
 leaving her seat for any one who 
 might choose to take it. Josephine 
 talked a little with an acquaintance 
 on her right, and then she looked 
 round on the brilliant audience of 
 which she was one, at Beethoven 
 himself there in the bronze, listen- 
 ing with down-bent head and features 
 that seemed but a chord of his own 
 music made not audible, but visible, 
 while she breathed the fragrance of 
 her breast-knot of violets. 
 
 The dance music had left her 
 tingling with pleasure; but all at
 
 1 70 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 once she was aware, as one is when 
 awaking in the morning after trouble, 
 memory of which is not yet clear, 
 that her buoyancy had fallen, and 
 there was sorrow somewhere. She 
 smiled at herself then; the sym- 
 phony had begun, the orchestra 
 played as one soul. Ah, yes, she 
 understood it ; there were the three 
 notes that some one had said were 
 the strokes of Fate knocking at 
 the door and even while she heard 
 them her thoughts reverted to 
 herself, unconscious of the music, 
 but vaguely led by it. Yes, yes, 
 they said, it was a life of splendor, 
 but it was not her life. Those born 
 in it were swept along it as upon 
 an undercurrent, and it was not all a 
 thing of the senses with them ; they 
 could live and aspire beyond it. But 
 she she observed it, pictured it, 
 criticised it, luxuriated in it; pres- 
 ently, it would enwrap her; if she 
 made it her own, she would become
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED i;i 
 
 she would become oh, misery ! all 
 that Gervais was. What made her 
 shudder? Was it a dim blood- poison- 
 ing apprehension, a terror of going 
 down into the dust, of developing 
 into a something ignoble, of the 
 evanishment of soul in matter? Was 
 it the sense of abasement? Was it the 
 sudden blare of the brass, the wild 
 Titanic harmony, as if the elements 
 fought together? She was all at 
 once in a strange commotion. Her 
 own paltriness, her abandonment to 
 her senses, the taint in her, were 
 singing and screaming and strug- 
 gling defiantly together. The cruelty 
 that could break a lover's heart; the 
 earthliness that would be a mildew on 
 his life if she had not left him ; the 
 sorrow, the misery, the despair that 
 had played him false and, oh, what 
 was life worth without him? There 
 were darker depths even than death. 
 Her fan was over her eyes. She 
 did not know that she heard the
 
 172 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 music. Some one took the next seat 
 unnoticed. She was on another 
 plane, in another sphere, at bay, and 
 challenging destiny ; and she hardly 
 heard the songs of hope in the 
 andante, melting in tears as some 
 pale autumn sunshine melts in rain, 
 before the great purple curtain of 
 cloud in the scherzo was rising, 
 rising, as if from some high hill 
 country of perfect joy beyond, 
 around whose base the clouds of sor- 
 row still lightly drifted. Now the 
 clouds crept higher again and hid 
 the heavenly summits; hope failed, 
 and the basses moaned. Then a 
 wind swept after them up, up, up 
 on the flutes, and scattered the 
 mists. Hope spread her wings 
 again; assurance came with the 
 clash of kettle-drums, the vast sweep 
 of the violins, the triumph of the 
 march; and higher and higher and 
 farther and farther the great breath 
 went, stripping away all shadow.
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 173 
 
 The heights shone calm and clear; 
 myriads of gay souls sparkled and 
 were glad with the violins out there 
 in the wide sunlight ; tune and color 
 and joy and light and love overran 
 all that bright world beyond the 
 hills, beyond the skies and she 
 came to herself after what seemed to 
 her a vision of Will driving tlirough 
 the snow, under the blue sky, the 
 wind whistling about him, on his 
 errands of love and mercy came to 
 herself with a little start, to find 
 Lawrence Berkeley sitting beside 
 her. But as they walked home 
 together, his dissection of the 
 scherzo, and his quick humming for 
 a moment of one of the tunes of the 
 dance music, as they went swiftly 
 up the avenue, made her feel as if she 
 were dancing it with him, and gave 
 another complexion to her thoughts. 
 They had come home from the 
 opera the next evening for the 
 opera paid no heed to Lent that year
 
 174 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 and there Josephine had seen Rob 
 Campbell, to whom some one had 
 given a ticket. She knew him, and 
 he knew her, of course, bowing with 
 glad recognition to her across the 
 house. But he seemed as far off as 
 if he were in the antipodes. And 
 that fact, so slight in itself, so 
 weighty in its relation to her home, 
 her past, and her pledged and 
 promised future, had suddenly made 
 her see more strongly than anything 
 else had done, that she was in dan- 
 ger in danger of being- made cap- 
 tive and held in this life, so far from 
 her old life and all she had loved 
 in it. It had made her very grave ; 
 she hardly knew why. 
 
