A silence of acute embarrassment was happily broken by Mr. Marks.
Saluting, he said:
“If Hi may make so bold before ’Is ’Ighness--there’ll be no ’oldin’
Mrs. Marks w’en she hears of ’Is ’Ighness a-jumpin’ on my ’ead, she
bein’ hambitious.”
Mrs. Witherby, who felt dissatisfied with the opportunities accorded
her hitherto for impressing His Highness with her character as a
gentlewoman all Roseborough delighted to honour, settled herself
fussily in her chair and began to discourse, with an air of one who has
dwelt much, if not _in_ palaces, at least around the corner.
“Your Highness of course is only on a little incognito journey--I
presume, to study the conditions of humbler folk. Your Highness will
shortly return to his throne, with all its royal splendours?”
He bowed, and in a manner more royally aloof than he had used before--a
manner that proclaimed the crowned Ruler--he condescended to converse
with her.
“We left our throne somewhat suddenly, because our royal splendours
had rather wearied us. Conceive, my dear madam, of having one’s every
step attended by a score of uniformed menials. Conceive of the infinite
ceremony of--let us say--boot-lacing, under the royal system. Contrast
it with the ease and privacy with which you, for instance, draw on your
fine prunella boots. You are alone. You sit. There is the difficult
stoop to bring the boot and the foot into friendly focus. Then the
valiant tussle, the gasp, perhaps the stitch in the side--if the
weather is warm, the drop of moisture--and the thing is accomplished.”
Mrs. Witherby twitched as if she were about to protest sharply, but a
cold, lofty look and gesture restrained her.
“If Hi may make so bold as to s’y so, ’Is ’Ighness is a wonderful
’and to describe things. Hi can see ’er doin’ of it,” Officer Marks
snickered reverentially, “beggin’ ’Is ’Ighness’s pardon.”
The prince, regardless of the lady’s bristles, elucidated further:
“Whereas, with us, the matter is not so simple. Conceive of a half
battalion in livery to find the boots--under the regulations of the
Secret Service Department. Two detectives to unravel the laces. Two
gentlemen, from the Interstate Commission of Harmony-Producers, to
bring the royal feet and royal boots into juxtaposition. Four to incase
the feet in the boots. And, say, half a dozen more to attend to
lacing and polishing. So with everything. An army of chemists to test
one’s toilet waters and perfumes every time one desires a sniff--for
fear some anarchist spy may have dropped poison into them. It becomes
irksome. And, at times, we steal forth secretly, climb the palace
palings, leap across the orchard, open the front gate of our kingdom
and stroll forth, incognito--as you see.”
Corinne gasped “Isn’t it thrilling?”
“Oh, yes,” Rosamond breathed.
Mrs. Witherby was anxious to retrieve herself, feeling that her first
essay had not resulted greatly to her honour. She smiled respectfully
and began again.
“I hope Your Highness will not think me impertinent--but is Your
Highness not related to most of the crowned heads of Europe?”
“You perceive resemblances?”
“Oh, _strong_ ones!” She tossed her head, delighted with herself for
this show of intelligence. “Particularly to the Czar of Russia--and
the King of Spain. Also Emperor William--about the eyes. Those are the
royalties who are most often photographed in the papers. But I daresay
Your Highness resembles all the others, too. I believe you are all
related? One hears that said.”
“We sprang from a common parent, madam.”
Mr. Marks looked about, proudly, and said:
“_Hi_ think ’e looks like the _King of Hengland_.” After a brief pause,
he added patronizingly, “though the hothers is well enough in their
way.”
“I trust Your Highness does not find us deficient in etiquette,” said
Mrs. Witherby. “My late husband’s mother once knew a London lady who
had been to Court.”
“Oh mamma, I’m sure His Highness doesn’t care about etiquette, or he
wouldn’t run away incog,” Corinne expostulated.
“Every Court has its rules of etiquette, my dear, and even royalty must
conform to them.”
Corinne looked disappointed.
“Oh, does Your Highness have to do _just so_--as we do?”
He gave her an affectionate, whimsical glance, and said:
“Yes; but when I put on my crown and climb upon my throne, I write my
own rules of Just So. And, what is more, I make everyone conform to
them. It is not difficult. Because, when they once understand, they
_wish_ to conform; and no other rules will do for them at all.”
