Chapter VI: Part 6

Acting on the impulse, Aunt Love also leaned her arm on the rail, and waited a second before stealing a furtive curious look at her neighbor's face. Their eyes met. In a moment both her hands were being shaken.

"For the land's sake, Mr. Gorham!"

"Hurrah for us," he answered, laughing. "To think that I should have come unexpectedly upon this celebration and you. What more could a Bostonian ask?"

"You might ask to be in the Massachusetts house instead of over here in Gotham."

"I fancy only invited guests go in there to-day; but at any rate I have only just arrived, and this is a fine place for the general effect. So that is the old Hancock house."

"Yes. I remember the real one very well."

"How well the grounds look. I am anxious to get in. You have visited it, of course."

"Yes, I have. I must say to you, Mr. Gorham, I had to laugh to see some o' the stuff they've put in a glass case over there. I've got some things in my attic in Pearfield they could have had and welcome."

"Perhaps they would have been glad of them," remarked Page.

Miss Berry laughed. "I never thought before o' puttin' Aunt Jerushy's old calash under glass for a show," she said. "It would 'a' looked simple to me; but there's papers in one o' the downstairs rooms that are interestin'. There's no doubt about it. It does make a body's blood boil to see the old superstitions down in black and white, and think o' the past sufferin's of innocent folks. There's one paper there makin' out a case against some poor critter for havin' dealin's with the devil, 'way back in Salem times."

"I want to see everything in that house," returned Gorham, with anticipatory relish.

"Well, give an account of yourself," said Miss Berry, after a moment's silence. "Have you been to Mrs. Van Tassel's?"

"No, not yet."

"But you are comin', ain't you?"

"To call, certainly."

"But you've been invited to stay?"

"Yes, I know; but I have taken a room at the Beach."

"Why, what's that for? Mrs. Van Tassel will think that's queer."

"She will have guests enough without me."

"It is your Uncle Richard's house," persisted Miss Berry.

"Yes, that is just the trouble," returned Page quietly.

Aunt Love sighed. "Well, I was 'lottin' on helpin' to make you all comfortable."

"I haven't a doubt of it, you dear soul. Be sure that only stern principle drives me from under your wing, and please get me an invitation to dinner soon, won't you? How is Jack?"

"He's lively. I heard 'em at breakfast talkin' about all comin' down to the illumination tonight."

"I wonder if I might join the party."

"Of course. Nobody knew you were comin' out so soon."

"I didn't expect it myself. It was a sudden determination."

"They are goin' to have their supper down here at six o'clock, I heard 'em say at breakfast, at the Marine--Caffy, I think they call it. At any rate I know the house first-rate; and if 't wan't for the Art Buildin' I could show it to you from here. It's brown, and that's queer enough in this place, and then it's all covered with candle snuffers. Just as soon as I once sensed it that the Columbian Guards were put here to look pretty and didn't know where anything was, I made up my mind if I didn't learn the g'ography o' the place I'd be a cripple; so I buckled down to it and I'm most ready to stand an examination. Miss Bryant told me when I first came down that if I'd just take the opposite direction to what a Guard told me, I'd find myself all right; and that did work pretty well, but it's better yet to know your own way around and not have to make calculations."

Page nodded smilingly.

"It does beat all," Aunt Love went on, "how when you're at this north end o' the Fair, the Art Buildin' is just across the street from everything. It does seem sometimes as if it hadn't any end; and when you once get into it. My!"

"Yes, I suppose so," said Page, "but," he added with the courage of a new-comer, "I propose to see all that's in it; and speaking of thoroughness, have you looked over this building?"

"I just glanced as I came along," replied Miss Berry cautiously. "It's pretty worldly and glitterin', just like the folks that built it. That hall in there with the slippery floor"--

"A ball-room, yes. Let us go back and examine."

"Oh, it's a ball-room, is it!" said Miss Berry, following the young man back into the lofty apartment where sunlight sifting through caught in the prismatic chandeliers and lay in rainbows on the floor.

They stood at the rope-guarded door of the dainty tea-room. Page pointed out to his companion the beauties of wreathed pillars and mural decorations in the lofty hall, but he observed that the light of suspicion still shone in her eyes.

"Let us try the roof, Aunt Love," he remarked. "You can see the Hancock house again from there, and I'm sure you will be more comfortable."

"Oh, I know this is all elegant, Mr. Gorham, and it's a great thing to have such riches opened up for everybody to see. Why, downstairs there's a gold piano, and velvet and silk curtains; but folks don't want to set their hearts on gold pianos and diamond chandeliers. You ain't goin' to take that elevator, are you?" she added, dropping her virtuously impersonal tone for one of anxiety.

"Certainly. You must have learned the importance of economizing steps here."

"Better get lame from walkin' than break your leg in a fallin' elevator," remarked Miss Berry. "Accidents in the papers do scare a body." But she consented to run the risk, and soon was standing beside Page in one of the square towers on the roof, with the Fair City spread out around them.

"I suppose you have visited the Midway," remarked Page, looking over to where the Ferris wheel revolved, slowly and steadily.

Miss Berry threw up both her hands. "Yes, all I want to," she returned sonorously.

"Don't say that. I expect you to pilot me to all the shows."

