II

Miss Harriet's house, called by Old Chester children "The

Stuffed-Animal House," was on the hill-road a stone's-throw beyond the

burial-ground. It was of weather-worn brick, and its white lintels,

carved in thin festoons of fruit and flowers, were nearly hidden by ivy

that stretched dark figures over the marble, and, thickening with the

years across the tops of the windows, made the rooms within dim with

wavering leaf shadows. A brick path, damp and faintly green with moss,

ran down to a green gate set in a ragged privet hedge that was always

dusty and choked with dead twigs. The house itself was so shaded by

horse-chestnuts that grass refused to grow in the door-yard. A porch

shadowed the front door, which opened into a dark, square hall, full of

dim figures that hung from the ceiling and stood in cases against the

walls. A dusty crocodile stretched overhead, almost the width of the

hall; a shark, with varnished belly splitting a little under one fin

and showing a burst of cotton, lurked in a dim corner; over the parlor

door a great snake, coiled about a branch, looked down with glittering,

yellow eyes; and along the walls were cases of very beautiful birds,

their plumage dulled now, for it was forty years since Miss Harriet's

father had made his collection. But all around the hall were

glistening eyes that stared and stared, until sometimes an Old Chester

child, clinging to a mother's protecting hand, felt sure they moved,

and that in another moment the crocodile's jaws would snap together, or

the eagle's wings would flap horribly in the darkness.

Yet there was an awful joy to Old Chester youth in being allowed to

accompany a mother when she made a polite call on Miss Harriet. This

hall, that was dark and still and full of the smell of dead fur and

feathers and some acrid preservative, had all the fascination of

horror. If we were very good we were allowed to walk from case to case

with old Miss Annie, while our mothers sat in the parlor and talked to

Miss Harriet. Miss Annie could not tell us much of the creatures in

the cases, and for all she used to laugh and giggle just as we did, she

never really knew how to play that the hall was a desert island and the

wild beasts were lurking in the forest to fall upon us.

"It isn't a forest, it's our front hall," Miss Annie would say; "and

you must do what I tell you, because I'm the oldest, and I don't want

to play desert island. But I'll show you my chickens," she would add,

with eager politeness.

Sometimes, if Miss Annie were not in the room, we would hear Miss

Harriet tell some story about her mischievousness, and our mothers

would sigh and smile and say, "Poor dear!" Our mothers never said

"poor dear!" about us when we did such things. If one of us Old

Chester children had spoken out in church as Miss Harriet said Miss

Annie did once, and told Dr. Lavendar that he was telling a story when

he read in the morning lesson that the serpent talked to

Eve--"because," said Miss Annie, "snakes can't talk"--if we had done

such a dreadful thing, we should have been taken home and whipped and

sent to bed without any supper, and probably the whole of the third

chapter of Genesis to learn by heart. We should not have been "poor

things!" This was very confusing to Old Chester youth until we grew

older and understood. Then, instead of being puzzled, we shrunk a

little and stayed close to our mothers, listening to Miss Harriet's

stories of Miss Annie with strange interest and repulsion, or staring

furtively at the little old woman, who laughed often and had a way of

running about like a girl, and of smoothing back her gray hair from her

temples with a fluttering gesture, and of putting up her lip and crying

when she was angry or frightened or when she saw anything being hurt.

Miss Annie could never bear to see anything hurt; she would not let us

kill spiders, and she made us walk in the grass instead of on the brick

path, because the ants came up between the bricks, and she was afraid

we would step on them.

"Annie is very kind-hearted," Miss Harriet used to tell our mothers.

"She can't bear my traps."

Miss Harriet's traps were her passion; her interest in taxidermy had

come to her from her father, and though she had not been able to add

anything of real value to Mr. Hutchinson's collection, her work was

thoroughly well done; and she even made a fair sum of money each year

by sending her squirrels and doves to town for the Christmas trade.

But more important than the money was the wholesome out-of-door life

her little business entailed, which had given her her vigorous body and

sane mind. She needed both to live with this gray-haired woman, whose

mind was eleven or twelve years old. It was not a bad mind for eleven

or twelve, Willy King used to say. Old Miss Annie had a sort of crude

common-sense; she could reason and determine as well as any other

twelve-year-old child--indeed, with an added shrewdness of experience

that sixty years of bodily age made inevitable. She knew, innocently,

much of life that other children were guarded from knowing; she knew

death, too, but with no horror--perhaps as we were meant to know

it--something as natural as life itself, and most of all as a release

from pain. For old Annie knew pain and feared it as only the body in

which the soul is not awake can fear it. She wept at the sight of

blood and moaned when she heard a squirrel squeak in the trap; she

shivered with passionate expectation of relief when Miss Harriet's

kindly chloroform brought peace to fluttering wings or beating claws.

When some soft, furry creature, hurt in the trap, relaxed into happy

sleep in the thick, sweet smell that came out of Miss Harriet's big

bottle, Miss Annie would laugh for joy, the tears of misery still wet

upon her wrinkled cheeks.

"Don't come into my shop," Miss Harriet used to say, laughing and

impatient, when Miss Annie would follow her into the room in the barn

where she did her work--"don't come in here, and then you won't see

things that hurt your feelings."