“They must be wonderful laws that people _want_ to keep,” Mabel thought.
Rosamond, asking for more fairy tales, said:
“Oh, won’t Your Highness tell us about your country?”
He took her hands lightly, smiling into her eager eyes:
“‘Prince, Prince, how does your garden grow?’ It is a great thing
to be the prince of one’s own little country. There are no prisons;
because there are no criminals. That is because everything is freely
given. Our financial rating is according to what a man has given.” He
looked pointedly at the heiress of the Mearely fortune, and added, “No
one is proud of being _merely_ rich.” She blushed faintly and looked
down, accepting the suggested rebuke. His regard, with its whimsical
seriousness--its blend of humorous comprehension, and confident love,
of human nature--sought Mabel’s, next. “There are no poor; because they
have learned to _love_ while they serve--and that makes them rich.”
He looked at Howard and perhaps he, too, recognized the “product of a
bloodless, stagnant village”--blind only because it had not been shown
light; for there was no sting in his words: “Love is valued above
everything. The love of a girl’s heart is more precious to her lover
than _much gold_.” The lovers’ fingers tightened on each other’s. “And
no one frowns on young chatterboxes or says ‘hush! hush!’”
“Oh--h,” Corinne sighed again in ecstasy.
“There are no gossips in my country. That is because every child
is taught to recite, in its cradle, the articles of the country’s
Constitution. Every infant can say ‘Oo--goo-goo--goog-ly’--which,
when translated, means ‘Mind your own business!’” Mrs. Witherby became
as flustered as if everyone in Roseborough did not know (from hearing
her oft asseverate it) how she despised gossip. The Prince continued:
“Observance of this one law has given perfect domestic, social,
religious, political, and international harmony.”
There was silence for some time after this, while the younger folk, at
least, tried to visualize a country where all these things were true.
Even Mr. Marks was in dreamland, absent-mindedly chewing his hat-brim
and spuffing out the straw chips.
“Hit must be a ’appy neighbour’ood,” he said at last, plaintively. His
Highness gave him a merry look over his shoulder.
“It is,” he said. “All the police are sergeants. They have no weapons.
But the government supplies them with a new cherry ribbon for their
watchfobs every Sunday.”
Marks saluted, grinning bashfully.
“Oh, tell some more,” Corinne urged. “Please Prince, tell some
more--about _you_.”
“Yes,” Rosamond echoed. “Tell some more about you.”
“About me?” He looked past the little group, whose limited and selfish
ideas of human joy and the means to happiness had brought them into
Villa Rose to know envy and suspicion and to call one another names;
and he saw the river and its valley painted by the dawn. Earth and sky
were agleam with the fires that precede the rising sun. The rhythms of
earth’s beauty, flowing to meet and heal the human need, came to his
ear in the lilt of a verse such as a child’s lips might shape, as it
went dancing, barefoot, through the radiant valley.
“I? Why I am....”
I am Prince of the Nameless Land.
I have set my throne on the azure steep,
And rimmed it round with a starry band,
For the hearts that stray and the eyes that weep.
Faith rears my walls o’er a garden slope;
My dreams are camped on the hills of Hope;
White stone is my castle crest.
Peace is my sentry and Mirth my guard,
My gates are wide and my doors unbarred
For the feet of the human guest.
Joy is my sceptre, and Tenderness
The crown on my august brow;
The ring on my finger is Gratitude
To God, who has sealed my vow,
And set his song in my waiting lips,
His love in my writing hand.
And made me Lord of the Things Men Dream--
The Prince of their Nameless Land!
The rosy glow from the sky stole into the room; and, to the Nature-man
and song-maker, it came like music. So Love had come to him there: at
last, the song with words, fitting the measures of its plain telling
to the old rhythms of his daily faith and desire. _She_--the woman--was
the gift to him of all the dawns he had watched alone.
A crashing of hoofs on the hill-road called the singer and his
companions back to Roseborough.
“What rapid riding!” Mrs. Witherby exclaimed. She went to the verandah,
followed by Howard. “Can it be someone coming here?”
“Oh dear!” Corinne sighed. “Roseborough will never see a night like
this again.”
The prince turned to her abruptly.
“What did you say?”
She looked at him, in surprise at his tone.
“I said we’d never have another wonderful night like this in
Roseborough.”
