Chapter XI: A Sisterly Scheme 181 (3)

The Doctor found a secluded pasture, near the woods that encircled the town, and there he sat him down, in the corner of a snake–fence, to wait until some farmer or market–gardener should pass by, to carry his message to the keeper. He had another message to send, too. He had several cases that must be attended to at once. Unless he could get away from his pachydermatous familiar, Pettengill must care for his cases that morning. It was hard—but what was he to do?

Zenobia stood by his side, dividing her attention between the caresses she bestowed on him and the care she was obliged to take of her red cap, which was not tightly strapped on, and slipped in various directions at every movement of her gigantic head. She was unmistakably happy. From time to time she trumpeted cheerily. She plucked up tufts of grass, and offered them to the Doctor. He refused them, and she ate them herself. Once he took a daisy from her, absent–mindedly, and she was so greatly pleased that she smashed his hat in her endeavors to pet him. The Doctor was a kind–hearted man. He had to admit that Zenobia meant well. He patted her trunk, and made matters worse. Her elephantine ecstasy came near being the death of him.

Still the farmer came not, nor the market–gardener. Dr. Tibbitt began to believe that he had chosen a meadow that was _too_ secluded. At last two boys appeared. After they had stared at him and at Zenobia for half–an–hour, one of them agreed to produce Dr. Pettengill and Zenobia’s keeper for fifty cents. Dr. Pettengill was the first to arrive. He refused to come nearer than the furthest limit of the pasture.

“Hello, Doctor,” he called out, “hear you’ve been seeing elephants. Want me to take your cases? Guess I can. Got a half–hour free. Brought some bromide down for you, if you’d like to try it.”

To judge from his face, Zenobia was invisible. But his presence alarmed that sensitive animal. She crowded up close to the fence, and every time she flicked her skin to shake off the flies she endangered the equilibrium of the Doctor, who was sitting on the top rail, for dignity’s sake. He shouted his directions to his colleague, who shouted back professional criticisms.

“Salicylate of soda for that old woman? What’s the matter with salicylate of cinchonidia? Don’t want to kill her before you get out of this swamp, do you?”

Dr. Tibbitt was not a profane man; but at this moment he could not restrain himself.

“_Damn you!_” he said, with such vigor that the elephant gave a convulsive start. The Doctor felt his seat depart from under him—he was going—going into space for a brief moment, and then he scrambled up out of the soft mud of the cow–wallow back of the fence on which he had been sitting. Zenobia had backed against the fence.

The keeper arrived soon after. He had only reached the meadow when Zenobia lifted her trunk in the air, emitted a mirthful toot, and struck out for the woods with the picturesque and cumbersome gallop of a mastodon pup.

“Dern _you_,” said the keeper to Dr. Tibbitt, who was trying to fasten his collar, which had broken loose in his fall; “if the boys was here, and I hollered ‘Hey Rube!’—there wouldn’t be enough left of yer to spread a plaster fer a baby’s bile!”

The Doctor made himself look as decent as the situation allowed, and then he marched toward the town with the light of a firm resolve illuminating his face. The literature of his childhood had come to his aid. He remembered the unkind tailor who pricked the elephant’s trunk. It seemed to him that the tailor was a rather good fellow.

“If that elephant’s disease is gratitude,” thought the Doctor, “I’ll give her an antidote.”

He went to the drug–store, and, as he went, he pulled out a blank pad and wrote down a prescription, from mere force of habit. It read thus:

DRUGGISTS,

_Commercial Block, Main Street, Sagawaug._

[Index]PRESCRIPTIONS CAREFULLY COMPOUNDED.[Index]

[Rx symbol] Calcium sul 3g ij

Calcium chl 3g xrj

Capsicum pulv 3g zi

sig. Take at once.

Tibbitt]

When the druggist looked at it, he was taken short of breath.

“What’s this?” he asked—“a bombshell?”

“Put it up,” said the Doctor, “and don’t talk so much.” He lingered nervously on the druggist’s steps, looking up and down the street. He had sent a boy to order the stable–man to harness his gig. By–and–by, the druggist put his head out of the door.

“I’ve got some asafœtida pills,” he said, “that are kind o’ tired, and half a pound of whale–oil soap that’s higher’n Haman—“

“Put ’em in!” said the Doctor, grimly, as he saw Zenobia coming in sight far down the street.

She came up while the Doctor was waiting for the bolus. Twenty–three boys were watching them, although it was only seven o’clock in the morning.

“Down, Zenobia!” said the Doctor, thoughtlessly, as he might have addressed a dog. He was talking with the druggist, and Zenobia was patting his ear with her trunk. Zenobia sank to her knees. The Doctor did not notice her. She folded her trunk about him, lifted him to her back, rose, with a heave and a sway, to her feet, and started up the road. The boys cheered. The Doctor got off on the end of an elm–branch. His descent was watched from nineteen second–story windows.

His gig came to meet him at last, and he entered it and drove rapidly out of town, with Zenobia trotting contentedly behind him. As soon as he had passed Deacon Burgee’s house, he drew rein, and Zenobia approached, while his perspiring mare stood on her hind–legs.

“Zenobia—pill!” said the Doctor.

As she had often done in her late illness, Zenobia opened her mouth at the word of command, and swallowed the infernal bolus. Then they started up again, and the Doctor headed for Zenobia’s tent.

But Zenobia’s pace was sluggish. She had been dodging about the woods for two nights, and she was tired. When the Doctor whipped up, she seized the buggy by any convenient projection, and held it back. This damaged the buggy and frightened the horse; but it accomplished Zenobia’s end. It was eleven o’clock before Jake Bumgardner’s “Half–Way–House” loomed up white, afar down the dusty road, and the Doctor knew that his round–about way had at length brought him near to the field where the circus–tent had been pitched.

