The musicians were not missed, and it is safe to say that, for some
time, their melody was unheard; not even the lovers on the verandah
lent ear to it, for Mabel was gathering her forces for an attack upon
all the conventions of maidenly reserve, while Howard was seeking
through the shallows of his diplomacy for some acceptable method of
writing “finis” across their romance. Each felt the secret strain and
battle within the other. They became silent, each waiting and guarding
against the other’s first move.
At the card table, as usual, the first rounds were played in silence.
The players were, as the saying is, “feeling one another out.” Judge
Giffen was not distracted, therefore, from the opening columns which
the _Digest_ had allotted to an “exclusive” bit of information supplied
by the young gentleman who acted as its special correspondent on the
Balkan peninsula. There was a page and a half of it. The Judge took off
his glasses--rubbed, and was replacing them, when Mrs. Lee addressed
him.
“I do hope you will find some charming item to regale us with, Judge
Giffen. I saw you tear off the wrapper so I know it is a new _Digest_.”
“Ah, yes--ah--just come, you know. A remarkable paper, the _Digest_.
Gives one the--ah--news of the world every week without a superfluous
word--ah--journalism in these days has become--ah--debauched. The
simplest events are distorted for sensationalism--ah--to wring tears
from the sentimentalists.”
“I’ve heard others say the same thing. What a pity, is it not?”
Mrs. Lee, finding that she could not turn a corner successfully, took
the kerchief out of the frame and drew the point of lace taut over her
thumb. Her motion attracted the judge’s attention and he watched her
deft fingers as he continued his strictures on journalism.
“A pity? A scandal! Does a celebrity die? We are intruded into the most
intimate details of his family history; what--ah--shaving soap he used
and whether he--ah--preferred to kiss his lady love on the--ah--nose
or behind the ear; and--ah--who cried, and how many, when he--ah--in
vulgar phrase--ah--‘kicked the bucket.’ And, mind you, not a word of
truth in the whole story! Whereas the _Digest_ merely states with
terseness and accuracy: ‘the--ah--Emperor of China died on Sunday,
of--ah--an overdose of--ah--bird’s-nest soup.’ It leaves you to infer
that, in the case of the death of a celebrated personage who met
thousands of people in his public life, there were some who cried and
some who--ah--did not. Any fool knows that, so why waste print on it?”
“My husband used to tell his students that, in literary composition,
sincerity was more important than rhetoric and that only a fine
_feeling_ could dictate the making of a truly fine _phrase_. He said
that pure English had come with the spiritual development of the race;
and that a forceful and intimate use of it must come about through the
individual writer’s spiritual evolution. Otherwise he claimed no man
could write with real power.”
“Ah. Um, very true. But all wasted on the--ah--young cubs, I dare say.”
The Judge wisely made no attempt to follow Professor Lee’s analyses.
Metaphysics was several points beyond him. He found the movements of
Mrs. Lee’s tiny needle, with its almost imperceptible gossamer thread,
more interesting.
“Ah. I have become quite absorbed in your work. It seems to be
so--ah--marvellously intricate. May I ask what, precisely, you are
doing?”
“I am mending a rare old cobweb of lace,” she answered--spreading the
white fragment across her palm for him to look at--“and, at the same
time, transferring it from its worn-out cambric to a new piece of
linen. A very delicate operation, judge; and a labour of love.”
“Ah! indeed?”
“Yes. It is for my granddaughter’s trousseau. She marries in December,
and--we feel confident--very happily. Yes, her intended seems a
thoroughly settled young man. She met him in Scotland.”
“It is a labour requiring both patience and skill, I should say.”
“I think that patience and skill are the two qualities required most in
any labour of love,” she answered, with gentle pleasure in the subject.
He peered at the dainty fabric as she cleverly set it into the frame
again.
“Now do find us some delicious item,” she urged.
“Ah. To be sure. Here’s something on the first page. I’ve just
begun--and it--ah--promises to be exciting, too, which is--ah--rather
unusual for the _Digest_.”
He had just found the place, preparatory to reading, when hubbub burst
about the card-table.
“Now, Mamma!” Corinne’s vigorous young voice broke in. “You simply
_cannot_ lead every time I take a trick. It’s--it’s ridiculous. This is
my play.”