 Mrs. Applegate, who had sent 
 Josephine under convoy, going her- 
 self to a lecture on "The Puritan at 
 the Base of Our Civilization, ' ' and 
 coming in with some stir in season 
 for Tannhauser's song in praise of 
 Venus, had now left the room a
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 175 
 
 moment, and Josephine, going to 
 the pianoforte, was trying over, as 
 she stood, an air that lingered in her 
 memory. The tune did not come 
 quite clearly, and she had sat down 
 to catch it in earnest, and Lawrence 
 Berkeley drew a seat for himself be- 
 side her. 
 
 "It is strange," she said, "how a 
 tune will haunt some inner sense 
 that cannot express it. ' ' 
 
 "That is because music belongs to 
 another world," said he; "because 
 it is 
 
 'A tone 
 
 Of some world far from ours, 
 Where music and moonlight and feeling are 
 one.' 
 
 I never felt that, though, half so 
 strongly till I heard you sing. 
 There is something so penetrating," 
 he said, leaning his head on his hand 
 as his arm rested on the piano, and 
 looking at her with a strange light in 
 the dark depths of his eyes, "so
 
 176 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 touching, in your voice, it seems the 
 voice of music itself. You must 
 have loved music always. ' ' 
 
 "Always," said Josephine, briefly, 
 still trying to find the air. 
 
 "How I should like to take you 
 where you could hear the Venetian 
 gondoliers as they sing in their soft, 
 melodious dialect! Do you know 
 may I say that if there were a 
 heaven yes, there must be for such 
 as you my idea of its supremest 
 bliss is sometking the same as if I 
 were to hear you sing forever 
 were to -have your voice beside me 
 whenever I turn to it! For, speak- 
 ing or singing, there is no such 
 music for my ear Josephine!" 
 
 He was bending towards her, 
 gazing full in her eyes with his own, 
 his lips near hers, his arms ready to 
 gather her in. Was she listening, 
 as she sat there, silent now, her 
 head bent? In the dim light, through 
 which a statue gleamed, a mirror
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 177 
 
 glanced, a painting gathered color 
 into itself and hinted of its unre- 
 vealed beauty, in the luxurious 
 warmth and the perfume of the 
 bedded roses near, was she yielding 
 swaying towards him? 
 
 Who can say? For at that moment 
 there came a peal of the door-bell 
 that startled the echoes from one end 
 to the other of the great house, and 
 Mr. Boylston hurried in, half breath- 
 less, the moment the door was 
 opened. 
 
 "Josephine!" he gasped in the 
 hall. "I want Josephine! Where is 
 she? Bertie little Bertie wants her. 
 She must come he is crying for her 
 he is very ill!" 
 
 "Bertie!" 
 
 "Bertie. The doctor said to-day 
 he must be denied nothing. Frances 
 is in hysterics. I don't know if if 
 he will get well. Can't you come, 
 Josephine? The little fellow took 
 such a fancy to you talks of you
 
 178 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 came round so to see you, you know 
 and he keeps saying, 'The lady 
 that sings, the lady that sings.' 
 We can hardly make it out his 
 voice is so thick and weak but that 
 is what it is. Is this your cloak? I 
 have a cab the horses were put up. 
 I" 
 
 "Of course. Why, of course," 
 cried Josephine, the instant she 
 understood him, and pulling up her 
 cloak. "I won't keep you a minute. 
 I'm so glad if the dear little fellow 
 wants me and I can go! I'm so used 
 to children, you know. Good-night, 
 Mr. Berkeley. You'll tell my aunt 
 about it, please." And before 
 Lawrence Berkeley could remon- 
 strate, or Mrs. Applegate knew what 
 was happening, Josephine was in the 
 cab and driving to comfort the sick 
 child. 
 