He drove on with a lighter heart in his bosom. He had not heard Zenobia behind him, for some time. He did not know what had become of her, or what she was doing, but he learned later.

The Doctor had compounded a pill well calculated to upset Zenobia’s stomach. That it would likewise give her a consuming thirst he had not considered. But chemistry was doing its duty without regard to him. A thirst like a furnace burned within Zenobia. Capsicum and chloride of lime were doing their work. She gasped and groaned. She searched for water. She filled her trunk at a wayside trough and poured the contents into her mouth. Then she sucked up a puddle or two. Then she came to Bumgardner’s, where a dozen kegs of lager–beer and a keg of what passed at Bumgardner’s for gin stood on the sidewalk. Zenobia’s circus experience had taught her what a water–barrel meant. She applied her knowledge. With her forefoot she deftly staved in the head of one keg after another, and with her trunk she drew up the beer and the gin, and delivered them to her stomach. If you think her taste at fault, remember the bolus.

Bumgardner rushed out and assailed her with a bung–starter. She turned upon him and squirted lager–beer over him until he was covered with an iridescent lather of foam from head to foot. Then she finished the kegs and went on her way, to overtake the Doctor.

* * * * *

The Doctor was speeding his mare merrily along, grateful for even a momentary relief from Zenobia’s attentions, when, at one and the same time, he heard a heavy, uncertain thumping on the road behind him, and the quick patter of a trotter’s hoofs on the road ahead of him. He glanced behind him first, and saw Zenobia. She swayed from side to side, more than was her wont. Her red cap was far down over her left eye. Her aspect was rakish, and her gait was unsteady. The Doctor did not know it, but Zenobia was drunk.

Zenobia was sick, but intoxication dominated her sickness. Even sulphide of calcium withdrew courteously before the might of beer and gin. Rocking from side to side, reeling across the road and back, trumpeting in imbecile inexpressive tones, Zenobia advanced.

The Doctor looked forward. Tom Matson sat in his dog–cart, with Miss Bunker by his side. His horse had caught sight of Zenobia, and he was rearing high in air, and whinnying in terror. Before Tom could pull him down, he made a sudden break, overturned the dog–cart, and flung Tom and Miss Minetta Bunker on a bank by the side of the road. It was a soft bank, well–grown with mint and stinging–nettles, just above a creek. Tom had scarce landed before he was up and off, running hard across the fields.

Miss Minetta rose and looked at him with fire in her eyes.

“Well!” she said aloud; “I’d like Mother to see you _now_!”

The Doctor had jumped out of his gig and let his little mare go galloping up the road. He had his arm about Miss Minetta’s waist when he turned to face his familiar demon—which may have accounted for the pluck in his face.

But Zenobia was a hundred yards down the road, and she was utterly incapable of getting any further. She trumpeted once or twice, then she wavered like a reed in the wind; her legs weakened under her, and she sank on her side. Her red cap had slipped down, and she picked it up with her trunk, broke its band in a reckless swing that resembled the wave of jovial farewell, gave one titanic hiccup, and fell asleep by the roadside.

* * * * *

An hour later, Dr. Tibbitt was driving toward Pelion, with Miss Bunker by his side. His horse had been stopped at the toll–gate. He was driving with one hand. Perhaps he needed the other to show how they could have a summer–house in the garden that ran down to the river.

* * * * *

But it was evening when Zenobia awoke to find her keeper sitting on her head. He jabbed a cotton–hook firmly and decisively into her ear, and led her homeward down the road lit by the golden sunset. That was the end of Zenobia’s infidelity.

THE NINE CENT–GIRLS.

THE NINE CENT–GIRLS.

Miss Bessie Vaux, of Baltimore, paid a visit to her aunt, the wife of the Commandant at old Fort Starbuck, Montana. She had at her small feet all the garrison and some two dozen young ranch–owners, the flower of the younger sons of the best society of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Thirty–seven notches in the long handle of her parasol told the story of her three months’ stay. The thirty–seventh was final. She accepted a measly Second–Lieutenant, and left all the bachelors for thirty miles around the Fort to mourn her and to curse the United States Army. This is the proem.

* * * * *

Mr. John Winfield, proprietor of the Winfield Ranch, sat a–straddle a chair in front of the fire in his big living room, and tugged at his handsome black beard as he discussed the situation with his foreman, who was also his confidant, his best friend and his old college mate. Mr. Richard Cutter stood with his back to the fire, twirled a very blonde moustache and smoked cigarettes continually while he ministered to his suffering friend, who was sore wounded in his vanity, having been notch No. 36 on Miss Vaux’s parasol. Dick had been notch No. 1; but Dick was used to that sort of thing.

“By thunder,” said Mr. Winfield, “I’m going to get married this year, if I have to marry a widow with six children. And I guess I’ll have to. I’ve been ten years in this girlless wilderness, and I never did know any girls to speak of, at home. Now _you_, you always everlastingly knew girls. What’s that place you lived at in New York State—where there were so many girls?”

“Tusculum,” replied Mr. Cutter, in a tone of complacent reminiscence. “Nice old town, plastered so thick with mortgages that you can’t grow flowers in the front yard. All the fellows strike for New York as soon as they begin to shave. The crop of girls remains, and they wither on the stem. Why, one Winter they had a hump–backed man for their sole society star in the male line. Nice girls, too. Old families. Pretty, lots of them. Good form, too, for provincials.”

“Gad!” said Jack Winfield, “I’d like to live in Tusculum for a year or so.”

“No, you wouldn’t. It’s powerful dull. But the girls were nice. Now, there were the Nine Cent–Girls.”

“The Nine–cent Girls?”

