Chapter VI: Prologue (5)

There was a time when Priscilla had letters from only one. Henry was very ill, and D'Entremont wrote bulletins of his condition to Priscilla and to his family. In one of these it was announced that he was beyond recovery, and Priscilla and Anna mingled their tears together. Then there came a letter saying that he was better. Then he was worse again. And then better.

In those days the mail was brought wholly by steamboats, and it took many days for intelligence to come. But the next letter that Priscilla had was from Henry Stevens himself. It was filled from first to last with praises of the marquis; that he had taken Henry out of his boarding place, and put him into his own large room in the St. Charles; that he had nursed him with more than a friend's tenderness, scarcely sleeping at all; that he had sold his cargo, relieved his mind of care, employed the most prominent physicians, and anticipated his every want--all this and more the letter told.

And the very next steamboat from the lower country, the great heavy Duke of Orleans, with a green half moon of lattice work in each paddle box, brought the convalescent Henry and his friend. Both were invited to supper at the house of Priscilla's mother on the evening after their arrival. Neither of them liked to face Priscilla's decision, whatever it might be, but they were more than ever resolved that it should not in any way disturb their friendship. So they walked together to the cottage.

Priscilla's mother was not well enough to come to the table, and she had to entertain both. It was hard for either of the guests to be cheerful, but Priscilla at least was not depressed by the approaching decision. Equally attentive to both, no one could have guessed in which direction her preference lay.

"We must enjoy this supper," she said. "We must celebrate Henry's recovery and the goodness of his nurse together. Let's put the future out of sight and be happy."

Her gayety proved infectious, and as she served her friends with her own hands they both abandoned themselves to the pleasure of the moment and talked of cheerful and amusing things.

Only when they rose to leave did she allow her face to become sober, and even then the twilight of her joyousness lingered in her smile as she spoke, facing them both:

"How I have enjoyed your coming! I wanted us to have this supper together before coming to the subject you spoke of before leaving. I shall have to say what will give you both pain." There was a moment's pause. Then she resumed:

"The matter has been decided for me. I can marry neither of you. My father and all my brothers and sisters have died of consumption. I am the only one left of five. In a few months--" She lowered her voice, which trembled a little as she glanced toward her mother's room--"my poor mother will be childless."

For the first time, in the imperfect light, they noticed the flushed cheeks, and for the first time they detected the quick breathing. When they walked away the two friends were nearer than ever by virtue of a common sorrow.

And as day after day they visited her in company, the public, and particularly that part of the public which peeped out of Miss Nancy More's windows, was not a little mystified. Miss More thought a girl who was drawing near to the solemn and awful realities of eternal bliss should let such worldly vanities as markusses alone!

A singular change came over Priscilla in one regard. As the prospect of life faded out, she was no longer in danger of being tempted by the title and wealth of the marquis. She could be sure that her heart was not bribed. And when this restraint of conscience abnormally sensitive was removed, it became every day more and more clear to her that she loved D'Entremont. Of all whom she had ever known, he only was a companion. And as he brought her choice passages from favorite writers every day, and as her mind grew with unwonted rapidity under the influence of that strange disease which shakes down the body while it ripens the soul, she felt more and more that she was growing out of sympathy with all that was narrow and provincial in her former life, and into sympathy with the great world, and with Antoine d'Entremont, who was the representative of the world to her.

This rapidly growing gulf between his own intellectual life and that of Priscilla Henry Stevens felt keenly. But there is one great compensation for a soul like Henry's. Men and women of greater gifts might outstrip him in intellectual growth. He could not add one cell to his brain, or make the slightest change in his temperament. But neither the marquis nor Priscilla could excel him in that generosity which does not always go with genius, and which is not denied to the man of the plainest gifts. He wrote to the marquis:

"MY DEAR FRIEND: You are a good and generous friend. I have read in
her voice and her eyes what the decision of Priscilla must have
been. If I had not been blind, I ought to have seen it before in
the difference between us. Now I know that it will be a comfort to
you to have that noble woman die your wife. I doubt not it will be
a comfort to her. Do you think it will be any consolation to me to
have been an obstacle in the way? I hope you do not think so meanly
of me, and that you and Priscilla will give me the only consolation
I can have in our common sorrow--the feeling that I have been able
to make her last days more comfortable and your sorrow more
bearable. If you refuse, I shall always reproach myself.

"HENRY."

I need not tell of the discussions that ensued. But it was concluded that it was best for all three that Priscilla and the marquis should be married, much to the disgust of Miss Nancy More, who thought that "she'd better be sayin' her prayers. What good would it do to be a march-oness and all that when she was in her coffin?"

A wedding in prospect of death is more affecting than a funeral. Only Henry Stevens and Anna Poindexter were to be present. Priscilla's mother had completed the arrangements, blinded by tears. I think she could have dressed Priscilla for her coffin with less suffering. The white dress looked so like a shroud, under those sunken cheeks as white as the dress! Once or twice Priscilla had drawn her mother's head to her bosom and wept.

"Poor mother!" she would say; "so soon to be alone! But Antoine will be your son."

