Chapter VI (2)

When dinner was over, she insisted upon wiping the dishes; and it was then that Miss Phillida scrutinized her dress, and saw that it was rusty, and not of fine material.

"Oh, just a traveling dress," thought the elder sister, who experienced an odd fluttering of the heart.

The afternoon was consumed in examining the house and garden. Miss Phillida raised her own vegetables, and kept a few chickens, which latter amused themselves by scratching up her seeds and pecking her choicest tomatoes as they ripened. A creek watered the lower end of the garden, and here a half-dozen ducks disported lazily. Under a spreading apple tree was a bench covered with an old buffalo robe, upon which she sat with her sewing on summer afternoons. Surrounded thus by comfort and peace, the gentle spinster had lived her harmless existence, conscious of but one ungratified wish: the longing for her sister. And now that wish was accomplished. With tremors of delight she displayed everything, confiding all her little plans to affectionate, sympathetic ears. Each homely detail gave Emma fresh pleasure. She seemed to desire to penetrate to the heart of this simple home life; to attach herself to it, like one who thirsted for an intimacy with something genuine and natural.

Miss Phillida saw with pleasure that clouds were gathering, and that darkness would come on earlier than usual. Emma became grave again after supper; and when she seated herself in the big rocking-chair before the hearth in the sitting-room, the firelight played over features that wore an expression of noble sadness.

"It is three years since I left Denver," she said, turning her luminous gray eyes upon her sister's bewildered countenance. "I sent my letters to a friend there who mailed them to you. It was not necessary for you to be harassed by a knowledge of my sufferings. You fancied I was living a happy, care-free life with a rich and generous husband. Heavens!--How unsophisticated we are, we country folks in Virginia!

"I can't make it all plain to you, Phillida, for you wouldn't understand without having gone through it, how, little by little, I learned the ways of society, and on what a base foundation the wealth we enjoyed was built. Robert was a speculator, and a reckless, unscrupulous one. And besides this he was not honest in small things. The husband I had imagined a fairy prince, full of noble qualities, was not only false but mean. He gave me whatever was necessary to make a show; nothing for my pleasure. Poor little sister! Don't you suppose I wanted to send you presents? I never had a dollar of my own all those seven years. But finally the end came. Robert failed--and it was a dishonorable failure. He went away in the night, leaving me to bear the brunt of everything."

"Oh, oh!" breathed Miss Phillida. "And didn't he come back?"

"He wrote me a letter from Canada, telling me to come over to him, for he was sick. Well, I went! I nursed him, and worked for him,--and I put up for two years with a life that was Purgatory. You mustn't expect me to be very sorry he died then, Phillida. You wouldn't if you knew all. I did hate to come back to you,--such a failure! But it was a miserable existence all alone there, in Quebec, and--I knew you would be glad to see me, dear!"

For a few moments the sisters wept together. Then Emma raised her head.

"I thought that perhaps I might get a school. Of course I intend to do something."

"No, no!" cried Miss Phillida, wiping her eyes and taking her sister's hand. "You needn't do that, dearest. With the garden and the cow and chickens, there is plenty. And then, you know, the hundred a year that comes from the railroad shares is as much yours as mine. Everything is yours, and, thank heaven, you're at home now, where everybody'll be good to you!"

"The same generous, self-sacrificing little soul! But, dear Phillida, I must work, if only to keep myself happy. I should soon be miserable and restless with nothing to do. Come, make up your mind to let me be a help instead of a burden. I have set my heart upon the school. Tell me, who are the trustees now?"

"Cousin Ned Miller's a trustee," replied Miss Phillida, who had grown thoughtful. "Perhaps you're right, Emma. Maybe you'll be happier with the children to think about. And he'll get you a school, I'm quite sure."

Emma rocked softly back and forth, looking into the fire. Perhaps she saw visions there of a new and happier life, for her face took on an expression of content.

But some little personal worry preyed upon Miss Phillida's mind. She said nothing about it, but one morning when Emma had gone for a drive with one of the neighbors, she took from the bureau drawer the precious parcel reposing there, and with an air of guilt made her way to the store.

"I've brought back this dress," she said confidentially to Heaton. "And if you'll be so kind as to change it, I'll take the black and white piece. I feel it's more suitable, somehow."

He readily obliged her, and the new pattern was deposited in the deep drawer, after which the little woman wore an air of chastened cheerfulness.

Cousin Ned Miller justified Miss Phillida's confidence. He not only promised Emma the school, but offered to get a class in French for her; and he spent time running about, waiting on her, and cheering her in every way that could suggest itself to his kind heart. His handsome team stood almost every day before the little brown house, while he loitered on the honeysuckle scented porch with the sisters. There was always some plausible excuse for his coming, and the true meaning of his visits did not dawn upon Miss Phillida's mind until one afternoon when she suddenly entered the sitting-room and saw them on the sofa together.

The little woman's face was aflame with joyous excitement, as she ran into the kitchen and began moving things about, without knowing or caring what she did. The happiest outcome!--the most natural, the most comfortable, and most reasonable arrangement that could happen! Emma and Cousin Ned! They were made for each other.

