^
 
 The Gleaners
 
 By CLARA E. LAUGHLIN 
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 A Novcllette. Illustrated, 12mo, decorated 
 boards, net 7Sc. 
 
 Again Miss Laughlio has given us master-piece 
 in this story of present day life, of which Millet's pic- 
 ture, "The Gleaners," is the moving spirit. 
 
 Everybody's Lonesome 
 
 A True Fairy Story. Illustrated by A. I. 
 Keller. 12010, cloth, net 75c. 
 
 'No one will read this happily optimistic book, 
 without being the better for \\*Book News. 
 
 The Lady in Gray 
 
 12mo, decorated boards, net SOc. 
 
 "A pretty tale it is, and a dear one, and one foil of 
 life's lessons. "Chicago Kecord-Htrald. 
 
 Divided 
 
 The story of a poem. A story based upon 
 Jean Ingelow's poem of the same name. 
 Marginal decorations in two colors. 12mo, 
 art cover, net 75c. 
 
 Miladi 
 
 Being sundry little chapters devoted to your 
 day dreams, Dear Miladi, and your House o* 
 Dreams and your Motherhood. 12mo, cloth, 
 net $1.20. 
 
 When Joy Begins 
 
 A Study of a Woman's Life. 12mo, half 
 vellum, net SOc. 
 
 "For a charming little gift that will bless the recip- 
 ient, this book is unsurpassed." ReUgunu.TeUscope. 
 
 The Evolution of a Girl's Ideal 
 
 A Little Record of the Ripening of the Affec- 
 tions to the Time of Love's Coming. 16mo, 
 decorated boards, net SOc.
 
 _ 
 -
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 A Novelette 
 
 By 
 CLARA E. LAUGHLIN 
 
 Author of "Everybody's Lonesome" "Evo- 
 lution of a Girl's Ideal," " The Lady 
 in Gray" " Divided," etc. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revel/ Company 
 London and Edinburgh,
 
 Copyright, 1911, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Rfth Avenue 
 Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave. 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street
 
 SRLF 
 URL 
 
 513S40Q 
 
 To 
 ADA DWYER
 
 CONTENrs 
 
 I. HER OWN WAY ... 9 
 
 II. THE COMING OF THE PICTURE . 18 
 
 III. THE WORTH OF THE PICTURE . 27 
 
 IV. THE MEANING OF THE PICTURE 36 
 
 V. MAKING AN APPLICATION . 44 
 
 VI. " MADE OVER " . .51 
 
 VII. " SYMBOLS " . . . 57 
 
 VIII. " MOLTA SlMPATICA " .64 
 
 IX. A NEIGHBOURLY CALL . . 71 
 
 X. FINDING His HEROINE . . 81 
 XL A GLEANER .... 93 
 
 XII. JULIETTA'S PLAY ... 99 
 
 XIII. THE PLOT BEGINS . . . 109 
 
 XIV. LEADING A HORSE TO WATER . 118 
 
 XV. AND MAKING HIM DRINK . 127 
 
 XVI. THE JOY OF THE HARVEST . 135 
 
 XVII. WHAT THE PLAY WAS ABOUT . 145 
 
 [7]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 HER OWN WAY 
 
 THE autumn afternoon sunshine 
 was pouring its gold through 
 the west windows of the sitting- 
 room before Julietta found her first op- 
 portunity to sit down. But she was not 
 able to rest, even then ; her tired body 
 had not relaxed, and her searching eyes 
 were making eager inventory in quest 
 of something left undone. 
 
 The rubber-tree ! Some careless per- 
 son in passing through the room had 
 brushed against the plant and knocked 
 off a leaf. This had happened since 
 morning, when Julietta tidied up. 
 [9]
 
 Th e G leaner s 
 
 As if her tense muscles were wire 
 springs, she bounced out of her rocking- 
 chair and went to appraise the damage. 
 
 " One would think that in a room as 
 large as this most anybody could get 
 through without breaking things, if they 
 were of a mind to take a little care ! " 
 
 But that was just it ! Care they 
 wouldrit take. Julietta's mind framed 
 several accusations, and tried each in 
 turn. The weight of probability lay 
 heaviest on her father. He always 
 seemed to have to struggle more in get- 
 ting into an overcoat than any other 
 man alive. And instead of staying in 
 the hall to accomplish this clumsy proc- 
 ess, he almost invariably returned to the 
 sitting-room, one arm in his coat and the 
 other waving wildly about in search of 
 its armhole. while he delivered some all- 
 but-forgotten message or asked the rep- 
 [10]
 
 Her Own IF ay 
 
 etition of some only-half-remembered 
 mandate. 
 
 Julietta could recall, now, when that 
 leaf must have been sacrificed. At the 
 dinner table she had asked her father to 
 stop in at the jeweller's as he came home, 
 and bring the dining-room clock that had 
 been repaired. And of course, when that 
 struggle with his overcoat was at its wild- 
 est, he had come back, clear to the din- 
 ing-room door, and asked her what it was 
 that she wanted him to bring. 
 
 Julietta bent resentfully and picked up 
 the fallen leaf. This was the second to 
 be sacrificed within a fortnight. There 
 were only eleven leaves left. Her father 
 and brothers made fun of her " sprouting 
 walking-stick," as they called her poor, 
 sparse rubber-tree. It was nothing to 
 them whether she had leaves on her plant 
 or had not. What they cared about was
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 their own perfect ease : their comfortable 
 beds, their three hot meals a day, their 
 clothes kept in perfect repair, their un- 
 challenged right to fill the house with 
 pipe-smoke. The rubber-plant was one 
 of her few, one of her very few, indulgen- 
 ces. But they had no respect for it. It 
 never seemed to occur to them that she 
 could desire any happiness in life be- 
 yond the happiness of ministering to 
 them. 
 
 They pretended that they didn't know 
 why she couldn't keep a servant. Juli- 
 etta knew ! They were always averring 
 their willingness to pay a servant any 
 wages in reason. As if wages could hire 
 any woman to work as Julietta worked ! 
 Yet they were not appreciative. When 
 they came home, night after night, and 
 found her " worn to a frazzle," they were 
 not sympathetic. They said : " Why do 
 
 [12]
 
 Her O 
 
 wn 
 
 you do it?" And they reiterated their 
 belief that if Julietta could not get for five 
 dollars a week a servant to her liking, 
 then in their opinion it would be well to 
 pay ten. 
 
 "And she'd eat and waste ten more. 
 A thousand dollars a year for a hired girl 
 who would never do one thing really 
 right ! I'd rather have the thousand, if 
 you please." 
 
 They tried to explain to her that what 
 they wanted to pay the thousand for was 
 her freedom from fret. But Julietta said 
 she should fret herself to death if she knew 
 that so much money was being paid out 
 " for next to nothing." So they gave it 
 up, and let Julietta have what they were 
 pleased to call her own way. 
 
 Her own way, indeed ! Julietta won- 
 dered if ever in her life she had had it. 
 Their mother died when Julietta was 
 [13]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 seventeen ; died after a long illness dur- 
 ing which she spent hours out of every 
 day telling Julietta what to do for her 
 father and the boys. It was the talk of 
 the village how faithful to her charge 
 Julietta had been. Everybody, Julietta 
 reflected, seemed more conscious of her 
 devotion than the three men who were its 
 beneficiaries. 
 
 Their village was a suburb of a big 
 city. It was a very big village, now, 
 and supported a good many thriving 
 businesses. Many of the residents were 
 wealthy, and nearly all of them were 
 well-to-do. Julietta's father was in the 
 real estate business : he handled a good 
 deal of neighbouring property on com- 
 mission ; he bought and sold a little of it 
 for himself, on speculation ; and he loaned 
 money on improved property and money 
 wherewith to build. One of his sons was
 
 Her Own 
 
 in business with him ; the other was owner 
 of the village drug store. The people 
 whose entire orbit was within the village 
 formed social circles more or less com- 
 pletely apart from the circles of those who 
 were commuters. This incensed Julietta. 
 There was a rich commuter who was in 
 the real estate business in the city. He 
 sold more expensive property than her 
 father sold, and negotiated larger loans. 
 But the difference was one only of degree. 
 Yet that man's womenfolk disregarded 
 Julietta in much the same way that they 
 disregarded the depot hackman's daugh- 
 ter. They made life difficult for her in 
 other ways, too. They and others of 
 their kind had worked havoc with the 
 cost of living. They outbid the villagers 
 in the matter of eggs and chickens and 
 other food products of the country round 
 about ; they absorbed at more than city 
 [15]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 wages all the available " help" ; and in a 
 hundred other ways they complicated the 
 problem of domestic management in the 
 village without doing anything apprecia- 
 ble to add to the enjoyability of life. Or 
 at least so Julietta thought. Her father 
 and brothers were satisfied. For, if they 
 had to pay more for chickens, they were 
 also able to charge more for shore prop- 
 erty and for the filling of prescriptions. 
 But there, again, was the selfish " man of 
 it " 1 They seemed to think that if they 
 paid the bills and gave Julietta ten dollars 
 a week for herself, she ought to be satis- 
 fied. Ten dollars a week for her very 
 life-blood 1 And what good to her, any- 
 way, was even the ten dollars? She 
 couldn't go into town to a concert or a 
 matinee once in a blue moon, because 
 meal times came so close together. And 
 when you're never more than an hour or 
 [16]
 
 Her O 
 
 wn 
 
 so at a time out of the kitchen, you don't 
 need many nice clothes. 
 
 Julietta's revolt against the tyranny of 
 her estate was continual. It was practi- 
 cally unremitting in her mind, and it was 
 seldom absent from her expression. Her 
 manner was one of protestation ; her 
 speech was sharp and hurried and gave 
 one to understand that she did not allow 
 herself leisure to loiter, and that she had 
 no time to humour the leisurely propensi- 
 ties of others. 
 
 People were careful how they intruded 
 upon Julietta; so careful that she was 
 often embittered to see how little they 
 cared whether her scant leisure was en- 
 livened or not. 
 
 ['73
 
 II 
 
 THE COMING OF THE PICTURE 
 
 THE door-bell rang. Julietta laid 
 down the rubber-plant leaf and 
 went to the door. A man with 
 an express package was there. He said 
 the package was for Julietta ; and pre- 
 sented his book for her to sign. 
 
 When he was gone, Julietta carried the 
 box into the house and through to the 
 kitchen. She was so pleasurably excited 
 that she forgot to remind the expressman 
 that he should have come to the back 
 door. 
 
 The sender's address on the box told 
 her that it was from her cousin in the 
 city. Julietta wondered what had " come 
 over " her cousin, all of a sudden. The 
 
 cousin was not given to making un- 
 [18]
 
 The Coming of the Picture 
 
 expected gifts. The shape of this box 
 indicated a picture. A chisel soon solved 
 the mystery. It was a picture 1 Julietta 
 looked at it resentfully ; her disappoint- 
 ment was keen, but she was suffering 
 something more than mere disappoint- 
 ment Her cousin had never selected 
 that picture with a view to giving Julietta 
 pleasure never ! Julietta's lips tight- 
 ened. The picture was a cast-off, and 
 had been shipped to her to get rid of it. 
 Her first impulse was to nail on again 
 the boards she had pried off, and return 
 the box with a chill note saying she was 
 sure a mistake had been made. Then 
 she caught sight of a letter. It said : 
 
 " DEAR JULIETTA : 
 
 "In our club we had an art lecture 
 last month. It was about a French 
 painter, Millet, and was very interesting. 
 One of his best pictures is called The 
 Gleaners. He only got $400 for it. But 
 
 C'9]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 the last time it was sold it was bought 
 for the French government for $60,000. 
 I don't quite see why it's so great, but it 
 seems it is. I bought this fine copy of it 
 for our sitting-room it's all in browns, 
 you know but Geoffrey won't have it 
 He says it gives him the backache. So 
 I thought I'd send it to you. Maybe you 
 won't like it either. If you don't, just 
 keep it to give for a wedding present. I 
 would have, only so many of my friends 
 have seen it in my house. 
 
 " I hope you're well. You must come 
 and see us soon. 
 
 " With love from Geoffrey and me to all 
 of you, 
 
 " Ever your affectionate cousin, 
 
 " ALVA." 
 
 Julietta did not like Geoffrey. He had 
 money, and he was patronizing. Un- 
 doubtedly he had told Alva to ship the 
 offending picture out to Julietta ; he con- 
 sidered that one in her position ought to 
 be grateful for any favour. Julietta was 
 not grateful. Geoffrey need not suppose 
 
 [20]
 
 The Coming of the Picture 
 
 that because she worked so hard she had 
 no spirit. She would show him a thing 
 or two ! 
 
 She shoved the box with the offending 
 picture under the kitchen table, and went 
 into the sitting-room to write a note. 
 
 But just then the washerwoman's chil- 
 dren came for the bundle of soiled clothes. 
 Their " wagon " was the much-battered 
 wicker baby carriage which had seen 
 hard service before it descended to their 
 humble ownership ; and it had been crib 
 and conveyance for six babies since, be- 
 sides doing innumerable duties in the 
 way of bringing home free kindling and 
 expensive pails of coal, and carrying to 
 their destination piles of spick-and-span 
 clothes. 
 
 Julietta left the children in the back 
 entry while she went to get the laundry 
 bag. 
 
 [21]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 " You tell your mother," she charged 
 the little girl when giving her the bag, 
 " that I find it very expensive, paying by 
 the dozen. It counts up to more than 
 having a woman by the day." 
 
 " My ma can't go out by the day very 
 well. There's no one to get dinner for us 
 or to mind the baby," the little girl replied. 
 
 " I don't want her to come here it 
 makes too much mess and bother. But 
 you tell her that I've figured it all out 
 soap and starch and blueing and fire for 
 ironing, and all and I say she's charg- 
 ing too much ! " 
 
 " She's cheaper than the laundry ! " 
 the little girl defended. 
 
 "She has to be, or she wouldn't get 
 any work," Julietta reminded. 
 
 " And her work is better ! She don't 
 put nothin' in the clo'es to rot 'em," the 
 boy declared. 
 
 [22]
 
 The Coming of the Picture 
 
 Julietta looked sternly at these forward 
 children. 
 
 " You tell your mother I want her to 
 come around and see me the first time she 
 gets a chance," she said and closed the 
 kitchen door. 
 
 When she went back to her note, the 
 mood for it was gone ; her irritation with 
 Geoffrey had given place to her irritation 
 with Mrs. Mears. 
 