Just as the dressing of the pale bride was completed, there came one of those sudden breakdowns to which a consumptive is liable. The doctor gave hope of but a few hours of life. When the marquis came he was heartbroken to see her lying there, so still, so white--dying. She took his hand. She beckoned to Anna and Henry Stevens to stand by her, and then, with tear-blinded eyes, the old minister married them for eternity!

Outside the door Priscilla's class of Slabtown boys stood with some roses and hollyhocks they had thought to bring for her wedding or her funeral, they hardly knew which. They were all abashed at the idea of entering the house.

"You go in, Bill," said one.

"No, you go. I can't do it," said Bill, scratching the gravel walk with his toes.

"I say somebody's got to go," said the first speaker.

"I'll go," said Boone Jones, the toughest of the party. "I ain't afeerd," he added huskily, as he took the flowers in his hand and knocked at the door.

But when Boone got in, and saw Priscilla lying there so white, he began to choke with a strange emotion. Priscilla tried to take the flowers from his hand, but Anna Poindexter took them. Priscilla tried to thank him, but she could only whisper his name.

"Boone----" she said, and ceased from weakness.

But the lad did not wait. He burst into weeping, and bolted out the door.

"I say, boys," he repeated, choking his sobs, "she's just dyin', and she said Boone--you know--and couldn't say no more, and I couldn't stand it."

Feeling life ebbing, Priscilla took the hand of the marquis. Then, holding to the hand of D'Entremont, she beckoned Henry to come near. As he bent over her she whispered, looking significantly at the marquis, "Henry, God bless you, my noble-hearted friend!" And as Henry turned away, the marquis put his arm about him, but said nothing.

Priscilla's nature abhorred anything dramatic in dying, or rather she did not think of effect at all; so she made no fine speeches. But when she had ceased to breathe, the old preacher said, "The bridegroom has come."

She left an envelope for Henry. What it had in it no one but Henry ever knew. I have heard him say that it was one word, which became the key to all the happiness of his after life. Judging from the happiness he has in his home with Anna, his wife, it would not be hard to tell what the word was. The last time I was at his house I noticed that their eldest child was named Priscilla, and that the boy who came next was Antoine. Henry told me that Priscilla left a sort of "will" for the marquis, in which she asked him to do the Christian work that she would have liked to do. Nothing could have been wiser if she had sought only his own happiness, for in activity for others is the safety of a restless mind. He had made himself the special protector of the ten little Slabtown urchins.

Henry told me in how many ways, through Challeau, Lafort & Company, the marquis had contrived to contribute to his prosperity without offending his delicacy. He found himself possessed of practically unlimited credit through the guarantee which the great New Orleans banking house was always ready to give.

"What is that fine building?" I said, pointing to a picture on the wall.

"Oh! that is the 'Hospice de Sainte Priscille,' which Antoine has erected in Paris. People there call it 'La Marquise.'"

"By the way," said Priscilla's mother, who sat by, "Antoine is coming to see us next month, and is to look after his Slabtown friends when he comes. They used to call him at first 'Priscilla's Frenchman.'"

And to this day Miss More declares that markusses is a thing she can't no ways understand.

_1871._

TALKING FOR LIFE.

For many years following the war I felt that I owed a grudge to the medical faculty. Having a romantic temperament and a taste for heroics, I had wished to fight and eat hard tack for my country. But whenever I presented the feeble frame in which I then dwelt, the medical man stood in my path with the remonstrance, "Why should you fill another cot in a hospital and another strip in the graveyard?" In these late years I have been cured of my regrets; not by service-pension slogans and pension agents' circulars, as you may imagine, but by the war reminiscence which has flooded the magazines, invaded every social circle, and rendered the listener's life a burden. In any group of men of my own age, North or South, I do not dare introduce any military topic, not even the Soudan campaign of General Wolseley, or the East Indian yarns of Private Mulvaney, lest I should bring down upon my head stories of campaigning on the Shenandoah, the Red River, or the Rappahannock--stories that have gained like rolling snowballs during the rolling years. Not that the war reminiscence is inherently tedious, but it is frightfully overworked. A scientific friend of mine of great endurance has discovered, by a series of prolonged observations and experiments at the expense of his own health, that only one man in twenty-seven hundred and forty-six can tell a story well, and that only one in forty-three can narrate a personal experience bearably. If I had gone into the army the chances are forty-two to one that I should have bored my friends intolerably from that day to this, and twenty-seven hundred and forty-five to one against my stories having anything engaging in them. I thank Heaven for the medical man that made me stay at home.

But once in a while it has been my luck to meet among old soldiers the twenty-seven hundred and forty-sixth man who can tell a story well. Ben Tillye is one of them, and here is an anecdote I heard from him, which is rather interesting, and which may even be true:

"I had just been promoted to a first lieutenancy, and thought that I saw a generalship in the dim distance. Why, with such prospects, I should have straggled right into the arms of three bushwhackers, I do not know.