"I really can't keep still," thought Miss Phillida. "I must go somewhere."

As she put on her old gray gown, a thought suddenly flashed into her mind. "Maybe it'll look curious," she reflected. "But I declare if I won't."

Once more she entered the store with a parcel under her cape. Fortunately the accommodating clerk was the only one around.

Miss Phillida blushed as she laid the black and white dress pattern on the counter.

"I'm ashamed to be so changeable, Heaton, indeed I am; but things have altered lately, and--my mind's more given to bright colors, somehow. So, if it won't inconvenience you any, and if you'd really just as lief--I think I'll change back to the pink."

MRS. MAY'S PRIVATE INCOME.[5]

WHEN Laura McHenry quietly turned her back upon the wealthy and desirable suitor her family had decided she should marry, and gave her hand to William May, a middle-aged lawyer of no particular standing or prospects, everybody decided that she had thrown herself away.

Mr. May began his married life upon a wind-fall of fifteen hundred dollars, his largest fee in a dozen years. A pretty house in Richmond was leased for a year, and the delightful experience of buying new furniture and disposing it to the best advantage gave the young wife such happy occupation for the first two months that she was always in a sunny humor, full of brightness and variability, and that kind of independent submissiveness which charms a man who likes to see a woman much occupied with household affairs, and with himself, as the center of the household. Her pretty show of activity amused him. He said she made occupation for herself in moving the furniture from one place to another and then back again. One of his jokes was to ask her where he should find the bed when he came home. And upon this she would pretend to pout, and then they would kiss each other without the least awkwardness or shame-facedness, and he would go off to his work with a pleasant sense of security in the devotion of his lovely wife, while she would carry in her mind all day long the picture of his smiling face, and love him for every pretty speech and admiring look.

They were really happy. And it lasted quite six months, till all the fifteen hundred dollars had been drawn out of the bank, except the bare moiety necessary to keep the account.

When Dinah's wages were a month over-due, her substantial presence disappeared out of the kitchen, and Laura's dainty white hands made acquaintance with dish-mops, stove-lifters and brooms. Such an ignoramus as she found herself! And with what zeal she bent her mind to the study of cookery books and the household corners of the newspapers. And brains told. She left the flour out of her first cake, but her second one was a triumph of art, and muffins, veal cutlets and custards came out from under her clever fingers with a delicacy and deftness that surprised herself and gratified May immensely. Although he was sorry to have her work in the kitchen, and sorry to find her now too tired to sing to him in the evenings with the same spirit and freshness that used to breathe through her songs. But the worst thing was that fatigue and unending attention to details, united to those perpetual interruptions from the door-bell which drive busy women almost distracted, had their effect upon Laura's delicate frame. She grew "nervous," which is often a misnomer for combined worry and distasteful labors. It will seem to the inexperienced that the housekeeping for two people, in a convenient little house, should have been a mere bagatelle to a clever woman. Perhaps it would have been if Laura had not had her profession to learn as well as practise. She had not been brought up to housework, but to sing. Music had always been so much a part of her life that she no more thought of giving up her daily study hours than she would have thought of giving up her William. It was not that she chose to work at her piano three or four hours a day after her morning housework was done, but that it simply did not occur to her to do otherwise. She usually forgot or neglected to take any lunch, and by dinner time had no appetite, which had its conveniences, for it was rapidly coming to pass that the dinners she could compass upon the scanty and irregular supplies of money she received were scarcely sufficient for more than one person, and she contrived that her husband should be that person.

She had a thousand devices for inducing him to eat the bit of steak, the single cup-custard, or the slice of fish. He was far from realizing that his delicately fair wife, with her dainty tastes, was illy nourished upon the tea and toast to which she often confined herself. Nor did Laura realize it.

But after all, it was not the housework, the scanty food, nor even the lack of variety and refreshment in her life that was beginning to tell heavily upon her health, that was spoiling her beautiful disposition and making her apprehensive and irritable. It was something more terrible to a loving woman, honoring and admiring her husband with all her soul, than all these things combined.

The third anniversary of their wedding-day came. Laura remembered what day it was as she opened her eyes in the early dawn. A sigh escaped her before she knew it. The tendency to meditate, as Nathaniel Hawthorne observed, makes a woman sad. Laura had always been thoughtful; lately--being much alone and having some matters to think about not tending to raise her spirits, she had insensibly become sober.

She put her feet out of bed into a pair of worn slippers, and shaking down a heavy mass of dark brown hair that matched her eyes in color, made her toilet without waking her husband, who slumbered serenely till within ten minutes of the breakfast hour, when she called him, meeting with a not overgracious response.

The little dining-room had a pleasant and comfortable air this chilly September morning. The little round table bore a glass containing a sprig or two of red geranium from the pot in the window, and the coffee-urn of nickel was polished till it shone like silver.