“In _Roseborough_?” he repeated, plainly astonished. “This--this is not
Roseborough?”
“But certainly it is,” Rosamond answered. “I told you so.”
“You told me it was Something Vale. Roseborough!” He stared at her,
blankly. “I’ve been wondering for hours how a house in Something Vale
could look down on just the same bit of the river. How is it that
_you_...? Really,”--he looked in amazement from one to the other--“you
know, it’s very odd to find that I have really been _here_ all the
time!”
“Quite so,” Howard replied, kindly. To Mrs. Witherby he whispered,
tapping his brow significantly. “Charming fellow--His Highness--but
touched.”
“Oh yes!” She agreed, excitedly. “Of course, _I_ saw that at once. But
royalty _is_, you know. They’re all insane. I’ve always heard that.”
The galloping pounded into the driveway and up to the verandah.
“It’s Dr. Frei,” Howard said.
Frei strode rapidly across the porch, his gaze seeking Rosamond. He
wore a long, black, military cloak and a soft black hat. As he swept
off his hat, and let the cloak fall back from his arm, he suggested
a staff-officer in uniform. A sword-glance was flashed in scathing
contempt over all but Mrs. Mearely and the prince. These two were
exempt from his anger, because he could feel nothing but tenderness for
Rosamond; and the prince he had not yet perceived. That distinguished
personage had caught sight of Frei on the verandah and immediately
hidden himself behind the door.
“Rosamond!” He called her name feelingly and made his way rapidly to
her. He kissed her hand. “Fear no longer. _I_ am here.”
“Ah, you have heard of the excitement,” Mrs. Witherby began.
He silenced her with a gesture so commanding, that she continued to
stare at his hand for several seconds afterward. His eyes blazed, his
whole body quivered with the excess of his emotion.
“Yes! I have heard it! First from Herr Ruggle, of the telegraph, when
together we reach for our milk pails on the back of the porch. Then
from Dr. Wells. Finally from everybody! I have heard how this beautiful
Rosamond, of Roseborough, has been suspected, maligned; her reputation
slandered, ruined--_criticized_--_criticized_”--he hissed out the
word with uncontrollable fury--“by you--and you--and you,” snapping
his fingers right and left. “Yes, criticized! and why? why?” Glaring,
he paused for emphasis. “Because a gentleman calls upon her, at his
convenience! What is more natural?” scornfully. “Two--three o’clock
in the morning--these are not _your_ hours for visiting? _No!_ I can
believe that!” with seething contempt. “With you--_with you_--it must
be _just so_. Bah! With me, if I am wakeful and I wish to visit some
friend at three o’clock in the morning, immediately I ring my bell, I
wake everybody, I am dressed, I demand the carriage or the automobile,
or the aeroplane, and I go to visit my friend. I wish to visit, and I
visit! _What is more natural?_ Does the clock rule the inclinations or
the reputations? Absurdity!”
While he drew breath, Rosamond said quickly:
“They know now. It’s all explained.”
“Certainly. _I_ have come to make the explanation. For your sake only.
I detest criticism. I do nothing for people who criticize. If I can
make great trouble for them, I do so. Always. But for you, whose heart
is torn, bleeding, from their criticisms, I make the great sacrifice. I
renounce my incognito. I take you under my protection.”
The word “incognito” is an unusual one to hear bandied about in a
peaceful village like Roseborough, and would be sure to produce its
effect at any time; but hardly such an effect as was produced by Dr.
Frei’s use of it now. Everyone stared at him, then at one another and
back at him; that is, everyone but Mrs. Mearely, who had long ago
convinced herself that Dr. Frei was some noted violin virtuoso who had
come to peaceful Roseborough to recover his health.
His manner changed. The feverish excitement of the furious avenger (on
critics) faded. With lifted head--yet not assertively lifted, but held
high with an hereditary and inbred dignity--and the quiet accents of
habitual and unquestioned authority, he said:
“I am Adam, Prince of Woodseweedsetisky.” He pronounced it as if it
were written Vode-s’-vade-s’-teesky.
There is a common phrase for describing a blank silence after a shock;
“one could have heard a pin drop.” In the silence that filled Villa
Rose, one could feel the temperature drop. In time, Rosamond found her
faculties of speech.