“If the Witherbys are going to have a set to, there’ll be no use in my
reading aloud till they’ve fought it out,” the Judge said to himself,
and lost himself as promptly as possible in the “exclusive.”
“Corinne! You are speaking to your mother!” Mrs. Witherby so informed
her daughter, when she could get her breath. Dr. Wells hastened to
intervene.
“I think,” he said, “that on the whole it might be as well to play
in turn. Of course, I make no rule”--a deprecating gesture toward
his bristling partner forbade her to think he would presume to make
rules for her--“but it is generally done, I believe.” He rose, beamed
benignly. “Your card.” He passed it to her.
Corinne tossed her head at her mother and led the round.
When her turn came, Mrs. Witherby threw down the knave of hearts and
gathered up the cards.
“Trumps! Our trick, doctor,” she cried victoriously. Her success was
greeted with a profound silence, broken at last by Dr. Wells; he
coughed. Andrews, seeing that Corinne was about to express herself with
her customary frankness, flung himself into the breach.
“Er--you overlooked--oh, quite by accident, of course--er--you have the
three of clubs in your hand.”
“I refuse to play with any one--_any one_--who is capable of looking at
my hand.”
The sensitive Mr. Andrews turned the peony-red which is specially
inflicted upon sandy, blond men.
“I did not look at your hand,” he protested, with mild heat. “You
played the three of clubs when you led off, just now, in your
daughter’s place--oh, by mistake, of course. It is still in your hand.”
“Your card,” the doctor murmured, politely handing it to her. Corinne
gathered up the trick.
“Another round finishes the game. Come on, Mrs. Witherby. You must put
your best foot forward and cast these young people into the shade,” Dr.
Wells urged in his cheeriest tones, obviously endeavouring to banish
the sour gloom that had settled on his partner’s spirit. A darting,
knifelike glance of her eyes told that he had failed.
“My foot is not of such dimensions as to cast a shade over two
persons,” sourly. “I don’t understand your allusion.”
Again the peace-loving Andrews flew like the dove upon the storm.
“Of course, Mrs. Witherby, you will be one of Mrs. Lee’s breakfast
party to-morrow?” he said, and thus gave Mrs. Lee the opportunity she
needed. She had begun to wonder how she was to introduce her topic
sympathetically in the discordant atmosphere of one of Mrs. Witherby’s
“card-game humours.”
“Did I hear my name?” she asked, turning to them.
“I mentioned your breakfast party,” Andrews replied quickly. “It is to
be at eleven o’clock, is it not?”
“Yes. But everyone is to be there by a quarter to eleven, so that we
can be prompt in beginning.”
“To be sure. Ah. The breakfast party.” The Judge looked over his paper.
“Do tell us about it,” Mrs. Witherby interjected. “I am simply bored
with these cards.”
“Mr. Falcon will arrive at Trenton Waters on the morning train, and
I am sure he will prefer to ramble across the fields to Roseborough.
I suppose I am a little old-fashioned, but I wished him to feel that
all the town was welcoming him home--not only the widow of his old
professor.” She sighed and smiled.
“_Dear_ Mrs. Lee,” Mrs. Witherby exclaimed, effusively. “That is _so_
like you.”
Encouraged by this responsiveness, Mrs. Lee continued more hopefully:
“You see, there was a good deal of comment when Jack left college
so abruptly. There had just come the opportunity, through Professor
Lee, to teach languages--for which Jack had a rare gift--and certain
classes in literature also. That was quite an honour for a young man of
twenty-one. And to think he threw it all away just to go out into the
world and see what was to be seen!”
“Well, well,” Mr. Andrews said, as she paused; “I’d never have done
that. But, then, it isn’t my nature.”
“Roseborough was inclined to be indignant,” Mrs. Lee admitted. “But
my husband felt--and said openly--that there might be wisdom in his
wandering. Indeed he was the only one who stood the boy’s friend in the
matter. Sixteen years ago. Ah, me!” She bent over her lace, because her
eyes were wet.
The Judge looked over the edge of his paper again.
“I can’t place him. Falcon, do you say?”
“Yes, Jack Falcon.”
He shook his head.
“I don’t think I ever knew him.”
Dr. Wells had just dealt for a new game, but he lingered in picking up
his cards to say:
“Doubtless I treated him for measles, in his turn--along with every
other child in the district--but I have not a clear remembrance of him
as a young man. Was he on any of the athletic teams, do you remember?”
