' ' v >r 
 
 :
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 Roy Rolfe Gil son 
 
 Author of" The Flower of Youth" 
 " In the Morning Glow " etc. 
 
 York and London 
 Harper & Brothers 
 Publishers :: MCMV1
 
 Copyright, 1906, by HARPER & BROTHERS. 
 
 All rights rtstmd. 
 
 Published March, 1906.
 
 Contents 
 
 PART I 
 A Devonshire Lad 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. LETITIA 3 
 
 II. LITTLE RUGBY 13 
 
 III. A POET OP GRASSY FORD 27 
 
 IV. THE SEVENTH SLICE 43 
 
 V. THE HANDMAIDEN 61 
 
 VI. COUSIN DOVE 71 
 
 VII. OP HAMADRYADS AND THEIR SPELLS ... 88 
 
 PART II 
 
 The School-Mistress 
 
 I. THE OLDER LETITIA 101 
 
 II. ON A CORNER SHELF 113 
 
 III. A YOUNGER ROBIN 123 
 
 IV. HIRAM PTOLEMY 136 
 
 V. A. P. A 150 
 
 VI. TRUANTS IN ARCADY 164 
 
 VII. PEGGY NEAL 177 
 
 VIII. NEW EDEN 188 
 
 IX. A SERIOUS MATTER 202 
 
 iii 
 
 2135679
 
 Contents 
 
 PART III 
 Rosemary 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE HOME-KEEPER 211 
 
 II. JOHNNY KEATS 219 
 
 III. THE FORTUNE-TELLER 234 
 
 IV. AN UNEXPECTED LETTER 244 
 
 V. SURPRISES 252 
 
 VI. AN OLD FRIEND OF OURS 264 
 
 VII. SUZANNE 275 
 
 VIII. IN A DEVON LANE . 287
 
 PART I 
 A Devonshire Lad
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 i 
 
 LETITIA 
 
 |LL little, white-haired, smiling ladies 
 remind me of Letitia Letitia Prim- 
 rose, whom you saw just now in 
 a corner of our garden among the 
 petunias. You thought her odd, 
 no doubt, not knowing her as I or as the children 
 do who find her dough-nuts sweet after school 
 is done, or their English cousins, those little 
 brown - feathered beggars waiting on winter 
 mornings in the snow-drifts at her sill. As for 
 myself, I must own to a certain kinship, as it 
 were, not of blood but of propinquity, a long 
 next-doorhood in our youth, a tenderer, name- 
 less tie in after years, and always a fond par- 
 tiality which began one day by our old green 
 
 3
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 fence. There, on its Primrose side, it seems, she 
 had parted the grape-vines, looking for fruit, 
 and found instead 
 
 "Why! whose little boy is this?" 
 
 Now, it happened to be Bertram, Jonathan 
 Weatherby's little boy it being a holiday, and 
 two pickets off, and the Concords purple in a 
 witchery of September sheen though at first 
 he could make no sign to her of his parentage, 
 so surprised he was, and his mouth so crammed. 
 
 "Will I die?" he asked, when he had gulped 
 down all but his tongue. 
 
 "Die!" she replied, laughing at his grave, 
 round eyes and pinching his nearer cheek. " Do 
 I look like an ogress?" 
 
 "No," he said; "but I've gone and swallowed 
 'em." 
 
 "The grapes?" 
 
 "No yes but I mean the pits," whereat she 
 laughed so that his brow darkened. 
 
 "Well, a man did once." 
 
 "Did what?" 
 
 "Died from swallowin' 'em." 
 
 "Who told you that?" 
 
 "Maggie did." 
 
 "And who is Maggie?" 
 4
 
 Letitia 
 
 " Why, you know Maggie. She's our hired girl." 
 
 "How many did you swallow?" 
 
 "Five." 
 
 "Five!" 
 
 "Or six, I guess. I'm not quite sure." 
 
 "What made you do it?" 
 
 "I didn't. You did." 
 
 "I made you swallow them?" 
 
 "Why, yes, 'cause, now, I had 'em in my 
 mouth " 
 
 "Six all at once!" 
 
 "Yes, and you went and scared me. I forgot 
 to think." 
 
 "Mercy! I'm sorry, darling." 
 
 "My name isn't darling. It's Bertram." 
 
 "I'm sorry, Bertram." 
 
 "Oh, that's all right," he forgave her, cheer- 
 fully, "as long as I don't die like the man did; 
 you'll know pretty soon, I guess." 
 
 "How shall I know?" 
 
 " Well, the man, he hollered. You could hear 
 him 'cross lots, Maggie says. So, if you listen, 
 why, pretty soon you'll know." 
 
 And it is due partly to the fact that Letitia 
 Primrose, listening, heard no hollering across 
 lots, that I am able here to record the very 
 
 5
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 day and hour when I first met her ; partly that, 
 and partly because Letitia has a better mem- 
 ory than Jonathan Weatherby's little boy, for I 
 do not remember the thing at all and must take 
 her word for it. 
 
 She was not gray then, of course. It must 
 have been a pink, sweet, merry face that peered 
 at me through the grape-vines, and a ringing 
 laugh in those days, and two plump fingers that 
 pinched my cheek. Her hair was brown and 
 hung in braids, she tells me. She may have been 
 fourteen. 
 
 I do not remember her so young. I do re- 
 member hugging some one and being hugged, 
 next door once in the bay-window by the red 
 geraniums, whose scent still bears to me some 
 faint, sweet airs of summers gone. It was not a 
 relative who hugged me ; I know by the feeling 
 the remembered feeling for I was dutiful but 
 not o'er keen in the matter of kissing our kith 
 and kin. No, it was some one who took me by 
 surprise and rumpled me, some one who seemed, 
 somehow, to have the right to 'me, though not 
 by blood some one too who was nearer my age 
 than most of our relatives, who were not so 
 young and round and luring as I recall them. 
 
 6
 
 Let it i a 
 
 It was some one kneeling, so that our heads were 
 even. The carpet was red, I remember. I had 
 run in from play, I suppose, and she was there, 
 and I I may have been irresistible in those 
 days. At least I know it was not I, but Eve 
 who 
 
 That must have been Letitia. I have never 
 asked, but it was not Cousin Julia, or the Potter 
 girl, or Sammy's sister. Excluding the rest of 
 the world, I infer Letitia. And why not kiss 
 me? She kissed Sammy, that fat, little, pud- 
 ding-head Sammy McSomething, who played the 
 mouth-organ. Since of all the tunes in the world 
 he knew but one (you know which one) , it may 
 seem foolish that I cared; but, remember, I 
 played none ! And she kissed him for playing 
 kissed him, pudgy and vulgar as he was with the 
 fetty-bag tied to his neck by a dirty string to 
 ward off contagions! Ugh! I swore a green, 
 green oath to learn the accordion. 
 
 That night in bed night of the day she kissed 
 him with only the moon-lamp burning outside 
 my window, I felt that my cheeks were wet. I 
 had been thinking. It had come to me awfully 
 as I tossed, that I had been born too late for 
 Letitia. Always, I should be too young for her. 
 
 7
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 Dear Letitia, white and kneeling even then, 
 perhaps, at your whiter prayers, or reading 
 after them, before you slept, in the Jane Eyre 
 which lay for years beneath your pillow, you 
 did not dream that you also were a heroine 
 of romance. You did not dream of the plot 
 then hatching in the night : plot with a vil- 
 lain in it oh, beware, Letitia, of a pudgy, 
 vulgar, superstitious villain wearing a charmed 
 necklace of assafcetida to ward off evils, but pow- 
 erless, even quite odorless against that green- 
 eyed one! For, lo! Letitia: thy Hero standing 
 beneath thy chamber - window in the moon- 
 beams, is singing soprano to the gentle bellows- 
 ings of early love! 
 
 No, I do not play the accordion, nor did I 
 ever. I never even owned one, so I never prac- 
 tised secretly in the barn-loft, nor did I ever, 
 after all my plotting, lure young Sammy to play 
 "Sweet Home" to our dear lady in the moon- 
 shine, only to be eclipsed, to his dire confusion 
 and everlasting shame, by me. It may have 
 been that I had no pocket-money, or that Santa 
 Claus was short that year in his stock of wind- 
 instruments, or that Jonathan Weatherby had 
 no ear for melody about the house, but it is far 
 
 8
 
 Letitia 
 
 more likely that Letitia Primrose never again 
 offended, to my knowledge, in the matter of 
 pudgy little vulgar boys. 
 
 Now, as I muse the longer of that fair young 
 lady who lived next door to us, as I see myself 
 crawling through the place with the pickets off, 
 and recall beyond it the smell and taste of the 
 warm Concords in my petty larcenies of a dozen 
 autumns, then other things come back to me, of 
 Letitia 's youth, of its cares and sacrifice and 
 its motherlessness. The Rev. David Primrose, 
 superannuate divine, bard and scholar, lived 
 mostly in a chair, as I recall him, and it was 
 Letitia who wheeled him on sunny days when 
 other girls were larking, who sat beside it in the 
 bay-window, half - screened by her geraniums, 
 reading to him when his eyes were weary, writing 
 for him, when his hand trembled, those fine fancies 
 that helped him to forget his sad and premature 
 decay. She was his only child, his only house- 
 maid, gardener, errand-boy, and "angel," as 
 mother said, and the mater went sometimes to 
 sit evenings with him lest Letitia should never 
 know joys of straw-rides and taffy-pulls and 
 church-sociable ice-cream and cake. 
 
 He had a fine, white, haggard face, too stern 
 9
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 for a little child to care for, but less forbidding 
 to a growing school - boy who had found by 
 chance that it softened wonderfully with mem- 
 ories of that Rugby where Tom Brown went 
 to school ; for Dr. Primrose had conned his 
 Xenophon within those very ivied -walls, and, 
 what was more to Bertram Weatherby, under 
 those very skies had fled like Tom, a hunted hare, 
 working fleet wonders in the fields of Warwick- 
 shire. 
 
 "A mad March hare I was, Bertram," he 
 would tell me, the light of his eyes blazing in that 
 little wind of a happy memory, only to sink and 
 go out again. Smoothing then with his fine, 
 white hands the plaid shawl which had been his 
 wife's and was now a coverlet for his wasted 
 knees, he would say, sadly: 
 
 "Broomsticks, Bertram but in their day 
 there were no fleeter limbs in Rugby." 
 
 There on my upper shelf is an old, worn, dusty 
 copy of the Odes of Horace, which I cannot read, 
 but it bears on its title-page, in a school-boy's 
 scrawl, the name and date for which I prize it: 
 
 "David Buckleton Primrose, Rugby, A.D. 
 18 ." 
 
 He laughed as he gave it to me. 
 
 10
 
 Let it i a 
 
 "Mark, Bertram," said he, "the 'A.D.'" 
 
 "Thank you, sir," I replied, tremulously. 
 "You bet I'll always keep it, Mr. Primrose." 
 
 "Dr. Primrose," he reproved me, gently. 
 
 "Doctor, I mean. Maybe Tom had one like 
 it." 
 
 "Likely," he replied. "You must learn to 
 read it." 
 
 "Oh, I will, sir and Greek." 
 
 "That's right, my boy. Remember always 
 what Dr. Primrose said when he gave you Hor- 
 ace: that no gentleman could have pretensions 
 to sound culture who was not well-grounded in 
 the classics. Can you remember that?" 
 
 Twice he made me repeat it. 
 
 "Oh yes, sir, I can remember it," I told him. 
 "Do you suppose Tom put in his name like 
 that?" 
 
 "Doubtless," said Dr. Primrose, "minus the 
 A.D." 
 
 " I didn't know you had a middle name," I said. 
 
 " Buckleton was my mother's maiden name," 
 he explained. " She was of the Wiltshire Buckle- 
 tons, and a very good family, too." 
 
 "David Buckleton Primrose," I read aloud. 
 
 "Lineal descendant of Dr. Charles Primrose, 
 ii
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 Vicar of Wakefield," added the minister, so 
 solemnly that I fairly caught my breath. I had 
 no notion then of whom he spoke, but there 
 was that in the chant of his deep voice and 
 the pleasant, pompous sound he gave the title, 
 which awed me so I could only stare at him, and 
 then at Horace, and then at him again, as he 
 lay back solemnly in his chair, regarding me with 
 half -shut eyes. Slowly a smile overspread his 
 features. 
 
 " I was only jesting. Did you never hear of 
 the Vicar of Wakefieldf" 
 
 "No," I said. 
 
 "There: that little yellow book on the third 
 shelf, between the green ones. He was its hero, a 
 famous character of Oliver Goldsmith's. He also 
 was a clergyman, and his name was Primrose." 
 
 "Oh," I said, "and did he go to Rugby, sir?" 
 
 Now, though the doctor laughed and shook his 
 head, somehow I got that notion in my noddle, 
 and to this very day must stop to remember 
 that the vicar was not a Rugby boy. I have 
 even caught myself imagining that I had read 
 somewhere, or perhaps been told, that his middle 
 name was Buckleton. One thing, of course, was 
 true of both Primroses: they lived A.D. 
 
 12
 
 II 
 
 LITTLE RUGBY 
 
 [UNTING fox-grapes on a Saturday 
 in fall, or rambling truantly on a 
 fair spring morning, and chuckling 
 to hear the school-bells calling in 
 vain to us across the meadows, it 
 was fine to say: 
 
 "Gee! If there was only a game-keeper to 
 get into a row with!" 
 
 And then hear Peter's answer: 
 " Gee, yes ! Remember how Velveteens caught 
 Tom up a tree?" 
 
 It was fine, I say, because it proved that 
 Peter, too, knew Tom Brown's School Days, and 
 all about Slogger Williams and Tom's fight with 
 him, all about East and Arthur and Dr. Arnold, 
 and Tom in the last chapter standing alone in 
 the Rugby chapel by the doctor's grave. 
 
 One night in winter I remember keeping watch 
 13
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 hard-pressed was Caesar by the hordes of Gaul 
 a merest stripling from among the legions, 
 stealthily deserted post, braving the morrow's 
 reckoning to linger in delicious idleness by his 
 father's shelves. There, in a tattered copy of an 
 old Harper's, whose cover fluttered to the hearth- 
 rug, his eyes fell upon a set of drawings of a gate, 
 a quadrangle, a tower door with ivy over it, a 
 cricket-field with boys playing and scattering a 
 flock of sheep, a shop (at this his eyes grew 
 wider) a mere little Englishy village-shop, to be 
 sure, blit not like others, for this, indeed, was 
 Sallie Harrowell's, where Tom bought baked 
 potatoes and a pennyworth of tea! And out 
 of one full, dark page looked Dr. Arnold a 
 face as fine and wise and tender as Bertram 
 Weatherby had fancied it, so that he turned 
 from it but to turn back again, thinking how 
 Tom had looked upon its living presence in 
 more wondrous days. Caesar's deserter read and 
 looked, and looked and read again, beside the 
 hearth, forgetting the legions in the Gallic wilds, 
 forgetting the Roman sentry calls for the cries 
 of cricketers, and seeing naught but the guarded 
 wickets on an English green and how the sheep 
 browsed peacefully under the windows in the vines.
 
 Little Rugby 
 
 Schoolward next morning Rugby and Caesar 
 nestled together beneath his arm. He found his 
 Little Rugby on a hill a red brick school-house 
 standing awkwardly and solemn - eyed in its 
 threadbare playground, for all the world like a 
 poor school-master, impoverished without, well 
 stocked within. It was an ugly, mathematical- 
 looking Rugby, austere and angular, and with- 
 out a shred of vine or arching bough for birds 
 or dreams to nest in, yet Bertram Weatherby 
 hailed it joyfully, ran lightly up its painted 
 steps, and flung wide open its great hall-door. 
 A flood of sound gushed forth laughter, bois- 
 terous voices, chatter of girls, and the movement 
 of restless feet. Across the threshold familiar 
 faces turned, smiling, familiar voices rose from 
 the tumult, his shoulders tingled with the buffets 
 of familiar hands. 
 
 "Hello, Bildad!" 
 
 "Hello, old saw-horse!" 
 
 " Hello, yourself ! Take that ! ' ' 
 
 But suddenly, in the midst of these savage 
 greetings, that gentle pressure of an arm about 
 him, and Peter's voice : 
 
 "Hello, old man!" 
 
 Bertram would whirl at that, his face beam- 
 15
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 ing; they had met but yesterday it was as 
 years ago "Hello, old man! Look, Peter!" 
 
 But a gong clanged. Then all about them was 
 the hurry and tramp of feet upon the stairs. Lost 
 in the precious pages, they climbed together, arm 
 in arm, drifting upward with the noisy current 
 and through the doors of the assembly-hall. 
 
 "See, Bertram the cricket-bats on the wall!" 
 
 "Yes; and the High Street and Sallie Har- 
 rowell's!" 
 
 "And the doctor's door!" 
 
 Through another door just then their own 
 masters were slowly filing, their own doctor last 
 and weightiest of all, his smooth, strong face 
 busy with some chapel reverie. 
 
 "The Professor's like Arnold," Bertram told 
 Peter as they slipped together into their double 
 seat. 
 
 The last gong clanged. There was a last bang 
 of seats turned down, a last clatter of books upon 
 the desks, the last belated, breathless ones flut- 
 tered down aisles with reddened cheeks, while 
 the Professor waited with the Bible open in his 
 hand. 
 
 "Let us read this morning the one-hundred - 
 and-seventh Psalm Psalm one hundred seven." 
 
 16
 
 Little Rugby 
 
 Peter was in Rugby, hidden by the girl in 
 front. The boy named Bertram fixed his gaze 
 upon the desk before him. Fair and smooth it 
 was too smooth with newness to please a Rug- 
 beian eye. During the Psalm, with his pocket- 
 knife he cut his initials in the yellow wood, and 
 smiled at them. In days to come other boys 
 would sit where he was sitting, and gaze and 
 puzzle over that rude legacy, and, if dreams 
 came true, might be proud enough to sprawl 
 their elbows where a famous man had lolled. 
 They might even hang the old seat-top upon the 
 wall, that all who ran might read the glory of 
 an alma mater in the disobedience of a mighty 
 son. Bertram Weatherby gazed fondly upon his 
 handiwork and closed his knife. Time and Des- 
 tiny must do the rest. 
 
 " Let us pray." 
 
 For a moment the Professor stood there silent- 
 ly with lowered eyes. Bertram and Peter, their 
 shoulders touching, bowed their heads. 
 
 "Our Father in heaven ..." 
 
 There was no altar only a flat-topped desk; 
 no stained -glass windows only the sunshine on 
 the panes; and there a man's voice, deep and 
 trembling, and here a school-boy's beating heart, 
 
 17
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "... Help us, O Father, to be kinder ..." 
 How you loved Peter, the Professor, and your 
 
 ugly Rugby on its hill! 
 
 "... Lead us, Father, to a nobler youth ..." 
 Ay, they should know you for the man you 
 
 were, deep down in your hidden soul. 
 
 "... Give us, Father, courage for the battle ..." 
 Wait till the next time Murphy bumped you 
 
 on the stairs! 
 
 " . . . to put behind us all indolence of flesh and 
 
 soul . . ." 
 
 You would study hard that term. 
 " . . . all heedlessness and disobedience ..." 
 You would keep the rules. 
 "... for Jesus' sake Amen." 
 "Peter, did you see the sheep . . ." 
 "If the two young gentlemen whispering on 
 
 the back seat " 
 You flushed angrily. Other fellows whispered 
 
 on back seats. Why, always, did the whole school 
 
 turn so knowingly to you ? 
 
 Sitting, one study-hour, in the assembly-hall, 
 Bertram's eyes wandered to the top of the Com- 
 mentaries, strayed over the book to the braids of 
 the Potter girl beyond, and on to the long, 
 
 18
 
 Little Rugby 
 
 brown benches. The hum of recitations there, 
 whispering behind him, giggling half suppressed, 
 and the sharp rat-tat of the teacher's warning 
 pencil came to him vaguely as in a dream. 
 Through the tall windows he saw the spotless 
 blue of the sky, the bright-green, swaying tips 
 of the maples, and the flight of wings. Out there 
 it was spring. Two more months of Cassar 
 eight more dreary weeks of legions marching and 
 barbarians bending beneath the yoke then 
 summer and the long vacation, knights jousting 
 in the orchard, Indians scalping on the hill. 
 Eight weeks forty days of school. 
 
 Behind a sheltering grammar Peter was read- 
 ing Hughes. Over his shoulder Bertram could 
 make out Tom, just come to Rugby, watching the 
 football, and that cool Crab Jones, fresh from a 
 scrimmage, with the famous straw still hanging 
 from his teeth. He read to the line of Peter's 
 shoulder, then his eyes wandered again to the 
 school-room window. It was spring in Grassy 
 Ford it was spring in Warwickshire. . . . 
 
 " If the young gentleman gazing out of the 
 window " 
 
 " Tertia vigilia eruptionem fecerunt " third 
 watch eruption they made. Eruptionem
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 eruption pimples break out sally. They 
 made a sally at the third watch. Tertia vigilia, 
 ablative case. Ablative of what? Ablative of 
 time. Why ablative of time? Because a noun 
 denoting oh, hang their eruptionem ! They 
 were dead and buried long ago. Why does a 
 fellow learn such stuff ? Help his English huh ! 
 English helps his Latin that's what. How 
 does a fellow know eruptionem? Because he's 
 seen pimples that's how. No sense learn- 
 ing Latin. Dead language dead as a door- 
 nail. . . . 
 
 Bertram Weatherby drew a picture on the 
 margin of his book a head, shoulders, two arms, 
 a trunk and trousered legs. Carefully, then, he 
 dotted in the eyes the nose the mouth the 
 ears beneath the tousled hair. He rolled the 
 shirt-sleeves to the elbows drew the trousers- 
 belt the shoes. Then delicately, smiling to 
 himself the while, his head tilted, his eyes squint- 
 ed like a connoisseur, he drew a straw pendent 
 from the figure's lips. 
 
 "Peter, who's that?" 
 
 "Sh! not so loud. She'll hear you." 
 
 "Who's that, Peter?" 
 
 ,"Hm Crab Jones." 
 
 20
 
 Little Rugby 
 
 "Now, if the idle young gentleman drawing 
 pictures " 
 
 " Tertia vigilia eruptionem fecerunt" oh, they 
 did, did they ? What of that ? . . . 
 
 "Rugby," said the Professor, who had a way 
 of enlivening his classes with matters of the outer 
 world " Rugby, as I have heard my friend Dr. 
 Primrose say, who was a Rugby boy himself, is 
 very different from our public schools. Only 
 the other day he was telling me of a school-mate, 
 a professor now, who had returned to England, 
 and who had spent a day there rambling about 
 the ivied buildings, and searching, I suppose, 
 for the ancient form where he had carved his 
 name. Dr. Primrose told me how, as this old 
 friend lingered on the greensward where the 
 boys played cricket, as he himself had done on 
 that very spot fine, manly fellows in their 
 white flannels he heard not a single oath or 
 vulgar word in all that hour he loitered there. 
 One young player called to another who ran too 
 languidly after the ball. 'Aren't you playing, 
 Brown?' he cried, with a touch of irony in his 
 voice." 
 
 The Professor paused. 
 
 91
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 " I have heard stronger language on our play- 
 ground here." 
 
 He paused again, adding, impressively: 
 
 "We might do well to imitate our English 
 cousins." 
 
 "Just what / say," whispered young Bertram 
 Weatherby. 
 
 "The Prof.'s all right," Peter whispered back. 
 
 And so, down -town, after school that day, 
 behold ! sitting on stools at Billy's Palace Lunch 
 Counter, in the Odd Fellow's Block two fine, 
 manly chaps, not in white cricket flannels, to 
 be sure, but 
 
 "It's some like Sallie Harrowell's," one mum- 
 bled, joyously, crunching his buttered toast, and 
 the other nodded, taking his swig of tea. 
 
 So it came to pass that they looked reverently 
 upon the Professor with Rugbeian eyes, and more 
 admiringly as they noted new likenesses between 
 him and the great head-master. There was a 
 certain resemblance of glowing countenance, they 
 told themselves, a certain ardor of voice, as they 
 imagined, and over all a sympathy for boys. 
 
 "Well," he would say, "stopping them as 
 they walked together arm in arm, "if you seek 
 
 22
 
 Little Rugby 
 
 Peter, look for Bertram eh?" giving their 
 shoulders a bantering shake which pleased them 
 greatly as they sauntered on. 
 
 Listening to his prayers in chapel, hearing at 
 least the murmur of them as they bowed their 
 heads, their minds swayed by the earnestness 
 of the great man's voice rather than by the 
 words he uttered, they felt that glow which comes 
 sometimes to boys who read and dream. Then 
 Bertram loved the touch of Peter's shoulder, 
 and, with the memory of another doctor and 
 another school-boy, he loved his Rugby, little 
 and meagre and vineless though it was upon its 
 threadbare hill. When he had left it he would 
 return some day, he thought; he would stand 
 like Tom in the last chapter; he would sit again 
 at his old brown desk, alone, musing missing 
 his mate, and finding silence where happy whis- 
 perings and secret play had been but still in the 
 pine before him he would trace the letters he 
 had cut, and, seeing them, he would be again the 
 boy who cut them there. 
 
 One morning, such was the fervor of the Pro- 
 fessor's voice, there was some such dream, and 
 when it ended, prayer and dream together 
 
 "After these exercises 
 23
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 It was the Professor's voice. 
 
 " I wish to see in my office Bertram Weath- 
 erby and Peter Wynne." 
 
 They heard aghast. The whole school turned 
 to them. The Past rose dreadfully before their 
 startled vision, yet for once, it seems, they could 
 find no blemish there. 
 
 Down -stairs, quaking, they slipped together 
 through the office door. The Professor had not 
 arrived. They took their stations farthest from 
 his chair, and leaned, wondering, for support 
 against the wall. There was a murmur of as- 
 sembling classes overhead, a hurry of belated 
 feet, and then that well-known, awful tread. 
 Peter gulped ; Bertram shifted his feet, his heart 
 thumping against his ribs, but they squared 
 their shoulders as the door flew open and the 
 Professor, his face grave, his eyes flashing, 
 swooped down upon them in the little room. 
 
 "Bertram!" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "Peter!" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " I have sent for you to answer a most serious 
 charge most serious, indeed. I am surprised. 
 I am astonished. Two of my best pupils, two 
 
 24
 
 Little Rugby 
 
 whom I have praised, not once but many times, 
 here in this very room two, I may say, of my 
 favorite boys found violating, wilfully violating, 
 the rules of this school. I could not believe the 
 charge till I saw the evidence with my own eyes. 
 I could not believe that boys like you boys of 
 good families, boys with minds far above the av- 
 erage of their age, would despoil, openly despoil 
 yes, I may say, ruthlessly despoil the prop- 
 erty of this school, descending " 
 
 "Why, sir, what prop " 
 
 "Descending," cried the Professor, "to van- 
 dalism to a vandalism which I have again and 
 again proscribed. Over and over I have said, 
 and within your hearing, that I would not coun- 
 tenance the defacing of desks!" 
 
 Bertram Weatherby glanced furtively at Peter 
 Wynne. Peter had sighed. 
 
 "Over and over," said the Professor, "I have 
 told you that they were not your property or 
 mine, but the property of the people whose rep- 
 resentative I am. Yet here I find you marring 
 their tops with jackrknives, carving great, sprawl- 
 ing letters " 
 
 " But, sir, at Rug" 
 
 "Great, ugly letters, I say, sprawling and 
 25
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 slashed so deeply that the polished surface can 
 never be restored." 
 
 "At Rug " 
 
 "What will visitors say? What will your 
 parents say if they come, as parents should, to 
 see the property for which they pay a tribute to 
 the state?" 
 
 "But, sir, at Rug" 
 
 " Bertram, I am grieved. I am grieved, Peter, 
 that boys reared to care for the neatness of their 
 persons should prove so slovenly in the matter of 
 the property a great republic intrusts to their use 
 and care." 
 
 "But, sir, at Rug" 
 
 "I am astonished." 
 
 "At Rug" 
 
 "I am astounded." 
 
 "At Rug" 
 
 "Astounded, I repeat." 
 
 "At Rugby, sir" 
 
 "Rugby!" thundered the Professor. "Rug- 
 by! And what of Rugby?" 
 
 "Why, at Rugby, sir" 
 
 " And what, pray, has Rugby, or a thousand 
 Rugby s, to do with your wilful disobedience?" 
 
 "They cut, sir" 
 
 26
 
 Little Rugby 
 
 " Cut, sir!" repeated the Professor. " Cut, sir!" 
 
 "Yes, sir their desks, sir." 
 
 "And if they do what then?" 
 
 "Well, sir, you said, you know " . 
 
 "Said? What did I say? I asked you to 
 imitate the manliness of Rugby cricketers. I 
 did not ask you to carve your desks like the 
 totem-poles of savage tribes!" 
 
 His face was pale, his eyes dark, his words 
 ground fine. 
 
 "Young gentlemen, I will have you know that 
 rules must be obeyed. I will have you know 
 that I am here not only as a teacher, but as a 
 guardian of the public property intrusted to my 
 care. Under the rules which I am placed here 
 to enforce, I can suspend you both dismiss you 
 from the privileges of the school. This once I 
 will act with lenience. This once, young gen- 
 tlemen, you may think yourselves lucky to 
 escape with demerit marks, but if I hear again 
 of conduct so unbecoming, so disgraceful, of 
 vandalism so ruthless and absurd, I shall punish 
 you as you deserve. Now go." 
 
 Softly they shut the office door behind them. 
 Arm in arm they went together, tiptoe, down 
 the empty hall. 
 
 27
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 The gloom of a great disappointment was in 
 their voices. 
 
 "He's not an Arnold, after all," they said.
 
 Ill 
 
 A POET OF GRASSY FORD 
 
 [HE lesser Primrose was a poet. 
 It was believed in Grassy Ford, 
 though the grounds seem vague 
 enough now that I come to think 
 of them, that he published widely 
 in the literary journals of the day. Letitia was 
 seen to post large envelopes, and anon to draw 
 large envelopes from the post-office and hasten 
 home with them. The former were supposed 
 to contain poems; the latter, checks. Be that 
 as it may, I never saw the Primrose name in 
 print save in our Grassy Ford Weekly Gazette. 
 There, when gossip lagged, you would find it 
 frequently in a quiet upper corner, set "solid," 
 under the caption "Gems" a terse distinction 
 from the other bright matters with which our 
 journal shone, and further emphasized by the 
 Gothic capitals set in a scroll of stars. Thus 
 3 29
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 modestly, I believe, were published for the first 
 time and I fear the last Dsf^id Buckleton 
 Primrose's "Agamemnon," "Ode to Jupiter," 
 "Ulysses's Farewell," "Lines on Rereading 
 Dante," "November: an Elegy Written in the 
 Autumn of Life," as well as those stirring bugle- 
 calls, "To Arms!" "John Brown," and "The 
 Guns of Sumter," and those souvenirs of more 
 playful tender moods, "To a Lady," "When I 
 was a Rugby Lad," "Thanksgiving Pies," and 
 "Lines Written in a Young Lady's Album on 
 her Fifteenth Birthday." Now that young lady 
 was Letitia, I chance to know, for I have seen 
 the verses in her school - girl album, a little 
 leathern Christmas thing stamped with forget- 
 me-nots now faded, and there they stand just 
 opposite some school-mate's doggerel of "roses 
 red and violets blue " signed Johnny Gray. The 
 lines begin, I remember: 
 
 "Virtue is in thy modest glance, sweet child," 
 
 and they are written in a flourished, old-fash- 
 ioned hand. These and every other line her 
 father dreamed there in his chair Letitia treasures 
 in a yellow scrap-book made of an odd volume 
 
 30
 
 A Poet of Grassy Ford 
 
 of Rhode Island statutes for 18 . There, one 
 by one, as he wrote them, or cut them with 
 trembling fingers from the fresh, ink - scented 
 Gazette "Gems," scroll and all, and with date 
 attached she set them neatly in with home- 
 made paste, pressing flat each precious flower of 
 his muse with her loving fingers. 
 
 Editor Butters used to tell me of the soft-eyed 
 girl, "with virtue in her modest glance," slipping 
 suddenly into his print - shop, preferably after 
 dusk had fallen, and of the well-known envelope 
 rising from some sacred folds, he never quite 
 knew where, to be laid tremblingly upon his 
 desk. 
 
 "Something from father, sir." 
 
 It was a faint voice, often a little husky, and 
 then a smile, a bow, and she had fled. 
 
 Editor Nathaniel Butters had a weakness of 
 the heart for all tender things a weakness 
 "under oath," however, as he once replied when 
 I charged him with it, and as I knew, for I myself 
 heard him one summer afternoon, as he sat, shirt- 
 sleeved and pipe in mouth, perched on a stool, 
 and setting type hard by a window where I 
 stood beneath fishing with a dogwood wand. 
 
 "The-oc-ri-tus! Humpf! Now, who in thun-
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 der cares a tinker's damn for Theocritus, in 
 Grassy Ford? Some old Greek god, I suppose, 
 who died and went to the devil; and here's a 
 parson a Christian parson who ought to know 
 better writing an ode to him, for Hank Myers 
 to read, and Jim Gowdy, and Old Man Flynn. 
 And I don't get a cent for it, not a blank cent, 
 Sam well, he doesn't either, for that matter 
 but it's all tommy-rot, and here I've got to sweat, 
 putting in capitals where they don't belong and 
 hopping down to the darned old dictionary every 
 five minutes to see if he's right Sam [turn- 
 ing to his printer] there's some folks think it's 
 just heaven to be a country editor, but I'll 
 be" 
 
 He was a rough, white-bearded, little, round, 
 fat man, who showed me type-lice, I remember 
 (the first and only time I ever saw the vermin), 
 and roared when I wiped my eyes, though I've 
 forgiven him. He was good to Letitia in an 
 hour of need. 
 
 Dr. Primrose, it seems, had written his master- 
 piece, a solemn, Dr. Johnsonian thing which he 
 named "Jerusalem," and reaching, so old man 
 Butters told me once, chuckling, "from Friday 
 evening to Saturday night." The muse had 
 
 32
 
 A Poet of Grassy Ford 
 
 granted him a longer candle than it was her wont 
 to lend, and Letitia trembled for that sacred fire. 
 
 "Print it, child? Of course he'll print it. 
 It's the finest thing I ever did!" 
 
 "True, father, but its length" 
 
 "Not longer than Milton's 'Lycidas,' my 
 dear." 
 
 "I know, but he's so he looks so fierce, 
 father." She laughed nervously. 
 
 "Who? Butters?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Tut! Butters has brains enough " 
 
 " It isn't his brains," replied Letitia. " It's his 
 whiskers, father." 
 
 "Whiskers?" 
 
 "Yes; they bristle so." 
 
 " Don't be foolish, child. Butters has brains 
 enough to know it is worth the printing. Worth 
 the printing!" he cried, with irony. "Yes, even 
 though it isn't dialect." 
 
 Dialect was then in vogue; no Grassy Ford, 
 however small, in those days, but had its Rhym- 
 ing Robin who fondly imagined that he might be 
 another Burns. 
 
 "Dialect!" the doctor repeated, scornfully, 
 his eyes roving to the shabby ancients on his 
 
 33
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 shelves. " Bring me Horace that's a good girl. 
 No yes." His hand lingered over hers that 
 offered him the book. "Child," he said, looking 
 her keenly in the eyes, " do you find it so hard to 
 brave that lion?" 
 
 " Oh no, father. I didn't mean I was afraid, 
 only he's so woolly. You can hardly make 
 out his eyes, and fire sputters through his old 
 spectacles. I think he never combs 'his hair." 
 
 "Does he ever grumble at you?" 
 
 "Oh no" and here she laughed "that is, I 
 never give him time; I run away." 
 
 The old poet made no reply to her, but went 
 on holding that soft little hand with the Horace 
 in it, and gazing thoughtfully at his daughter's 
 face. 
 
 "We can send it by mail," he said at last. 
 
 That roused Letitia. 
 
 " Oh, not at all !" she cried. " Why, I'm proud 
 to take it, father. Mr. Butters isn't so dreadful 
 if he is fuzzy. I'm sure he'll print it. There 
 was that letter from Mr. Banks last week, a 
 column long, on carrots." 
 
 He smiled dryly at her over his opened book. 
 
 "If only my 'Jerusalem' were artichokes in- 
 stead of Saracens!" he said. 
 
 34
 
 A Poet of Grassy Ford 
 
 The fuzzy one was in his lair, proof-reading 
 at his unkempt desk. The floor was littered at 
 his feet. He was smoking a black tobacco in a 
 blacker pipe. He wore no coat, no cuffs, and 
 his sleeves were um; it does not matter. He 
 glared (" carnivorously," Letitia tells me) at the 
 opening door. 
 
 "Evening," he said, and waited; but the 
 envelope did not arise. So he rose himself, 
 offering a seat in the midst of his clutter, a 
 plain, pine, rope-mended chair, from which he 
 pawed spiled sheets of copy and tattered ex- 
 changes that she might sit. 
 
 "Looks some like snow," he said. 
 
 "Yes," she assented. "I called, Mr. But- 
 ters" 
 
 She paused uncertainly. It was her own 
 voice that had disconcerted her, it was so trem- 
 ulous. 
 
 "Another poem, I suppose," he said, fondly 
 imagining that he had softened his voice to a 
 tone of gallantry, but succeeding no better than 
 might be expected of speech so hedged, so beset 
 and baffled, so veritably bearded in its earward 
 flight. 
 
 "You you mentioned snow, I think," stam- 
 35
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 mered Letitia. He had frightened her away, or 
 she may have drawn back, half -divining, even in 
 embarrassment, that the other, the more round- 
 about, the snowy path, was the better way to 
 approach her theme. 
 
 "Snow and east winds are the predictions, I 
 believe, Miss Primrose." 
 
 "I dread the winter don't you?" she vent- 
 ured. 
 
 "No," he replied. "I like it." 
 
 "That's because you are 
 
 " Because I'm so fat, you mean." 
 
 "Oh no, Mr. Butters, I didn't even think of 
 that; I meant so 
 
 And then heavens! it flashed across her 
 that she had meant " woolly " ! To save her soul 
 she could think of no synonyme. Her cheeks 
 turned red. 
 
 "I meant why, of course, I meant you're 
 so well prepared." 
 
 "Well prepared," he grumbled. 
 
 "Why, yes, you men can wear beards, you 
 know." 
 
 "Egad! you're right," he roared. "You're 
 right, Miss Primrose. I am well mufflered, that's 
 a fact." 
 
 36
 
 A Poet of Grassy Ford 
 
 "But, really, it must be a great assistance, 
 Mr. Butters." 
 
 "Oh yes; it is and it saves neckties." 
 
 And this, mark you, was the way to Poetry! 
 Poor Letitia, with the manuscript hidden be- 
 neath her cloak, was all astray. The image of 
 the poet with Horace in his lap rose before her 
 and rebuked her. She was tempted to disclose 
 her mission, dutifully, there and then. 
 