"Falling into the hands of guerrillas was a serious business then. An order had been issued by the wiseacre in command of the Army of the Potomac that all guerrillas taken should be put to death. This did not deprive the bushwhackers of a single man, but they naturally retaliated by a counter-order that all prisoners of theirs should be shot. In this game of pop and pop again the guerrillas had decidedly the advantage, and I was one of the first to fall in their way. I had hardly surrendered before I regretted that I had not resisted capture. I might have killed one of them, or at least have forced them to shoot me on the spot, which would not have been so much worse than dying in cold blood the next morning, and which would have led to a pursuit and the breaking up of their camp. But here I was disarmed, and after an hour's march seated among them bushwhacking in an old cabin on a hillside.

"The leader of the party of three who had captured me seemed a kindly man--one that, if it were his duty to behead me, would prefer to give me chloroform before the amputation. For obvious reasons I made myself as agreeable as possible to him. I tried also to talk to the captain of the band after I reached the camp, but he repelled my friendly advances with something like surliness. I reasoned that he intended to execute me, and did not wish to have his feelings taxed with regrets. At any rate, after finding that he could get no information of value from me, he went on with his writing at a table made by propping up an old wooden shutter in the corner of the cabin. Meantime I reflected that the only way in which I could avoid my doom was by awakening a friendly sympathy in the minds of my captors. I fell to talking for life. I trotted out my funniest stories, and the eight men about me laughed heartily as I proceeded.

"The captain was visibly annoyed. My interlocutor in this conversation was his second in authority, the one who had captured me. He had no distinct mark of rank, but I fancied him to be a sergeant. At length the captain turned to him, and said, 'Jones, I can't write if you keep up this talking.'

"I knew that this was meant as a hint for me, but I knew also that my very last hope lay in my winning the hearts of the guerrilla officer and his men. So with slightly lowered voice I kept on talking to the men, who looked at me from under their ragged slouched hats with the most eager interest. At the end of one of my stories their amusement broke forth into hearty laughter. The captain stopped writing, and turned upon me with the remark, only half in jest, I thought:

"'I'll have to shoot you, lieutenant. You must be a valuable man in the Yankee camp.'

"I forced a laugh, but went on with my stories, explaining to the captain that I meant to enjoy my last hours at all hazards. The accent of those about me reminded me irresistibly of the year that I, though of Northern birth, had spent in a school in eastern Virginia.

"'You are a Virginian,' I said to Sergeant Jones.

"'Yes.'

"'What county?'

"'I'm from Powhatan.'

"'I went to school in the next county,' I said, 'at what was called Amelia Academy.'

"'Goatville?' demanded Jones.

"'Yes, I went to old Goat. That's what we all called him on account of his red goatee. We never dated a letter otherwise than "Goatville." And yet we loved and revered the principal. Did you go there?'

"'No,' said Jones, 'but I knew a good many who did.'

"Well, from this I broke into my stock of schoolboy stories of the jokes about the 'cat,' or roll pudding we had twice a week, of the rude tricks put upon greenhorns and their retorts in kind. The men enjoyed these yarns, and even the captain was amused, as I inferred, because I could no longer hear his pen scratching, for he sat behind me.

"'Did you ever swim in the Appomattox?' asked Jones.

"'Yes,' I replied; 'I came near losing my life there once. I had a roommate who was a good swimmer. I was also a pretty good swimmer, and we foolishly undertook for a small wager to see who could swim the river the oftenest, only stopping to touch bottom with our toes at each side. We went over side by side five times. The sixth crossing I fell behind; it was all I could do, and at its close I crept out on the bank and lay down. My roommate, Tom Freeman, struck out for a seventh. He was nearly over when the boys by my side uttered a cry. Tom was giving out. He was in a sort of hysterical laughter from exhaustion, and, though able to keep above the water, he could not make any headway. I got to my feet and begged the boys to go to his help, but they all had their clothes on, and they had so much confidence in Freeman as a swimmer that they only said, "He'll get out."

"'But I could see no way in which he could get out. I had recovered a little by this time, and I seized a large piece of driftwood, plunged into the river again, and pushed this old limb of a tree across the stream ahead of me. Freeman was sinking out of sight when he got his hand on the bough. I was able to push him into water where he could get a footing, but I somehow lost my own hold on the wood and found myself sinking, utterly faint from a sort of collapse. There was a tree that had fallen into the stream a few yards below. I was just able to turn on my back and keep afloat until I could grasp the top branches of the tree. Then I crept out--I never knew how, for I was only half conscious. But I'll never forget the cry from the boys on the other side of the stream that reached my ears as I lay exhausted alongside of Freeman on the bank. "Hurrah for Tilley!" they shouted.'

"'No, they didn't.' It was the captain who contradicted me thus abruptly, and I looked up in surprise.

"'That's not what they called you in those days,' said the captain. 'They shouted, "Hurrah for Stumpey!" They never called you anything but "Stumpey."'

"'Who in thunder are you?' I said, getting to my feet.

"'Tom Freeman,' replied the captain, rising and grasping my hand.

"Well, I wasn't shot, as you can see for yourselves."

PERIWINKLE.

"Bring me that slate, Henriettar!"

Miss Tucker added a superfluous r to some words, but then she made amends by dropping the final r where it was preceded by a broad vowel. If she said _idear_, she compounded for it by saying _waw_. She said _lor_ for law, and _dror_ for draw, but then she said _cah_ for car. Some of our Americans are as free with the final r as the cockney is with his initial h.