“Oh, he was past the measles stage when he came to Roseborough! He
would trudge for miles through the woods; but I remember that he hated
sports.”
“That accounts for my very hazy recollection of him. I was never called
from my Thanksgiving turkey to set his collarbone.”
He laughed cosily at his own repartee, and played, since Mrs. Witherby
had opened the game and his turn had come. His ruddy brow was rolled up
in furrows, though, because it was difficult to follow his partner’s
play at any time--more than difficult while conversing upon an alien
subject.
“The boy wasn’t one to--to ‘mix,’ as they say. He was devoted to my
dear husband. Professor Lee had a wonderful understanding of all
growing things--he loved them. Ah, well,” she sighed tenderly. “Jack
was much with us. He had his room here--the music room it is now--for
of course he knew us in our palmy days when we lived here, before Mr.
Mearely’s time. We loved him dearly and he never forgot us. He always
wrote to my husband at least twice a year, and--afterward--to me. When
I decided to publish the professor’s manuscripts, the boy wrote--he was
in the Balkans then--offering his services as editor, out of gratitude
and love for him who is gone. So you see why my heart is very tender
toward him, and why I am asking you all, dear friends, to join me
to-morrow in his welcome home.”
“Oh, Mrs. Lee,” Corinne cried, clapping her hands, “I think it’s
lovely!”
“Such a sweet notion!” her mother opined, and to show that her interest
was genuine, asked, with point: “Has he made any _money_?”
“Ah, I fancy he has,” Mrs. Lee said. “A little; though for years his
was a hand-to-mouth existence. Recently, I know, he was handsomely paid
by a wealthy gentleman of title....”
“Title?” Mrs. Witherby interrupted excitably.
“Yes, indeed--if my failing memory serves me--I believe he was almost
if not quite a _royal_ personage.”
“_Royal?_”
“But that reminds me of something that will stir your pride, I know,
as it stirred mine. There was a little prose poem of Professor Lee’s,
_about Roseborough_.” She beamed at them all.
“Quite a good subject for a poem, I dare say,” the Judge remarked.
“Personally, I never read a poem--though even the _Digest_ prints them,
to fill in.”
“I sent it to Jack,” Mrs. Lee hastened on--to forestall any discussion,
pro and con poetry--“hoping that it might revivify his memories
and lead him home from his wanderings. He showed it to this titled
gentleman, who was so charmed with it that he begged for a copy and
asked many question, about our dear old town.”
There were pleased and reverent murmurs from every one, and Howard, who
had also been listening, said:
“Very flattering.”
Miss Crewe kept her shoulder turned, and refused to let her thoughts
leave their main purpose to sympathize with her natal hamlet’s pride.
“It begins so beautifully,” Mrs. Lee continued. “Listen: ‘Here where
all hearts are tender and sincere.’”
“‘Here where all hearts are tender and sincere,’” Mrs. Witherby echoed,
rolling her eyes. “How lovely! One would know at once that meant
Roseborough.”
The phrase had caught Andrews’s ear. In playing, he parroted vacantly:
“‘Here where all hearts are tender and sincere!’ Very nice. Trumps.”
Mrs. Witherby returned to the item of greatest interest to her.
“But, dear Mrs. Lee, you spoke just now of his being handsomely paid
for something. What was he paid for, and how much was it?”
“Oh, yes. For designing a great pleasure garden for the peasants of
that place. But I don’t know the amount.”
“Oh, he is a landscape gardener now?” Andrews asked. He was an amateur
horticulturist, in a very small way, himself, and enjoyed gardening
details. The judge, whose interest in Mr. Falcon was exhausted, had
returned to his paper. Mrs. Lee laughed.
“No. Not a gardener. He is a writer. But one who can write on the
earth, if pencil and pad fail him. A practical poet--if you can
call ‘practical’ a man who roams the world in search of beauty, or
of conditions which will allow him to _make_ them beautiful. The
professor delighted in saying--oh, figuratively, of course--that one
could easily recognize the true artist, because his fingers are always
knuckle-deep in earth-dust; whereas the dilettante’s fingers are
chiefly remarkable for nail-polish.”
“And, there, I entirely agree with him! As I am constantly telling
Corinne, I consider the way people polish their nails, nowadays, is
positively vulgar.” Mrs. Witherby spoke emphatically and played her
card with a righteous flourish.