 She was sorry about the note ; sundry 
 scathing phrases she had been all ready 
 to set down when those Mears children 
 came had quite escaped her. 
 
 In the hope of remembering what they 
 were, she went back to the kitchen, 
 dragged the box out from under the 
 table, and looked again at the offending 
 picture, read again the offensive letter. 
 
 The picture was beautifully framed in a 
 brown wood the exact tone of the photo- 
 [23]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 graph itself. The frame was severely 
 plain, but the grain of the walnut was 
 exquisite, and its satin finish gave it 
 what Julietta called " an air." She had 
 often admired the Braun Clement prints 
 she saw in picture shop windows and 
 on the walls of some of her most tasteful 
 friends ; she knew that one of these fine 
 French photographs of a celebrated pic- 
 ture was considered more elegant than a 
 mediocre " original " in a gilt frame ; she 
 had even gone so far as to think she 
 would buy one, some day not for this 
 home which she could never hope to have 
 to her liking ; but if ever she had the joy 
 of furnishing one to her own taste. (The 
 possible man who might live in Julietta's 
 house was an absolutely tractable man 
 who would intrude no dreams of his own 
 long-cherishing into her scheme of things. 
 He had nothing in common with the three 
 
 [24]
 
 The Coming of the Picture 
 
 men Juliette, knew best of all ; nothing in 
 common with a man like Geoffrey who 
 could venture to order a picture out of 
 his house because he said it made his back 
 ache.) 
 
 Julietta looked admiringly at that 
 French walnut frame. In her mind's eye 
 she could see it with the bent gleaners re- 
 moved and a " Girl With the Muff " in 
 their place. 
 
 She decided not to return the picture. 
 But in order to keep it and her self- 
 respect, she must think up something to 
 say to Alva which would make Alva feel 
 like a fool for having given it away. 
 This idea interested Julietta more than 
 the other had done. She took the pic- 
 ture out of its packing, and carried it into 
 the sitting-room. 
 
 Sixty thousand dollars ! Julietta wished 
 she knew something about why so vast a 
 [25]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 sum should have been paid for this unat- 
 tractive picture of three peasant women in 
 a stubbly field. Such coarse, clod-like 
 women, too I She studied them intently, 
 but unavailingly except that they made 
 the muscles of her back ache, too. 
 
 Julietta had always heard the French 
 characterized as light, pleasure-loving, 
 worshipful of beauty. Why was this pic- 
 ture so precious to them ? 
 
 [26]
 
 Ill 
 
 THE WORTH OF THE PICTURE 
 
 FATHER and Frank and Steve 
 viewed the picture with interest, 
 in the light of Alva's letter, but 
 without being able to hazard even a good 
 guess as to why it was so highly re- 
 garded. 
 
 " You can't tell anything from a photo- 
 graph," Frank reminded. " In the origi- 
 nal the colours may be gorgeous or 
 something like that." 
 
 Father was concerned with the rise in 
 value. 
 
 "From four hundred dollars to sixty 
 thousand is some rise," he said. " I 
 wonder how long it took to make the 
 jump." 
 
 [27]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 Julietta knew, vaguely, that Millet was 
 not a great while dead ; she thought the 
 jump in value must have been within a 
 few years. 
 
 " I've seen it happen, over and over 
 again," father went on ; "a man gets 
 a-hold of a piece of property that ought 
 by all the signs to be a good investment. 
 And he holds it for years, paying taxes, 
 and sells it for about what it cost him. 
 Two years later, or so, the fellow that 
 bought it trebles his money I " 
 
 Steve went back to his drug store as 
 soon as he had eaten his supper ; but the 
 other three sat around and looked at the 
 picture, and studied it as if it were some 
 peculiarly fascinating puzzle. And talk 
 of one thing led to talk of another in a 
 more animated discussion than had en- 
 livened this household for many months 
 
 before. It was ten o'clock, and Steve 
 [28]
 
 The Worth of the Picture 
 
 was back again, before anybody realized 
 that the evening had flown. 
 
 Steve's store was the grand clearing- 
 house for village information. Everybody 
 in the suburb went there with more or less 
 frequency. A notice posted in the drug 
 store was the favourite method of com- 
 munication with the public. People might 
 or might not read the Lost and Found or 
 the Help Wanted or the House to Rent 
 columns of the city dailies, and they might 
 but probably would not read the Shore 
 Suburban News ; but they were sure to 
 read a notice that was posted in the drug 
 store. 
 
 Steve had, of course, a speaking ac- 
 quaintance with every one in the village ; 
 and he had a fund of knowledge about 
 most every one far beyond what it would 
 have been comfortable for them to realize. 
 He knew a great many things about peo- 
 [29]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 pie in the village, but last of all kinds of 
 information to percolate to the drug store 
 was any information about the villagers' 
 artistic tastes. So Steve wrote a notice : 
 
 " WANTED TO KNOW Something about 
 the French artist Millet, and especially 
 about his picture called The Glean- 
 ers' Any one who happens to know 
 will confer a favour by speaking to the 
 Proprietor." 
 
 From a little after seven, when the 
 notice was posted up near the cigar case 
 and the candy counter in the front of the 
 store, till past nine, it was read many 
 times, but without other result than that 
 some who felt on pretty free terms with 
 " the Proprietor " ventured to " kid " him 
 about his new interest in art. 
 
 "Got a girl, Steve?" they teased. 
 " Does she make you answer questions 
 about What's-his-name ? " 
 
 Steve reiterated that he was seeking 
 [30]
 
 The Worth of the Picture 
 
 the information for some one else. Some 
 of the village wags believed him, and 
 some didn't. 
 
 About nine-thirty an interurban trolley 
 car stopped at the drug store door (one of 
 the offices of the drug store was as a trol- 
 ley waiting-room) and a man got off. He 
 stepped to the cigar case to make a pur- 
 chase, and the notice caught his eye. 
 
 Steve had waited on him. He knew as 
 little about this man as about anybody in 
 the village. Practically the sum of his 
 knowledge was that the gentleman's name 
 was Sheppard ; that he had come to the 
 suburb, about two months ago, from no- 
 body-knew-where ; and that he was living 
 in the little stone house of the Hansons' 
 out beyond the ravine. The Hansons 
 had gone abroad in the spring; their 
 house was rented for the summer by a 
 Southern family, and in September, im- 
 [31]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 mediately after the Southerners left, this 
 Mr. Sheppard came. He had a Japanese 
 servant who was housekeeper and valet, 
 but who fraternized not at all with the 
 other servants of the village nor with the 
 tradespeople ; so not much was known of 
 Mr. Sheppard who escaped being con- 
 sidered " mysterious " only because his 
 manner was so frank and so apparently 
 free that hardly any one realized how lit- 
 tle about himself he ever revealed. 
 
 " Interested in art, Mr. Grier?" he asked, 
 when he had finished reading the notice. 
 
 Steve smiled. "I guess you'd hardly 
 call it that," he said; "but I'd like to 
 know a little about that particular picture 
 and why it cost sixty thousand dollars." 
 
 "Did it?" Mr. Sheppard asked. "I 
 didn't know. I've seen it" 
 
 " The real one ? " 
 
 "Yes; in the Louvre." 
 [32]
 
 The W^orth of the Picture 
 
 " Is it very wonderful?" 
 
 " It is why, to tell you the truth I 
 don't know much more about it than you 
 do, except that I can remember just how 
 it looks. The yellow stubble, the bent 
 figures, the sunburnt hands and faces of 
 the women, the blistering heat of the sun 
 which the picture makes one feel as if he 
 were out under it, all come back to me 
 very vividly, now that you remind me of 
 the painting. But I don't believe I know 
 much more about it than that it is consid- 
 ered a great canvas. I'll tell you what I'll 
 do, though ! Mr. Hanson's library is a 
 very good one, I'm finding. He is an ap- 
 preciator of art. I'll look the books over, 
 when I go home ; and if there's anything 
 about Millet I'll bring it down to you in 
 the morning." 
 
 "I wonder who he is and what he 
 [33]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 does," Frank said, when Steve had re- 
 counted his talk with Mr. Sheppard. 
 
 Steve admitted his inability to guess. 
 " He seems to be an awfully nice, human 
 sort of a chap nothing queer or freakish 
 about him. I guess it's no sign that be- 
 cause a man doesn't tell all his business 
 to a bunch of gossips like there are in this 
 village there's anything the matter with 
 him. Looks to me like a good proof of 
 his intelligence." 
 
 Julietta was beginning to be quite ex- 
 cited. She had forgotten all about the 
 rubber-plant when she lay down to sleep 
 that night, and all about the excessive 
 charges of Mrs. Mears. She could hardly 
 wait for the morrow and what develop- 
 ments it might bring. 
 
 When Steve came home for dinner the 
 next day he brought a book, and a mes- 
 sage. 
 
 [34]
 
 The Worth of the Picture 
 
 " Mr. Sheppard found a book that tells 
 about the picture," he announced, handing 
 the book to Julietta ; " and he said he had 
 sat up nearly all night reading it. I told 
 him how we came to be so interested. 
 And he said that he certainly was obliged 
 to Alva for sending us the picture." 
 
 " He was obliged ? " echoed Julietta. 
 " I wonder why ! " 
 
 " Maybe he'll tell you when you take 
 back the book," Steve ventured. 
 
 [35]
 
 IV 
 
 THE MEANING OF THE PICTURE 
 
 AS soon as she had hurried the 
 dinner dishes out of the way, 
 Julietta sat down to make ac- 
 quaintance with that book which the 
 mysterious Mr. Sheppard had stayed 
 awake nearly all night to read. It was 
 the " Life and Letters of Jean Francois 
 Millet," and the narrative gripped her 
 almost on the first page. Withdrawn 
 into a world far apart from her own, she 
 was as if veritably in Gruchy on the rug- 
 ged Norman coast ; in the little gray stone 
 house with its thatched roof, where the 
 peasant-painter was born and where his 
 boyhood was lived ; in the remarkable 
 family group of that simple, God-fearing 
 home where the will of the Almighty was 
 [36]
 
 The Meaning of the Picture 
 
 the hourly thought of every one, and the 
 routine of life was so close to that of 
 patriarchal days in Palestine that the 
 Bible seemed like a personal revelation to 
 them. 
 
 She toiled in the fields with the boy 
 Francois while the seasons unfolded their 
 wonders to him and he felt himself, as he 
 plowed and sowed and reaped, one with 
 those Bible men who were his chief 
 companions-invisible. She followed him 
 through the struggles and starvation of 
 his student life, up to that time in his 
 thirty-fourth year when he was beginning 
 to be known for the brilliant colouring 
 and marvellous flesh-tints of his pictures, 
 and the French government gave him an 
 order for a painting. The subject he 
 chose was " Hagar and Ishmael in the 
 Desert," and Millet lavished all his skill 
 on Hagar's form, intending it to be a 
 [37]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 striking study of the nude. But one 
 evening when the picture was almost 
 finished, he happened to overhear himself 
 discussed by two youths as "a man 
 named Millet who never paints anything 
 but naked women." Then Millet was 
 overcome with shame of himself and of 
 his departure from the beautiful old ideals 
 of his boyhood. He went home and 
 said to his devoted young wife : " If you 
 consent, I will paint no more of those 
 pictures. Life will be harder than ever, 
 and you will suffer ; but I shall be free, 
 and able to do what I have long dreamt 
 of." To which the brave girl she was 
 only twenty-two and had two babies 
 replied: " I am ready. Do as you will." 
 From that moment Millet's back was 
 turned forever on success as the world of- 
 fered it to him if he would gratify its 
 tastes. He took his little family to 
 [38]
 
 The Meaning of the Picture 
 
 Barbizon on the edge of the forest of 
 Fontainebleau, on one hand, and of the 
 great plain of La Biere on the other. 
 There life was indeed hard, and sorrows 
 were many ; but there Millet was free to 
 do what he had " long dreamt of " ; and 
 there, far exceeding his fondest dreams, 
 he wrought not only immortal beauty but 
 a new era in art. 
 
 Finally, Julietta came to The Gleaners ; 
 to the letter to Rosseau in which Millet 
 first mentioned it, saying : 
 
 " I am working like a slave to get my 
 picture of The Gleaners done in time. I 
 really do not know what will be the result 
 of all the trouble that I have taken. 
 There are days when I feel as if this un- 
 happy picture had no meaning. If only it 
 does not turn out too disgraceful ! . . . 
 Headaches, big and little, have attacked 
 me during the last month with such vio- 
 lence that I have scarcely been able to 
 work for a quarter of an hour at a time." 
 
 [39]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 She read with what scoffing and abuse 
 the noble picture was received ; and how 
 Millet had replied to it : " They may do 
 their worst ! I stand firm. They may 
 call me a painter of ugliness, a detractor 
 of my race, but let no one think they can 
 force me to beautify peasant-types. I 
 would rather say nothing than express 
 myself feebly." 
 
 Thanks to the outcry of the visionless, 
 he got only two thousand francs for his 
 picture. Julietta wondered why the pic- 
 ture was considered so " dangerous " that 
 many people had protested against its 
 exhibition and declared that Millet was 
 trying to stir up another Revolution. 
 
 She had to admit that she was not very 
 sure just what " gleaners " really were. 
 She had a hazy idea, of course, but it was 
 very hazy. The only definite things with 
 which she could connect any of her vague 
 [40]
 
 The Meaning of the Picture 
 
 impressions about gleaners were sermons 
 and Sunday-school lessons dealing with 
 Ruth. Julietta thought she would look it 
 up. 
 
 She got the Bible and reread the story 
 of Naomi and her daughter-in-law. Ju- 
 lietta thought she knew it by heart, she 
 had heard it so often reiterated ; but 
 this was the first time she had ever read 
 it searchingly. Ruth was a gleaner ; she 
 left the land of her birth and went to 
 Judea where, according to a provision of 
 the Lord, a woman might earn her bread 
 in the sweat of her brow and need not, as 
 in Moab, beg the bitter bread of depend- 
 ence. For in Israel the husbandman 
 was commanded : 
 
 " When thou cuttest down thine harvest 
 in thy field, and hast forgot a sheaf in the 
 field, thou shalt not go again to fetch it : 
 it shall be for the stranger, for the father-
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 less, and for the widow : that the Lord 
 thy God may bless thee in all the work of 
 thine hands. . . . And thou shaJt 
 remember that thou wast a bondman in 
 the land of Egypt : therefore I command 
 thee to do this thing." 
 