Mr. May came in after keeping her waiting fifteen minutes, and after helping her and himself to oatmeal, began to read the newspaper that lay at his plate in apparent forgetfulness of everything else. He was a stout, rather short man, with large, luminous brown eyes that never seemed to be looking at anything in particular. A full beard and mustache sprinkled with gray hid a mouth that in his youth had made the lower part of his face strongly resemble that of Peter the Great. There was some quality about him that caused one to dread arousing his anger; a strong sense of his own importance, perhaps. Some persons have the gift of reflecting their own egotism into the minds of others, rendering themselves formidable entirely through an appeal to the imagination.

Laura was a tall, gracefully-formed woman, with a presence that promised to become majestic with increasing years. Yet at heart she was timid and sensitive as a delicate child, needing affection and encouragement in the same measure; the last woman in the world for a man who lived entirely within himself, and to whom a wife was an adjunct, to be put on and off at his pleasure. Yet May had in regard to her--and in regard to all other things--a conscience void of offense. He took credit to himself for having given her her heart's desire in his love.

The door-bell jangled sharply. May looked up.

"If that is the landlord," he said impressively, "I don't want to see him."

"What shall I tell him?" asked Laura.

"Tell him anything you please!" The tone was sternly impatient this time.

She went slowly into the narrow hall, and after a momentary parley with some one who spoke in a high, angry voice, returned with a bill which she laid before him without a word.

"Tell him I will--attend to it."

"He says----" she murmured deprecatingly, but got no further; the lowering expression that came over his face was too lacerating to her feelings. She preferred confronting the irate butcher again.

But there was a lump in her throat as she quietly resumed her seat. One of her ideas of the "protection" promised by the marriage ceremony had been a shielding from the roughness of persons of this sort. Why did he ask her to stand between him and the landlord, the coal man and the butcher? Why, oh, why, was there any necessity for these evasions and subterfuges? She looked at her husband as he arose at last, after a leisurely breakfast hour, and stood by the window finishing a paragraph in his paper. He was a strong, robust man in the prime of life, with a profession and hosts of acquaintances to help on his interests. Why could he not at least make the small income necessary to keep their very modest establishment going?

The explanation lay in a single fact. May was a man of visionary schemes, always chasing some will-o'-the-wisp which promised fortune and distinction, finding his pleasure in holding honorary posts at his political club, which gave him a chance to talk and repaid him in a cheaply gained reputation for ability.

Little by little Laura's idealized vision of her husband had faded before the pressure of facts. But she clung to the shreds of her faith as women do hold to their illusions; as they must if the world is to go on and homes continue to exist. There was something still for her to learn, however, and not the easiest lesson that had been set for her.

She set rather indifferently about her practising that afternoon. It seemed to be no matter whether Chopin or Mendelssohn spoke to her soul; both were alike rendered with a cold brilliancy very far removed from her usual sympathetic interpretation. Her thoughts were far away, wandering amid scenes of her girlhood; a happy time, full of social enjoyment, of affectionate family intercourse, of freedom from care, from make-shifts, from the dishonor of debt; a dishonor that bore lightly upon May, with his belief in the future, but that was crushing to her sensitive nature. Idly her fingers wandered, swifter her thoughts flew, till all at once a sentence of homely wisdom from a modern novelist came into her mind: "Many women are struggling under the burden of money-saving when they had far rather spend their energies in money-getting."

She arose impetuously, her eyes suddenly full of light. What had she been thinking of? There was a fund of unused wealth in her fine musical education, in her beautiful voice, a little impaired by hardships, but magnificent still. Here was the way out of all this mirage of poverty; with what she could earn by taking a class in Madame Cable's school combined with her husband's earnings, they could live with comparative ease and comfort. Oh, happiness, oh, relief! Laura's hat and cape were on in ten minutes and a car was taking her down-town to the dwelling of her old teacher, sure of a welcome and of aid. Madame had offered her this position five years ago, just after her graduation, but her mother would not hear of it. Now her mother was two thousand miles away, on a frontier post with Major McHenry, entirely ignorant of the state of affairs in her daughter's household.

What a curiously elusive thing courage is! By the time Laura's finger was on the bell at Madame's door, her breath was coming in gasps, and while she waited in the lofty and handsomely furnished parlor for the coming of her old teacher, all the strength went out of her knees, so that she found it difficult to rise when that stately, self-possessed woman came in with a little silken rustle of skirts and extended hand.

It is so hard to say outright to a friend, "Help me!" And yet, is not the opportunity of giving help and comfort one of the rewards of a successful life? Why do we distrust human goodness? It was the pride in Laura's nature that made her talk of everything else rather than the object of her call, that made her tongue falter and her cheek grow paler, when at length she brought herself to her task.

But fate was not ill-disposed. It happened that Madame needed her services. She had come at an opportune moment, and in a few minutes the business was satisfactorily settled.

"At the same time, my dear," said Madame, folding her soft, fat hands and shaking her head till the emerald drops in her ears emitted flashes of green fire, "I must say that I never like to see a married woman set out to earn money. It is apt to spoil her husband. A man should support his wife. It is his duty and it ought to be his pleasure. And another side of the matter is that women to whom the extra income they can gain by their talents means luxury and possibly extravagance, forget that such competition makes it harder for their needy sisters. Money-making is not such a gracious task. It should be left to those who really need the money."