“Mamma! It’s my lead.” There was more than a suggestion of anger in
Corinne’s voice.
Bowing, Dr. Wells handed his partner her card, saying politely:
“Your card.”
“Corinne, you watch me like a hawk; as if you thought your own mother
would cheat you if you weren’t looking.”
“Ah! but I always _am_ looking,” that young lady cried gayly.
There was a lull at the table after this family tilt, and the Judge
seized the occasion to share the “exclusive,” which had proved too
thrilling to be kept to himself.
“Ah--give me your attention a moment. I have just read in my _Digest_,
here, such a peculiar tale. A reigning prince of some little European
state has run off.”
“Dear, dear,” Mrs. Lee said. “Was it a love-affair?”
“Ah--not precisely: though a princess had been arranged for him.”
Even Miss Crewe felt a degree of interest in a run-away prince, or
perhaps she felt that she had challenged her aunt’s wrath long enough.
She rose, as her cousin called to her:
“Oh, Mabel, come and hear about the prince. Do tell us more, Judge
Giffen.”
The Judge consulted his paper.
“Um--ah--here it is. Um--ah--odd chap. Very chivalrous
and--ah--romantic; eccentric; fond of wandering about, incognito, and
entering humble people’s houses and--ah--making friends with them.
Artistic. No love-affair suspected, but--ah--it seems he has never
enjoyed _ruling_. Too sensitive. Been missing for months. The Court
tried to--ah--hide the fact, but it is out now, and the whole world
is aware that His Highness--wait a minute till I find the place, for
it’s a fearful name. Ah--here it is. His Highness, Prince Adam Lapid,
reigning Duke of Woodseweedsetisky”--he stumbled over it badly.
“Good gracious!” Mabel said.
“Ah--His Highness has abdicated and run away in disguise, leaving a
letter. Ah--this is the letter. Listen”:
Dear Subjects, Councillors, and neighbouring Princes, including
Her Highness Princess Olga of Damala-Binootshia, to whom
processes of state have affianced me although I have never seen
her. I herewith and hereby abdicate and renounce my hereditary
right to the throne of Woodseweedsetisky. I am too sensitive to
endure the criticisms aimed at royalty by heartless radicals.
Recently I have received harsh words from a visiting, untitled
stranger, whom I had employed in executing a beneficent and
beautiful plan for my ungrateful subjects. It was not my fault
that it was, later, found to be impossible to bring the water
to the top of the mountain, where I had insisted that the
fountain--a memorial to my father--be erected. Criticism of me
on that account was unjust and cruel. It was not I who failed,
but the water. I abdicate. I go to a place where there is no
criticism. Farewell.
ADAM LAPID.
“Well! What a....”
The Judge silenced the interrupting chorus. “A postscript.”
P. S. People who criticise me are ignorant. If they knew as
much as I do they would act as I do. As for the visiting
stranger--a person of no antecedents--who criticised me because
of the fountain, I have put him in prison. Let him see whether
his pointed criticisms are sharp enough to pick my prison
locks. The top of the mountain was the proper place for the
memorial fountain to my honoured father. It was not my fault
that the water did not arrive there to spout. But when this
stranger of humble birth said to me, “I told you water will not
run uphill, even to oblige a prince,” I put him in the prison.
Farewell.
“Now, that’s a remarkable tale, eh?”
“He’s quite mad, of course,” Howard said. Dr. Wells wanted to know what
became of the man who designed the fountain where the water would not
arrive to spout.
“Oh--ah--he escaped.”
“So his criticisms _were_ sharp enough to pick locks,” the doctor
chuckled, as joyfully as if the original jest had been his.
“Ah. Quite so. The Councillors suspected at first that the prince’s
disappearance and--ah--the whole thing was an anarchistic plot. But
they are satisfied now that he really ran off of his own accord.”
“Oh, isn’t it thrilling?” Corinne clapped her hands again. Her large,
round eyes had been growing larger and larger, throughout the recital,
till it was impossible for them to stretch any more.
“I hope he’ll keep his freedom, poor dear, and let the kingdom rage,”
Mabel said. There was a bitterness in her intonation, which always drew
her aunt’s anger, for Mrs. Witherby held that Mabel should feel humbled
under the weight of gratitude.