“Er--er--it’s very good of you, Dr. Frei, to attempt
this--er--masquerade for my sake. But my reputation has already been
saved--by Prince Adam of--Woodse....”
“Vode-s’-vade-s’-teesky.”
“Ye--es. The real Prince Adam is here.” She looked about for her prince.
“Hi found ’im. ’Ere’s ’Is ’Ighness--’idin’ up ’ere.”
His Highness, the Vagabond, perforce stepped out of his concealment
into Dr. Frei’s ken. He bowed to him ceremoniously, respectfully, yet
with a sparkle of mirth in his eye.
“This is Prince Adam,” Mrs. Mearely said.
“At your service,” he said, to Frei.
“Ach! no! This is too much!” Frei stormed at him. “The fountain! You
criticized me because the water did not arrive to spout. I put you in
the prison and now you come out and say you are me. Oh no! You are not
me. _Who_ you are, I forget. I purposely forget, because you are of
no importance whatever. But you are not _me_.” He stopped, breathing
heavily and glaring.
“This needs clearing up,” Mrs. Witherby said. She looked at Mrs.
Mearely and her vagabond, and said it very positively.
As if in answer, the thickset figure of Teodor Carl Peter
Lassanavatiewicz stumbled across the porch and into the room. He burst
into sobs at the near view of his Sovereign. He rushed to Frei, fell on
his knees--despite the wound he groaned at--and kissed his hands.
“_Ach! Ich habe Sie gefunden._ It is thou. All night have I in the wet
grass and hard roads waited. But I have fallen asleep.” He caught sight
of the vagabond and exploded, in angry astonishment, “_Der Anarchist!
der Teufel!_”
Frei, deeply moved, looked down upon him.
“Ah--is it thou, my faithful Teodor?” Emotionally, with wet eyes,
he indicated the kneeling figure to the silent group in Villa Rose.
“Always he is searching the world for me! Ah--ah--so faithful! Faithful
Teodor.” He observed a white linen strip about the faithful one’s
nether limb. “You are _wounded_?” he cried, in dismay.
Indignation sounded through the kneeling man’s sobs.
“I--I have been abominably--execrably wounded in the leg.”
“Ah--ah! Poor Teodor.”
“You will go home with me? You will at last marry the Princess Olga,
who adores you?”
“Yes, yes,” soothingly. “We will go home. We will marry her.” He
sighed. “She will say she adores me. She has been well brought up.”
He turned his attention once more to Roseborough and the present.
“Farewell,” he said--his expression was grieved and disdainful--“I
go--without regrets. Here, where I thought was my journey’s end, I have
heard most cruel criticism. It is the world. Everywhere the same. I go
back to my own country, where I can put the critics in the _prison_!”
The vagabond asked meekly:
“If Your Highness will be so kind as to introduce me and vouch for my
respectability--for Mrs. Mearely’s sake....”
Prince Adam bent upon him imperious looks of intense dislike.
“For Mrs. Mearely, nothing is needed. You--and you”--pointing at
the offenders, chief of whom he rightly considered to be Mrs.
Witherby--“destroyed her reputation. But I have given her a new one.
She needs no more. Now, those, who absurdly criticized her, are at her
feet in apologies. They will humble themselves before her always.”
“Nay, Your Highness,” replied the vagabond, who had read the signs more
clearly. In spite of himself, the whimsical strain came uppermost.
“Here also, water will not run uphill--not even to oblige a prince.”
“I say, I do not know you!” Prince Adam thundered, “You are an
anarchist and a critic. From you I have received this false tale of a
place where ‘all hearts are tender and sincere.’ Roseborough! Ah! bah!
You are my evil genius. I repudiate you. Before all, I say I do not
know this man.”
He took Rosamond’s hand and, with profound reverence, kissed it.
“Rosamond,” he repeated her name feelingly, “I cannot take you where
I am going. Besides, now I shall marry Princess Olga, and it is even
possible she would not wish you to be with me. You will remain forever
in my memory--my one true dream, the perfect melody I heard but could
not keep. Farewell.”
He saluted the others distantly. “Madame. Ladies. Herr Howard.” He
marched out with swift step, but stopped suddenly on the verandah,
remembering the wounded Lassanavatiewicz limping behind. “Come,
my Teodor. Come my Teodor. Ah--ah--so faithful.” He put his arm
about his Teodor’s shoulder an instant, as the latter lifted his
bandaged leg over the threshold, an act of condescension which caused
Lassanavatiewicz to weep devotedly. Prince Adam crossed the verandah
and passed from view without a backward glance.