"I am not going to tell you I need it," thought Laura. Aloud, she said with much indifference:

"Madame, have you any one in your mind you would rather get to take your classes--any one you think would do the work better?"

"No," the teacher acknowledged that she knew no other superior to her old pupil. "To tell you the truth, if I did I should feel it a duty to engage the better worker. The principal of a school like this cannot let her feelings guide her, you know."

"Then as the advantage is mutual," said Laura, a smile breaking over her serious face, "my conscience is at rest. It is a matter of the success of the fittest. My needier sister is not so well prepared for the post as I, and so I get it."

"Really, you are right," murmured Madame, with her head on one side. "But," she added as her visitor rose, "take my advice about one thing: keep your earnings for yourself; they belong to you. Don't let your husband find out that there is a--another capable bread-winner in the house."

Madame had not the highest opinion in the world of Mr. William May. But who lays to heart words of selfish caution? Not the wife who in the glow of comfort and peace arising from the prospect of an income of her own, feels all the old confidence and affection return as she explains matters to her husband with a careful avoidance of any wound to his self-love, and a blissful dwelling upon the pleasure and advantage that is to come to herself in the healthful exercise of her accomplishments.

May was a little afraid their social standing would suffer. He certainly did not like the idea of his wife teaching in a school. It was contrary to all his preconceptions of her domestic, home-loving disposition.

"It is a reflection upon me," he said moodily, adding with a little passionate movement that brought her within his arm, her cheek close to his lips: "I didn't marry you to let you work, my darling!"

She might have answered that he had let her work at harder things, but she did not. She dwelt upon the idea of the comfort a regular occupation was to be to her during the long winter days. She would be much happier and less lonely with something to do. Very little said she of the salary that was an item of so much importance in her mind.

But after he had gone out to his club she got out a little blank book and figured it all away for six months to come. She resolved to leave out of consideration the house-rent and the table. Naturally, William would continue to bear the burden of these responsibilities. Her design was to fill in the vacancies which he was indifferent to. So much for the gas bill, so much for laundry, so much for the seats in church. And something over for the indispensable winter clothing and for the joy of giving. She looked forward to the happiness of hanging a new hat upon the rack in place of dear Will's shabby one, and of supplying a pair of slippers. Bliss and comfort of a little control over circumstances, instead of being compelled to stand helpless and anxious waiting upon the good fortune of another! Could a man have any idea of what this feeling is to a woman? Mr. May could not have had, or he would never have done what he did.

All that first month Laura was buoyed up by the anticipation of that comfortable check she was soon to finger. Cool autumn breezes were beginning to blow, but when first one woman, then another, put on wraps, until her plain undraped gown appeared odd, she merely smiled indifferently and warmed herself with the thought of pay-day. When the farina kettle sprang a leak she laughingly declared it was old enough to be superannuated. A dollar seemed such a trifle to worry over now.

At last it was in her hands. The first earning of her life. With a child's glee she hurried home and displayed it to her husband, enjoying his teasing comments on her sudden accession to wealth. But the dinner had to be cooked, and recalling herself to this duty, she ran into the kitchen, leaving the check behind her on the desk.

"It is all right," said Mr. May, when she looked for it later in the evening. "I put it in my private drawer."

"Oh, yes, it is safer there," she returned easily, and got out her mending basket, humming a gay tune, more light of heart than she had been in many a day.

The next day was Saturday, and she had more morning work to do than usual, but she hurried through it, and by half-past ten she had her hat and gloves on and was rummaging the desk for her check. It was nowhere to be found.

"Impossible that it could have been stolen," she exclaimed. "Impossible! It was not indorsed. No one could use it, even if a thief had made his way in, and that is absurd to think of. It _must_ be here."

Only when every paper had been taken out and scrutinized did she desist from her search, and almost crying with vexation, resigned herself to await her husband's return and ask his advice.

"My check!" she cried breathlessly, almost before he was fairly inside the door. "It is gone!"

He turned with a somewhat puzzled expression at her excited manner.

"The check? Oh, why, that is all right. I put it in the bank this morning."

"You put it in the bank?" repeated Laura slowly. "But how could you? It was not indorsed."

"I indorsed it," he answered rather shortly, annoyed at all this explanation about a mere matter of course. Were not he and his wife one, and was not everything in common between them? It had not entered his head for a single instant that there was anything amiss about a procedure that was to Laura a veritable thunderbolt.

She stood for a moment with her eyes lowered, ashamed for him who thought of nothing less than of being ashamed for himself. It was impossible to reproach him; he was a man whom a breath of censure hardened into rock. While the sunshine of applause and sympathy shone upon him he was debonair and charming, but the first chilling breath of blame brought all the ice in his nature to the surface. She had experienced the change; she dared not encounter it. Besides, it was not in this first instant of a new revelation of his creed that she was to feel all the sense of his moral flexibility. That was reserved for later, when her keen instinct of justice and of individual rights had been outraged again and again. She loved him. To win a smile and a kind word from him what would she not have sacrificed? The mere trifle of money was nothing. It was the feeling of having been unfairly treated, of having been not considered at all where she had every right to consideration. And yet the want of that trifle of money was to make her miserable for a long time to come.