“No doubt you feel so, Mabel,” she said, acidly. “But most of us
recognize duty and the importance of the world’s opinion. Ah! there is
our sweet hostess.”
“Did we disturb you with our melodic outcries?” Rosamond asked,
blithely. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes shining.
“We heard you, of course,” Andrews remarked--meaning to be polite. He
was leading a new round.
“You made _criticisms_?” the violinist asked, darkly.
“Oh, my dear Dr. Frei, we were charmed--utterly charmed.”
Frei acknowledged Mrs. Witherby’s impressive compliment with a low bow.
He was very grave.
“Dr. Frei plays _so_ beautifully.” Rosamond thought she saw his sad
mood coming upon him, and was eager to ward it off with sympathetic
eulogies. Mrs. Lee, unawares, abetted her.
“Dear Dr. Frei, how much you have added to the natural charm of our
dear old town by bringing your violin, and opening your little studio
among us.”
Frei bent and kissed her hand.
“You have a kind heart,” he said, gratefully. “_You_ criticise no one.”
“Oh, I hope not,” she replied. “The Judge has just been telling us
about a poor dear man out in the great world--ah, well! Life must be
very different in the vast cities, where people are strangers instead
of neighbours. Think of that! Strangers instead of neighbours! How
fortunate I am to live in Roseborough, where everybody is so interested
in everybody else. Dear Mrs. Witherby, in particular, takes such an
interest.” She patted that lady’s arm. Mrs. Witherby, having lost
the last round, had left the table. “Ah, well, that is the spirit of
Roseborough.”
“Some might call it a meddlesome spirit,” Miss Crewe suggested.
“Oh, my dear child,” Mrs. Lee reproved her, affectionately.
“I think we will not allow Mabel to interpret the spirit of
Roseborough.” Mrs. Witherby was smilingly spiteful.
“Where did you learn to play?” Judge Giffen drew Frei aside.
“In Warsaw.”
“Ah! Indeed? I know Warsaw.” He began to relate to Dr. Frei whatever
incidents remained in his mind of his visit to the Polish capital,
twenty-five years before.
Mrs. Witherby was assisting Mrs. Lee in gathering up her fancywork,
scissors, spools and so forth, and was receiving in return that lady’s
ardent thanks for her help in notifying guests without telephones of
Mr. Falcon’s home-coming breakfast. Mabel lifted the old lady’s white
wool shawl and wrapped it about her.
“Oh, do come here, Mrs. Mearely!” cried Corinne, who was now alone at
the card table. She caught Rosamond’s hand and began excitedly, “Oh,
Mrs. Mearely, Judge Giffen has just read such a thrilling thing in the
_Digest_. Just think! a real prince has run away from his throne, and
taken a different name, but they don’t know what it is and--and--he’s
gone looking for a real romance--and they think he has hidden himself
in some little town. Oh! think; if he’d only come to Roseborough! Oh,
Mrs. Mearely,” she panted, “all my life I’ve wanted something wonderful
to happen in Roseborough!”
Rosamond laughed, noting Corinne’s breathless excitement rather than
her news.
“My dear Corinne, nothing will ever happen in Roseborough.”
Corinne almost wailed her protest at this hard saying.
“Oh, it _might_ happen! Think if the prince came here. Oh, he _might_,
Mrs. Mearely,” she pleaded. “_He might._”
Rosamond, smiling, shook her head. Seeing that Mrs. Lee was ready to
leave, she threw her own wrap around her.
“Now, I must be off to bed. I have overstayed.” Mrs. Lee was rejecting
Mrs. Witherby’s efforts to keep her “just another half hour.” “One must
go to sleep when the twilight ends, if one would really enjoy early
rising. I think I may almost say I have not missed a sunrise for twenty
years.”
“Sunrise?” Howard repeated, “I often wonder how you do it! I find
half-past eight almost too early.”
“Dr. Frei and I will go with you,” Rosamond said. Frei, hearing his
name, turned. The Judge followed him for the purpose of concluding his
arguments.
“As I was saying,” he insisted, “I have only one criticism to make of
Beethoven’s sonatas....”
Frei wheeled upon him, and silenced him with a commanding gesture.
“Do not make it!” he said, frowning fiercely as at the most hated
of enemies. “Beethoven is not here to defend himself. Ach! I detest
criticism. It is the speech of those who do not understand.”