Miss Tucker was the schoolmistress at the new schoolhouse in West Easton. I am not quite sure, either, that I have the name of the place right. I think it may have been East Weston. Weston or Easton, whichever it is, is a country township east of the Hudson River, whose chief article of export is chestnuts; consequently it is not set down in the gazetteer. After all, it doesn't matter. We'll call it East Weston, if you please.

The schoolhouse was near a brook--a murmuring brook, of course. Its pleasant murmur could not be shut out. The school trustees had built the windows high, so that the children might not be diverted from their lessons by any sight of occasional passers-by. As though children could study better in a prison! As though you could shut in a child's mind, traveling in its vagrant fancies like Prospero's Ariel round about the earth in twenty minutes! The dull sound of a horse's hoofs would come in now and then from the road, and the children, longing for some new sight, would spend the next half hour in mental debate whether it could have been a boy astride a bag of turnips, for instance, or the doctor in his gig, that had passed under the windows.

It was getting late in the afternoon. Miss Tucker had dominated her little flock faithfully all day, until even she grew tired of monotonous despotism. Perhaps the drowsy, distant sounds--the cawing of crows far away, the almost inaudible rattle of a mowing machine, and the unvarying gurgle of the brook near at hand--had softened Miss Tucker's temper. More likely it had made her sleepy, for she relaxed her watchfulness so much that Rob Riley had time to look at the radiant face of Henrietta full two minutes without a rebuke. At last Miss Tucker actually yawned two or three times. Then she brought herself up with a guilty start. Full twenty minutes had passed in which she, Rebecca--or, as she pronounced it, Rebekker--Tucker, schoolmistress and intellectual drum-major, had scolded nobody and had scowled at nobody. She determined to make amends at once for this remissness. Her eye lighted on Henrietta. It was always safe to light on Henrietta. Miss Tucker might punish her at any time on general principles and not go far astray, especially when she sat, as now, bent over her slate.

Henrietta was a girl past sixteen, somewhat tallish, and a little awkward; her hair was light, her eyes blue, and her face not yet developed, but there were the crude elements of a possible beauty in her features. When her temper was aroused, and she gathered up the habitual slovenly expression of her face into a look of vigor and concentrated resolution, she was "splendid," in the vocabulary of her schoolmates. She was one of those country girls who want only the trimmings to make a fine lady. Rob Riley, for his part, did not miss the trimmings. Fine lady she was to him, and his admiration for her was the only thing that interfered with his diligence. For Rob had actually learned a good deal in spite of the educational influences of the school. In fact, he had long since passed out of the possibility of Miss Tucker's helping him. When he could not "do a sum" and referred it to her, she always told him that it would do him much more good to get it himself. Thus put upon his mettle, Rob was sure to come out of the struggle somehow with the "answer" in his teeth. Miss Tucker would have liked Rob if Rob had not loved Henrietta, who was Miss Tucker's deadliest foe.

"Bring me that slate this instant!" repeated the schoolmistress when Henrietta hesitated, "and don't you rub out the picture."

Henrietta's face took on a sullen look; she rose slowly, dropping the slate with a clatter on her desk, whence it slid with a bang to the floor, without any effort on her part to arrest it. Miss Tucker did not observe--she was nearsighted--that in its fall, and in Henrietta's picking it up, it was reversed, so that the side presented to the schoolmistress was not the side on which the girl had last been at work. All Miss Tucker saw was that the side which faced her when she took the slate from Henrietta's hand contained a picture of a little child. It was a chubby little face, with a funny-serious expression. The execution was by no means correct, the foreshortening of the little bare legs was not well done, the hands were out of drawing, and the whole picture had the stillness that comes from inexperience. But Miss Tucker did not see that. All she saw was that it was to her eye a miraculously good picture.

"That's the way you get your arithmetic lesson! You haven't done a sum this morning. You spend your time drawing little brats like that."

"She isn't a brat."

"Who isn't a brat?"

"Periwinkle isn't. That's Periwinkle."

"Who's Periwinkle?"

"She's my niece. She's Jane's little girl. You sha'n't call her a brat, neither."

"Don't you talk to me that way, you impudent thing! That's the way you spend your time, drawing pictures."

Miss Tucker here held the slate up in front of her and stared at the picture of Periwinkle. Whereupon the scholars who were spectators of Miss Tucker's indignation smiled. Some of them grew red in the face and looked at their companions. Little Charity Jones rattled out a good, hearty, irrepressible giggle, which she succeeded in arresting only by stuffing her apron into her mouth.

"Charity Jones, what are you laughing at?"

But Charity only stuck her head down on the desk and went into another snicker.

"Come here!"

Charity was sober enough now. Miss Tucker got a little switch out of her desk and threatened little Charity with "a good sound whipping" if she didn't tell what she was laughing at.

"At the picture," whimpered the child.

"I don't see anything to laugh at," said the mistress, holding the slate up before her.

Whereupon the school again showed signs of a sensation.