 "How is Mrs. Butters?" she inquired instead. 
 
 "About as well as common, which is to say, 
 poorly very poorly, thank you." 
 
 "Oh, I'm sorry." 
 
 Editor Butters seemed downcast. 
 
 " She's tried everything," he said. " Even had 
 a pocket made in her gown to hold a potato and 
 a horse - chestnut but this rheumatism does 
 beat all, I tell you. How's the old gentleman?" 
 
 "The doctor says he will never walk." 
 
 "Yes, so I heard," muttered the editor. " It's 
 a damned shame." 
 
 He was fumbling with his proofs and did not 
 see her face yet, after all, she could feel the 
 sympathy even in his rudeness. 
 
 "Still hatching poems, I suppose?" 
 
 Her heart, which had warmed even as her 
 37
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 cheeks had colored at his other words, grew cold 
 at these. What manner of toil it was that 
 brought forth things so pure and beautiful in 
 her sight, what labor of love and travail of spirit 
 it was to him, she alone would ever know who 
 watched beside him, seeing his life thus ebbing, 
 dream by dream. She sat silent, crumpling 
 those precious pages in her hands. 
 
 "Well," Butters went on, gruffly, clearing his 
 throat, "he's a good hand at it." He was not 
 looking at Letitia, but kept his eyes upon a ring 
 of keys with which he played nervously; and 
 now when he spoke it was more spasmodically, 
 as if reluctant to broach some matter for which, 
 however, he felt the time had come. "Yes, he's 
 a good hand at it. Used to be even better than 
 he is now but that's natural. I wish, though 
 you'd just suggest when it comes handy just in 
 a quiet sort of way, you know some day when 
 you get the chance that he's getting just a 
 leetle bit you can say it better than I can 
 but I mean long-winded for the Gazette. It's 
 natural, of course, but you see you see, Miss 
 Primrose, if we print one long-winded piece, you 
 know you can see for yourself why, every 
 other poet in Grassy Ford starts firing epics at 
 
 38
 
 A Poet of Grassy Ford 
 
 us, which is natural, of course, but hard on 
 me. And if I refuse 'em, why, then, they just 
 naturally up and say, 'Well, you printed Prim- 
 rose's; why not mine?' and there they have you 
 there they have you right by the yes, sir, 
 there they have you; and there's the devil to 
 pay. Like as not they get mad then and stop 
 their papers, which they don't pay for and 
 that's natural, too, only it causes feeling and 
 doesn't do me any good, or your father either." 
 
 "But, Mr. Butters, you printed Mr. Banks's 
 letter on carrots, and that was " 
 
 The editor fairly leaped in his chair. 
 
 "There, you have it!" he cried. "Just what 
 I said! There's that confounded letter of Jim 
 Banks's, column-long on carrots, a-staring me 
 in the face from now till kingdom come when 
 any other idiot wants to print something a col- 
 umn long. Just what I say, Miss Primrose ; but 
 you must remember that the readers of the 
 Gazette do raise carrots, and they don't raise 
 well, now, for instance, and not to be mean or 
 personal at all, Miss Primrose not at all they 
 don't raise Agamemnons or Theocrituses. I 
 suppose I should say Theocriti singular, The- 
 ocritus; plural, Theocriti. No, sir, they don't 
 
 39
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 raise Theocriti which is natural, of course, and 
 reminds me while we are on the subject re- 
 minds me, Miss Primrose, that I've been think- 
 ing or wondering in fact, I've been going to 
 ask you for some time back, only I never just 
 got the chance ask you if you wouldn't just 
 kind of speak to your father, to kind of induce 
 him, you know, to to write on about well, 
 about livelier things. You see, Miss Primrose, 
 it's natural, of course, for scholars to write about 
 things that are dead and gone. They wouldn't 
 be scholars if they wrote what other people knew 
 about. That's only natural. Still still, Miss 
 Primrose, if the old gentleman could just give 
 us a poem or two on the well, the issues of the 
 day, you know oh, he's a good writer, Miss 
 Primrose! Mind, I'm not saying a word not a 
 word against that. I'd be the last Good 
 God, what's the matter, girl! What have I 
 done? Oh, I say now, that's too bad that's 
 too bad, girlie. Come, don't do that don't 
 Why, if I'd a-known " 
 
 Letitia, "Jerusalem" crushed in her right 
 hand, had buried her face among the proof- 
 sheets on his desk. Woolier than ever in his 
 bewilderment, the editor rose sat rose again 
 
 40
 
 A Poet of Grassy Ford 
 
 patted gingerly (he had never had a daughter), 
 patted Letitia's shaking shoulders and strove 
 to soothe her with the only words at his com- 
 mand: "Oh, now, I say I why, say, if I'd 
 a-known" till Letitia raised her dripping face. 
 
 "You m-mustn't mind, Mr. B-Butters," she 
 said, smiling through her tears. 
 
 " Why, say, Miss Primrose, if I'd a-dreamed " 
 
 "It's all my f-fault, Mr. B-Butters." 
 
 "Damn it, no! It's mine. It's mine, I tell 
 you. I might a-known you'd think I was criti- 
 cising your father." 
 
 "Oh, it's not that exactly, Mr. Butters, but 
 you see " 
 
 She put her hair out of her eyes and smoothed 
 the manuscript. 
 
 " Egad ! I see ; you had one of the old gentle- 
 man's " 
 
 Letitia nodded. 
 
 "Egad!" he cried again. "Let's see, Miss 
 Primrose." 
 
 "Oh, there isn't the slightest use," she said. 
 "It's too long, Mr. Butters." 
 
 "No, no. Let's have a look at it." 
 
 "No," she answered. "No, it's altogether too 
 long, Mr. Butters." 
 
 41
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "But let's have a look at it." 
 
 She hesitated. His hand was waiting ; but she 
 shook her head. 
 
 "No. It's the longest poem he ever wrote, 
 Mr. Butters. It's his masterpiece." 
 
 "By George! let's see it, then. Let's see it." 
 
 "Why, it's as long, Mr. Butters it's as long 
 as ' Lycidas. ' ' 
 
 " Long as hm !" he replied. " Still still, Miss 
 Primrose," he added, cheerfully, "that isn't so 
 long when you come to think of it." 
 
 "But that's not all," Letitia said. "It's 
 about it's called oh, you'll never print it, Mr. 
 Butters!" 
 
 She rose with the poem in her hand. 
 
 "Print it!" cried Butters. "Why, of course 
 I'll print it. I'll print it if every cussed poet in 
 Grassy" 
 
 "Oh, will you, Mr. Butters?" 
 
 "Will I? Of course I will." 
 
 He took it from her unresisting fingers. 
 
 " Je-ru-sa-lem!" he cried, fluttering the twenty 
 pages. 
 
 "Yes," she said, "that's that's the name of 
 it, Mr. Butters," and straightway set herself to 
 rights again. 
 
 42
 
 IV 
 
 THE SEVENTH SLICE 
 
 T was the editor himself who told 
 me the story years afterwards 
 Butters of "The Pide Bull," as he 
 ever afterwards called his shop, for 
 in her gratitude Letitia had pointed 
 out to him how natural it was that he of all men 
 should be the patron of poets, since beyond a 
 doubt, she averred, he was descended from that 
 very Nathaniel Butter for whom was printed 
 the first quarto edition of King Lear. Indeed, 
 with the proofs of "Jerusalem" she brought him 
 the doctor's Shakespeare, and showed him in 
 the preface to the tragedy the record of an an- 
 tique title-page bearing these very words: 
 
 " Printed for Nathaniel Butter, and are 
 to be fold at his {hop in Paul's Church- 
 yard at the figne of the Pide Bull neere 
 St. Auftin's Gate, 1608." 
 
 43
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "Egad!" said Butters, "I never heard that 
 before. Well, well, well, well." 
 
 " I think there is no doubt, Mr. Butters," said 
 Letitia, "that he was your ancestor." 
 
 "You don't say so," mumbled the delighted 
 editor. " Shouldn't wonder. Shouldn't wonder 
 now at all. I believe there was an 's' tacked 
 on our name, some time or other, now that I 
 come to think of it, and printer's ink always did 
 run in the Butters blood, by George!" 
 
 He even meditated hanging up a sign with a 
 pied bull upon it or so he said but rejected 
 the plan as too Old English for Grassy Ford. 
 He never ceased, however, to refer to "my old 
 cousin Shakespeare's publisher, you know," 
 and in the occasional dramatic criticisms that 
 embellished the columns of the Gazette, all plays 
 presented at our Grand Opera- House in the Odd 
 Fellow's Block were compared, somehow, willy- 
 nilly, to King Lear. 
 
 Butters of " The Pide Bull," I say, first told me 
 how that young Crusader with the tear-wet face 
 had delivered "Jerusalem," saving it from the 
 stern fate which had awaited it and setting it 
 proudly among the immortal "Gems." Then I 
 sought Letitia, whose briefer, more reluctant 
 
 44
 
 The Seventh Slice 
 
 version filled in wide chinks in the Butters narra- 
 tive, while my knowledge of them both, of their 
 modesty and their tender-heartedness, filled in 
 the others, making the tale complete. 
 
 I was too young when the poet wrote his 
 masterpiece to know or care about it, or how it 
 found its way to the wondering world of Grassy 
 Ford nay, to the whole round world as well, 
 "two hemispheres," as old man Butters used to 
 remind me with offended pride in his voice, 
 which had grown gruffer with his years. Did 
 he not send Gazettes weekly, he would ask, to 
 Mrs. Ann Bowers's eldest son, a Methodist mis- 
 sionary in the Congo wilds, and to " that woman 
 in Asia"? He referred to a Grassy Ford belle 
 of other days who had married a tea-merchant 
 and lived in Chong-Chong. 
 
 Who knows what befell the edition of that 
 memorable Gazette which contained " Jerusalem," 
 set solid, a mighty column of Alexandrine lines? 
 One summer's afternoon, tramping in an Adiron- 
 dack wilderness, I came by chance upon the 
 blackened ashes of a fire, and sitting meditative- 
 ly upon a near-by log, poking the leaf-strewn 
 earth with my stick, I unearthed a yellow, half- 
 burned corner of an old newspaper, and, idly 
 4 45
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 lifting it to read, found it a fragment of some 
 Australian Times. Still more recently, when my 
 aunt Matilda, waxing wroth at the settling floors 
 of her witch-colonial house in Bedfordtown, had 
 them torn up to lay down new ones, the carpen- 
 ters unearthed an old rat's nest built partially 
 of a New York Tribune with despatches from 
 the field of Gettysburg. 
 
 "Sneer not at the power of the press," old 
 man Butters used to say, stuffing the bowl of his 
 black pipe from my tobacco-jar and casting the 
 match into my wife's card-tray. " Who knows, 
 my boy? Davy Primrose's 'Jerusalem' may 
 turn up yet." 
 
 It is something to ponder now how all those 
 years that I played away, Letitia, of whom I 
 thought then only as the young lady who lived 
 next door and occasional confidante of my idle 
 hours, was slaving with pretty hands and puz- 
 zling her fair young mind to bring both ends 
 together in decent comfort for that poor de- 
 pendent one. Yet she does not sigh, this gray 
 Letitia among the petunias, when she talks of 
 those by-gone days, but is always smiling back 
 with me some happy memory. 
 
 "You were the funniest boy, Bertram," she 
 4 6
 
 The Seventh Slice 
 
 tells me, " always making believe that it was old 
 England in Grassy Ford, and that you were 
 Robin Hood or Lord Somebody or Earl Some- 
 body Else. How father used to laugh at you ! He 
 said it was a pity you would never be knighted, 
 and once he drew for you your escutcheon - 
 you don't remember ? Well, it had three books 
 upon it Tom Brown's School-days, Tales of a 
 Grandfather, and the Morte d' Arthur " 
 
 Then I remind her that Robin Saxeholm was 
 half to blame for my early failure as an Amer- 
 ican. He was a Devonshire lad; he had been a 
 Harrow boy, and was a Cambridge man when 
 he came, one summer of my boyhood, to Grassy 
 Ford to visit the Primroses. His father had 
 been the doctor's dearest friend when they were 
 boys together in Devonshire, and when young 
 Robin's five-feet-eleven filled up the poet's door- 
 way, Letitia tells me, the tears ran down the 
 doctor's cheeks and he held out both his arms 
 to him: 
 
 "Robin Saxeholm! you young Devon oak, 
 you tell me, does the Dart still run?" 
 
 "He does, sir!" cried the young Englishman, 
 speaking, Letitia says, quite in the Devon man- 
 ner, for those who dwell upon the banks of that 
 
 47
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 famous river find, it seems, something too hu- 
 man in its temper and changeful moods to speak 
 of it in the neuter way. 
 
 They sat an hour together, the poet and his 
 old friend's son, before Letitia could show 
 the guest to the room she had prepared for 
 him. 
 
 That was a summer! 
 
 Robin taught me a kind of back-yard, two- 
 old-cat cricket with a bat fashioned by his own 
 big hands. Sometimes Letitia joined us, and 
 the doctor watched us from his chair rolled out 
 upon the garden walk, applauding each mighty 
 play decorously, in the English fashion, with 
 clapping hands. Robin Goodfellow, the doctor 
 called our captain, " though a precious large one, 
 I'll be bound," he said. Letitia called him Mr. 
 Saxeholm, first then Mr. Robin, and some- 
 times, laughingly, Mr. Bobbin then Robin. I 
 called him Mr. Bob. 
 
 I made up my mind to one thing then and 
 there: I should be happier when I grew old 
 enough to wear white cricket flannels and a 
 white hat like Mr. Bob's, and I hoped, and 
 prayed too on my knees, that my skin would be 
 as clear and pinkish yes, and my hair as red. 
 
 48
 
 The Seventh Slice 
 
 Alas! I had begun all wrong: I was a little beast 
 of a brunette. 
 
 I taught Mr. Bob baseball, showed him each 
 hill and dale, each whimpering brook of Grassy 
 Ford, and fished with him among the lilies in 
 shady pools while he smoked his pipe and told 
 me of Cambridge and Harrow-on-the-Hill and 
 the vales of Devon. He had lived once, so he 
 told me, next door to a castle, though it did not 
 resemble Warwick or Kenilworth in the least. 
 
 "It was just a cah-sle" said Mr. Bob, in his 
 funny way. 
 
 "With a moat, Mr. Bob?" 
 
 "Oh yes, a moat, I dare say but dry, you 
 know." 
 
 "And a drawbridge, Mr. Bob?" 
 
 "Well, no not precisely; at any rate, you 
 couldn't draw it up." 
 
 "But a portcullis, I'll bet, Mr. Bob?" 
 
 "Well I cahn't say as to that, I'm sure, 
 Bertram." 
 
 He had lived next door to a castle, mind you, 
 and did not know if it had a portcullis ! He had 
 never even looked to see! He had never even 
 asked! Still, Mr. Bob was a languid fellow, 
 Bertram Weatherby was bound to admit, even 
 
 49
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 in speech, and drawled out the oddest words 
 sometimes, talking of "trams" and "guards" 
 and "luggage-vans," which did seem queer in a 
 college man, though Bertram remembered he 
 was not a Senior and doubtless would improve 
 his English in due time. Indeed, he helped him, 
 according to his light, and the credit is the boy's 
 that the young Britisher, after a single summer 
 in Grassy Ford, could write from Cambridge to 
 Letitia : " I guess I will never forget the folks in 
 Grassy Ford! Remember me to the little kid, 
 my quondam guide, philosopher, and friend." 
 
 Robin was always pleasant with Letitia, help- 
 ing her with her housework, I remember, wiping 
 her dishes for her, tending her fires, and weeding 
 her kitchen-garden. There never had been s"o 
 many holidays, she declared, gratefully, and she 
 used to marvel that he had come so far, all that 
 watery way from Devon, yet could be content 
 with such poor fare and such humble work and 
 quiet pleasures in an alien land so full of won- 
 ders. Yet it must have been cheerful loitering, 
 for he stayed on, week after week. He had 
 come intending, he confessed, to "stop" but 
 one, but somehow had small hankering there- 
 after to see, he said, "what is left of America, 
 
 5
 
 The Seventh Slice 
 
 liking your Grassy Fordshire, Bertram, so very 
 well." Perhaps secretly he was touched by the 
 obvious penury and helplessness of his father's 
 friend, as well as by the daughter's loving and 
 heavy service, so that he stayed on but to aid 
 them in the only unobtrusive way, overpaying 
 them, Letitia says, for what he whimsically 
 called "tuition in the quiet life," as he gently 
 closed her fingers over the money which she 
 blushed to take. Then he would quote for her 
 those lines from Pope : 
 
 "... Quiet by day, 
 Sound sleep by night; study and ease 
 Together mixt, sweet recreation, 
 And innocence, which most doth please 
 With meditation." 
 
 He read Greek and Latin with Dr. Primrose, 
 and many an argument of ancient loves and 
 wars I listened to, knowing by the keen-edged 
 feeling of my teeth when the fray was over that 
 my mouth had been wide open all the while. 
 Letitia, too, could hear from the kitchen where 
 she made her pies, for it was a conversational 
 little house, just big enough for a tete-a-tete, as 
 Dr. Primrose used to say, and when debate waxed 
 high, she would stand sometimes in the kitchen
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 doorway, in her gingham apron, wiping the same 
 cup twenty times. 
 
 "Young Devon oak," the doctor called him, 
 sometimes half vexed to find how ribbed and 
 knotty the young tree was. 
 
 "We'll look it up, then," he would cry, "but 
 I know I'm right." 
 
 "You'll find you are mistaken, I think, doc- 
 tor." 
 
 "Well, now, we'll see. We-'ll see. You're 
 fresh from the schools and I'm a bit rusty, I'll 
 confess, but I'm sure I'm here, now hm, let's 
 see why, can that be possible? I didn't think 
 so, but by George! you're right. You're right, 
 sir. You're right, my boy." 
 
 He said it so sadly sometimes and shut the 
 book with an air so beaten, lying back feebly in 
 his chair, that Robin, Letitia says, would lead 
 the talk into other channels, merely to contend 
 for ground he knew he could never hold, to let 
 the doctor win. It was fine to see him then, 
 the roused old gentleman, his eyes shining, sitting 
 bolt upright in his chair waving away the young 
 man's arguments with his feeble hand. 
 
 "I think you are right, doctor, after all. I 
 see it now. You make it clear to me. Yes, 
 
 52
 
 The Seventh Slice 
 
 sir, I'm groggy. I'm down, sir. Count me 
 out." 
 
 And you should have seen the poet then in his 
 triumph, if victory so gracious may be called 
 by such a name. There was no passing under 
 the yoke no, no! He would gaze far out of 
 the open window, literally overlooking his van- 
 quished foe, and delicately conveying thus a 
 hint that it was of no utter consequence which 
 had conquered; and so smoothing the young 
 man's rout, he would fall to expatiating, sooth- 
 ingly, remarking how natural it was to go astray 
 on a point so difficult, so many-sided, so subtle 
 and profound in short, speaking so eloquently 
 for his prone antagonist, expounding so many 
 likely arguments in defence of that lost cause, 
 one listening would wonder sometimes who had 
 won. 
 
 Evenings, when Letitia's work was done, she 
 would come and sit with us, Robin and me, upon 
 the steps. There in the summer moonlight we 
 would listen to his tales, lore of the Dartmoor 
 and Exmoor wilds, until my heart beat strangely 
 at the shadows darkening my homeward way 
 when the clock struck ten. Grape-vines, I noted 
 then, were the very place for an ambush by the 
 
 53
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 Doones, of whom they talked so much, Robin 
 and Letitia! Later, when the grapes were ripe, 
 a Doone could regale himself, leisurely waiting to 
 step out, giant-wise, upon his prey ! There were 
 innumerable suspicious rustlings as I passed, and 
 in particular a certain strange a dreadful brush- 
 ing sound as of ghostly wings when I squeezed, 
 helpless, through the worn pickets! and then I 
 would strike out manfully across the lawn. 
 
 One day in August it was August, I know, 
 for it was my birthday and Robin had given me 
 a rod and line we took Letitia with us to the 
 top of Sun Dial, a bald-crowned hill from which 
 you see all Grassy Fordshire green and golden at 
 your feet. Leaving the village, we crossed a 
 brook by a ford of stones and plunged at once 
 into the wild wood, forest and ancient orchard 
 that clothed the slope. I was leading to show 
 the way. Robin followed with Letitia to help 
 her over the rocks and brambles and steeper 
 places of the long ascent, which was far more 
 arduous than one might think, looking up at it 
 from the town below. 
 
 I strode on proudly, threading the narrow 
 hunter's trail I knew by heart, a remnant of an 
 old wagon -lane long overgrown. I strode on 
 
 54
 
 The Seventh Slice 
 
 swiftly, I remember, breaking the cobwebs, part- 
 ing the fragrant tangle that beset the way 
 vines below, branches above me keeping in 
 touch the while, vocally, when the thickets inter- 
 vened, with the pair that followed. I could hear 
 them laughing together over the green barriers 
 which closed behind me, and I was pleased at 
 their troubles among the briers. I had led them 
 purposely by the roughest way. Robin, stalking 
 across the ford, had made himself merry with my 
 short legs, and I had vowed secretly that before 
 the day was out he should feel how long those 
 legs could be. 
 
 "I'll show you, Mr. Bob," I muttered, plung- 
 ing through the brushwood, and setting so fast 
 a pace it was no great while before I realized 
 how faintly their voices came to me. 
 
 "Hello-o!" I cried. 
 
 "H'lo-o!" came back to me, but from so far 
 behind me I deemed it wiser to stop awhile, 
 awaiting their approach. 
 
 The day was glorious, but quiet for a boy. 
 The world was nodding in its long, midsummer 
 nap, and no birds sang, no squirrels chattered. 
 I looked in vain for one; but there were ber- 
 ries and the mottled fruit of an antique ap- 
 
 55
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 pie -tree to while the time away and so I 
 waited. 
 
 I remember chuckling as I nibbled there, won- 
 dering what Mr. Bob would say of those short 
 legs which had outstripped him. I fancied him 
 coming up red and breathless to find me calmly 
 eating and whistling between bites and I did 
 whistle when I thought them near enough. I 
 whistled "Dixie" till I lost the pucker, thinking 
 what fun it was, and tried again, but could not 
 keep the tune for chuckling. And so I waited 
 and then I listened but all the wood was still. 
 
 "Hello-o!" I cried. 
 
 There was no answer. 
 
 "Hello-o!" I called again, but still heard 
 nothing in reply save my own echo. 
 
 "Hello-o!" I shouted. "Hello-o!" till the 
 wood rang, and then they answered: 
 
 "H'lo-o!" but as faint and distant as before. 
 
 They had lost their way ! 
 
 " Wait / " I shouted, plunging pell-mell through 
 the bushes. "Wait where you are! I'm com- 
 ing!" 
 
 And so, hallooing all the way, while Robin 
 answered, I made my way to them and found 
 them resting on a wall.
 
 The Seventh Slice 
 
 "Hello," I said. 
 
 "Hello," said Robin. "We aren't mountain- 
 goats, you know, Bertram." 
 
 I grinned gleefully. 
 
 " I thought my legs were so short?" I said. 
 
 "And so they are," he replied, calmly, "but 
 you go a bit too fast, my lad for Letty." 
 
 I had forgotten Letitia! Revenging myself 
 on Robin, it was she alone who had suffered, 
 and my heart smote me as I saw how pale she 
 was, and weary, sitting beside him on the wall. 
 Yet she did not chide me ; she said nothing, but 
 sat there resting, with her eyes upon the wild- 
 flower which she plucked to pieces in her hand. 
 
 We climbed more slowly and together after 
 that. I was chagrined and angry with myself, 
 and a little jealous that Robin Saxeholm, friend 
 of but a summer-time, should teach me thought- 
 fulness of dear Letitia. All that steep ascent I 
 felt a strange resentment in my soul, not that 
 Robin was so kind and mindful of her welfare, 
 guiding her gently to where the slope was mild- 
 est, but that it was not I who helped her steps. 
 I feigned indifference, but I knew each time he 
 spoke to her and I saw how trustingly she gave 
 her hand. 
 
 57
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 And I was envious yes, I confess it envious 
 of Robin for himself, he was so stalwart; and 
 besides, his coat and trousers set so rarely! 
 They were of some rough, brownish, Scotchy 
 stuff, and interwoven with a fine red stripe just 
 faintly showing through oh, wondrous fetching! 
 Such ever since has been my ideal pattern, 
 vaguely in mind when I enter tailor-shops, but 
 I never find it. It was woven, I suppose, on 
 some by-gone loom ; perhaps at Thrums. 
 
 Reaching the summit and drinking in the 
 sweet, clear, skyey airs, with Grassy Fordshire 
 smiling from all its hills and vales for miles about 
 us, I forgot my pique. 
 
 "What about water?" Letitia asked. 
 
 I knew a spring. 
 
 "I'll go," said Robin. "Where is it, Ber- 
 tram?" 
 
 "Oh no, you won't!" I cried, fiercely. "That's 
 my work, Mr. Bob. You're not the only one 
 who can help Letitia." 
 
 He looked astonished for a moment, but 
 laughed good-naturedly and handed me his 
 flask. Letitia smiled at me, and I whistled 
 "Dixie" as I disappeared. I hurried desper- 
 ately till I lost my breath; I skinned both 
 
 58
 
 The Seventh Slice 
 
 knees; I wellnigh slipped from a rocky ledge, 
 yet with all my haste I was a full half - hour 
 gone, and got back red and panting. 
 
 They had waited patiently. Famished as they 
 were, neither had touched a single mouthful. 
 Letitia said, "Thank you, Bertram," and hand- 
 ed me a slice of the bread and jam. She seemed 
 wondrous busy in our service. Robin was silent 
 and I guessed why. 
 
 " I didn't mean to be rough," I said. 
 
 " Rough ?" he asked. " When were you rough, 
 Bertie?" 
 
 "About the water." 
 
 "Oh," he said, putting his hand upon my 
 shoulder. "I never thought of it, old fellow," 
 and my heart smote me for the second time 
 that day, seeing how much he loved me. 
 
 Letitia, weary with our hard climbing, ate so 
 little that Robin chided her, very gently, and I 
 tried banter. 
 
 "Wake up! This is a picnic." But they did 
 not rally, so I sprang up restlessly, crying, " It's 
 not like our other good times at all." 
 
 "What!" said Robin, striving to be playful. 
 " Only six slices, Bertram ? This is our last holi- 
 day. Eat another, lad." 
 
 59
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 Then I understood that gloom on Sun Dial : he 
 was going to leave us. Boy like, I had taken it 
 for granted, I suppose, that we would go on 
 climbing and fishing and playing cricket in 
 Grassy Ford indefinitely. He was to go, he 
 said, on Monday. 
 
 " News from home, Mr. Bob ?" 
 
 He was silent a moment. 
 
 "Well, no, Bertie." 
 
 "Then why not stay?" I urged. "Stay till 
 September." 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 "Eat one more slice for me," I can hear him 
 drawling. "I'll cut it and a jolly fat one it 
 shall be, Bertram and Letty here, she'll spread 
 it for you." Here Mr. Bob began to cut well- 
 nigh a quarter of the loaf he made it. " Lots of 
 the jam, Letty," he said to her. "And you'll 
 eat it, Bertram and we'll call it we'll call it 
 the Covenant of the Seventh Slice never to 
 forget each other. Eh? How's that?" 
 
 Now, I did not want the covenant at all, but 
 he was so earnest; and besides, I was afraid 
 Letitia might think that I refused the slice be- 
 cause of the tears she had dropped upon it, 
 spreading the jam. 
 
 60
 
 V 
 
 THE HANDMAIDEN 
 
 OBIN gone, I saw but little of 
 Letitia, I was so busy, I suppose, 
 with youth, and she with age. 
 The poet's lamp had burned up 
 bravely all that summer-time, its 
 flame renewed by Robin's coming or, rather, 
 it was the brief return of his own young English 
 manhood which he lived again in that fine, clean 
 Devon lad. Robin gone, he felt more keenly 
 how far he was from youth and Devonshire, 
 what a long journey he had come to age and 
 helplessness, and his feeble life burned dimmer 
 than before. 
 
 Two or three years slipped by. The charm 
 was gone which had drawn me daily through the 
 hole in our picket - fence. Even the doctor's 
 Rugby tales no longer held me, I knew them so 
 by heart. When he began some old beginning, 
 s 61
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 my mind recited so much more glibly than his 
 faltering tongue, I ha.d leaped to the end before 
 he reached the middle of his story. He was 
 given now to wandering in his narratives, and 
 while he droned there in his chair, my own 
 mind wandered where it listed, or I played rest- 
 lessly with my cap and tried hard not to yawn, 
 longing to be out-of-doors again. Many a time 
 has my conscience winced, remembering that 
 eagerness to desert one who had been so kind to 
 me, who had led my fancies into pure-aired ways 
 and primrose paths a little too English and 
 hawthorn-scented, some may think, for a good 
 American, but we meant no treason. He, before 
 Robin, had given my mind an Old-World bent 
 never to be altered. Only last evening, with 
 Master Shallow and a certain well-known portly 
 one of Windsor fame, I drank right merrily and 
 ate a last year's pippin with a dish of caraways 
 in an orchard of ancient Gloucestershire. Be- 
 fore me as I write there hangs a drawing of 
 pretty Sally of the alley and the song. Be- 
 tween the poet and that other younger Dev- 
 onshire lad, they wellnigh made me an English 
 boy. 
 
 We heard from Robin rather, Letitia did. 
 62
 
 The Handmaiden 
 
 He never wrote to me, but sent me his love in 
 Letitia's letters and a book from London, Lorna 
 Doone, for the Christmas following his return. 
 Letitia told me of him now and then. She knew 
 when he left Cambridge and we sent him a 
 present or, rather, Letitia did Essays of Em- 
 erson, which she bought with money that could 
 be ill-spared, and she wrote an inscription in 
 it, "From Grassy Fordshire, in memory of the 
 Seventh Slice." She knew when he went back 
 home to Devon, and then, soon afterwards, I 
 believe, when he left England and went out to 
 India. Now, she did not tell me that wonderful 
 piece of news till it was old to her, which was 
 strange, I thought. I remember my surprise. 
 I had been wondering where Robin was and 
 saying to her that he must be in London per- 
 haps in Parliament! making his way upward 
 in the world, for I never doubted that he would 
 be an earl some day. 
 
 "Oh no," Letitia said, when I mentioned 
 London. "He is in India." 
 
 "India! Mr. Bob in India?" 
 
 "Yes. He went why, he went last autumn! 
 Didn't you know?" 
 
 No, I did not know. Why, I asked, and as 
 63
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 reproachfully as I could make the question why 
 had she never told me ? 
 
 She must have forgotten, she replied, penitent 
 there were so many things to remember. 
 
 True, I argued, but she ought at least to have 
 charged her mind with what was to me such 
 important news. Mr. Bob and I were dear, dear 
 friends, I reminded her. He had gone to India, 
 and I had not known ! 
 
 She knew it, she said, humbly. She would 
 never forgive herself. I did not go near her for 
 days, I remember, and long afterwards her of- 
 fence still rankled in my mind. Had she not 
 spread that slice on Sun Dial, never to forget? 
 When next I saw her I made a rebuking point of 
 it, asking her if she had heard from Robin. She 
 shook her head. Months passed and no letter 
 came. 
 
 " We don't see you often any more, Bertram," 
 her father said to me one day. 
 
 "No," I stammered. "I'm" 
 
 "Busy studying, I suppose," he said. 
 
 "Yes, sir; and ball-games," I replied. 
 
 "How do you get on with your Latin?" he 
 inquired, feebly. 
 
 "We're still in Virgil, sir." 
 64
 
 The Handmaiden 
 
 "Ah," he said, but without a trace of the old 
 vigor the classics had been wont to rouse in him. 
 "That's good won'erful writer up " 
 
 He was pointing with his bony forefinger. 
 
 "Yes?" I answered, wondering what he meant 
 to say. He roused himself, and pointed again 
 over my shoulder. 
 
 "Up there on the s 'elf." 
 
 He was so ghastly white I thought him dying 
 and called Letitia. 
 
 " 'S all right, Bertram," he reassured me, 
 patting my hand. I suppose he had seen the 
 terror in my face. He smiled faintly. " 'M all 
 right, Bertram." 
 
 Outside the apple-trees were blooming, I 
 remember, and he lived, somehow, to see them 
 bloom again. 
 
 My conscience winces, as I say, to think how 
 I twirled my cap by my old friend's bedside, 
 longing to be gone; yet I comfort myself with 
 the hope that he did not note my eagerness, or 
 that if he did he remembered his own boyhood 
 and the witchery of bat and ball. Not only 
 was the poet's life-lamp waning, not only was 
 Letitia burdened with increasing cares, fast 
 aging her, the mater said, but I was a child no 
 
 65
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 longer; a youth, now, mindful of all about me, 
 and seeing that neighbor household with new 
 and comprehending eyes. 
 
 The very house grew dismal to me. The 
 boughs outside were creeping closer not to 
 shelter it, not to cool it and make a breathing 
 nook for a lad flushed with his games in the sum- 
 mer sun. It was damp there; the air seemed 
 mouldy under the lindens; there was no invita- 
 tion in the unkempt grass; toads hopped from 
 beneath your feet, bird-songs came to you, but 
 always, or so it seemed to me, they came from 
 distance, from the yards beyond. 
 
 There within, across that foot- worn threshold 
 which had been a goal for me in former years, 
 there was now a not a poet any longer, or 
 Rugby boy, but only a sick old man. Upon a 
 table at his side his goblets stood, covered with 
 saucers, and a spoon in each. His drugs were 
 watery; there was no warmth in them, no spar- 
 kle even when the sun came straggling in, no 
 wine of life to be quaffed thirstily only a tepid, 
 hourly spoonful to be feebly sipped, a sop to 
 death. 
 
 Even with windows open to the breeze the air 
 seemed stifling to the lad I was. The sunlight 
 
 66
 
 The Handmaiden 
 
 falling on the faded carpet seemed always ebbing 
 to a kind of shadow of a glow. The clock, that 
 ugly box upon the shelf, ticked dreadfully as if 
 it never would strike a smiling hour again. The 
 china ornaments at its side stood ghastly mute, 
 and hideous flowers ///// those waxen faces 
 under glass! If not quite dead, why were they 
 kept so long a-dying there? Would no kind, 
 sunny soul in mercy free them from their pallid 
 misery ? I was a Prince of Youth ! What had 
 I to do with tombs ? I fled. 
 
 Even Letitia, kind as ever to me, seemed al- 
 ways busy and preoccupied sweeping, dusting, 
 baking, cleansing those everlasting pots and 
 pans, or reading to her father, who listened 
 dreamily, dozing often, but always waking if 
 she stopped. Content to have her at his side 
 because discontent to have her absent, even for 
 the little while her duties or the doctor's orders 
 led her, though quite unwillingly, away. Im- 
 patience for her return would make him queru- 
 lous, which caused her tears, not for its failing 
 consciousness of her devotion, but for its warning 
 to her of his gentle spirit's slow decline despite 
 her care. 
 
 "Where have you been so long, Letitia?" 
 67
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "So long, father? Only an hour gone." 
 
 "Only an hour? I thought you would never 
 come." 
 
 " See, father, I've brought you a softer pillow,"" 
 she would say, smiling his plaints into oblivion. 
 It was the smile with which she had caught the 
 grape-thief by the fence, the one with which 
 she had charmed a Devonshire lad, now gone 
 three years and more the tenderest smile I ever 
 saw, save one, and the saddest, though not 
 mournful, it was so genuine, so gentle, and so 
 unselfish, and her eyes shone lovingly the while. 
 Its sadness, as I think now of it, lay not so much 
 in the smile itself as in the wonder of it that she 
 smiled at all. 
 
 The mater was she not always mother to the 
 motherless ? was Letitia's angel in those weary 
 days, carried fresh loaves of good brown bread 
 to her, a pot of beans, or a pie, perhaps, pass- 
 ing with them through the hole in the picket- 
 fence. I can see her now standing on Letitia's 
 kitchen doorstep with the swathed dish in her 
 hands. 
 
 "The good fairy," Letitia called her; and 
 when she was for crying for cry she must some- 
 times, though not for the world before her fa- 
 
 68
 
 The Handmaiden 
 
 ther's eyes she shed her tears in the kitchen in 
 the mater's arms. So it was that while I was 
 yet a school-boy an elder sister was born unto 
 our house and became forever one of the Weath- 
 erbys by a tie not of blood, I have said before, 
 yet it was of blood, now that I come to think of 
 it it was of gentle, gentle human blood. 
 
 There was an old nurse now to share Letitia's 
 vigils, but only the daughter's tender hands 
 knew how to please. She scarcely left him. 
 Doctor or friends met the same answer, smiling 
 but unalterable: she would rather stay. Not a 
 night passed that she did not waken of her own 
 anxiety to slip softly to his bedside. He smiled 
 her welcome, and she sat beside him with his 
 poor, thin hand in hers, sometimes till the dawn 
 of day. 
 
 Day by day like that, all through the silent 
 watches of the darkened world, that gentle hand- 
 maiden laid her sacrifice upon the altar of her 
 duty, without a murmur, without one bitter 
 word. It was her youth she laid there; it was 
 her girlhood and her bloom of womanhood, her 
 first, her very last young years sparkle of eyes, 
 rose and fulness of maiden cheeks, the golden 
 moments of that flower-time when Love goes 
 
 69
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 choosing, playtime's silvery laughter and blithe, 
 untrammelled song. 
 
 " Titia," he said to her, "there's no poem 
 'alf so beaut'ful 's your love, m' dear." 
 
 The words were a^ crown to her. He set it on 
 her bowed head with his trembling fingers. 
 
 " Soft brown 'air," he murmured. He could 
 not see how the gray was coming there. 
 
 Spring came, scenting his room with apple 
 blooms ; summer, filling it with orient airs but 
 he was gone.
 
 VI 
 
 COUSIN DOVE 
 
 |P in the attic of the Primrose house 
 one day, I was helping Letitia with 
 those family treasures which were 
 too antiquated for future usage, 
 but far too precious with memories 
 to cast out utterly discarded laces, broken fans, 
 pencilled school-books, dolls and toys that had 
 been Letitia's, the very cradle in which she had 
 been rocked by the mother she could not re- 
 member, even the little home-made pieced and 
 quilted coverlet they had tucked about her 
 while she slept. She folded it, and I laid it care- 
 fully in a wooden box. 
 
 " How shall we fill it?" I asked her, gazing at 
 the odds and ends about my feet. 
 
 "With these," she said, bringing me packages 
 of old newspapers, each bundle tied neatly with 
 a red ribbon, too new and bright ever to have
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 been worn. I glanced carelessly at the foolish 
 packages, as I thought them then suddenly 
 with a new interest. 
 