 Julietta read it over several times ; then 
 she looked intently at the picture which 
 was beginning to mean so much to her. 
 She got up and went and stood close to 
 it that she might satisfy herself the better 
 about some details. Her glance roved 
 from the farmer's great stacks, in the 
 background, to the few wisps each of the 
 three gleaning women held in her hand ; 
 she compared him, on horseback, like a 
 general directing the movements of his 
 men, with the bent women in the fore- 
 ground, their eyes searching among the 
 stubble for grains of wheat, their hands 
 outstretched in eagerness to seize the 
 [42]
 
 The Meaning of the Picture 
 
 tiniest particle that might be transmitted 
 into sustenance. Julietta had learned 
 that the painter believed in the sweetness 
 of that bread only which has been earned 
 in toil ; she knew this picture could not 
 be, as some had ignorantly interpreted it, 
 a protest against the grim necessity of 
 labour. What then ? A plea for fields 
 not too clean-picked ? 
 
 [43]
 
 V 
 
 MAKING AN APPLICATION 
 
 THERE was a knock at the back 
 door. Resentful of the interrup- 
 tion, Julietta went to the door. 
 Mrs. Mears had herself brought back the 
 clean clothes. 
 
 " The children told me you wanted to 
 see me, Miss Grier," the woman began. 
 " I'm awful sorry if there's any dissatis- 
 faction. I'd hate to lose your washing." 
 There was something about Mrs. Mears 
 that reminded Julietta of the women in 
 the picture ; her toil-bent figure had not 
 the sturdiness of theirs, but she carried 
 with her (when you came to notice such 
 things) the same air of eager searching- 
 ness as if she, like they, could not afford 
 to let the tiniest particle of sustenance 
 [44]
 
 Making An Application 
 
 escape her gleaning. Also, Julietta sud- 
 denly found herself feeling like the farmer 
 on horseback, with his great stacks about 
 him. 
 
 "Come in," she urged; "and let us 
 talk about it." 
 
 Mrs. Mears lifted the clean clothes out 
 of the battered baby-buggy, and closed 
 the kitchen door behind her. Julietta un- 
 pinned the white wrapping (part of an 
 old sheet it was) and gave an admiring 
 look at Mrs. Mears' handiwork. 
 
 " How beautifully you do them ! " she 
 exclaimed. 
 
 Mrs. Mears looked the astonishment 
 she felt. She had expected criticism as 
 a prelude to bargaining or dismissal. 
 
 "I try very hard," she answered, 
 simply. "It means so much to me to 
 have my customers satisfied." 
 
 "Come into the sitting-room," said 
 [45]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 Julietta ; "there is an open fire there, 
 and easier chairs." 
 
 Mrs. Mears was not able to conceal the 
 wonder she felt ; it declared itself in her 
 face ; but she followed Julietta, and ac- 
 cepted the comfortable chair Julietta indi- 
 cated. 
 
 " I mustn't stop," she murmured. 
 " I've to get back and see about the 
 children's supper." 
 
 " Are none of them old enough to help 
 you ? " 
 
 " Well, Elsie is ; but of course she 
 works. She's sixteen ; she works by a 
 factory." 
 
 "A factory?" 
 
 " Yes'm Higgins' at Waumbeck." 
 
 " Has he a factory there now ? " 
 
 "Yes'm." 
 
 " And does your little girl go back and 
 forth every day ? " 
 
 [46]
 
 Making An Application 
 
 " Yes'm ; it's a ten-cent fare on the 
 interurban. But that's a lot cheaper than 
 goin' into the city to work, or stay in' in 
 there to board. And of course, if I was 
 to move into town, rents 'd be higher and 
 I maybe couldn't find no place where I 
 could dry clothes. And over to Waum- 
 beck there ain't nobody that gives their 
 washin' out to be done. I've figured it 
 all out, and I don't see no other way." 
 
 " What does Elsie get ? " 
 
 " Three a week." 
 
 " Three dollars ! And it costs her a 
 dollar and twenty cents for car fare ! " 
 
 " I know ! But a dollar an' eighty 
 cents helps me out more than you'd be- 
 lieve. That's more than I can earn in a 
 couple o' days, almost when I count out 
 what it costs me for soap an' fire, an' 
 starch, an' bluein'. I could earn more if 
 I went out by the day. But what does 
 [47]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 that mean? It means leavin' my house 
 go at sixes and sevens ; an' my children 
 run wild, without proper food or care. 
 It'd mean that Elsie'd have to come home 
 nights, from that long day at the fact'ry, 
 and find the house all every-which-way, 
 an' no supper cooked, what with me get- 
 tin' home as late as her. An' I don't 
 want her to get discouraged, Miss Grier. 
 It's awful important not to leave a young 
 girl like her get discouraged with tryin' 
 to do right." 
 
 Julietta was glad that there was only 
 firelight in the room, and that the dusk 
 had deepened almost to dark ; for her 
 eyes were brimming, and her mouth was 
 tremulous. 
 
 " Mrs. Mears," she began, quite tim- 
 idly, "I've been thinking since I sent 
 that message to you yesterday. I'm 
 sorry I troubled you to come here after 
 [48]
 
 Making An Application 
 
 your hard day's work ; but for my sake, 
 I'm glad you came. I know that you do 
 better work than the laundry. I've al- 
 ways known it ! Why, only last week, 
 a friend of mine sent her best new hand- 
 embroidered shirt-waist to the laundry, 
 and when it came home it literally 
 dropped to pieces from the stuff they 
 had used to bleach it. You ought to get 
 more than the laundry gets. But for the 
 present, at least, I hope you'll let me pay 
 you just as much." 
 
 Mrs. Mears received this announce- 
 ment with a burst of grateful tears. 
 
 " If you could know, Miss Grier, what 
 this means to me ! " she cried. 
 
 " I see," commented Julietta's father, 
 looking up from his newspaper at the 
 supper table that evening, "that our 
 neighbour, Grant Higgins, is giving a 
 
 [49]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 hundred thousand dollars for a new 
 Erring Women's Refuge." 
 
 " He can afford to, without missing it," 
 declared Frank. 
 
 Julietta's eyes flashed fire. " His half- 
 paid employees are giving it ! " she cried. 
 " And they do miss it ! " 
 
 Father and the boys looked in astonish- 
 ment at Julietta. They had never before 
 known her so vehement about anything 
 except her own grievances. 
 
 [50]
 
 VI 
 
 "MADE OVER" 
 
 STEVE carried the Millet book back 
 to his store and waited for Mr. 
 Sheppard to come in, homeward 
 bound. Julietta thought Steve should 
 have taken the book to Mr. Sheppard's 
 house. But Steve was afraid that would 
 look as if he were trying to force ac- 
 quaintance. He might have sent it by 
 his errand boy ; but he didn't. 
 
 The truth was, Steve was hoping for a 
 chance to talk with Mr. Sheppard ; to tell 
 him how much Julietta had enjoyed the 
 book ; and perhaps to hear a little more 
 of why Mr. Sheppard had been so inter- 
 ested in it. 
 
 Steve had not read the book : he had
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 little time for reading and it was all he 
 could do to keep up with the daily pa- 
 pers, the Druggist's News, and a few 
 magazines. He was far from being sure 
 that he understood what Julietta tried to 
 tell about the book. But there was one 
 thing that was unmistakable ! Julietta 
 had got something out of the picture or 
 the book, or both, that was clarifying life 
 at home in much the same magic way 
 that Steve sometimes clarified turgid and 
 muddy liquids by dropping in a chemical 
 which caused precipitation. 
 
 Mr. Sheppard seemed much interested 
 when Steve told him how grateful for the 
 loan of the book his sister was. 
 
 " Whatever it was that she wanted to 
 find out about that picture, she seems to 
 have got it, all right," Steve said. 
 
 " I'm glad to hear it," Mr. Sheppard 
 declared, " If it helped her as much as 
 [52]
 
 "Made Over 
 
 it has helped me, it is a wonderful book 
 for sure. Does your sister paint ? " 
 
 The question almost startled Steve, 
 who, naturally, thought first of cosmetics. 
 
 " No ; oh, no I " he said ; " she doesn't 
 do anything like that." 
 
 Mr. Sheppard laughed. " You seem 
 quite shocked at the idea," he observed. 
 "But so many young ladies nowadays 
 paint, or stamp leather, or hammer brass, 
 or or do something, you know. It 
 seems quite the thing." 
 
 " Julietta keeps house," Steve explained. 
 " She has kept house since she was seven- 
 teen. I guess she never had time to learn 
 much about art." 
 
 On hearing this, Mr. Sheppard felt 
 more interested than before. He had 
 been seeing the druggist's young lady 
 sister in his mind's eye ; imagining her 
 as one of the village types he had met 
 [53]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 on the stage oftener than anywhere else. 
 He had been amusedly sure that she 
 painted china or lamp-shades ; that she 
 belonged to a whist club ; was her broth- 
 er's best patron of soda-water ; and was 
 probably " boning " on Millet to write a 
 paper for the Mary E. Wilkins' Literary 
 Society. 
 
 Steve's manner, much more than what 
 he said, indicated a far different type. 
 Mr. Sheppard pursued his inquiry. 
 
 "She must have more artistic taste 
 than you think," he suggested, " if she is 
 interested in Millet." 
 
 " I don't know that she ever heard 
 of Millet till this week," Steve replied, 
 bluntly. "I know / didn't. But this 
 picture came it was a hand-down from 
 my cousin, whose husband said it made 
 his back ache and Julietta wanted to 
 find out why it was considered so won- 
 [54]
 
 "Made Over 
 
 derful. I don't believe I understand yet. 
 But I know one thing ! Whatever it 
 was that Julietta found out, it has about 
 made her over." 
 
 " Made her over ? " 
 
 "Yes! She was pretty tired of her 
 job keeping house for my father and my 
 
 brother and me and she was Well, 
 
 she didn't have enough to interest her, I 
 guess, and she was kind of hard to 
 live with. Whatever it was that she got 
 out of that book, she's been quite differ- 
 ent" 
 
 " Isn't that interesting ! " Mr. Sheppard 
 exclaimed. " I wonder what it was." 
 
 " Something about gleaners. I haven't 
 heard a great deal. I'm at home so little. 
 She'd be glad to tell you, I'm sure, if you 
 would care to know." 
 
 " I should, indeed ! What shall I do 
 about it?" 
 
 [55]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 Steve looked at his watch. It was 
 two-thirty. 
 
 " This is a slack time," he said. " I'll 
 walk up home with you, if you want to 
 go, and introduce you to my sister." 
 
 " Would she like that better than if I 
 introduced myself ? " 
 
 11 Why, I don't know. I'll tell you 1 
 I'll 'phone her that you're coming ; that'll 
 do just as well." 
 
 [56]
 
 VII 
 
 " SYMBOLS " 
 
 THE autumn afternoon was glori- 
 ous. Frost had turned the trees 
 to scarlet and gold and bronze, 
 but had not yet noticeably stripped them, 
 although the ground was well carpeted 
 with fallen leaves. The sunshine was 
 warm, but the air had a tingle in it 
 which made pulses leap as no merely 
 soft warmth can ever do. 
 
 The village was famed for its hard 
 maples. A magnificent avenue of them 
 completely overarched the broad street 
 on which the Griers lived, and they were 
 aflame with splendour as Sheppard 
 walked along beneath their arch. 
 
 Julietta opened the door for him and 
 asked him in. He was conscious of a 
 [57]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 sense of regret the moment the front 
 door was closed and he got a whiff of 
 the stove-heated air of the sitting-room. 
 
 " I'll tell you," he began when the first 
 formalities were over with ; " I want to 
 talk with you. I I'd be so glad if you 
 would tell me some things about the 
 book and what you got out of it. But 
 what have you got to do ? Would it be 
 impossible for you to come out and take 
 a walk? I'm not very good at this 
 sort of thing." 
 
 He smiled, and Julietta understood. 
 They were sitting stiffly facing each 
 other, not very different from children in 
 the first stage of a party. 
 
 " And ' anyway besides,' " he went on, 
 " the afternoon is much too wonderful to 
 miss." 
 
 Julietta was captivated by Mr. Shep- 
 pard's manner. It was shy, in a way ; 
 [58]
 
 "Symbols" 
 
 but it wasn't the kind of shyness that 
 made another person ill at ease. And 
 there was an unmistakable heartiness 
 about it that seemed waiting only for a 
 bit of friendly encouragement to bring it 
 to full expression. 
 
 "I'd love to go," she said; and went 
 at once to get ready. 
 
 While she was gone he stood studying 
 the picture, his memory painting it in 
 the sun-drenched colours of the original. 
 
 Julietta smiled appreciatively when she 
 came back and saw his intent scrutiny. 
 
 " When you've learned to read its 
 meaning it is wonderful, isn't it?" she 
 said. 
 
 " I don't know," he answered, " that 
 I've learned to read its meaning. But 
 the fact that so many people have 
 learned is what has meant so much to 
 me!" 
 
 [59]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 "Yes?" she murmured, uncompre- 
 hendingly. 
 
 " Sounds mysterious-like, doesn't it ? " 
 he went on. " Perhaps I'd better try to 
 explain. You see, the part that made 
 such a hit with me was the part that 
 told how discouraged Millet was when 
 he was painting this picture. Remem- 
 ber ? He said something about ' if only 
 it does not turn out too disgraceful 1 ' 
 Think of that ! He could feel that way 
 about a canvas which was destined to be 
 of such great worth to the world. If he 
 could get that discouraged about one of 
 the very greatest pictures of modern 
 times, I figured that it isn't any wonder 
 if a little fellow like me gets the blue 
 devils about his job." 
 
 They were out in the maple-arched 
 street now, and freedom of tongue 
 
 seemed to come to Sheppard with the 
 [60]
 
 "Symbols 
 
 freer movements of his limbs. He had, 
 too, made a pleasant discovery about 
 Julietta. 
 
 "You walk with a good rhythm," he 
 declared. 
 
 "Do I ? " she asked. " I didn't know 
 it." 
 
 " Look I " he illustrated comically, ad- 
 justing his speech to different lengths 
 of steps differently accented. Julietta 
 laughed delightedly. " That's the rea- 
 son so many people don't like to walk," 
 he went on. " They don't know how. 
 And they don't know what they miss. 
 If there's something I can't think out 
 sitting down, I get on my legs and start 
 them in a good, swinging rhythm. I 
 usually find that my mind falls into 
 step." 
 