 Frances Boylston forgot all her 
 jealousies and dreads when she saw 
 the girl come in, radiant in the rose-
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 179 
 
 color and swan's-down of her cloak, 
 the frosty freshness in her cheek, 
 the splendor in her eyes. She 
 waited only for the out-door chill to 
 pass, and then led Josephine upstairs, 
 not even pausing to think if the physi- 
 cians, who had said that skill could do 
 no more, would have allowed her to go. 
 
 "Here she is, my darling boy," 
 the mother whispered, as they went 
 into the room that seemed to be dark 
 with the steam and odor of drugs, 
 before the nurse turned up the light 
 a moment. 
 
 "The lady that sings," muttered 
 the boy, with a thick, strange 
 utterance, but with a glow on his 
 glad white face, surveying the 
 beautiful apparition, and trying to 
 hold out his feeble little hand. 
 "Now sing!" And Josephine sat 
 down beside him and began to sing: 
 
 " Soft fall the feet of the little Christ Child, 
 Walking abroad when the winds are wild ; 
 Dropping his blessing on each dear head
 
 l8o THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 Where the children sleep in their snowy 
 
 bed; 
 
 Shining clear in the moon's white beam, 
 Where the children sleep, where the 
 
 children dream. ' ' 
 
 As she sang, the hot eyelids 
 drooped, but as she ceased they 
 sprang open again, and she began 
 another strain. Cradle-songs, lul- , 
 labies, hymns, she sang softly, 
 sweetly, untiringly, for an hour. 
 The child lifted his arms to her to 
 be taken, his mother sometimes 
 kneeling on the other side, some- 
 times distractedly walking the room 
 from end to end. Occasionally he 
 slept, and then she rested as she 
 could in the drowsy atmosphere of 
 the dim place. A whistle from a 
 rushing train far out in the night 
 awoke him, and she began again. 
 The carriages rolling home from 
 late pleasures how foreign they 
 seemed ! How little part such things 
 had in the real things of life ! She
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED l8l 
 
 had a feeling that if Will were 
 only here this child might live. 
 She was tired, holding the child in a 
 constrained attitude and singing. 
 But what of that? she had danced to 
 more fatigue many a night that 
 winter. When he opened his eyes 
 again she began to sing once more ; 
 and when he closed them her voice 
 lulled away, still murmuring with 
 music half under the breath; and 
 Mr. Boylston drowsed on the lounge, 
 and the nurse moved gently here and 
 there, and the mother still knelt 
 beside Josephine and the boy. 
 
 The gray dawn was coming in, and 
 she was singing, 
 
 ' ' I think, when I read that sweet story of old, 
 
 When Jesus was here among men, 
 How he called little children as lambs to 
 
 his fold, 
 
 I should like to have been with them 
 then," 
 
 when the child looked up with quite 
 clear eyes a moment.
 
 l8z THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 "Mamma," he murmured. They 
 could just make it out. 
 
 "Oh, what what is it, my dar- 
 ling?" the mother cried. 
 
 "Is she one of them one of the 
 angels singing there?" And then, 
 with his eyes wide open on the angels 
 singing there, the child was dead. 
 
 Josephine went home and to bed, 
 Mrs. Bulfmch coming to comfort 
 her sister. Wrought to the last 
 point of tension by the night, with 
 its fatigues and sorrows, Josephine 
 slept heavily; and her head ached 
 too much the next evening when she 
 awoke to let her rise, and she was too 
 shocked and pained to wish to rise. 
 
 The dear little boy, the only one 
 among all the outside members of 
 the family who had given her affec- 
 tion! She cried till her head ached 
 again while thinking of him. And 
 then death had come so suddenly, 
 so darkly, in the midst of all the 
 splendid movement and gayety for
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 183 
 
 Lent had made little difference other 
 than that of changing the character 
 of the gayety and a song she knew 
 kept running through her head 
 
 " Dust and ashes, dead and done with, 
 
 Venice spent what Venice earned ! 
 The soul, doubtless, is immortal where a 
 soul can be discerned." 
 
 Venice, indeed! She had all she 
 wanted of this sort of Venice. Her 
 little home in the hills seemed a 
 place to be longed for, a nest of 
 innocence and safety now. 
 