 "Why," I said, "they're papers from Bom- 
 bay!" 
 
 "Yes," she answered. 
 
 "Where Robin is?" I asked. 
 
 There was no reply from the garret gloom. 
 
 "Did Mr. Bob send them?" 
 
 She was busy in a chest. 
 
 "What did you ask, Bertram?" she inquired, 
 absently. 
 
 "Did Mr. Bob send these Bombay papers?" 
 
 "Oh," she answered, "those?" 
 
 She paused a moment. 
 
 "No," she told me. 
 
 "Oh," said I, much disappointed, "I thought 
 he might. They're last year's papers, too, some 
 of them." 
 
 "Do they fill the box?" she asked. 
 
 "Yes," I said. "Shall I nail the cover on?" 
 
 "Oh, don't nail it," she protested, shuddering. 
 " We won't put any cover on, I think ; at least 
 not yet." 
 
 Long before Dr. Primrose died he had planned 
 with Letitia what she should do without him. 
 
 72
 
 Cousin Dove 
 
 His home then would be hers, and she was to 
 sell it and become a school - mistress, the one 
 vocation for which his classical companionship 
 had seemed to fit her and to which her own book- 
 loving mind inclined. Left alone then she tried 
 vainly to dispose of her little property, living 
 meanwhile with us next door to it, and gradually, 
 chiefly with my own assistance and the mater's, 
 packing and storing the few possessions from 
 which she could not bring herself to part. To 
 Editor Butters she presented an old edition of 
 King Lear; to me, not one, but many of her 
 father's best - loved books, which she fancied 
 might be of charm and use to me. 
 
 Of relatives across the sea Letitia knew little 
 beyond a few strange names she had heard her 
 father speak, and in her native and his adopted 
 land she had no kinsfolk she had ever seen save 
 a distant cousin as far removed from her in miles 
 as blood, and remembered chiefly as a mar- 
 vellously brocaded waistcoat with pearl buttons, 
 to which she had raised her timorous eyes on his 
 only visit to her father years ago. Apparently, 
 this little girl had gone no farther up. She could 
 never remember a face above that saffron vest, 
 and, what was still more remarkable, considering 
 
 73
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 her shyness, was never certain even of the knees 
 and boots that must have been somewhere below. 
 
 Now the yellow waistcoat, whose name was 
 George Cousin George McLean had a daughter 
 Dove, or Cousin Dove, as Letitia called her, con- 
 cerning whom we always used to smile and won- 
 der, so that in course of time myths had grown 
 up about the girl whom none of us had ever seen 
 and of whom we had no notions save the idle 
 fancies suggested by her odd, sweet, unforgettable 
 little name. 
 
 The mater had always said that she must be 
 a quaint and demure little thing in short, dove- 
 like. 
 
 That, my father argued, was quite unlikely, 
 since he had never known a child to mature in 
 keeping with a foolish, flowery, or pious Chris- 
 tian name. He had never known a human Lily 
 to grow up tall and pale and slender, or a Violet 
 to be shy and modest and petite, or a Faith or 
 Hope or Patience to be singularly spiritual and 
 
 mild. For example, there was Charity B , 
 
 of Grassy Ford, who hinted that heaven was 
 Presbyterian, and that she knew folks, not a 
 thousand miles off, either, who would never be 
 Presbyterians, my father said ; and so, he added, 
 
 74
 
 Cousin Dove 
 
 it was dollars to dough-nuts that Cousin Dove 
 was not at all dovelike, but a freckled and red- 
 haired, roistering, tomboy little thing. 
 
 Letitia had a notion, she scarce knew how or 
 why, that Cousin Dove was not birdlike, but 
 like a flower, she said a white -and -pink- 
 cheeked British type with fluffy yellow hair 
 and a fondness for candy, trinkets, and even 
 boys. 
 
 As for myself, I had two notions as a boy one 
 for the forum, the other for my cell. The first 
 was simply that Cousin Dove was pale and tall 
 and frigid beyond endurance. I could see her, 
 I declared, going to church somewhere with two 
 little black-and-gilt books held limply in her hand 
 and she had green eyes, I said. On the other 
 hand, privately, I kept a far different portrait 
 in mind a gilded one, rather a golden vision by 
 way of analogy, I suppose, for was not Dove the 
 veritable daughter of a gorgeous, saffron-hued 
 brocade? From yellow waistcoat to cloth of 
 gold is but a step for a bookish boy. She was 
 tall and stately, I told myself; and as I saw her 
 then, her 'mediaeval robe clung lovingly about 
 her, plain but edged with pearls (seed-pearls I 
 think they called them in the old romances), 
 
 75
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 and she had a necklace of larger pearls, loops of 
 them hanging a golden cross upon her bosom. 
 Her face was radiant, her eyes blue, her hair 
 golden, and she wore a coronal of meadow flow- 
 ers. I do not mean that I really fancied Cousin 
 Dove was so in flesh and blood, but such to me 
 was the spirit of her gentle name, the spell of 
 which had conjured up for me in some rare mo- 
 ment of youthful fancy this Lady of the Mari- 
 golds, this Christmas-card St. Dove. 
 
 In the midst of Letitia's sad uprooting of her 
 old garden, as she called the only home she had 
 ever known, a letter came from the yellow waist- 
 coat conveying surprising news. Dove herself 
 was leaving for Grassy Ford to persuade her 
 cousin to return with her and dwell henceforth 
 with the McLeans. A thrill ran through our 
 little household at the thought of that approach- 
 ing maid of dreams. Now we should know, 
 the mater said, that the girl was dovelike. 
 "Humpf!" was my father's comment. Letitia 
 trembled, she said, with a return of her childish 
 awe of the yellow waistcoat. I myself was 
 stirred I was still in teens, and dreaded girls I 
 had never met. 
 
 On the July morning that was to bring her, I 
 76
 
 Cousin Dove 
 
 rose early, I remember, and took down my fish- 
 ing-rod. 
 
 - " Not a bad idea, either," remarked my father, 
 as' he stood watching me. "Still," he added, 
 "there's no hurry, Bertram. She'll want to 
 change her dress first, you know." 
 
 I made no answer. 
 
 "It's a bit selfish though," he continued, "to 
 be carrying her off this way the'very first morn- 
 ing." 
 
 "Mother," I said, coolly, "will you put up 
 some sandwiches? I may not be back till 
 dark." 
 
 " Why, Bertram ! Going fishing on the day 
 
 " I don't really see what that's got to do with 
 it," I interrupted. "Must I give up all my fun 
 because a mere girl's coming?" 
 
 "No, Bertram," said my father, in his kindest 
 tones. "Go, by all means, and here [he was 
 rummaging in the bookcase drawer] here, my 
 son, take these along, these old field-glasses. 
 They may come handy. You can see our yard, 
 you know, from the top of Sun Dial and the 
 front porch. Splendid fishing up on Sun Dial " 
 
 But I was off. 
 
 " Bertram! Bertram!" called my mother, but 
 6 77
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 I did not heed her. I stopped at a grocery for 
 cheese and crackers, and strode off to the farthest 
 brook farthest, I mean, from Sun Dial. Trouble- 
 some Brook, it was called, not so much for the 
 spring freshets that spread it over the lower 
 meadows as for the law - suits it had flowed 
 through in its fickle course between two town- 
 ships and good farm-lands. Under its willows 
 I cooled my wrath and disentangled my knotted 
 tackle. The stream flowed silently. There was 
 no wind, no sound, indeed, but the drone of in- 
 sects ; all about me was a world in reverie, mid- 
 summer-green save for the white and blue above 
 and the yellow wings of vagrant butterflies and 
 the sun golden on the meadows. Many a time I 
 have fished in that very spot. It is a likely one 
 for idleness and for larger fish than any I ever 
 caught there, and waiting for them as a boy I 
 used to read in the little pocket-fitting books I 
 dote on to this day they fit the hand so warmly, 
 unlike their bigger brethren, who at the most give 
 you three-fingers' courtesy. There on that same 
 moist bank I have sounded deeper pools than 
 Troublesome's, and have come home laden with 
 unlooked-for spoil that glistens still in a certain 
 time-worn upper creel of mine. 
 
 78
 
 Cousin Dove 
 
 But I had no book that day, having forgotten 
 one in my hurried parting, and I had not yet 
 mastered that other tranquil art of packing little 
 bowls with minced brown meditation so I was 
 restless. The world seemed but half awake. I 
 chafed at the stillness. Before, I had found it 
 pleasant; now it nettled me. I frowned im- 
 patiently at my cork dozing on the waters. I 
 roused it savagely, and gazed up at the sun. 
 
 "Queer," I said to myself. "Queer it should 
 be so late this morning" but I did not mean the 
 sun. 
 
 Trains from the West glide into Grassy Ford 
 on a long curve following the trend of Trouble- 
 some and the pastoral valley through which it 
 runs. It is a descending grade down which the 
 cars plunge roaring as though they had gathered 
 speed rather than slackened it, and as though 
 they would run the gantlet of the ugly build- 
 ings and red freight-cars that, from the windows 
 of the train, are all one sees of our lovely town. 
 Now the Black Arrow was the pride of the X., 
 Y. & Z., and all that summer had arrived in the 
 nick of its schedule time. 
 
 " Funny," said I to myself, looking at the sun. 
 " Funny it should be late this morning." 
 
 79
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 I pulled up my hook and cast it in again. My 
 cork shook itself yawned, I was about to say, 
 and settled down again as complacently as be- 
 fore. Leisurely the ripples widened and were 
 effaced among the shadows. 
 
 What right had any one to assume that I had 
 not long planned to go a-fishing that very 
 morning ? 
 
 I pulled up my line again. 
 
 Even a father should not presume on the 
 kinship of his son. 
 
 I dropped my bait into a likelier hole. 
 
 Besides, I was not a child any longer, to be 
 bullyragged by older people. Had I not gone 
 fishing a hundred times? yet no one had ever 
 deemed it odd before. 
 
 My float drifted against a snag. I jerked it 
 back. 
 
 It was the only unpleasant trait my father 
 had. 
 
 Again I squinted at the sun. "Queer," said 
 I, "it should be so late this morning." I pulled 
 up my 
 
 Hark! That was a whistle! There would be 
 just time to reach the open if I ran! 
 
 I ran. 
 
 80
 
 Cousin Dove 
 
 Breathless, I made the meadow fence and 
 clambered up and saw her train go by. Yes, 
 I I waved to it. Suppose she had seen me ! I 
 was only some truant farm-boy on a rail. 
 
 Her train ran by me in a cloud of dust and 
 clattered on among the freight-cars. I heard 
 the rumble die away, but the bell kept ringing. 
 The brakeman, doubtless, would help her off 
 Letitia would be waiting with out-stretched arms 
 girls are such fools for kissing and then 
 father would take her bag, and the surrey would 
 whisk her off to the mater, bareheaded at the 
 gate. Rails are sharp sitting; let us look at the 
 cork again. 
 
 It was calm as ever and nestling against a 
 snag. I pulled up my line till the bait emerged, 
 limp, unnibbled. Savagely I swished it back 
 it caught in the willows. I pulled. It would not 
 budge. In a sudden rage I whipped out my 
 pocket-knife, severed the cord as high above me 
 as I could reach, and wrapping the remnant 
 about my rod, turned townward. 
 
 A dozen yards from the faithless stream, I 
 remembered my cheese and crackers, and went 
 back for them, and started off again, purpose- 
 less. Never before had vagabondage on a golden 
 
 81
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 morning seemed irksome to me. It was not 
 that I wished to see Cousin Dove, but merely 
 that I had no desire to do anything else a 
 different matter. Only one way was really 
 barred to me, since in point of pride I could not 
 go homeward till the sun sank, yet all other 
 ways seemed shorn somehow of their old de- 
 lights, I knew so well every stick and stone of 
 them. 
 
 While I was dallying thus, irresolute, I thought 
 of "The Pide Bull" and my old friend Butters. 
 It was inspiration. In twenty minutes (mindful 
 of my father's eyes meanwhile) I had reached 
 the shop. 
 
 "Hello," he growled, as I appeared. "You 
 here again?" 
 
 "Yep." 
 
 "What do you want?" 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 "Humpf! Help yourself, then." 
 
 "Mr. Butters, what kind of type is this?" 
 
 "What type?" 
 
 "This type." 
 
 " What good '11 it do to tell you ? You won't 
 remember it, if I do." 
 
 "Yes, I will." 
 
 82
 
 Cousin Dove 
 
 "You won't know ten minutes aft'er I tell 
 you." 
 
 "Go on, Mr. Butters. Tell me." 
 
 "Well, if you must know, it's b'geois." 
 
 "B-what?" 
 
 " B'geois, I tell you, and I won't tell you again, 
 either." 
 
 "How do you spell it, Mr. Butters?" 
 
 " Say, what do you think I am ? I haven't got 
 time to sit here all day and answer questions." 
 
 "But how do you spell it, Mr. Butters?" 
 
 "Dictionary 's handy, isn't it?" 
 
 "You ought to know how to spell it," I re- 
 marked, fluttering the dictionary. 
 
 "Who said I didn't know how to spell it?" 
 
 " You told me to look it up." 
 
 " Did, hey ? And what d' I do it for ? D' you 
 think I've got time to be talking to every young 
 sprig like you?" 
 
 " Here it is, Mr. Butters. It's spelled b-o-u-r- 
 g-e-o-i-s." 
 
 "Precisely," said the editor " b-o-u-r-g-o-i-s, 
 bur- Joyce." 
 
 "No g-e-o-i-s, Mr. Butters." 
 
 "Just what I said." 
 
 "You left out the 'e.'" 
 83
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "Why, confound you, what do you mean by 
 telling me I don't know my own business?" 
 
 "I was only fooling, Mr. Butters. You did 
 say the 'e,' of course." 
 
 "You're a liar!" he promptly answered. "I 
 didn't say the 'e,' and you know it!" 
 
 He broke off into a roar of triumphant laugh- 
 ter, but well I knew who had won the day. He 
 was mine he and "The Pide Bull," and the 
 story of his wife's uncle's old yellow rooster, and 
 the twenty legends of Tommy Rice, the sexton, 
 who "stuttered in his walk, by George!" yes, 
 and the famous narrative of how Mr. Butters 
 thrashed the barkeep all, all his darling mem- 
 ories were mine till sunset if I chose to listen. 
 
 He took me to luncheon at the Palace Hotel 
 near by his shop, and afterwards mellowed per- 
 ceptibly over his pipe, as we sat together in the 
 clutter of paper about his desk waiting for the 
 one-o'clock whistle to blow him to work again. 
 
 "How old are you?" he asked. 
 
 "Eighteen," said I, half ashamed I was no 
 more. 
 
 "Beautiful age," he mused, nodding his head 
 and stroking his warm black bowl. " Beautiful 
 age, my boy." He spoke so mildly that I waited, 
 
 84
 
 Cousin Dove 
 
 silent and a little awed to have come so near 
 him unawares, and feeling the presence of some 
 story he had never told before. 
 
 But the whistle blew one o'clock and he rose 
 and put on his apron, and went back to his case 
 again, talking some nonsense about the weather; 
 and though I lingered all afternoon, he was 
 nothing but the old, gruff printer, and never 
 afterwards did I catch him nooning and thinking 
 of the age he said was beautiful. 
 
 It was six when I took up my fishing-tackle and 
 went home to supper, whistling. I found the 
 mater in the kitchen. 
 
 "Ah," she said. "What luck, Bertram?" 
 " None," I replied. " The fish weren't biting." 
 "Oh, that's too bad. You must be tired." 
 "I am, and hungry. Is father home?" 
 " Not yet. Come, you must meet 
 But I ran up the kitchen staircase to the hall 
 above. Safe in my room, I could hear a mur- 
 muring from Letitia's. Hers was a front room, 
 mine a rear one, and a long hall intervened, so 
 I made nothing of the voices. 
 
 I scrubbed and lathered till my nose was red 
 and shining beautifully. Then I drew on my 
 Sunday suit, in which I always stood the straight- 
 
 85
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 er, and my best black shoes, in whieh I always 
 stamped the louder, and my highest, whitest 
 collar, and my best light silk cravat a Christ- 
 mas present from Letitia, a wondrous thing of 
 pale, sweet lavender, in which not Solomon 
 though it would hike up behind. It was not 
 like other ties, and while I was struggling there 
 I heard the supper knell. I pulled fiercely. The 
 soft silk crumpled taut and the bow stuck up 
 seven ways for Sunday. So I unravelled it 
 again looped it once more with trembling fin- 
 gers, for I heard the voices on the stairs, and 
 jerked it into place but what a jumble! 
 
 " Bertram ! Bertram !" It was father's voice. 
 "Supper, Bertram." 
 
 "In a minute." 
 
 The face in the glass was red as a sunset in 
 harvest-time. The eyes I saw there popped 
 wildly. 
 
 "Bertram!" 
 
 " Yes ; I hear you ! [Confound it.] " 
 
 "Supper, Bertram. We are all waiting." 
 
 I deigned no answer. 
 
 Then father rang. Oh, I knew it was father. 
 I looped desperately and hauled again like a 
 sailor at his cordage, and so, muttering, wrung 
 
 86
 
 Cousin Dove 
 
 out a bow-knot. Then in the mirror I took a 
 last despairing look, leaped for the doorway, 
 slipped, stumbled, and almost fell upon the 
 stairs, hearing below me a lusty warning 
 "Here he comes!" and so emerged, rosy, a 
 youth-illumined, with something lavender, they 
 tell me, fluttering in my teeth (and something 
 blood-red, I could tell them, trembling in my 
 heart). 
 
 And there she was! 
 
 There she stood in the smiling midst of them, 
 smiling herself and giving me her hand Cousin 
 Dove Cousin Dove McLean, at the first sight 
 of whom my shyness vanished. 
 
 "Your tie, my son, seems a trifle " 
 
 So this was Cousin Dove? this was the 
 daughter of the golden waistcoat this brown- 
 eyed school-girl with brown no, as I lived! 
 red hair.
 
 VII 
 
 OF HAMADRYADS AND THEIR SPELLS 
 
 IT was a golden summer that last of 
 my youth at home, with Cousin 
 Dove to keep us forever smiling. 
 She was just eighteen and of that 
 'blessed temperament which loves 
 each day for its gray or its sunny self. She 
 coaxed Letitia out-of-doors where they walked 
 much in the mater's garden with their arms about 
 each other's waist. Letitia's pace was always 
 deliberate, while Dove had the manner of a 
 child restrained, as if some blithe and skipping 
 step would have been more pleasant, would have 
 matched better her restless buoyancy, her ever 
 upturned beaming face as she confided in the 
 elder woman what? What do girjs talk so 
 long about? I used to marvel at them, won- 
 dering what Dove could find so merry among 
 our currant-vines. She was a child beside Le- 
 
 88
 
 Of Hamadryads and their Spells 
 
 titia. She had no memories to modulate that 
 laughing voice of hers, no tears to quench the 
 twin flames dancing in her eyes, and never an 
 anxious thought in those days to cast its shadow 
 there where her hair red, I first called it ; it was 
 pure chestnut brown, I mean, with the red just 
 showing through, and wondrous soft and pretty 
 on the margin of her fair white forehead, where 
 it clung like tendrils of young scampering vine 
 reddening in the April sun. Even Letitia, whose 
 Present seemed always twilit, was tempted by- 
 and-by into claiming something of that heritage 
 of youth of which she had been so long deprived. 
 From mere smiling upon her gay young cousin 
 she fell to making little joyous venturings herself 
 into our frolics, repartees, and harmless badinage 
 "midsummer madness," father called it a 
 sort of scarlet rash, he said, which affected per- 
 sons loitering on starlit evenings on the porch 
 or wandering under trees. He was the soul of 
 our table banter, and after supper sat with us 
 on the steps smoking his cigar and "devilling," 
 as he said, "you younger caps and bells." 
 Whom he loved he teased, after the fashion of 
 older men, and Dove was the chief butt of 
 that rude fondness. It was not his habit 
 
 89
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 to caress, but his eyes twinkled at his fair 
 victim. 
 
 "And to think, Dove," he was wont to say 
 when she had charmed him, " that Bertram here 
 swore that you carried prayer-books and had 
 green eyes!" 
 
 "And what did you prophesy, Uncle Weath- 
 erby?" 
 
 "I? The truth." 
 
 "And what was that?" 
 
 " Why, / said you were an angel, though a lit- 
 tle frolicsome perhaps, and with beautiful au- 
 burn hair. Did I not, my son?" 
 
 " No, sir. You thought she would be a tom- 
 boy with red " 
 
 "Precisely," he would interrupt. "You see, 
 my dear, how in every particular I am corrob- 
 orated by my son." 
 
 Into these quiet family tournaments, Letitia, 
 as I have said, was slowly drawn, but it was a 
 new world to her and she was timid in it. Doc- 
 tor Primrose had been endowed with wit, even 
 with a quiet, subtle humor in which his daughter 
 shared, but beneath their lighter moments there 
 had flowed always an undercurrent of that sad 
 gravity which tinged their lives together. If 
 
 90
 
 Of Hamadryads and their Spelts 
 
 they were playful in each other's company, it 
 was out of pity for each other's lot, his in his 
 chair, hers by its side, rather than because they 
 could not help the jest. It was meant to cheer 
 each other that kind of tender gayety which, 
 however fanciful, however smiling, ends where it 
 begins in tears unshed. Waters in silent wood- 
 land fountains, all untouched by a single gleam 
 from the sky above the boughs, lose sometimes 
 their darker hues and turn to amber beneath the 
 fallen leaves but they are never golden like the 
 meadow pools; they never flash and sparkle in 
 the sun. 
 
 Letitia was not yet thirty; life stretched years 
 before her yet; so, coaxed by Cousin Dove and 
 me, she gave her hands to us, half-delighted, half- 
 afraid. Here now, at last, were holidays, games, 
 tricks, revels, the mummery and masque, the 
 pipe and tabor all the rosy carnival of youth. 
 Her eyes kindled, her heart beat faster as we 
 led her on" but at the first romp failed her. 
 It was beautiful, she pleaded only let her smile 
 upon it as from a balcony she could not dance 
 she had never learned our songs. 
 
 We did not urge her. She sat with the mater 
 and smiled gladly upon our mirth. In all the
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 frolics of that happy summer her eyes were 
 always on Cousin Dove, as if, watching, she were 
 thinking to herself enviously, often sadly, I 
 have no doubt, but through it all lovingly and 
 with a kind of pride in that grace and flower- 
 ness 
 
 "There is the girl I might have been." 
 
 Dove, even when she seemed the very spirit 
 of our effervescence, kept always a certain let- 
 ter of that lovely quaintness which her name 
 implied. She was a dove, the mater said, re- 
 minding us for the hundredth time of her old 
 prediction a dove always, even among the 
 magpies ; meaning, I suppose, father and myself. 
 
 It was not all play that summer. I was to 
 enter college in the fall, and I labored at exer- 
 cises, helped not a little by a voice still saying: 
 
 " That's right, my boy. Remember what Dr. 
 Primrose said when he gave you Horace." 
 
 Now was I under the spell of that ancient life 
 which had held him thralled to his very end. 
 Mine were but meagre vistas, it is true, but I 
 caught such glimpses of marble beauty through 
 the pergola of Time, as made me a little proud 
 of my far-sightedness. Seated with Dove and 
 Letitia beneath a favorite oak, half-way up Sun 
 
 92
 
 Of Hamadryads and their Spells 
 
 Dial, I discoursed learnedly, as I supposed, only 
 to find that in classic lore the poet's daughter 
 was better versed than I. She brightened visi- 
 bly at the sound of ancient names; they had 
 been the music of her father's world, and from 
 earliest childhood she had listened to it. Seat- 
 ed upon the grass, I, the school-boy, expounded 
 text -book notes. She, the daughter of "Old 
 David Homer," as Butters called him, told us 
 bright tales of gods and heroes, nymphs and 
 flowers and the sailing clouds shell-pink in the 
 setting sun. They had been to her what Mother 
 Goose and Robinson Crusoe had been to me ; they 
 had been her fairy stories, told her at eve ere 
 she went to bed ; and now as she told them, an 
 eager winsomeness crept upon her, her voice was 
 sweeter, her face was glorified with something of 
 that roseate light in which her scenes were laid ; 
 she was a child again, and Dove and I, listening, 
 were children with her, asking more. 
 
 She sat bolt-upright while she romanced for 
 us. I lay prone before her with my chin upon 
 my hands, nibbling grass - stalks. Dove, like 
 Letitia, sat upon the turf, now gazing raptly 
 with her round brown eyes at the story-teller's 
 face, now gazing off at the purple woodland 
 93
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 distance or at Grassy Ford's white spires among 
 the elms below. 
 
 "Why, Letty, you're a poetess," Dove once 
 said, so breathlessly that Letitia laughed. " And 
 I," Dove added, "why, I don't know a single 
 story." 
 
 "Why should you know one?" replied Letitia, 
 pinching Dove's rueful face. " Why tell an idyl, 
 when you can live one, little Chloe, little wild 
 olive? You yourself shall be a heroine, my 
 dear." 
 
 Idling there under distant trees for refuge 
 from the August sun, which burns and browns 
 our Grassy Fordshire, crumbling our roads to a 
 gray powder and veiling with it the green of 
 way-side hedge and vine idling there, Dove was 
 a creature I had never seen before and but half- 
 divined in visions new to me. Fair as she seemed 
 under our roof-tree, there in the woodland she 
 was far the lovelier. Young things flowered 
 about us, their fragrance scenting the summer 
 air. Like them her presence wore a no less 
 subtle spell. It was an ancient glamour, though 
 I did not know it then, it seemed so new to me 
 one which young shepherds felt, wondering at it, 
 in the world's morning; and since earth's daugh- 
 
 94
 
 Of Hamadryads and their Spells 
 
 ters, then as now, with all their fairness, could 
 scarce be credited with such wondrous witchery, 
 those young swains came home breathless from 
 the woodland with tales of dryads and their 
 spells. Maiden mine, in the market-place, you 
 are only one among many women, though you 
 be beautiful as a dream, but under boughs the 
 birds still sing those songs the first birds sang 
 there it is always Eden, and thou art the only 
 woman there. 
 
 On my nineteenth birthday three climbed Sun 
 Dial as three had climbed it once before. Leav- 
 ing the village we crossed the brook by that 
 self-same ford of stones, and plunged at once 
 into the forest and ancient orchard that clothed 
 the slope. I was not leading now, but helping 
 them, Dove and Letitia, over the rocks and 
 brambles and steeper places of the ascent. 
 Threading as before that narrow trail I knew 
 by heart, I broke the cob-webs and parted the 
 fragrant tangle that beset our way, vines below, 
 branches above us. It was just such another 
 August noon, and the world was nodding; no 
 birds sang, no squirrels chattered. We stopped 
 for breath, resting upon a wall shaded by an 
 ancient oak. 
 
 95
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "The very spot!" I cried. "Do you remem- 
 ber, Letitia, how you and Robin rested here?" 
 
 "Yes," she answered. 
 
 " Do you remember how I called to you, and 
 came running back ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I'd been waiting for you under an apple- 
 tree. How I should like to see old Robin 
 now!" 
 
 "Who was Robin?" asked Cousin Dove, and 
 so I told her of the Devonshire lad. During 
 my story Letitia wandered, as she liked to do, 
 searching for odd, half-hidden flowers among 
 the grasses. Soon she was nowhere to be seen, 
 nor could we hear her near us. 
 
 "Letitia was fond of Robin, was she not?" 
 asked Cousin Dove. 
 
 " Oh yes," I said. " So were we all." 
 
 " But I mean don't you think she may have 
 loved him?" 
 
 "Oh," I said, "I never thought of that; be- 
 sides, Letitia never had time for " 
 
 Dove opened wide her eyes. 
 
 "Must you have time for " 
 
 "I mean," I stammered, "she was never free 
 like you or me; we " 
 
 96
 
 Of Hamadryads and their Spells 
 
 " I see," she replied, coloring. " He must have 
 been a splendid fellow." 
 
 "He was," I said. 
 
 "Dear Letitia!" murmured Cousin Dove, gaz- 
 ing thoughtfully at the wilted flower she held. 
 The wood which had been musical with voices 
 was strangely silent now. It was something 
 more than a mere stillness. It was like a spell, 
 for I could not break it, though I tried. Dove, 
 too, was helpless. There was no wind I should 
 have known had one been blowing yet the 
 boughs parted above her head, and a crown fell 
 shining on her hair! her hair, those straying 
 tendrils of it, warm and ruddy and now fired 
 golden at that magic touch her brow, pure as 
 a nun's, beneath that veiling the long, curved 
 lashes of her hidden eyes her cheeks still 
 flushed her lips red-ripe and waiting motion- 
 less. 
 
 She raised her eyes to me! a moment only, 
 but my heart leaped, for in that instant it 
 dawned upon me how all that vision there 
 flesh, blood, and soul was just arm's -length 
 from me! 
 
 It was I know.
 
 PART II 
 The School-Mistress
 
 THE OLDER LETITIA 
 
 |RECISELYat half-past seven there 
 was a faint rustling on our staircase 
 and a moment later Letitia Prim- 
 rose appeared at our breakfast-ta- 
 ble smiling "Good-morning." She 
 was dressed invariably in the plainest of black 
 gowns with the whitest of niching about her 
 wrists and throat, and at the collar a pin which 
 had been her mother's, a cameo Minerva in an 
 antique setting of vine leaves wrought in gold. 
 The gown itself I scarcely know how to style 
 it, for no frill or foible of the day was ever visi- 
 ble in its homely contour, or if existing there, 
 had been so curbed by the wearer's mod- 
 esty as to be quite null and void to the naked 
 eye. Every tress of her early whitening hair lay 
 smoothly back about her forehead, and behind 
 was caught so neatly beneath her comb, it might 
 
 101
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 be doubted how or if she ever slept upon it. 
 Just so immaculate, virginal, irreproachable 
 did the older Letitia come softly down to us 
 every week-day morning of her life, and taking 
 her chair between Dove's seat and mine, she 
 would adjust her gold-rimmed glasses to better 
 see how the night had dealt with us, and beam- 
 ing upon us with one of the pleasantest of in- 
 quiring smiles, would murmur 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 She ate little, and that so unobtrusively, I 
 used to wonder if she ate at all. I can remember 
 her lifting her cup, but do not recall that it ever 
 reached her lips. She had, I think, some trick 
 of magnetism, some power of the eye that held 
 yours at the crucial moment, so that you never 
 really saw her sip or bite, and she never chewed, 
 I swear, yet I never heard of her bad digestion. 
 Eating in her was a chaste indulgence common 
 only, I believe, to spinsterhood a rite, commun- 
 ionlike, rather than a feast. 
 
 When the clock struck eight, we would rise 
 together I for my office, Dove for farewells, 
 Letitia for the school-room; I with a clattering 
 chair, Dove demurely, Letitia noiselessly, to 
 put on a hat as vague and unassuming as that 
 
 J02
 
 The Older Letitia 
 
 decorous garment in which she cloaked herself 
 from the outer world a kind of cape and jacket, 
 I think it was, in winter, but am not quite sure. 
 In summer it was a cashmere shawl. Then 
 slipping on a pair of gloves, black always and 
 always whole, however faded, she would take up 
 her small pearl-handled parasol, storm or shine, 
 and that linen bag of hers, a marvellous reticule 
 for books and manuscripts with a separate 
 pocket in the cover-flap for a comb and mirror 
 and extra handkerchief though not to my 
 knowledge; I am merely telling what was told. 
 Nor am I telling all that was said of Letitia's 
 panoply and raiment, the manner of which at 
 every season, at every hour of the night and day, 
 was characterized if I have understood the 
 matter not so much by a charm of style as of 
 precaution, a modest providence, a truly ex- 
 quisite foresight and readiness for all emergen- 
 cies, however perilous, so that fire nor flood nor 
 war's alarms nor death itself, however sudden, 
 should find her unprepared. Fire at night would 
 merely have illumined a slender, unobtrusive 
 figure descending a stair or ladder unabashed, 
 decently, even gracefully arrayed in a silk kimono 
 which hung nightly on the foot-board of her 
 
 103
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 bed; and since for other purposes it was 
 never worn, it remains unscorched, and, indeed, 
 unblemished, to this very day. But for that 
 grim hand the moment of whose clutch can 
 never be foretold with certainty, nothing could 
 exceed Letitia's watchfulness and care. She 
 dressed invariably, I have said, in the plainest 
 black, but I have heard, and on authority I 
 could not question, that however simple and 
 inexpensive those outer garments were, the in- 
 ner vestments were of finest linen superimposing 
 the softest silk. Thus for a tendency to some 
 heart-affection was hereditary in the Primrose 
 family thus could no sudden dissolution or 
 surrender, such as might occur in an absence 
 from home and the ministration of loving friends, 
 be attended ever by any post-mortem embarrass- 
 ment or chagrin, but rather would disclose a 
 pride and delicacy of taste and consideration, 
 the more remarkable and worthy of approval 
 and regret, because it could never otherwise have 
 been revealed. Nothing I know of in the way 
 of gifts was more acceptable to Letitia Primrose 
 than those black silk ones which she took such 
 pains to purchase and secrete. 
 
 It was a wondrous reticule, that linen pouch 
 104
 
 The Older Letitia 
 
 of which I spoke, bearing "L. P." embroidered 
 on its outer side. I say its outer, for so she 
 carried it always; and in years, so many I will 
 not count them, I never knew that monogram 
 turned in, or down. She met me with it in the 
 doorway from which Dove watched us till we 
 had left the gate. Mornings, for years, we went 
 to our work together, save when an urgent 
 matter summoned me earlier or compelled me, 
 against my will and exercise, to drive. Morn 
 after morn we walked together to the red brick 
 school-house, talking of village news and the 
 varying moods of our fickle northern weather, 
 or perhaps of books, old ones and new ones, or 
 of those golden memories that we shared. They 
 were not perfunctory as I recall them, those 
 morning dialogues. There was no abstraction 
 about Letitia, no cursory, unweighed chattering 
 of things so obvious as to need no comment. 
 Every topic might be a theme for her mild elo- 
 quence. It might be of Keats that she dis- 
 coursed to me, or Browning or Alfred Tennyson 
 or perhaps the Corsican, whom she hated, partly 
 for tyranny, partly because he made her "look 
 at him," she said; it might be the Early Church, 
 whose records she had read and read again, 
 
 105
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 though not one - half so much for Cuthbert's 
 holiness, I told her, as for Fuller's quaintness, 
 which she loved ; or it might be a March morning 
 that we walked together, while she spoke like a 
 poet's daughter of the first pink arbutus some 
 grinning farm-boy had laid but yesterday upon 
 her desk. 
 
 Why no one ever wooed and won such fervor 
 seemed passing strange to Dove and me. With 
 all the grace of goodness and gentle courage in 
 which she faced the world alone, in all those 
 years which had followed her father's death, she 
 had never, to Dove's ken or mine, won a single 
 suitor. Those burdens of care and sacrifice laid 
 too soon upon her frail, young shoulders had 
 borne early fruit patience, wisdom, and a 
 sweet endurance beyond her years but on such 
 harvest young men set small store. A taste 
 for it comes late. It made her pleasing to her 
 elders, but those of her own years shrank in- 
 stinctively from its very perfectness. She had 
 matured too soon. How then should any one 
 so coolly virtuous know trial or passion ? Surely 
 so young a saint could have no warm impetuous 
 hours to remember, no sweet abandonment, no 
 pretty idyls had she even a spring-time to recall ? 
 
 1 06
 
 The Older Letitia. 
 
 Men admired her for her mind and heart, but 
 in her presence secretly were ill at ease. Her 
 self-dependence rendered useless their stronger 
 arms accustomed to being leaned upon. She 
 smiled upon them, it is true, but not as men like 
 to be smiled upon neither as a child, trustingly, 
 nor as a queen, confident of their homage and 
 gallant service. She appealed neither to their 
 protection nor to their pride. She awoke the 
 friend, but not the lover, in them; and so the 
 years slipped by and she won no chivalry, be- 
 cause she claimed none. She had but asked 
 and but received respect. 
 
 Our raillery, harmlessly meant, was not al- 
 ways kind, as I look back at it. It is scarcely 
 pleasant to be reminded that among one's kind 
 one is not preferred, yet Letitia bore all our jest- 
 ing with steadfast pleasantry. 
 
 "Do I look forlorn? Do I look so help- 
 less ?" she would ask. Her very smile, her 
 voice, her step, seemed in themselves an an- 
 swer. " What do I want with a husband 
 then?" 
 
 "Why," Dove would say, "to make you hap- 
 py, Letitia." 
 
 "You child: I am perfectly happy." 
 107
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "Well," Dove would answer, stubbornly, "to 
 make you happier, then." 
 
 I have forgotten Letitia's answers all but 
 one of them: 
 
 "I lived so long with my scholar-love," she 
 once said, sweetly, of her father, " I fear I never 
 should be content with an ordinary man." 
 
 Dove declared that no one in Grassy Ford- 
 shire was half worthy of her cousin ; at least, she 
 said, she knew but one, and he was already 
 wedded and to a woman, she added, humbly, 
 not half so good or wise or wonderful as Letitia. 
 Dove stoufly held that Letitia could have mar- 
 ried, had she wished it, and whom she would. 
 Father would shake his head at that. 
 
 "No," he would say, "Letty is one of those 
 women men never think of as a bride." 
 
 "But why?" Dove would demand then, loy- 
 ally. " She is the very woman to find real hap- 
 piness in loving and self - sacrifice. Adversity 
 would never daunt her, and yet," my wife would 
 say with scorn rising in her voice, " the very men 
 who need such help and comprehension and 
 comradeship in their careers, would pass her by, 
 and for a chit of girl who would never be happy 
 sharing their struggles but only their success!" 
 
 1 08
 
 The Older Letitia 
 
 "My dear," father would reply, sagely, "a 
 man glories in his power to hand a woman some- 
 thing she cannot reach herself. Letty Primrose 
 has too long an arm." 
 
 "But if a man once married Letitia " Dove 
 would protest, and father would chuckle then. 
 
 "Ah, yes, my dear, if one only would! But 
 there's the rub. Doubtless he would find Letitia 
 much like other women, quite willing he should 
 reach things down to her from the highest shelf. 
 But he must be a wise man to suspect just that 
 to guess what lies beneath our Letty's ap- 
 parent self -sufficiency." 
 
 "An older man might," Dove once suggested. 
 "A general, or a great professor, or a minister 
 plenipotentiary. ' ' 
 
 "Doubtless," he answered, "but our Grassy 
 Ford is a narrow world, -my dear. The young 
 sprigs in it are only silly lads, and the elder 
 bachelors are very musty ones, I fear and 
 not an ambassador among them. I doubt very 
 much if Letitia will -ever meet him that man 
 you mean, who might choose Letty's love 
 through wisdom, and whose wisdom she might 
 choose through love." 
 