"What are you laughing at?" and Miss Tucker instinctively felt of her back hair.

"It's on the other side of the slate," burst out Charity's brother, who was determined to deliver his sister out of the den of lions.

Miss Tucker turned the slate over, and there was Henrietta's masterpiece. It was a stunning caricature of the schoolmistress in the act of yawning. Of course, when that high and mighty authority had, in her indignation held up the slate so as to get a good view of the picture of Periwinkle, she was unconsciously exhibiting to the school the character study on the reverse of the slate. And now, as she looked with unutterable wrath and consternation at the dreadful drawing, the scholars were full of suppressed emotion--half of it terror, and the other half a served-her-right feeling.

"The school is dismissed. Henriettar Newton will stay," said the schoolmistress. The children arose, glad to escape, while Henrietta felt that her friends were all deserting her, and she was left alone with a wild beast.

"Chaw her all up," said one of the boys to another. "I wouldn't be in there with her for a good deal."

Rob Riley left the room the last of all, and he lingered under the window. But what could he do? After a while he hurried away to Henrietta's father, on the adjoining farm, and made a statement of the case to him.

"I sha'n't interfere," said the old man sternly. "That girl's give me trouble enough, I'm sure. Spends her time makin' fool pictures on a slate. I hope the schoolmistress'll cure her."

Rob did not know what to say to this. He went back across the field to the schoolhouse door and sat down and listened. He could hear an angry collocation. He thought best not to interfere unless the matter came to blows.

The old man Newton entered his house soon after Rob Riley left him, and repeated to his wife what Rob had said from his own standpoint. The little grandchild, Periwinkle, sat on the floor with that funny-serious air that belonged to her chubby face.

"I'll go down and see about that, I will," she said with an air of great importance.

"What?" said the old man, looking tenderly and fondly at Periwinkle.

"I'll see about that, I will," said the barefoot cherub, as she pulled on her sunbonnet and set out for the schoolhouse, pushing resolutely forward on her sturdy little legs.

"I vum!" said the old man, as he saw her disappear round the fence corner.

The quaint little thing had not yet been in the house a week. She was sent on to the grandparents after her mother's death, and, as the child of the daughter who had left them years ago never to return, she had found immediate entrance into the hearts of the old folks. The reprobate Henrietta, who wasted her time drawing pictures, and who was generally in a state of siege at home and at school, had found in little Periwinkle, as they called her, a fountain of affection. And now that Henrietta was in trouble, the little Illinois Periwinkle had gone off in her self-reliant fashion to see about it.

When she reached the schoolhouse she found Rob Riley, whom she had come to know as Henrietta's friend, standing listening.

"I've come down to see about that, I have," said Periwinkle, nodding her head toward the schoolhouse. Then she listened a while to the angry voice of Miss Tucker, and the surly, sobbing, and defiant replies of Henrietta, who was saying, "Stand back, or I'll hit you!"

"Open that door this minute, Wob Wiley! I'm a goin' to see about that."

Rob hesitated. The latch was clearly out of Periwinkle's reach. Rob had a faint hope that the little thing might divert the wrathful teacher from her prey. He raised the latch and set the door slightly ajar.

"Now push," he said to Periwinkle.

She pushed the door open a little way and entered the schoolroom without being seen by the angry mistress, who was facing the other way, having driven Henrietta into a corner. Here stood the defiant girl at bay, waving a ruler, which she had snatched from the irate teacher, and warning the latter to let her alone. Periwinkle walked up to the teacher, pulled her dress, and said:

"I've come down to see about that, I have."

"Who are you?" said the frightened Miss Tucker, to whom it seemed that the little chub had dropped down out of the sky, or come to life off Henrietta's slate.

"I'm Periwinkle, and you mustn't touch my Henrietta. I've come down to see about it, I have."

Miss Tucker, in a sudden reaction, sank down on a chair exhausted and bewildered. Then she sobbed a little in despair.

"What shall I do with that girl?" she muttered. "I'm beat out."

"Come home, Henrietta," said Periwinkle, and she marched Henrietta out the door under the very eyes of the schoolmistress.

"Come back this minute!" cried Miss Tucker, rallying when it was too late. But the weeping Henrietta, the solemn Periwinkle, and the rejoicing Rob Riley went away and answered the poor woman never a word.

Miss Tucker, who was not without some good sense and good intentions, found out that evening that she did not like teaching. She forthwith resigned the school in East Weston. In a week or two a new teacher was engaged, "a young thing from town," as the people put it, "who never could manage that Henrietta Newton."

But sometimes even a "young thing" is gifted with that undefined something that we call tact. Sarah Reade soon found out, from the gratuitous advice lavished upon her, that her chief trouble would be from Henrietta; so she took pains to get acquainted with the unruly girl the first day. Finding that the center of Henrietta's heart was Periwinkle, she took great interest in getting the girl to tell her all about Periwinkle. Henrietta was so much softened by this treatment that for three whole days after the advent of Miss Reade she did not draw a picture on the slate. But the self-denial was too great. On the fourth day, while Miss Reade was hearing recitation, and the girls at the desk behind Henrietta were looking over at her, she drew a cow very elaborately.