It was hard to be sweet and loving all day Sunday, with a weight of suppressed thought upon her mind, but forbearance nourishes affection, and by Monday she was her own tender, submissive self again. Besides, it had occurred to her that the money was not quite out of her reach; William would give her a check if she asked him for it.

When she made the suggestion he readily assented, and made out one to her for five dollars before he left Monday morning. When she timidly broached the subject again he looked annoyed, and said curtly that the landlord had the money.

"But----" began Laura, flushing hotly, then closed her lips and went quietly about her work. What was there to say? The landlord had to be paid, of course. Only somehow, she had thought that her husband would do that, as he had always managed it before.

But the following month brought Mr. May increasing ill-luck. He would have been a generous and kindly man if he had prospered, and with nothing to bring it to the surface he might have gone through life, his lack of sterling principle unsuspected. He could be generous but not just; he could recognize the rights of others--the right of tradesmen to be paid, the rights of his political comrades to a fulfilment of his promises to them--_if_ everything went well with himself. But to tell the truth in the teeth of disaster, to face an irate creditor, to climb down from his height of vain ambition and lay to heart that vow of duty his childish lips had uttered at his mother's knee--"To labor truly to get my own living, and do my duty in that state of life to which it shall please God to call me"--this was what William May had not it in him to perform. And his wife, with her clear moral sense, her unbending Puritan conscience, was doomed to see him fail.

It was not the loss of her money that pained her so much when on the next pay-day she handed him her check in very pity and sorrow for his "bad luck." It was the feeling that do what she would, work as she might, they would never be any better off. And the still more dreary revelation that as her energy was more feverishly applied his diminished. The more earnest and eager she grew to pay off their increasing debts and establish system in their ways, the more careless he became.

She furbished up her wedding gown and made engagements to sing at parlor entertainments. She gave private lessons. And she made money. Some of it she handled herself, but most of it was "put in the bank," and drawn out for a strange purpose: one she disapproved and disbelieved in utterly, but could not positively oppose.

He was so boyishly eager about it, so confident of his success. Through activity unprecedented and maneuverings he did not care to remember, Mr. May had been put up for State senator from his district, and in all the bustle of officering small meetings and petty "bossing," his spirits were so high, and he was so good-humored and affectionate that his wife had not the heart to tell him that this was the worst waste of time in which he had yet engaged. For to her sane, cautious mind it was apparent from the first that he had not the shadow of a chance of being elected.

It happened that on the very eve of the election she was engaged to sing at Carnegie Hall. He could not possibly spare time to take her, and she went down alone, in a car. Her eyes were very bright and a spot of color burned in each cheek. She was beautiful, with the beauty of spirit that has triumphed over flesh. But a physician in the audience whispered to his wife that that lovely woman was far along in consumption. "And she will go quick, too, poor thing!"

The troublesome cough which she had neglected all winter annoyed her more than usual going home, but she was rather shocked than grieved when in the middle of the night a hemorrhage came on. Life was growing hard and duty perplexing. But sheer force of will and affection made her seem better next day, and she would not hear of her husband staying with her. He was pledged to appear elsewhere and she made him go. He did not come in till after midnight, and then--she sat up in sudden terror, listening to that stumbling step, those mumbling speeches! It was not only his election that May had lost that night; his manhood had followed.

Laura turned her face to the wall. Was life to hold this new horror? Ah, that she might escape the next day, with its shame, its sorrow and its pitiful regrets. But what she expected did not come. May was constitutionally incapable of confessing himself at fault. He slept off his intoxication and did not get up until he was quite himself again, cool and non-committal.

"Bad luck again, girlie," he said with an assumption of indifference. "I can't make you Mrs. Senator this time."

"Poor Will!" the wife murmured. "I am sorry, dear."

"You are better?" he asked hastily, struck with her expression. "You must have the doctor."

It was a tardy suggestion, and Laura smiled sadly. The doctor came, however. But all he could do was to hold out those vague hopes which are no comfort to anxious hearts. Before long her mother was sent for, but the dread disease did its rapid work. Laura's great trial to the last was the terrible sense of responsibility that haunted her about the expenses that were being incurred.

"When I am not here, mother, what will he do? Poor fellow, nobody understands him but me."

A little while afterwards she aroused herself from a fit of musing and murmured:

"This awful feeling of helplessness!--and I tried so hard to set things right. I thought when I had a little income of my own that everything would go well."

"You have killed yourself," said her mother, darting a look of reproach at the unconscious husband, who entered the room at this moment.

"Oh, no, don't say that," Laura whispered. "I only did what I wanted to do. Will and I have been very happy, only----" But neither the mother nor the husband, bending over the bed, heard the rest of the sentence.