"You'll be disappointed, then. Civilization's good enough for me. If I'd had a call to minister to naked savages, I s'pose I'd 'a' been given grace to conquer; but to listen to 'em yell, and see 'em dance, is a mighty queer thing for Christians to seek for entertainment, it seems to me. If I could go into that Pleasance with plenty o' hot water and Castile soap, and some sensible clothes, and could help those poor critters to a more godly way o' livin' that would be a different thing; but when I want a good time I ain't goin' to try to get it bein' trod on by camels and yelled at by Turks, all the time smellin' smells I don't know the name of and would be afraid to. No, sir."

Page laughed. Miss Berry looked as though Michigan's breezes were powerless to cool her.

"Perhaps the Midway Plaisance is an acquired taste," he said. "You may like it better, later."

"No, I've seen enough of it if I can't be a missionary, but I'm glad all the natives have got it warm at last, anyway."

"Which natives?"

"Oh, all those foreign folks. They're all natives of some place, I s'pose, and they do say when 't was rainy and cold and muddy they had a forlorn time of it in the Pleasance."

"Yes; we used to read about it, and my brother Robert nicknamed the street then the Mudway Nuisance. We all laughed at the joke but Jack. It is against Jack's principles to jest at sacred things like Chicago and her Fair. I shall have to get him to show me the fine points of the Midway. He won't refuse me."

"No, indeed. There's plenty that like it. The place gets more crowded every day. Why, Mr. Gorham," Miss Berry dropped her rather sad, musing tone, and spoke feelingly. "That Midway is just a representation of matter, and this great White City is an emblem of mind. In the Midway it's some dirty and all barbaric. It deafens you with noise; the worst folks in there are avaricious and bad, and the best are just children in their ignorance, and when you're feelin' bewildered with the smells and sounds and sights, always changin' like one o' these kaleidoscopes, and when you come out o' that mile-long babel where you've been elbowed and cheated, you pass under a bridge--and all of a sudden you are in a great, beautiful silence. The angels on the Woman's Buildin' smile down and bless you, and you know that in what seemed like one step, you've passed out o' darkness into light." Aunt Love paused thoughtfully. "It's come to me, Mr. Gorham, that perhaps dyin' is goin' to be somethin' like crossin' the dividin' line that separates the Midway from the White City. I've asked myself when I've passed under that bridge and felt the difference down so deep, what did make it so strong? 'T ain't only the quiet and the grandeur o' those buildin's compared with the fantastic things you've left behind; I believe it's just the fact that the makers o' the Fair believed in God and put Him and their enlightenment from Him into what they did; and we feel it some like we'd feel an electric shock."

Page nodded. "You make me more interested than ever in my prospect of sightseeing," he said. "Now I propose that you show me the way to that cafe where you say the others will come this evening, and we will take lunch together there. Not a word of objection, Aunt Love. This is a great day. United we stand, divided we fall. Let us charge on the cafe under the candle-snuffers."

The two friends descended to the street, and Page, submitting to Miss Berry's guidance, was led through the archway running beneath the eastern corridor of the Art Building. "I won't attempt to take you through the buildin' itself," said Miss Berry, "'cause I know well enough I shouldn't get you through before the middle o' the afternoon; partly 'cause you'd stop to look at the statuary, and partly 'cause the first thing I always do when I get in there is to lose myself. I've thought, up to this summer, that I had a pretty good bump o' locality; but land! let me turn around in that place a few times and all those signs, 'East Wall,' 'North Wall,' and the rest, don't mean any more to me than Greek would. You'll see how 't is when you try it."

Page was only half listening. He paused by the brink of the water, fascinated by the sparkling, shining, noonday beauty before him. Gondolas were stealing from beneath the bridges, and electric launches passing and repassing silently and smoothly over the changing waves.

"We must get into one of those boats, Aunt Love," he said with enthusiasm.

"You can't sail to the restaurant. That's right over yonder," observed Miss Berry practically, indicating with her parasol the many-towered roof of the Marine Cafe.

Page sighed. "Do what you like with me," he answered resignedly. "I can see already that the summer will be too short."

"If your breath ain't, that's all you need fret about," returned Miss Lovina, as they started eastward, along the bank of the pond. "Many's the time in the last weeks I've wished I only weighed one hundred. Don't those ducks and swans have it comfortable?"

Page watched the undulating motions of the pretty birds that eyed them as they passed.

"No, I didn't bring my lunch; hadn't the least notion o' stayin'," replied Miss Berry over her shoulder, to the graceful followers who soon veered away, secure of dining sumptuously every day.

"These here steps," remarked Aunt Love, as she climbed up to Costa Rica's entrance and down on the other side, "do seem an awful aggravation when you're tired, which I ain't now, of course. There's no gettin' out of 'em except by walkin' all around Robin Hood's barn."

Page found his companion surprisingly intelligent as to the names of the buildings they passed lingeringly on the way to the cafe, and once arrived at that haven, they proceeded to take a leisurely lunch, after which Miss Berry allowed herself to be easily persuaded to ride around the lagoon in an electric launch.

Page found so much to interest him in this initial trip, the quiet gliding motion, cool air, and constantly stimulating panorama were so charming, that he scarcely knew when to abandon this certain good for one more doubtful. At last, however, he and Miss Berry found themselves roaming beneath the gilded towers of the Electricity Building. Miss Lovina gazed benevolently and uncomprehendingly upon one and another evidence of marvelous achievement, waiting patiently whenever Page paused to examine and question.

"There's one place here," she volunteered at last, "where I will say for 'em they've done a cute thing. They've harnessed chain lightnin' so it pulls up and down a zigzag path just as tame as my cow'll go to pasture. Come and see it, Mr. Gorham."