 " I'll try it," Julietta cried. " I get the 
 blue devils too."
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 " And feel sure the job you're working 
 so hard on will never turn out right ? " 
 
 "I should say 1 do!" 
 
 " Was that why you liked the book so 
 much and the picture?" 
 
 " Why, no 1 I don't believe I had 
 thought of that as much as you have. 
 But I'm so glad you told me. It will 
 help me a lot." 
 
 " It has helped me ; helped me to go 
 on, I mean. But I'm not out of the woods 
 yet ; I can't even see the sun so I can tell 
 for sure which direction I'm going in." 
 
 Julietta had once spent a summer with 
 some friends who had a camp far up 
 north close to the great forests. 
 
 " And isn't there any moss on the north 
 side of trees?" she asked. 
 
 " I haven't been able to find any." 
 
 " And no one has blazed a trail ? " 
 
 " Oh, of course ! But the trails are 
 [62]
 
 "Symbols 
 
 not very fresh, and it takes a keen eye to 
 pick out old blazings. That's why this 
 book helped so. I know that the man 
 who followed this trail got out or at 
 least his work did." 
 
 " He himself is buried on the forest's 
 edge," said Julietta, who had read the 
 book through. 
 
 Sheppard looked at her appreciatively. 
 " You love symbols," he averred. 
 
 " Do I ? " she questioned. " You are 
 teaching me so many things about my- 
 self." 
 
 [63]
 
 VIII 
 "MOLT A SIMPATICA" 
 
 THEIR way, which they had not 
 chosen but were following un- 
 thinkingly, led across the deep 
 ravine and past the little stone house of 
 the Hansons. 
 
 He ran ahead, as they approached the 
 house, and left the book at the door. 
 
 " I hate impedimenta," he admitted 
 when he rejoined her in the road ; " even 
 when I am as much indebted to it as I am 
 to that book." 
 
 " Do you paint ? " she asked, suddenly. 
 The sight of the stone house and of the 
 Japanese who opened the door had 
 brought back to her all the mystery about 
 Mr. Sheppard. 
 
 [64]
 
 "Mo It a Simpatica" 
 
 " No," he answered ; " but I'd like to. 
 That's why I'm here." 
 
 She looked puzzled. " Let me ex- 
 plain," he went on. " I'm not aspiring to 
 paint people as Millet painted them not 
 with pigments. I want to write plays 
 real plays about real people. I've written 
 light operas ; I've made a good deal of 
 money ; most people think I ought to be 
 satisfied to go on as I've begun. I can't. 
 I'm sick of being a clown. They tell me 
 I ought to be glad I can make the world 
 laugh. It isn't laughing that I make 
 them do ; it's grinning. They say I ought 
 to be glad I can make people forget. I 
 don't want to make them forget ! I want 
 to make them think and feel. I'm tired of 
 being a mountebank who sweats like a 
 hired rogue to distract men and women 
 from their peril and their obligations. 
 
 "Millet got ashamed to paint nude 
 [65]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 women to pander to Parisian taste. I got 
 ashamed to go on writing comic operas. 
 His friends said he was crazy. My friends 
 say I am crazy. He deserved infinitely 
 greater credit than I do, because when he 
 turned his back on what he was ashamed 
 of, he had a young wife and two little 
 babies, and he was penniless. I have no 
 one depending on me, and I am not poor. 
 But it hasn't been easy. That's why I 
 came here away from every one I know. 
 I've got a play that I want to write. But 
 it comes hard. I feel worse than Millet 
 did when he was painting The Glean- 
 ers." 
 
 " But you're encouraged now !" Julietta 
 cried, eagerly. 
 
 He shook his head. " I'm encouraged 
 to keep on trying to get out of the wood," 
 he said ; " but I don't see yet how I'm 
 
 going to do it." 
 
 [66]
 
 "Molt a Simpatica" 
 
 " I don't believe I understand," she 
 murmured. 
 
 " It isn't the purpose that I lack now," 
 he explained ; "it's the vision. I want to 
 do my play, but there's something that 
 balks me ; something that doesn't ' come.' " 
 
 " I wish I could help you," she said. 
 " But I'm not clever." 
 
 "I'm not so sure of that," he replied. 
 " However, it isn't half so likely to be 
 cleverness that helps as sympathy the 
 right kind of sympathy." 
 
 Julietta smiled wistfully. " I can see," 
 she said, " how sympathy might help to 
 console you for failing to do what you 
 want to do ; but I can't see how it could 
 help you to to write a good play ! " 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 " I don't blame you for not quite see- 
 ing," he explained. " But it's this way : 
 we Anglo-Saxons have a rather limited 
 [67]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 way of using the words sympathy and 
 sympathetic, as if they had only one mean- 
 ing and that was allied to pity or com- 
 passion. I've picked up a few foreign 
 phrases, now and then in my stays abroad, 
 and I particularly like one that the 
 Italians use a great deal : they say of 
 some one well, if I were in Italy I should 
 say of you that you are molta simpatica; 
 meaning that you and I have many tastes 
 and ideals and understandings in com- 
 mon ; as we'd say in our clumsier speech, 
 that we ' get on together ' very well. 
 That's what I meant by the sympathy that 
 helps." 
 
 " I see," she murmured. " Isn't it 
 pretty? 'Molta simpatica I ' What a 
 lovely thing to be ! " 
 
 " Isn't it ? And how wonderfully it does 
 help ! I've met any number of persons 
 
 after whom, when they had left me, I 
 [68]
 
 "Molt a Simpatica" 
 
 could only look and blink in a dazed 
 kind of way and say : ' How clever 1 ' 
 But I can't seem to remember that any 
 one of that sort ever gave me any real 
 help. The people who do that are the 
 ones who contrive, in some lovely way, to 
 set us right with our best selves. I don't 
 seem to know just how to express it but 
 you know I You've met people whose 
 effect on you was to make you dig down 
 and bring up some splendid aspiration 
 that you used to cherish and then had 
 put by, thinking you could never reach 
 anywhere near to it ; and, somehow, these 
 people make you believe you can; and 
 you try again and succeed ! Now, 
 nobody need tell me that the fairies are 
 all dead, while miracles like that are still 
 happening in this world ! " 
 
 " No indeed ! " cried Julietta, her eyes 
 shining with new visions. 
 [69]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 " It is because I wanted to get that 
 magic into my play that I was ' stuck/ " 
 he went on. " I want my play to be like 
 the the person who is ' molta simpatica' : 
 to give every one who sees it a feeling 
 that he's finer than he thought he was, 
 or than any body ever thought he was. 
 . . . Perhaps then he'll try to do 
 something to prove it I " 
 
 " You can do it ! " Julietta declared, 
 turning to him a radiant face whereon, 
 already, "the magic" had begun to work 
 its charm. " I never supposed there was 
 any one in the world with such a lovely 
 dream. And I cannot hope to make you 
 understand what it has meant to me to 
 to know about it." 
 
 " It is lovelier now than it has ever been 
 before," he said gently. " You have en- 
 hanced it quite wonderfully, Miss Grier 
 because you are ' molla simpatica? " 
 [70]
 
 IX 
 
 A NEIGHBOURLY CALL 
 
 AFTER that walk and its wonder- 
 working conversation, Julietta 
 was almost too tumultuously 
 happy to think. But she was aware her 
 heart, if not her brain, was telling her 
 things that life could never again be to 
 her as it had been : monotonous, self- 
 centered, fretful. Whether it was or was 
 not to be that she should see much of this 
 young man, enjoy much of his transfigur- 
 ing companionship, she could never again 
 be without this ideal that he had given 
 her : " Molta simpatica " / She had long 
 bemoaned the absorption by her house- 
 hold tasks which kept her, as she thought, 
 from being clever and so of consequence 
 to her world. But here was a new vista
 
 T/ie Gleaners 
 
 opened up to her : a beautiful new life in 
 which one came into happiness and help- 
 fulness not by what one could do, but by 
 what one could feel. 
 
 Julietta was singing softly, to her- 
 self when she opened the front door and 
 entered the dusky house. The air in- 
 doors was heavy with stove heat; the 
 house was an old-fashioned one, and 
 stoves instead of steam-pipes had long 
 been a deep grievance of the old Julietta 
 who had such a talent for grievances. 
 Tingling as she was with her brisk walk, 
 and with her vigorous new interests, she 
 felt stifled with the staleness of that hot, 
 heavy air. Did it strike her menfolk 
 that way when they came into it? she 
 wondered. And how had it seemed to 
 them to come home, evening after even- 
 ing, not only out of the crisp air into this 
 closeness, but out of their world of fresh 
 [72]
 
 A Neighbourly Call 
 
 interests into this world of hers where 
 the interests were all stale ? 
 
 She opened several windows and one 
 door, and let in a rush of new air to rout 
 the old. Then, when the atmosphere 
 seemed more breathable, she lighted the 
 reading lamp, took the wrappers from 
 two magazines that had come in the 
 afternoon mail, and looked about wist- 
 fully for some other little thing that she 
 might do to give the room a look of 
 home. She was sorry she had not 
 brought home a few of the most gorgeous 
 red maple leaves to put on her supper- 
 table. To-morrow she would do this ! 
 
 For to-morrow Well ! John Shep- 
 
 pard had told her that it was a delight 
 to him to have some one to walk with 
 who walked as well as she did, and an 
 even greater delight to have some one to 
 talk with who was interested in such 
 [73]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 real things. He worked hard, usually, 
 until mid-afternoon, he said ; and then 
 he obliged himself to go out for exercise. 
 Hitherto he had had to make himself go 
 out. But if he could hope that some- 
 times he might stop in and see if she 
 were inclined for a walk 
 
 Julietta's assurance that he " might 
 indeed " was so eager that it would 
 almost certainly have dampened the 
 ardour of a man who was hoping for the 
 pleasurable lure of coquetry. But John 
 Sheppard had been surfeited with co- 
 quetry ; and when he wanted more of it, 
 he knew where he could go and un- 
 failingly find it. 
 
 At supper that night Julietta had so 
 pretty a flush, so radiant a look what 
 with the long walk, and with other things 
 that each of her three menfolk was 
 conscious of a surprised realization that 
 [74]
 
 A Neighbourly Call 
 
 Juliette, was pretty. She had another 
 surprise in store for them, too. 
 
 "Steve," she said, "do you suppose 
 it would do any good to put a notice for 
 a girl in your store ? I've made up my 
 mind to get one, if I can ; even if she 
 isn't very good, she can sweep a little, 
 and dust a little, and peel potatoes, and 
 wash dishes. And that'll give me a tiny 
 bit more time for some things I want to 
 do." 
 
 " You know," her father reminded, 
 " that you've tried that kind before ; and 
 it always ended in your doing every- 
 thing yourself, and being exasperated all 
 the while, to boot." 
 
 " I remember," Juliette, replied. " I 
 don't want another incompetent if I can 
 get any other kind. If we can get 
 efficiency for a good price, I'd rather 
 go without something less essential, and 
 [75]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 have it. But if we can't ! Well, I'll 
 
 take what I can get, and try to overlook 
 what it won't help me to see." 
 
 " I'll put the notice up to-night," Steve 
 declared. "And I'll say : ' Best Wages.' " 
 
 "We'll all help," Frank interposed. 
 " Maybe there's something father or I 
 could do towards hunting down a good 
 one." 
 
 " Say ' No washing,' Steve, please," 
 Julietta directed. " I couldn't think of 
 taking the washing away from Mrs. 
 Mears ; she needs the work." 
 
 Julietta's menfolk stared a little ; but, 
 being wise in their day and generation, 
 they made no remark. 
 
 She wondered if he would come the 
 
 very next afternoon. Would he think of 
 
 her again so soon ? Or, if he did, would 
 
 he persuade himself that she would be 
 
 [76]
 
 A Neighbourly Call 
 
 surprised perhaps even amused to 
 find him there so quickly, and be 
 ashamed to come? 
 
 Julietta could not make up her mind 
 whether to stay in and hope that he might 
 call, or to go out and hope that she 
 might meet him. She blushed when she 
 realized how eager to see him again she 
 was. Her glance roved about the sitting- 
 room restlessly. What had she been 
 wont to do with herself in the afternoons 
 before yesterday ? She could hardly re- 
 member. 
 
 In the midst of her quandary the door- 
 bell rang. Julietta's heart jumped, and 
 the pretty colour came flooding back into 
 her cheeks. She looked into the hall- 
 rack mirror, to make sure she had no 
 straying locks. 
 
 Mr. Sheppard looked more than a little 
 self-conscious. 
 
 [77]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 " I didn't mean to bother you again so 
 soon, Miss Grier really I didn't ! " he 
 apologized. "But I don't mean to im- 
 pose on your good nature by asking you 
 to walk with me to-day. This is just a 
 
 neighbourly call I ought to have 
 
 gone to the back door, by rights. You 
 see, I've never known anybody here that 
 I could ask information of. And to-day 
 when my Jap told me that we must send 
 some household linens out to be washed, 
 I wondered if I mightn't trouble you to 
 tell me where to send them. I'm afraid 
 to entrust Mrs. Hanson's pretty things to 
 a laundry." 
 
 11 Why, of course 1 " she cried. " I've 
 a splendid laundress. Come in won't 
 you ? and let me tell you about her." 
 
 He hesitated. " I'm afraid you're 
 busy," he began ; but even Julietta could 
 see that he wanted to be urged. 
 [78]
 
 A Neighbourly Call 
 
 " Not a bit 1 " she declared. " And if 
 you'd like me to take you over to see 
 Mrs. Mears, I'd be only too glad to do 
 it." 
 
 " It wouldn't be an imposition ? " 
 
 " Not at all 1 I'm interested in Mrs. 
 Mears, and I've been wishing for a good 
 excuse to go and see her. I could hardly 
 go without an excuse, because she's a 
 very busy woman and doesn't have much 
 time for mere friendly calls." 
 
 " Perhaps she won't have time, either, 
 for my table-cloths ?" he hazarded. " My 
 Jap told me he heard it was very difficult 
 to get good laundry work done here. He 
 says some one in the village told him that 
 every week a hamperful of Mrs. Grant 
 Higgins' fine things goes to Paris for 
 laundering." 
 
 " Not really ? " 
 
 " Well, I've never seen the hamper, of 
 [79]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 course. But it isn't the first time I've 
 heard of that thing being done." 
 
 Julietta's eyes flashed. " The idea I " 
 she cried. 
 
 He loved the spirit of her, and his look 
 said so plainly. 
 