THE LAZIEST GIRL IN VIRGINIA.[6]

UPON the Virginia side of the Potomac River, five miles across from Washington City whose twinkling lights can be distinctly seen by night, lies a little farm of about twenty-five acres, owned by a widow and her three daughters, Caroline, Minnie and Rosa.

The dwelling is a villa rather than a farm-house, with wide verandas that are the favorite sitting-rooms of the family in summer. The glimpse they catch of the river traffic and of the far-off city gives them a cheerful feeling of nearness to active life, while they are removed from its noise and crowds.

Besides this property Widow Jones had found herself possessed, at her husband's death, of an immense tract of unproductive land down on Chesapeake Bay which could not be sold until Rosa, the younger girl, now eighteen, came of age. Meanwhile, the taxes vexed her soul.

Hospitable, easy-going and accustomed to consider luxuries positive necessities, the family would have been severely straitened if it had not been for the nicety with which their various talents helped one another out.

Caroline had excellent business ability and managed all the outside affairs. She drew the dividends on their railway stock, parleyed with lawyers, and engaged and settled with the hired men. In the burning August weather, when a dozen red-shirted Negroes were to be cared for, this slender young girl, in flaring straw hat and short gingham dress, mounted her horse and rode up and down the fields, a keen-eyed, cheery, sweet-voiced overseer. Regardless of her own meals she helped old black Jessie prepare the meals for the men in the little cabin, and there was no complaint as to quality or quantity under her liberal rule. She did the marketing also and bought the other supplies. Then Mrs. Jones took up the work, and her deft fingers and good taste converted crude materials into food and raiment for the quartet. She was a notable housekeeper and the best of neighbors, her round, jolly visage being sure to appear at every moment of need, and her chicken broth and jellies lingered pleasantly in the memory of the fretful convalescent.

Minnie's function was the care of all the live animals on the farm. She had unerring judgment concerning mules and horses, understood the peculiarities of cows, and knew everything worth knowing about poultry and bees. She was a plump, happy-looking blonde, with a lovely hand, a neat foot, and a playfully witty tongue that, like her own bees, never stung the wise but kept fools at bay. Alert and busy from morning till night she gave no thought to the admirers who sighed for her smiles, but laughingly turned them over to Rosa, who had, she said, nothing else to do but to make herself charming.

Rosa was the strongest possible contrast to her energetic sisters. Rarely beautiful, and gifted with an artistic faculty that nearly approached genius, she was apparently utterly devoid of ambition or sense of responsibility, and was content to be waited upon and cared for as if she was still the petted infant whose graces had at the outset won the willing service of every one about her.

Her form was of medium height, but so symmetrical that she appeared taller than she was. Her head was borne on her full, white throat with a sort of dreamy grace, bent it almost seemed by the weight of her magnificent tresses, the color of ripe wheat when the sun is shining upon it, and falling a quarter of a yard below her waist. Her eyes were of a deep, dark brown, with the softness of a Newfoundland dog's when he is gazing wistfully at his master. It would have been as impossible to say anything harsh to Rosa, when she opened those great dark eyes and looked at you, as it would be to strike a dove or a gazelle or a sweet young baby. Usually the heavy, blue-veined lids half veiled them, and as her seashell cheeks warmed to their pinkest tone, and her exquisite bow of a mouth fell slightly apart, as she lay, as she loved to do, in the hammock on the west veranda, an artist would have thought her the very embodiment of love's young dream of sweet, maidenly beauty.

She seemed all softness and gentleness. Perhaps only her mother knew what strength of will and temper lay behind Rosa's placid brow and square little chin. There had been some stout tussels between a determined little mother and a rosebud of a baby in the years gone by; and although the match might have seemed an unequal one, the result had always been the same. "A compromise," Major Jones had laughingly called it, meaning, as he explained once in a candid moment, that the rosebud had its own way.

Rosa's way was only passively, not actively objectionable. All she asked was to be let alone; allowed to paint undisturbed in her untidy attic studio when the whim seized her, and to lie in the hammock like a kitten, dozing the hours away when she did not choose to exert herself. Occasionally she would have spells of helpfulness, and for several days her stool and box of colors would be set up beside the parlor or dining-room doorway, while she decorated the pannels with sprays of wistaria and masses of fern, so true to nature that one wondered where a little country girl had ever learned to paint after such a manner.

One warm afternoon in early September she was sitting on her stool in the hall, which ran through the middle of the house from end to end, putting slow, effective touches to a border above the dado which she had begun in the spring, and with characteristic indifference had left unfinished until now. Caroline, just in from a tour to the orchard, had thrown herself down upon the settee to rest, and was exchanging remarks with her mother about a certain dress trimming which the elder lady had under way when she suddenly broke off to exclaim:

"If there isn't Mr. Brent coming, and not a speck of meat in the house! Now, I suppose I shall have to go to town to market. I should think it was enough for him to be here every Sunday and Wednesday, without dropping upon us between whiles."

"Let Jessie kill a chicken," suggested Mrs. Jones, soothingly.

"But you know he doesn't eat chickens. If he was like any civilized American he would. But nothing except a round of raw beef satisfies his English appetite!"