So Page was piloted through the spectacular southeast portion of the building, where color and movement thrilled through every phase of intensity, from the steady glow of the living green pillars of the Egyptian temple, to the various whirling globes and wheels, and the racing bubbles of changing light which sped along their irregular tracks.

"Ah, here are the telephones," remarked Page.

"Yes; do you know, Mr. Gorham, till I came to Chicago I'd never seen a telephone? I find folks don't make anything of 'em here. Mrs. Van Tassel ain't any more afraid of her telephone than she is of her sewin' machine. When I first came I used to jump a foot every time that sharp little bell rung; but I made up my mind that I was havin' advantages, and that I wasn't goin' to slight 'em. I made up my mind I was goin' to speak into that box, no matter how fast the chills traveled up my back, and I did it; it makes me as weak as a kitten yet, but I just will be up with the times I live in if I get a chance; and ain't a telephone a perfect wonder now?"

"It is, indeed, and they are improving them all the time. I see there is a long-distance telephone. How should you like to talk to New York?"

"I shouldn't like to make a fool o' myself that way or any other, Gorham Page."

"But really, Aunt Love"--

"Save your breath, Mr. Gorham. I know this buildin's full o' queer doin's and it's a good place to play jokes on a body, but there's limits to even a greenhorn's credulity."

"I was never more in earnest, I assure you. It is possible to talk to New York."

Miss Berry regarded her companion severely. "Then it's blasphemous. That's all I've got to say."

"Why, I don't see that."

"Do you s'pose the Lord would have put New York a thousand miles away from Chicago if he'd expected 'em to talk to each other?"

Page laughed. "I never thought of that before as a reason for the antagonism between the two cities. Nonsense, Aunt Love; the world moves, and you must move with it. You shall speak to New York and be proud of yourself ever afterward. You know it is to be expected that science will do everything possible toward annihilating space."

Page ascended the steps toward a silk-curtained cabinet; a uniformed boy opened its glass door.

After remaining in the closet a minute and speaking a few sentences into the telephone, he beckoned to Miss Berry who had remained standing at the foot of the steps looking very apprehensive.

"Now, Aunt Love," he said encouragingly, as she slowly approached, a do-or-die expression on her face. Had Miss Berry been of the Romish church instead of being a "Con'regationalist in good and regular standing," she would assuredly have crossed herself before entering that tasteful little apartment.

Page smiled into his mustache as he placed the receiver in her hand, fervently wishing that he might hear both sides of the impending dialogue.

"Mr. Gorham," said Miss Berry, addressing him over her shoulder impressively, "think of the miles, the hours, I traveled; the rivers and lakes I crossed; the mountains I tunneled"--

"Yes, yes, Aunt Love; but don't keep our New York friend waiting."

"I feel prickly, Gorham. I think I'm goin' to faint."

"Oh no, you're not. Just say Hello," returned Page cheerily, his eyes twinkling.

"Hello," quavered Miss Lovina, and promptly the answer came:--

_New York_. Is this Miss Berry?

_Miss Berry_. How did you know my name?

_New York_. A gentleman just told me to expect you. I am happy to meet you, or to hear you, all the way from New York.

_Miss Berry_. Go away!

_New York_. Aren't you a little unreasonable, madam? I'm a good way off already.

_Miss Berry_. How am I to be sure you ain't in the next room, sir?

_New York_. Do you hear me so distinctly?

_Miss Berry_. It is the most wonderful thing in the world if you are real.

_New York_. Oh, I am real, I assure you, madam. I see you have been making trips to the Midway, and your confidence in human nature is shaken.

_Miss Berry_. You're just right there. I should like to talk to you about the Midway. Have you been to the Fair yet?

_New York_. No; and alas, I'm afraid I'm not coming; but if I do, I'm going to the Midway the first thing.

_Miss Berry_. Now, young man, you just stand there a minute, and I'll convince you--"Hey?" for Gorham was pulling her sleeve.

"There are some more people waiting to speak, Aunt Love."

"What? Oh," Miss Berry looked dazed, relinquished the receiver, and moved like a somnambulist out of the cabinet.

"You might have said good-by to your new friend," suggested Page.

"Mr. Gorham, tell me," spoke Aunt Love beseechingly. "If I was ever good to you, if you ever liked my cookies, tell me the truth. Was that all hocus-pocus, or was it genuine?"

"Why, it was genuine, Aunt Love. It is done every day in business."

"Well," Miss Berry stepped off energetically. "All is, then, I've capped the climax o' my life. I don't calc'late to ever call anything wonderful again."

But she did. Page took her upstairs to the gallery where a door opened by magic when her foot touched the threshold; where the tel-autograph reproduced a writer's chirography while transmitting his thoughts; where a metal rod, passing along a person's spine, caused blue flames to leap forth, crackling and spitting in Mephistophelean fashion, a cure which Miss Berry thought worse than any known disease. She saw there, too, the smallest steam-engine in the world, reposing its miniature perfection in a walnut shell, and displaying its exquisite mechanism only beneath a magnifying glass.

But the cooking of food and the hatching of chickens by electricity appealed to Aunt Love so engrossingly that, after repeated vain efforts to woo her away from both these attractions, Page finally took his leave of her there, and his parting view showed Miss Berry gazing through the side of an incubator where chicks were in every stage of existence, from the first thrust of a yellow beak through the eggshell, to the freed and bedraggled little wretch whose sole aim in life seemed to be to half hop and half tumble across the incubator until its wet body rested directly upon an incandescent light. These eventful journeys, with their apparently suicidal goal, so absorbed Miss Berry that she could do little more than wave her hand after Page as he set briskly off for pastures new.