 Dove's answer was a sigh, 
 s 109
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "Bertram," she said, "you must make some 
 real nice, elderly bachelor doctor friends, and 
 we'll ask them to visit us." 
 
 It seemed a likely plan, but nothing came of 
 it, and the silly lads and the musty ones alike 
 left our Letitia more and more to friendships 
 beyond her years. From being so much in the 
 company of her elders, she grew in time to be 
 more like them. Her modesty became reserve ; 
 reserve, in turn, a certain awkwardness or shy 
 aloofness in the presence of the other sex 
 primness, it was called. She had not forgotten 
 how to smile; her talk was blithe enough with 
 those she knew, and was still colored by her love 
 for poetry, but it fast grew quainter and less 
 colloquial ; there was a certain old-fashioned care 
 and subtlety about it, a rare completeness in its 
 phrases not at all like the crude, half-finished 
 ones with which our Grassy Ford belles were 
 content. It added to her charm, I think, but to 
 the evidence as well of that maturity and self- 
 complacency which all men seemed to fear and 
 shun, not one suspecting that the glow beneath 
 meant youth youth preserved through time 
 and trial to be a light to her, or to Love be- 
 lated. 
 
 no
 
 The Older LetitU 
 
 Her brown hair turned to gray, her gray to 
 white, and she still came down to us smiling 
 good - morning ; still worshipped Keats, still 
 scorned the upstart who made her look ; taught 
 on, year after year, in the red brick school-house, 
 wearing the wild flowers farm-boys gathered in 
 the hills. Her life flowed on like a stream in 
 summer, softly in shadow and in sun. She seem- 
 ed content no bitter note in her low voice, no 
 glance of envy, malice, or chagrin in those kind 
 gray eyes of hers, which beamed so gently upon 
 others' loves ; we used to wonder how they might 
 have shone upon her own. 
 
 One day in August it was again that anni- 
 versary birthday around which half my memo- 
 ries of her seem to cling she gave me a copy of 
 In Memoriam, and bought for herself the linen 
 for another reticule. Neatly, and in the fashion 
 of our grandmothers' day, she worked upon it 
 her initials, L. and P., in Old-English letters, old- 
 rose and gold. 
 
 "What," I asked, "is the figure meant for?" 
 
 "The figure? Where?" 
 
 "In the background there the figure seven, 
 in the lighter gold." 
 
 She bent to study it. 
 
 in
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "There is a seven there," she said. "I must 
 have used a lighter silk." 
 
 "Then shall you alter it?" I asked. 
 
 "No," she answered. "It is now too late." 
 
 "She means the figure," I explained to Dove. 
 
 "The letters also," Dove murmured, softly, 
 as we turned away.
 
 II 
 
 ON A CORNER SHELF 
 
 IT five minutes to four o'clock the 
 red school -house gave no sign of 
 the redder Hfe beating within its 
 walls. The grounds about it, worn 
 brown by hundreds of restless feet 
 and marked in strange diagrams, the mystic 
 symbols of hop-scotch, marbles, and three-old- 
 cat, were quite deserted save for sparrows busy 
 with crumbs from the mid-day luncheon-pails. 
 Five minutes' later, one listening by the picket- 
 fence might have heard faintly the tinkling of 
 little bells, and a rising murmur that with the 
 opening of doors burst suddenly into a tramping 
 of myriad feet, while from the lower hallway two 
 marching lines came down the outer stair, primly 
 in step, till at the foot they sprang into wild dis- 
 order, a riot of legs and skirts, with the shouts 
 and shrieks and shrill whistlings of children 
 
 "3
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 loosed from bondage. When the noisy tide had 
 swept down the broad walk into the street, 
 Letitia might be seen following smilingly, her 
 skirts surrounded by little girls struggling for the 
 honor of being nearest and bearing her reticule. 
 At the end of happy days Letitia 's face bore 
 the imprint of a sweet contentment, as if the 
 love she had given had been returned twofold, 
 not only in the awkward caresses of her little 
 ones, but in the sight of such tender buds opening 
 day by day through her patient care into fuller 
 knowledge of a great bright world about them. 
 She strove earnestly to show them more of it 
 than the school-books told; she aimed higher 
 than mere correctness in the exercises, those 
 anxious, careful, or heedless scribblings with 
 which her reticule was crammed. In the geog- 
 raphy she taught there were deeper colorings 
 than the pale tints of those twenty maps the 
 text-book held ; greater currents flowed through 
 those green and pink and yellow lands than the 
 principal rivers there, and in the plains between 
 them greater harvests had been garnered, accord- 
 ing to her stories, than the principal products, 
 principal exports principal paragraphs learned 
 by rote and recited senselessly. 
 
 114
 
 On a Corner Shelf 
 
 Drawing, in Letitia's room, it was charged 
 against her by one named Shears, who had the 
 interests of the school at heart and jaw, had 
 become a subterfuge for teaching botany as 
 well. 
 
 "For draggin' in a study," as he told a group 
 on the corner of Main and Clingstone streets, 
 "not deluded in the grammar-grade curricu- 
 lum!" 
 
 He paused to let the word have full effect. 
 
 "For wastin' the scholais' time and gettin' 
 their feet wet pokin' around in bogs and marshy 
 places, a-pullin' weeds! And for what? why, 
 by gum, to draw 'em!" 
 
 His auditors chuckled. 
 
 "What," he asked, "are drawin'-books for?" 
 
 His fellow-citizens nodded intelligently. 
 
 "And even when she does use the books," 
 cried Mr. Samuel Shears, "she won't let 'em 
 draw a consarned circle or cross or square, 
 without they tell her some fool story of Michael 
 the Angelo!" 
 
 The crowd laughed hoarsely. 
 
 "And who was Michael the Angelo?" asked 
 Mr. Shears, screwing his face up in fine derision 
 and stamping one foot, rabbit-like, by way of 
 
 "5
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 emphasis to his scorn. "Who was this here 
 Michael the Angelo?" 
 
 Four men spat and the others shuffled. 
 
 "A Dago!" roared Shears, and the crowd was 
 too much relieved to do more than gurgle. 
 "What does my son care about Michael the 
 Angelo?" 
 
 Letitia admitted, I believe, that his son 
 didn't. 
 
 "And furthermore," said Mr. Shears, insinu- 
 atingly, "what I want to know is: why has she 
 got them pitchers a- hanging around the school- 
 room walls? Pitchers of Dago churches and 
 Dago statures and I guess you know what 
 Dago statures are I guess you know whether 
 they're dressed like you and me! I guess you 
 fellows know all right and if you don't, there's 
 them that do. And, in conclusion, I want to 
 ask right here: who's a-payin' for them there 
 decorations?" 
 
 Mr. Shears spat, the crowd spat, and they 
 adjourned. 
 
 Now, there may have been a dozen prints re- 
 lieving the ugliness and concealing the cracks 
 in the school-room walls, but all quite innocent, 
 as I recall them: "Socrates in the Market- 
 
 116
 
 On a Corner Shelf 
 
 Place," "The Parthenon," "The Battle of 
 Salamis," "Christian Martyrs," a tragic moment 
 in the arena of ancient Rome, "St. Peter's," I 
 suppose, " St. Mark's by Moonlight," and of stat- 
 ues only one and irreproachable, the "Moses" 
 of Michael Angelo. His "David" was Letitia's 
 joy, but she never dreamed, I am sure, of its 
 exhibition in a grammar-school, though I have 
 heard her declare (shamelessly, Mr. Shears 
 would say) that were it not for a Puritan weak- 
 ness of eyesight hereditary in Grassy Ford, that 
 lithe Jew's ideal figure would be a far better 
 lesson to her boys than all the text-books in 
 physiology. 
 
 "Might it not incite them to sling-shots?" 
 queried Dove, softly. 
 
 " I don't agree with you," said Letitia, lost in 
 her theme, and noting only the fact, and not the 
 nature, of the opposition. " I don't agree with 
 you at all. It would teach them the beauty of 
 manly Why do you laugh?" 
 
 If Shears could have heard her! His informa- 
 tion, such as it was, had been derived from his 
 only son, a youth named David, "not by An- 
 gelo," Letitia said, and hopelessly indolent, 
 whose only fondness was for sticking pins into 
 
 117
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 smaller boys. He was useful, however, as a 
 barometer in which the rise or fall of his surly 
 impudence registered the parental feeling against 
 her rule. 
 
 Shears and his kind held that the proper study 
 of mankind was arithmetic. What would he 
 not have said at the corner of Main and Cling- 
 stone streets, had he known that Letitia was 
 trifling with Robinson's Complete? that be- 
 tween its lines, she was teaching (surreptitiously 
 would have been his word), an original, elemen- 
 tary course in ethics, a moral law of honesty, 
 fair-dealing, and full-measure, so that all exam- 
 ples, however intricate, were worked out rigidly 
 to the seventh decimal, by the Golden Rule ! 
 
 Red geraniums bloomed in her school-room 
 window, and on a corner-shelf, set so low that 
 the children easily might have leaned upon it, 
 lay Webster and another book always one 
 other; though sometimes large and sometimes 
 small, now green, now red, now blue, now yellow, 
 but always seeming to have been left there care- 
 lessly. Every volume bore on its fly-leaf two 
 names "David Buckleton Primrose," written 
 in a bold, old-fashioned script in fading ink, and 
 below it "Letitia Primrose," in a smaller, finer 
 
 118
 
 On a Corner Shelf 
 
 but no less quaint a hand. That book, what- 
 ever its name and matter, had been left there 
 purposely, you may be sure. Letitia remem- 
 bered how young Keats drank his first sweet 
 draught of Homer and became a Greek; how 
 little lame Walter poured over border legends 
 to become the last of the Scottish minstrels; 
 and how that other, that English boy, swam the 
 Hellespont in a London street, to climb on its 
 farther side, that flowery bank called poesy. 
 It was her dream that among her foster-children, 
 as she fondly called them, there might be one, 
 perhaps, some day some rare soul waiting rose- 
 like for the sun, who would find it shining on her 
 school-room shelf. So she dropped there weekly 
 in the children's way, as if by accident, and 
 without a word to them unless they asked, 
 books which had been her father's pride or her 
 own young world of dreams books of all times 
 and mental seasons, but each one chosen with 
 her end in mind. They were beyond young 
 years, she admitted frankly, as school years go, 
 but when her Keats came, she would say, smiling, 
 they would be bread-and-wine to him ; milk and 
 wild-honey they had been to her. 
 
 "Suppose," said Dove, "it should be a girl 
 119
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 who bears away sacred fire from your shelf, 
 Letitia?" 
 
 "Yes, it might be a girl," replied the school- 
 mistress. " Perhaps who knows ? another 
 ' Shakespeare's daughter ' !" And yet, she added, 
 and with the faintest color in her cheeks, know- 
 ing well that we knew her preference, she rather 
 hoped it would be a boy. 
 
 Few could resist that book waiting by the 
 dictionary ; at least they would open it, spell out 
 its title-page, flutter its yellowing leaves, looking 
 for pictures, and, disappointed, close it and turn 
 away. But sometimes one more curious would 
 stop to read a little, and now and then, to Le- 
 titia 's joy, a lad more serious than the rest 
 would turn inquiringly to ask the meaning of 
 what he found there; then she would tell its 
 story and loan the volume, hoping that Johnny 
 Keats had come at last. 
 
 No one will ever know how many subtle lures 
 she set to tempt her pupils into pleasant paths, 
 but men and women in Grassy Ford to-day re- 
 member that it was Miss Primrose who first said 
 this, or told them that, and while her discipline 
 is sometimes smiled at she was far too trusting 
 at times, they tell me doubtless, no one is the 
 120
 
 On a Corner Shelf 
 
 worse for it, since whatever evil she may have 
 failed to nip, may be balanced now by the good 
 of some lovely memory. Bad boys grown tall 
 remembering their hookey-days do not forget the 
 woman they cajoled with their forged excuses; 
 and it is a fair question, I maintain, boldly, as 
 one of that guilty clan, whether the one who put 
 them on an honor they did not have, or, let us 
 say, had mislaid temporarily whether the rec- 
 ollection of Letitia Primrose and her innocence 
 is not more potent now for good than the crimes 
 she overlooked, for evil. 
 
 Sometimes I wonder if she was half so blind as 
 she appeared to be, for as we walked one Sab- 
 bath by the water-side, with the sun golden on 
 the marshes, and birds and flowers and caress- 
 ing breezes beguiling our steps farther and 
 farther from the drowsy town, I remember her 
 saying : 
 
 "It is for this my boys play truant m the 
 spring-time. Do you wonder, Bertram?" 
 
 For the best of reasons I did not. I was 
 thinking of how the springs came northward to 
 Grassy Fordshire when I was a runaway; and 
 then suddenly as we turned a bend in Trouble- 
 some, there was a splash, and two bare feet sank 
 
 121
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 modestly into the troubled waters. There was 
 a bubbling, and then a head emerged dripping 
 from all its hairs. Young David Shears had 
 dived in the nick of time.
 
 Ill 
 
 A YOUNGER ROBIN 
 
 JHEN our boy was born we named 
 him Robin Weatherby, after that 
 elder Robin who had charmed my 
 'youth. If his babyhood lacked 
 I aught of love or discipline, it was 
 neither Dove's fault nor Letitia's, for Robin's 
 mother had ideas and a book on childhood, and 
 dear Letitia did not need a book. In fact, she 
 clashed with Dove's. I, as physician-in-ordinary 
 to my child for in dire emergencies in my own 
 family I always employ an old-fogy rival was 
 naturally of some little service in consultation 
 with the two ladies and the Book. Of the char- 
 acters of these associates of mine, I need only 
 say that Dove was ever an anxious soul, the 
 Book a truthful but at times a vague one, while 
 Letitia was all that could be desired as guide, 
 philosopher, and friend. Alarming symptoms 
 
 123
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 might puzzle others, but never her ; they might, 
 even to myself, even to the Book, bode any one 
 of twenty kinds of evil; to her they pointed 
 solely, solemnly to one that one, alas! which 
 had carried off some dear child of her school. 
 
 Dove, I am sure, had never been impatient 
 with Letitia, but now, such was the tension of 
 these family conferences and such the gravity 
 of the case involved, there were times, I noted, 
 when the cousins addressed each other with the 
 most exquisite and elaborate courtesy, lest either 
 should think the other in the least disturbed. 
 For example, there was that little affair of con- 
 solation a sort of rubber make-believe with 
 which young Robin curbed and soothed his appe- 
 tite and invited pensiveness. Microbes, Letitia 
 said, were 
 
 Dove interposed to remind her that the things 
 were boiled just seven 
 
 Germs, Letitia argued, were not to be trifled 
 with. 
 
 "Just seven times a week, my dear," said 
 Dove, triumphantly. 
 
 "And besides," Letitia continued, undis- 
 mayed, " they will ruin the shape of the child's 
 mouth." 
 
 124
 
 A Younger Robin 
 
 " But how ?" cried Dove. " Pray tell me how, 
 my love, when they are made in the very iden- 
 tical im " 
 
 "And modern doctors," Letitia stated with 
 some severity, "are doing away with so many 
 foolish notions of our grandmothers." 
 
 "Yet our fathers and mothers," Dove replied, 
 "were very fair specimens of the race, my dear. 
 Shakespeare, doubtless, was rocked in a cradle, 
 and his brains survived. They were quite in- 
 tact, I think you will admit. He wasn't joggled 
 into" 
 
 " Yet who knows what he might have written, 
 dear love," answered Letitia, "if he had been 
 permitted to lie quite 
 
 " You try to make a child go to sleep, my dar- 
 ling, without something!" my wife suggested. 
 "Just try it once, my dear." 
 
 "Cradles," said Letitia but at this juncture 
 I stepped in, authoritatively, as the father of my 
 child. It is due to Dove, I confess gladly, and 
 partly to Letitia also, that this fatherhood has 
 been so pleasant to look back upon. Robin's 
 mouth is very normal, as even Letitia will admit, 
 I know, as she would be the last person in the 
 world to say that his brains had suffered any in 
 9 125
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 the joggling. Somehow, by dint of boiling the 
 consolation I suppose, and by what-not formu- 
 lae, we got him up at last on two of the sturdiest, 
 little, round, brown legs that ever splashed in 
 mud-puddle Dove's Darling, my Old Fellow, 
 and Letitia's Love. 
 
 Love she called him in their private moments, 
 and other names as fond, I have no doubt ; pub- 
 licly he was her Archer, her Bowman, her Robin 
 Hood. She, it was, who purchased him bow- 
 and-arrows, and replaced for him without a mur- 
 mur, three panes in the library windows and a 
 precious little wedding vase. The latter cost her 
 a pretty penny, but she reminded us that a boy, 
 after all, will be a boy ! She took great pride in 
 his better marksmanship and sought a suit for 
 him, a costume that should be traditional of 
 archers bold. 
 
 "Have you cloth," she asked, "of the shade 
 called Lincoln green?" 
 
 The clerk was doubtful. 
 
 "I'll see," she said. "Oh, Mr. Peabody! 
 Mr. Peabody!" 
 
 "Well?" asked a man's voice hidden be- 
 hind a wall of calicoes. " Well ? What is 
 it?" 
 
 126
 
 A Younger Robin 
 
 "Mr. Peabody, have we any cloth called 
 Abraham " 
 
 "Not Abraham Lincoln," Letitia interposed, 
 mildly. "You misunderstood me. I said Lin- 
 coln green." 
 
 "Same thing," said the clerk, tartly. 
 
 Mr. Peabody then emerged smilingly from be- 
 hind his wall. 
 
 "How do you do, Miss Primrose," said he. 
 "What can we do for you this morning?" Le- 
 titia carefully repeated her request. He shook 
 his head, while the young clerk smiled trium- 
 phantly. 
 
 "No," he said. "You must be mistaken. I 
 have never even heard of such a color and if 
 there was one of that name," he added, with 
 evident pride in his even tones, "I should cer- 
 tainly know of it. We have other greens " 
 
 Letitia flushed. 
 
 ."Why," she explained, "the English archers 
 were accustomed to wearing a cloth called Lin- 
 coln green." 
 
 Mr. Peabody smiled deprecatingly. 
 
 " I never heard of it," he replied, stiffly ; " and, 
 as I say, I have been in the business for thirty 
 years." 
 
 127
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "But don't you remember Robin Hood and 
 his merry men?" 
 
 "Oh!" exclaimed the merchant, a great light 
 breaking in upon him. "You mean the fairy 
 stories! Ha, Jia! Very good. Very good, in- 
 deed. Well, no, Miss Primrose, I'm afraid we can 
 hardly provide you with the cloth that fairies 
 
 "Show me your green cloths all of them," 
 said Letitia, her cheeks burning. 
 
 " Certainly, Miss Primrose. Miss Baggs, show 
 Miss Primrose all of our green cloths all of 
 them." 
 
 "Light green or dark green?" queried Miss 
 Baggs, who had been delighted with the whole 
 affair. 
 
 Letitia pondered. There had been some rea- 
 son, she reflected, for Robin Hood's choice of 
 gear. 
 
 "Something," she said, at last "something 
 as near to the shade of foliage as you can give 
 me." 
 
 "I beg pardon?" inquired Miss Baggs. 
 
 "The color of leaves," explained Letitia. 
 
 "Well," Miss Baggs retorted, smartly, "some 
 leaves are light, and some are dark, and some 
 leaves are in-between." 
 
 128
 
 A Younger Robin 
 
 There was a dangerous gleam in Letitia's eyes. 
 "Show me all your green cloths," she requested, 
 curtly "all of them." Miss Baggs obeyed. 
 
 "I suppose it really isn't Lincoln green, you 
 know," Letitia said, when she had brought the 
 parcel home with her and had spread its con- 
 tents upon the sofa, " but I hope you'll like it, 
 Dove. It is the nearest to tree-green I could 
 find." 
 
 It was, indeed. 
 
 Now, Dove had never heard of a boy in green, 
 and had grave doubts, which it would not do, 
 however, to even hint to dear Letitia ; so made it 
 was, that archer-suit, though by some strange 
 freak of fancy that caused Letitia keen regret, 
 Robin, dressed in it, could seldom be induced 
 to play at archery, always insisting, to her dis- 
 comfiture, that he was Grass! 
 
 "When you grow up, my bowman," she once 
 told him, "I'll buy you a white suit, all of flan- 
 nel, and father shall teach you to play at cricket 
 in the orchard." 
 
 "But crickets are black," cried Robin, whose 
 eye for color, or the absence of it, I told Letitia, 
 was bound to ruin her best-laid English plans. 
 
 It was good to see them, the Archer Bold and 
 129
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 the Gray Lady walking together, hand-in-hand 
 the one beaming up, the other down ; the one 
 so subject to sudden leaps and bounds and one- 
 legged hoppings to avoid the cracks, the other 
 flurried lest those wild friskings should disturb 
 the balance she had kept so perfectly all those 
 years till then. 
 
 In their walks and talks lay many stories, I 
 am sure things which never will be written 
 unless Letitia turns to authorship, for which it 
 is a little late, I fear; but even then she would 
 never dream of putting such simple matters 
 down. She does not know at all the delicious 
 Lady of the Linen Reticule, who, to herself, is 
 commonplace enough. She might, perhaps, make 
 a tale or two of the Archer in Lincoln Green, but 
 what is the romance of an archer without the 
 lady in it ? 
 
 One drowsy afternoon on a Sunday in summer- 
 time I stretched myself in my easy-chair with 
 another for my slippered feet. My dinner had 
 ended pleasantly with a love-in-a-cottage pud- 
 ding which had dripped blissfully with a heaven- 
 ly cataract of golden sauce. Dove had gone out 
 on a Sabbath mission, rustling away in a gown 
 sprinkled with rose-buds one of those summer 
 
 130
 
 A Younger Robin 
 
 things in which it is not quite safe for any woman 
 to risk herself in this wicked world. 
 
 Such shallow thoughts were passing through 
 my mind as Dove departed, and when the front 
 gate clicked behind her, I opened a charming 
 novel and went to sleep. I know I slept, for I 
 walked in a path I have never seen. I should 
 like to see it, for it must be beautiful in the 
 spring-time. It was a kind of autumn when I 
 was there. I was dragging my feet about in 
 the yellow leaves, when a senile hollyhock leaned 
 over quietly and tickled me on the ear. As I 
 brushed it away I heard it giggling. Then a 
 twig of pear-tree bent and trifled with my nose, 
 which is a thing no gentleman permits, even in 
 dreams, and I brushed it smartly. Then I heard 
 a voice I suppose the gardener's telling some- 
 thing to behave itself. Then I swished again 
 among the leaves. How long I swished there I 
 have no notion, but I heard more voices by-and- 
 by, and I remember saying to myself, "They 
 are behind the gooseberries." They did not 
 know, of course, that I was there, else they had 
 talked more softly. 
 
 "No," said he, " you be the horsey." 
 "Oh no," said the other, "I'd rather drive." 
 131
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "No, you be the horsey." 
 
 "Sh! Let me drive." 
 
 "I said you be the horsey." 
 
 "I be the horsey?" 
 
 "Yes. Whoa, horsey! D'up! Whoa! D'up!" 
 
 Then all was confusion behind the gooseberries 
 and the horsey d'upped and whoaed, and whoaed 
 and d'upped, till I all but d'upped. I did move, 
 and the noise stopped. 
 
 How long I slept there I do not know, but 
 I heard again those voices behind the vines, 
 though more subdued now, mere tender under- 
 tones like lovers in a garden seat. Lovers I sup- 
 posed them, and, keeping still, I listened: 
 
 "But I'm not your little boy," said one, 
 "because you haven't any." 
 
 "Oh yes, you are," replied the other, confi- 
 dently. "You're my little boy because I love 
 you." 
 
 "But why don't you ask God to send you a 
 little boy all your own, just four years old like 
 me, so we could play together ? Why don't you ?" 
 
 " Because," the reply was, " you're all the little 
 boy I need." 
 
 " But if you did ask God and the angel brought 
 you a little boy, then his name would be Billie." 
 
 132
 
 A Younger Robin 
 
 "Oh, would it?" 
 
 " Yes, his name would be Billie, because now 
 Billie is the next name to Robin." 
 
 "What do you mean by the next name to 
 Robin?" 
 
 "Why, 'cause now, first comes Robin, and 
 then comes Billie, and then comes Tommy, or 
 else Muffins, if you turn the corner unless he's 
 a girl and then he's Annie." 
 
 "What?" gasped the second voice. "I don't 
 understand." 
 
 " Well, then," the first voice answered, wearily, 
 "call him Johnny." 
 
 I know at the time the explanation seemed 
 quite clear to me, as it must have been to the 
 second speaker, for the colloquy ended then and 
 there. I might have peeked through the goose- 
 berries and not been discovered, I suppose, but 
 just then I went out shooting flamingoes with a 
 friend of mine, and when I got back, some time 
 that day, the gooseberry-vines were thick with 
 rose-buds. And while I was gone a brook had 
 come you could hear it plainly on the other 
 side and I was surprised, I remember, and 
 angry with my aunt Jemima (I never had an 
 Aunt Jemima) for not telling me. I listened
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 awhile to the tinkle-tinkling till presently the 
 burden changed to a 
 
 " Tra, la, la, 
 Tra, la, la," 
 
 over and over, till I said to myself, "These are 
 the Singing Waters the poets hear!" So I tip- 
 toed nearer through the crackling leaves, and 
 touching the rose- vines very deftly for fear of 
 thorns, again I listened. My heart beat faster. 
 
 " It is an English linn!" I said, astonished, for 
 there were words to it, English words to that 
 singing rivulet! I could make out "gold" and 
 "rue" and "youth." 
 
 "Some woodland secret!" I told myself; so I 
 listened eagerly, scarcely breathing, and little by 
 little, as my ears grew more accustomed to the 
 sounds, I heard the song, not once, but often, 
 each time more clearly than before : 
 
 " Many seek a coronet, 
 Many sigh for gold, 
 Some there are a-seeking yet 
 (Never thought of you, my pet!) 
 Now they're passing old. 
 
 " Many yearn for lovers true, 
 Some for sleep from pain, 
 
 134
 
 A Younger Robin 
 
 Seeking laurel, some find rue 
 (Oh, they never dreamed of you!) 
 Now want youth again. 
 
 "Crown and treasure, love like 
 Peace and laurel -tree, 
 Have I all, oh! world of mine 
 (Soft little world my arms entwine) 
 Youth thou art to me." 
 
 _, It seemed familiar, yet I could not place the 
 song, till at last it came to me that Dr. Primrose 
 wrote it for his only child, a kind of lullaby 
 which he used to chant to her. 
 '* Then I remembered how all that while I had 
 been listening with my eyes shut, and so I 
 opened them to find the singer and saw Letitia 
 with Robin sleeping in her arms.
 
 IV 
 
 HIRAM PTOLEMY 
 
 IE afternoon in a spring I am 
 I thinking of, passing from my office 
 to the waiting - room beyond it, 
 I found alone there a little old 
 1 gentleman seated patiently on the 
 very edge of an old-fashioned sofa which occu- 
 pied one corner of the room. He rose politely 
 at my entrance, and, standing before me, hat 
 in hand, cleared his throat and managed to 
 articulate : 
 
 "Dr. Weatherby, I believe." 
 I bowed and asked him to be seated, but he 
 continued erect, peering up at me with eyes that 
 watered behind his steel-bowed spectacles. He 
 was an odd, unkempt figure of a man ; his scraggly 
 beard barely managed to screen his collar-button, 
 for he wore no tie; his sparse, gray locks fell 
 quite to the greasy collar of his coat, an antique 
 136
 
 Hiram Ptolemy 
 
 frock, once black but now of a greenish hue ; and 
 his inner collar was of celluloid like his dickey 
 and like the cuffs which rattled about his lean 
 wrists as he shook my hand. 
 
 "My name is Percival Hirarn De Lancey 
 Percival," he said. "De Lancey was my moth- 
 er's name." 
 
 "Will you come into my office, Mr. Percival?" 
 I asked. 
 
 "No no, thank you that is, I am not a 
 patient," he explained. " I just called on my 
 way to " 
 
 He wet his lips, and as he said "New York" I 
 fancied I could detect beneath the casual man- 
 ner he assumed, no inconsiderable self-satisfac- 
 tion, accompanied by a straightening of the 
 bent shoulders, while at the same moment he 
 touched with one finger the tip of his collar and 
 thrust up his chin as if the former were too tight 
 for him. With that he laid his old felt hat 
 among the magazines on my table and took a 
 chair. 
 
 "The fact is," he continued, "I am a former 
 protege of the late Rev. David Primrose, of 
 whom you may " 
 
 He paused significantly.
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "Indeed!" I said. "I knew Dr. Primrose 
 very well. He was a neighbor of ours. His 
 daughter " 
 
 My visitor's face brightened visibly and he 
 hitched his chair nearer to my own. 
 
 " I was about to ask you concerning the the 
 daughter," he said. "Is she?" 
 
 "She lives with my family," I replied. "Le- 
 titia " 
 
 "Ah, yes," he said; "Letitia! That is the 
 name Letitia Primrose well, well, well, well. 
 Now, that's nice, isn't it? She lives with you, 
 you say." 
 
 "Yes," I explained, "she has lived with my 
 family since her father's death." 
 
 " He was a remarkable man, sir," Mr. Percival 
 declared. " Yes, sir, he was a remarkable man. 
 Dr. Primrose was a pulpit orator of unusual 
 power, sir of unusual power. And something 
 of a poet, sir, I believe." 
 
 "Yes," I assented. 
 
 "I never read his verse," said the little old 
 gentleman, "but I have heard it said that he 
 was a fine hand at it a fine hand at it. In 
 fact, I" 
 
 He paused modestly. 
 
 138
 
 Hiram Ptolemy 
 
 "I am something of a writer myself." 
 
 "Indeed!" I said. 
 
 "Oh yes; oh yes, I but in a different line, 
 sir, I" 
 
 Again he hesitated, apparently through hu- 
 mility, so that I encouraged him to proceed. 
 
 "Yes?" I said. 
 
 " I er in fact, I " he continued, shyly. 
 
 "Something philosophical," I ventured. 
 
 "Yes; oh yes," he ejaculated. "Well, no; 
 not that exactly." 
 
 "Scientific then, Mr. Percival." 
 
 He beamed upon me. 
 
 " Well, now, how did you guess it ? How did 
 you guess it?" he exclaimed. 
 
 "Oh, I merely took a chance at it," I replied, 
 modestly. 
 
 "Well, now, that's remarkable. Say you 
 seem to be a clever young fellow. Are you 
 are you interested in science?" he inquired, 
 sitting forward on the very edge of his chair. 
 
 "Well, as a doctor, of course," I began. 
 
 "Of course, of course," he interposed, "but 
 did you ever take up ancient matters to any 
 extent?" 
 
 "Well, no, I cannot say that I have."
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "Latin and Greek, of course?" suggested Mr. 
 Percival. 
 
 "Oh yes, at college Latin and Greek." 
 
 "Dr. Weatherby," said my visitor, his eyes 
 shining, "I don't mind telling you: I am a " 
 
 He wetted his lips and glanced nervously 
 about him. 
 
 "We are quite alone," I said. 
 
 "Dr. Weatherby, I am an Egyptologist!" 
 
 "You are?" I answered. 
 
 "Yes," he replied. "Yes, sir, I am an Egyp- 
 tologist." 
 
 "That," I remarked, "is a very abstruse de- 
 partment of knowledge." 
 
 "It is, sir," replied the little old gentleman, 
 hitching his chair still nearer, so that leaning 
 forward he could pluck my sleeve. " I am the 
 only man who has ever successfully deciphered 
 the inscriptions on the great stone of Iris- Iris!" 
 
 "You don't say so!" I exclaimed. 
 
 "I do, Dr. Weatherby. I am stating facts, 
 sir. Others have attempted it, men eminent in 
 the learned world, sir, but I alone here in my 
 bosom ' 
 
 He tapped the region of his heart, where a 
 lump suggested a roll of manuscript. " I alone, 
 
 140
 
 Hiram Ptolemy 
 
 Dr. Weatherby, have succeeded in translating 
 those time-worn symbols. Dr. Weatherby" 
 he lowered his voice almost to a whisper "it 
 has been the patient toil of seven years!" 
 
 He sprang back suddenly in his chair, and 
 drawing a red bandanna from his coat-tails pro- 
 ceeded to mop his brow. 
 
 "Mr. Percival," I said, cordially, looking at 
 my watch, "won't you come to dinner?" His 
 eyes sparkled. 
 
 "Well, now, that's good of you," he said. 
 "That's very good of you. I was intending to 
 go on to New York to-night by the evening-train, 
 but since you insist, I might wait over till to- 
 morrow." 
 
 "Do so," I urged. "You shall spend the 
 night with us. Letitia will be delighted to see 
 an old friend of her father, and my wife will be 
 equally pleased, I know. Have you your grip 
 with you?" 
 
 "It is just here behind the lounge," said 
 Mr. Percival, springing forward with the agility 
 of a boy and drawing from beneath the flounce 
 of the sofa-cover a small valise of a kind now 
 seldom seen except in garrets or in the hands of 
 such little, old-fashioned gentlemen as my guest.
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 It had been glossy black in its day, but now was 
 sadly bruised and a little mildewed with over- 
 much lying in attic dust. In the very centre of 
 the outer flap, which buckled down over a 
 shallow pocket, intended, I suppose, for comb 
 and brush, was a small round mirror, dollar- 
 sized, which by some miracle had escaped the 
 hand of time. 
 
 "By- the- way," I said, as we entered my 
 buggy, "you haven't told me " 
 
 He interrupted me, smiling delightedly. 
 
 "Why I am going to New York?" 
 
 "Yes," I said. 
 
 "Well, sir, I'll tell you. I'll tell you, doctor, 
 and it's quite a story." 
 
 "Where is your home, Mr. Percival?" 
 
 "Sand Ridge," he said, "has been my home, 
 but I expect to reside hereafter in " 
 
 He wetted his lips and pulled at his collar 
 again 
 
 "In New York, sir." 
 
 On our drive homeward he told his story. 
 Early in manhood he had been a carpenter by 
 day, by night a student of the ancient languages, 
 which he acquired by dint of such zeal and sacri- 
 fice that Dr. Primrose, then in the zenith of his 
 143
 
 Hiram Ptolemy 
 
 own career, discovering the talents of the poor 
 young artisan, urged and aided him to obtain 
 a pulpit in a country town. He proved, I im- 
 agine, an indifferent preacher, drifting from 
 place to place, and from denomination to de- 
 nomination, to become at last a teacher of Greek 
 and Latin in the Sand Ridge Normal and Col- 
 legiate Institute. Whatever moments he could 
 spare from his academic duties, he had devoted 
 eagerly to Egyptian monuments, and more par- 
 ticularly to that one of Iris - Iris which had 
 baffled full half a century of learned men. 
 
 "But how did you do it?" I inquired. He 
 wriggled delightedly in the carriage-seat. 
 
 "Doctor," he said, "how does a man perform 
 some marvellous surgical feat, which no one had 
 ever done, or dreamed of doing, before? Eh?" 
 
 "I see," I replied, nodding sagely. "Such 
 things are beyond our ken." 
 
 "I did it," he chuckled. "I did it, doctor. 
 And now, sir " . 
 
 He paused significantly. 
 
 "You are going to New York," I said. 
 
 "Exactly. To" 
 
 "Publish," I suggested. 
 
 "The very word!" he cried. "Doctor, I am 
 M3
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 going to give my discovery to the world to the 
 world, sir! not merely for the edification of 
 savants, but for the enlightenment of my fellow- 
 men." 
 
 "By George!" I said, "that's what I call phil- 
 anthropy, Mr. Percival." 
 
 "Well, sir," he replied, modestly, "all I ask 
 all I ask in return, sir, is that I may be per- 
 mitted to spend the remainder of my days, rent 
 free and bread free, in some hall of learning, that 
 I may edit my books and devote myself to 
 further research undismayed by the the 
 
 "Wolf at the door," I suggested. 
 
 "Exactly," he replied. "That's all I ask." 
 
 " It is little enough," I remarked. 
 
 " Doctor," he said, solemnly, " it is enough, sir, 
 for any learned man." 
 
 When I reached home with my unexpected 
 guest, Dove and Letitia smilingly welcomed him ; 
 I say smilingly, for there was that about the 
 little old gentleman which defied ill -humor. 
 He seemed shy at first, as might be expected of 
 a bachelor-Egyptologist, but the simple manners 
 he encountered soon reassured him. I led him 
 to our best front bedroom, where he stood, 
 dazzled apparently by the whiteness and ruffles 
 
 144
 
 Hiram Ptolemy 
 
 all about him, and could not be induced to set 
 down his valise till he had spread a paper care- 
 fully upon the rug beneath it. 
 
 "Now, I guess I'll just wash up," he said, "if 
 you'll permit me," looking doubtfully at the 
 spotless towels and the china bowl decorated 
 with roses, which he called a basin. I assured 
 him that they were there to use. 
 
 It was not long before we heard him wander- 
 ing in the upper halls, and hastening to his rescue 
 I found him muttering apologies before a door 
 through which apparently he had blundered, 
 looking for the staircase. Safe on the lower 
 floor again, Letitia put him at his ease with her 
 kind questions about Egyptology, and the de- 
 lighted scientist was in the midst of a glowing 
 narrative of the great stone of Iris - Iris when 
 dinner was announced. It was evident that 
 Dove's table quite disconcerted him with its 
 superfluity of glass and silver, and dropping his 
 meat-fork on the floor, he strenuously resisted 
 all Dove's orders to replace it from the pantry. 
 
 " No, no, dear madam," he exclaimed, pointing 
 to the shining row beside his plate, " do not dis- 
 turb yourself, I pray. One of these extras here 
 will do quite as well."
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 During the dinner Letitia plied him with 
 further questions till he wellnigh forgot his 
 plate in his elation at finding such sympathetic 
 auditors. Dove considerately delayed the courses 
 while he talked on, bobbing forward and back- 
 ward in his chair, his slight frame swayed by his 
 agitation, his face glowing, and his beard bris- 
 tling with its contortions. 
 
 " Never," he told me afterwards, as we passed 
 from the dining-room arm-in-arm "never have 
 I enjoyed more charming and intelligent con- 
 versation never, sir ! " 
 
 I offered him cigars, but he declined them, 
 observing that while he never used "the weed," 
 he had up-stairs in his valise, if we would permit 
 him 
 
 We did so, though none the wiser as to what 
 he meant, for he did not complete his sentence, 
 but, bowing acknowledgment, he briskly disap- 
 peared, to return at once without further mishap 
 in our deceitful upper hallway reappearing 
 with a paper bag which he untwisted and offered 
 gallantly to the ladies. 
 