“No, the Nine Cent–Girls. Catch the difference? They were the daughters of old Bailey, the civil engineer. Nine of ’em, ranging from twenty–two, when I was there—that’s ten years ago—down to—oh, I don’t know—a kid in a pinafore. All looked just alike, barring age, and every one had the face of the Indian lady on the little red cent. Do you remember the Indian lady on the little red cent?”

“Hold on,” suggested Jack, rising; “I’ve got one. I’ve had it ever since I came.” He unlocked his desk, rummaged about in its depths, and produced a specimen of the neatest and most artistic coin that the United States government has ever struck.

“That’s it,” said Dick, holding the coppery disk in his palm. “It would do for a picture of any one of ’em—only the Bailey girls didn’t wear feathers in their hair. But there they were, nine of ’em, nice girls, every way, and the whole lot named out of the classics. Old Bailey was strong on the classics. His great–grandfather named Tusculum, and Bailey’s own name was M. Cicero Bailey. So he called all his girls by heathen names, and had a row with the parson every christening. Let me see—there was Euphrosyne, and Clelia, and Lydia, and Flora and Aurora—those were the twins—I was sweet on one of the twins—and Una—and, oh, I can’t remember them all. But they were mighty nice girls.”

“Probably all married by this time,” Jack groaned. “Let me look at that cent.” He held it in the light of the fire, and gazed thoughtfully upon it.

“Not a one,” Dick assured him. “I met a chap from Tusculum last time I was in Butte City, and I asked him. He said there’d been only one wedding in Tusculum in three years, and then the local paper had a wire into the church and got out extras.”

“What sort of girls were they?” Winfield asked, still regarding the coin.

“Just about like that, for looks. Let me see it again.” Dick examined the cent critically, and slipped it into his pocket, in an absent–minded way. “Just about like that. First rate girls. Old man was as poor as a church mouse; but you would never have known it, the way that house was run. Bright girls, too—at least, my twin was. I’ve forgotten which twin it was; but she was too bright for me.”

“And how old did you say they were? How old was the youngest?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Dick, with a bachelor’s vagueness on the question of a child’s age, “five—six—seven, may be. Ten years ago, you know.”

“Just coming in to grass,” observed Mr. Winfield, meditatively.

* * * * *

Two months after the evening on which this conversation took place, Mr. Richard Cutter walked up one of the quietest and most eminently respectable of the streets of Tusculum.

Mr. Cutter was nervous. He was, for the second time, making up his mind to attempt a difficult and delicate task. He had made up his mind to it, or had had it made up for him; but now he felt himself obliged to go over the whole process in his memory, in order to assure himself that the mind was really made up.

The suggestion had come from Winfield. He remembered with what a dazed incomprehension he had heard his chum’s proposition to induce Mr. Bailey and all his family to migrate to Montana and settle at Starbuck.

“We’ll give the old man all the surveying he wants. And he can have Ashford’s place on the big dam when Ashford goes East in August. Why, the finger of Providence is pointing Bailey straight for Starbuck.”

With a clearer remembrance of Eastern conventionalities than Mr. Winfield, Dick Cutter had suggested various obstacles in the way of this apparently simple scheme. But Winfield would hear of no opposition, and he joined with him eight other young ranchmen, who entered into the idea with wild Western enthusiasm and an Arcadian simplicity that could see no chance of failure. These energetic youths subscribed a generous fund to defray the expenses of Mr. Cutter as a missionary to Tusculum; and Mr. Cutter had found himself committed to the venture before he knew it.

Now, what had seemed quite feasible in Starbuck’s wilds wore a different face in prim and proper Tusculum. It dawned on Mr. Cutter that he was about to make a most radical and somewhat impudent proposition to a conservative old gentleman. The atmosphere of Tusculum weighed heavy on its spirits, which were light and careless enough in his adopted home in Montana.

Therefore Mr. Cutter found his voice very uncertain as he introduced himself to the young lady who opened, at his ring, the front door of one of the most respectable houses in that respectable street of Tusculum.

“Good morning,” he said, wondering which one of the Nine Cent–Girls he saw before him; and then, noting a few threads of gray in her hair, he ventured:

“It’s Miss—Miss Euphrosyne, isn’t it? You don’t remember me—Mr. Cutter, Dick Cutter? Used to live on Ovid Street. Can I see your father?”

“My father?” repeated Miss Euphrosyne, looking a little frightened.

“Yes—I just want—“

“Why, Mr. Cutter—I do remember you now—didn’t you know that Papa died nine years ago—the year after you left Tusculum?”

Dick Cutter leaned against the door–jamb and stared speechlessly at Euphrosyne. He noted vaguely that she looked much the same as when he had last seen her, except that she looked tired and just a shade sad. When he was able to think, he said that he begged her pardon. Then she smiled, faintly.

“We couldn’t expect you to know,” she said, simply. “Won’t you come in?”

“N–N–No,” stuttered Dick. “I–I–I’ll call later—this evening, if you don’t mind. Ah—ah—_good_ day.” And he fled to his hotel, to pull himself together, leaving Miss Euphrosyne smiling.

He sat alone in his room all the afternoon, pondering over the shipwreck of his scheme. What should he tell the boys? What would the boys say? Why had he not thought to write before he came? Why on earth had Bailey taken it into his head to die?

After supper, he resolved to call as he had promised. Mrs. Bailey, he knew, had died a year after the appearance of her ninth daughter. But, he thought, with reviving hope, there might be a male head to the family—an uncle, perhaps.

The door was opened by Clytie, the youngest of the nine. She ushered him at once into a bright little parlor, hung around with dainty things in artistic needlework and decorative painting. A big lamp glowed on a centre–table, and around it sat seven of the sisters, each one engaged in some sort of work, sewing, embroidering or designing. Nearest, the lamp sat Euphrosyne, reading Macaulay aloud. She stopped as he entered, and welcomed him in a half–timid but wholly friendly fashion.