 [80]
 
 X 
 
 FINDING HIS HEROINE 
 
 ON the way to Mrs. Mears' cottage, 
 which was quite at the outskirts 
 of the village, they passed the 
 great stone gateway of the Grant Higgins 
 place. The house, set way back in the 
 splendidly shaded grounds, was hardly 
 from any view-point visible to the curi- 
 ous common eye. Beside the gate was a 
 lodge house, which had occasioned no 
 small amount of talk when it was built. 
 It was the only one for miles about. 
 Other millionaires had great mansions, 
 but there was not one of them whose 
 front door-bell any one in all the world 
 might not ring, if he had the temerity. 
 In vain was it explained on the Higgins' 
 
 behalf that the lodge bell was their front 
 [81]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 door-bell, and any one might pull it. The 
 community felt its intelligence, as well as 
 its democracy, affronted by such an ex- 
 planation. 
 
 "So you think," John Sheppard re- 
 sumed, nodding towards the great gate- 
 way, " that Mrs. Higgins should be able 
 to get her clothes washed in this coun- 
 try ? " 
 
 " I don't care a fig about where she 
 gets her foolish clothes washed 1 " Julietta 
 cried. " But I do think the Higginses 
 ought to obey the law about gleaning the 
 corners of their fields ! " 
 
 He looked puzzled. " I don't believe 
 I understand," he murmured. 
 
 " Did you read in the papers, two days 
 ago, that Grant Higgins has given a hun- 
 dred thousand dollars for an Erring 
 Women's Refuge ? " 
 
 " Yes ; I believe I did." 
 [82]
 
 Finding His Heroine 
 
 " Didn't it make you well, didn't it 
 make you wonder, at least ? " 
 
 " It did ! My mind has been running 
 on themes like that in connection with 
 my play." 
 
 " Is your play going to be about such 
 things?" 
 
 " It's trying to be ! But I don't 
 
 know what the matter is 1 I've got the 
 feeling strong ; got the intense will to do 
 it. But I write and write, and when I 
 come to read what I've written, it's the 
 same old feeble, futile protest that no- 
 body ever really heeds. Sometimes, if a 
 few writers get bitter and incendiary 
 enough, they can stir up a revolution 
 against greed. But what happens ? Un- 
 told suffering of the innocent ; a little suf- 
 fering of the guilty ; reaction ; and the old 
 state of affairs again. Like France ex- 
 changing mild Louis for bloodthirsty 
 [83]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 Robespierre and then for tyrannical 
 Napoleon. I'd like to be one of those 
 that helped on a happier day that's the 
 only real thing there is to live for ! but 
 stirring up ire against Mrs. Higgins' 
 laundry hampers isn't any way to bring 
 the magic feeling that we talked about ; 
 do you think so ? " 
 
 Julietta shook her head thoughtfully. 
 " I suppose it is not," she said. " And 
 I'm sure 7 don't feel ire against any one 
 for being rich only (since the day before 
 yesterday !) for gleaning the corners after 
 having harvested the field." 
 
 Sheppard looked up sharply. " What 
 do you mean ? " he asked. 
 
 "I mean," she answered with spirit, 
 " that if people would only remember the 
 old law about gleaning, it would help to 
 solve . so many things. I don't blame 
 anybody for not remembering it / 
 [84]
 
 Finding His Heroine 
 
 didn't until the picture made me look 
 it up. I just wish it might be possible to 
 put other people in mind of it." 
 
 " I don't believe I know except in a 
 very vague way," he faltered. 
 
 "Well, as I say, I didn't, either," she 
 replied, " until I had looked it up in the 
 Bible. It seems that in other nations of 
 olden days the widow and the father- 
 less had to become dependents on their 
 nearest male kin. But in Israel a woman 
 who wanted to be beholden to nobody 
 could work for her bread and get it. 
 Those that reaped the harvests were 
 ordered not to pick their fields too clean ; 
 so that when the gleaners came along 
 there might be enough left to reward 
 their back-breaking toil. The laws are 
 plain ; I read 'em all. There's not a 
 word about building granaries and lock- 
 ing the doors, and if the widow and the 
 [85]
 
 'The Gleaners 
 
 fatherless can answer questions satis- 
 factorily, the wealthy farmer is to hand 
 
 x 
 
 them out a bit of dole. Not a word 1 
 He's to let them work in his field, and 
 to see to it that they get enough to 
 glean. And he's to do it remembering 
 that he was once a bondman in the land 
 of Egypt 1 I've heard all that preached 
 about a half a hundred times or so ; but 
 the sermons were all about what a good 
 daughter-in-law Ruth was, and how she 
 became the great-grandmother of David ; 
 and that never seemed to have much in 
 it for me. All this other I figured out 
 for myself, and I suppose that the reason 
 it all seemed so wonderful was because 
 I tried it on myself, first thing." 
 
 Mr. Sheppard seemed so deep in 
 thought that Julietta could not be sure 
 if he were listening to her or had gone on 
 
 some " long, long trail " of his own. But 
 [86]
 
 Finding His Heroine 
 
 she was feeling the exhilaration of putting 
 her discovery into words. It isn't easy 
 to tell your spiritual evolutions to the 
 people who've lived beside you for years, 
 and who think that they know you " like 
 a book." A new acquaintance, if it be 
 the right kind and auspiciously begun, is 
 a wonderful " developer " ; under its 
 stimulus, all kinds of impressions flash 
 up in recognizable forms and likenesses. 
 It is in revealing ourselves to new ac- 
 quaintances that we find out, oftener than 
 in any other one way, new truths about 
 ourselves. Everybody ought to form a 
 new acquaintance of an intimate, con- 
 ndence-for-confidence sort, at least twice 
 a year ; some souls, that grow fast, need 
 one oftener. Julietta had been allowing 
 herself far too little of this experience ; 
 she had been feeling like a blank plate, 
 and had given herself over to bitterness 
 [87]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 on that account, when all she needed was 
 exposure to the light, and a touch of 
 stimulating " developer." And the darker 
 a blank plate has been kept, of course, 
 the better the picture when the flash of 
 light the hundredth of a second flash of 
 real light comes. Which was the se- 
 cret, no doubt, of the clear image made 
 on Julietta's mind by the idea of the 
 gleaners. And so, whether Sheppard 
 heard her or not, she was far from hav- 
 ing made her speech in vain. For she 
 had convinced herself ; and that is the 
 first step towards service. 
 
 But Sheppard did hear. He was keen ; 
 he knew what Julietta was giving him : 
 the first account she had tried to render 
 of her awakening. And he was as rever- 
 ent towards it as he had been towards 
 the story of Millet's sharp recall from 
 
 his least-worthy self. He was reverent 
 [88]
 
 Finding His Heroine 
 
 towards both, because he had so vivid a 
 recollection of the day, not long ago, 
 when he had seemed without other aim 
 than the continued writing of comic 
 operas ; and of the very next day, when 
 he knew, as well as he knew now, that 
 he was through with his jester's job for- 
 ever. He remembered, too, how he had 
 tried to tell his friends ; and how they 
 had laughed at him and told him he 
 was " bilious." He remembered the 
 first time he had been able to open his 
 heart ; it was to a comparative stranger, 
 too! 
 
 He was doing more, though, than lis- 
 tening and remembering. He was look- 
 ing ahead. Some things Julietta was 
 saying fitted strangely well into the 
 blank places of that puzzle picture he 
 called his drama. When she said : " I 
 guess the reason it seemed so wonderful 
 [89]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 was because I tried it on myself, first 
 thing," he stopped stock-still in the road. 
 
 " That's it 1 " he cried, exultantly. " Of 
 course ! That's it 1 " 
 
 She looked a little mystified ; the ex- 
 uberance of his affirmation almost startled 
 her. 
 
 " I began on Mrs. Mears," she went 
 on, "our washwoman, whom we're go- 
 ing to see." 
 
 And she told him the simple story of 
 her talk with Mrs. Mears. 
 
 When she had finished, Sheppard 
 turned to her with delight irradiating 
 his face. 
 
 "Miss Grier," he said, "you've no idea 
 what you have done for me 1 I've been 
 trying to write my drama, and to put 
 into it some of the things I feel about 
 such gross injustices as are wrought by 
 men like Grant Higgins. But the thing 
 [90]
 
 Finding His Heroine 
 
 wouldn't work out. It's easy to do the or- 
 dinary indictment ; but it has been done so 
 often and to so little purpose. You know 
 how different I wanted to make mine. 
 But I couldn't. It kept getting away 
 from me and running into stereotyped 
 situations that I knew would never make 
 people think ; they'd look, and listen, and 
 go home saying : ' Those rich men ought 
 to be ashamed of themselves ! ' And 
 when they were home, they'd forget. I 
 wanted to write a play that would make 
 each and every one who saw it demand 
 of himself: 'What can 7 do about it?' 
 But that play wouldn't come. You've 
 brought it to me ! You've made me see 
 how I was all wrong. I was trying to 
 write my play about a man like Grant 
 Higgins. And it's you I should have 
 been writing about ! " 
 
 " Me ? " echoed Julietta, in amazement. 
 [90
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 " How could anybody write a play about 
 me?" 
 
 " You wait and see ! " he cried. " But 
 you must help me, too. And if we can 
 write something that will make every 
 one go home and try the doctrine on 
 Mrs. Mears, the Grant Higginses will 
 soon be taken care of. ... And yet 
 you say that you're not clever I " 
 
 [92]
 
 XI 
 
 A GLEANER 
 
 MRS. MEARS was ironing, and 
 Julietta persuaded her to let 
 them come into the kitchen to 
 talk to her. 
 
 "I know what it means to be inter- 
 rupted even for a few minutes when 
 your irons are just right and you have a 
 big piece of evenly-dampened linen dry- 
 ing on your board," Julietta said. So 
 they were admitted to the kitchen, where 
 Mrs. Mears had to clear off two chairs 
 before she could ask them to sit down. 
 
 " I don't always leave things get piled 
 
 up this way," she apologized. " But this 
 
 bein' such a fine dryin* day, I washed 
 
 later' n usual in case it'd maybe rain 
 
 [93]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 to-morrow. An' then, without waitin' to 
 clean up none, I had to begin ironin', be- 
 cause there's some o' these things Mrs. 
 Ellendorf wants to-night 'count o' Mr. 
 Ellendorf goin' away." 
 
 "So Mrs. Ellendorf is one of your 
 customers?" Julietta asked. She was 
 hopeful of finding out the names of all 
 Mrs. Mears' patrons. 
 
 " Yes'm ; I've washed fer her fer quite 
 some time. My customers is mostly 
 pretty steady, I must say. What I'd do 
 if they wasn't, I don't know. A lady that 
 come here yesterday was real provoked 
 with me because I couldn't take her 
 washin' until she gets a new girl. I tried 
 t' tell her how I couldn't do no more'n 
 what I'm doing, an' couldn't put off none 
 o' my steady people fer an extry. She 
 was as cross as sticks 1 Said she didn't 
 know what workin' people was comin' to 
 [94]
 
 A Gleaner 
 
 when a lady couldn't get her clothes 
 washed. ' There's the laundry 1 ' I says. 
 ' They charge too outrageous,' she says ; 
 'an' besides, they ruin things.' I guess 
 that talk with you must 've made me kind 
 o' sassy, Miss Grier ; fer I spoke right up 
 to her, an' says : ' But I'll bet if I did yer 
 clothes, an' did 'em careful an' tried t' 
 charge you what the laundry does, you'd 
 have threatened t' put the law on me fer 
 a thief an' a robber.' " 
 
 Julietta laughed delightedly. Mrs. 
 Mears was leading up quite easily to 
 what was on Julietta's mind. 
 
 "I've been thinking, Mrs. Mears," she 
 said, " that if you were willing I'd go to 
 each of your patrons and tell them how I 
 had come to feel about paying you ; and 
 see if I can get any of the others to see it 
 the same way. I know how you feel: 
 you wouldn't want to take a chance of 
 [95]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 losing a steady customer. But if / 
 asked !" 
 
 Mrs. Mears' lips trembled for a moment 
 before she could command herself to 
 speak. 
 
 " If you think they wouldn't take it 
 amiss," she ventured. " It'd mean an 
 awful lot t' me if I was t' get just that 
 much more. It'd be as much as Elsie 
 gets, barrin' car fare, for her week's work ; 
 an' some besides. I could keep her at 
 home t' help me a bit with the housework ; 
 an' maybe I could have her learn some, 
 thing that'd give her a chance at a better 
 job than three dollars a week." 
 
 " Of course you could ! " cried Julietta, 
 in an inclusive affirmation. " And I'm 
 going this very day to see about it." 
 
 She was so eager to put the proposi- 
 tion before those other women that she 
 could hardly wait for Mr. Sheppard to 
 [96]
 
 A Gleaner 
 
 conclude his simple arrangement with 
 Mrs. Mears. 
 
 Once they were outside again out of 
 the steaming hot kitchen where Mrs. 
 Mears spent nearly all her days and 
 drawing long breaths of the balmy 
 October air, John Sheppard turned to 
 Julietta and cried : 
 
 "The wonder of it!" 
 
 "The wonder of what?" Julietta 
 echoed. 
 
 " Of everything ! Of the tremendously 
 moving human story that you make me 
 see ! Of its having waited so ' inevita- 
 ble ' a story ! for me to do. And most 
 of all, of your bringing it to me in just 
 this way. I call it quite the most splendid 
 thing that ever happened to any young 
 man in or out of a fairy tale ! " 
 
 The pink that was so pretty came 
 flooding into Julietta's cheeks. 
 [97]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 " I why, it's nothing what I did ; the 
 wonderful part is all in what you made of 
 it," she murmured. " But I'm glad I'm 
 very glad, if I helped, even a little. That's 
 wonderful to me ! I never expected to be 
 worth even that much." 
 
 "Worth!" he cried. "Why, you're 
 worth all the other young women I ever 
 heard of ! You're a real heroine 1 If 
 there could be just one like you in every 
 community one who, when an ideal 
 came to her, grappled with it and wouldn't 
 let it go till she had got the best out of it 
 for her own life and those around her it 
 wouldn't take long to make the world a 
 sweeter place to live in." 
 
 Julietta's eyes filled with grateful, happy 
 tears. A week ago she had not known 
 there was so much glory in God's world. 
 