Mr. Marks, alone of those in the living room of Villa Rose, had
comments to make immediately, and his were personal. He was divided
between pleasure at having actually hit Lassanavatiewicz and chagrin at
having only grazed him.
“That’s wot ’appens w’en foreigners goes hup against _Henglish_ guns,”
he said proudly; and, at once, added disappointedly. “But Hi _do_ wish
my _aim_ was better. _Hi_ do wish _that_.”
Thought in Roseborough usually moved like molasses below zero, even
when Roseborough had not been up all night. It should have been easy,
otherwise, for Mrs. Witherby or Mrs. Mearely to identify the pseudo
prince from some of the phrases in the real prince’s tirade against
him. One or two phrases uttered by Prince Adam, however, could not
make Mrs. Mearely forget that she had been deceived; nor could they
enlighten Mrs. Witherby, who found it more enjoyable to revive all her
old suspicions--which dated, and gathered momentum from the absence
of Amanda, Jemima and Blake, and the simultaneous appearance of the
rose-and-silver gown. She recalled the sly jibes she had been obliged
to bear submissively rather than offend Royalty, and her temper flew to
the masthead like a regatta display--all primary colours, and chiefly
red. She hurled her fury first upon the vagabond:
“Oh, the miserable upstart! The thief! The villain! As to _you_, Mrs.
Mearely, let us see if you’ll hold your head high in Roseborough after
the tale I’ll tell. You’ll make a fool of me, will you, with your
‘prince’? Oh, indeed! Let me tell you, you’ll never have a reputation
again. I know you. Trying to escape with such tales. You villain! You
counterfeiter! Oh! When I think how I’ve scraped and kow-towed to you!”
She concluded with a direct attack upon the mock prince, even as she
had begun.
“_’Im_ thinkin’ ’e looks like the _King of Hengland_!” Officer Marks
was bellicose about that delusion. “’E’s a _himpostor_!”
The vagabond was prevented from offering a third interpretation of
himself by Mrs. Lee’s advent. She came in, all tender distress, and put
her arms about Rosamond as if to protect something precious to herself.
“Oh, my dear. You are all right, unhurt? Susannah Potts stopped just
now, and told me of your fright--the excitement--and, oh, such a tale!
She was on her way to do a day’s cleaning at the Kilroys, and saw me in
my garden, and told me that Maria had sat up in a bedquilt all night at
the telephone, and had rung your number twenty-nine times! When one has
no telephone one misses a great deal. But you should have sent someone
to wake me. It was just your sweet thoughtfulness, not to break an old
woman’s sleep.” She patted Rosamond’s cheek.
The vagabond had watched her, from the moment of her appearance, with
affectionate eyes. He stepped forward now. Sixteen years had changed
him--turned a long, slender boy into a compact broad-shouldered man,
written in his face much more than the simple tales of the First
Primer. Had they met on the road, she might not have known him. It
was not his outward person that she recognized now; but she knew that
attitude of head held forward and bent in humility; hands thrust deep
into coat pockets, and black eyes, apparently downcast, but in reality
gleaming through half-closed lids, while he mutely asked pardon for
some outrageous prank, and at the same time flashed the impudent news
that he would not undo it if he could, no, not for a wilderness of
monkeys.
“Who _was_ the dreadful man,” Mrs. Lee was asking when she caught sight
of him. “Why--who--who? Jack! Jack, my dear boy--Oh, my dear boy.” She
went to him with open arms and embraced him and crooned over him.
“Yes, Mother Lee. I’m home again.” He kissed her cheek. “But you didn’t
tell me that you don’t live _here_ any more! So it was I, Mother Lee. I
was the tramp.”
“Oh Jack!” she laughed happily, though her eyes were wet. “And then
you told some story and kept it up. Just the same, naughty Jack.” She
held his arm in hers as she beamed delightedly at the others. “So now
you all know one another, and I needn’t make any introductions. And see
how wonderfully it came about, too--just as I longed to have it, Mrs.
Mearely! My Jack and Roseborough met without knowing that they were
Jack Falcon and Roseborough, and so they found out each other’s true
selves at once. How beautiful!”