Dick sat down, very much embarrassed, in spite of the greeting. It was many years since he had talked to nine ladies at once. And, in truth, a much less embarrassed man might have found himself more or less troubled to carry on a conversation with nine young women who looked exactly like each other, except for the delicate distinctions of age which a masculine stranger might well be afraid to note. Dick looked from one to the other of the placid classic faces, and could not help having an uneasy idea that each new girl that he addressed was only the last one who had slipped around the table and made herself look a year or two older or younger.

But after a while the pleasant, genial, social atmosphere of the room, sweet with a delicate, winning virginity, thawed out his awkward reserve, and Dick began to talk of the West and Western life until the nine pairs of blue eyes, stretched to their widest, fixed upon him as a common focus. It was eleven when he left, with many apologies for his long call. He found the night and the street uncommonly dark, empty and depressing.

“Just the outfit!” he observed to himself. “And old Bailey dead and the whole scheme busted.”

For he had learned that the Nine Cent–Girls had not a relative in the world. Under these circumstances, it was clearly his duty to take the morning train for the West. And yet, the next evening, he presented himself, shamefaced and apologetic, at the Bailey’s door.

He thought that he wanted to make some sort of explanation to Miss Euphrosyne. But what explanation could he make? There was no earthly reason for his appearance in Tusculum. He talked of the West until eleven o’clock, and then he took a hesitating leave.

The next day he made a weak pretense of casually passing by when he knew that Miss Euphrosyne was working in the garden; but he found it no easier to explain across the front fence. The explanation never would have been made if it had not been for Miss Euphrosyne. A curious nervousness had come over her, too, and suddenly she spoke out.

“Mr. Cutter—excuse me—but what has brought you here? I mean is it any thing that concerns us—or—or—Papa’s affairs! I thought everything was settled—I had hoped—“

There was nothing for it now but to tell the whole story, and Dick told it.

“I suppose you’ll think we’re a pack of barbarians,” he said, when he had come to the end, “and, of course, it’s all impracticable _now_.”

But Miss Euphrosyne did not seem to be offended—only thoughtful.

“Can you call here to–morrow at this time, Mr. Cutter?” she inquired.

* * * * *

Miss Euphrosyne blushed faintly when Dick presented himself to hear judgement pronounced.

“I suppose you will think it strange,” she said, “but if your plan is feasible, I should wish to carry it out. Frankly, I _do_ want to see the girls married. Clelia and Lydia and I are past the time when women think about such things—but Clytie—and the rest. And, you know, I can remember how Papa and Mama lived together, and sometimes it seems cruelly hard that those dear girls should lose all that happiness—I’m sure it’s the best happiness in the world. And it can never be, _here_. Now, if I could get occupation—you know that I’m teaching school, I suppose—and if the rest of the girls could keep up their work for the New York people—why—don’t you know, if I didn’t tell—if I put it on business grounds, you know—I think they would feel that it was best, after all, to leave Tusculum....”

Her voice was choked when she recommenced.

“It seems awful for me to talk to you in this cold–blooded way about such a thing; but—what _can_ we do, Mr. Cutter? You don’t know how poor we are. There’s nothing for my little Clytie to do but to be a dressmaker—and you know what _that_ means, in Tusculum. Oh, _do_ you think I could teach school out in Star—Star—Starbuckle?”

Miss Euphrosyne was crying.

Dick’s census of possible pupils in the neighborhood of Starbuck satisfied Miss Euphrosyne. It troubled Dick’s conscience a bit, as he walked back to the hotel. “But they’ll all be married off before she finds it out, so I guess it’s all right,” he reflected.

* * * * *

The next week Dick went to New York. This was in pursuance of an idea which he had confided to Winfield, on the eve of his forth–setting.

“Why,” Winfield had said to him, “you are clean left out of this deal, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am,” said Dick. “How am I going to marry a poor girl on a hundred dollars a month?”

“I might set you up for yourself—” began his employer.

“Hold on!” broke in Dick Cutter, with emphasis. “You wouldn’t talk that way if you’d ever been hungry yourself. I ’most starved that last time I tried for myself; and I’d starve next trip, sure. You’ve been a good friend to me, Jack Winfield. Don’t you make a damn fool of yourself and spoil it all.”

“But,” he added, after a pause, “I _have_ a little racket of my own. There’s a widow in New York who smiled on yours affectionately once, ere she wed Mammon. I’m going just to see if she feels inclined to divide the late lamented’s pile with a blonde husband.”

So, the business at Tusculum being determined, and preparations for the hegira well under way, Dick went to look after his own speculation.

He reached New York on Tuesday morning, and called on the lady of his hopes that afternoon. She was out. He wrote to her in the evening, asking when he might see her. On Thursday her wedding–cards came to his hotel by special messenger. He cursed his luck, and went cheerfully about attending to a commission which Miss Euphrosyne, after much urging, had given him, trembling at her own audacity. The size of it had somewhat staggered him. She asked him to take an order to a certain large dry–goods house for nine traveling ulsters, (ladies’, medium weight, measurements enclosed,) for which he was to select the materials.

“Men have so much taste,” said Miss Euphrosyne. “Papa _always_ knew when we were well dressed.”

Dick had to wait while another customer was served. He stared at her in humble admiration. It was a British actress, recently imported.

* * * * *

When Mr. Richard Cutter sat on the platform of Tusculum station and saw his nine charges approach, ready for the long trip to the Far West, it struck him that the pinky–dun ulsters with the six–inch–square checks of pale red and blue did not look, on these nine virgins, as they looked on the British actress. It struck him, moreover, that the nine “fore–and–aft,” or “deer–stalker” caps which he had thrown in as Friendship’s Offering only served to more accentuate a costume already accentuated.

