"Ah," he said. "Well, I have ordered her not to talk. But does she ask any

questions?" he continued.

"No," I said; "not of me. She has not asked one."

I saw then that the same vague fear which was filling my heart was taking

shape in his.

From that moment, he watched her hourly, with an anxiety which soon

betrayed itself to my aunt.

"William, why does not Annie get stronger?" she said suddenly to him one

day.

"I do not know why," he answered, with a solemn sadness and emphasis in

his tone which was, as I think, he intended it to be, a partial revelation

to her, and a warning. Aunt Ann staggered to a chair and looked at him

without a word. He answered her look by one equally agonized and silent,

and left the room.

The baby was now two weeks old. Annie was no stronger than on the day of

his birth. She lay day and night in a tranquil state, smiling with

inexpressible sweetness when she was spoken to, rarely speaking of her own

accord, doing with gentle docility all she was told to do, but looking

more and more like a transfigured saint. All the arch, joyous, playful

look was gone; there was no added age in the look which had taken its

place; neither any sorrow; but something ineffably solemn, rapt, removed

from earth. Sometimes, when Edward came to her bedside, a great wave of

pitying tenderness would sweep over her face, giving it such a heavenly

look that he would fall on his knees.

"O Helen," he said once, after such a moment as this, "I shall go mad if

Annie does not get well. I do not dare to kiss even her hand. I feel as if

she never had been mine."

At last the day and the hour and the moment came which I had known would

come. Annie spoke to me in a very gentle voice, and said,--

"Helen, darling, you know I am going to die?"

"Yes dear, I think so," I said, in as quiet a voice as hers.

"You know it is better that I should, darling?" she said with a trembling

voice.

"Yes, dear, I know it," I replied.

She drew a long sigh of relief. "I am so glad, darling; I thought you knew

it, but I could not be sure. I think no one else understands. I hope dear

mamma will never suspect. You will not let her, if you can help it, the

dear doctor will not tell her; he knows, though. Darling, I want you to

have my baby. I think Edward will be willing. He is so young, he will be

happy again before long; he will not miss him. You know we have always

said it was partly your baby. Look at his eyes now, Helen," she said,

turning the little face towards me, and into a full light.

I started. I had never till that moment seen in them a subtle resemblance

to the eyes of George Ware. We had said that the baby had his mother's

eyes--so he had; but there had always been a likeness between Annie's eyes

and George's though hers were light-blue, and his of a blue so dark that

it was often believed to be black. All the Wares had a very peculiar

luminousness of the eye; it was so marked a family trait that it had

passed into almost proverbial mention, in connection with the

distinguished beauty of the family. "The Ware eye" was always

recognizable, no matter what color it had taken from the admixture of

other blood.

At that moment I saw, and I knew that Annie had seen, that the baby's eyes

were not so much like her own as like the deeper, sadder, darker eyes of

her cousin--brave, hopeless, dear George, who was toiling under the sun of

India, making a fortune for he knew not whom.

We neither of us spoke; presently the little unconscious eyes closed in

sweet sleep, and Annie went on, holding him close to her heart.

"You see, dear, poor mamma will not be able to bear seeing him after I

die. Common mothers would love him for my sake. But mamma is not like

other women. She will come very soon where I am, poor mamma; and then you

will have to take papa home to your house, and papa will have comfort in

little Henry. But he must be your baby, Helen. I shall speak to Edward

about it soon."

She was not strong enough to talk long. She shed no tears, however, and

looked as calm as if she were telling me of pleasant plans for a coming

earthly summer. I also was perfectly calm, and felt strangely free from

sorrow. Her absolute spirituality bore me up. It was as if I spoke with

her in heaven, thousands of centuries after all human perplexities had

passed away.

After this day she grew rapidly weaker. She had no pain. There was not a

single physical symptom in her case which the science of medicine could

name or meet. There was literally nothing to be done for her. Neither

tonic nor stimulant produced the least effect. She was noiselessly sinking

out of life, as very old people sometimes die, without a single jar, or

shock, or struggle. Her beautiful serenity and entire freedom from

suffering blinded Aunt Ann's eyes to the fact that she was dying. This was

a great mercy, and we were all careful not by a word or look to rouse her

to the truth. To all her mother's inquiries Annie invariably replied,

"Better, dear mamma, better, only very weak," and Aunt Ann believed,

until the very last, that the spring would make her well again.