But despite this small grumble, she smiled cordially as a good-looking, middle-aged man with a vigorous, florid face, set off by a pair of heavy black whiskers, came briskly up the path and included all of them in a general, informal bow.

"Do you like omelet?" she asked reflectively, as he took a seat near Rosa, and began commenting upon her work with an easy censorship which was evidently not disagreeable to her.

He gave a little shudder. "'I'll no pullet sperm in my brew,'" he quoted.

"Oh, I might have known you for a Falstaff," retorted Caroline, rising. "Well, Mamma, I'm off."

"Not on my account, Miss Caroline. See here, I've brought my animal diet with me, knowing that you ladies subsist on tea and fruit when I'm not about." And from his coat pocket he drew a roll of brown paper, three-quarters of a yard long, and held it out.

"Prime bologna," he added, complacently, as both mother and daughter laughed heartily, and Rosa turned to give one of her slow, sweet smiles.

Brent was a "family friend." The major had made his acquaintance at his club and brought him home to dine one day when Rosa was a winsome, tumbling baby; and although he had grown grayer and stouter during the years he had been coming out to the farm, ostensibly to oversee Rosa's painting--for which he never would hear of compensation--he had not faltered in a certain purpose conceived soon after that first visit, and as unsuspected by Mrs. Jones and her two elder daughters as it was patent to Rosa herself.

There were some rare affinities between them, even aside from their painting. Brent's British phlegm was mellowed by a luxuriance of imagination that he had inherited from an East Indian mother. His temperament was a mixture of vigor, warmth and languor; and while he was not in the least degree adaptable, he had a faculty of changing the atmosphere of a company to suit himself; so that if others were not pleased it seemed to be they, not he, who was out of place. If they yielded up their individuality to his, well and good; if not, they dropped out of the talk; that was all. Brent was a fluent and entertaining talker. He liked to tell stories of tiger hunts and other jungle pastimes; and Rosa, reclining with her dreamy eyes half shut, liked to listen and feel herself pleasantly thrilled and excited without other necessity than to give up her mind to follow where he led.

Her education had been desultory and superficial. Brent had played the largest part in it, and he had molded her nature at his pleasure by catering to certain biases that he had perceived to be unchangeable, and for the rest giving her the side of life and affairs which he preferred her to believe. What other experiences he had had besides those he chose to tell them, these innocent women neither conjectured nor troubled themselves to inquire. It was enough that he had been "the major's friend."

He had lodgings in town, but his landlady scarcely ever saw him; for when he was not roaming around upon one of his sketching tours he seemed to live in the Corcoran Art Gallery, where Rosa painted under his superintendence several hours each week. He had really devoted himself to the girl's development with a zeal beyond what would have appeared to be necessary in the "family friend." Perhaps Rosa thanked him in private, for she never did so before the others. She treated him always with the same indolent familiarity, and accepted his advice, his help and his devotion as a mere matter of course; but she generally did as he bade her.

This afternoon she continued to fill in her charcoal outlines until she grew tired, and then, dropping her brushes, slipped to a cushion and, crossing her hands behind her head, leaned back and looked up at him like a weary seraph.

"Lazy child," said Brent, smiling, and taking her dropped brushes. "That stem is well done, Rosa; but I want you to leave flowers for a while and begin on that study of the nurse and child. It is time for you to begin to think less of technic and study the masters. I wish you could go abroad now."

"You have made me think of nothing but technic," said the girl.

"Certainly. There are many stages in art, and that is the preliminary one. But you are now to make an advance. How little you realize your advantages. If I had your genius!"

"I realize one advantage--having you for a teacher," she said in a low tone.

The others had dropped away, and they were by themselves.

Brent moved closer to her. "Have you thought of what I talked to you about?"

"It's no use to talk about that; I rather think they expect me to make a great match, some time. Mamma wouldn't consider you eligible, you know," she drawled, softly, with smooth, matchless insolence.

Brent looked at her with an expression she did not understand; but she never troubled herself about what was beyond her easy comprehension. And herein Brent had vastly the advantage; he understood her to the depths of her nature, and he knew perfectly that he had made himself an essential part of her existence. But he was wise enough to be patient. For the present he allowed her to waive the subject aside; nor did he betray even by the quiver of an eyelash that she had wounded his self-love. Indeed, their temperaments were much alike, and neither one was troubled with sensitiveness. Of the two the robust, mastiff-like man had more than the brown-eyed angel, who now took to the hammock and left him to finish her work; for it was as natural for him to work as it was for her to be idle.

"You must get settled in town early this fall," he said to the mother, when the family had assembled again on the veranda after dinner. "I have laid out a good winter's work for Rosa at the gallery, and I want her to start as soon as possible."

"Mr. Brent, I admire your coolness," commented Caroline. "If you expect Rosa to put in a steady winter's work you must have suddenly created a remarkable change in her."

"I really don't see how we are to go to town at all this winter," said Mrs. Jones, wrinkling her pretty forehead. "The Farleys haven't yet positively pledged themselves to take the place, as we depended on their doing; and of course we can't go unless we let this house."