But it was too late for retreat. The Baileys had burned their bridges behind them. The old house was sold. Their lot was cast in Montana. He had his misgivings; but he handed them gallantly into the train—it was not a vestibule express, for economy forbade—and they began their journey.

He had an uneasy feeling that they were noticed; that the nine ladies in the ulsters of one pattern—and of the pattern of his choosing—were attracting more attention than any ladies not thus uniformed would have attracted; but he was not seriously disturbed until a loquacious countryman sat down beside him.

“Runnin’ a lady base–ball nine, be ye?” he inquired. “I seen one, wunst, down to Ne’ York. They can’t play ball not to speak of; but it’s kinder fun lookin’ at ’em. Couldn’t ye interdooce me to the pitcher?”

Mr. Cutter made a dignified reply, and withdrew to the smoking–car. There a fat and affable stranger tapped him on the back and talked in his ear from the seat behind.

“It don’t pay, young man,” he said. “I’ve handled ’em. Female minstrels sounds first rate; but they don’t give the show that catches the people. You’ve gotter have reel talent kinder mixed in with them if you want to draw.”

“Them ladies in your comp’ny, where do they show?” inquired the Conductor, as he examined the ten tickets that Dick presented.

“What do you mean?” asked the irritated pioneer.

“If they show in Cleveland, I’d like to go, first rate,” the Conductor explained.

“Those ladies,” Dick thundered, at the end of his patience, “are not actresses!”

“Hmf! What be they then?” asked the Conductor.

* * * * *

They had arrived at Buffalo. They had gone to the Niagara Hotel, and had been told that there were no rooms for them; and to the Tifft House, where there were no rooms; and to the Genesee, where every room was occupied. Finally they had found quarters in a very queer hotel, where the clerk, as he dealt out the keys, said:

“One for Lily, and one for Daisy and one for Rosie—here, Boss, sort out the flower–bed yourself,” as he handed over the bunch.

Dick was taking a drink in the dingy bar–room, and trying to forget the queer looks that had been cast at his innocent caravan all the day, when the solitary hall–boy brought a message summoning him to Miss Euphrosyne’s room. He went, with his moral tail between his mental legs.

“Mr. Cutter,” said Miss Euphrosyne, firmly, “we have made a mistake.”

“It looks that way,” replied Dick, feebly; “but may be it’s only the—the ulsters.”

“No,” said Miss Euphrosyne. “The ulsters are a part of it; but the whole thing is wrong, Mr. Cutter; and I see it all now. I didn’t realize what it meant. But my eyes have been opened. Nine young unmarried women can not go West with a young man—if you had heard what people were saying all around us in the cars—you don’t know. We’ve got to give up the idea. Oh, but it was awful!”

Miss Euphrosyne, trembling, hid her face in her hands. Her tears trickled out through her thin fingers.

“And the old house is sold! _What_ shall we do? _Where_ shall we go?” she cried, forgetting Dick utterly, lost and helpless.

Dick was stalking up and down the room.

“It would be all right,” he demanded, “if there was a married woman to lead the gang, and if—if—if we caught on to something new in the ulster line?”

“It might be different,” Miss Euphrosyne admitted, with a sob. Speaking came hard to her. She was tired: well nigh worn out.

“_THEN_,” said Dick, with tremendous emphasis, “what’s the matter with my marrying one of you?”

“_Why_, Mr. Cutter!” Miss Euphrosyne cried, “I had no idea that you—you—ever—thought of—is it Clytie?”

“No,” said Mr. Cutter, “it isn’t Clytie.”

“Is it—is it—” Miss Euphrosyne’s eyes lit up with hope long since extinguished, “is it Aurora?”

“No!”

Dick Cutter could have been heard three rooms off.

“No!” he said, with all his lungs. “It ain’t Clytie, nor it ain’t Aurora, nor it ain’t Flora, nor Melpomene nor Cybele nor Alveolar Aureole nor none of ’em. It’s _YOU_—Y–O–U! I want to marry _you_, and what’s more, I’m going to!”

“Oh! oh! oh! oh!” said poor Miss Euphrosyne, and hid her face in her hands. She had never thought to be happy, and now she was happy for one moment. That seemed quite enough for her modest soul. And yet more was to come.

For once in his life, Dick Cutter seized the right moment to do the right thing. One hour later, Miss Euphrosyne Bailey was Mrs. Richard Cutter. She did not know quite how it happened. Clytie told her she had been bullied into it. But oh! such sweet bullying!

* * * * *

“No,” said Mr. Richard Cutter one morning in September of the next year, to Mr. Jack Winfield and his wife, (Miss Aurora Bailey that was,) “I can’t stop a minute. We’re too busy up at the ranch. The Wife has just bought out Wilkinson; and I’ve got to round up all his stock. I’ll see you next month, at Clytie’s wedding. Queer, she should have gone off the last, ain’t it? Euphrosyne and I are going down to Butte City Monday, to buy her a present. Know anybody who wants to pay six per cent. for a thousand?”

THE NICE PEOPLE.

THE NICE PEOPLE.

“They certainly are nice people,” I assented to my wife’s observation, using the colloquial phrase with a consciousness that it was any thing but “nice” English, “and I’ll bet that their three children are better brought up than most of—“

“_Two_ children,” corrected my wife.

“Three, he told me.”

“My dear, she said there were _two_.”

“He said three.”

“You’ve simply forgotten. I’m _sure_ she told me they had only two—a boy and a girl.”

“Well, I didn’t enter into particulars.”