 Her devotion to the little dead boy 
 was known all over town by the time 
 of the funeral. Every one left cards, 
 every one sent flowers to her; there 
 were never seen any such as Law- 
 rence Berkeley sent. She received 
 no one ; she sent down no messages ; 
 and Lawrence Berkeley cursed the 
 fate that had snatched from his lips 
 the draught full of all the sweetness 
 of life. Her uncle, who had felt
 
 184 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 very sore over the death of his little 
 grandson Laura's children were all 
 girls was now full of anxiety about 
 Josephine, who lay in a singular state 
 of weakness, sick all over and all 
 through, caring for nothing, now 
 and then a big tear welling under 
 her closed lids, languid, listless, 
 wrapt in melancholy thought. 
 
 For Josephine was very unhappy. 
 A flash of lightning had illuminated 
 the dark recesses of her being ; she 
 saw herself forsaking all that had 
 been her life her poor careworn 
 mother, her home, and everything 
 it meant simply for the love of 
 pleasure. She saw herself on the 
 point of treachery to Will, Will who 
 was her very life, her self ! If she had 
 not been called away at the instant, 
 she might have done all this. She 
 had! And she was only now repent- 
 ing it ! She felt as if the little child 
 had died to save her. She felt as if 
 she were responsible for that, guilty
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 185 
 
 of it. She felt powerless, restless, 
 feverish, choked, dying. She looked 
 so. You would hardly have known 
 it was Josephine. And her uncle 
 presently brought in his own doctor, 
 quite another man from Mrs. Boyl- 
 ston's physician; and he, in a fine 
 rage, asked why he had not been 
 called before to a patient in this 
 advanced stage of disease. And 
 then Mr. Applegate made some very 
 strong remarks about Frances, to 
 repent of them as quickly. Jose- 
 phine had not known before exactly 
 what had ailed little Bertie. "Oh, 
 Will, Will!" she moaned. "You 
 must send for him. He knows all 
 about it he is a doctor he can cure 
 me no one else can. Will, my 
 dear Will I must have him here. ' ' 
 Her aunt, full of anxiety, full of 
 fear, full of solicitude, probed her 
 with questioning, and then all the 
 burden escaped. And Mr. Apple- 
 gate, wild with anger and wild with
 
 1 86 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 fright together, had telegraphed for 
 Will, and there Will was in Jose- 
 phine's room now. 
 
 "Frances is a wicked woman," 
 roared Mr. Applegate, waiting below, 
 "to have risked this girl's life so! If 
 she dies " 
 
 "Oh, she will not, she cannot 
 die!" exclaimed his wife, in a tran- 
 sport of apprehension herself, vainly 
 trying to dismiss it. And then they 
 waited for the reassuring word. 
 Mr. Applegate came over and 
 stroked his wife's hair caressingly. 
 "She made us love her very much, 
 didn't she?" he said. And he 
 strode away again, angry with his 
 wife's sobs and his own thoughts. 
 "Why am I upset in this way about 
 a child I had never seen a year 
 ago? Why should I be concerned as 
 to whether she lives or dies?" 
 stormed Mr. Applegate, downstairs. 
 
 "She is not going to die," calmly 
 said Will, upstairs.
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 187 
 
 "I'm not afraid of it. I've been 
 exposed to it. I will go in, sir," 
 exclaimed Mr. Applegate, five 
 minutes afterwards, at the door of 
 the anteroom to the sick-chamber. 
 
 ' ' I cannot allow you to go in, ' ' said 
 Dr. Will. And for once in his life 
 the elder gentleman found his 
 master. 
 
 But calm as Will was without, his 
 heart was beating like a trip-ham- 
 mer within, and every nerve was 
 bristling with electric force. He 
 was dealing with a tremendous 
 enemy; an enemy that assaulted 
 with sapping and mining and drain- 
 ing of strength, with poisoning the 
 blood and the brain. But he had 
 met the enemy countless times 
 before up among the hills; he had 
 the benefit of old Dr. Madden's 
 experience behind him; he was 
 young and fresh in his wrestle with 
 evil ; he had the last word of science 
 himself; he knew how to work. He
 
 1 88 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 gave himself no sleep; he sum- 
 moned every force he had; he 
 allowed no one in the room but the 
 nurses and Dr. Fleischmann, and he 
 never paused to think if he were 
 laboring in this costly disregard of 
 strength to save his treasure for an- 
 other for that pale, dark fellow 
 haunting the door ; he merely meant 
 to save her. And he did. 
 