 [98]
 
 XII 
 JULIETTA'S PLAY 
 
 JOHN SHEPPARD wished very, 
 very much that he might have 
 heard Julietta make her plea to the 
 several patrons of Mrs. Mears. But he 
 realized how impossible that was. It 
 was sufficiently difficult for Julietta to 
 make these calls and tell her story ; it 
 would have been quite impossible for her 
 to take a strange young man along. 
 
 So she went alone from house to house 
 of the five other patrons ; and John Shep- 
 pard, at a discreet distance down the 
 street, waited, in an agony of impatience, 
 her reappearance. It made him heart- 
 sick when he thought how liable her 
 lovely ardour was to meet with a chill 
 [99]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 rebuff ; and yet he dared not stay by 
 her to protect her. 
 
 She was biting her lip to keep from 
 crying when she came away from Mrs. 
 Ellendorf's. 
 
 " She says," Julietta answered to John 
 Sheppard's look of sympathetic question- 
 ing, " that the cost of living is high 
 enough now, without her trying to make 
 things any worse by paying more for 
 washing. I I guess she thinks I'm 
 kind of crazy." 
 
 " Of course she does," John Sheppard 
 cried. "And yet, I see, she keeps an 
 electric runabout. But if anything should 
 happen to little Elsie Mears if she should 
 get discouraged, or too-much tempted, 
 and should leave Grant Higgins' factory 
 en route for his Erring Women's Refuge 
 how hard on Higgins Mrs. Ellendorf 
 would be! Don't you see how much 
 
 [100]
 
 ' s Play 
 
 more far-reaching this makes your play ? 
 For there are only a comparatively few 
 Higginses. But there are hundreds of 
 thousands of Ellendorfs." 
 
 " Oh, let us hope not ! " cried Julietta, 
 trying to smile instead of crying. " For 
 if there are hundreds of thousands like 
 Mrs. Ellendorf, I'm afraid - " 
 
 She stopped abruptly. 
 
 " Afraid the play will never accomplish 
 anything ? " he finished for her. 
 
 Julietta flushed. "I - No! "she de- 
 clared. " Of all people in the world I 
 ought to be the last to think that. For a 
 week ago I'm sure any one would have 
 seemed justified in saying of me that if a 
 big, noble idea were to be presented to 
 me, it would almost certainly get the the 
 door slammed in its face. I was dead 
 enough to make anybody hopeless about 
 
 my resurrection." 
 
 [101]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 "Why, you were nothing of the sort I " 
 he contended. 
 
 " You don't know what I was," she re- 
 minded him. " But I know 1 And I 
 know that if I could be resurrected, any- 
 body can be. And I believe that if any- 
 body can move the Ellendorfs 'Thou 
 art the man 1 ' This idea of yours " 
 
 "Of mine?" he cried. "Why, my 
 dear Miss Grier ! It's no idea of mine, 
 it's yours all yours ! every bit of it All 
 I've done is to appreciate it and appro- 
 priate it ! " 
 
 She smiled delightedly at him. 
 
 " Have it your own way then," she 
 said. " But if it is to get to other peo- 
 ple, you must get it to them. Because I 
 am quite evidently destined for no suc- 
 cess at that." 
 
 " You give up easily don't you?" he 
 
 charged, reproachfully. 
 [102]
 
 *Julietta*s Play 
 
 She winced. "You're right," she ad- 
 mitted, humbly. " I do. But can I, for 
 instance, try Mrs. Ellendorf again? If I 
 go back there with that same plea, she'll 
 probably have me arrested for a luna- 
 tic." 
 
 " Well, if she did," John Sheppard re- 
 minded, "it wouldn't be the first time 
 that some one trying to give the world a 
 better ideal had been arrested and put in 
 jail would it?" 
 
 " I suppose not." 
 
 " No ; nor it wouldn't be the last time. 
 But here I go again on my hobby ! 
 wouldn't it be wonderful if, instead of 
 trying to break into people's lives with 
 our new ideas, we could do something 
 that would make people come out and 
 hunt them ? " 
 
 Julietta smiled. The idea of Mrs. 
 Ellendorf out in an eager hunt for new
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 ideals was grimly amusing to her, fresh 
 from that chilling interview. 
 
 " You don't believe it could be done?" 
 
 " I don't believe that /could do it" 
 
 " Couldn't we do it together? " 
 
 " How ? " 
 
 " I'm not sure that I know how ; but 
 maybe if we think hard a way will 
 suggest itself. You don't know Mrs. 
 Ellendorf very well ? " 
 
 " Hardly at all. I have met her a few 
 times, very formally ; but she has never 
 been inside my house, and this is the first 
 time I ever called on her." 
 
 " I know the type I No discoverable 
 capacity for any ardour except an ardour 
 for more possessions. Yet there must be 
 a spot in her somewhere a little, lonely, 
 hungry spot that mere possessions can- 
 not fill. If one could only find out what 
 it is 1 Well, maybe we can. At any rate, 
 [104]
 
 " s Play 
 
 I think we'll try. Nearly everybody 
 abandons Mrs. Ellendorf and her kind 
 after one hasty, discouraging survey. 
 We're going to make at least one more 
 attempt." 
 " Are we ? " 
 
 " Yes ; and by ' we ' I don't mean 
 1 you,' all alone. I'm going to help, next 
 time. But these first calls I'm afraid 
 you'll have to see through all unaided." 
 " Except by your sympathy - " 
 " Except by my sympathy ! " 
 " Then, forward, march ! " she said. 
 " I'm going to attack the citadel of Mrs. 
 Updyke." 
 
 " I don't believe there was ever an- 
 other so worthless a crusader ! " he de- 
 clared, woefully, when she rejoined him. 
 " I can't tell you what a cowardly Pre- 
 tender I feel."
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 " I suppose," she rejoined, " that pru- 
 dence has sometimes made other men 
 keep quiet when they'd rather be in the 
 attacking party." 
 
 "Doubtless. But a husky gent who 
 lets a lovely lady go ahead and meet the 
 
 enemy alone ! Well, what is the 
 
 news of this affray ? Report the killed 
 and wounded." 
 
 " The casualties are all on our side," 
 she told him. " It was a particular friend 
 of Mrs. Updyke's whose washing Mrs. 
 Mears refused to do. Mrs. Updyke had 
 never heard of such impertinence. Is it 
 worth while going on, do you think ? " 
 
 " Why, of course it is I You wait and 
 see." 
 
 So Julietta went on. 
 
 Mrs. Pendleton was an impressionable 
 little body. She said she'd love to do 
 it but couldn't ; her girls were just at 
 [106]
 
 's Play 
 
 an age where they wore so many wash 
 clothes dresses and petticoats and 
 guimps and shirt-waists that it would 
 ruin her to pay anything like laundry 
 prices. She was sorry ! But it was such 
 a struggle to keep her girls looking nice. 
 So many of the girls they went with had 
 laundresses by the week in their homes. 
 If there was anything else she could do 
 for Mrs. Mears, though 1 Did Julietta 
 think that Mrs. Mears would like the 
 white pique suit Mrs. Pendleton's young- 
 est daughter had outgrown? It was a 
 perfectly good suit, only too small. . . . 
 
 "I tried to explain that Mrs. Mears 
 had no time to do up white pique for her 
 family ; but Mrs. Pendleton was deter- 
 mined. So here's the suit ! " 
 
 Julietta held out a bundle. 
 
 " And Mrs. Pendleton is quite happy 
 
 believing that she has risen to the occa- 
 [107]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 sion. Now she can dismiss the matter 
 from her mind." 
 
 " I'm so glad I didn't write my play 
 about the Higginses," he said. 
 
 [108]
 
 XIII 
 
 THE PLOT BEGINS 
 
 JULIETTA'S other calls were also 
 unavailing. No one thought favour- 
 ably of paying Mrs. Mears more 
 than the least she would take. 
 
 " Now," declared John Sheppard, when 
 she came away from Mrs. Borland's, 
 " you're about to be reinforced : a young 
 man with a idee is about to offer you his 
 services." 
 
 There was encouragement in his tone, 
 his manner. 
 
 " Oh ! have you got it ? " Julietta cried, 
 eagerly. 
 
 " I have a little one to begin on," he 
 answered. "The big one that finally 
 
 works will be yours, doubtless." 
 [109]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 She shook her head. " But tell me 
 yours," she urged. 
 
 " Mine's hardly worth calling an idea," 
 he said ; " it's a mere suggestion. But it 
 may do to start on. What you want is 
 another chance at those five women oh, 
 yes you do ! You're not beaten 1 But 
 you can't just exactly go back and repeat 
 your plea which has failed to move them. 
 You want to get them in different condi- 
 tions. What conditions ? " 
 
 44 That's more than I can ever guess," 
 replied Julietta. 
 
 " I don't blame you. But well ! 
 before I tell you what I had thought of, 
 let me ask you something. Would you 
 do me the honour of going to the theatre 
 with me ? " 
 
 44 Why, I'd love to 1 " Julietta cried. 
 
 41 Could you go this evening ? " 
 
 44 Yes, thank you ; I could." 
 [no]
 
 The P lot Begins 
 
 " This isn't dodging the question of 
 our crusade ; it's part of it," he assured 
 her. " I'll unfold my little plan to you 
 on our way home after we've seen a 
 friend of mine who'll surely be surprised 
 to see me." 
 
 They took the theatre train into the 
 city. Mr. Sheppard had not said any- 
 thing about what they were going to see, 
 and Julietta was so pleasurably excited 
 over the expedition and its air of mys- 
 tery that any play would have delighted 
 her. But her happiness knew no bounds 
 when she found herself in the lobby of 
 that theatre where her favourite actress 
 (who was also the favourite of a very large 
 and loyal public) was playing. Julietta 
 waited in the lobby while Mr. Sheppard 
 went to see about tickets. 
 
 He was gone some time because, as he 
 [in]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 explained on his return, the house was 
 sold out, and there had to be some " figur- 
 ing done " as to where he and Julietta 
 might sit. Even the house manager's 
 box was sold. 
 
 At length, however, a place was found 
 for them, and they saw the play. It was 
 not until after the last curtain had gone 
 down that Julietta learned she was to 
 meet the star. She was quite panic- 
 stricken so evidently nervous that Mr. 
 Sheppard was a little fearful, remember- 
 ing what he had to propose. 
 
 The star was so delighted to see him 
 that she did not seem to notice Julietta's 
 shyness. She was long used to a stiff 
 self-consciousness in people who came 
 back onto the stage to see her. Many 
 people she met in drawing-rooms were 
 stiff and self-conscious enough ; but on 
 the stage, after a performance, when 
 
 [112]
 
 The Plot Begin 
 
 everything about them is so distractingly 
 unusual and interesting, the strangers 
 from the other side of the footlights are 
 even less likely to suggest anything of 
 their probable character when they are at 
 their ease. 
 
 But Mr. Sheppard (whom the star called 
 Jack) was too wise in the ways of the 
 theatre to linger on a stage after a per- 
 formance when everybody from the star 
 to the stage doorkeeper is in a hurry to 
 get away. 
 
 " I'll answer all your questions later," 
 he promised the star. "I'm living out on 
 the North Shore writing. I want you to 
 come out. I can't ask you to my bachelor 
 abode. But Miss Grier, who is not only 
 my neighbour but my quite wonderful 
 collaborator, will invite you to her house, 
 I'm sure. And we can all go for a fine 
 walk I remember how you love that 1 "
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 Julietta gasped ; but no one noticed it. 
 What could Mr. Sheppard be thinking of! 
 Their old-fashioned house ! And no 
 girl! 
 
 As in a dream, Julietta heard him 
 asking the star if she could come to- 
 morrow ; heard her say she could (she 
 was a young woman of few engage- 
 ments) ; heard him tell her about the 
 ii : 15 train. 
 
 Eleven-fifteen ! That meant luncheon. 
 Julietta wondered if she were to have the 
 party. 
 
 The star thanked her ; and she mur- 
 mured something in reply she never 
 knew what. 
 
 "Now we must make a dash for our 
 train ! " John Sheppard declared. " I'll 
 meet you at the station to-morrow." 
 
 He hailed a taxi, and they whirled to 
 the depot
 
 The Plot Begins 
 
 " That'll be great fun ! " he declared- 
 meaning the party to-morrow. 
 
 " Will it ? " murmured Julietta, weakly. 
 
 He took no notice of her anxiousness 
 partly because it never occurred to him 
 that it might be an " undertaking " for 
 Julietta to have the star to luncheon ; and 
 partly because he was so eager to impart 
 his suggestion. 
 
 " Of course it will ! " he cried. " You'll 
 love her everybody does. And I know 
 she will love you. Wait till you see 
 her face when she hears about The 
 Gleaners" 
 
 " But how can I entertain her ? " Julietta 
 faltered. 
 
 " You won't have to. She can entertain 
 herself and us too. There's hardly any- 
 thing under the shining sun any real 
 thing ! that she isn't interested in." 
 
 " I know but I haven't any girl." 
 ["5]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 " Any what ? " 
 
 " Any servant any one to do things 
 for her like she's used to." 
 
 " You mean about luncheon ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Well, we could take her to the North 
 Shore hotel, if you'd rather. But if it's 
 her 'ruthers' you're thinking of, I can tell 
 you that she'd ten thousand times rather 
 go to your house and help get her own 
 luncheon. And I could pretty nearly tell 
 you what it would be a real treat to 
 her to have." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Well, either pancakes or waffles or 
 little baking-powder biscuits hot with 
 honey on 'em. Have you ever tried to 
 eat any of those in a hotel even the best 
 hotel in the world ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Well, you're fortunate. Then, I 
 [116]
 
 The Plot Begins 
 
 should think that either corned-beef hash 
 or Irish stew with dumplings would be 
 about all else you'd need to make the 
 feast put Lucullus' in the shade, for her." 
 
 " Not really ? " 
 
 " Will you try it and see ? " 
 
 " I will."
 
 XIV 
 LEADING A HORSE TO WATER 
 
 JULIETTA'S men-folk declared that 
 they would be absentees from lunch- 
 eon, thereby saving her some work 
 and themselves the effort of coming home 
 and being polite to a strange and cele- 
 brated lady. 
 
 " You'll have a better time, and so will 
 we," they said, good-naturedly. They 
 were whole-heartedly delighted at Juli- 
 etta's new interests. 
 