But Annie, smoothing her hair back from her temples with a curious,

girlish gesture, would only shake her head and sidle closer to her

sister, the young, guileless eyes in the withered face full of protest

and appeal. Her horror of pain lost Miss Harriet many a fine specimen;

for, in her pity for the trapped creatures, Annie, noiselessly, like

some Indian hunter, used to follow on her sister's footsteps through

the woods, lifting the baits out of the traps, or if she found a snared

creature unhurt, letting it go, and then creeping home, frightened at

Miss Harriet's anger, which, if she discovered the old child's

naughtiness, fell like a thunderbolt, and then cleared into patient

amusement, as a black shower brightens into sunshine. The big, kind

woman with a man's mind could not be angry at this poor creature; so

she did her duty by her and tried not to think about her. She went her

way, and set her traps, and prepared her few specimens, brushing Annie

or any other annoyance aside with careless good-nature.

"Don't think about unpleasant things," she used to say, in her loud,

cheerful voice. "The trouble with you doctors and ministers," she told

Dr. Lavendar, "is that you make people think about their insides. It's

stomachs with Willy and souls with you. Nobody ought to know that they

have a stomach or a soul. I don't. A tree don't. And there isn't an

oak in Old Chester that isn't pleasanter than Mrs. Drayton. Yet she's

always fussing about her insides--spiritual and material."

"It's when you don't have 'em that you fuss," Dr. Lavendar said; "the

trouble isn't too much soul, it's too little. And I guess it's the

same with stomachs."

"Then you say Mrs. Drayton has no soul?" Miss Harriet said, pleasantly.

"I never said anything of the sort," said Dr. Lavendar.

As for Miss Harriet, she went on to Willy King's office, prepared, as

usual, to make him as uncomfortable as she could. But she never put

Willy out. Her flings at his profession tickled him immensely, and if

now and then the good, honest William practised, as Miss Harriet said,

a few of the tricks of his trade, he was not averse to sharing their

humor with some one who could appreciate it.

"So you have that Drayton cat on your hands again?" Miss Harriet said,

plumping herself down in William's own chair in front of his office

table so that she could pick up and examine what she called his

"riffraff." ("Do open your windows, William. I don't see how you can

be so shut up. Po-o-o! how can people live so much in-doors?")

"Well," said William, doing as he was bid, "she enjoys my visits and I

enjoy her checks. I don't complain."

"That's like the profession," said Miss Harriet; "you put your hands in

our pockets whenever you get a chance. Well, you'll get nothing out of

my pocket, William, for there's nothing in it."

"Miss Harriet," said William, chuckling--"you won't tell anybody, will

you? But Mrs.--well, I won't name names; that's not professional--"

"Call her a 'Female,'" said Miss Harriet.

"Well, a Female sent for me on Tuesday, in a dreadful hurry; I must

come, 'right off! quick!' I was just sitting down to breakfast, but of

course I ran--"

"Martha must have been pleased?"

"I ran; and arrived, winded. There was--the Female, at _her_

breakfast. 'Oh,' she said, 'doctor, the baby has slept right through

from six last night, and he hasn't wakened up yet. I am afraid there

is something the matter with his little brain.'"

"William, if you didn't say that there was something the matter with

_her_ little brain--"

"I didn't," William said, grimly, "because she hasn't any. Now, Miss

Harriet, let's talk about yourself; it's pleasanter."

"Oh, there was not the slightest occasion to come to see you. But I

said I would, and here I am. I suppose you'll send me a bill as long

as my arm. Do you have a system of charges, Willy? So much for a look

over your glasses? So much for that solemn cough? I suppose you grade

all your tricks. Now work off the most expensive ones on me; I propose

to get the worth of my money, young man."

"Thought you said you weren't going to pay any bills?" William reminded

her; and then refused to be side-tracked any longer, but asked question

after question, bringing her up once or twice with a sharp turn.

"Don't joke now, please, Miss Harriet. Be as exact as you can. Is

this condition thus, or so--?" And when he got through with his

questions, he took up the joking rather heavily.

"You're so faithless about pills," he said, "that I'm not going to give

you any."

"What! no pills?" said Miss Harriet.

William King laughed awkwardly. "Not a pill! I don't see any

condition which warrants them: but--"

"What did I tell you? There's nothing the matter, and you just dragged

me here to give your office a busy look."

"I didn't suppose you'd see through it," said Willy King. "But, Miss

Harriet, I--I don't feel _quite_ satisfied. I--do you know I've a

great mind to get a man in Mercer to look you over? I want you to go

up with me to-morrow and see him."

"Nonsense!"

"No, truly," he said; "I am not satisfied, Miss Harriet."

"But what do you mean?" she insisted, sharply. "There's nothing the

matter with me. You said yourself I didn't need any medicine. Give me

some opiate to stop this--this discomfort when it comes on, and I'll be

all right."

"You can't bear opiates," he said, bluntly; "your heart won't stand

them. Don't you remember the time you broke your ankle and I tried

morphine--a baby dose--to give you some relief? You gave me a scare, I

can tell you."

Miss Harriet was silent. Then: "I've known my heart wasn't right for

two years. But--"

"Oh, your heart doesn't give me any concern--if you don't take

liberties with it. Perhaps it isn't quite as good as it was thirty

years ago, but--"

"Ah, I lost it to you then, Willy. You were a sweet little fellow when

you came into my class. Do you remember once when--"

"Miss Harriet, you've got to go to Mercer with me to-morrow," William

King interrupted, quietly. "I hope there's nothing much out of the

way. I hope not. I--I believe not. But I'm not sure. We'll go up

and see Greylord and find out. He'll give you some pills, maybe," he

ended, and laughed and got up. "Now I'm off to the cat, Miss Harriet."

And Miss Harriet, to her astonishment, found herself dismissed before

she had made the boy tell her what he was afraid of. "He _is_ a boy,"

she said to herself. "Of course he wouldn't be apt to know what was

the matter. I ought to have gone to see some Mercer man to begin with.

I remember when Willy was born."