 It was not till Josephine was 
 entirely out of danger, and removed 
 into another room, and a thorough 
 fumigation had been completed, that 
 Mr. Applegate was allowed to have 
 his way, so overjoyed then as to for- 
 get all the hard things he had said 
 about having the doors in his own 
 house shut in his face. 
 
 "Now," said Dr. Will, who in the 
 last weeks had gone and come, "I 
 resign my patient to you, sir, and to 
 Dr. Fleischmann. I have patients at 
 home waiting for me, and must take 
 the night train up, not to return. ' '
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 189 
 
 "Will," whispered a feeble voice 
 from the lounge where Josephine 
 lay, a pallid, big-eyed, little wreck 
 of Josephine, "I must go, too." 
 
 "Not to-day," said Will, gently. 
 
 "Then you must stay till I can 
 go. Oh, Will, you act as if you had 
 not forgiven me ! You have acted so 
 ever since you came. It made me 
 cold it made me shiver to see you. 
 I felt I couldn't get well. I didn't 
 care if I didn't get well. Have I 
 grown so horrid do you suppose 
 oh, let me see!" 
 
 "Hush, dear; hush!" said Will. 
 
 "No, no," she murmured, husk- 
 ily. "I must know now! If you 
 came to cure me," with a sort of 
 eager breathlessness, "just as you 
 would go to cure any one if you are 
 going away because you think I I 
 that I was going to be untrue or 
 because I have lost all my pretty 
 face ' ' 
 
 "But this is childish, Josephine,
 
 190 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 dear one, and I have asked you not 
 to excite yourself. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, but you know the pretty face 
 will come back even if I never have 
 my voice again ! But if you have left 
 off loving me, Will " sighed the 
 piteous little tones. 
 
 "Hush! hush, my darling! you 
 haven't any strength to waste. I 
 have never left off loving you." 
 
 "But you have left off having any 
 faith in me ! You " 
 
 "Dearest," he said, in an under- 
 tone, "you forget " 
 
 "Oh, I had just as lief Uncle 
 Applegate heard every word I said ! 
 He loves me, at any rate, I know. 
 I am willing he should know every 
 thought I think. He believes in 
 me!" 
 
 "Josephine, my darling," he 
 whispered, "if you had given your 
 promise to a prince of the reigning 
 family himself, I should have known 
 your heart was mine, and should
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 1 9 1 
 
 have come down and claimed my 
 own. Are you satisfied now?" And 
 he laughed like the old Will. 
 
 "Oh, no," said Josephine, gazing 
 up at him with her great hollow 
 eyes, darker now than darkest cairn- 
 gorm. ' ' I am afraid you say it only 
 to keep me quiet." 
 
 "Very well, then," said Will. 
 "Only keep quiet." 
 
 And then he knelt beside her, and 
 plainer than any wordy protest could 
 have done, the kiss he gave her told 
 whether or not he loved her. 
 
 And, as you may suppose, during 
 these moments, Mr. Applegate was 
 very uneasy. "Do you mean," he 
 cried now "do you mean, sir, that 
 just as her aunt and I have become 
 attached to her, have found her 
 indispensable, you are going to take 
 her away?" 
 
 "I have been attached to her," 
 said Will, "ever since I have known 
 her. ' '
 
 192 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 "But I had other views for her, 
 sir other views! Views very much 
 to her advantage. I must insist 
 upon my rights! Yes, I may call 
 them my rights!" exclaimed Uncle 
 Applegate, beginning to storm up 
 and down tha room. 
 