*CHAPTER XVII.*

*THE BRONZE BABY.*

Somebody says that we only really live when we do not know that time is passing. If that be true, Miss Berry lived intensely during the period she passed in the gallery of the Electricity Building that afternoon.

"I wonder how late it is!" she asked herself at last with a start. "The folks'll think I'm lost. I must hurry home directly."

But she sighed as she said it. To "hurry home" from this city of magnificent distances was but a form of words.

"If I could only borrow the wings off 'n some o' those angels!" she murmured as she hastened down the nearest flight of stairs; but doubtful as she was of the lateness of the hour, she could not keep her mind from straying back to the strange scenes in the miniature world she had been watching. Next the incubator had been a little sandy inclosure in the midst of which stood a small curtained house where the young chickens could be brooded at will, and across whose front ran the defiant legend, "Who cares for mother now!"

"I wonder how soon electricity'll take the place o' folks," she mused. "Seems if 't won't take long. Yes, yes," she went on in answer to a faint peeping that came from beneath her wrap, "we'll get home some time to-night," and she hurried faster still, a pleased smile breaking over her face; for Aunt Love was not alone. She had at the present moment one of those emancipated chicks in a pasteboard box pressed to her side.

"I believe I'll take the Internal Road, and then the cars," she said to herself. "There'll be an awful crowd at Sixtieth Street, but I can stand consid'able squeezin'. I know I'm late."

She was late. Not that it mattered. She was to dine in solitary state that evening in any case; but she had meant to reach the house in time to carry the information of Mr. Page's arrival and his plan to meet his friends; and in this she was disappointed. Only Blitzen was left at home to give her his customary boisterous greeting, and she had before her the difficult task of explaining and introducing to him her ball of yellow fluff and impressing its sacredness upon his volatile mind.

Jack was the first to arrive at the rendezvous that evening, and to his satisfaction Mildred was second. She sauntered up to the steps accompanied by a young army officer at whom Jack stared down from his post on the balcony. He had, however, sufficient self-control to swallow his discontent. Mildred had somehow taught him this self-control in the short space of a week, and he managed to walk to meet her with an air of nonchalance suited to that with which she slowly mounted the steps after dismissing her escort.

"Who is the military?" he asked lightly.

"A cousin of Helen Eames. He has been showing us over the Battle Ship."

"Indeed? I was there this afternoon too."

"Were you? It is awfully stuffy down below in that museum, isn't it? Our party was glad to retreat to a private room and have a sherry cobbler. Everything is beginning to be crowded now."

"What interests me," said Jack, placing a chair by one of the tables for Mildred as he spoke, "is to know how soon you are going to give me a day."

"Oh, any time," returned the girl as she seated herself.

"Any time! That is what you always say, but when I try to pin you down you slip away."

"Wouldn't anybody?" smiled the other. There was something about the curves at the corners of Mildred's upper lip and its downward dip in the middle that made her smile more provoking than other girls'.

"There! You are slipping away again."

"No, indeed. I am far too tired and this is too comfortable."

"You have had an engagement every day since I have been here. You can't deny it. What sort of a way is that to treat a guest?"

"You aren't my guest, you are Clover's."

"Clover is a daisy and always was," exclaimed Jack, regardless of paradox. "She is the sweetest girl in the world."

"Of course," returned Mildred, raising a glass of water to her lips as coolly as though she liked this.

"I ought to have gone with you that first evening," said Van Tassel gloomily.

Mildred set down her glass and looked at the speaker with an unfathomable expression as she spoke slowly:--

"'There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to'"--

"Would it, Mildred?" Jack broke in with a sort of earnest excitement. "Would it have led on to fortune?"

The girl colored under the glowing gaze.

"If I had gone with you, would you have had fewer engagements and more time for me since then?"

"How can I tell?" she returned, with a low laugh of enjoyment. Jack was fairly dramatic. He was really entertaining.

"I didn't know exactly what my feeling was then; but I knew afterward," he went on. "Ogden wasn't any part of our past. I didn't want to share you with him that night."

"He didn't want to share me with you either, so you were both satisfied," returned Mildred demurely.

"Was he satisfied?" asked Van Tassel savagely. "Methinks not. I notice that whatever your engagements have been this week, he has not been in them."

"How observing you are!"

"Yes. He is done for. It would be interesting to know how many scalps that makes, Mildred."

"Look here, Jack," the girl was not smiling, and her eyes darkened as she met his; "if you will practice conservation of energy now, I will give you a capital opportunity to air your talents in amateur theatricals next winter. You are the very man we have been looking for."

"Can I make love to you?"

"That depends on your versatility."

"Or my patience in standing in line. I've been standing in line all the week. Don't you think it is about time I got there?"

"What do you call this?" Mildred gave him a tantalizing glance from under her half-dropped lids. "I arrive early at the rendezvous. We sit _tete-a-tete_, and how do you make use of the time?"

Color flashed all over Jack's face.

"I am a fool," he agreed.

"That must be why you always speak the truth so indiscreetly. I never thought of that as the reason, really. Now let us decide what to order before Clover comes. What can make her so late?"