 So she made her preparations for three 
 only. And, somehow, it was not of the 
 star's coming to her house to eat of her 
 cooking that she found herself thinking 
 with the greatest sense of wonder and 
 
 expectancy, but of John Sheppard's com- 
 [118]
 
 Leading a Horse to W^ater 
 
 ing. It was his pleasure that she had in 
 mind as she prepared her corned- beef 
 hash and mixed her flaky biscuit. Juli- 
 etta could cook 1 It was a severe temp- 
 tation to her to show what she could do. 
 But she had promised that she wouldn't. 
 And in any case, she was beginning to 
 realize that the unwearied spirit, and not 
 the elaborateness of the menu, is the 
 essence of hospitality. 
 
 So she kept faithfully to her hash and 
 her biscuits and honey, and her fragrant 
 coffee and yellow cream ; adding to his 
 suggestions only by a simple green salad 
 (her French dressing was her pride) and 
 some hot gingerbread and warm apple- 
 sauce. 
 
 There could be no doubt of the star's 
 appreciation of that luncheon ! Nor of 
 John Sheppard's either on his own ac- 
 count or on hers.
 
 'The Gleaners 
 
 And after they had eaten and eaten, 
 they helped Julietta wash and wipe the 
 dishes and put them away. By this time, 
 Julietta had completely lost her self-con- 
 sciousness with the star. For the star 
 was one of those whom John Sheppard 
 had described as molta simpatica; one 
 who by a lovely magic set people at 
 rights with their best selves. 
 
 " Ah, The Gleaners ! " she exclaimed, 
 when they had gone back to the sitting- 
 room. " Did I tell you, Jack, that I was 
 at Barbizon this summer?" 
 
 "No!" 
 
 " I drove there from Fontainebleau 
 straight through the heart of the forest. 
 My 1 what a drive. And I stayed at that 
 famous little hotel near the forest's edge, 
 where the hamlet of Barbizon begins. 
 Have you never been there ? " 
 
 " Never yet" 
 
 [120]
 
 Leading a Horse to W^ater 
 
 " Go, then at your first opportunity." 
 
 " I mean to," he declared. 
 
 "I don't know when anything has 
 made a profounder impression on me," 
 she went on. " The majesty of the forest 
 and of the great plain, and the other 
 majesty of simplicity and earnestness 
 and fidelity to visions of the few men 
 who made that rude hamlet famous 
 through all the world. I had something 
 of the same feeling at Domremy when 
 I thought of little Jeanne going forth 
 from there with a faith that was to shake 
 kingdoms and to defy faggot-flames ! 
 God be praised!" she cried, her eyes 
 brimming, " for the dreamers who have 
 stood fast. And I don't doubt that, to 
 Millet, the wolf at the door was full as 
 terrifying as the crackling of the faggots 
 to little Jeanne." 
 
 " I don't think it was either of those 
 
 [121]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 that hurt the most," Julietta ventured. 
 " I think it was " she hesitated. 
 
 " Mrs. Ellendorf," John Sheppard said 
 for her. 
 
 The star looked mystified. 
 
 " Come out in the sunshine, under the 
 maple trees," he went on, "and we'll tell 
 you." 
 
 Julietta had never known anything so 
 wonderful as the star's interest in their 
 story. It was more than satisfying ; it 
 was inspiring. 
 
 " And now for the ' plot ' ! " she cried, 
 when she had heard it " up to date." 
 
 "The plot is a little chaotic as yet," 
 he admitted. " But the idea at the back 
 of it is something like this : What was it 
 we used to do in school, in arithmetic 
 (what I mostly did in arithmetic was to 
 
 wonder and despair !) when we tried to 
 [122]
 
 Leading a Horse to Jf^ater 
 
 find the least common denominator, or 
 greatest common divisor, or something 
 
 that went into other things Oh, my 
 
 goodness ! I'm making an awful muddle. 
 But here were Mrs. Ellendorf and Mrs. 
 Updyke, and Mrs. Pendleton and Mrs. 
 Borland and Mrs. Corwin ; five women 
 with, so far as we could discover, no in- 
 terest in common except their wash- 
 woman, and mighty little interest in her. 
 We want to get at those women. We 
 want to try out, through them, the power 
 of an idea. They are not interested in 
 Mrs. Mears ; they are not interested in 
 us ; they are not interested in one an- 
 other ; but they are interested in yoic ! " 
 
 She looked dismayed. " Am I to preach 
 the gospel to them ? " 
 
 " Not in the way you think from house 
 to house, as Miss Grier did." 
 
 " Nor yet from the roadside, I hope ? " 
 [123]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 " Dear me, no ! A roadside preacher 
 would have no caste with them." 
 
 " How, then in your new play ? " 
 
 "That remains to be dreamed about. 
 But if you preach it in a play, we shall 
 never know what the Ellendorfs and Up- 
 dykes do about it after they get home. 
 This is our chance of a lifetime to set 
 them wrestling with an idea and see the 
 finish." 
 
 "I'd love the experience. But what 
 part am I to play ? " 
 
 " You're to be the bait ; Mrs. Mears is 
 to be the hook ; and we Miss Grier and 
 I are to be the well, I suppose the line 
 and sinker. However, it's the bait that's 
 the important part of fishing getting the 
 kind of bait that the fish you want will 
 bite for. You're a magic bait almost 
 any fish that swims will bite for you." 
 
 " That's pretty if untruthful," she re- 
 ['24]
 
 Leading a Horse to Water 
 
 torted, smiling. " How do I attach my- 
 self to the hook?" 
 
 "In the simplest way. We're going 
 there now." 
 
 " What am I to do ? " 
 
 " Become a patron to as small an ex- 
 tent as you choose." 
 
 " And then ? " 
 
 " The Shore Suburban News to-morrow 
 will announce that you spent to-day with 
 your friend, Miss Grier." 
 
 " And after that ? " 
 
 " Well, you're here for four weeks at 
 least are you not ? " 
 
 She nodded assent. 
 
 "We must not be too precipitate. 
 To-morrow you have a matinee. Then 
 
 comes Sunday. And then ! Well, 
 
 then I'm not sure. The idea is to get it, 
 
 surreptitiously, to the knowledge of these 
 
 ladies that you are interested in Mrs. 
 
 [125]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 Mears, and particularly in Elsie. Now, 
 how best to do that " 
 
 " I'm to lead them to the water to 
 change our simile but how am I to 
 make them drink?" 
 
 "They'll drink when they see you 
 drinking." 
 
 "But won't they quit when I have 
 to?" 
 
 " You won't quit you'll only move on 
 your way. I don't know what they'll do. 
 All we can do is to try." 
 
 [126]
 
 XV 
 
 AND MAKING HIM DRINK 
 
 THEY tried. Julietta wrote cards 
 of invitation for Thursday after- 
 noon, to meet the star. She 
 sent them quite generally among her ac- 
 quaintances, and the star heroically en- 
 dured the " tea " for the good of the 
 cause. 
 
 If each of the five was surprised to find 
 herself included she was agreeably so. 
 And if each of them was surprised at the 
 star's cordiality towards her, that also 
 was most agreeable. 
 
 Then the star did something that was 
 as hard for her, almost, as the crackling 
 flames of another kind of martyrdom, she 
 said : she " spoke a piece." Mr. Shep- 
 
 pard had written the piece; although 
 [127]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 that fact was not mentioned. It was 
 about the stern fight of a sixteen year old 
 girl to keep her eyes averted not from 
 gewgaws, merely, but from the most ordi- 
 nary comforts and little girlish pleasures ; 
 of her loosening grasp on safety ; her 
 slipping into the abyss. 
 
 All the women cried copiously. The 
 star was crying, too. 
 
 "The great thing," she said, when they 
 came crowding around her with their 
 ejaculations, "is to hold out the saving 
 hand while there's yet time : the hand of 
 justice, not the hand of mercy. Justice 
 gives a girl her fair fight ; mercy cannot 
 atone to her for not having had it. We 
 all want to do what we can ; but some 
 of us look too far afield for it. Just now 
 I'm finding one opportunity in the 
 
 daughter of my laundress " And 
 
 so on. 
 
 [128]
 
 And Making Him Drink 
 
 The talk grew very animated. Only, 
 at five o'clock the star had to go back 
 to town with a multitude of things left 
 unsaid. 
 
 " Do, please," she entreated as she was 
 leaving, " any of you, who are working 
 along these lines, write to me about your 
 experiences. I'm so interested." 
 
 And within a week she had five letters, 
 out of a score or more, relating to Elsie 
 Mears. 
 
 " They've all been to see her, anyway," 
 the star told Julietta when she showed 
 the letters. 
 
 " And offered her their outgrown 
 pique suits, no doubt," Julietta observed. 
 
 " Never mind, dear ; they've got to 
 work out their own salvation ; nobody 
 can do it for them, and no one of them 
 can do it for another. And at least, 
 
 when we plead for justice and not for 
 [129]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 mercy, we leave less opportunity for 
 weird experiments than people perpetrate 
 in the name of charity. A woman must 
 be quite terribly deficient in sanity who 
 can go to see Mrs. Mears, with a view to 
 helping Elsie to a fair chance, and come 
 away with no better grasp of the situation 
 than that an outgrown white pique suit 
 is an equivalent of Justice." 
 
 To each and every letter the star re- 
 plied : 
 
 " You ask me what you can do. You 
 say that Mrs. Mears has never asked and 
 probably would not receive charity. It 
 would be a great pity if she would receive 
 it ! The best we can do for such a fine, 
 sturdy woman, it seems to me, is to see 
 that she gets a fair wage for her work. 
 Perhaps, considering the heavy burden 
 she has to bear, and the tremendous fact 
 that she is trying to rear six worthy young 
 citizens, it would not be beyond the bounds 
 of justice if she were to be paid more than 
 
 [130]
 
 And Making Him Drink 
 
 we pay a laundry for less careful work. 
 But she should certainly, it seems to me, 
 not be paid less. Beyond this, we have 
 no rights in her affairs, I think, except 
 such as we have in those of any other 
 neighbour for whom we feel an affection- 
 ate interest." 
 
 Even then " it came hard," as Julietta 
 said. "They would have slaved them- 
 selves sick to get up a benefit for the 
 Mearses. But the undramatic business 
 of paying out an additional half dollar 
 a week on the washing bill is almost be- 
 yond them." 
 
 It was here that Julietta's own heroism 
 found its stiff test. For not to lose pa- 
 tience with those women required an 
 almost superhuman steadfastness to pur- 
 pose. 
 
 She declared that it was John Sheppard 
 who kept her to her course. He declared 
 that it was Julietta who was leading him.
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 " Everybody wants to be a sower of 
 seed the seeds of new ideals, new 
 ideas," he said. " But hardly anybody 
 wants to be a gardener, hovering over 
 the seeded soil and coaxing along the 
 blossom and then the fruit. You make 
 me feel ashamed of my so-much-easier 
 undertaking." 
 
 He told her, daily, that the play was 
 going forward quite wonderfully ; but he 
 never discussed its details with her as 
 she knew that he did with the star. 
 This, Julietta thought, was because he 
 knew how ignorant of things dramatic 
 she was. Yet, much as she loved and 
 admired the star, she could not help feel- 
 ing jealous of her. How could John Shep- 
 pard resist falling in love with her? What 
 could a girl like Julietta be to him who 
 lived and moved and had his being in a 
 world of women like the star ? 
 [132]
 
 And Making Him Drink 
 
 Love brings its exceeding bitterness 
 with every drop of its honey-sweet ; and 
 Julietta grew well acquainted with that 
 bitterness as golden October waned, and 
 November with its sharper chill came on. 
 
 She saw John Sheppard every day ; but 
 sometimes for a brief while only. He was 
 working very hard, and was often wrought 
 to a high pitch of excitability. So long 
 as the star stayed in town, he went in 
 frequently to see her. It seemed to Juli- 
 etta that they had both dramatist and 
 star drifted far, in the rapid current of 
 their lives from interest in gleaners and 
 in her efforts. It was hard to say why 
 she felt so ; but she did. It was not be- 
 cause either of them neglected or slighted 
 her; they did anything but that. But 
 because they seemed to have a tremen- 
 dous common interest that they made no 
 sign of wishing to share with her. 
 [133]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 At length the star's engagement in the 
 city was over, and she moved on. Juli- 
 etta was sure that Mr. Sheppard missed 
 the star terribly. In fact, he said that he 
 did. And yet he seemed to seek Juli- 
 etta ; never to be satisfied if he did not 
 see her every day. They had as many 
 long walks as his work and the weather 
 would permit. They went into town to 
 the theatre quite frequently. And he 
 paid Julietta almost constant tribute of 
 flowers and sweets and books. Every- 
 thing would have been idyllic had there 
 not lurked always in Julietta's conscious- 
 ness that feeling of a something closest 
 of all things to his heart, which she was 
 never asked to share. 
 
 [134]
 
 XVI 
 
 THE JOY OF THE HARVEST 
 
 THEN came a day when he went 
 to her looking as she had never 
 in all her life seen any one 
 least of all a man look. He seemed 
 almost like a man in a fever delirium. 
 Dull red flamed in his cheeks ; his eyes 
 glittered with a strange brightness. He 
 was intensely excited, strung almost to 
 snapping tension. An hour ago he had 
 rewritten, for what would be the last time 
 until rehearsals began, perhaps, the clos- 
 ing scene of his play. The typist would 
 be done with it to-morrow. 
 
 "And then?" asked Julietta, her heart 
 beating heavy with dread of separation. 
 
 "Then I'll take it to New York. At 
 first I thought of sending it, and trying 
 [135]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 to wait, here, until I heard. But I see 
 now how impossible that is. So I'll go 
 to-morrow afternoon." 
 
 " To-morrow ? " 
 
 "Yes I'm crazy ! I couldn't stay be- 
 hind it not an hour, I don't believe. 
 You don't know yet how fully my 
 heart is in that play. But when you see 
 it, you will know. It is the heart of me, 
 and the soul of me. I can't send it to 
 make its way alone." 
 
 She could not command herself to ask 
 anything further just then. What did 
 anything further matter ? He was going ; 
 and in no human likelihood would he 
 ever come back. The glory-days were 
 done. And he so eager to go ! Fool 
 that she had been, to think that she was 
 anything but a makeshift of companion- 
 ship during this self-imposed exile of his ! 
 
 She struggled as it seemed to her she
 
 The *J oy of t he Harvest 
 
 had never struggled before to keep back 
 her tears ; but they would not wait. She 
 turned her head away. He did not seem 
 to notice. All his thought was running 
 ahead ; he had none, it seemed, for retro- 
 spect, for remembrance. 
 
 They walked on in silence for some 
 time. It was he who spoke first. 
 