“No, dear, and you couldn’t have understood him. Two children.”

“All right,” I said; but I did not think it was all right. As a near–sighted man learns by enforced observation to recognize persons at a distance when the face is not visible to the normal eye, so the man with a bad memory learns, almost unconsciously, to listen carefully and report accurately. My memory is bad; but I had not had time to forget that Mr. Brewster Brede had told me that afternoon that he had three children, at present left in the care of his mother–in–law, while he and Mrs. Brede took their Summer vacation.

“Two children,” repeated my wife; “and they are staying with his aunt Jenny.”

“He told me with his mother–in–law,” I put in. My wife looked at me with a serious expression. Men may not remember much of what they are told about children; but any man knows the difference between an aunt and a mother–in–law.

“But don’t you think they’re nice people?” asked my wife.

“Oh, certainly,” I replied. “Only they seem to be a little mixed up about their children.”

“That isn’t a nice thing to say,” returned my wife.

I could not deny it.

* * * * *

And yet, the next morning, when the Bredes came down and seated themselves opposite us at table, beaming and smiling in their natural, pleasant, well–bred fashion, I knew, to a social certainty, that they _were_ “nice” people. He was a fine–looking fellow in his neat tennis–flannels, slim, graceful, twenty–eight or thirty years old, with a Frenchy pointed beard. She was “nice” in all her pretty clothes, and she herself was pretty with that type of prettiness which outwears most other types—the prettiness that lies in a rounded figure, a dusky skin, plump, rosy cheeks, white teeth and black eyes. She might have been twenty–five; you guessed that she was prettier than she was at twenty, and that she would be prettier still at forty.

And nice people were all we wanted to make us happy in Mr. Jacobus’s Summer boarding–house on top of Orange Mountain. For a week we had come down to breakfast each morning, wondering why we wasted the precious days of idleness with the company gathered around the Jacobus board. What joy of human companionship was to be had out of Mrs. Tabb and Miss Hoogencamp, the two middle–aged gossips from Scranton, Pa.—out of Mr. and Mrs. Biggle, an indurated head–bookkeeper and his prim and censorious wife—out of old Major Halkit, a retired business man, who, having once sold a few shares on commission, wrote for circulars of every stock company that was started, and tried to induce every one to invest who would listen to him? We looked around at those dull faces, the truthful indices of mean and barren minds, and decided that we would leave that morning. Then we ate Mrs. Jacobus’s biscuit, light as Aurora’s cloudlets, drank her honest coffee, inhaled the perfume of the late azaleas with which she decked her table, and decided to postpone our departure one more day. And then we wandered out to take our morning glance at what we called “our view;” and it seemed to us as if Tabb and Hoogencamp and Halkit and the Biggleses could not drive us away in a year.

I was not surprised when, after breakfast, my wife invited the Bredes to walk with us to “our view.” The Hoogencamp–Biggle–Tabb–Halkit contingent never stirred off Jacobus’s verandah; but we both felt that the Bredes would not profane that sacred scene. We strolled slowly across the fields, passed through the little belt of woods, and as I heard Mrs. Brede’s little cry of startled rapture, I motioned to Brede to look up.

“By Jove!” he cried, “heavenly!”

We looked off from the brow of the mountain over fifteen miles of billowing green, to where, far across a far stretch of pale blue lay a dim purple line that we knew was Staten Island. Towns and villages lay before us and under us; there were ridges and hills, uplands and lowlands, woods and plains, all massed and mingled in that great silent sea of sunlit green. For silent it was to us, standing in the silence of a high place—silent with a Sunday stillness that made us listen, without taking thought, for the sound of bells coming up from the spires that rose above the tree–tops—the tree–tops that lay as far beneath us as the light clouds were above us that dropped great shadows upon our heads and faint specks of shade upon the broad sweep of land at the mountain’s foot.

“And so that is _your_ view?” asked Mrs. Brede, after a moment; “you are very generous to make it ours, too.”

Then we lay down on the grass, and Brede began to talk, in a gentle voice, as if he felt the influence of the place. He had paddled a canoe, in his earlier days, he said, and he knew every river and creek in that vast stretch of landscape. He found his landmarks, and pointed out to us where the Passaic and the Hackensack flowed, invisible to us, hidden behind great ridges that in our sight were but combings of the green waves upon which we looked down. And yet, on the further side of those broad ridges and rises were scores of villages—a little world of country life, lying unseen under our eyes.

“A good deal like looking at humanity,” he said: “there is such a thing as getting so far above our fellow–men that we see only one side of them.”

Ah, how much better was this sort of talk than the chatter and gossip of the Tabb and the Hoogencamp—than the Major’s dissertations upon his everlasting circulars! My wife and I exchanged glances.

“Now, when I went up the Matterhorn,” Mr. Brede began.

“Why, dear,” interrupted his wife; “I didn’t know you ever went up the Matterhorn.”

“It—it was five years ago,” said Mr. Brede, hurriedly. “I—I didn’t tell you—when I was on the other side, you know—it was rather dangerous—well, as I was saying—it looked—oh, it didn’t look at all like this.”

A cloud floated overhead, throwing its great shadow over the field where we lay. The shadow passed over the mountain’s brow and reappeared far below, a rapidly decreasing blot, flying eastward over the golden green. My wife and I exchanged glances once more.

Somehow, the shadow lingered over us all. As we went home, the Bredes went side by side along the narrow path, and my wife and I walked together.

“_Should you think_,” she asked me, “that a man would climb the Matterhorn the very first year he was married?”

“I don’t know, my dear,” I answered, evasively; “this isn’t the first year I have been married, not by a good many, and I wouldn’t climb it—for a farm.”

“You know what I mean,” she said.

I did.