She was just trying to make the horns look right, rubbing them out and retouching them, while the other girls rose up in their seats and brought their heads together in a cluster to see, declaring in a whisper that "it was the wonderfullest thing how Henrietta could draw," when who should look down among them but Miss Reade herself. As soon as Henrietta became conscious of Miss Reade's attention she dropped her pencil, not with the old defiant feeling, but with a melancholy sense of having lost standing with one whose good opinion she would fain have retained.

The teacher took the slate in her hand, not in Miss Tucker's energetic fashion, but with a polite "Excuse me," which made Henrietta's heart sink down within her. For half a minute Miss Reade scrutinized the drawing without saying a word.

"Did anybody ever give you any drawing lessons?" she said to the detected criminal.

"No, ma'am."

"You draw well; you ought to have a chance. You'll make an artist some day. Your cow is not quite right. If you'll bring the picture to me after school I'll show you some things about it. I think you'd better put it away now till you get your geography lesson."

Henrietta, full of wonder at finding her art no longer regarded as a sin, put the slate into the desk, and cheerfully resumed the study of the boundaries and chief products of North Carolina, while Miss Reade returned to the hearing of the third-reader class.

"I say, Henrietta, she's j-u-s-t s-p-l-e-n-d-i-d!" whispered Maria Thomas. And Rob Riley thought Miss Reade was almost as fine as Henrietta herself.

"You see," said Miss Reade to Henrietta after school, "that the hind legs of your cow look longer than the fore legs."

"There's something wrong." said the girl, "but that isn't it. I've measured, and the cow's just as high before as behind, though she doesn't look so."

"Yes, but you've put her head a little toward you. The hind legs ought to seem shorter at a little distance off. Now try it. Make her not so high from the ground behind," and Miss Reade proceeded to explain one or two principles of perspective. When Henrietta had experimented on her cow and saw the result, she was delighted.

"I don't know much about drawing," said Miss Reade, "but I've a set of drawing books and some drawing cards. Now, if you'll let drawing alone till you get your lessons each day, I'll lend you my drawing books and give you all the help I can."

When the old man Newton heard that the "new school ma'am" was permitting Henrietta to draw "fool picters on her slate," he was sure that it never would work. He believed in breaking a child's will, for his part, "though the one that broke Henriettar's will would hev to git up purty airly in the mornin' now, certain," he added with a grim smile. But when the old man found Henrietta unexpectedly industrious, toiling over her studies at night, he was surprised beyond measure; and when he understood the compact by which studies were to come first and drawing afterward, he winked his eye knowingly at his wife.

"Who'd a thought that little red-headed school ma'am would a ben so cute? She knows the very bait for Henriettar now. That woman would do to trade hosses."

But when the little schoolmistress seriously proposed that he should send Henrietta down to New York to take lessons in drawing, he quickly changed his mind. Of what kind of use was drawing? And then, it would cost, according to Miss Reade's own account, about two or three hundred dollars a year for board; all to learn a lot of nonsense. It is true, when the teacher craftily told him stories of the prices that some lucky artists received for their work, he felt as though she were pointing down into a gold mine. But the money in his hand was good money, and he never sent good money after bad. And so Henrietta's newly raised hope of being an artist was dashed, and Rob Riley was grievously disappointed; for he was sure that Henrietta would astonish the metropolis if once she could take her transcendent ability out of East Weston into New York. Besides, Rob Riley himself was going off to New York to develop his own talent by learning the granite cutter's trade. He confided to Henrietta that he expected to come to something better than granite cutting, for he had heard that there had been granite cutters who, being, like himself, good at figures, in time had come to be great contractors and builders and bosses. He was going to be something, and when he was settled at work in New York Henrietta had a letter from him telling that he was learning mechanical drawing in the Cooper Union night school, and that he got books out of the Apprentices' Library. He also attended free lectures, and was looking out for a chance to be something some day. Henrietta carried the letter about with her, and wished heartily that she also might go to New York, where she could improve herself and see Rob Riley occasionally.

Now it happened that Mrs. Newton had a cousin, a rich man, in New York--at least, he seemed rich to those not used to the measure applied to wealth in a great city. She had not seen him since he left the little town in western Massachusetts, where they were both brought up. But she often talked about Cousin John. Whenever she saw his business advertisements in the papers she started out afresh in her talk about Cousin John. It is something quite worth the having--a cousin in New York whose name is in the papers, and who is rich. Whenever Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Newton's neighbor, talked too ostentatiously about her uncle, who was both a deacon and a justice of the peace up in New Hampshire, then Mrs. Newton said something about Cousin John. To save her life she couldn't imagine how Cousin John lived, except that he kept a carriage or two, or in what precisely his greatness consisted, since he held no office either in church or State, but the old lady evidently believed in her heart that a cousin who was a big man down in New York was nearly as good as an uncle who was a deacon up in New Hampshire.