The fact was that Clover, wanting to stop a minute to look at some pieces of old china and silver in the Louisiana house, had had the usual curious experience in World's Fair minutes. In a city of enchantment, how could it be expected that sixty seconds should be of the conventional length? She had set aside plenty of time also just to walk through the middle of the Art Building; and as every woman knows, it was always impossible to pass so near "The Young Athlete" without pausing, if but for a brief acknowledgment.

Gorham Page had just been admiring the bronze, and had stepped aside to look at the photographs on a neighboring table when Clover advanced. He was short-sighted, and she wore an Eton suit and a sailor hat, the garb of ninety-nine out of every hundred women in the summer of '93; but he knew her at once, and paused. After a moment's watching he approached her.

She colored faintly with surprise as she returned his greeting.

"The subtle differences in the nature of man and woman are more interesting than the obvious ones," he said.

"What are you leading up to now?" she asked. "I expected your first words to be an explanation or an apology, or both. How does it happen that this is the place where we first meet?"

"You were very, very kind, Mrs. Van Tassel, and I hope I assured you of my appreciation in my letter; but I found I could get a room at the hotel near you, and then affairs taking a favorable turn I left Boston suddenly, and none too soon; none too soon; I have been here all day. How stupendous it is! You are on your way to the Marine Cafe. May I go with you?"

"Oh, you have seen Jack, or my sister."

"No."

"Then how comes it that you are so well informed?"

"Happily for me, I ran across Aunt Love."

"Oh, that explains her prolonged absence perhaps. Usually it is hard for us to persuade her to spend a whole day down here. We must hurry a little, I think." Clover laughed. "Hurrying is the normal condition of people who try to keep appointments at the Fair."

They threaded their way amid groups and figures in plaster and marble, and emerged from the southern entrance.

"What I started to speak of when I first met you was the contrast of a man's and woman's way of approaching that bronze," said Page. "I went up to it and especially noticed the muscles and veins of the man's hand and the truthful way the fingers sink into the flesh of the baby it supports. You approached it and took hold of the baby's hand and patted his leg. Now why didn't I want to pat that little fellow's fat leg?"

"I give it up," laughed Clover. "I can only say you had very poor taste."

"No, there is a deep reason for the difference. Of course it is a woman's nature to pet a baby."

"What a deep discovery! I congratulate you on the result of your explorations. Do you think you shall write a book about it?"

"I amuse you, Mrs. Van Tassel."

"Yes, you do, I won't deny it." Clover was a trifle ashamed of having been caught in her loving ebullition toward the soft bronze, and was willing to laugh it away.

"Still it is interesting," Page went on musingly, "to observe how affection is outward with women and inward with men."

"That doesn't sound complimentary to us, Mr. Page. I hope you mean well."

Gorham's pensive eyes met her merry ones. "Yes. I revere the wise arrangement by which it takes a man and a woman to make one complete being; and the more I observe and understand refined human nature, the more I think I see the possibilities, and what it was intended that marriage should be. You are a good walker, Mrs. Van Tassel."

"Yes; I am thinking how impatient Mildred and Jack will be with me. I will give you a subject for your analytical mind. Make a record of the broken appointments at the World's Fair and discover the reasons for them. You would have a psychological study of absorbing interest."

"All phases of human nature are interesting."

"Even that where vials of righteous wrath are poured out upon you for delinquency when you know you haven't any defense to offer? You are my defense this time."

"What do you want me to say?"

"Oh, I wouldn't trust you to say anything. I am morally certain that you would tell the truth."

"That isn't so very damaging, is it?"

"Why, certainly. You would tell them that I stopped to make love to the bronze baby; and if Mildred heard that, hungry as she is by this time, you would soon have to formulate exceptions to your rule that women are all affection outwardly. By the way, what a fortunate experience yours must have been."

Page smiled philosophically, and looked approvingly at his light-footed companion.

They arrived at the cafe shortly after Mildred had directed her companion's attention to the menu, and the apparition of the unexpected guest entirely diverted from Clover any comment upon her tardiness.

The cordiality of his welcome pleased Page. He could not know the reason for the nervous energy of his cousin's greeting. The four sat for an hour at table and then took their way by boat to the Court of Honor, where they remained in the launch during the playing of the fountains. Clover, sitting next Page, watched his attitude toward this first view of the evening's spectacle with some curiosity.

He caught her amused gaze once as it rested upon him.

"Sumptuous! Delicate! Wonderful!" he said, breaking a long, absorbed silence.

"What?" returned Clover. "But you haven't suggested yet going down beneath the electric fountains to find out the why and the how of it all; and I am sure you will not rest until you have been on the roof of the Manufactures Building and made friends with the man who manipulates the search light."

"No." Page smiled vaguely and shook his head. "I do not want to go behind the scenes."

"Then the Court of Honor is a wonderful place," said Clover.

"Poetical! Marvelous!" gasped Page.

A gondola decked with soft lanterns stole by. One gondolier swept his oar lazily through the water, the other stood with his hand caught in his bright sash, and poured forth the "_Dammi encor_" from "Faust" with true musical intensity.

Again Clover and Page looked into one another's eyes, but there was no badinage this time in her glance. It was a place of dreams. Showers of golden mist fell beneath the stars. The massive buildings softened away into distant shadowy suggestion. The sculptors' creations shone out thrillingly.

In heavenly beauty stood the Agricultural Hall with its foreground of gleaming water, the pure white of its columns defined against the tempered rose-color of its inner wall,--a vision glowing and pure; as far above its sister palaces in beauty as its use was set apart from theirs; for here were displayed the works of God rather than the imperfect marvels of man's handiwork.