The judge, feeling aggrieved at this public snubbing, walked off,
muttering under his breath: “Touchy fiddler!” Frei gave his arm to Mrs.
Lee.
“Good-bye, for the present.” Rosamond waited an instant to offer
cheer to her remaining guests, before joining Mrs. Lee and Frei on
the verandah. “Some of you will have time for another game before we
return. The chess board is just as you and Wilton left it, Judge. When
cards and chess pall, you will find sandwiches and salad, with perhaps
a jelly or two and some of Amanda’s parsnip wine on the dining-room
table. I know we can’t persuade Mrs. Lee.”
“No, dear, not in the evening. Good-night, dear friends. I shall see
you all at breakfast, to-morrow. A quarter to eleven. Don’t fail me.”
“We won’t!” Corinne called to her, above the calmer promises of the
older folk.
“Oh, joy! A new man is coming to Roseborough! Though I suppose he’s
pretty old,” she added, after Mrs. Lee and her two escorts had
disappeared. “Mrs. Lee calls men of fifty ‘dear boys,’ if they ever
went to Charleroy.”
Mrs. Witherby, Wells, and Andrews seated themselves at the card table.
For the moment, Mrs. Witherby’s mind was occupied with something more
important than cards. Assuring herself that her niece could not hear
her, she said:
“Mrs. Barton is not coming from Poplars Vale till next week, so I shall
try to persuade Mrs. Mearely to let me leave our Thomas to sleep in the
house here, to-night. With her sister absent, she is quite alone. You
know, I consider it _suspicious_ that her _two_ maids should have been
called to their sick mother’s bedside the same day that her coachman
was obliged to take the gray mare out to the farm. It leaves Mrs.
Mearely _quite_ alone. I consider it _very_ suspicious. I think Mrs.
Barton should have been sent for. I think it peculiar that Mrs. Mearely
herself did not tell me about it.”
Wells, who was dealing, replied humorously:
“But--the maids being sisters--naturally, if Jemima’s mother is ill, so
is Amanda’s mother, te-he-he.”
He was rewarded with a frosty glance.
“It pleases you to be facetious. Corinne, come--we are having another
game.”
Corinne came, none too willingly. The Judge, who had had enough of the
_Digest_ for that evening, nodded to Wilton.
“Er--shall we try the chessmen to-night, Howard? Perhaps Miss Crewe
will sit by and inspire us.”
Howard, anxious to avoid another tête-à-tête with Mabel, answered with
alacrity, “By all means.”
Mabel, yawning, sank among the cushions of the settee. She was not
interested in chess, but she could watch her lover’s profile from this
position.
“Oh, I wish there were something _young_ to do,” Corinne protested.
“Cards aren’t young.”
“I don’t consider it safe for Mrs. Mearely to remain alone to-night,”
Mrs. Witherby resumed. “A most villainous-appearing man with a
multitude of black whiskers has been seen lurking about. Johnson, the
butcher’s boy, told my maid, Hannah Ann, about it. He saw _him_!”
“I don’t think Mrs. Mearely is timid,” Andrews said.
“In my day, Mr. Andrews, it was not considered _well-bred_ for women
to make an exhibition of courage. They had it, but they suppressed
it under a mask of timidity and sensitiveness. And the girls married
easily at eighteen. And the widows were wives again before they had
reached the lavender stage of their mourning. I shall try to insist
on Mrs. Mearely’s keeping our Thomas to-night, and I do think it rash
of her to don such a rich and conspicuous gown when she is entirely
alone....”
“Oh, my trick again! Oh, goody!” Corinne broke in enthusiastically.
“Congratulations, fair partner.” Andrews thought he had done very well
with that speech. So did Corinne.
“Oh, you say such lovely things, Mr. Andrews!”
“Losing as usual, aunt?” Mabel’s tone was delicately unpleasant. It
angered her aunt.
“Not at all! I doubt if there is a woman in Roseborough who plays a
better hand.”
In turning to make her speech more impressive and to give Miss Crewe a
broadside, as it were, of her displeasure, she had a full view of the
verandah, and was in the nick of time to see a swarthy, black-whiskered
face, topped by a soft, black felt hat, slowly raised over the verandah
rail. She panted twice from terror’s cold shock; then screamed with all
her might. The apparition disappeared.