Now it happened that John Willard, the Cousin John of Mrs. Newton's gossip, was spending the summer at Lebanon Springs, and at the close of his vacation he started to drive home through the beautiful region once the scene of the anti-renters' conflict with the old patroons. He stopped to see the Shaker villages, and then drove on among the rich farms, taking great pleasure in explaining to his town-bred wife the difference between wheat and rye as it stood in the shock, feeling for once the superiority of one whose early life has been passed in the country. He happened to remember that he had a cousin over in Weston, and though he had not seen her for many years, he proposed to turn aside and eat one dinner with old Farmer Newton and his wife.

And thus it happened that Cousin John Willard, and especially that Mrs. Cousin John Willard, saw Henrietta's drawings, and heard of her aspiration to learn to draw and paint; and thus it happened that Cousin John, and, what is of more consequence, Mrs. Cousin John, invited the girl to come down to New York and spend the winter with them and develop her talent for drawing; though Mrs. Willard did not think so much of Henrietta's developing her gift for art as that she had a fine face, and would undoubtedly develop into a beauty under city influences. And as Mrs. Willard had no children, and her house was lonesome, she thought it might add to her own consequence and to the cheerfulness of her house to have a handsome cousin under her care. Henrietta's father was rather unwilling to let her go; he didn't see how she could be spared from the housework; but the mother was resolved that she should go, and go she did.

The first things that excited the country girl's wonder were not the streets and buildings and the works of art, but the unwonted luxury of city life. Velvet carpets, large panes of plate glass, hot and cold water that came for the turning of a stopcock, illumination that burst forth as by magic, mirrors that showed the whole person and reduplicated the room--even doorbells and sliding doors, and dumb waiters and speaking-tubes, were things that filled her with astonishment. For weeks she felt that she had moved out of the world into a fairy book. But, being a high-spirited girl, she carefully concealed her wonder, moving about with apparent nonchalance, as though she had lived in the enchanted ground all her life. Secretly she carried on experiments upon water works, gas fixtures, and plate-glass mirrors, using the inductive method of reasoning, as all intelligent people have from the beginning, without any of the cumbrous and pedantic machinery provided for them by Lord Chancellor Bacon.

She was soon at work, but drawing from uninteresting plaster casts of scroll-work in the lower classes of the School of Design for Women was not so pleasant as spontaneous picture-making on her slate had been. In Weston, too, she had been a prodigy; her gift for drawing was little less than miraculous in the eyes of her companions. But in Cooper Institute she was one of many, and there were those whom much practice had rendered more skillful. She would slip away from her work and go through the alcoves sometimes, on one pretext or another, to envy the girls who were in their second year, and were drawing from a bust of Psyche or The Young Augustus, and especially did she wish that she were one of the favored circle in the Venus Room. She thought it would be fine to try the statue of the Venus de Milo. But day in and day out she had to stand before a cast of a meaningless scroll, endeavoring to represent it on drawing paper. This was no longer play, but work as tedious as the geography lessons in Weston. There is a great difference between work and play, though they both may consist in doing the same thing. Nevertheless Henrietta had positive ability, and the almost mechanical training of the first months did her good.

But somehow she was not so glad to see Rob Riley, the granite cutter, as she had expected to be. When Rob called at first to see her, the maid, who had received many warnings against allowing sneak thieves and tramps to stand in the hall, did not dare leave him by the hatrack. She eyed him suspiciously, cross-questioned him sharply, and finally called the cook upstairs to stand guard over him and the overcoats while she went to call Henrietta. Poor Rob, already frightened at having to ring the door-bell of a brown-stone house, stood in the hall fumbling his hat, while the stalwart cook never once took her eyes off him, but stood ready to throttle him if he made a motion to seize a coat or to open the door behind him. Somehow the greeting between the two under these circumstances was as different as possible from their parting in the country. Henrietta felt that by receiving Rob Riley in his Sunday clothes she had forever compromised herself with Hibernia downstairs; and poor Rob, half chilled by Henrietta's reception, and wholly dampened by the rosewood furniture and the lace curtains, and the necessity for sitting down on damask upholstery, was very ill at ease. Henrietta longed to speak freely, as she had done in the old days when they strolled through the hill pasture together, but then she trembled lest the door-bell should ring and some of Mrs. Cousin John's fine visitors enter the reception room. So the meeting was a failure. Rob even forgot that he had meant to ask Henrietta to go with him to the free lecture the next evening. And he was glad when he got out, and Henrietta was relieved, though she cried with vexation and disappointment when he was gone. As for Rob, he went home in great doubt whether it was worth while trying to be something. Of what use was it to seek to get to be a boss, a builder, or the owner of a quarry? Things were all wrong anyhow.

After this he only met Henrietta now and then as she came in or went out, though this was not easy, for he had to work with the hammer all day, and his evenings were spent in mechanical drawing. On second thought, he _would_ be something, if only just to show folks that looked down on him. Though, if he had only known it, Henrietta did not look down on him at all; all her contempt was expended on herself.

But this feeling wore away as she became naturalized in Mrs. Cousin John's world. There were little dance parties, and though Henrietta was obliged to dress plainly, she grew more to be a beautiful woman. The simplicity of her dress set off this fine loveliness, and Henrietta Newton was artist enough to understand this, so that her clothes did not make her abashed in company. She had no party dresses, but with Mrs. Willard's assistance she always looked the beautiful country cousin. Other girls remarked upon the monotony of her dress, but then the gentlemen did not care that one woolen gown did duty on many occasions. Some women can stand the ordeal of a uniform for church and theater, party and _tête-à-tête_.