Amid the majestic splendor of the night rolled the passionate appeal of the gondoliers' love-song, become an impersonal voice now as the boats drifted apart. Little wonder that Page forgot to be abstractly analytical, and that the soft spontaneous sympathy of his companion's eyes exercised enchantment borrowed from the environment. He smiled upon her with a bright tenderness which transfigured his thoughtful face.

For a long time they were silent, but when he gave her his hand as she stepped from the launch, he spoke out of the depths of his enjoyment:--

"That was a never-to-be-forgotten experience for me."

"I think no one ever forgets his first evening in the Court of Honor," returned Clover.

"Well, what are we going to do now?" asked Mildred, as they ascended the steps. "My! How the wind has sprung up from the lake. They will hardly dare to have the fireworks."

"Then let us take a brisk constitutional home," proposed Jack.

"Come, children. Follow your leader," commanded Mildred, turning and addressing Clover and her companion.

"Hurry her by the chocolate houses, Jack," said Clover; "that is, if you can."

"He can't," returned Mildred. "I have my eye on Baker's now."

She insisted that they all stop and partake of the cup, more potent than tea to cheer when the east wind blows, served by the pretty, uniformed girls, who by this time in the evening were inclined to be pessimistic and severe, small blame to them. They must easily believe that the human body is largely liquid.

Leaving the little circular temple, the quartette started up the lake shore on the stone walk. The dark waves were tumbling and dashing, tipped with foam in the sudden gale. The battle-ship and large excursion boats were gay with electric lights.

"Oh, Mrs. Van Tassel!" exclaimed Page. "See the search light on the Quadriga." They turned to view the group with its mounted heralds and champing, prancing horses, distinct and unearthly fair in the surrounding blackness.

"Could we walk home backward, do you think?" he asked.

"No," replied Clover. "I can answer with certainty, for I've tried it more than once."

"I suppose we do in course of time get past the Manufactures Building? What an incomprehensible, colossal thing it is."

"Yes, a good deal more so to me now than it was a month ago."

"Have mercy!" exclaimed Page with a groan.

Mildred and Jack were walking in front of them.

"Isn't this like old times, Mildred?" asked the latter with a relish, clapping his hat on tighter as the sweep of the wind threatened it.

"Just about as unlike as we could imagine. Sorry to disagree with you, Jack."

"Don't mention it. You don't disagree with me, my child. I have enjoyed this first evening with you immensely."

"First evening is pretty good, isn't it?" suggested the girl, and they both laughed. "You didn't use to quarrel for my society," she added.

"I want you to understand that I wasn't quarreling with you there, a few hours back, at the Marine Cafe."

"Oh!"

"No, I was merely making the excusable protest of an old friend,--speaking in a brotherly way, you know."

"Oh, it won't do, Jack." He knew exactly how she was smiling in the darkness. "It is my unalterable rule never to be a sister to any of them. I can't break over it for you."

"Them!" ejaculated her companion. "I don't thank you to class me with Tom, Dick, and Harry, and the rest of these late arrivals. Remember, I was the first-comer into your friendship."

"You were a pretty good sort of fellow."

"Yes; you probably can't conceive of what a healing thought it is to me now that I have snubbed you many a time, young lady. I had to. Your attentions were so persistent in those days. Yes, mademoiselle, I had to hold you off, or I should never have had any peace of my life. I remember it well. Perhaps you don't."

"Oh yes, I do, perfectly," sighed Mildred. "Wasn't the Flirt the stanchest little dear that ever spread a sail; and to think that is all over! I don't feel nearly so much elation over going with Mr. Eames on that yacht party to-morrow as I used to in nagging you into consent that I should sail the Flirt."

"Is that the infantry officer?"

"Yes; and he is very nice. I should like you to meet him. If I knew him a little better I would have procured you an invitation. You should remember that virtue is its own reward. If you had not preferred smoking in the hammock to coming into the parlor and making yourself agreeable the other evening when Helen Eames and her mother were calling, they would surely have asked you to join the party. 'If you would be loved, be lovely.' That is what my mother used to tell me." Mildred laughed to herself.

"Then why don't you obey her?" returned Jack curtly.

"I don't want to be loved," returned the spoiled girl. "I'm loved too much already."

After this they marched in silence for a time, their springy steps carrying them by the foreign buildings, Ceylon, France with its green, fountain-sprayed court, Spain, and Germany. It was not until they turned beside Iowa's pavilion and left behind them the waves dashing on the sea-wall that Mildred spoke again.

"It gives me the blues, Jack, every time I see our boathouse stranded high and dry behind that nightmare of a Spectatorium."

"I don't see how you can call anything dry that is as full of beer as that is."

"Oh," exclaimed the girl indignantly, "what a fall from its old estate! To think of our playhouse being turned into a saloon! Do you remember the dance it was christened with? I was allowed to go, and you made me perfectly happy by waltzing with me once."

"Humph!" returned the other. "And now it is a great question whether you would make me perfectly happy by waltzing with me once."

"Oh, Jack," Mildred laughed out now, "don't be cross. Don't grudge a girl her 'little brief authority.' My observation of life has taught me that her queenship is brief enough. She blossoms out of awkward childhood into an attractive womanhood, and then after a little space yields up her sweet liberty to some lord of creation whom she has to pacify and wait on ever afterward. Moral: Let her keep her authority as long as possible."

"You seem to have been rather unfortunate in your married masculine acquaintance," returned Van Tassel drily.