 "I suppose, Mr. Applegate," said 
 Will, "that what we both desire is 
 her happiness " 
 
 "Oh, and you mustn't think me 
 ungrateful," piped up the feeble 
 voice. "I love you, too. But Will 
 is my own self he always was and 
 I thought you knew I mean, I 
 didn't think" 
 
 "This will never do," said Mr. 
 Applegate. "I can't have her dis- 
 turbed in this way. You must go 
 now I beg your pardon I really 
 But if you are going, you see your- 
 self that you had best go now, at any 
 rate. ' ' 
 
 "Then I must go, too," she 
 urged.
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 193 
 
 "By Jove!" then cried Mr. Apple- 
 gate, with the sudden shift tempes- 
 tuous forces are apt to make. "He 
 shan't go at all. He shall stay 
 here. He shall come here and 
 practice. It's high time of day if we 
 can't have confidence in our little 
 girl's choice. He shall come here 
 and practice there's plenty of room 
 at the top. What do you say to 
 that, Mrs. Applegate?" For his 
 wife had been detained downstairs, 
 and was just coming into the room 
 with some Easter lilies in her hand. 
 "A fellow that can start in on equal 
 terms with Fleischmann, can beat 
 him on his own ground, is pretty 
 sure of success. Besides, I like his 
 pluck, his grit got a regular bull- 
 dog grip won't give up our little 
 Josephine. Jove! I don't blame 
 him. Come, young man, sell out 
 your practice to some other young 
 sawbones up there in the wilderness. 
 No more driving over quagmires
 
 194 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 and across rivers in the snow-storms 
 and the midnights. I know what a 
 country doctor's life is. We'll give 
 you a clientele that goes off to its 
 country-seats every summer, and 
 leaves you four months for play, for 
 study, for Europe, for the land's- 
 end " 
 
 "Oh, my dear, my dear!" cried 
 Mrs. Applegate. 
 
 "Yes," said her husband, walk- 
 ing up and down the room, and 
 pervading it after his wont, "this 
 house is quite large enough for all 
 our purposes put together. Why, 
 it is an immense house, you know! 
 I always wondered what we wanted 
 such a house for. Now I see ! The 
 reception-room on the right for you, 
 the room behind it for your office 
 the little writing room off that we 
 no more need those rooms, Mrs. 
 Applegate," turning to his wife, 
 "than we do the fifth wheel of a 
 coach! And "
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 195, 
 
 "But my mother! My poor dear 
 mother!" whispered Josephine. 
 
 "You can go to see her whenever 
 you wish," said her uncle, with the 
 solemnity of one making a vow, 
 "oftener, very like, than if you lived 
 in the same town with her. She can 
 come down and see you make a 
 change for her go to the theater. 
 That little Agnes you tell of can go 
 on with your school you've had so 
 much to say about, ' or we can do 
 better for her. She can marry that 
 young sawbones By Jove ! perhaps 
 it will be that fellow with the 
 scholarship over here. Oh, I've had 
 my eyes out all the time, Missy." 
 
 "And have my little house with 
 the bay-window," cried Mrs. Apple- 
 gate. 
 
 "And so we will make one family 
 here," said her husband. "That is 
 settled." 
 
 "I I couldn't think of it," stam- 
 mered Dr. Will.
 
 1 96 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 "Why can't you think of it? 
 You've got to think of it! That's all 
 there is about it!" exclaimed Mr. 
 Applegate. "It's done! It's the 
 only condition on which I withdraw 
 my opposition. I'll take Josephine 
 and my wife and go off to parts 
 where I'll defy you to find me, and 
 never come back, if you don't agree, 
 and agree at once ! You run up now, 
 my boy," said Uncle Applegate, 
 going over and laying his hands on 
 Will's shoulders, "and put things 
 there in train. You must think of 
 other people than yourself you 
 really must. You must think of us, 
 two lonely old persons in our empty 
 house. Come down Where is an al- 
 manac? a calendar they're usually 
 tumbling round under your feet all 
 over the house when you don't want 
 them! Oh, here well, let me see 
 this is how ha come down say 
 just before Whitsunday to stay. 
 I'll have Josephine all well and
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 197 
 
 strong and rosy again by that time, 
 and I'll have a brass plate engraved 
 for your side of the door, and you'll 
 do well here you'll do well!" 
 dropping his calendar, and walking 
 up and down again, and rumpling 
 his hair. "I'm entirely selfish in 
 this business, " he said. "I'm put- 
 ting you under no obligation. On 
 the other hand, you're obliging me. 
 I've had a happiness, your aunt has 
 had a happiness, come into our life 
 that we are not going to lose out of 
 it." 
 
 "But, my dear sir, my kind " 
 
 "Oh, nothing of the sort! Quite 
 the contrary! Just give me your 
 assurance!" 
 