* * * * *

When we reached the boarding–house, Mr. Jacobus took me aside.

“You know,” he began his discourse, “my wife, she used to live in N’ York!”

I didn’t know; but I said “Yes.”

“She says the numbers on the streets runs criss–cross like. Thirty–four’s on one side o’ the street an’ thirty–five on t’ other. How’s that?”

“That is the invariable rule, I believe.”

“Then—I say—these here new folk that you ’n’ your wife seem so mighty taken up with—d’ ye know any thing about ’em?”

“I know nothing about the character of your boarders, Mr. Jacobus,” I replied, conscious of some irritability. “If I choose to associate with any of them—“

“Jess so—jess so!” broke in Jacobus. “I hain’t nothin’ to say ag’inst yer sosherbil’ty. But do ye _know_ them?”

“Why, certainly not,” I replied.

“Well—that was all I wuz askin’ ye. Ye see, when _he_ come here to take the rooms—you wasn’t here then—he told my wife that he lived at number thirty–four in his street. An’ yistiddy _she_ told her that they lived at number thirty–five. He said he lived in an apartment–house. Now there can’t be no apartment–house on two sides of the same street, kin they?”

“What street was it?” I inquired, wearily.

“Hunderd ’n’ twenty–first street.”

“May be,” I replied, still more wearily. “That’s Harlem. Nobody knows what people will do in Harlem.”

I went up to my wife’s room.

“Don’t you think it’s queer?” she asked me.

“I think I’ll have a talk with that young man to–night,” I said, “and see if he can give some account of himself.”

“But, my dear,” my wife said, gravely, “_she_ doesn’t know whether they’ve had the measles or not.”

“Why, Great Scott!” I exclaimed, “they must have had them when they were children.”

“Please don’t be stupid,” said my wife. “I meant _their_ children.”

* * * * *

After dinner that night—or rather, after supper, for we had dinner in the middle of the day at Jacobus’s—I walked down the long verandah to ask Brede, who was placidly smoking at the other end, to accompany me on a twilight stroll. Half way down I met Major Halkit.

“That friend of yours,” he said, indicating the unconscious figure at the further end of the house, “seems to be a queer sort of a Dick. He told me that he was out of business, and just looking round for a chance to invest his capital. And I’ve been telling him what an everlasting big show he had to take stock in the Capitoline Trust Company—starts next month—four million capital—I told you all about it. ‘Oh, well,’ he says, ‘let’s wait and think about it.’ ‘Wait!’ says I, ‘the Capitoline Trust Company won’t wait for _you_, my boy. This is letting you in on the ground floor,’ says I ‘and it’s now or never.’ ‘Oh, let it wait,’ says he. I don’t know what’s in–_to_ the man.”

“I don’t know how well he knows his own business, Major,” I said as I started again for Brede’s end of the verandah. But I was troubled none the less. The Major could not have influenced the sale of one share of stock in the Capitoline Company. But that stock was a great investment; a rare chance for a purchaser with a few thousand dollars. Perhaps it was no more remarkable that Brede should not invest than that I should not—and yet, it seemed to add one circumstance more to the other suspicious circumstances.

* * * * *

When I went upstairs that evening, I found my wife putting her hair to bed—I don’t know how I can better describe an operation familiar to every married man. I waited until the last tress was coiled up, and then I spoke.

“I’ve talked with Brede,” I said, “and I didn’t have to catechize him. He seemed to feel that some sort of explanation was looked for, and he was very out–spoken. You were right about the children—that is, I must have misunderstood him. There are only two. But the Matterhorn episode was simple enough. He didn’t realize how dangerous it was until he had got so far into it that he couldn’t back out; and he didn’t tell her, because he’d left her here, you see, and under the circumstances—“

“Left her here!” cried my wife. “I’ve been sitting with her the whole afternoon, sewing, and she told me that he left her at Geneva, and came back and took her to Basle, and the baby was born there—now I’m sure, dear, because I asked her.”

“Perhaps I was mistaken when I thought he said she was on this side of the water,” I suggested, with bitter, biting irony.

“You poor dear, did I abuse you?” said my wife. “But, do you know, Mrs. Tabb said that _she_ didn’t know how many lumps of sugar he took in his coffee. Now that seems queer, doesn’t it.”

It did. It was a small thing. But it looked queer. Very queer.

* * * * *

The next morning, it was clear that war was declared against the Bredes. They came down to breakfast somewhat late, and, as soon as they arrived, the Biggleses swooped up the last fragments that remained on their plates, and made a stately march out of the dining–room. Then Miss Hoogencamp arose and departed, leaving a whole fish–ball on her plate. Even as Atalanta might have dropped an apple behind her to tempt her pursuer to check his speed, so Miss Hoogencamp left that fish–ball behind her, and between her maiden self and Contamination.

We had finished our breakfast, my wife and I, before the Bredes appeared. We talked it over, and agreed that we were glad that we had not been obliged to take sides upon such insufficient testimony.

After breakfast, it was the custom of the male half of the Jacobus household to go around the corner of the building and smoke their pipes and cigars where they would not annoy the ladies. We sat under a trellis covered with a grape–vine that had borne no grapes in the memory of man. This vine, however, bore leaves, and these, on that pleasant Summer morning, shielded from us two persons who were in earnest conversation in the straggling, half–dead flower–garden at the side of the house.

“I don’t want,” we heard Mr. Jacobus say, “to enter in no man’s _pry_–vacy; but I do want to know who it may be, like, that I hev in my house. Now what I ask of _you_, and I don’t want you to take it as in no ways _personal_, is—hev you your merridge–license with you?”

“No,” we heard the voice of Mr. Brede reply. “Have you yours?”