Edward Neal's face during these weeks was like the face of a man lost in a

trackless desert, seeking vainly for some sign of road to save his life.

Sickness and death were as foreign to the young, vital, irrepressible

currents of his life, as if he had been a bird or an antelope. But it was

not now with him the mere bewildered grief of a sensuous animal nature,

such as I should have anticipated that his grief would be. He dimly felt

the truth, and was constantly terrified by it. He came into Annie's

presence more and more reverently each day. He gazed speechlessly into her

eyes, which rested on him always with angelic compassion and tenderness,

but with no more look of human wifely thought than if he and she were

kneeling side by side before God's white throne. Sometimes he dared not

touch even so much as the hand on which his own wedding-ring rested.

Sometimes he would kneel by the bedside and bury his face and weep like a

little child. Then he would throw himself on his horse and gallop away and

not come home until twilight, when he was always found on Annie's lounge

in the library. One night when I went to him there he said, in a tone so

solemn that the voice did not sound like his,--

"Helen, there is something I do not understand about Annie. Do people

always seem so when they are going to die? I do not dare to ask her if she

loves me. I feel just as much awe of her as if she had been in heaven. It

seems sometimes as if I must be going mad, for I do not feel in the least

as if she had ever been my wife."

"She never has, poor boy," I thought, but I only stroked his hair and

said nothing; wondering in my heart at the certainty with which in all

natures love knows how to define, conquer, reclaim his own.

The day before Annie died she asked for her jewel-case, and spent several

hours in looking over its contents and telling me to whom they should be

given. I observed that she seemed to be searching uneasily for something

she could not find.

"What is it, dear?" I said. She hesitated for a secondhand then replied,--

"Only a little ring I had when I was a girl."

"When you were a girl, my darling!" I exclaimed. She smiled gently and

said,--

"I feel like an old woman now. Oh, here it is," she added, and held it out

to me to open for her the tiny padlock-shaped locket which hung from it.

It had become so tightly fastened together that it was with great

difficulty I could open it. When I did so, I saw lying in the hollow a

little ring of black hair, and I remembered that Annie had worn the ring

when she was twelve years old.

She asked me to cut a few of the silky hairs from the baby's head, and

then one little curl from her own, and laying them with the other, she

shut the locket and asked for a piece of paper and pencil. She wrote one

word with great difficulty, folded the ring in the paper, wrote another

word on the outside, and laid it in a corner of the jewel-case. Then she

sank back on the pillows, and slipping her left hand under her cheek said

she was very tired, and almost instantly fell into a gentle sleep. She did

not wake until twilight. I was to sleep on the lounge in her room that

night, and when she woke I was preparing it.

"Darling," she said, "could you sleep as well in my big chair, which can

be tipped back?"

"Certainly, sweet," I said; "but why?"

"Because that can be drawn up so much nearer me; it will be like sleeping

together."

At nine o'clock the nurse brought the baby in and laid him in Annie's

bosom, sound asleep. Annie would not let him lie anywhere else, and was so

grieved at any remonstrance, that the doctor said she must be indulged in

the desire. When she was awake and was not speaking to us, her eyes never

left the baby's face.

She turned over, with her face to the chair in which I lay, and reached

out her left hand towards me. I took it in mine, and so, with our hands

clasped above the little sleeping baby, we said "good-night" to each

other.

"I feel much better to-night than I have for some days, dear Helen," she

said; "I should not wonder if we all three slept until morning."

Very soon I saw that she was asleep. I watched her face for a long time;

it was perfectly colorless and very thin, and yet there was not a look of

illness on it. The ineffable serenity, the holy peace, made it look like

the face of one who had been transfigured, translated; who had not known

and who never could know any death. I cannot account for the sweet calm

which I felt through all these weeks. I shed no tears; I did not seem even

to sorrow. I accepted all, as Annie herself accepted it, without wonder,

without murmur. During the long hours of this last night I lived over

every hour of her precious, beautiful life, as I had known and shared it,

until the whole seemed to me one fragrant and perfect flower, ready to be

gathered and worn in the bosom of angels. At last I fell asleep.