 "Lemon-drops," he said. "Permit me, Mrs. 
 Weatherby. Oh, take more, Miss Letitia do, 
 I beg ; they are quite inexpensive, I assure you 
 
 146
 
 Hiram Ptolemy 
 
 quite harmless and inexpensive. Help yourself 
 liberally, Mrs. Weatherby. Lemon - drops, as 
 you are doubtless aware, doctor, are the most 
 healthful of sweets, and as a have another, Miss 
 Primrose, do ! as a relaxation after the day's toil 
 are much to be preferred, if you will pardon my 
 saying so, Dr. Weatherby much to be preferred 
 to that poisonous cigar you are smoking there." 
 
 "Quite right, Mr. Percival," I assented. 
 
 "They are very nice," Dove said. 
 
 "Oh, they are delicious!" cried Letitia. 
 
 "Are they not?" said the little man, delighted 
 with his hospitality, and so I left them two 
 ladies and an Egyptologist sucking lemon-drops 
 and talking amiably of the great stone of Iris- 
 Iris while I attended on more modern matters, 
 but with regret. I returned, however, in time 
 to escort the scientist to his bedroom, where he 
 opened his valise' and took from it a faded cotton 
 night-gown, which with a few papers and a 
 Testament seemed its sole contents. His books, 
 he explained, had gone on by freight. As I 
 turned to leave him he said, earnestly: 
 
 "Doctor, my old friend's daughter is a most 
 remarkable woman, sir a most remarkable 
 woman." 
 
 M7
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "She is, indeed," I assented. 
 
 "Why," said he, "she evinced an interest in 
 the smallest detail of my work! Nothing was 
 too trivial, or too profound for her. I was 
 astonished, sir." 
 
 "She is a scholar's daughter, you must re- 
 member, Mr. Percival." 
 
 "Ah!" said he. "That's it. That's it, doc- 
 tor. And what an ideal companion she would 
 make for another scholar, sir! or any man." 
 
 Next morning I was called into the country 
 before our guest had risen, and when I returned 
 at noon he had gone, leaving me regretful mes- 
 sages. I heard then what had happened in my 
 absence. Hiram Ptolemy it is the name we 
 gave to our Egyptologist had awakened soon 
 after my departure and was found by Dove 
 walking meditatively in the garden. After 
 breakfast, while my wife was busy with little 
 Robin, Letitia listened attentively to a further 
 discourse can the Iris-Iris, which, she was told, 
 bore on its surface a glorious message from the 
 ancient to the modern world. 
 
 "It will cause, dear madam," said the scien- 
 tist, his eyes dilating and his voice trembling 
 with emotion, " a revolution in our retrospective 
 148
 
 Hiram Ptolemy I 
 
 vision; it will bring us, as it were, face to face 
 with a civilization that will shame our own!" 
 
 Letitia told Dove there was a wondrous dig- 
 nity in the little man as he spoke those words. 
 Then he paused in his eloquence. 
 
 "Miss Primrose," he said, "permit me to pay 
 you a great compliment : I have never in my life 
 had the privilege of meeting a woman of 
 such understanding as your own. You are re- 
 markably remarkably like your learned and 
 lamented father." 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Percival," Letitia said, flushing, 
 "you could not say a kinder thing." 
 
 "And yet," said the scientist, "you you are 
 quite unattached, are you not?" 
 
 "Quite what, Mr. Percival?" 
 
 "Unattached," he repeated, "by ties of the 
 affections?" 
 
 " Oh, quite," she answered, " quite unattached, 
 Mr. Percival." 
 
 "But surely," he said, "you still have ' 
 
 He paused awkwardly. 
 
 "Oh," said Letitia, "I shall never marry, 
 Mr. Percival if you mean that." 
 
 He bowed gravely. 
 
 " Doubtless, dear madam you know best." 
 149
 
 A. P. A. 
 
 |NE spring a strange infection spread 
 through the land and appeared 
 suddenly in our corner of it. First 
 'a rash became a matter of discus- 
 ! sion in our public places, but was 
 not thought serious until the journals of the 
 larger cities brought us news that set our town 
 aflame with apprehension. Half our citizens 
 broke out at once in a kind of measles, not, how- 
 ever, of the common or school-boy sort that 
 speckled cloud with a silver lining of no-more- 
 school-till-it's-over nor yet that more malignant 
 type called German measles. It was, in fact, 
 quite Irish in its nature, generally speaking, and 
 in particular it was what might be termed anti- 
 papistical for, hark you ! it had been discovered 
 that the Catholics were arming secretly to take 
 the world by storm ! 
 
 150
 
 A. P. A. 
 
 There are many Romanists in Grassy Ford. 
 St. Peter's steeple, tipped with its gilded cross, 
 towers higher than our Protestant spires, and on 
 the Sabbath a hundred farmers tie their horses 
 beneath its sheds and follow their womenfolk 
 and flocks of children in to mass. In those days 
 Father Flynn was the priest, a youngish, round- 
 faced man, who chanted his Latin with a rich 
 accent derived from Donegal, and who was not 
 what is called militant in his manner, but was, 
 in fact, the mildest-spoken of our Grassy Ford 
 divines. He held aloof from those theological 
 disputes which sometimes set his Protestant 
 brethren by the ears, declining politely all in- 
 vitations to attend the famous set debates be- 
 tween our Presbyterian and Universalist min- 
 isters, which ended, I remember, in a splendid 
 God-given victory for the one whose flock you 
 happened to be in. Father Flynn only smiled 
 at such encounters; he was not belligerent, and 
 while his parish might with some good reason 
 be described as coming from fine old fighting 
 stock, it had never given evidence, so far as I 
 am aware, of any desire to use cold steel, its 
 warm, red, hairy fists having proven equal to 
 those little emergencies which sometimes arise
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 more particularly on a Saturday night, at 
 Riley's. But when it was whispered, then 
 spoken aloud, and finally charged openly on the 
 street corners and even in letters to the Gazette, 
 then edited by Butters 's son, that Father Flynn 
 was training a military company in the base- 
 ment of St. Peter's church, that the young Ro- 
 manists had been armed with rifles, and that 
 ammunition was being stored stealthily and by 
 night under the very altar! and this by order 
 from the Vatican, where a gigantic plot was 
 brewing to seize the New World for the Pope ! 
 then it was shrewdly observed by those who held 
 the rumors to be truth that Father Flynn did 
 have the look of a conspirator and that he walked 
 with a military ease and swing. 
 
 The priest and his flock denied the charges 
 with indignant eloquence, but without con- 
 vincing men like Shears, who argued that the 
 guilty were ever eager to deny. Shears himself 
 was of no persuasion, religious or otherwise, but 
 belonged by nature to the great party of the 
 Opposition, whose village champion he was, 
 whether the issue was the paving of a street or a 
 weightier matter like the one in hand, of pro- 
 tecting the nation, as he said, from the treason 
 
 152
 
 A. P. A. 
 
 of its citizens and the machinations of a decaying 
 power eager to regain its ancient sway! He 
 was a lawyer by profession, but one whose time 
 hung heavily on his hands, and, frequenting 
 village shops where others like him gathered 
 daily to argue and expound, he would hold forth 
 glibly on any theme, the chief and awe-inspiring 
 quality of his eloquence being an array of for- 
 midable statistics, culled Heaven knows where, 
 but which few who listened had the knowledge 
 or temerity to oppose. He was now brimming 
 with figures concerning Rome ancient, medi- 
 aeval, or modern Rome: "Gentlemen, you may 
 take your choice; I'm your man." He was 
 armed also, by way of climax and reserve, should 
 statistics fail to convince his auditors, with some 
 strange stories having a spicy flavor of Boccaccio, 
 which he told in a lowered voice as illustrations 
 of what had been and what might be again 
 should priests prevail. 
 
 To hear him pronounce the Eternal City's 
 name was itself ominous. His mouth, always 
 a large one, expanded visibly as he boomed out 
 "R-rome!" discharging it as from a cannon's 
 muzzle, and with such significance and effect 
 that many otherwise sanguine men began to
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 suspect that there might be truth in his solemn 
 warnings. Lights had been seen in St. Peter's 
 church at night ! Catholic youths did hold some 
 kind of drill there on certain week-day evenings ! 
 And, lastly, it was pointed out, Father Flynn 
 himself had ceased denials! 
 
 "And why?" Shears asked. "Why, gentle- 
 men? I'll tell ye! /'// tell ye! orders from 
 R-rome! You mark my words orders from 
 Rome!" 
 
 Apprehension grew. A society was formed, 
 with Shears at it's head, to protect the village, 
 and assist, if need be, the State itself. Meetings 
 were held secret and extraordinary sessions 
 in the Odd Fellow's Block. Watches were set 
 on the priest's house and on St. Peter's. Reso- 
 lute men stood nightly in the shrubbery near the 
 church lest guns and cartridges should be added 
 to the stores already there. Zealous Protestant 
 matrons of the neighborhood supplied hot coffee 
 to the midnight sentinels. All emergencies had 
 been provided for. At a given signal three 
 pistol-shots in quick succession, and the same 
 repeated at certain intervals the Guards of Lib- 
 erty would assemble, armed, and march at once in 
 two divisions, a line of skirmishers under Tommy 
 '54
 
 A. P. A. I 
 
 Morgan, the light-weight champion of Grassy 
 Fordshire, followed by the main body in com- 
 mand of Shears. No one, however, was to fire a 
 shot, Shears said "not a shot, gentlemen, till 
 you can see the whites of their eyes. Remember 
 your forefathers!" 
 
 Every night now half the town pulled down 
 its curtains and opened doors with the gravest 
 caution. 
 
 "Who's there?" 
 
 "Peters, you fool." 
 
 "Oh, come in, Peters. I thought it might 
 be" 
 
 " I know: you thought it might be the Pope." 
 
 It was considered wise to take no chances. 
 Assassination, it was widely known, had ever 
 been a favorite method with conspirators, espe- 
 cially at Rome, and Shears made it plain, in the 
 light of history, that "the vast fabric," as he 
 loved to call the Romish world, was composed of 
 men who, certain of absolution, would murder 
 their dearest friends if so commanded by cipher 
 orders from the Holy See! 
 
 Meanwhile, in Grassy Ford, friendships of years 
 were crumbling. Neighbors passed each other 
 without a word ; some sneered, some jeered, some
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 quarrelled openly in the street, and there were 
 fisticuffs at Riley's, and in the midst of this civil 
 strife some one remembered Shears himself, no 
 doubt that Dago pictures hung shamelessly on 
 the walls of a public school-room! 
 
 "Michael the Angelo" had been a Catholic! 
 
 What if Letitia Primrose were the secret ally 
 of the Pope ! . . . 
 
 "But she's not a Catholic," said one. 
 
 "She's Episcopalian," said another. 
 
 "What's the difference?" inquired a third. 
 
 "Mighty little, 7 can tell ye," said Colonel 
 Shears. "The thing's worth seein' to." 
 
 A knock on Letitia 's door that afternoon was 
 so peremptory that she answered it in haste and 
 some trepidation, yet was not more surprised by 
 the sudden summons than by the man who 
 stepped impressively into the school-room. The 
 pupils turned smilingly to David Shears. 
 
 "Your father!" they whispered. 
 
 It was, indeed, Colonel Samuel Shears, of the 
 Guards of Liberty. He declined the chair Le- 
 titia offered him. 
 
 "No," he said, majestically, " I thank you. I 
 prefer" and here he thrust up his chin by way 
 of emphasis "to stand." 
 156
 
 A. P. A. 
 
 The school giggled. 
 
 "Silence!" said Letitia. "I am ashamed." 
 
 Colonel Shears coolly surveyed the array of 
 impudent youths before him, or perhaps not so 
 much surveyed it as turned upon it, slowly and 
 from side to side, the calm defiance of his massive 
 jowls. He was well content with that splendid 
 mug of his, which he carried habitually at an 
 angle and elevation well calculated to spread 
 dismay. Upon occasion he could render it the 
 more remarkable by a firm compression of the 
 under- lip, pulled gravely down at the corners into 
 what old Butters used to say was a plain attempt 
 "to out -Daniel Webster." The resemblance 
 ended, however, in the regions before described. 
 His brow, it should be stated, did not attest the 
 majesty below them, nor did his small eyes 
 glower with any brooding, owl-like light of wis- 
 dom, as he supposed, but bulged rather with a 
 kind of fierce bravado, as if perpetually he were 
 saying to the world: 
 
 "Did I hear a snicker?" 
 
 Colonel Shears surveyed the school, and then, 
 more slowly, the pictures on the walls about 
 him, turning sharply and fixing his gaze upon 
 Letitia.
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 [Point One: She was clearly ill at ease.] 
 
 [Point Two: A guilty flush had overspread 
 her features.] 
 
 "These pictures " said Colonel Shears, with 
 a wave of his hand in their direction. " Who 
 if I may be so bold" and here he raised his 
 voice to the insinuating higher register "who, 
 may I inquire, paid for them?" 
 
 "I did, Mr. Shears," Letitia answered. 
 
 " A-ah ! You paid for them ?" 
 
 "I did." 
 
 "Very good," he replied. "And now, if I 
 may take the liberty to ' 
 
 "Pray don't apologize, Mr. Shears." 
 
 The Colonel's crest rose superior to the in- 
 terruption. 
 
 "If I may be permitted," he said, "to repeat 
 my humble question may I ask, was it your 
 money that bought the pictures?" 
 
 "It was." 
 
 "Your own?" 
 
 "My own." 
 
 "You are remarkably generous, Miss Prim- 
 rose." 
 
 "I think not," said Letitia, with increasing 
 dignity. " You will pardon me, Mr. Shears, if I 
 158
 
 A. P. A. 
 
 continue with my classes. After school I shall 
 be at liberty to discuss the matter. Meanwhile, 
 won't you be seated?" 
 
 Colonel Shears for the second time declined, 
 but asked permission, humbly he said, to ex- 
 amine the works of art upon the walls. His 
 request was granted, and Letitia proceeded with 
 her class. When the inspector had made a 
 critical circuit of the room, and not without 
 certain significant clearings of his throat and 
 some sharp glances intended to catch Letitia 
 unawares, he sniffed the geraniums in the win- 
 dow and picked up a book lying on the corner 
 shelf. He glanced idly at its title and started ! 
 gasped ! and then, horrified, and as if he could 
 not believe his bulging eyes, which fairly pierced 
 the covers of the little volume, he read aloud, 
 in a voice that echoed through the school-room: 
 
 " The Lays of Ancient Rome by Thomas 
 Babington Macaulay !" 
 
 Letitia, whose back was turned, jumped at the 
 unexpected roar behind her, and the Colonel, 
 perceiving that evidence of what he had sus- 
 pected, now strode forward with an air of tri- 
 umph, tapping the Lays with his heavy fore- 
 finger.
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "Pardon me," he said, his countenance illu- 
 mined by a truly terrible smile of accusation, 
 "but when, may I ask, did these here heathen 
 tales become a part of the school curriculum?" 
 
 "They are not a part of it," replied Letitia. 
 
 "Ah! They are not part of it ! You admit it, 
 then? Then may I ask when you made them 
 a part of it, Miss Primrose?" 
 
 "The stories of Roman heroes ' Letitia be- 
 gan. 
 
 "That is not my question. That is not my 
 humble question. When did these here Rom- 
 ish" 
 
 "Mr. Shears," Letitia interposed, flushed, but 
 speaking in a quiet tone she sometimes used, and 
 which the Colonel might well have heeded had 
 he known her, " I observe that you are not 
 familiar with Macaulay. I shall be pleased to 
 loan you the volume, to take home with you and 
 read at leisure. You will find it charming." 
 
 She turned abruptly to the class behind her. 
 
 "We will take for to-morrow's lesson the ex- 
 amples on page one hundred and thirty-three." 
 
 The Colonel glared a moment at the stiff little 
 back before him, and then at the book, which 
 he slipped resolutely into his pocket. A dozen 
 1 60
 
 At P* At / 
 
 strides brought him to the door, where he turned 
 grandly with his hand upon the knob. 
 
 "I bid you," he said, with a fine, ironical 
 lowering of the under-lip, and bowing slightly, 
 "good-day, ma'am," and the door closed noisily 
 behind him. There was a tittering among the 
 desks. Young David Shears, red - faced and 
 scowling, dropped his eyes before his school- 
 mates' gaze. Letitia tapped sharply on her bell. 
 
 That evening the president of the school- 
 board called and talked long and earnestly with 
 Letitia in our parlor. Mr. Roach was a furniture 
 dealer by trade, a leading citizen by profession 
 a tight, little, sparrow-like man, who had risen 
 by dint of much careful eying of the social and 
 political weather to a place of honor in the vil- 
 lage councils. He was considered safe and con- 
 servative, which was merely another way of 
 saying that he never committed himself on any 
 question, public or private, till he had learned 
 which way the wind was blowing. He smiled 
 a good deal, said nothing that anybody could 
 remember, and voted with the majority. Out 
 of gratitude the majority had rewarded him, and 
 he -was now the custodian of our youth the 
 161
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 sentinel, alert and fearful of the slightest shadow, 
 starting even at the sound of his own footfall 
 on the Ramparts of the Republic, as Colonel 
 Shears once called our public schools. He had 
 come, therefore, under the shadow of the night, 
 but out of kindness, as he himself explained, to 
 advise the daughter of an old friend and in a 
 voice so low and cautious that Dove, seated in 
 the room beyond, heard nothing but a soothing 
 murmur in response to Letitia's spirited but re- 
 spectful tones. In departing, however, he was 
 heard to say : 
 
 " Oh, by-the-way er I think you had better 
 not mention my calling, Miss Primrose. Better 
 not mention it, I guess. It er hum might 
 do harm, you know. You understand." 
 
 "Perfectly," replied Letitia. "Good-night." 
 When the door was closed she turned to Dove. 
 
 "What do you think that little that man 
 wants?" she asked. 
 
 "Don't know, I'm sure." 
 
 " Wants me to take down all my pictures " 
 
 "Your pictures!" 
 
 "Yes and remove all books but text-books 
 from the school-room. And listen: he says my 
 geraniums fancy! my poor little red gera- 
 
 162
 
 Ai # 1 <A t 
 
 niums ! are ' not provided for in the cur- 
 riculum." 
 
 "The curriculum!" cried Dove, hysterically. 
 
 "The curriculum," replied Letitia, without 
 a smile. "Do you know what I asked him?" 
 She leaned her chin upon her hands and gazed at 
 Dove's laughing face across the table. " Do you 
 know what I asked that man?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "I asked him if Samuel Luther Shears was 
 provided for in the curriculum." 
 
 "You didn't say Luther, Letitia!" 
 
 "I did I said Luther." 
 
 "Darling! And what did he say to that?" 
 
 Letitia smiled. 
 
 "What could he say, my love?"
 
 VI 
 
 TRUANTS IN ARCADY 
 
 HE excitement vanished as it had 
 come, in our tranquil air. A few 
 keen April nights had been suffi- 
 cient for the sentinels in the lilac- 
 bushes, who wearied of yawning 
 at St. Peter's silent and gloomy walls. Their 
 ardor and the matrons' midnight coffee cooling 
 together, they were withdrawn, and the Guards 
 themselves, though they had no formal mus- 
 tering -out, forgot their fears and countersigns 
 and met no more. Friendships were renewed. 
 Neighbors nodded again across their fences. 
 Protestant housewives dropped Catholic- vended 
 sugar into their tea, and while there were men 
 like Shears, who still in dreams saw candles burn- 
 ing, St. Peter's arsenal became a quiet parish 
 church again. 
 
 Untouched by the whirlwind's passing, Le- 
 164
 
 Truants in Arcady / 
 
 titia's window-garden went on blooming red, her 
 pictures still hung defiantly on the walls, and 
 classic fiction tempted our youth to her corner 
 shelf. Colonel Shears, however, in that single 
 visit to the school-room, had found new texts for 
 his loquacity, and, our courts failing as usual to 
 furnish him with sufficient cases to engross his 
 mind, he devoted himself with new ardor to our 
 public welfare, and recalled eloquently, to those 
 who had time to listen, the little, old, red school- 
 house of their youth, the simpler methods of the 
 old school-masters, who had no fads or foibles 
 beyond the birch, and who achieved, he said 
 witness his hearers, to say nothing of his hum- 
 ble self results to which the world might point 
 with' satisfaction if not with pride. Had the 
 modern schools produced an Abraham Lincoln, 
 he wished to know ? 
 
 " Not by a jugful," was his own reply. " You 
 may talk about your kindergartens, and your 
 special courses, and your Froebel, and your 
 Delsarte, and you may hang up your Eyetalian 
 pictures on the wall, and stick up geraniums in 
 your windows but where is your Abraham ? 
 That's what I ask, gentlemen. I tell you, the 
 schools they had when you and I were boys 
 
 165
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 gentlemen, they were ragged they were ragged, 
 as we were but they turned out men ! And you 
 mark my words: there ain't any old maid in 
 Grassy Ford, with all her ancient classics, and her 
 new methods, and her gimcracks and flower- 
 pots, that '11 ever produce an Honest Abe!" 
 
 I am told that the crowd agreed with him 
 so heartily and with such congratulatory delight 
 that he was emboldened to announce himself 
 then and there as a candidate for the school- 
 board. Though he failed of election, there was 
 always a party in Grassy Ford opposed to new- 
 fangled methods in the schools. Letitia herself 
 was quite aware that even among her fellow- 
 teachers there were those who smiled at her 
 geraniums, and there had been some criticism of 
 her manner of conducting classes. Shears was 
 fond of relating how a visitor to her room had 
 found a class in fractions discussing robins' eggs! 
 Letitia explained the matter simply enough, but 
 the fact remained for the Colonel to enlarge upon. 
 
 "A lesson," he said, "in Robinson's Complete 
 Arithmetic, page twenty-seven, may end in some- 
 body's apple-tree, or the top of Sun Dial, or 
 Popocatapetl, or Peru! Gentlemen, I maintain 
 that such dilly-dallying is a subversion of the 
 166
 
 Truants in Arcady 
 
 "Subversion!" growled old man Butters, who 
 still came out on sunny days with the aid of his 
 cane. " I calculate you mean it's not right." 
 
 "That," said the orator, suavely, "is the 
 meaning I intended to convey, Mr. Butters." 
 
 "Well, then, you're wrong," grumbled the 
 old man. "Why, that there girl" -he called 
 her so till the day he died, this side of ninety 
 "that there girl's a trump, Sam Shears, / tell 
 ye. She teaches Robinson and God A'mighty, 
 too!" 
 
 Letitia was often now in the public eye; her 
 teaching was made a campaign issue, though all 
 her nature shrank from such contests. It was 
 easy to attack her manner of instruction, and 
 sometimes difficult to defend it it had been so 
 subtle in its plan, and so unusual in its execu- 
 tion, and, moreover, time alone could disclose 
 what fruits would ripen from its flowery care. 
 Old Mr. Butters had put roughly what Dr. Prim- 
 rose himself had taught: 
 
 " Dearly beloved, in the fountains of learning, 
 no less than in the water-brooks, His lilies blow." 
 
 " Wouldst thou love God?" he asked, in the 
 last sermon that he ever wrote, " First, love 
 His handiwork." 
 
 167
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 It was his daughter's motto. It hung on the 
 walls of her simple chamber, with others from 
 her "other poets," as she used to call them 
 little rubrics printed for her in red and gold at 
 the " Pide Bull." That handiwork of God which 
 she still called Grassy Fordshire was so full of 
 marvels to this poet's daughter, there were so 
 many flowers in it, the birds there sang so blithe- 
 ly, its waters ran with such tremulous messages 
 echoed by woods and whispered by meadow- 
 grasses, its skies, melting into glowing promises 
 in the west, shone thereafter with such jewelled 
 truths, she could hold no text-books higher than 
 her Lord's. 
 
 It was not mere duty that drew her morn 
 after morn, year after year, to the red - brick 
 school-house. All the tenderness, all those eager 
 hopes and fears which she lavished so upon her 
 labor, meant life and love to her, for she truly 
 loved them those troops of laughing, heedless 
 children, passing like flocks of birds, stopping 
 with her for a little twittering season to seize 
 her bounty and, as it seemed to her, fly on gay- 
 ly and forget. 
 
 . It may be that I write prejudiced in her favor, 
 but I write as one knowing the dream of a wom- 
 
 168
 
 Truants in Arcady 
 
 an's lifetime to set those young feet straight in 
 pleasant paths, to open those wondering eyes 
 to the beauty of an ancient world about them, 
 in every leaf of it, and wing in the earth below 
 and the sky above it, and there not only in the 
 flawless azure, but in the rain-clouds' gloom. 
 
 "Dark days are also beautiful," she used to 
 tell them. " Had you thought of that ?" 
 
 They had not thought of it. It was one of 
 those subtler things which text-books do not 
 say; but Letitia taught them, and a woman of 
 Grassy Ford, when sore bereft, once said to me: 
 "Dark days, doctor, are also beautiful. Miss 
 Primrose told us that, when we went to school 
 to her. It was of clouds she spoke, but I re- 
 membered it and now I know." 
 
 "Oh, Miss Primrose," Johnny Murray used to 
 say. " Do you remember when I went to school 
 to you? Do you remember where I sat there 
 by the window? Well, it's awfully funny, but 
 do you know, I never add or multiply or sub- 
 tract but I smell geraniums." 
 
 Perhaps, the Colonel would reply, that was 
 why Johnny Murray deserted the ledgers he 
 was set to keep the scent of the flowers in them 
 proved too strong for him. It may be so, for 
 
 169
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 little things count so surely ; it may be the rea- 
 son he is to-day a sun-browned farmer instead 
 of a lily-white clerk in his father's store. From 
 the geraniums in a school-room window to a 
 thousand peach-trees blooming in a valley is a 
 long journey, but it was for just such journeys 
 that Letitia taught, and not merely for that 
 shorter one which led through her petty school- 
 room to the grade above. 
 
 Letitia tells me that sitting there at her higher 
 desk above those rows of heads, she used to 
 think of them as flowers, and of her school-room 
 as a garden. Often then it would come to her 
 how pleasant a task it was to tend the roses 
 there golden - haired Laura Vane, and Alice 
 Bishop, and Isabel Walton, and handsome, black- 
 eyed Tommy Willis, whose pranks are famous 
 in Grassy Fordshire still; then, at the doting 
 thought of them, her heart would smite her, and 
 she would turn to those other homelier flowers. 
 It must have been in some such moment of re- 
 pentance that Susan Leary, chancing to raise 
 her eyes to her adored school-mistress, found 
 Letitia smiling so amiably upon her that the girl 
 blushed, and from that hour grew more mind- 
 ful of her scolding looks ; her freckled face was 
 
 170
 
 Truants in Arcady 
 
 scrubbed quite glossy after that, her dress was 
 neater, her ribbons tied, till by-and-by, to Le- 
 titia's wonder and reward, she found in that 
 beaming Irish face upturned to her, color and 
 fragrance for her very soul. 
 
 Young Peter Bauer was a German sprout 
 transplanted steeragewise to a corner of the 
 garden, and slow in budding, his face as blank 
 as the blackboard-wall he grew beside ; but one 
 fine morning, at a single question in the B geog- 
 raphy, it burst into roseate bloom. 
 
 "Teacher, teacher, I know dot! Suabia ist 
 in Deutschland. Mein vater ist in Deutschland! 
 Ich bin" 
 
 And after that Peter was a poppy on Friday 
 afternoons, reading essays on his fatherland. 
 Thus, honest gardener that Letitia was, she 
 trained and pruned, disdaining nothing because 
 of weediness, believing that what would bear a 
 leaf would bear a flower as well. To leave at 
 four o'clock, to return at nine and find one open 
 which had been shut before! is it not the gar- 
 dener's morning joy ? 
 
 It was not alone the plants which refused to 
 grow for her that caused her pain. These at 
 least she had never loved, however patiently 
 
 171
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 she had cared for them. There were wayward 
 beauties in her garden who on tenderer stalks 
 bore longer thorns. She learned, in her way, the 
 lesson mothers learn in theirs, who sometimes 
 love and toil and sacrifice unceasingly, and wait, 
 years or forever, for reward. 
 
 "Remember, Miss Primrose, you are not a 
 mother," snapped a certain sharp- tongued ma- 
 tron of our town who had disagreed with her. 
 
 "Oh," said Letitia, "but I have loved so 
 many children. I am a kind of mother." 
 
 "Mother!" cried the matron. 
 
 "Yes," Letitia answered. "I am a mother 
 without a child." 
 
 Had they been her children, it had been easier 
 to forgive their thoughtlessness. Offended some- 
 times by her discipline, they said plain things 
 of her lack of pretty youth; they whispered lies 
 of her; she shed some tears, I know, over those 
 scribblings which she intercepted or found for- 
 gotten on the school - room floor. Then her 
 garden was the abode of shadows, her efforts 
 vain there. Sometimes, for solace, she sought 
 out Dove, but the habit of lonely thinking had 
 grown upon her; it had been enforced by her 
 maidenhood . 
 
 172
 
 Truants in Arcady 
 
 While I am not a herb -doc tor by diploma, 
 I am one by faith, simples have wrought such 
 speedy cures in my own gray hours, and Grassy- 
 Fordshire is so green with them that a walk 
 by Troublesome or a climb on Sun Dial is in 
 itself a marvellous remedy, aromatic and ano- 
 dyne. In my drives to patients beyond the 
 town, I have been seized suddenly by a kind of 
 fever. There are no pills for it, or powders, or 
 any drugs in all the bottles on my shelves but 
 a jointed fishing-rod and line kept in the bottom 
 of a doctor's buggy is efficacious if applied in 
 time. Often when that spell was on me I have 
 turned Pegasus towards the nearest stream, and 
 while he nibbled, one hour on a scented bank, 
 fish or not sixty drops from the grass-green 
 phial of a summer's day has restored my soul. 
 Clattering home again at double - quick, Peg- 
 asus 's ears on end, his nostrils quivering, my 
 buggy thumping over thank - you - ma'ams, I 
 would not be a city leech for a brown-stone front 
 and a brass name-plate upon my door. 
 
 In some such pleasant hooky-hour in spring 
 I had cast, sullenly enough, but was now hum- 
 ming to myself, in tune with Troublesome, when 
 a twig snapped behind the willows. Some cow,
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 thought I, and kept my eyes upon the stream. 
 Another twig: I turned inquiringly. There, by 
 the water-side, and all unmindful of my presence, 
 was Letitia Primrose. 
 
 I bit my pipe clean through. I would have 
 called at once, but something stopped me. She 
 stood quietly by the brook, gazing at the stones 
 on which it played and sang. Her shoulders 
 drooped a little, her face seemed tired and pale. 
 She turned and saw me. 
 
 "Bertram!" Her face was guilty. 
 
 " Hello!" I said, lighting my pipe. 
 
 "You here, Bertram?" 
 
 "Yes," I replied, casting again. "How is it 
 you're here? No school, Letitia?" 
 
 She hesitated. 
 
 "No patients, doctor?" she asked, softly. 
 
 "No patients dying," I retorted. We eyed 
 each other. 
 
 "I had a headache," she said, meekly, seat- 
 ing herself upon a log. "And I have a substi- 
 tute." 
 
 "There are other doctors," I remarked. 
 
 Suddenly she rose. 
 
 "I think," she said, "I'll just stroll that way, 
 if you don't mind, Bertram."
 
 Truants in Arcady 
 
 "Not at all," I replied. "I know how you 
 feel, Letitia. That's why I come here." 
 
 "Do you?" she asked. "Then this isn't your 
 first" 
 
 "Nor my twentieth offence," I replied, laugh- 
 ing. She sighed. 
 
 "I'm glad of that. It's my first really. I 
 feel like a criminal." 
 
 I pointed with my broken pipe-stem. 
 
 "You'll find the best path there," I said. 
 
 "I think I'll stay, if you don't mind, Ber- 
 tram." 
 
 "Stay, by all means," I replied, and went on 
 fishing. Letitia was the first to speak. 
 
 "It's hard always trying to be dominant," 
 she remarked, "isn't it?" 
 
 "Why, I rather like it," I replied. 
 
 "You are a man," she said. "Men do, I 
 believe. But I, I get so tired sometimes" she 
 bit her lip "of being master." She laughed 
 nervously. "That's why I ran away." 
 
 Presently she went on speaking. 
 
 "If we could only be surrounded by such 
 things as these, always, how serene our lives 
 might be. Don't smile. It's my old sermon of 
 environment, I know ; but why are you here ? 
 
 i7S
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 and why am I? I try my best to keep the 
 beautiful before my children's eyes, to tempt 
 them into lovely thinking. Bertram, I believe, 
 heart and soul, in the power of beauty. I am 
 so sure of it, I know I should be a stronger 
 teacher if I were young and beautiful myself 
 or even pretty, like Helen White." 
 
 "She is a mere wax doll," I said. 
 
 "But children like pretty faces," she replied. 
 " Look! You have a fish!" 
 
 It was a snag, but while I was busy with it 
 she rose. 
 
 "Wait," I said, "I'll drive you home." 
 
 "No, thank you, Bertram. I'd rather walk. 
 My head is better now. Good-bye." 
 
 I did not urge her. When she had gone I 
 picked up a slip of paper from the path where 
 she had passed. It was a crumpled half of a blue- 
 ruled leaf torn from some pupil's tablet, and, 
 scrawled upon it in a school-girl's hand, I read : 
 
 " DEAR EDNA, Don't mind the homely old thing. 
 Everybody says she's fifty if she's a day. No one would 
 marry her, so she had to teach school." 
 
 It was written, Dove told me afterwards, by 
 one of the rose-girls in Letitia's garden. 
 
 176
 
 VII 
 
 PEGGY NEAL 
 
 Y aunt Miranda, who was wise in 
 many things, used to maintain that 
 a woman ceased to be charming 
 only when she thought she had 
 I ceased to be so ; that age had noth- 
 ing whatever to do with the matter and so 
 saying, she would smile so bewitchingly upon 
 me that I was forced inevitably to the conclu- 
 sion that she bore her fifty years much better 
 than many women their paltry score. Letitia 
 was not so sanguine; she laid more stress upon 
 the spring-time. I have heard her say that 
 there was nothing lovelier in the world than a 
 fair young girl full of pure spirits as a rose-cup 
 full of dew. She would turn in the street to 
 look at one ; she liked them to be about her ; her 
 own face grew more winning in such comrade- 
 ship, and when she was given a higher school- 
 
 177
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 room, where the girls wore skirts to their shoe- 
 tops and put up their hair, it was an almost 
 childish pleasure which she displayed. It was 
 this very preference for exquisite maidenhood 
 that explained her fondness for Peggy Neal. It 
 was not scholarship which had won the teacher's 
 heart, for Peggy was an indifferent student, as 
 Letitia herself confessed, but she was a plump 
 and brown-eyed, pink-cheeked country girl who 
 always smiled and who had that grace of inno- 
 cence and bloom of health which are the witchery 
 of youth. She was a favorite with school-boys, 
 a belle of theirs at straw-rides, dances, and taffy- 
 pulls, and other diversions of our Grassy Ford- 
 shire teens, where, however, her gentle ways, her 
 readiness to follow rather than to lead, her utter 
 incapability of envy or spiteful speech made her 
 beloved of girls as well. She was the amiable 
 maiden whom men look twice at, yet whose sis- 
 ters are never quite jealous, holding her charm 
 to be mere pinkish prettiness and beneath the 
 envy of superior minds like theirs. Peggy was 
 the sort of girl Letitia had never been, roseate 
 with the kind of youth Letitia had never known, 
 and it enchanted her as a joy and beauty which 
 had been denied. 
 
 178
 
 Peggy Neat 
 
 Neal, the father, was a drunken farmer, whose 
 wife was chiefly responsible for the crops they 
 planted, and who, being strong and abler than 
 her shiftless spouse, was usually to be seen in the 
 field and garden directing and aiding the hired 
 man. Peggy was the only child. She helped 
 her mother in the kitchen, fed the chickens, 
 skimmed the milk, sold the butter, and let her 
 father in o' nights. He was a by- word in the 
 village. Occasional revivalists prayed for him 
 publicly upon their knees, but without effect. 
 His wife could have told them how futile that 
 method was; she had tried it herself in more 
 hopeful years. She had tried rage also, but it 
 left her bitter and sick of life, and Pat the drunk- 
 er; so wisely she had fallen back upon resigna- 
 tion, though not of the apathetic sort, and had 
 made herself mistress of the farm, where her 
 husband was suffered to spend his nights if he 
 chose, or was able to walk so far from the tavern 
 where he apent his days. 
 
 For Peggy the mother had better dreams. 
 She knew that the girl was beautifu', and she 
 knew also what beauty, however born, might 
 win for itself in a wider world than her own had 
 been. Peggy, therefore, was to finish school,
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 however the farm might suffer by her absence 
 and the expense of such simple dress as her 
 village friendships would require. Nature might 
 marry Thrift or Money, thought the hard-faced 
 woman in the faded sunbonnet; silk and lace 
 and a new environment might make a queen of 
 this beggar-maid, her last hope in a life of hope- 
 lessness. Proudly she watched her daughter 
 flower into village fame, guarding that fairness 
 with jealous eyes. 
 
 "Daughter," she would say, "where is your 
 hat?" 
 
 "Mamma, I like the sun." 
 
 " Nonsense. . Go straight and fetch it and put 
 it on. Do you want to be speckled like your 
 ugly old mother- hen?" 
 
 It was a care and pride that would have turned 
 another and far less lovely head than Peggy's, 
 yet in spite of it this country school-girl ripened 
 sweetly. Driving on country visits I usecl to 
 meet her by the way, walking easily and hum- 
 ming to herself the while, her books and luncheon 
 swinging at her side a perfect model for ro- 
 mantic painters who run to milk-maids, or, as 
 Letitia used to say, the veritable Phyllis of old 
 English song. 
 
 180
 
 Peggy Neal 
 
 The mother rose at dawn; she toiled by sun- 
 light and by lamplight; her face grew haggard, 
 her figure gaunter, her voice sharper with bitter 
 irony, her heart harder save in that one lone 
 corner which was kept soft solely for her child. 
 Peggy, I believe, was the only living thing she 
 smiled upon. Neighbors dreaded her cutting 
 tongue ; her husband was too dazed to care. 
 
 Time went by. In spite of that stern resolve 
 in the woman's nature, and all her labor and 
 frugal scheming, what with the failure of crops 
 and her lack of knowledge of their better care, 
 and an old encumbrance whose interest could be 
 barely met on the quarter-days that cast their 
 shadows on the whole round year, the farm 
 declined. Letitia's gifts from her own wardrobe 
 were all that kept Peggy Neal in school. It was 
 a word from Letitia also that raised the cloud on 
 the mother's face when despair was darkest there. 
 Might not summer-boarders, Letitia asked, bear 
 a surer, more golden harvest than those worn- 
 out fields? 
 
 "Summer-boarders!" cried Mrs. Neal, with a 
 grim irony in her voice. But she repeated it 
 "Summer-boarders," in a milder tone, and the 
 plan was tried. 
 