She was leaning to gaze into his face with loving look, and so did not
see that everyone, but Corinne, sought some spot for view where eyes
would not be encountered. Constable Marks, having no cause for moral
sensitiveness, put his battered straw hat on and took it off again in
punctilious greeting to the new arrival.
“Hi’m ’appy to welcome you ’ome, Sir. Hi’ll be goin’ along, now, to
tell Mrs. Marks as ’ow Hi was almost the _first_ to greet you. She
halways ’as a ’ankerin’ to see me prominent.” He drew out his watch.
“Nigh on my breakfast time.”
“Good day, _sergeant_,” Falcon called after him, good humouredly.
Constable Halfred Marks grinned sheepishly and departed.
Presently Mabel gave words to the thought in everyone’s mind, but Mrs.
Lee’s and Corinne’s. She said:
“And we’ve all got to live here _knowing each other_!”
“Won’t that be wholesome?” Falcon said cheerily.
Corinne could contain herself no longer.
“Oh Goody! Oh, to think the prince is going to stay in Roseborough!
Prince Falcon! And, oh, Mrs. Lee, Mabel’s going to marry Mr.
Howard--at _last_!”
“Oh, how glad I am!” Mrs. Lee embraced Mabel. “Two dear young people.
Such an unselfish girl, always labouring for dear aunt Emma and
Corinne. How often I’ve prayed, ‘May that sweet, unselfish girl get a
good husband.’” She shook hands with Howard.
“I--I didn’t know anybody ever noticed me,” Mabel answered, with
quivering lip.
“How glad our dear Mrs. Witherby must be. I know what joy she feels.
She is always more interested in others than in her own affairs.”
Mrs. Witherby hunted for her handkerchief, sniffling with unexpected
emotion, and faltered:
“Her father was my favourite brother--my favourite.”
“And now you’ll all meet at breakfast as dear friends, and not
strangers. But that is the spirit of Roseborough. Jack, perhaps you’ll
find that all your wandering has only led you safely home. Somewhere,
dear boy, even you must find your end-of-journeying. You remember the
words: ‘Dear Roseborough, to every seeker of harmony thou art his
end-of-journeying; to every wanderer, his home’?”
“My ‘end-of-journeying’!” he repeated, and looked at Rosamond, who had
stolen away from the room to the verandah.
The golden light of the risen sun filled the open spaces of the garden
and sought for chinks and window holes in the great elms, through which
to send its warm yellow shafts into Villa Rose. Falcon went out to the
railing, and looked down. The sun was splashing all the hillside with
glory; and the river flowed like golden glass.
Mrs. Witherby was repeating something she had evolved, at last, as the
perfect explanation of “all our little mistakes last night.”
“If only it hadn’t happened in the _night_! I’m sure _I_ would _never_
have thought--I’m the _last_ person to.... But when things happen _in
the night_!”
Mrs. Lee had joined her boy on the verandah. She pointed to the
sunlight that now burst through the elms in a dozen places.
“But the night is past,” she said comfortingly.
Rosamond, lifting her face to let the midsummer morning sky shower its
splendour on her, echoed softly:
“Yes--the night is past.”
Falcon turned to her. He heard the secret call in her low note, the
human undertone of the high wind-swung song of the nests.
Their eyes met. Their youth--and the joy and the hope of it--leaped in
them, and they smiled wonderingly at each other.
With a buoyant, compelling movement Falcon went to her, under her
golden leaf-laced veil of sun, and gripped her hand in the firm, warm
clasp of a comrade who has sought long and will never let go of the
mate he has found.
“Night _is_ past--_Good-morning, Rosamond_!”
They laughed for sheer gladness.
THE END
[Illustration]
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
* * * * * *
Transcriber’s note:
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unpaired
quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of
inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed.
Most commas at the ends of paragraphs and sentences have been changed
to periods. Occasional missing periods and commas have been restored.
The Table of Contents was added by the Transcriber and placed in the
Public Domain.
Page 92: Transcriber added the colon in “Poor man:”, as the print at
that point was incomplete.
Page 117: “I except to see ninety” was printed that way; may be a
typographical error for “expect”.
Page 193: “asked many question, about” was printed in the singular.
Page 227: “gloves from the settie” was printed that way; probably
should be “settie”.