“Eh? What?” Dr. Wells looked up, jerkily, from his cards. Howard had
half risen, from habit, at the feminine cry of distress. The Judge,
peering over his pince-nez, offered a practical explanation.
“A beetle? The summer bugs do bite.”
“Mamma! I wish you wouldn’t shriek when there’s no need.”
Mrs. Witherby was angry now as well as frightened. She gestured
frantically and gasped.
“There--there! I _saw_ him! Oh! the terrible man! Oh, quick--catch
him--a man!”
She continued to point and wave and gasp at such a rate, that Judge
Giffen and Wilton Howard, concealing their mirth as best they could,
went to the verandah and made a perfunctory investigation. The movement
of their shoulders suggested that they were not looking over the
verandah rail so much as laughing over it. Miss Crewe gave herself up
to an almost hysterical hilarity.
“You have so much imagination, Aunt Emma.”
Dr. Wells cackled with delight, “Te-he-he! The cry of the eternal
feminine--‘Catch him! Catch the _man_!’ Te-he-he.”
“You _must_ have seen him!” Mrs. Witherby’s face was crimson with fury.
She would have liked to tear out all the mocking eyes now regarding her.
“Not even a tiger,” Howard informed her cheerfully.
“Nary cannibal,” the Judge added, with facetious looks and stepping
about on tiptoe as if in mortal fear of bogies.
“I _saw_ him! I saw....” Words failed her. She played her card blindly,
and took the trick. This was the last straw, as far as Corinne was
concerned.
“Mamma! It’s _my_ trick!” She snatched it away from her mother with
trembling hands. Her nerves were taut from the scare she had received,
for the wild shriek had been sent almost into her ear. It proved the
last straw for Mrs. Witherby also.
“Corinne!” she thundered. “_This_ is _too_ much! Do you suppose your
mother is going to sit here the whole evening and not take a single
trick? How _dare_ you assert yourself so?”
Corinne threw down her cards and burst into explosive sobs.
“I don’t--I didn’t--I never did. It was my trick.” Wells patted her
shoulder affectionately.
“There, there, dear child. Don’t cry.”
“What’s this?” the Judge asked. “Our merry Corinne in tears?”
“No one thinks of _me_, the mother!” Mrs. Witherby whimpered.
“She--she--is always like that when she plays cards. What
has--a--mother to do with trumps--and things?”
“Oh, you heartless child! And after the terrible fright I’ve had! Judge
Giffen, your arm. I am not well.”
“Eh, what?” The Judge resented nothing so much as being asked to leave
his chess. “Oh--yes--with pleasure. Let us seek the--ah--sympathetic
seclusion of the dining room, eh? Mrs. Mearely spoke of sandwiches.
Yes--ah--a sustaining sandwich.”
“I couldn’t eat a mouthful. I’m so upset. Corinne’s behaviour--and--oh,
Judge--that dreadful face! Oh, if you’d seen the villainous whiskers!”
“Yes--yes--a little--ah--salad. A glass of Amanda’s parsnip wine.” He
guided her into the dining room.
“Shall we also refresh the inner soul, Miss Corinne?” Mr. Albert
Andrews asked, with gallantry.
“Now I am quite sure that Mrs. Mearely has provided creams and a fine
array of iridescent jellies to delight the youthful palate. Go with
Andrews, dear child.”
Corinne threw her arms around Dr. Wells’s neck.
“I think you are just too dear for anything, Dr. Wells. I wish I could
have you for a father.”
“Heaven forbid!” he answered absently. “Er--that is--thank you,
my dear. You are a very sweet girl, Corinne. Yes--considering the
circumstances--a remarkably sweet girl,” he added as the dining-room
door closed behind the couple. He rose, taking his pipe from his pocket.
“Do you find Aunt Emma wearing, doctor?” Mabel inquired flippantly.
“Some do.”
“Oh, no, no! What a sad idea. I shall go out now and have a pipe in
the moonlight, and all the little cares will blow away with the smoke.”
“Don’t let Mrs. Witherby’s wild man get you,” Howard urged, laughing.
“Te-he-he! the good lady is so excitable; but she means well. I leave
you to the pleasant task of dispelling pessimistic ideas from Miss
Crewe’s lovely head.” He went out on tiptoe, with extravagant antics of
mock caution.
[Illustration]