 "But," said Will, with his eyes on 
 Josephine, "if I if we accept your 
 goodness, . still Josephine should be 
 married at home, and " 
 
 "This is her home!" roared Mr. 
 Applegate. "By Jove! this is her 
 home, and is always going to be. I
 
 198 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 shall run no risk of having her leave 
 it under any sort of promise. ' ' 
 
 "He he means he can't trust 
 me," sighed Josephine. 
 
 "Take it any way you please. 
 Only do as I say. I don't believe 
 any young man from the country 
 ever had a better chance offered 
 him. But of that I will never speak 
 again. ' ' 
 
 4 '0h, Will, Will" 
 
 "Yes, I know," continued Mr. 
 Applegate. " To do the proper thing 
 you should repent your flirtations, 
 and abjure society and money and 
 luxur) r and gayety and your aunt 
 and me, and go back to the small 
 house and the narrow way. But 
 you are going to do nothing of the 
 kind. Rich people have some 
 rights. I've a right to a sunny old 
 age, as sunny as the gout will suffer 
 it to be since I've found the way to 
 have it. And have it I will! And 
 you don't go out of this house, Dr.
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 199 
 
 Will Marley, till I have your word, 
 and there's an end of it." And 
 then Mr. Applegate crossed the room 
 again, and took Will's hands in his. 
 "I want you to understand, ' ' he said, 
 "that you're my* son. And I think 
 I shall have more satisfaction out of 
 you than I have out of my other 
 children's husbands. And I promise 
 you, we won't be very much in the 
 way, your aunt and I." And with 
 a burst of emotion he threw an arm 
 round Will, and then he kissed him, 
 Will blushing like a girl the while. 
 "Besides," said Mr. Applegate, 
 "it's very handy to have a doctor in 
 the house." 
 
 "But Frances!" said Mrs. Apple- 
 gate. 
 
 "And Laura " said Josephine. 
 
 "Laura thinks whatever Frances 
 thinks, you know, ' ' said their father. 
 "And Frances feels as if Josephine 
 were very near her child the dear 
 little boy ! And she is as full of grati-
 
 200 THE MAID HE MARRIED 
 
 tilde, as well, as Frances can be. 
 She has been round here to inquire 
 every day, you know, and she has 
 even said that if Dr. Will had had 
 the case he might have saved the 
 boy. I don't think so, though I 
 don't think so. Bertie didn't belong 
 to the earth. And and Frances is 
 an Applegate, after all. I shouldn't 
 wonder if it ended by your having an 
 affectionate sister in her. It isn't 
 as if there were not enough and to 
 spare for all ! And if you can think 
 of a pleasanter way to spend the 
 honey-moon, or any other moon, 
 than by sailing in a yacht through 
 the Mediterranean waters, along the 
 shores of Africa, in summer seas and 
 under summer skies, touching 
 strange Italian cities and exploring 
 Grecian ruins, old temples and 
 palaces, between-whiles, orange 
 boughs heaped on the deck your 
 aunt and me along why, I 
 should like to have you mention
 
 THE MAID HE MARRIED 2OI 
 
 it. For that's what we're going 
 to do. ' ' 
 
 And then, as, a little while after- 
 wards, Mr. Applegate left the lovers 
 together and stamped downstairs, 
 he said to his wife on the way: "It's 
 the luckiest day's work we've done 
 for a long time. If she had married 
 Berkeley, he'd have taken her away; 
 and now we have her for good and 
 all. And I'll be hanged if my mil- 
 lions aren't as good as Berkeley's 
 are, by Jove!" 
 
 "My dear, what has that to do 
 with it?" 
 
 "A great deal, you will find," 
 said Uncle Applegate. "And the 
 more I think of it, the more I am 
 sure that a fresh, courageous, noble, 
 healthy young chap, like this Dr. 
 Will of ours, is better worth bringing 
 into the family than a fellow with 
 well, with a history. I never did 
 want our little pink pearl of a girl to 
 marry Lawrence Berkeley, anyway!"
 
 PRINTED AT THE LAKESIDE PRESS 
 
 FOR HERBERT S. STONE & CO. 
 
 PUBLISHERS, CHICAGO
 
 The 
 
 Maid He Married 
 ''By. 
 
 HarrietfrescottSpofford