A sudden thought sent the color flying to Mildred's face, and her customary complacent poise was shaken.

"There was one exception," she said, so timidly and meekly that her companion was struck by the change; but she had not the courage to be more specific, and there was no need. Jack understood her.

When the four reached home they found Miss Berry in the sitting-room reading by the light of a lamp.

Blitzen was sitting on a rug, and did not, as usual, run to meet them. On a chair reposed a bird-cage with some white stuff in it.

"What is this, Aunt Love?" asked Clover. "Have you some new pets?"

"I've got one," returned Miss Berry, smiling placidly. "I'll give you all three guesses. It's a World's Fair souvenir."

"Tell us, Blitzen," said Mildred, kneeling on the rug beside the small dog and shaking his tousled head; but Blitzen, as soon as he could free himself, withdrew in unwonted dignity. Evidently there was that within him to-night which could not brook flippancy.

"A live souvenir?" asked Clover, perplexed.

"Mr. Gorham can guess," remarked Miss Lovina, glancing again down the columns of her newspaper, and shaking in a comfortable silent laugh.

"I?" said Page; then, after a moment's cogitation, "You surely didn't bring home one of those chickens?"

"I did. In that cage, my dears, there is an electric chicken." Miss Berry looked over her spectacles impressively. "The same power that runs the inter-internal railroad and shines in the rainbow fountains, don't disdain to hatch a chicken. If you doubt it, there's the chicken."

She gestured toward the bird-cage.

"I brought it home in a box; and I said to myself that most everybody had an old cage, so I went up garret, and there I found that one. On Blitzen's account I thought best to use a cage to-night." Her gaze descended on the terrier, whose head descended beneath it.

"Blitzen," asked Jack with deliberate, stern solemnity, "what do you think of the chicken?"

Blitzen rose with a crushed air, and slowly, as one who would not attract attention, crept across the room and retired under a remote sofa.

A shout of laughter followed his unostentatious disappearance.

"We've had some words," explained Aunt Love. "He barked cruel at the poor little thing when he first saw me with it."

"Have it out, have the chicken out," said Mildred; and Miss Berry, yielding to the general urgency, produced her prize from the depths of the cotton wool. It began to struggle and peep vigorously as soon as its beady eyes saw the light, and there came a muffled howl from under the sofa.

"What are you going to name it?" asked Clover.

"I don't know what name would be good enough for such a smart critter."

"Why, Electra, of course," remarked Jack. "Nothing less for such a star among chickens."

"Sounds well and suitable," observed Miss Berry placidly, "whether it means anything or not."

"I wonder if it has any unusual springs," said Mildred. "If I should touch the button do you suppose it would give us a rest?" She advanced a finger toward one of the bright eyes, but Miss Berry removed her squeaking prize from harm, and tucked it away again in the cotton from which it struggled several times before finally settling down with a diminuendo of peeps.

*CHAPTER XVIII.*

*CLOVER'S DIPLOMACY.*

Mr. and Mrs. Page arrived duly, even a little earlier than they had at first anticipated. Jack met them at the station and drove with them to their destination.

"You see it was simply impossible, Mrs. Van Tassel, for my wife to curb her impatience after Gorham began to write home," said Mr. Page to his hostess in explanation of their change of plan. "Gorham doesn't very often gush, as perhaps you know."

"And I assure you that Mr. Page was not difficult to persuade," added Hilda. "Your last kind letter determined us. And I am really in Chicago!" she went on, looking about her. "Jack, congratulate me!"

"I do, sincerely. I think you, Hilda, will appreciate your advantages."

Mr. Page gave his contagious, quiet chuckle. "That is the way he goes on," he said, turning to Mildred. "Jack is very severe on me always. I am going to show you, Miss Bryant, several lists of adjectives, carefully prepared, very carefully and thoughtfully, one for every day in the week, that I am intending to use on the World's Fair to mollify my cousin."

"You might have trusted safely to the inspiration of the moment," returned Mildred gayly.

"Oh, you don't know Jack. One single false move, one expletive out of place, and it would be all over with me."

"Poor Robert, I feel for you," remarked Van Tassel.

"Why, that is mysterious," replied his cousin. "Anybody who compassionates me just now doesn't understand economizing his emotions." The speaker sank back in his roomy wicker chair and took a glass of lemonade from a salver which Miss Berry was passing to the company. The crushed ice jingled pleasantly against the crystal, and the couple of straws that emerged from each glass were alluring to a stout and thirsty man. "Aunt Love, it is very pleasant to see you here," he added. "We shall have to renew our old acquaintance. We had no time in Boston."

"That's so, Mr. Page. I guess I can jog your memory about a good many things."

When later the husband and wife were shown to their own room and the door was closed, Robert looked at Hilda with large eyes. "Whew!" he said softly. "Uncle Richard was all right. What pretty women!"

"I told you so. I told you that Mildred was a perfect Juno, and that you were very unfortunate to be out of town when she spent that week with me at the beach. As for Mrs. Van Tassel"--

"Why, she's an angel,--she's an angel! I knew it from her letter. I felt it in my bones."

"As if you knew anything about your bones, you dear old cushion. Stop praising those girls,--calling one a goddess and one an angel. Come and apostrophize the lake. Isn't it beautiful?"

"It was you who called Miss Bryant a goddess, remember. Yes, this is every bit as good as the ocean, for all I see," walking to the window and putting an arm around his wife's waist. "We are in great luck, Hilda," continued Page, glancing about their spacious room. "This isn't much like the discomforts we read about in connection with World's Fair visiting. I don't wonder," he added after a pause, "that Jack was cut up by being at cross purposes with those girls."