Mrs. Willard meant well by Henrietta. If Henrietta's art got on slowly, and her chance for a prize decreased steadily under the dissipating influences about her, it was not that Mrs. Willard intended to do her harm by parading her pretty cousin on Sundays and week days. It was only a second growth of vanity in Cousin John's wife. When one is no longer sought after for one's own sake, the next best thing is to be sought after for somebody else's sake. Mrs. Willard shone now in a reflected glory, as the keeper of the pretty Miss Newton. Young gentlemen stood squarely in front of Mrs. Willard and made full bows to her, and were delighted when she asked them to call. Mrs. Willard also carried it up to her own credit, in her confidential talks with ladies of her own age, that she was doing so much for John's cousin, whom she had found buried in an old farmhouse. For Mrs. Willard was a Christian and a philanthropist, besides being a reformer.

She was endeavoring with all her heart to reform a younger brother of her own, who was enough to have filled the hands of three or four red, white, and blue ribbon associations. He was a fine subject to work on, this young Harrison Lowder. Few young men have been so much reformed. He had a bright wit and genial manners, but moral endowments had been accidentally omitted in his makeup. Nothing that was pleasant could seem wrong to him. He was a magnificent sinner, with an artistic lightness of touch in wrongdoing, and he took his evil courses with such unfailing good nature that people forgave him.

It was a happy thought of Mrs. Willard's, when she saw him becoming fascinated with Henrietta, to reform him and render Henrietta a service at the same time. For Lowder had money, and to a poor country girl such a marriage ought to be a heaven-send, while it would serve to reform Harry, no doubt. It isn't always that a matchmaker can be sure of being a benefactor to both sides. One of the most remarkable things in nature, however, is the willingness of women to lay a girl's life on the altar for the chance of saving the morals of a scapegrace man. If a pious mother can only marry her son Beelzebub to some "good, religious girl," the chance of his reformation is greatly increased. The girl is neither here nor there when one considers the necessity for saving the dear Beelzebub.

Harry Lowder had the advantage of all other comers with Henrietta. The keeper was on his side, in the first place; and he was half domesticated at the house, coming and going when he pleased. The city dazzled the country girl, and it was a great pleasure to him to take her to theaters and operas. His winning manners, his apparent frankness, and the round of amusements he kept her in, could not but have their effect on a strong-willed creature such as she was. Her pent-up intensity of life burst out now into the keenest enjoyment of all that she saw and heard and felt for the first time.

There were times when the memory of her country home and little Periwinkle came into her mind like a fresh breeze from the hills. At such times she recoiled from the round of unhealthful excitement in which she found herself; she hated the high-wrought plays and burlesque operas that she had seen; she despised the exciting novels that Harry Lowder had lent her. Then the old farm, with its stern and quiet ways, seemed a sort of paradise; she longed for her mother's voice, and even for her father's rebuke, for Rob Riley's homely love-making, and Periwinkle's quaint ways. At such times she had a sense of standing in some imminent peril, a dark foreboding shadowed her, and she wished that she had never come to New York, for the drawing did not get on well. Harry Lowder said it didn't matter about the drawing; she was meant for something better. There was always an easy way out of such depressions. Harry told her that she had the blues, and that if she would go to see this or that the blues would disappear. There is an easy way of getting rid of the blues by pawning to-morrow to pay to-day's debts.

It would hardly be right to say that Lowder was in love with Henrietta Newton, for in our good English tongue there is usually a moral element to the word love. But Harry certainly was fascinated with Henrietta--more fascinated than he had ever been with any one else. And as he had become convinced that it was best for him to marry and to reform--just a little--he thought that Henrietta Newton would be the girl to marry.

So it happened that Periwinkle, who had waited for Christmas to come that she might see Henrietta again, was bitterly disappointed. At Christmas Henrietta had been promised two great treats--Fox in Humpty Dumpty and the sight of St. Dives's Church in its decorations, with the best music in the city. And then there were to be other things quite as wonderful to the country girl. In truth, Henrietta was afraid to go home. Somewhere in the associations of home there lay in wait for her a revengeful conscience which she feared to meet. Then, too, Rob Riley would be at home, and a meeting with him must produce shame in her, and bring on a decision that she would rather postpone. Mrs. Willard begged her to stay, and it was hard to resist her benefactress. But in her girl's heart at times she was tired and homesick, and the staying in the city cost her two or three good crying spells. And when the holidays were past she bitterly repented that she had not gone home.

In this mood she sat down and wrote a long letter to her mother, full of regrets and homesickness, and longing and contradictoriness. She liked the city and she didn't. She hadn't done very well in her drawing, as she confessed, but she meant to do better. It was a letter that gave the good old mother much uneasiness. This city world was something that she could not understand--a great sea for the navigation of which she had no chart. She got from Henrietta's letter a vague sense of danger, a danger terrible because entirely incomprehensible to her.