 181
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 The first ones came in June. They descended 
 noisily from the fast express, lugging bags and 
 fishing-rods and guns. Some of them stared; 
 some young ones whistled softly at the fair 
 driver of that old two-seated buckboard wait- 
 ing to bear them to the farm. They greeted 
 effusively for the daughter's sake the hard- 
 mouthed woman who met them at the door, 
 striving her best to smile a welcome. She it 
 was who showed them their plain but well- 
 scrubbed chambers, while their minds were at the 
 barn. 
 
 Pastures and orchards bore strange fruit that 
 summer: white-faced city clerks in soft, pink 
 shirts smoked cigarettes and browned in the sun ; 
 freckled ladies set up their easels in the cow-lot ; 
 high-school professors asked one another puzzling 
 questions, balanced cannily on the topmost rail 
 of the Virginia fence, and all all, that is, to a 
 man helped Peggy carry in the milk, helped 
 Peggy churn, helped Peggy bake, helped Peggy 
 set the table, and clear it, and wipe the dishes, 
 and set them safely away again in the dim 
 pantry helped Peggy to market, and Peggy 
 to church : so rose her star. 
 
 The mother watched, remembering her own 
 182
 
 Peggy Neat 
 
 girlhood. Its romance, seen through a mist of 
 gloomy years, seemed foolish now. There might 
 be happiness in human life she had never 
 known any. There was a deal of nonsense in 
 the world called love, she knew, and there was 
 a surer thing called money. Peggy should wait 
 for it. 
 
 The mother watched, smiling to herself sar- 
 donically, secretly well-pleased smiling because 
 she knew quite well that these callow sprigs had 
 far less money than negligees; well-pleased be- 
 cause she guessed that soon enough a man with 
 both would be hovering about sweet Peggy's 
 dairy. It was a humorous thing to her that all 
 these city men should think it beautiful that 
 dampish, sunless spot where the milk-cans stood 
 waist-deep in cresses. 
 
 She kept sharp eyes upon her daughter, and 
 farm-house duties filled Peggy's days to their 
 very brim. There must be no loitering by star- 
 light, either. Mother and daughter now slept 
 together in the attic store-room, for the new 
 farming had proved a prosperous thing. 
 
 The summer was not like other summers. 
 There was life and gayety up at Neal's: strum- 
 ming of banjos and the sound of laughter and 
 
 183
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 singing on the porch, much lingering in ham- 
 mocks under the pine-trees, moonlit jaunts in 
 the old hay-rick, lanterns moving about the 
 barn and dairy, empty bowls on the buttery 
 table when Mrs. Neal came down at dawn, and 
 half-cut loaves in the covered crocks. 
 
 September came and the harvest had been 
 gathered in. The last boarder had returned 
 cityward. Peggy was in school again. One 
 day, however, she was missing from her classes, 
 and Letitia, fearing that she might be ill, walked 
 to the farm after school was over. It was a 
 pleasant road with a narrow path beside it 
 among the grasses, and the day was cool with 
 premonitions of the year's decline. 
 
 The farm seemed silent and deserted. She 
 knocked at doors, she tapped lightly on the 
 kitchen - windows, but no one was at home. 
 At the barn, however, the horses were in their 
 stalls, turning their heads to her and whinneying 
 of their empty mangers. Surely, she thought, 
 the Neals could not be gone. She stood awhile 
 by the well-curb from which she could better 
 survey the farm: it lay before her, field and 
 orchard, bright with sunshine and golden-rod, 
 yet she saw no moving thing but the crows in 
 184
 
 Peggy Neat 
 
 the corn-stubble and the cows waiting by the 
 meadow-bars. Then she tried the dairy, and 
 there heard nothing but the brook whimpering 
 among the cans and cresses, and she turned away. 
 . Now a lane runs, grassy and strewn with the 
 wild blackberry- vines, through the Neal farm 
 to a back road into town, and Letitia chose it 
 to vary her homeward way. It passes first the 
 brook, over a little hoof-worn, trembling bridge, 
 and then the vineyard, where the grapes were 
 purple that autumn evening. There, pausing to 
 regale herself, Letitia heard a strange sound 
 among the trellises. It was a child crying, 
 moaning and sobbing as if its heart would break. 
 For a moment only Letitia listened there; then 
 she ran, fearfully, stumbling in the heavy loam 
 between the rows of vines, to the spot from 
 which the moaning came. She found a girl 
 crouching on the earth. 
 
 "Peggy!" she cried, kneeling beside her. 
 " Peggy ! Are you hurt ? Peggy ! Answer me !" 
 
 The girl shook her head and shrank away 
 among the lower leaves. 
 
 "Oh, what is the matter?" Letitia begged, 
 terrified, and gathered Peggy into her arms. 
 "Tell me! Tell me, sweet!" 
 185
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 " Nothing," was the wretched answer. " Please 
 please go away!" 
 
 But Letitia stayed, brushing the dirt from 
 the girl's dark hair, kissing her, petting her, 
 murmuring the tenderest names, and gently 
 urging her to tell. Peggy raised herself upon 
 her knees, putting both hands to her temples 
 and staring wildly with swollen eyes. 
 
 "Mamma's gone in, Miss Primrose," she said, 
 brokenly. " She '11 she'll tell you. Please - 
 please go away!" 
 
 She begged so piteously, Letitia rose. 
 
 " I'd rather stay, Peggy ; but if you wish it " 
 
 "Yes. Please go!" 
 
 "I'd rather stay." 
 
 "No. Please" 
 
 Slowly, and with many misgivings, Letitia 
 went. She knocked again at the farm-house, 
 but got no answer, as before. She tried the 
 doors they were locked, all of them. Then 
 her heart reproached her and she hurried back 
 again to the lane. It was growing dusk, and in 
 the vineyard the rows confused her. 
 
 "Peggy!" she called, softly. 
 
 Her foot touched a basket half-filled with 
 grapes. 
 
 186
 
 Peggy Neal 
 
 " Peggy ! Where are you ?" 
 
 She could hear nothing but the rustling leaves. 
 
 "Peggy!" she called. "Peggy!" 
 
 There was no answer, but as she listened with 
 a throbbing heart, she heard cows lowing at 
 the pasture -bars and the click of the farm- 
 yard gate.
 
 VIII 
 
 NEW EDEN 
 
 ETITIA'S church, the last her 
 father ever preached in, is a little 
 stone St. Paul's, pine -shaded and 
 ivy-grown, upon a hill-side. There 
 are graves about it in the lawn, 
 scattered, not huddled there, and no paths be- 
 tween them, only the soft grass touching the 
 very stones. Above them in the un trimmed 
 boughs swaying with every wind, the wild birds 
 nest and sing, so that death. where Dr. Primrose 
 lies seems a pleasant dreaming. 
 
 "Our service," he used to say, "is the ancient 
 poetry of reverence;" and every verse of it 
 brings to Letitia memories of her father standing 
 at the lecturn, while she was a child listening in 
 the pews. 
 
 " I was very proud of him," she used to tell us. 
 " His sermons were wonderful, I think. You 
 188
 
 New Eden 
 
 will say that I could not judge them as a girl and 
 daughter, but I have read them since. I have 
 them all in a box up-stairs, and now and then 
 I take one out and read it to myself, and all that 
 while I can hear his voice. They are better than 
 any I listen to nowadays; they are far more 
 thoughtful, fuller of life and fire and the flower 
 of eloquence. Our ministers are not so brim- 
 ming any more." 
 
 She told us a story I had never heard, of his 
 earnestness and how hard it was for him to find 
 words fervent enough to express his meaning; 
 how when a rich old merchant of Grassy Ford 
 confessed to him a doubt that there was a God, 
 dear Dr. Primrose turned upon him in the vil- 
 lage street where they walked together and said, 
 with the tears springing to his eyes : 
 
 "Gabriel Bond, not as a clergyman but as a 
 man, I say to you, consider for a moment that 
 apple -bloom you are treading on!" It was 
 spring and a bough from the merchant's garden 
 overhung the walk where they had paused. 
 "Hold it in your hand, and look at it, and 
 think, man, think! Use the same reason which 
 tells you two and two make four the same 
 reason that made you rich, Gabriel and tell me, 
 13 189
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 if you can, there is no God! Why, sir " and 
 here Dr. Primrose's heart quite overcame him, 
 and his voice broke. "Gabriel, you are not 
 such a damned " 
 
 And the merchant, Letitia said, for it was 
 Bond himself who told her the story long after 
 Dr. Primrose's voice was stilled the merchant, 
 astounded to find a clergyman so like another 
 man struggling for stressful words for his emo- 
 tion, picked up the bruised twig from beneath 
 his feet and stuck it in her father's coat. 
 
 "Doctor," he said, quietly, "there's force, sir, 
 in what you say," and left Dr. Primrose won- 
 dering on the walk. But the next Sunday he 
 appeared at church, and every Sunday for many 
 years thereafter, merely explaining to those 
 who marvelled, that he had found a man. 
 
 It was not likely that the daughter of such a 
 man would be much troubled with doubts of 
 what he had taught so positively or what she 
 had come to believe herself ; if led astray it would 
 be like her sex in general, through too much 
 faith. While not obtrusive in her views of life 
 in her younger years, Letitia, as she reached 
 her prime, and through the habit of self-depend- 
 ence and her daily duty of instructing undevel- 
 
 190
 
 Ne<w Eden 
 
 oped minds, grew more decisive in her manner, 
 more impatient of opposition to what she held 
 was truth, especially when it seemed to her the 
 fruit of ignorance or that spirit of bantering ar- 
 gument so common to the humorously inclined. 
 She liked humor to know its place, she said ; it 
 was the favorite subterfuge of persons champion- 
 ing a losing cause. In such discussions, finding 
 her earnestness useless to convince, and scorning 
 to belittle a theme dear to her with resort to jest 
 or personalities, she would sit silenced, but with 
 a flush upon her cheeks, and if the enemy had 
 pressed too sharply on her orderly retreat, one 
 would always know it by the tapping of her foot 
 upon the floor. 
 
 She was no mean antagonist. For she read 
 not only those volumes her father loved, but the 
 books and journals of the day as well. Reading 
 and theorizing of the greater world outside her 
 little one, she was ziot troubled by those para- 
 doxes which men meet there, which cause them 
 to falter, doubt, and see two sides of questions 
 where they had seen but one, till they fall back 
 lazily, taking their ease on that neutral ground 
 where Humor is the host, welcoming all and 
 favoring none. We used to smile sometimes at 
 
 191
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 Letitia's fervency; we had our little jests at 
 its expense, but we knew it was her father in her, 
 poet and preacher not dead but living still. In 
 his youth and prime Dr. Primrose was ever the 
 champion of needy causes, whose name is legion, 
 so that his zeal found vent, and left him in his 
 decline the mild old poet I remember. Would 
 Letitia'be as mild, I wondered? 
 
 "A few more needy causes," I used to say, 
 " would soften that tireless spirit say, stockings 
 to darn and children to dress for school, and a 
 husband to keep in order." 
 
 "Yet in lieu of these," Dove once replied, 
 "she has her day's work and her church and 
 books" 
 
 "But are they enough for a woman, do you 
 think?" I asked my wife. We were standing 
 together by Robin's bedside, watching him as 
 he slept. Dove said nothing, but laid her hand 
 against his rose-red cheek. 
 
 Little by little we became aware of some 
 subtle change in our Letitia. She took less 
 interest in the mild adventures of our household 
 world. She smiled more faintly at my jests, a 
 serious matter, for I have at home, like other 
 men, some reputation for a pretty wit upon 
 
 192
 
 New Eden 
 
 occasion. It was a mild estrangement and 
 recluseness. She sat more often in. her room 
 up-stairs. She was absent frequently on lonely 
 walks, sometimes at evening, and brought home 
 a face so rapt, and eyes with a look in them so 
 far away from our humble circle about the 
 reading-lamp, we deemed it wiser to ask no 
 questions. For years it had been an old country 
 custom of ours, when we sat late, to seek the 
 pantry before retiring, but now when invited 
 to join us in these childish spreads, " No, thank 
 you," Letitia would reply, and in a tone so 
 scrupulously courteous I used to feel like the 
 man old Butters told about- a poor, inadvertent 
 wight, he was, who had offered a sandwich to 
 an angel. I forget now how the story runs, 
 but the man grumbled at his rebuff, and so 
 did I. 
 
 " I know, my dear," Dove reproved me, "but 
 you ought not to do such things when you see 
 she's thinking." 
 
 "Thinking!" I cried, cooling my temper in 
 bread-and-milk. "Is it thinking, then?" 
 
 "I don't know what it is," Dove sighed. 
 "She isn't Letitia any more, yet for the life of 
 me I can't tell why. I never dream now of
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 disturbing her when she looks that way, and I 
 cannot even talk to her as I used to do." 
 
 "She isn't well," I said. 
 
 "She says she was never better." 
 
 "She may be troubled." 
 
 "She says she was never happier." 
 
 "Well, then," I decided, sagely, "it must be 
 thinking, as you say." 
 
 We agreed to take no notice of what might be 
 only moody crotchets after all ; they would soon 
 pass. We no longer pressed her to join our 
 diversions about the lamp, but welcomed her in 
 the old spirit when she came willingly or of her 
 own accord. Yet even then it was not the same : 
 there was some mute, mysterious barrier to the 
 old, free, happy intercourse. Some word of 
 Dove's or mine, mere foolery, perhaps, but 
 meant in cheerfulness, would dance out gayly 
 across the table where we sat at cards, but slink 
 back home again, disgraced. What could this 
 discord be? we asked ourselves this strange 
 impassiveness, this disapproval, as it seemed to 
 us negative, but no less obvious for that?" 
 
 There was a heaviness in the air. We breathed 
 more freely in Letitia's absence. We grew self- 
 conscious in that mute, accusing presence, which 
 
 194
 
 Ne<w Eden 
 
 I resented and my wife deplored. Dove even 
 confessed to a feeling of guiltiness, yet could 
 remember no offence. 
 
 "What have I done?" I asked my wife. 
 
 "What have I done?" asked she. 
 
 At meals, especially, we were ill at ease. The 
 very viands, even those famous dishes of Dove's 
 own loving handiwork, met with disfavor instead 
 of praise. Letitia had abandoned meats; now 
 she declined Dove's pies! Pastry was innutri- 
 tious, she declared, meats not intended for man 
 at all, and even of green things she ate so minc- 
 ingly that my little housewife was in despair. 
 
 "What can I get for you, dear?" she would 
 ask, anxiously. "What would you like?" 
 
 " My love," Letitia would reply, flushing with 
 annoyance, "I am perfectly satisfied." 
 
 " But I'll get you anything, Letitia." 
 
 " I eat quite enough, my dear," was the usual 
 answer "quite enough," she would add, firmly, 
 "for any one." 
 
 Then Dove would sink back ruefully, and I, 
 pitying my wife I, rebuked but unabashed and 
 shameless in my gluttony, would pass my plate 
 again. 
 
 "Give me," I would say, cheerfully, "a third
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 piece of that excellent, that altogether heavenly 
 cherry-pie, my dear." 
 
 It may sound like triumph, but was not 
 for Letitia Primrose would ignore me utterly. 
 " Have you read," she would ask, sipping a little 
 water from her glass, " New Eden, by Mrs. Lord ?" 
 
 We still walked mornings to the school-house, 
 still talked together as we walked, but not as 
 formerly not of the old subjects, which was 
 less to be wondered at, nor yet of new ones with 
 the old eloquence. I felt constrained. There 
 was a new note in Letitia 's comments on the 
 way the world was going, though I could not 
 define its pitch. She spoke, I thought, less 
 frankly than of old, but much more carelessly. 
 She seemed more listless in her attitude towards 
 matters that had roused her, heart and soul, in 
 other days. Me she ignored at pleasure; could 
 it be possible, I wondered, that she was de- 
 termined to renounce the whole round world as 
 well? 
 
 It was I who had first resented this alienation, 
 but it was Dove who could not be reconciled 
 to a change so inscrutable and unkind. Time, 
 I argued, was sufficient reason; age, I reminded 
 her, cast strange shadows before its coming; 
 
 196
 
 Ne<w Eden 
 
 our friend was growing old perhaps like her 
 father before her time. But Dove was 
 alarmed : Letitia was pale, she said ; her face was 
 wan there was a drawn look in the lines of the 
 mouth and eyes; even her walk had lost its 
 buoyancy. 
 
 "True," I replied, "but even that is not un- 
 natural, my dear. Besides, she eats nothing; 
 she starves herself." 
 
 My wife rose suddenly. 
 
 "Bertram," she said, earnestly, "you must 
 stop this folly. I have tried my best to tempt 
 her out of it, but I have failed. It is you she is 
 fondest of. It is you who must speak." 
 
 " I fear it will do no good," I answered, " but I 
 will try." I have had use for courage in my 
 lifetime, both as doctor and man, but I here 
 confess to a trembling of the heart-strings, a 
 childish faintness, a lily cowardice in these en- 
 counters, these trifling domestic sallies and am- 
 buscades. Nor have I strategy; I know but one 
 method of attack, and its sole merit is the little 
 time it wastes. 
 
 " Letitia," I said, next morning, as we walked 
 town ward, "you are ill." 
 
 "Nonsense, Bertram," she replied. 
 197
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "You are ill," I replied, firmly. "You are 
 pale as a ghost. Your hands tremble. Your 
 walk" 
 
 "I was never stronger in my life," she inter- 
 posed, and as if she had long expected this little 
 crisis and was prepared for it. " Never, I think, 
 have I felt so tranquil, so serene. My mind " 
 
 " I am not speaking of your mind, ' ' I said. " I 
 am talking of your body." 
 
 "Bertram," she said, excitedly, "that is just 
 your error not yours alone, but the whole 
 world's error. This thinking always of 
 earthly" 
 
 "Now, Letitia," I protested, "I have been a 
 doctor " 
 
 "Illness," she continued, "is a state of mind. 
 To think one is ill, is to be ill, of course, but to 
 think one is well, is to be well, as I am well, 
 I mean, in a way I never dreamed of! a way 
 so sure, so beautiful, that I think sometimes I 
 never knew health before." 
 
 "Letitia," I said, sharply, "what nonsense is 
 this?" 
 
 "It is not nonsense," she retorted. "It is 
 living truth. Oh, how can we be so blind! 
 The body, Bertram why, the body is nothing!" 
 
 198
 
 New Eden 
 
 "Nothing!" I cried. 
 
 "Nothing!" she answered, her face glowing. 
 "The body is nothing; the mind is everything! 
 It is God's great precious gift! With my mind 
 I can control my body my life yes, my very 
 destiny! if I use God's gift of Will. It is divine." 
 
 "Letitia," I said, sternly, "those are fine 
 words, and well enough in their time and place. 
 I am not a physician of souls. I mend worn 
 bodies, when I can. It is yours I am thinking 
 of the frail, white, half -starved flesh and blood 
 where your soul is kept." 
 
 "Stop!" she cried. "You have no right to 
 speak that way. You mean well, Bertram, but 
 you are wrong. You are mistaken terribly 
 mistaken," she repeated, earnestly "terribly 
 mistaken. I am quite, quite able to care for 
 myself. I only ask to be let alone." 
 
 She had grown hysterical. Tears were in 
 her eyes. 
 
 " See," she said, in a calmer tone, wiping them 
 away, " I have had perfect control till now. 
 This is not weakness merely; it is worse: it is 
 sin. But I shall show you. I shall show you 
 a great truth, Bertram, if you will let me. Only 
 have patience, that is all." 
 
 199
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 She smiled and paused in a little common 
 near the school-house where none might hear us. 
 
 "I learned it only recently," she told me. 
 " I cannot see how I never thought of it before : 
 this great power mind has over matter how 
 just by the will which God has given us in His 
 goodness, we may rise above these petty, earthly 
 things which chain us down. We can rise here, 
 Bertram here on earth, I mean and when we 
 do, even though our feet be on Grassy Fordshire 
 ground, we walk in a higher sphere. Ah, can't 
 you see then that nothing can ever touch us? 
 nothing earthly, however bitter, can ever 
 sadden us or spoil our lives! There will be no 
 such thing as disappointment; no regret, no 
 death and earth will be Eden come again." 
 
 Her eyes were shining. 
 
 " Letitia," I said, "it is of another world that 
 you are dreaming." 
 
 "No, it is all quite possible here," she said. 
 " It is possible to you, if you only think so. It 
 is possible for me, because I do." 
 
 "It seems," I said, "a monstrous selfishness." 
 
 "Selfishness!" she said, aghast. 
 
 "As long as you have human eyes," I said, 
 "you will see things to make you weep, Letitia." 
 200
 
 New Eden 
 
 "But if I shut them if I rise above these 
 petty" 
 
 "The sound of crying will reach your ears," I 
 said. " How then shall you escape sadness and 
 regret? What right have you to avoid the 
 burdens your fellows bear ? to be in bliss, while 
 they are suffering? It would be monstrous, 
 Letitia Primrose. You would not be woman: 
 You would be a fiend." 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "You don't understand," she said. 
 
 "At least," I answered, "I will send you 
 something from the office." 
 
 She shut her lips. 
 
 "I shall not take it." 
 
 "It will make you stronger," I insisted. 
 
 "You can do nothing," she answered, coldly, 
 "to make me stronger than I am."
 
 IX 
 
 A SERIOUS MATTER 
 
 |F ever woman had a tender heart, 
 that heart was Dove's. I used to 
 say, to her confusion, that a South 
 Sea cannibal might find confession- 
 al in her gentle ear, were his voice 
 but low enough ; that she might draw back, shud- 
 dering at his tales of the bones he had picked, 
 but if only his tears were real ones, I could 
 imagine her, when he had done, putting her hand 
 upon his swarthy shoulder and saying, earnestly: 
 "I know just how you feel!" 
 Such was the woman Letitia confided in, now 
 that her tongue was loosened and the mystery 
 solved, for her soul was brimming with those 
 new visions dreams so roseate as she painted 
 them that my wife listened with their wonder 
 mirrored in her round brown eyes, and dumb 
 before that eloquence. Dove loved Letitia as 
 
 202
 
 A Serious Matter 
 
 a greater woman than herself, she said, wor- 
 shipped her for her wider knowledge and more 
 fluent speech, just as she wondered at it rue- 
 fully as a girl on Sun Dial listening to Letitia's 
 tales of dryads and their spells. In return for 
 all this rapt attention and modest reverence, 
 Letitia formerly had been grace itself. It was a 
 tender tyranny she had exercised; but now? 
 how should my simple, earthly Dove, mother 
 and housewife, confide any longer her favorite 
 cares, her gentle fears, her innocent regrets? 
 With what balm of sympathy and cheer would 
 the new Letitia heal those wounds ? Would not 
 their very existence be denied ; or worse, be held 
 as evidence of sin? iniquity in my poor girl's 
 soul, hidden there like a worm i' the bud, and 
 to be chastened in no wise save by taking in- 
 visible white wings of thought, and soaring 
 God knows where ? 
 
 The new Letitia was not unamiable, nor yet 
 unkind, knowingly, for she smiled consistently 
 upon all about her a strange, aloof, unloving 
 smile though, at which we sighed. We should 
 have liked her to be heart and soul again in our 
 old-time common pleasures, even to have joined 
 us now and then in a fault or two to have 
 
 203
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 looked less icily, for example, upon our occa- 
 sional petty gossip of our neighbors, or to have 
 added one wrathful word to our little rages at 
 the way the world was straying from the golden 
 mist we had seen it turn in, in our youth. As 
 we watched her, wondering, laughing sometimes, 
 sometimes half-angry at this new and awful 
 guise she had assumed, it would come to us, not 
 so much how sadly earthen we must seem to 
 her, nor yet how strange and daft and airy her 
 new views seemed to us in our duller sight but 
 how the old Letitia whom we had loved was gone 
 forever. 
 
 "Bertram," said my wife one evening as we 
 sat together by the lamp, "what do you think 
 Letitia says?" 
 
 "I am prepared for anything, my dear." 
 Dove, who was sewing, laid down her work and 
 said, gravely: 
 
 " She does not believe in marriage any more." 
 I raised my eyebrows. There was really noth- 
 ing to be said. 
 
 "At least," my wife went on, resuming her 
 sewing, " she says that the time will come when 
 the race will have" Dove paused thoughtfully 
 " risen above such things, I think she said. I 
 
 204
 
 A Serious Matter . 
 
 really don't remember the words she used, but 
 I believe yes, there will be marriage in a way 
 that is" Dove knitted her brows "a union 
 of kindred souls, if I understand her." 
 
 "Ah!" I replied. "I see. But what about 
 the perpetuation " 
 
 My wife shook her head. 
 
 "Oh, all that will be done away with, I be- 
 lieve," she said, gravely. 
 
 " Done away with!" I cried. 
 
 "At least," Dove explained, "it will not be 
 necessary." 
 
 My face, I suppose, may have looked incredu- 
 lous. 
 
 " I don't quite comprehend what Letitia says 
 sometimes," my wife explained, "but to-day 
 she was telling me " 
 
 Dove laughed quaintly. 
 
 "Oh, I forget what comes next," she said, 
 "but Letitia told me all about it this morning." 
 
 I returned to my quarterly. Presently my 
 wife resumed: 
 
 " She has four books about it." 
 
 "Only four!" I said. "I should think one 
 would need a dozen at least to explain such 
 mysteries." 
 
 14 205
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 " She says herself she is only at the beginning," 
 Dove replied. " She's now in the first circle or 
 cycle, I've forgotten which but the more she 
 reads and the more she thinks about it, the more 
 wonderful it grows. Oh, there was something 
 else what was it now she called it ? something 
 about the cosmos, I think she said, but I 
 didn't quite grasp the thing at all." 
 
 "I'm surprised," I replied. "It's very sim- 
 ple." 
 
 "I suppose it is," Dove answered, quickly, 
 and so humbly that I laughed, but she looked up 
 at me with such a quivering smile, I checked 
 myself. "I suppose it is simple," she replied. 
 " I guess my mind is not very strong, Bertram. 
 I I find it so hard to understand some " 
 
 I saw the tears were coming. 
 
 "Don't trouble yourself about such things, 
 my dear," I said, cheerfully. "It's a bonny 
 mind you have, you take my word for it." 
 
 Dove wiped her eyes. 
 
 "No," she said; "when I listen to Letitia, I 
 feel like a" 
 
 "There, there, my dear," I said, "you have 
 things a thousand times more vital and useful 
 and beautiful than this cosmos Letitia talks 
 206
 
 A Serious Matter 
 
 about. It's only another word for the universe, 
 my love, if I remember rightly I'm not quite 
 sure myself, but it doesn't matter. It's easy to 
 pronounce, and it may mean something, or it 
 may mean nothing, but we needn't trouble our- 
 selves about it, little one. You have work to 
 do. You must remember Letitia has no such 
 ties to bind her to the simple things, which are 
 enough for most of us to battle with. I am tired 
 of theories myself, dear heart. Work every- 
 day, humble, loving service is all that keeps life 
 normal and people pleasant to have about. I 
 see so much of this other side, it is always good 
 to come home to you." 
 
 I went back to my medical journal I forgot 
 to say I had come around to my wife's side of our 
 reading-table in settling this perplexing matter; 
 I went back to my work, and she to hers, and 
 we finished the evening very quietly, and in as 
 good health and unruffled spirits as the cosmos 
 itself must enjoy, I think, judging from the easy 
 way it has run on, year after year, age after age, 
 since the dark beginning.
 
 PART III 
 Ro s e m a ry
 
 THE HOME-KEEPER 
 
 IHE years slip by so quietly in 
 Grassy Ford that men and women 
 born here find themselves old, they 
 scarce know how, for are they not 
 still within sound of the brooks 
 they fished in, and in the shadow of the very 
 hill- sides they climbed for butternuts, when they 
 were young? The brooks run on so gayly as 
 before, and why not they as well ? 
 
 "Butters," Shears used to grumble, "never 
 could learn that he was old enough to stop his 
 jawing and meddling around the town, till they 
 dug his grave for him; then he shut up fast 
 enough." 
 
 "Well, then," said Caleb Kane, another char- 
 acter, " we'll sure enough have to send for the 
 sexton." 
 
 Colonel Shears eyed Caleb with suspicion, 
 211
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "What for?" he asked. 
 
 "Why, to get a word in edgewise, Sam'l," 
 Caleb replied, and the Colonel rose, shifted his 
 cigar, and sauntered homeward. 
 
 "Mostly comedies," said the one we call 
 Johnny Keats, when I urged him to write the 
 stories of his native town; yet, as I told him, 
 there are tragedies a-plenty too in Grassy Ford- 
 shire, though the dagger in them is a slower tort- 
 ure than the short swift stab men die of in a 
 literary way. Our heroic deaths are done by 
 inches, as a rule, so imperceptibly, so often with 
 jests and smiles in lieu of fine soliloquies, that 
 our own neighbors do not always know how rare 
 a play the curtain falls on sometimes among our 
 hills. 
 
 If I do not die in harness, if, as I often dream of 
 doing, I turn my practice over to some younger 
 man perhaps to Robin, who shows some signs 
 of following in his father's steps I shall write 
 the story of my native town ; not in the old way, 
 embellished, as Butters would have termed it, 
 with family photographs of the leading citizens 
 and their houses and cow-sheds, and their wood- 
 en churches, and their corner stores with the 
 clerks and pumpkins in array before them not 
 
 212
 
 The Home-keeper 
 
 in that old, time-honored, country manner, but 
 in the way it comes to me as I look backward and 
 think of the heroes and heroines and the clowns 
 and villains I have known. I shall need some- 
 thing to keep me from "jawing and meddling 
 around the town"; why not white paper and a 
 good stub pen, while I smoke and muse of my 
 former usefulness. I suppose I shall never write 
 the chronicle ; Johnny Keats could, if he would ; 
 and I would, if I could thus the matter rests, 
 while the town and its tales and I myself grow 
 old together. Even Johnny Keats, who was a 
 boy when Letitia taught in the red brick school- 
 house, has a thin spot in his hair. 
 
 Had Dove but lived it is idle, I know, to say 
 what might have been, had our Grassy Ford- 
 shire been the same sweet place it was, before 
 she went like other white birds "southward," 
 she said, "but only for a winter, Bertram 
 surely spring comes again." 
 
 This I do know: that I should have had far 
 less to tell of Letitia Primrose, who might have 
 gone on mooning of a better world had Dove not 
 gone to one, leaving no theories but a son and 
 husband to Letitia 's care. It was not to the 
 oracle that she intrusted us, but to the woman 
 213
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 not to the new Letitia but to the old, who had 
 come back to us in those vigils at my wife's 
 bedside. 
 
 "This is not sin, Letitia," Dove said to her. 
 
 "Oh, my dear!" replied Letitia. "You must 
 not dream that I could call it so." 
 
 "Still," Dove answered, "if I had your mind, 
 perhaps ' 
 
 "Hush, dear love," Letitia whispered. "My 
 sweet, my sweet oh, if I had your soul!" 
 
 From such chastening moments Letitia Prim- 
 rose was the mother she might have been. A 
 tenderer, humbler heart, save only Dove's, I 
 never knew, nor a gentler voice, nor a stronger 
 hand, than those she gave us, man and boy 
 bereft not only in those first blank days, but 
 through the years that followed. So easily 
 that I marvelled did the school-mistress become 
 the home-keeper, nor can I look upon a spinster 
 now, however whimsical, that I do not think of 
 her as the elder sister of that wife and mother 
 in her soul. 
 
 A new dream possessed Letitia; it was to be 
 like Dove. She could never be youthful save 
 in spirit; she could never be lovely with that 
 subtle poise and grace which cannot be feigned 
 
 214
 
 The Home-keeper 
 
 or purchased at any price, neither with gold nor 
 patience nor purest prayer nor any precious 
 thing whatever, but comes only as a gift to the 
 true young mother at her cradle-side. She 
 could not be one-half so perfect, she confessed 
 humbly to herself, but she could keep the fire 
 blazing on a lonely hearth, where a man sat si- 
 lent with his child. 
 
 My girl's housewifeliness had seemed a simple 
 matter when Letitia's mind was on her school 
 and sky; it was now a marvel as she learned 
 what Dove had done those thousand little 
 things, and all so easily, so placidly, that at the 
 day's fag-end Letitia, weary with unaccustomed 
 cares, wondered what secret system of philoso- 
 phy Dove's had been. What were the rules 
 and their exceptions ? What were the formulas ? 
 Here were sums to do, old as the hills, but 
 strange, new answers! There must be a gram- 
 mar for all that fluency, that daily smoothness 
 in every clause and phrase a kind of eloquence, 
 as Letitia saw it now, marvelling at it as Dove 
 had marvelled at her own. When she had solved 
 it, as she thought, the steak went wrong, or the 
 pudding failed her, or the laundry came home 
 torn or incomplete, moths perhaps got into 
 
 215
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 closets, ants stormed the pantry, or a pipe got 
 stopped ; and then, discomfited, she would have 
 Dove's magic and good - humored mastery to 
 seek again. 
 
 She had kept house once herself, it is true, 
 but years ago, for her simple father, and not in 
 Dove's larger way. The Primrose household as 
 she saw it now had been a meagre one, for here 
 in the years of Dove's gentle rule, a wondrous 
 domestic ritual had been established, which it 
 was now her duty to perform. That she did it 
 faithfully, so that the windows shone and the 
 curtains hung like snowy veils behind them, so 
 that the searching light of day disclosed no 
 film upon the walnut, who could doubt, knowing 
 that conscience and its history? She kept our 
 linen neatly stitched; she set the table as Dove 
 had set it ; she poured out tea for us more prim- 
 ly, to be sure, but cheerfully as Dove had poured 
 it, smiling upon us from Dove's chair. 
 
 Robin grew straight of limb and wholesome of 
 soul as Dove had dreamed. Letitia helped him 
 with his lessons, told him the legends of King 
 Arthur's court, and read with him those Tales 
 of a Grandfather, which I had loved as just such 
 another romping boy though not so handsome 
 
 216
 
 The Home-keeper 
 
 and debonair as Dove's son was, for he had her 
 eyes and her milder, her more poetic face, and 
 was more patrician in his bearing; he is like his 
 mother to this day. His temper, which is not 
 maternal, I confess those sudden gusts when, 
 as I before him, he chafed in bonds and cried 
 out bitter things, rose hotly sometimes at Leti- 
 tia's discipline, though he loved her doubly 
 now. 
 
 "You are not my mother!" he would shout, 
 clinching his fists. "You are not my mother!" 
 
 Then her heart would fail her, for she loved 
 him fondly, even in his rage, and her penalty 
 would be mild indeed. Often she blamed her- 
 self for his petty waywardness, and feeling her 
 slackening hand he would take the bit between 
 his teeth, coltlike; but he was a good lad, 
 Robin was, and, like his mother, tender-hearted, 
 for all his spirit, and as quick to be sorry as to 
 be wrong. When they had made it up, crying 
 in each other's arms, Letitia would say to him: 
 
 "I'm not your mother, but I love you, and 
 I've got no other little boy." 
 
 It was thus Letitia kept our home for us, 
 tranquil and spotless as of old; and if at first I 
 chose more often than was kind to sit rather 
 
 217
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 among my bottles and my books and instru- 
 ments, leaving her Robin and the evening- 
 lamp, it was through no fault or negligence of 
 hers I did it, for, however bright my hearth might 
 glow, however tended by her gentle hands, its 
 flame was but the ruddy symbol to me of a past 
 whose spirit never could return. 
 
 "Who is Miss Primrose?" strangers in Grassy 
 Ford would ask. 
 
 "She's a sort of relative," the reply would be, 
 "and the doctor's house-keeper." 
 
 For the woman who keeps still sacred and 
 beautiful another woman's home, in all the 
 language, in all our wordiness, there is no other 
 name.
 
 II 
 
 JOHNNY KEATS 
 
 HE one we call Johnny Keats is 
 well enough known as Karl St. 
 John. He was a Grassy Ford- 
 shire boy and Letitia's pupil, as 
 I have said, till he left us, only to 
 like us better, as he once told me, by seeing 
 the world beyond our hills. He went gladly, I 
 should say, judged by the shining in his eyes. 
 He was a homely, slender, quiet lad, except 
 when roused, when he was vehement and ob- 
 stinate enough, and somewhat given, I am told, 
 to rhapsody and moonshine. He read much 
 rather than studied as a school-boy, and was 
 seen a good deal on Sun Dial and along Trouble- 
 some where he never was known to fish, but 
 wandered aimlessly, wasting, it was said, a deal 
 of precious time which might have been bettered 
 in his father's shop. Letitia liked him for a cer- 
 
 219
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 tain brightness in his face when she talked of 
 books, or of other things outside the lessons; 
 otherwise he was not what is termed in Grassy 
 Ford a remarkable boy. We have lads who 
 "speak pieces" and "accept," as we say it, 
 " lucrative " positions in our stores. 
 
 Karl drifted off when barely twenty, and as 
 time went by was half forgotten by the town, 
 when suddenly the news came home to us that 
 he had written, and what is sometimes considered 
 more, had published, and with his own name 
 on the title-page, a novel! Sleepington Fair, 
 the thing was called. There are those who say 
 Sleepington Fair means Grassy Ford, and that 
 the river which the hero loved, and where he 
 rescued a maid named Hilda from an April 
 flood, is really our own little winding Trouble- 
 some, widened and deepened to permit the well- 
 nigh tragic ending of the tale. You can wade 
 Troublesome; Hilda went in neck-deep. They 
 say also that the man McBride, who talks so much, 
 is our old friend Colonel Shears; the fanciful 
 McBride is tall in fact, and the actual Shears is 
 tall in fancy. Be that as it may, the book was 
 excellent, considering that it was written by a 
 Grassy Fordshire boy, and it set at least two 
 
 220
 
 Johnny Keats 
 
 others of our lads, and a lady, I believe, to scrib- 
 bling further deponent sayeth not. 
 
 Sleepington Fair was read by the ladies of 
 the Longfellow Circle, our leading literary club. 
 Our Mrs. Buhl, acknowledged by all but envious 
 persons to be the most cultured woman in 
 Grassy Ford, pronounced it safely "one of the 
 most pleasing and promising novels of the past 
 decade," and, in concluding her critical review 
 before the club, she said, smilingly : " From Mr. 
 St. John our Mr. St. John, for let me call him 
 so, since surely he is ours to claim from our 
 Mr. St. John we may expect much, and I feel 
 that I am only voicing the sentiments of the 
 Longfellow Circle when I wish for him every 
 blessing of happiness and health, that his facile 
 pen may through the years to come trace only 
 what is pure and noble, and that when, as they 
 will, the shadows lengthen, and his sun descends 
 in the glowing west, he may say with the poet ' 
 
 What the poet said I have forgotten, but the 
 words of Mrs. Buhl brought tears to the eyes of 
 many of her auditors, who, at the meeting's close, 
 pressed about her with out - stretched hands, 
 assuring her that she had quite outdone herself 
 and that never in their lives had they heard 
 
 IS 221
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 anything more scholarly, anything more thought- 
 fully thought or more touchingly said. Would 
 she not publish it, she was asked, pleadingly? 
 No ? It was declared a pity. It was a shame, 
 they said, that she had never written a book 
 herself, she who could write so charmingly of 
 another's. 
 