"H'm. There is one exhibit I have come out here to see that isn't inside the White City," returned Hilda. "I've come to discover which one of them Jack is in love with."

"Both, of course. How can he help it?" replied her husband promptly.

Gorham took it upon himself to launch his brother and sister on their Fair pilgrimage that very evening.

When they came home again, hours later, Clover and Jack were sitting alone in the parlor and rose to meet them as they entered the room. Their tired, excited faces were a study.

Hilda dropped into a chair. "Well," she exclaimed, "I never expected to go to heaven till I died; but I've been there."

"Jack," added Robert meekly, "get in your fine work now. I've nothing to say, absolutely nothing. I've dropped my jaw so often since six o'clock that it isn't in working order, any way."

"Say no more," returned Van Tassel, waving his hand grandiloquently. "We Chicagoans are nothing if not magnanimous."

"I thought I knew what I was going to see, that is the queer part of it," said Page, looking perplexed; "but it seems I didn't know anything at all about it. I feel there is an unlimited feast in store for me, Mrs. Van Tassel."

Clover smiled at his enthusiastic tone. "You are in the first-day frame of mind, I see."

"What is that?"

"Oh, eagerness and hopefulness."

"And what is the second?"

"Despair; yes, overwhelming, stony despair."

"What is the third? Suicidal tendency?"

"No indeed. Resignation. At first one expects and determines to see everything; soon finds that to be so impossible that he yields to his bewilderment, and at last accepts the inevitable and sets himself to see what he can, and be rapturously content therewith."

"Thank you, thank you! Forewarned, forearmed. Perhaps we may even skip the second stage."

A few days later, Clover, her guests having scattered on various quests, went to the noon orchestral concert in Festival Hall. This wonderfully generous free exhibit attracted a large audience, many of whom embraced it as an opportunity to rest from the fatigues of sight-seeing, while many others, coming perhaps from the country where "hearing a band" was a rare privilege, were drawn thither by the hope of attractive music.

Possibly one half the number came intelligently to the feast, and greeted the conductor when he entered upon the stage. Clover joined in the applause as Theodore Thomas passed before his players with that quiet, characteristic grace, which has power to thrill with anticipation a greater number of America's music-lovers than the movement of any other man.

It interested her as it had many a time before, this summer, to note the effect upon certain of the audience of the number with which the programme opened. She saw pleased hopefulness give way to apathy in many faces, as strange harmonies and dissonances fell upon uncultivated ears. She noticed one patient-faced countryman who waited through two numbers, evidently discovering nothing but a wilderness of sound. He then examined his programme, and not finding "After the Ball" on it, arose and departed from the hall more in sorrow than anger.

Blessings on the man, by the way, who introduced the noiseless paper on which those programmes were printed. There were two girls sitting next to Clover, chewing gum while they listened for some melody they could recognize, and Clover congratulated herself that all the foldings and drummings of their programmes were inaudible; but alas, as soon as the maidens discovered that the music they were hearing was unworthy the name, they cheerfully set about doing the next best thing, which was to prepare for the afternoon's campaign. This was a free concert anyway, so no matter if it wasn't worth much. They would not leave at once, because this was a better place to rest than they would be likely to find soon again; so they unfolded their maps of the grounds, not printed on absorbent paper, far from it, and proceeded to discuss their plans.

Clover caught sight of Jack standing across the hall. He discovered her at the same moment. His concentrated look flashed into a smile as they exchanged nods.

At the close of the number he came around to where Clover sat in the front row of the circle, and leaned his arm on the railing in front of her.

"How handsome Jack can look, when he is happy and interested," she thought, and instantly became aware that her neighbors had ceased their planning, and were nudging each other in silent absorption.

"Wasn't that great!" he exclaimed. "Are you going over to the Music Hall this afternoon?"

"Indeed I am. They are going to play the Tschaikowsky Symphony."

"That settles it. Suppose we go up in the wheel after lunch, and then go over to the concert together."

"All right. I'd like to. Why, there is Mildred on the left, down there near the front. I didn't know she was coming."

"Nor I. Shall I go and speak to her?"

In a minute Jack was back, just as the music began again. The girls who had constituted the thorn in Clover's side during the first half of the programme had left their seats as soon as he moved away, so he came in and took the place beside Clover.

"Mildred says she will go with us," he whispered.

When the Intermezzo was finished, Clover spoke.

"Did you ask Mildred to join us?" she asked.

"No, she proposed it," returned Jack, and there was a pleasure in his eyes which did not escape his companion.

"You mentioned last night in our talk that you hadn't seen much of Mildred since you came; that she was too much of a belle for your comfort."

"Yes. It is simply surprising to find her here alone."

Clover's eyes twinkled. She had mentioned to her sister, this morning, that she meant to meet Jack at the noon concert.

"Well, you leave her to me. No matter what I say, don't contradict me. Promise?"

"What's up?" asked Van Tassel doubtfully.

"Oh, Mildred's conceit and a few other things that ought to come down. I want you to myself a part of the time, Jack."

Her companion met her laughing glance.

"I am yours to command, Clover, always."

"Don't forget, then," she answered.

When the concert was over, Mildred came slowly up the aisle, superb as usual in her consciously unconscious carriage.

"Well," she said to her sister as they met, "where are we to lunch?"