 " You've never seen such mad im- 
 patience have you ? You don't under- 
 stand it 1 " 
 
 " I don't believe I do," she faltered. 
 
 " But you will some day 1 " 
 
 " Will I ? " 
 
 "Well, I hope you will. I hope that 
 when you see the play, you'll realize why 
 I'm so excited ; why I can hardly hope to 
 sleep or eat until I've seen how it appeals 
 to some one else." 
 
 Yet how little eagerness he had to 
 know how it would appeal to her ! 
 [137]
 
 The G leafier s 
 
 He had talked to her, infrequently 
 and in her presence, to the star about 
 the ways and means of play-producing. 
 So she had some vague ideas of the 
 time that must elapse before even the 
 most favoured playwright could hope 
 to know the public's judgment on his 
 labours. 
 
 " I suppose," she hazarded, " you 
 haven't the least idea when it will come 
 here." 
 
 He laughed heartily. "I wish I had 
 the least idea when it would get any- 
 where," he said. " But of course, I 
 hope that if it opens in New York after 
 a few ' road ' performances, you know it 
 will stay there for a long, long, long, long 
 while ; not too long because 4 the road,' 
 as we call all the country that is not New 
 York, makes us bigger money, if we 
 have a real success ; but long enough so
 
 The Joy of the Harvest 
 
 that there can be no doubt that New York 
 likes us." 
 
 "I thought," ventured Julietta, "that 
 what you cared most about, with this 
 play, was whether it would do good." 
 
 "That's what I do care most about. 
 But one of the few ways I can tell how 
 much good it may be doing is by the 
 statements I get of how many people 
 have paid their money to see it which 
 same blessedly few theatre-goers would 
 do if they had any suspicion of my real 
 object. If they pay and keep paying, it 
 will be because they have a good time at 
 our play, and have not been bored by any 
 too-obvious good counsel. I told you 
 that a dramatist was not only a mere 
 sower of seed, but that he must even do 
 his sowing craftily. We may throw the 
 first handful in the sign of the cross, as 
 Millet's Normandy peasants did, with a 
 [139]
 
 'The Gleaners 
 
 prayer to God for the harvest. But 
 w;/like them, the harvest we may not 
 hope to see. That joy is yours yours, 
 and some mothers' joy." 
 
 A little sob escaped Julietta, struggling 
 successfully past the lock she had tried to 
 set upon her heart's bitterness. 
 
 He heard it, and stopped they were 
 walking briskly along the Shore Road 
 beyond the confines of their village. 
 
 " You're not discouraged ? " he cried, 
 turning so he could face her, and laying 
 his hand appealingly on her arm. 
 
 "I try not to be," she murmured. 
 " But but sometimes it seems to me to 
 be a a pretty scraggly kind of harvest. 
 I I don't know how long my patience 
 will last when you're gone and I have 
 no one to keep me encouraged. I'm a 
 poor, weak, wobbly ' farmer of ideals,' 
 and I feel terribly ashamed." 
 
 [HO]
 
 T/ie yoy of the Harvest 
 
 He did not answer immediately ; when 
 he did, his voice had a quality in it 
 sweeter than anything Julietta had ever 
 heard. 
 
 " Remember, dear, how Millet felt 
 when he was painting The Gleaners ; and 
 try to think what it would have been, not 
 only to all the world, but to zis, if he 
 hadn't gone on." ' 
 
 Julietta's tears flowed, unchecked, and 
 her mouth trembled so that she could 
 frame no reply. He drew her hand 
 through his arm and they walked on, 
 slowly both heads bent, and his right 
 hand still covering hers where he held it 
 on his left arm. 
 
 "And and when one harvest fails, 
 the good husbandman does not give up," 
 he continued ; "he bides till another 
 seed-time and sows again." 
 
 " But I'm no sower," she reminded. 
 [Mi]
 
 T/ie Gleaners 
 
 " I couldn't sow this seed, even. You 
 and your sweet friend had to do it for 
 me." 
 
 " Well 1 don't we stand ready to do it 
 again for you, whenever you need us ? " 
 
 Julietta shook her head. 
 
 " You'll soon forget me, and my little 
 garden patch, when you're sowing your 
 great fields for harvest," she faltered. 
 
 John Sheppard looked at her in amaze- 
 ment too great for words. Was it possi- 
 ble she thought such a thing? How 
 could she not know 1 He had felt so sure 
 that she understood his love. What 
 could he say about it that would speak 
 for it as his actions had ! He couldn't 
 go away and leave her in any doubt. 
 
 And yet ! Must he forego that 
 
 dream he had cherished so long and so 
 jealously that delicious dream in which 
 he, like other men who sowed seed
 
 The jfoy of the Harvest 
 
 in the written word, had seen " a new 
 heaven and a new earth," and in which 
 a Voice had said : " Write : for these 
 words are true and faithful ! " 
 
 Gripping the hand he held so hard that 
 it almost hurt, he bent his head lower 
 and murmured : 
 
 " Look at me dear." 
 
 Julietta tried to obey : she lifted her 
 face, which was burning with blushes ; 
 but she could see him only through the 
 blur of her tears. 
 
 " Tell me you don't believe what you 
 just said about me forgetting." 
 
 Her mouth quivered ; words would not 
 come. 
 
 No one was in sight on the Shore Road. 
 He drew her to him and kissed her eyes 
 where the tears shone tears for his go- 
 ing. 
 
 Then an automobile whirled into view. 
 [143]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 " Say you don't believe it," he pleaded. 
 
 The auto flew by in a cloud of dust. 
 
 " I don't believe that you'll forget," 
 she said. And lifted to him, full of trust, 
 her eyes that he had kissed. 
 
 [144]
 
 XVII 
 WHAT THE PLAY WAS ABOUT 
 
 IT seemed to Juliette that she counted 
 time, after John Sheppard left, not 
 by figures on the dial, nor yet by 
 heart-throbs, but by the coming of the 
 mails. 
 
 He kept her fully posted on every de- 
 tail of the play's progress. 
 
 " About all I can write you in return," 
 she said, " is how my garden grows my 
 garden of ideals that you planted for 
 me." 
 
 " That, and how you are, is about all 
 that any one could write me that would 
 be of intense interest to me just now," he 
 answered. 
 
 The play had been instantly accepted. 
 [H5]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 " I took it in to the office of the man- 
 ager I preferred to any other," he wrote 
 her on his third day in New York. " He 
 seemed pleased to see me; asked me 
 where I had been. ' Writing a play,' I told 
 him. ' Good ! ' he said. ' Get it done? ' 
 I produced it from my pocket like a 
 book agent. ' What's it about ? ' he 
 asked, 'nibbling' at the pages. I gave 
 him the gist of it, briefly. He smiled 
 quizzically. ' Think you can get away with 
 it ? ' he queried. ' That's up to you to 
 decide,' I answered. ' I'll read it to-night,' 
 he promised. And I got out quickly I 
 so that the day's work might be got 
 through with before evening. ... In 
 the small hours he called me at The 
 Players. ' I'll have your contract ready 
 at eleven o'clock to-morrow,' he 'phoned. 
 That was all all that was necessary. 
 When I saw him this morning he said : 
 ' Where have you been, Sheppard ? ' I 
 knew what he meant, but pretended not 
 to. ' At The Players,' I answered, 
 stupidly. He cussed me with a look. 
 ' I mean, where did you write your play ? ' 
 I told him. ' Is this kind of thing in the 
 atmosphere there ? ' he asked, tapping the 
 
 [146]
 
 What the Play was About 
 
 manuscript. ' Not in the atmosphere of 
 any place,' I replied ; ' I worked there for 
 some time without better results than if I 
 had stayed on Broadway.' He gave me 
 a long, searching look out of those keen 
 eyes of his and said nothing, for a 
 moment. Then he handed me the con- 
 tract to read. 'They do happen yet,' he 
 muttered as if to himself more than to 
 me. ' What ? ' I asked. ' Miracles 1 ' he 
 grunted. ' Yes ! ' I said, fervently ; ' they 
 do ! ' . . . We discussed the cast even 
 before I had taken the contract to my 
 lawyer for his approval which isn't at 
 all necessary, but is the only thing I ever 
 do that makes me feel businesslike." 
 
 In other matters than its acceptance 
 the play went forward speedily ; the idea 
 being to get it on in New York before 
 the end of January, so that if it succeeded, 
 it might have a good long run there be- 
 fore the hot weather. 
 
 So rehearsals were soon in progress. 
 These meant long hours of hard work for
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 the author much rewriting and pruning 
 and enlarging. His daily letters to Julietta 
 were written in such scraps of time as he 
 could snatch from his work. 
 
 In them he began to plan definitely for 
 her coming on. They were to play three 
 weeks of trial performances : Baltimore, 
 Washington, and a week of one-night 
 stands. Then, on the very last night of 
 January, they were to open in New 
 York. 
 
 " My mother will be here," he wrote, 
 " and my married sister and likewise, it 
 seems, a number of my ' cousins and my 
 aunts.' Mother is writing you, asking 
 you to be her guest at the hotel. I want 
 to meet you at the train, so we must try 
 to find one that will bring you in here 
 after I am back from the road, on Sunday, 
 and before they have me snared for the 
 
 Governor's interminable dress rehearsal." 
 [148]
 
 What the Play was About 
 
 It all seemed like a dream to Julietta, 
 as she read his letters and even as she 
 went about her preparations. She had 
 been in New York for a day or two at a 
 time on several occasions when she went 
 to boarding-school. But that she should 
 be going there to stay ten days or a fort- 
 night and to attend, as a guest of the 
 dramatist, the first night of a play ! 
 
 He telegraphed her about the play's 
 warm reception on the road. But he sent 
 her no newspapers. "I want you," he 
 wrote, " to bring to the hearing a mind 
 quite free from preconceptions. I haven't 
 told mother, either, what my play is 
 about." 
 
 From the moment of her arrival, Juli- 
 etta was caught up into the whirl of 
 anxiety and nervousness that precedes a 
 metropolitan opening. They were quite 
 on the outside, in a way she and John
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 Sheppard's mother and sister but no 
 one was more excited. If they had had 
 anything to do, any responsibility, the 
 demand on them would have helped to 
 steady them. But they could only wait 
 And when they went out, and tried to 
 divert themselves, all they could think 
 as they laughingly confessed to one 
 another was, as they scanned the people 
 they passed : Will he come, I wonder 1 
 And will she like it? They saw all 
 New York in relation only to "The 
 Gleaners." 
 
 At length the evening came. Mrs. 
 Sheppard and her party were to have a 
 box, and to wear their best, of course. 
 
 " Don't dress up too much or, if you 
 do, wear a plain, dark cloak, please," 
 John Sheppard whispered to Julierta. " I 
 have other plans for you." 
 
 Wonderingly, she obeyed wearing 
 C'50]
 
 What the P lay was About 
 
 her ulster instead of the pretty evening 
 wrap she had brought. 
 
 When they reached the theatre, she 
 understood. He saw them all seated in 
 their box, then excused himself. 
 
 " I'm going back for just a minute, to 
 wish everybody luck," he said. "And 
 when I return if Miss Grier doesn't 
 mind, I'd like her to watch the play from 
 the balcony." 
 
 No one seemed surprised ; he had 
 evidently explained his purpose to his 
 mother and sister. And, two minutes 
 before the curtain was rung up, he came 
 and got Julietta. Their seats were ob- 
 scure ones wherein no one would think 
 of looking for the author, but from which 
 the view was excellent. And they could 
 listen, unnoticed, to the comments all 
 about them. 
 
 In her tense excitement, Julietta
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 gripped the arm of her seat as if for 
 support. Under cover of the friendly 
 dusk when the curtain was up and the 
 house was dark, John Sheppard's hand 
 covered hers, clinging close. 
 
 Almost immediately, Julietta realized 
 what the play was. She had supposed 
 him joking when he said he ought to 
 write about her. 
 
 This girl he had built his play about 
 was not Julietta, of course and yet she 
 was ! Nothing that she did was as 
 Julietta had done and yet, everything 
 was there as they had talked about it, 
 about the girl who put new magic into 
 stale lives because, instead of sowing 
 broadcast, as nearly everybody wants to 
 do, she was willing to coax along the 
 harvest. It was real comedy : people 
 laughed until they cried ; and when they 
 cried, they could pretend (if they wanted
 
 W^hat the Play was About 
 
 to) that it was because they had laughed 
 so hard. Julietta could pretend this, too, 
 if she cared to pretend and she did, for 
 the sake of the people who could see. 
 But John Sheppard knew 1 
 
 After the third act there was an ova- 
 tion, not the usual noisy first-night kind 
 that means nothing but the good-will of 
 friends, but a demonstration charged with 
 real feeling, such as to make gratefully 
 glad the hearts of those who cared so 
 very, very much how the public took this 
 play. 
 
 To the calls for " Author ! Author ! " 
 Sheppard did not respond. When they 
 persisted, the producer appeared, saying 
 that Mr. Sheppard could not be found ; 
 and that, if he could be found, un- 
 doubtedly he would not be able to say 
 what happiness their kind reception gave 
 him. 
 
 ['53]
 
 The Gleaners 
 
 " I think I know just how you feel," the 
 producer went on. " You feel as I did 
 when I read the play. Sitting alone, at 
 home, after a hard day's work, I went at 
 the manuscript as well, as some of you 
 men go back to the office at night to 
 have another round at the things that are 
 never done. And before I knew it, I was 
 laughing until I cried and crying until 
 I laughed, and well, as I said, I 
 think I know how you feel. I wish you 
 might know as well how we feel whom 
 you have so greatly encouraged." 
 
 Then the lights went down, and the 
 curtain went up, and the play proceeded 
 to its close the close that left each 
 auditor smiling mistily, and thoughtful 
 each of his or her own Mrs. Mears, 
 determined each to be a patient gardener 
 of ideals, no matter in how small a patch 
 of ground. 
 
 [154]
 
 W^hat the P lay was About 
 
 " Will Do More Good Than All the 
 Philippics Ever Written Against ' The 
 Other Fellow: " 
 
 Thus ran the verdict 
 
 " It's your play, really. I feel ashamed 
 to have my name attached to all this 
 credit," John Sheppard declared to Juli- 
 etta when he laid down, next afternoon, 
 the last of the glowing tributes the day's 
 press had paid " The Gleaners." 
 
 " You needn't let that mar your happi- 
 ness," Julietta reminded him, blushing 
 prettily. " Think how soon it will be my 
 name, too." 
 
 END
 
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