I think it was a chance shot; but it told all the same. The Major (he was a widower), and Mr. Biggle and I looked at each other; and Mr. Jacobus, on the other side of the grape–trellis, looked at—I don’t know what—and was as silent as we were.

Where is _your_ marriage–license, married reader? Do you know? Four men, not including Mr. Brede, stood or sate on one side or the other of that grape–trellis, and not one of them knew where his marriage–license was. Each of us had had one—the Major had had three. But where were they? Where is _yours_? Tucked in your best–man’s pocket; deposited in his desk—or washed to a pulp in his white waistcoat (if white waistcoats be the fashion of the hour), washed out of existence—can you tell where it is? Can you—unless you are one of those people who frame that interesting document and hang it upon their drawing–room walls?

Mr. Brede’s voice arose, after an awful stillness of what seemed like five minutes, and was, probably, thirty seconds:

“Mr. Jacobus, will you make out your bill at once, and let me pay it? I shall leave by the six o’clock train. And will you also send the wagon for my trunks?”

“I hain’t said I wanted to hev ye leave—” began Mr. Jacobus; but Brede cut him short.

“Bring me your bill.”

“But,” remonstrated Jacobus, “ef ye ain’t—“

“Bring me your bill!” said Mr. Brede.

* * * * *

My wife and I went out for our morning’s walk. But it seemed to us, when we looked at “our view,” as if we could only see those invisible villages of which Brede had told us—that other side of the ridges and rises of which we catch no glimpse from lofty hills or from the heights of human self–esteem. We meant to stay out until the Bredes had taken their departure; but we returned just in time to see Pete, the Jacobus darkey, the blacker of boots, the brusher of coats, the general handy–man of the house, loading the Brede trunks on the Jacobus wagon.

And, as we stepped upon the verandah, down came Mrs. Brede, leaning on Mr. Brede’s arm, as though she were ill; and it was clear that she had been crying. There were heavy rings about her pretty black eyes.

My wife took a step toward her.

“Look at that dress, dear,” she whispered; “she never thought any thing like this was going to happen when she put _that_ on.”

It was a pretty, delicate, dainty dress, a graceful, narrow–striped affair. Her hat was trimmed with a narrow–striped silk of the same colors—maroon and white—and in her hand she held a parasol that matched her dress.

“She’s had a new dress on twice a day,” said my wife; “but that’s the prettiest yet. Oh, somehow—I’m _awfully_ sorry they’re going!”

But going they were. They moved toward the steps. Mrs. Brede looked toward my wife, and my wife moved toward Mrs. Brede. But the ostracised woman, as though she felt the deep humiliation of her position, turned sharply away, and opened her parasol to shield her eyes from the sun. A shower of rice—a half–pound shower of rice—fell down over her pretty hat and her pretty dress, and fell in a spattering circle on the floor, outlining her skirts—and there it lay in a broad, uneven band, bright in the morning sun.

Mrs. Brede was in my wife’s arms, sobbing as if her young heart would break.

“Oh, you poor, dear, silly children!” my wife cried, as Mrs. Brede sobbed on her shoulder, “why _didn’t_ you tell us?”

“W–W–W–We didn’t want to be t–t–taken for a b–b–b–b–bridal couple,” sobbed Mrs. Brede; “and we d–d–didn’t _dream_ what awful lies we’d have to tell, and all the aw–aw–ful mixed–up–ness of it. Oh, dear, dear, dear!”

* * * * *

“Pete!” commanded Mr. Jacobus, “put back them trunks. These folks stays here’s long’s they wants ter. Mr. Brede—” he held out a large, hard hand—“I’d orter’ve known better,” he said. And my last doubt of Mr. Brede vanished as he shook that grimy hand in manly fashion.

The two women were walking off toward “our view,” each with an arm about the other’s waist—touched by a sudden sisterhood of sympathy.

“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Brede, addressing Jacobus, Biggle, the Major and me, “there is a hostelry down the street where they sell honest New Jersey beer. I recognize the obligations of the situation.”

We five men filed down the street. The two women went toward the pleasant slope where the sunlight gilded the forehead of the great hill. On Mr. Jacobus’s verandah lay a spattered circle of shining grains of rice. Two of Mr. Jacobus’s pigeons flew down and picked up the shining grains, making grateful noises far down in their throats.

MR. COPERNICUS AND

THE PROLETARIAT.

MR. COPERNICUS AND THE PROLETARIAT.

The old publishing house of T. Copernicus & Son was just recovering from the rush of holiday business—a rush of perhaps a dozen purchasers. Christmas shoppers rarely sought out the dingy building just around the corner from Astor Place, and T. C. & Son had done no great business since young T. C., the “Son,” died, fifteen years before. The house lived on two or three valuable copyrights; and old Mr. Copernicus kept it alive just for occupation’s sake, now that Tom was dead. But he liked to maintain the assumption that his queer old business, with its publication of half–a–dozen scientific or theological works per annum, was the same flourishing concern that it had been in his prime. That it did not flourish was nothing to him. He was rich, thanks to himself; his wife was rich, thanks to her aunt; his daughter was rich, thanks to her grandmother. So he played at business, and every Christmas–time he bought a lot of fancy stationery and gift–books that nobody called for, and hired a couple of extra porters for whom the head–porter did his best to find some work. Then, the week after New Year’s, he would discharge his holiday hands, and give each of them a dollar or two apiece out of his own pocket.

“Barney,” he said to the old porter, “you don’t need those two extra men any longer?”

“‘Deed an’ we do not, sorr!” said Barney; “th’ wan o’ thim wint off av himself the mornin’, an’ t’ other do be readin’ books the whole day long.”

“Send him to me,” Mr. Copernicus ordered, and Barney yelled unceremoniously, “Mike!”