 "Ladies! Ladies!" murmured Mrs. Buhl, 
 much affected by this ovation, but her modest 
 protest was drowned utterly in a chorus of 
 
 "Yes, indeed!" 
 
 Sleepington Fair aroused much speculation 
 as to its author's rise in the outer world, chiefly 
 with reference to the money he must be making, 
 the sum being variously estimated at from five 
 to twenty-five thousand a year. 
 
 "Too low," said Shears. " Suppose he makes 
 half a dollar on every book, and suppose he sells 
 well, say he sells one hundred thousand " 
 
 "One hundred thousand!" cried Caleb Kane. 
 "Go wan!" 
 
 "Why, darn your skin," said Colonel Shears, 
 " why not ? The Old Red Barn sold five hundred 
 thousand, and only out two years. Saw it my- 
 self in the paper, the other day." 
 
 "No!" 
 
 222
 
 Johnny Keats 
 
 "I say yes! Five hundred thousand, by 
 cracky!" 
 
 "Oh, well," said Caleb, "that thing was 
 written by a different cuss." 
 
 When it was learned one morning that Karl 
 had returned under cover of night for a visit 
 to Grassy Ford, those who had known the boy 
 looked curiously to see what manner of man he 
 had become. And, lo! he was scarcely a man 
 at all, but a beardless youth, no laurel upon his 
 head, no tragic shadow on his brow! a shy 
 figure flitting down the long main street, darting 
 into stores and out again, and nodding quickly, 
 and hurrying home again as fast as his legs would 
 take him to dodge a caller even there and 
 wander, thankful for escape, on the banks of 
 Troublesome. 
 
 "Well, you 'ain't changed much," said Colonel 
 Shears, when he met the author. 
 
 "No," said Karl. 
 
 " Look just as peaked as ever," was the cheer- 
 ful greeting of Caleb Kane. 
 
 "Yes," said Karl. 
 
 "Don't seem a day older," said Grandma 
 Smith. 
 
 "No?" said Karl. 
 
 223
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "Why, Karl," said Shears, "I thought you'd 
 change; thought you'd look different, somehow! 
 Yes, sir, I thought you'd look different but, I 
 swan,' you don't!" 
 
 "No," said Karl, and there was such honest 
 chagrin in the faces of those old-time friends, he 
 was discomfited. What had they expected, he 
 asked at home? 
 
 "Why," said his mother, "don't you know? 
 Can't you guess, my dear? They looked at 
 least for a Prince - Albert and a stove-pipe 
 hat." 
 
 " Silk hat! Prince-Albert!" 
 
 "Why, yes," said his father. "The outward 
 and visible sign of the soul within." 
 
 Karl's clothes, it is true, were scarcely the 
 garb to be hoped for in so marked a man. The 
 dandies of Grassy Ford noted complacently that 
 his plain, gray, wrinkled suit did not compare 
 for style and newness with their own, while they 
 wore at their throats the latest cravats of emer- 
 ald and purple loveliness. Karl's tie was black, 
 and a plain and pinless bow which drooped de- 
 jectedly. His hat was a mere soft, weather- 
 beaten, shapeless thing, and he walked on Sunday 
 with gloveless hands. Miss Johnson, a reigning 
 
 224
 
 Johnny Keats 
 
 belle, tells how he once escorted her from the 
 post-office to her father's gate, talking of Words- 
 worth all the way, and all unconscious of the 
 Sun Dial burrs still clinging to his coat ! 
 
 Letitia, for one, declared that she was not 
 disappointed in the author of Sleepington Fair. 
 In honor of her old pupil she gave a dinner, and 
 spent such thought upon its menu and took 
 such pains with its service, lest it should offend 
 a New-Yorker's epicurean eye, it is remembered 
 still, and not merely because it was the only 
 literary dinner Grassy Ford has known. There 
 was some agitation among the invited guests as 
 to the formality involved in a dinner to a lion 
 even though that lion might be seen commonly 
 with burrs in his tail. The pride and honor of 
 Grassy Ford was at stake, and the matter was 
 the more important as the worthy fathers of 
 the town seldom owned dress - suits in those 
 days. For a time, I believe, when I was a boy, 
 Mr. Jewell, the banker, was the sole possessor, 
 and became thereby, no less than by virtue of 
 the manners which accompany the occasional 
 wearing of so suave a garment in so small a 
 town our first real gentleman. In his case, 
 however, the ownership was the less surprising 
 225
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 in that he was known to enjoy New York con- 
 nections, on his mother's side. 
 
 Now, to those who consulted Letitia as to the 
 precise demands of the approaching feast, she 
 explained, gracefully, that they would be wel- 
 come in any dress adding, however, for the 
 gentlemen's benefit, and hopefully no doubt, 
 for she had the occasion in heart and hand, that 
 the conventional garb after six o'clock was a 
 coat with tails. As a result of the conference 
 two guests-to-be might have been seen through 
 a tailor's window, standing coatless and erect 
 upon a soap-box, much straighter than it was 
 their wont to stand, much fuller of chest, robin- 
 like, aad with hips thrown neatly back to 
 match, as the Colonel said. Two other gentle- 
 men of the dinner-party told their wives bluntly 
 that they would go "as usual," or they would 
 be not go at all, before which edicts their 
 dames salaamed. 
 
 Letitia counted on five dress-suits, at least, 
 including the author's and my own. Mine I 
 must wear, she said, or she would be shamed 
 forever; so I put it on when the night arrived, 
 wormed my way cautiously into its outgrown 
 folds, only to find then, to my pain, that an up- 
 226
 
 Johnny Keats 
 
 right posture alone could preserve its dignity 
 and mine. 
 
 The hour arrived, and with it the Buxtons, old 
 friends and neighbors; Dr. Jamieson, homoeo- 
 pathic but otherwise beyond reproach, and Miss 
 Jamieson, his daughter, who could read Brown- 
 ing before breakfast, much, I suppose, as some 
 robust men on empty stomachs smoke strong 
 cigars; the Gallowses, not wanted overmuch, 
 but asked to keep the white wings of peace 
 hovering in our hills ; the Jewells, and some one 
 I've forgotten, and then the Buhls Mr. Buhl 
 smiling, but unobtrusive to the ear, Mrs. Buhl 
 radiant and gracious, and pervading the as- 
 semblage with a dowagerial rustling of lavender 
 silk. To my mind the quieter woman in the 
 plain black gown adorned only by an old-lace 
 collar and antique pin, her hair the whiter for 
 her cheeks now rosy with agitation, her eyes 
 shining with the joy of the first great function 
 she had ever given, was the loveliest figure 
 among them all. 
 
 Last came two plain, unassuming folk, though 
 proud enough of that only son of theirs, and 
 then 
 
 "Oh!" cries Mrs. Buhl, so suddenly, so ec- 
 227
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 statically that the hum ceases and every head 
 is turned. "Mister St. John!" 
 
 It is indeed the author of Sleepington Fair. 
 And behold the lion! a slight and faltering 
 figure, pausing upon the threshold, burrless in- 
 deed, but oh! in that old sack suit of gray! 
 
 Letitia bore the shock much better than might 
 be expected. She changed color, it is true, but 
 the flush came back at once, and, standing loyal- 
 ly at his side, she led the lion into the room. 
 
 It was a trying moment. He was an Author 
 he had written a Book but we were thirteen 
 to his one, and four dress-suits besides ! Thirteen 
 to one, if you omit his parents, and four dress- 
 shirts, remember, bulging and crackling before 
 his dazzled eyes! New York wavered and fell 
 back, and the first skirmish was Grassy Ford's. 
 
 At the same instant it was whispered anxious- 
 ly in my ear that the ices had not arrived, but I 
 counselled patience, and dinner was proclaimed 
 without delay. The lion and Letitia led the 
 procession to the feast, and I have good reason 
 for the statement that he was a happier lion 
 when we were seated and he had put his legs 
 away. Still, even then he could scarcely be 
 called at ease. Once only did he talk as if he 
 
 228
 
 Johnny Keats 
 
 loved his theme, and then it was solely with 
 Letitia, who had mentioned Troublesome, out 
 of the goodness of her heart, as I believe. His 
 face lighted at the name, and he talked so glad- 
 ly that all other converse ceased. What was 
 the lion roaring of so gently there ? Startled to 
 hear no other voices, he stopped abruptly, and, 
 seeing our curious faces all about him, dropped 
 his eyes, abashed, and kept them on his plate. 
 Then Mrs. Buhl, famous in such emergencies, 
 came to the rescue. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. St. John," she said, while we all sat 
 listening, " I've wanted to ask you: how did you 
 come to write Sleepington Fair?" 
 
 "Oh," he replied, reddening, "I I wanted 
 to that was all." 
 
 "I see," she replied. 
 
 "Do you like 'Sordello'?" asked Miss Jamie- 
 son, in the awkward silence that ensued. 
 
 "Well, really I cannot say; I have never 
 read it," was his confession. 
 
 "Not read 'Sordello'!" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Let's see, that's Poe, isn't it ?" asked a young 
 dress-shirt, swelling visibly, emboldened to the 
 guess by the lion's discomfiture, 
 
 229
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "Robert Browning," replied the lady, with a 
 look of scorn, and the dress-shirt sank again. 
 
 "New York is a great place, isn't it?" volun- 
 teered Jimmy Gallows. 
 
 "Yes," said the lion. 
 
 "Been up the Statue of Liberty, I suppose?" 
 Jimmy went on. 
 . "No," said the lion. 
 
 "What!" cried the chorus. "Never been up 
 the" 
 
 "What did he say?" asked Mrs. Jewell, who 
 was deaf. Mr. Buxton solemnly inclined his lips 
 to her anxious ear and shouted : 
 
 " He has never been up the Statue of Liberty." 
 
 "Oh!" said the lady. 
 
 The silence was profound. 
 
 "What, never?" piped Jimmy Gallows. 
 
 "Never," said the lion, shaking his mane a 
 little ominously. " I have never been a tourist." 
 
 Letitia mentioned Sun Dial, and would have 
 saved the day, I think, had not Mrs. Buhl leaned 
 forward with the sweetest of alluring smiles. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. St. John," she said, "I've been go- 
 ing to ask you in fact, for a long, long time I 
 have wanted to know, and I wonder now if you 
 won't tell me: how do authors" she paused sig- 
 
 230
 
 Johnny Keats 
 
 nificantly " how do authors get their books ac- 
 cepted?" 
 
 A dress-shirt crackled, but was frowned upon. 
 
 " What did he say?" asked the lady who was 
 deaf. 
 
 "He hasn't said anything yet," roared Mr. 
 Buxton. 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 " Do tell us," urged Mrs. Buhl. " Do, Mr. St. 
 John. I almost called you Karl." 
 
 "Was it a conundrum?" inquired the deaf 
 lady, perceiving that it had been a poser. 
 
 " No. Question: how do authors get their books 
 accepted ?" 
 
 "Yes how do they?" urged Mrs. Buhl. 
 
 "Why," said the lion at last, for all the table 
 hung upon his answer, "by writing them well 
 enough I suppose." 
 
 It was a weak answer. There was no satis- 
 faction in it, no meat, no pith at all, nothing to 
 carry home with you. Mrs. Buhl said, "Oh!" 
 
 "To what, then," piped Jimmy Gallows, "do 
 you attribute your success?" 
 
 He was a goaded lion, one could see quite 
 plainly; the strain was telling on his self-con- 
 trol. 
 
 231
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 " It is not worth mentioning, Mr. Gallows," he 
 replied, stiffly. 
 
 "Mr. St. John," Letitia interposed, in a quiet 
 voice, " was just now telling me that there is no 
 music in all New York to compare with Trouble- 
 some's. Shall we go into the other room?" 
 
 That night, when the last guest had departed, 
 I asked Letitia, " Well, what do you think of the 
 author?" 
 
 "/ am not disappointed," she replied. 
 
 "Not much of a talker, though?" I sug- 
 gested. 
 
 "He does not pretend to be a talker," she 
 replied, warmly. "He is a writer. No," she 
 repeated, " I am not disappointed in my Johnny 
 Keats." 
 
 Next day, I think it was, in the afternoon, he 
 asked Letitia to walk with him to the banks of 
 Troublesome, to a spot which she had praised the 
 night before. His heart was full, and as they 
 lingered together by those singing waters he 
 told her of his struggles in the city whose statue 
 he had never climbed. He told her of his 
 black days there, of his failure and despondency, 
 of his plans to leave it and desert his dreams, 
 but how that mighty, roaring, dragon "creature 
 
 232
 
 had held him pinioned in its claws till he had 
 won. 
 
 "And then," he told her, "when I saw my 
 book, I looked again, and it was not a dragon 
 which had held me it was an angel!" 
 
 Seeing that her eyes were full of tears, he 
 added, earnestly: 
 
 " Miss Primrose, I wanted you to know. You 
 had a part in that little triumph." 
 
 "I?" 
 
 " You. Don't you remember? Don't you re- 
 member those books you left for us ? in our old 
 school-room? on the shelf?"
 
 Ill 
 
 THE FORTUNE-TELLER 
 
 AUTUMN comes early in Grassy 
 Fordshire. In late September the 
 nights are chill and a white mist 
 hovers ghostly in the moonlight 
 'among our hills. The sun dispels 
 it and warms our noons to a summer fervor, 
 but there is no permanence any longer in heat 
 or cold, or leaf or flower all is change and 
 passing and premonition, so that the singing 
 poet in you must turn philosopher and hush 
 his voice, seeing about him the last sad rites 
 of those little lives once blithe and green as 
 his own was in the spring. 
 
 Ere October comes there are crimson stains 
 upon the woodlands. "God's plums, father!" 
 Robin cried, standing as a little boy on Sun 
 Dial and pointing to the distant hills. A spell 
 is over them, a purple and enchanted sleep, 
 234
 
 The Fortune-teller 
 
 though all about them the winds are wakeful, 
 and the sumac fire which blazed up crimson in 
 the sun but a moment gone, burns low in the 
 shadow of white clouds scudding before the gale. 
 Here beneath them the bloom of the golden-rod 
 is upon the land ; fieldsful and lanesful, it bars 
 your way, or brushes your shoulders as you 
 pass. Only the asters, white and purple and 
 all hues between, vie here and there with the 
 mightier host, but its yellow plumes nod triumph 
 on every crest, banks and hedgerows glow with 
 its soldiery, it beards the forest, and even where 
 the plough has passed posts its tall sentries at 
 the furrow's brim. 
 
 In the lower meadows there is still a coverlet 
 of summer green, but half hidden in the taller, 
 rusting grasses, whose feathery tops ripple in 
 the faintest wind, till suddenly it rises and whips 
 them into waves, now ruddy, now flashing silver, 
 while a foam of daisies beats against the gray 
 stone hedges like waters tumbling on a quay. 
 
 There is cheerful fiddling in these dying grasses, 
 and crickets scuttle from beneath your feet ; there 
 is other music too a shrill snoring as of elder 
 fairies oversleeping; startled insects leap upon 
 you, flocks of sparrows flee from interrupted 
 235
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 feasts, squirrels berate you, crows spread horrid 
 tales of murder stalking in the fields. 
 
 Then leave the uplands tripping on its hidden 
 creepers; part the briers of the farthest hedge- 
 row, and descend, Down in the valley there is a 
 smell of apples in the air, pumpkins glow among 
 the wigwams of the Indian-corn, and deeper still 
 runs Troublesome among the willows, shining 
 silver in the waning sun. There in the sopping 
 lowlands they are harvesting the last marsh hay. 
 A road leads townward, the vines scarlet on its 
 tumbling walls ; the air grows cooler 
 
 "Oh, it is beautiful!" says Letitia, sadly 
 "but it is fall." 
 
 I observe in her always at this season an un- 
 usual quietness. She is in the garden as early 
 as in the summer-time, and while it is still drip- 
 ping with heavy dew, for she clings tenderly to 
 its last flowers to her nasturtiums, to the morn- 
 ing-glories on the trellis, and the geraniums and 
 dahlias and phlox and verbenas along the path ; 
 but she gives her heart to her petunias, and 
 because, she says, they are a homely, old-fash- 
 ioned flower, whom no one loves any more. 
 As she caresses them, brushing the drops from 
 their plain, sweet faces, she seems, like them, to 
 
 236
 
 The Fortune-teller 
 
 belong to some bygone, simpler time. Some 
 think her an odd, quaint figure in her sober 
 gown, but they never knew the girl Letitia, or 
 they would see her still, even in this elder woman 
 with the snow-white hair. 
 
 Every fall gypsies camp in the fields near 
 Troublesome on their way southward. It is 
 the same band, Letitia tells me, that has stopped 
 there year after year, and Letitia knows: she 
 used to visit them when she was younger and 
 still had a fortune to be told. It was a weakness 
 we had not suspected. She had never acknowl- 
 edged a belief in omens or Horoscopes, or proph- 
 ecies by palms or dreams, though she used to 
 say fairies were far more likely than people 
 thought. She had seen glades, she told us, 
 lawn or meadow among encircling trees, where, 
 long after sundown, the daylight lingered in a 
 fairy gloaming ; and there*, she said, when the 
 fire-flies danced, she had caught such glimpses 
 of that elf -land dear to childhood, she had come 
 to believe in it again. There was such a spot 
 among our maples, and from the steps where 
 we used to sit, we would watch the afterglow 
 pale there to the starlit dusk, or that golden 
 glory of the rising moon break upon the shadowy 
 16 237
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 world, crowning the tree-tops and quenching 
 the eastern stars. Then, sometimes, Dove and 
 Letitia would talk of oracles and divination and 
 other strange inexplicable things which they 
 had heard of, or had known themselves; but 
 Letitia never spoke of the gypsy band till three 
 giggling village maids, half-fearful and half- 
 ashamed of their stealthy quest, found their 
 school-mistress among the vans! She flushed, 
 I suppose, and made the best of a curious matter, 
 for she said, simply, when we charged her with 
 the story that had spread abroad : 
 
 " They are English' gypsies, and wanderers like 
 the Primroses from their ancient home. That 
 is why they fascinate me, I suppose." 
 
 How often she consulted them, or when she 
 began or ceased to do so, I do not know, but 
 when I showed her the vans by the willows and 
 the smoke rising from the fire, last fall, she 
 smiled and said it was like old times to her 
 but she added, quaintly, that palms did not itch 
 when the veins showed blue. 
 
 " Nonsense," I said, "we are both of us young, 
 Letitia. Let us find the crone and hear her 
 croak. I am not afraid of a little sorcery." 
 
 Paying no heed to her protestations I turned 
 238
 
 The Fortune-teller 
 
 Pegasus I have always a Pegasus, whatever 
 my horse's other name through the meadow- 
 gate. A ragged, brown-faced boy ran out to 
 us and held the bridle while I alighted, and then 
 I turned and offered Letitia a helping hand. 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "No, I'll wait here." 
 
 "Come," I said, "have you no faith, Letitia?" 
 
 "Not any more," she replied. "This is fool- 
 ishness, Bertram. Will you never grow up?" 
 
 " It's only my second-childhood," I explained. 
 "Come, we'll see the vans." 
 
 "Some one will see us," she protested. 
 
 "There is not a soul on the road," I said. 
 
 Shamefacedly she took my hand, glancing 
 uneasily at the highway we had left behind us, 
 and her face flushed as we approached the fire. 
 An ugly old woman with a dirty kerchief about 
 her head, was stirring broth for the evening meal. 
 
 "Tripod and kettle," I said. "Do you re- 
 member this ancient dame?" 
 
 "Yes," said Letitia, "it is" 
 
 "Sibyl," I said. "Her name is Sibyl." 
 
 Letitia smiled. 
 
 "Do you remember me?" she asked, offering 
 her hand. The old witch peered cunningly into 
 
 239
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 her face, grinning and nodding as if in answer. 
 Two or three scraggy, evil-eyed vagabonds were 
 currying horses and idling about the camp, 
 watching us, but at a glance from the fortune- 
 teller, they slouched streamward. The crone's 
 entreaties and my own were of no avail. Letitia 
 put her hands behind her but we saw the vans 
 and patted the horses and crossed the woman's 
 palm so that she followed us, beaming and 
 babbling, to the carriage-side. There we were 
 scarcely seated when, stepping forward so 
 suddenly that I glanced, startled, towards the 
 camp the gypsy laid a brown hand, strong as a 
 man's, upon the reins; and turning then upon 
 Letitia with a look so grim and mysterious that 
 she grew quite pale beneath those tragic eyes, 
 muttered a jargon of which we made out nothing 
 but the words : 
 
 "You are going on a long journey," at which 
 the woman stopped, and taking a backward 
 step, stood there silently and without a smile, 
 gazing upon us till we were gone. 
 
 Letitia laughed uneasily as we drove away. 
 
 "Did she really remember you?" I asked. 
 
 "No, I don't think so which makes it the 
 more surprising." 
 
 240
 
 The Fortune-teller 
 
 "Surprising?" 
 
 "Yes; that she should have said again what 
 she always told me." 
 
 "And what was that?" 
 
 "That I was going on a long journey." 
 
 " Did she always tell you that ?" 
 
 "Always, from the very first." 
 
 "Perhaps she tells every one so," I suggested. 
 
 " No, for I used to ask, and very particularly, 
 as to that." 
 
 Why, I wondered, had she been so curious 
 about long journeys ? I had never known travel 
 to absorb her thoughts. Why had she inquired, 
 and always so very particularly, as she confessed, 
 about that single item of gypsy prophecy, and 
 the very one which would seem least likely to 
 be verified ? Never in my knowledge of Letitia's 
 lifetime had there been any other promise than 
 that of the fortune-teller that she would ever 
 wander from Grassy Ford. I might have asked 
 her, but she seemed silent and depressed as we 
 drove homeward, which was due, I fancied, to 
 the gypsy's rude alarm. For some days after 
 she continued to remark how strangely that 
 repetition of the old augury had sounded in her 
 ears, and smiling at it, she confessed how in 
 241
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 former years she had laid more stress upon it, 
 and had even planned what her gowns would be. 
 
 "Did you guess where you were going?" I 
 ventured to inquire. 
 
 "Well, I rather hoped " 
 
 "Yes?" I said. 
 
 "You know my fondness for history," she 
 continued. "I rather hoped I should see some 
 day what I had read about so long castles and 
 things and then, too, there were the novels I 
 was fond of, like Lorna Doone. I always wanted 
 to see the moors and the Doone Valley, and the 
 water-slide that little John Ridd had found so 
 slippery, when he first saw Lorna." 
 
 "You wanted to see England then," I said. 
 
 "Yes, England," she replied. "England, you 
 know, was my father's country." 
 
 "The Doone Valley," I remarked, "would be 
 Devon, wouldn't it?" 
 
 "Yes," she replied, "and it was Devon where 
 father was a boy." 
 
 "And our old friend Robin Saxeholm came 
 from Devon, you know," I said. 
 
 "So he did," she answered. Then we talked 
 of Robin and his visit to Grassy Fordshire years 
 ago, and what Letitia had forgotten of it I re- 
 
 242
 
 The Fortune-teller 
 
 called to her, and what I could not remember, 
 she supplied, so that it all came back to us like a 
 story or a summer dream. 
 
 When she had gone up-stairs I sat for a long 
 time smoking by the dying fire, and musing of 
 some old-time matters which now came back to 
 me in a clearer light. From thinking of my own 
 youth, little by little, I came to Robin's I mean 
 the younger, who was now so soon to be a man. 
 Tall and fair like the youth he was named for, 
 though not red-haired, he had all but completed 
 that little learning which is a " dangerous thing ": 
 he was a high-school senior now, and over- 
 whelmed sometimes with the wonder of it, but a 
 manly fellow for all that, one whom my eyes 
 dwelt fondly on more often than he knew. In 
 the springtime he would have his parchment; 
 college would follow in the fall college! What 
 could I do to give my son a broader vision of the 
 universe, lest with only Grassy Ford behind him, 
 he should think the outside world lay mostly 
 within his college walls ? 
 
 "You are going on a long journey." 
 The gypsy's words came back unbidden as I 
 rose by the embers of the fire. "A long jour- 
 ney," I repeated; "and why not?" 
 
 243
 
 IV 
 
 AN UNEXPECTED LETTER 
 
 CURING the winter a great piece of 
 news stirred Grassy Ford, and in 
 spite of the snow-drifts on our 
 [walks and porches furnished an 
 i excuse for a dozen calls that other- 
 wise would never have been made so soon. Old 
 Mrs. Luton was discovered in a state of apoplexy 
 on our steps, but on being brought in and di- 
 vested of her husband's coon-skin cap, a plush 
 collar, a scarf, a shawl, a knitted jacket, and a 
 newspaper folded across her chest, recovered her 
 breath and told her story. Mrs. Neal, so Mrs. 
 Luton said, had been heard to say, according to 
 Mrs. Withers, who had it from Mrs. Lowell, who 
 lived next door to Mrs. Bell who, as the world 
 knows, called more often than anybody else at 
 the Neal farm-house, feeling a pity for the lonely 
 woman there, as who did not? Mrs. Neal had 
 
 244
 
 An Unexpected Letter 
 
 been heard to say, what Mrs. Luton would not 
 have repeated for the world to any one but her 
 dear Miss Primrose, who could be trusted im- 
 plicitly, as she knew, and she had said it in the 
 most casual way Mrs. Neal, that is but se- 
 cretly very well pleased, though, Heaven knows, 
 she, Mrs. Luton 
 
 " Won't you have some coffee ?" asked Letitia, 
 for the breakfast was not yet cold. 
 
 "Yes, thank you, I will, for I'm as cold as 
 can be," exclaimed her visitor, laughing hys- 
 terically, and she was profuse in her praise of 
 Letitia's beverage, and inquired the brand. Her 
 manner of sipping it as she sat in an easy-chair 
 before the fire did away with all necessity for a 
 spoon, but was a little trying to a delicate sense 
 of hearing like Letitia's, and was responsible be- 
 side for what was wellnigh a disastrous deluge 
 when in the midst of a copious ingurgitation 
 she suddenly remembered what she had come 
 to tell: 
 
 "Ffff Peggy Neal's a-living in New York!" 
 she splashed, her eyes popping. It would be 
 impossible to relate the story as Mrs. Luton told 
 it, for its ramifications and parentheses involved 
 the history of Grassy Ford and the manifold 
 
 245
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 relationships of its inhabitants, past and present, 
 to say nothing of the time to come, for in specu- 
 lations Mrs. Luton was profound. 
 
 Mrs. Neal, it seems, had broken her long silence 
 and had been heard to allude to "my daughter 
 Peggy in New York." Some years had passed 
 since the farm-gate clicked behind that forlorn 
 and outcast girl, and in all that time the mother 
 had never spoken the daughter's name, nor had 
 any one dared more than once to question her. 
 Letitia had tried once, but once only, to inter- 
 cede for the pupil she had loved, the manner of 
 whose departure was well enough understood in 
 the town and country-side, though where she had 
 gone remained a mystery. 
 
 On leaving the farm that September evening, 
 Peggy, with a desperate and tear-stained face, 
 had been met by a neighbor girl, who as a con- 
 fidant in happier hours, was intrusted with 
 the story. It was not a long one. The mother 
 had pointed to the gate. 
 
 "Look there!" she cried. "He went that 
 way. I guess you'll find him, if you try, you 
 
 Then her mother struck her, Peggy said. She 
 did not know it was the name which felled her. 
 
 Now after silence which had seemed like death 
 246
 
 An Unexpected Letter 
 
 to the lonely woman in the hills, Peggy had 
 written home to her, to beg forgiveness, to say 
 that in a life of ease and luxury in a great city, 
 she could not help thinking of the farm, which 
 seemed a dream to her; she could never return 
 to it, she said, but she wondered if her father 
 was living, and if her mother had still some 
 heart for her wayward daughter, and would 
 write sometimes. She said nothing of a child. 
 That she was still unmarried seemed evident 
 from the signature " Your loving, loving Peggy 
 Neal." That some good -fortune had befallen 
 her in spite of that sad beginning in her native 
 fields, was quite as clear, for the paper on which 
 she had scrawled her message was of finest text- 
 ure and delicately perfumed ; and, what was more, 
 between its pages the mother had found a sum 
 of money, how much or little no one knew. 
 
 It was observed that the mother's face had 
 relaxed a little. That she had answered her 
 daughter's message was asserted positively by 
 Mrs. Bell, though what that answer was, and 
 whether forgiveness or not, she did not know. 
 It was assumed, however, to have been a pardon, 
 for the mother seemed pleased with the daugh- 
 ter's progress in the world, which must have 
 
 247
 
 Mis s Primrose 
 
 seemed to her the realization, however ironical, 
 of her discarded hopes; and it was she herself 
 who had divulged the contents of the letter. To 
 the cautious curiosity manifested by elderly la- 
 dies of Grassy Ford, who called upon her now 
 more often than had been their wont, as she 
 took some pleasure in reminding them, to their 
 obvious discomfiture, and to all other hints and 
 allusions she turned her deafer ear, while to di- 
 rect questions she contented herself with the 
 simple answer: 
 
 "Peggy's well." 
 
 "You hear from her often, I suppose?" some 
 caller ventured. The reply was puzzling: 
 
 "Oh, a mother's apt to." 
 
 She said it so sadly, looking away across the 
 farm, that Letitia's informant as she told the 
 story burst into tears. 
 
 "She's a miserable woman, Miss Letitia, de- 
 pend upon it. She's a miserable, broken-down, 
 heart-sick creature for what she's done. 'You 
 hear often, I suppose?' said I. 'A mother's 
 apt to,' says she, and turned away from me 
 with a face so lonesome as would break your 
 heart." 
 
 For myself, as Letitia told me, I had my own 
 248
 
 An Unexpected Letter 
 
 notion of the mother's sad and evasive answer, 
 but I held my peace. 
 
 It was the coldest winter we had known in 
 years. For weeks at a time our valley was a 
 bowl of snow, roads were impassable, and stock 
 was frozen on the upland farms. Suddenly 
 there came a thaw: the sun shone brightly, the 
 great drifts sank and melted into muddy streams, 
 and early one morning Farmer Bell, his shaggy 
 mare and old top-buggy splashed with mire and 
 his white face spattered, stopped at the post-of- 
 fice and called loudly to the passers-by. 
 "Old Neal's dead and I want the coroner." 
 To the crowd that gathered he told the story. 
 Neal's wife, waiting up for him Christmas night, 
 had made an effort to reach the Bells to ask for 
 tidings, but the wind was frightful and the drifts 
 already beyond her depth. She had gone back 
 hoping that he was safe by his tavern fire, but 
 she sat by her own all night, listening to the 
 roaring of the wind and the rattling windows 
 through which the snow came drifting in. At 
 dawn, from an upper chamber, she peered out 
 upon a sight that is seldom seen even in these 
 northern hills. The storm was over, but the 
 world was buried white; roads and fences and 
 
 249
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 even the smaller trees were no longer visible, 
 and the barn and a neighbor's cottage were un- 
 familiar in their uncouth hoods. For days she 
 remained imprisoned on the lonely farm. She 
 cut paths from the woodshed to the near-by 
 barn and saved the cattle in their stalls. Then 
 the thaw came, and she reached the Bells. 
 
 Hitching his mare to his lightest buggy, for 
 the roads were rivers, the farmer drove through 
 the slush and the remnant drifts to the corner 
 tavern where Neal had been. The bartender 
 stared blankly at his first question. 
 
 "Neal?" he stammered out at last. 
 
 " Yes, Neal ! John Neal, confound you ! Can't 
 you speak?" 
 
 The man laid the glass he was wiping upon the 
 bar. 
 
 "Neal left here Christmas day along about 
 four in the afternoon, when the storm began." 
 
 As Bell drove homeward he saw two figures at 
 the Neal farm-gate that gate which Peggy had 
 closed behind her and, coming nearer, he made 
 out his own man Tom and the widow, lifting 
 the body from the melting snow. 
 
 Peggy Neal did not come to her father's 
 funeral. Letitia herself would have written the 
 
 250
 
 An Unexpected Letter 
 
 news to her, for the woman, dry-eyed and dumb 
 and sitting by the coffin-side, had aged in a day 
 and was now as helpless as a child. 
 
 "Shall I write to Peggy?" Letitia asked her, 
 but she did not hear. Twice the question was 
 repeated, but they got no answer, so Letitia 
 wrote, and laid the letter on the casket, open 
 and unaddressed. It was never sent.
 
 V 
 
 SURPRISES 
 
 BOGGING homeward from a country 
 call one afternoon in May, I was 
 admiring the apple - orchards and 
 the new -ploughed fields between 
 them, when I chanced upon my son 
 Robin with a handful of columbine, gathered 
 among the Sun Dial rocks. 
 
 "Oh," said he, "is that you, father?" It is 
 an innocent way of his when he has anything in 
 particular to conceal.. 
 
 "At any rate," I replied, "you are my son." 
 He smiled amiably and I cranked the wheel, 
 making room for him beside me. 
 "Columbine," I remarked. 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Letitia will be pleased," I said. 
 Now I knew it was for the Parker girl Rita 
 Parker, who blushes so when I chance to meet 
 252
 
 Surprises 
 
 her that I know now how it feels to be an ogre, 
 a much-maligned being, too, for whom I never 
 had any sympathy before. 
 
 "I just saw a redstart," remarked my son. 
 
 " So ?" I replied. " Did you notice any bobo- 
 links?" 
 
 "Did I?" he answered. "I saw a million of 
 them." 
 
 "You did?" 
 
 "Down in the meadows there." 
 
 "A million of them?" 
 
 " Almost a million, ' ' he replied. " Every grass- 
 stalk had one on it, teetering and singing away 
 like anything." 
 
 "Why, I didn't know Rita was with you." 
 
 "Rita!" he exclaimed, reddening. 
 
 "Why, yes," I said. "You saw so many 
 birds, you know." 
 
 It was a little hard upon the boy, but I broke 
 the ensuing silence with some comments on 
 the weather, and having him wholly at my 
 mercy then, I chose a subject which so long 
 had charmed me, I had been on the point 
 of telling him time and again, yet had re- 
 frained. 
 
 "Robin," said I, "you will be a graduate in a 
 " 253
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 day or two. What do you say to a summer in 
 England, boy?" 
 
 He caught my hand so violently that the 
 rein was drawn and Pegasus turned obediently 
 into the ditch and stopped. 
 
 "England, father!" 
 
 "If we are spared," I said, getting the buggy 
 into the road again. 
 
 "All of us!" he cried. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "But you'll come, father?" He said it so 
 anxiously that I was touched. It isn't always 
 that a boy cares to lug his father. 
 
 "I should like to," I said, "but no." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "I cannot leave," I replied. "Jamieson's 
 going. We can't both go." 
 
 "Oh, bother Jamieson!" Robin exclaimed. 
 "What does he want to choose our year for? 
 Why can't he wait till next?" 
 
 " It's his wife," I explained. " She's ill again. 
 But you go, Robin, and take Letitia." 
 
 "When do we start?" 
 
 "In June." 
 
 11 This June?" 
 
 "Next month. I've laid out the journey for 
 254
 
 Surprises 
 
 you on a map, and I've got the names of the 
 inns to stop at, and what it will cost you, and 
 everything else." 
 
 "But when did you think of it?" asked my 
 son. 
 
 "Last fall." 
 
 " Last fall! Does Aunt Letty know ?" 
 
 "Partly," I said. "She knows you're going, 
 but not herself. It's a little surprise for her. 
 You may tell her yourself, now, while I stop at 
 the office." 
 
 He scrambled out and hitched my horse for 
 me, so I held the flowers. He flushed a little as 
 he took them. 
 
 "Father, you're a trump," he said. 
 
 I bowed slightly: it is wise to be courteous 
 even to a son. I had stopped at the office to 
 get the map, and an hour later Letitia met me in 
 our doorway. 
 
 "Bertram!" she said, taking my hand. 
 
 "Robin told you?" 
 
 "Yes. Oh, it's beautiful, Bertram, but I 
 cannot go." 
 
 "Nonsense," I said. 
 
 "But you?" 
 
 "I shall do very nicely." 
 255
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "But the cost?" 
 
 "Will be nothing," I said. "The boy must 
 not go alone." 
 
 "That's not the reason you are sending me, 
 Bertram." 
 
 "It's a good one," I replied. 
 
 "No," she insisted, shaking her head. 
 
 "You have been good to the boy, Letitia," I 
 explained. "This is only a way of saying that 
 I know." 
 
 "You do not need to say it," she replied. " I 
 have done nothing." 
 
 "You have done everything, Letitia for us 
 both." 
 
 The tears ran down her cheeks. My own 
 eyes 
 
 "You have loved Dove's husband and son," 
 I told her. "We shall not forget it." 
 
 Her face was radiant. 
 
 "It has been nothing for me to do," she said. 
 "Loving no one in particular, I have had the 
 time to love every one, don't you see? Why, all 
 my life, Bertram, I've loved other people's dogs, 
 and other people's children" -she paused a 
 moment and added, smiling through her tears 
 "and other people's husbands, I suppose." 
 256
 
 Surprises 
 
 "You will go?" I asked. 
 
 "I should love to go." 
 
 "You will go, Letitia?" 
 
 " I will go," she said. 
 
 That evening I took from my pocket a brand- 
 new map of the British Isles I mean brand-new 
 last fall. Many a pleasant hour I had spent 
 that winter at the office with a red guide-book 
 and the map before me on my desk. With no 
 little pride I spread it now on the sitting-room 
 table which Letitia had cleared for me. 
 
 "What are the red lines, father?" asked my 
 son. He had returned breathless from telling 
 the Parker girl. 
 
 " Those in red ink," I replied, " I drew myself. 
 It is your route. There's Southampton where 
 you land and there's London and there's 
 Windsor and Oxford and Stratford and War- 
 wick and Kenilworth : and here," I cried, sweep- 
 ing my hand suddenly downward to the left 
 "here's Devonshire!" 
 
 " Where father was a boy," Letitia murmured, 
 touching the pinkish county tenderly with her 
 hand. 
 
 Ah, I was primed for them ! There was not a 
 question they could ask that I could not answer. 
 257
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 There was not a village they could name, I could 
 not instantly put my finger on. Those winter 
 hours had not been spent in vain. I knew the 
 inns the King's Arms, the Golden Lion, the 
 White Hart, the Star and Anchor, the George 
 and Dragon, the Ring o' Bells! I knew where 
 the castles were I had marked them blue. I 
 knew the battle-fields I had made them crim- 
 son. For each cathedral a purple cross. Each 
 famous school a golden star. Never, I believe, 
 was there such a map before for convenience, 
 for ready reference : one look at the margin where 
 I made the notes a glance at the map and 
 there you were! 
 