"Oh, the Farleys will take the place," said Brent confidently. "And there is a nice little house on "H" Street that will be vacant about the first of October. I wish you would go in to-morrow and look at it."

"Give me the address," said Caroline. "I have to go in town to-morrow, and I'll take a peep at it. Then, if it seems worth while for you to take the trouble, mamma dear, you can go in next week."

"Only don't let it slip through your fingers," counseled Brent. "Rosa, don't you want to take a little walk up the hill and see the sunset?"

"Get the wheelbarrow!" said Minnie, briskly. "You'll never get Rosa to climb the hill."

But Brent continued to look smilingly at Rosa, and, somewhat to their surprise, she got up and went with him. As they began to climb the gentle slope he took hold of her arm, and she leaned against him with the same unconcern with which she would have accepted aid from one of her sisters. They were gone half an hour, and when they came back a close observer might have noted a satisfied look in Brent's face. He had made a slight, very slight, advance in his plans, whatever they were.

It was in accordance with them that the family moved into the little house on "H" Street within a fortnight. Every afternoon saw Rosa seated before a Corot in the main gallery of the Corcoran Art Building, and for at least two hours she was busily occupied. Just how it came about no one could have said. Perhaps Rosa herself was not aware of the tightening of a leash which had been woven securely about her, and that had guided and now held her to certain duties. Once, as he sat beside her, painting away upon his small canvas with those minute, exquisite touches which characterized his style, Brent said, with some significance:

"You work very well under direction, Rosa; but you wouldn't set a stroke if I were not here, would you?"

She laughed, and turned her eyes upon him inquiringly. "Wouldn't I?" she asked; "ah, well, perhaps not. But then, you see, you _are_ here."

"You have grown so used to having me always at hand, that you couldn't get on at all without me, could you?"

"Get on without you?" she repeated. "Why, I never thought of it."

The next day he let her think of it. For a week he was absent on a sketching tour. When he returned he discovered that she had taken a vacation also; and then, for the first time in her life, he said a few stern words to her. They were very few, and without any hint of anger; but the girl crimsoned, and opened her eyes pathetically. Any other man would have been self-condemned; but Brent, while instantly resuming his usual manner, did not lessen the effect of his rebuke; and from this time her manner toward him began to undergo a change. It was imperceptible to others, but apparent to Brent. She was no longer so sweetly insolent to him; she was more timid, more tractable; and she attended more steadily to her work, seeming to set a new value upon the praise of which he had always been lavish.

The winter passed and the enervating air of April crept over the city. One afternoon Rosa threw down her brushes petulantly, exclaiming that she could not make another stroke.

Brent quietly gathered her implements and his own and stored them neatly away. Then he laid his hand over hers and said, in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone:

"Let's go and get married, Rosa?"

For a minute they looked at one another in silence. Then her eyes dropped to her dress, a pink print, fresh and crisp under the great gray apron which she had begun to untie.

"What! In a calico dress?" she said.

"Yes, just as you are; and now."

"What will they say at home?"

"Think how much trouble we are going to save your mother. We will tell them this evening. Come, Rosa, I have been waiting for you a good many years; don't keep me waiting any longer."

"It is dreadfully absurd," she observed. "What will you do with me?"

"Take you abroad next week, and when we come back settle you down in the prettiest little house you ever saw. I have bought one up on Capitol Hill, and you shall be its little mistress."

"I don't like housekeeping," remarked Rosa; but she was walking with him toward the door. Suddenly she stopped. "We can't get married without a license, can we?"

"I have the license," said Brent, touching his waistcoat pocket. "I got it yesterday."

"It seems to me," she said, pouting a little, "You were rather premature. How did you know I would have you?"

"I believed in my lucky star. We were meant for each other, my dear."

She was silent after this. They walked half-a-dozen squares and stopped before a house next to a church. As Brent rang the bell he saw that the girl was trembling slightly, and he lost no time in getting her into the parlor, where a puzzled minister came to them a moment or so later. Brent explained and produced the license. Rosa was nineteen and her father was not living. There was no delay, and in the presence of the minister's wife and daughter (who took the bride for a pretty servant girl and were condescending) the ceremony was performed. But for the heavy ring that encircled her finger the girl might have believed that she was dreaming, as Brent drew her out of the house again and hailed a passing horse-car to take them to her mother's house.

Minnie opened the door, and through the dusk her quick eyes perceived something unusual in her sister; but Brent, giving her no time for questions, drew his wife into the little parlor, where the widow sat with her sewing.

"Mrs. Jones," he said calmly, "Rosa and I are married." As she got up hastily, the color rushing to her face, he added, "I believe my old friend the major would not have refused to give me his daughter."

It was a stroke of genius. Instead of uttering the angry words upon her lips the widow fell back upon her chair, crying. The major, dead, was not less the family oracle; and even the girls, who had burst into exclamations, and were not to be repressed for half an hour or so, felt that, irregular and shocking as the affair was, yet there was within it a grain of amelioration.

"But that she should have got married in a sixpenny calico!" exclaimed Caroline, tearfully. "I never shall get over that."