 "Oh, it is beautiful!" exclaimed Letitia. 
 
 "Isn't it?" I cried. 
 
 "You should have it patented," said my son. 
 
 "Suppose," I suggested, "you ask me some- 
 thing something hard now. Ask me some- 
 thing hard." 
 
 I took a turn with my cigar. Robin knitted 
 his brows, but could think of nothing. Letitia 
 pondered. 
 
 "Where's" 
 
 She hesitated. 
 
 "Out with it!" I urged. 
 258
 
 Surprises 
 
 "Where's Tavistock?" she asked. 
 
 I thought a moment. 
 
 "Is it a castle?" 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "Is it a battle-field?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Is it just a town, then?" 
 
 "Yes, just a town." 
 
 " Did anything famous happen there?" 
 
 She hesitated. 
 
 "Well," she said, "perhaps nothing very fa- 
 mous but it's an old little town one that I've 
 heard of, that is all." 
 
 Well, she did have me. It was not very fa- 
 mous, and only a an idea came to me. 
 
 "Oh," I said, shutting my eyes a moment, 
 "that town's in Devon." 
 
 Letitia nodded. 
 
 " See," I said. Adjusting my glasses, and peer- 
 ing a moment at the pinkish patch, I tapped it, 
 Tavistock, with my finger-nail. "Right here," 
 I said. 
 
 We made a night of it that is, it was mid- 
 night when I folded my map and locked it away 
 with the guide-book and the table of English 
 money I had made myself. There was one in 
 259
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 the book, it is true, but for ready reference, for 
 convenience in emergencies, it did not compare 
 with mine mine worked three ways. 
 
 A fortnight later I had the tickets in my hand 
 ss. Atlantis, date of sailing, the tenth of June. 
 I myself was to steal a day or two and wave 
 farewell to them from the pier. Robin already 
 had packed his grip; indeed, he repacked it 
 daily, to get the hang of it, he said. It was a 
 new one which I had kept all winter at the 
 office in the bottom of a cupboard, and it bore 
 the initials, R. W., stamped on the end. And 
 he had a housewife a kind of cousin to a needle- 
 book stuffed full of handy mending-things, pre- 
 sented by the Parker girl. The boy was radiant, 
 but as June drew nigh I saw he had something 
 heavy on his mind. A dozen times he had 
 begun to speak to me, privately, but had changed 
 the subject or had walked away. I could not 
 imagine what ailed the fellow. He seemed rest- 
 less; even, as I fancied, a little sad at times, 
 which troubled me. I made opportunities for 
 him to speak, but he failed to do so, either 
 through neglect or fear. I saw him often at the 
 office, where he was always bursting in upon me 
 with some new plan or handy matter for his 
 
 260
 
 Surprises 
 
 precious bag. He had bought a razor and a 
 brush and strop. 
 
 "But what are they for?" I asked, amazed. 
 A blush mantled his beardless cheeks. 
 
 "Those? Oh just to be sure," he said. 
 
 Now what could be troubling the lad, I won- 
 dered? It was something not always on his 
 mind, for he seemed to forget it in preparations, 
 but it lurked near by to spring out upon his 
 blithest moments. His face would be shining; 
 an instant later it would fall, and he would walk 
 to the window and gaze out thoughtfully into 
 the street, in a way that touched me to the heart, 
 for, remember, this was to be my first parting 
 with the boy. The more I thought of it, the 
 more perplexed I was; and the more I wondered, 
 the more I felt it might be my duty to speak 
 myself. 
 
 "Robin," I said one day, and as casually as I 
 could make my tone, "did you want to tell me 
 anything? What is it? Speak, my boy." 
 
 We were alone together in my inner office and 
 the door was shut. He walked resolutely to the 
 desk where I was sitting. 
 
 "Father," he said, "I have." 
 
 My heart was beating, he looked so grave. 
 261
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "Well," I remarked, "you have nothing to 
 fear, you know." 
 
 "Father," he said, doggedly, "it's about 
 it's about 
 
 "Yes?" I encouraged him. 
 
 "It's about this trip." 
 
 "This trip?" 
 
 "Yes. It's about father, you'll tell her" 
 
 "Tell her?" I repeated. 
 
 "Yes. You tell her." 
 
 " Tell whom ? Tell what ?" 
 
 "Why, Aunt Letty." 
 
 "Aunt Letty! Tell Aunt Letty what?" 
 
 He blurted it fiercely : 
 
 " About her hat." 
 
 ' ' Her hat ! Her hat ! Good Lord, what hat ? " 
 
 "Why, her Sunday hat!" 
 
 "You mean her ' 
 
 "Why, yes, father! You know that hat." 
 
 I knew that hat. 
 
 "Do you object," I asked, "to your aunt's 
 best Sunday hat?" 
 
 His scowl vanished and his face broke into 
 smiles. 
 
 "That's it," he said. 
 
 "Don't be alarmed," I assured him, keeping 
 262
 
 Surprises 
 
 my own face steady no easy matter, for, as I 
 say, I knew the hat. " Don't be alarmed, my 
 son. She shall have a new one, if that will 
 please you." 
 
 His smiles vanished. He seemed suspicious. 
 His tone was cautiousness itself. 
 
 " But who will buy it ?" he asked. 
 
 "Why, you!" I said. 
 
 He leaped to my side. 
 
 "/?" 
 
 "You," I repeated. 
 
 He laughed hysterically whooped is the bet- 
 ter word. 
 
 "You wait!" he cried, and, fairly dancing, he 
 seized his cap and rushed madly for the door. 
 It shut behind him, but as swiftly opened again. 
 
 "Oh, dad," he said, beaming upon me from 
 the crack, "it '11 be a stunner! You'll see." 
 
 It was.
 
 VI 
 
 AN OLD FRIEND OP OURS 
 
 IH, I know the town," I had told 
 them confidently had I not been 
 there in 18 ? But no, it was not 
 my town. It was not my New 
 York at all that we found at our 
 journey's end, but belonged apparently to the 
 mob we fell among, bags and bundles, by the 
 station steps, till from our cabman's manner, 
 when I mildly marvelled at the fare he charged 
 us, the place, I suspected, belonged to him. 
 Four days and nights we heard it rumbling 
 about us. Robin got a mote in his eye, Letitia 
 lost her brand-new parasol, and I broke my 
 glasses but we saw the parks and the squares 
 and the tall buildings and the statue which 
 Johnny Keats never climbed. Reluctantly, for 
 the day was waning as we stood on the Battery 
 looking out at it across the bay, we followed his 
 
 264
 
 An Old Friend of Ours 
 
 example. On the third afternoon Letitia pro- 
 posed a change of plans. Her eyes, she confessed, 
 were a little tired with our much looking. Why 
 not hunt old friends? 
 
 " Old friends ?" I asked. " Whom do we know 
 in New York, Letitia?" 
 
 "Why, don't you remember Hiram Ptolemy 
 and Peggy Neal?" 
 
 " To be sure," I said" the Egyptologist! But 
 the addresses?" 
 
 " I have them both," she replied. " Mrs. Neal 
 came to the house crying, and gave me Peggy's, 
 and begged me to find her if I could. And Mr. 
 Ptolemy why can I never remember the name 
 of his hotel?" 
 
 "You have heard from him then?" 
 
 She blushed. 
 
 "Yes," she replied. "It's a famous hotel, 
 I'm sure. The name was familiar." 
 
 "Hotel," I remarked. "Hiram must be get- 
 ting on then?" 
 
 " Oh yes," she said, fumbling with her address- 
 book. " It's the Mills Hotel." 
 
 "And a famous place," I observed, smiling. 
 " So he lives at a Mills Hotel ?" 
 
 " I forgot to tell you," she continued, " I have 
 265
 
 Mis s Primrose 
 
 been so busy. He wrote me only the other day, 
 that, after all these years mercy! how long it 
 has been since he fed us lemon-drops! after all 
 these years of tramping from publisher to pub- 
 lisher, footsore and weary, as he said, he had 
 found at last a grand, good man." 
 
 " One," I inferred, " who will give his discovery 
 to the world." 
 
 "Oh, more than that," explained Letitia, 
 "this dear, old, white-haired 
 
 " Egyptologist," I broke in. 
 
 "Publisher," she said, with spirit, "has prom- 
 ised him to start a magazine and make him 
 editor a scientific magazine devoted solely to 
 Egyptology, and called The Obelisk." 
 
 "Well, well, well, well," I said. "We must 
 congratulate the little man. Perhaps you may 
 even be impelled to recon 
 
 "Now, Bertram," began Letitia, in that tone 
 and manner I knew of old so I put on my hat, 
 and, freeing Robin to likelier pleasures, we drove 
 at once to " the " Mills Hotel. Letitia 's address- 
 book had named the street, which she thought 
 unkempt and cluttered and noisy for an editor 
 to live in, though doubtless he had wished to 
 be near his desk. 
 
 266
 
 An Old Friend of Ours 
 
 " Is Mr. Hiram Ptolemy in?" inquired Letitia. 
 
 " I'll see," said the clerk, consulting his ledgers. 
 
 He returned at once. 
 
 " There is no one here of that name, madam." 
 
 "Strange!" she replied. "He was here let 
 me see but two weeks ago." 
 
 "No madam," he said. "You must mean 
 the other Mills Hotel." 
 
 "Is there another Mills Hotel?" she asked. 
 
 "Yes," he replied. "Hotel number " 
 
 "I thought" said Letitia, "this place seem- 
 ed" 
 
 She glanced about her. 
 
 " But," said I, "the address is of this one." 
 
 "True," she replied. "Did you look in the 
 P's?" she inquired, sweetly. 
 
 "Why, no; in the T's. You said" 
 
 "But it's spelled with a P," she explained. 
 "P-t-o-1 " 
 
 Then her face reddened. 
 
 "Never mind," she said. "You are right 
 quite right. It is the other hotel. But can 
 you tell me, please, if Mr. Hiram De Lancey 
 Percival lives here?" 
 
 The clerk smiled broadly. 
 
 "Oh yes," he said. "Mr. Percival does, but 
 267
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 he's out at present. You will find him, however, 
 at this address." 
 
 He wrote it down for her and she took it 
 nervously. 
 
 " Thank you," she said, glancing at it. " Don't 
 be silly, Bertram. Yes, it's the publisher's. Let 
 us go. Good-day, sir." 
 
 It was not a large publisher's, we discovered, 
 for the place was a single and dingy store-room 
 in a small side street. Its walls were shelved, 
 filled from the floor to the very ceiling volume 
 after volume, sets upon sets, most of them shop- 
 worn and bearing the imprints of by-gone years. 
 Between the shelves other books, equally old and 
 faded, and offered for sale at trifling prices, lay 
 on tables in that tempting disarray and dust 
 which hints of treasures overlooked and waiting 
 only for recognition always on the higher shelf, 
 or at the bottom of the other pile. The window 
 was filled with encyclopaedias long outgrown by 
 a wiser world, and standing beside them, and 
 looking back towards the store-room's farther 
 end, was a melancholy vista of discarded and 
 forgotten literature. 
 
 "Who buys them?" asked Letitia. 
 
 "Who wrote them?" I replied. 
 268
 
 An Old Friend of Ours 
 
 A bell had tinkled at our entrance, but no 
 one came to us, so we wandered down one nar- 
 row aisle till we reached the end. And there, 
 at the right, in an alcove hitherto undiscernable, 
 and at an old, worm-eaten desk dimly lighted 
 by an alley window, sat our old friend Ptolemy, 
 writing, and unaware of our approach. It was 
 the same Hiram, we observed, though a little 
 shabbier, perhaps, and scraggier-bearded than of 
 old, but the same little, blinking scientist we had 
 known, in steel -bowed spectacles, scratching 
 away in a rickety office - chair. He was quite 
 oblivious of the eyes upon him, lost, doubtless, 
 in some shadowy passage of Egyptian lore. 
 
 I coughed slightly, and he turned about, peer- 
 ing in amazement. 
 
 "Miss Primrose! Dr. Weatherby! I do be- 
 lieve!" he exclaimed, and, dropping his pen, 
 staggered up to us and shook our hands, his 
 celluloid cuffs rattling about his meagre wrists 
 and his eyes watering with agitation behind his 
 spectacles. 
 
 " You in New York!" he piped. "I why, 
 I'm astounded I'm astounded but delighted, 
 too delighted to see you both! But you 
 mustn't stand." 
 
 18 269
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 I looked curiously at Letitia as he brought us 
 chairs, setting them beside his desk. She was a 
 little flushed, but very gracious to the little 
 man. 
 
 "Miss Primrose," he said, fidgeting about her, 
 "allow me allow me," offering what seemed to 
 be the stabler of the wooden seats. She had ac- 
 cepted it and was about to sit, when he stopped 
 her anxiously with a cry, "Wait! wait, I beg 
 of you!" and replaced it with his own. His was 
 an elbow chair whose sagging leathern seat had 
 been reinforced with an old green atlas, its 
 pasteboard cover still faintly decorated with a 
 pictured globe. 
 
 Seating himself again beside his desk, he 
 turned to us beaming with an air of host, and 
 listened with many nervous twitchings and 
 furtive glances at Letitia, while I explained our 
 presence there. 
 
 " It's a grand journey a grand journey, Miss 
 Primrose," he declared. "I only wish I were 
 going, too." 
 
 "Tell us," said Letitia, kindly, "about The 
 Obelisk. Is the first number ready yet?" 
 
 He sat up blithely, wetting his lips, and with 
 that odd mannerism which recalled his visit to 
 270
 
 An Old Friend of Ours 
 
 Grassy Ford, he touched with one finger the tip 
 of his celluloid collar, and thrust out his chin. 
 
 "Almost," he said. "It's almost ready. It 
 '11 be out soon very soon now it '11 be out 
 soon. I've got it here right here right here 
 on the desk." 
 
 He touched fondly the very manuscript we 
 had surprised him writing. 
 
 "That's it," he said. "The Obelisk, volume 
 one, number one." 
 
 "And the great stone of Iris-Iris?" queried 
 Letitia. 
 
 He half rose from his chair, and exclaimed, 
 excitedly, pointing to a drawer in the paper- 
 buried desk: 
 
 "Right there! The cut is there! cut of the 
 inscription, you know. It's to be the frontis- 
 piece. Here : page one my story story of the 
 translation and how I made it, and what it 
 means to the civilized world. Don't fail to read 
 it!" 
 
 He wiped his glasses. 
 
 "When," I asked, "will it be out?" 
 
 "Soon," he replied. "Soon, I hope. Not 
 later than the fall." 
 
 "That's some time off yet," I remarked. 
 271
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "You do not understand," he replied, anx- 
 iously. " You do not understand, Dr. Weather- 
 by. A magazine requires great preparation- 
 great preparation, sir and particularly a scien- 
 tific magazine, Dr. Weatherby." 
 
 "Ah," I said. "I see." 
 
 "Great preparation, sir," the little man went 
 on, leaning forward and tapping me on the 
 knee. "There must be subscribers, sir." 
 
 "To be sure," I assented. "They are quite 
 essential, I believe." 
 
 "Very," said Hiram Ptolemy. "Very, sir. 
 We must have fifty at the fewest before we go 
 to press. My publisher is obdurate fifty, he 
 says, or he will not invest a penny not a penny, 
 sir." 
 
 " And you have already ?" I inquired. I was 
 sorry afterwards to have asked the question. 
 It was not delicate. I asked it thoughtlessly, 
 intending only to evince my interest in the cause. 
 Coloring slightly, he wet his lips and cleared his 
 throat before replying. 
 
 "One, sir; only one, as yet." 
 
 "Then put me down number two," I said, 
 eager to retrieve my blunder. 
 
 His face lighted, but only for a moment, and 
 272
 
 An Old Friend of Ours 
 
 turning an embarrassed countenance upon Le- 
 titia, and then on me, he stammered: 
 
 "But I" 
 
 "Oh, by all means, Bertram," said Letitia, 
 "we must subscribe." 
 
 The Egyptologist swallowed hard. 
 
 "I think" he began. 
 
 " Bertram Weatherby is the name, Mr. Per- 
 cival," said Letitia, in a clear, insistent tone, 
 and at her bidding the little man scrawled it 
 down, but so tremulously at first that he tore up 
 the sheet and tried again. 
 
 "And the subscription price?" I inquired, 
 opening my pocket-book. 
 
 "You you needn't pay now, doctor," he 
 replied. 
 
 " Is one dollar a year," said Letitia, promptly, 
 and I laid the bill upon the desk. 
 
 Hiram Ptolemy touched it gingerly, fumbled 
 it, dropped it by his chair, and, still preserving 
 his embarrassed silence, fished it up again from 
 the cluttered floor. Ten minutes later, when 
 we said farewell to him, he still held it in his 
 hand. 
 
 "What was the matter with him?" I asked 
 Letitia, as we drove away, glancing back at that 
 
 273
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 odd and shamefaced figure standing wistfully 
 in the doorway. 
 
 " The other subscriber," she replied. " Didn't 
 you guess?" 
 
 "What!" I said. "You, Letitia?" 
 
 She smiled sadly. 
 
 "Poor little man!"
 
 VII 
 
 SUZANNE 
 
 was evening when we set out, not 
 without trepidation, to find Peggy 
 Neal. We had dined over-dined 
 in a room of gilt and mirrors and 
 shining silver, watching the other 
 tables with their smiling groups or puzzling 
 pairs; some so ill-assorted that we strove vainly 
 to solve their mystery, others so oddly man- 
 nered for a public place, we thought the men 
 so brazen in their attentions, the women so 
 prinked and absurdly gowned and unabashed, 
 Letitia at first was not quite sure we were rightly 
 there. 
 
 "Still," she said, "there are nice people here 
 why, even children!" 
 
 "The place is famous," I protested. 
 "I suppose it must be respectable," she re- 
 plied, "but I never saw such a mixture!" 
 
 275
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 She gazed wonderingly about her. 
 
 "I suppose it must be New York," she said. 
 
 It was half -past eight when we entered the 
 street again. We drove at once to the number 
 Mrs. Neal had given, riding silently and a little 
 nervously, but still marvelling at the scene we 
 had left behind us, a strange setting for two 
 such elder village-folk as we, making us wonder 
 if we had missed much or little by living our 
 lives so greenly and far away. 
 
 "I hope she will be at home," said Letitia. 
 "Every one seemed to be going to the the- 
 atre." 
 
 "For my part," I confessed, "I rather hope 
 we shall not find her." 
 
 "But why, Bertram?" 
 
 I could not say. The cab stopped. There 
 were lights in the house, and, leaving Letitia, I 
 went up the steps and pulled the bell. The 
 household was at home, apparently, for I heard 
 voices and the music of a piano as I stood wait- 
 ing at the door. It was one of the older streets, 
 ill-lighted and lined monotonously by those red- 
 brick fronts so fashionable in a former day. 
 
 The door was opened by a colored maid, and 
 there was a gush of laughter and the voices of 
 
 276
 
 Suzanne 
 
 men and women, with the tinkling undercurrent 
 of a waltz. 
 
 " Is Miss Neal at home?" I asked. 
 
 "Miss who?" 
 
 "Miss Neal." 
 
 "Miss Neal?" 
 
 "Miss Peggy Neal." 
 
 She hesitated. "I'll see," she said. "Will 
 you come in, suh?" 
 
 " No," I replied. " I'll wait out here." 
 
 She returned presently. 
 
 "Did you say Miss Peggy Neal, suh?" 
 
 "Yes," I replied, "Miss Peggy Neal." 
 
 "Don't any such lady live heah, suh." 
 
 "Strange," I murmured, and was about to 
 turn away when a woman clad in a floating 
 light-blue robe, her face indefinite in the dimly 
 illumined hallway, but apparently young and 
 pretty, or even beautiful, perhaps, and with an 
 amazing quantity of golden hair, slipped through 
 the portieres and pushed aside the maid. 
 
 "I am Peggy Neal," she said, in a low voice. 
 "What is wanted?" 
 
 "You!" I gasped, but Letitia had left the 
 carriage and was at my shoulder. 
 
 "Peggy!" she said. 
 
 277
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "Miss Primrose! And this is Dr. Weather- 
 by!" 
 
 "Dear Peggy," Letitia murmured, kissing the 
 astonished girl on both powdered cheeks. " But 
 how you've changed! You're so pale, Peggy 
 and your eyes and your hair Peggy, wha* 
 have you done to your hair?" 
 
 "Yes, my hair," murmured Peggy. 
 
 "Why, it used to be jet," Letitia said. " But 
 you don't ask us in, my dear and here we've 
 come all the long way from Grassy Ford to see 
 you." 
 
 "Hush!" said Peggy, and Letitia paused, for 
 the first time noting the voices in the inner rooms. 
 
 "Oh," she whispered, "I see: you have a 
 party." 
 
 "Yes," Peggy answered. "We we have a 
 party." 
 
 "I think we should go, Letitia," I interposed, 
 but she did not hear me. 
 
 "I can't get over your hair," she murmured, 
 holding Peggy at arm's -length from her and 
 then turning her head a little to look about her. 
 "Do they smoke at your parties?" she asked. 
 
 "Oh yes," laughed Peggy, "all the men 
 smoke, you know." 
 
 278
 
 Suzanne 
 
 "But I thought," said Letitia, "I saw a 
 woman with a cigarette." 
 
 "It may have been a candy cigarette," 
 Peggy answered. 
 
 "That's true," said Letitia, "for I've seen 
 them at Marvin's in Grassy Ford." 
 
 The portieres before which Peggy stood, one 
 hand grasping them, parted suddenly behind 
 her head, and the face of another girl was thrust 
 out rudely behind her own and staring into 
 mine. It was a rouged and powdered face, with 
 hard-set eyes that did not flinch as she gazed 
 mockingly upon me, crying in a voice that filled 
 the hall with its harsh discords: 
 
 "Aha! Which one to-night, Suzanne?" 
 
 Then she saw Letitia, and with a smothered 
 oath, withdrew laughingly. The music and 
 talking ceased within. It was not in the room 
 behind the curtains, but seemingly just beyond 
 it, and I could hear her there relating her dis- 
 covery as I supposed, though the words were 
 indistinct. 
 
 "How I hate that girl!" hissed Peggy, her 
 eyes black with anger. 
 
 "Then I wouldn't have her, my dear," said 
 Letitia, soothingly. "I should not invite her." 
 279
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 There was a burst of laughter within, followed 
 by subdued voices, and I heard footsteps stealth- 
 ily approaching. Peggy heard them too, no 
 doubt, though she was answering Letitia's 
 questions, for she grasped the curtains more 
 tightly than before, one hand behind her and 
 the other above her head. As she did so the 
 loose sleeves of her robe slipped down her arm, 
 disclosing a spot upon its whiteness. 
 
 "Peggy, dear," Letitia said, anxiously, "you 
 have hurt yourself." 
 
 "Yes," was the answer, "I know. It's a 
 bruise." 
 
 It was a heart, tattooed. She hid it in her 
 hair. 
 
 "We must go, Letitia," I urged. "We must 
 not keep Peggy from her friends." 
 
 "Yes," she assented. " But I had so much to 
 ask you, Peggy, and so much to tell." 
 
 The curtains parted again, this time far above 
 Peggy's head, and I saw a man's eyes peering 
 through. She appeared to be disengaging the 
 flounces about her slippered feet, but I saw her 
 strike back savagely with her little heel, and he 
 disappeared. But other faces came, one by one, 
 though Letitia did not see them. Her eyes 
 280
 
 Suzanne 
 
 were all for her darling Peggy whom she plied 
 with questions. How had her health been? 
 How did she like New York? Did she never 
 yearn for little old Grassy Ford again? Was 
 she quite happy? 
 
 "Yes," Peggy murmured, "quite; quite 
 happy." 
 
 She spoke in a hurried, staccato voice, in an 
 odd, cold monotone. There was no kindness in 
 her eyes. 
 
 The door-bell rang, and we stepped aside as 
 the maid answered it. Two young men swag- 
 gered in, flushed and garrulous, nodding, not 
 more familiarly to the servant than to Peggy 
 herself, who parted the curtains to let them pass. 
 They gazed curiously at her guests. 
 
 "Why, they kept on their hats!" Letitia said, 
 in a shocked undertone. " Is it customary here, 
 Peggy?" 
 
 "Everything," was the bitter answer, "is 
 customary here. How is my mother?" 
 
 "It was your mother, Peggy, who asked me 
 to find you." Letitia spoke, gently. "She wants 
 to see you. She is not very strong since your 
 father's" 
 
 She paused. 
 
 281
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "Is my father dead?" 
 
 "Didn't you know?" 
 
 "No; but I thought as much; he was such a 
 boozer." 
 
 Letitia stared. "Peggy!" she said. 
 
 " Oh, I know what you think," the girl replied, 
 wearily, seating herself upon the stairs, and 
 putting her chin upon her hands. She did not 
 ask us to be seated. 
 
 " Letitia," I said, firmly, " come ; we must go." 
 I put my hand upon the door-knob. 
 
 " Doctor," said Peggy Neal, rising again, "you 
 won't mind waiting outside a moment ? I have 
 something to say to dear Miss Primrose." 
 
 "Certainly," I replied. "Good-bye, Miss 
 Neal." 
 
 She gave her hand to me. "Good-bye, doc- 
 tor." Then she looked me strangely in the 
 eyes, saying in an undertone, " Mind, I shall tell 
 her nothing" and paused significantly, adding 
 in a clearer tone again "but the truth." 
 
 I waited anxiously upon the steps. Five 
 minutes passed ten twenty thirty and I 
 grew impatient. Then the door opened, and 
 Letitia appeared with Peggy, and radiant 
 though in tears. 
 
 282
 
 Suzanne 
 
 "Good-bye," she said, kissing her, "dear, 
 dear Peggy. Oh, Bertram, I have heard such a 
 wonderful story!" 
 
 "Indeed?" 
 
 "Yes," Peggy said from the doorway, "Miss 
 Primrose is the same enthusiast she used to be 
 when I went to school to her." 
 
 " It is like a novel," declared Letitia; "but we 
 must go. You must forgive me for keeping you 
 so long away from your newer friends." 
 
 "It is nothing," was the answer. "I'm so 
 glad you came." 
 
 "Remember your promise, Peggy!" 
 
 "Oh yes my promise," Peggy murmured. 
 "Good-bye, Miss Primrose. Good-bye, doctor. 
 Good-bye. Good-bye." 
 
 The carriage-door had scarcely closed upon us 
 when Letitia seized my arm. 
 
 " Bertram, " she said, " it is a story ! I thought 
 it was only in books that such things happened. 
 I would not have missed this visit for the world!" 
 
 "But," I said, "do you trust" 
 
 " Trust her ? Yes. A woman never cries like 
 
 that when she's lying, Bertram. Listen: she 
 
 came to New York from Grassy Ford. He was 
 
 nowhere to be found. He had given her a false 
 
 283
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 address. Then a little girl was born dead. 
 Oh, you can't imagine what that child's been 
 through, Bertram^ the disgrace, the sorrow, 
 the rags and poverty, hunger even and only 
 think how we were eating and sleeping soundly 
 in Grassy Ford, all that time she was starving 
 here! Then temptations came in this miserable, 
 this wicked, wicked place ! Oh, how can man 
 Well she did not dare to come home, but stayed 
 on here. It was then she took the name Su- 
 zanne, to hide her real one. Twice twice, Ber- 
 tram she went down to the river 
 
 Letitia's voice was breaking. 
 
 "Oh, I can't tell you all she told me. But 
 just when it all seemed darkest, she met this 
 good, kind woman with whom she lives." 
 
 " What!" I said. " Did she tell you that ?" 
 
 " Bertram, that woman saved her! saved her 
 from worse than death took her from the very 
 street clothed her, fed her, and nursed her to 
 health again. Did you see her dress? It was 
 finest silk and lace. Did you see the rings on 
 her fingers? One was a diamond, Bertram, as 
 large as the pearl you wear; one was an opal, 
 set in pearls; another, a ruby and she told me 
 she had a dozen more up-stairs." 
 284
 
 Suzanne 
 
 "Who is this woman?" 
 
 "She did not tell me. I forgot to ask." 
 
 "What was the promise she made you?" 
 
 " To visit us to come next summer to Grassy 
 Ford." 
 
 "Us, Letitia?" 
 
 "Yes; I made her promise it. She refused 
 at first, but I told her there were hearts as loving 
 in Grassy Ford as in New York oh, I hope there 
 are, Bertram ; I hope there are ! She will go first 
 to the farm, of course, to see her mother, and 
 then, before she comes back to this new mother, 
 who makes me burn, Bertram, when I ask my- 
 self if any woman in Grassy Ford would have 
 done as much then she will visit us. It will 
 mean so much to her. It will set that poor, 
 spoiled life right again before our petty, little, 
 self-righteous world. Oh, I shall make them re- 
 ceive her, Bertram ! I shall make them take her 
 in their arms!" 
 
 She paused breathlessly, but I was silent. 
 
 "I thought you wouldn't mind," she said. 
 
 Still I could not speak. 
 
 "Tell me," she urged, "did I presume too 
 much? Was I wrong to ask her without con- 
 sulting you?" 
 
 19 285
 
 Miss Primrost 
 
 ''No," I answered but not through kindness 
 as Letitia thought, let me confess it ; not through 
 having the tenderest man's heart in the world, 
 as she said, gratefully, but because I knew 
 how, she will always wonder that Peggy would 
 never come.
 
 VIII 
 
 IN A DEVON LANE 
 
 HAVE never seen an English lane, 
 but I have a picture of one above 
 the fireplace, and I once smelled 
 hawthorn blooming. A pleasant, 
 hedgerow scent, it seemed to me, 
 with a faint suggestion of primroses on the other 
 side I say primroses, but Letitia smiles when I 
 declare I can smell them still, or laughs with 
 Robin: they have been in England. 
 
 "Are you quite sure about it, Bertram?" 
 "They do have primroses," I reply, defiantly. 
 "But are you sure they are primroses?" she 
 demands. 
 
 "Smell again, father!" cries my son. 
 "Yes," I retort; "or violets; they may be 
 violets beyond the hedge." 
 
 It is then they laugh at me, and they make a 
 great point of their puzzling questions: am I 
 
 287
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 certain for example, that the primrose is fra- 
 grant enough to be smelled so far, and is it in 
 flower when the hawthorn blooms? That is 
 important, they insist. It is not important, I 
 reply in my England. 
 
 " Your England!" they cry. 
 
 "To be sure," I say. "In my England and 
 I see it as plainly as you do yours the haw- 
 thorn and primrose is always flowering. In my 
 England it is always spring." 
 
 It is summer in theirs. It is always cool and 
 fragrant and wholly charming in my Devonshire. 
 It was rather hot when they got to theirs that 
 is, the sunny coast of it they brag of was a lit- 
 tle trying, sometimes, I suspect, in midsummer, 
 though neither will confess. 
 
 "But not the moors!" they say. 
 
 "Oh, well the moors no; I should think 
 not," I answer. "I am not such a fool as to 
 think that moors are hot." 
 
 " How cool are the moors?" they then inquire, 
 innocently, but I see the trick; I hear the plot 
 in their very voices, and am wary. 
 
 "Oh," I reply, "as cool as usual." 
 
 "But there are dense forests on the moors," 
 Robin suggests. " Regular jungles eh, father ?" 
 288
 
 In a Devon Lane 
 
 I am not to be taken without a struggle. 
 
 "Hm," I reply. 
 
 "Hm what, father?" 
 
 " Well, I prefer the coast myself." 
 
 "The dear white coast," says Letitia, slyly. 
 
 "The dear red coast!" I cry in triumph, but 
 they only sigh: 
 
 "Ah, it was a wonderful, wonderful journey! 
 One could never imagine it or even tell it. One 
 must have been there." 
 
 It was a wonderful journey, I then admit, and 
 I do not blame them for their pridefulness, but 
 what, I ask, would they have done without my 
 map? 
 
 I am bound by honesty to confess, however, 
 that fair as my Devon is with the vales and 
 moorlands I have never seen, Letitia 's Devon 
 must be fairer. She found it lovelier far than 
 she had thought, she tells me, and she smiles 
 so happily at the mere sound of its magic 
 name what, I ask, must a shire be made 
 of to stand the test of that woman's dreams ? 
 
 "Here we have hills," I tell her. 
 
 "But not those hills, Bertram." 
 
 "Have we not Sun Dial?" I protest. 
 
 "Yes, we have Sun Dial," she admits. 
 289
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 "We have winds," I say, "and singing waters, 
 in Grassy Fordshire." 
 
 She shakes her head. 
 
 " You never heard the Dart or Tamar or the 
 Tavy. You never stood on the abbey bridge." 
 
 "And where," I ask, "was that?" 
 
 " That was at Tavistock," she replies, " at dear 
 little Tavistock after a rain, with the brown 
 water rushing through the arches where the 
 moss and fern and ivy clings rushing over 
 bowlders and swirling and foaming and falling 
 beyond over a weir; then racing away under 
 elm-trees and out into meadows oh, you never 
 heard the Tavy, Bertram." 
 
 "We have Troublesome," I insist. 
 
 "Yes," she replies, but her mind is absent. 
 "We have Troublesome, to be sure." 
 
 Then I rouse myself. I fairly menace her 
 with her treason. 
 
 " Surely," I cry, " you do not prefer old Devon 
 to Grassy Fordshire!" 
 
 It is a question she never answers. 
 
 "Grassy Fordshire is your native heath," I 
 remind her, jealously. 
 
 "Devon was my father's," she replies, "and 
 mother's, too." 
 
 290
 
 In a Devon Lane 
 
 " Still," I insist, "you do not prefer it to your 
 own?" 
 
 " It is beautiful," is her answer. 
 
 Had ever man so exasperating an antagonist ? 
 She declines utterly to be convinced; she talks 
 of nothing but that ruddy land as if it always 
 had been hers to boast of, is forever telling of 
 ancient villages cuddled down in the softest cor- 
 ners of its hills and headlands to doze and dream 
 in the English cloud-shadows and the sun some 
 of them lulled, she says, by the moorland music 
 of winds among the granite tors, and waters 
 falling down, down through those pastoral val- 
 eys to the sea; some lapped by the salt waves 
 rippling into coves blue and tranquil as the sky 
 above them, and others still in a sterner setting, 
 clinging to edges in the very clefts of a wild and 
 rugged coast, like weed and sea-shells left there 
 by the fury of the autumn storms. So, she tells 
 me, her Devon is; so I picture it as we sit to- 
 gether by the winter fire, while for the thou- 
 sandth time she tells her story: how she and 
 Robin, with my map between them, made that 
 long journey which, years before it, the gypsy 
 had found forewritten in her hand. It was the 
 very pilgrimage that as a boy I planned and 
 
 291
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 promised for myself when I should come to be a 
 man, but have found no time for yet my son 
 has seen it, that land of the youth whose name 
 he bears, so that, listening, I take his glowing 
 word, as I took that of the youth before him, 
 for its moorland heather and its flashing streams. 
 
 Robin, it seems, preferred north Devon Lyn- 
 ton and Lynmouth and their crags and glens. 
 Letitia, I note, while yet agreeing with his wild- 
 est adjectives, leans rather towards the south. 
 
 "But think," he says, "of Watersmeet and 
 the Valley of Rocks, Aunt Letty!" 
 
 "I do think of them," she answers, "but 
 think of Dartmoor, my dear." 
 
 "And so I do," is his reply. 
 
 "That day the wind blew so," she calls to 
 mind, "that morning when we rode to Tavis- 
 tock." 
 
 "Tavistock?" I always ask. "Tavistock? 
 Where have I heard that name ? Do all Devon- 
 shire roads lead up to Tavistock?" 
 
 She only smiles. 
 
 "You should see Tavistock," she says, and 
 resumes her memories. I sit quite helpless be- 
 tween the combatants. They differ widely, one 
 might think, to hear their voices rising and fall- 
 
 292
 
 In a Devon Lane 
 
 ing in warm debate, yet listening to their words 
 I detect nothing but a rivalry of praise, an ef- 
 fort on the part of each to outdo the other, as I 
 tell them, in pasans and benisons on what I am 
 led inevitably to believe is the fairest of earthly 
 dwelling-places. 
 
 When Robin withdraws his youthful vigor and 
 goes off to bed, or if he is away at school, from 
 which he writes such letters as I wish Dove could 
 but see, the talk is tranquil by our hearth, or lit- 
 tle by little drops quite away. 
 
 "Such lands breed men," observes Letitia 
 for the hundredth time. It is her old, loved 
 theory, the worth and grace of a rare environ- 
 ment, of which she speaks, sewing in the fire- 
 light. "The race must be hardy to wring its 
 living from such shores and heights." 
 
 "True," I answer, thinking of the wreckers 
 and smugglers who haunted those creeks and 
 coves in years gone by more lawless summers 
 than the quiet one which found a woman on the 
 very sands their heels had furrowed, or choosing 
 flowers to press on the very cliffs they climbed 
 with their spray-wet booty. I think vaguely 
 of the soldiers and sailors who fought the battles 
 whose dates and meanings it was Letitia 's joy 
 293
 
 Miss Primrose 
 
 to teach in the red-brick school-house. I think 
 more vividly of great John Ridd and Amyas 
 Leigh, and then a clearer vision I remember 
 that other, that later Devonshire lad who was 
 flesh and blood to me; and sitting here by my 
 Grassy Fordshire fire, a man grown gray who 
 was once a boy eating the slice two lovers spread 
 for him, I keep their covenant. 
 
 You go up from Plymouth, Letitia tells me, 
 and by-and-by you are on the moors, marvelling ; 
 and you like everything, but you love Tavistock. 
 It is in a valley, with the Tavy running beneath 
 that bridge of which she is forever dreaming, 
 for, as she stood there watching the waters play- 
 ing, and listening to their song, she said : 
 
 "Here Robert Saxeholm was a boy. How 
 often he must have stood here!" 
 
 " Robin Saxeholm ?" asked a clear voice almost 
 at her side; and Letitia turned. A pretty Eng- 
 lish lady stood there smiling and offering her 
 hand. 
 
 "Yes," said Letitia, "did you know him, 
 too?" 
 
 The lady smiled a sad little smile it was. 
 She was in black. 
 
 " fie was my husband, " she replied, " and this " 
 294
 
 In a Devon Lane 
 
 turning to the blue-eyed, fair-haired girl beside 
 her "is Letitia Saxeholm." 
 
 "Why," my Robin cried "why, that's" 
 Letitia Primrose stopped him with a glance, 
 and turning swiftly to that little English maid 
 "Letitia?" she said, taking those pink cheeks 
 gently between her hands, and kissing them 
 wellnigh with every word she uttered. "Le- 
 titia what a sweet sweet name!" 
 
 THE END
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LI RARY FACILITY 
 
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