I was wakened by a low murmur from the baby, who stirred uneasily. Annie's

hand was still locked in mine; as I sought to disengage it cautiously, I

felt, with a sudden horror, that the fingers were lifeless. I sprang to my

feet and bent over her; she did not breathe. Out of that sweet sleep her

body had passed into another which would know no waking, and her soul had

awakened free. Slowly I withdrew the little sleeping baby from her arms

and carried it to the nurse. Then I went to Dr. Fearing's room; he had

slept in the house for a week; I found him dressed, but asleep on a

lounge. He had lain in this way, he told me, for four nights, expecting

that each would be the last. When I touched him on the shoulder he opened

his eyes, without surprise or alarm, and said,--

"Did she wake?"

"No," I replied, and that was all.

The day was just breaking: as the dark gray and red tints cleared and

rolled away, and left a pale yellow sky, the morning star, which I could

see from Annie's bedside, faded and melted in the pure ether. Even while I

was looking at it it vanished, and I thought that, like it, Annie's bright

soul, disappearing from my sight, had blended in Eternal Day.

* * * * *

This was four years ago. My Aunt Ann died, as Annie had said she would,

in a very few months afterward. My uncle came, a broken and trembling man,

to live with us, and Edward Neal gladly gave his little son into my hands,

as Annie had desired. He went abroad immediately, finding it utterly

impossible to bear the sight of the scenes of his lost happiness. He came

back in two years, bringing a bright young wife with him, a sunny-haired

English girl, who, he said, was so marvelously like Annie. She is like the

Annie whom he knew!

Every day their baby boy is brought to our house to see his brother; but I

think two children of one name never before looked so unlike.

My little Henry is the centre of his grandfather's life and of mine. He is

a pensive child, and has never been strong; but his beauty and sweetness

are such that we often tremble when we look in his face and remember

Annie.

George Ware is still in India. Every ship brings brave sweet letters, and

gifts for the baby. I sent him the little paper which I found in the

corner of Annie's jewel-case, bearing his name. I knew that it was for him

when I saw her feeble hands laying the baby's hair and hers together in

the locket.

In November Annie's grave is snowy with white chrysanthemums. She loved

them better than any other flowers, and I have made the little hillock

almost into a thicket of them.

In George Ware's last letter he wrote:--

"When the baby is ten years old I shall come home. He will not need me

till then; till then, he is better in your hands alone; after that I can

help you."

The One-Legged Dancers.

Very early one morning in March, ten years ago, I was sitting alone on one

of the crumbling ledges of the Coliseum: larks were singing above my head;

wall-flowers were waving at my feet; a procession of chanting monks was

walking slowly around the great cross in the arena below. I was on the

highest tier, and their voices reached me only as an indistinct wail, like

the notes of a distant Aeolian harp; but the joyous sun and sky and songs,

were darkened and dulled by their presence. A strange sadness oppressed

me, and I sank into a deep reverie. I do not know how long I had been

sitting there, when I was suddenly roused by a cry of pain, or terror, and

the noise of falling stones. I sprang to my feet and, looking over, saw a

young and beautiful woman lying fearfully near the edge of one of the most

insecure of the projecting ledges on the tier below me--the very one from

which I had myself nearly fallen, only a few days before, in stretching

over after some asphodels which were beyond my reach.

I ran down as fast as possible, but when I reached the spot she had

fainted, and was utterly unconscious. She was alone; I could see no other

human being in the Coliseum. The chanting monks had gone; even the

beggars had not yet come. I tried in vain to rouse her. She had fallen so

that the hot sun was beating full on her face. I dared not leave her

there, for her first unconscious movement might be such that she would

fall over the edge. But I saw that she must have shade and water, or die.

Every instant she grew whiter and her lips looked more rigid. I shouted

aloud, and only the echoes answered me, as if in mockery. A little lark

suddenly flew out from a tuft of yellow wall-flower close by, and burst

into a swift carol of delight as he soared away. At last, with great

efforts, I succeeded in dragging her, by her feet--for I dared not venture

out so far as the spot on which her head lay--to a safer place, and into

the partial shade of a low bush. As I did this, one of her delicate hands

was scratched and torn on the rough stones, and drops of blood came to the

surface. In the other hand were crushed a few spikes of asphodel, the very

flowers, no doubt, which had lured me so near the same dangerous brink. It

seemed impossible to go away and leave her, but it was cruel to delay. My

feet felt like lead as I ran along those dark galleries and down the stone

flights of giddy stairs. Just in the entrance stood one of those

pertinacious sellers of old coins and bits of marble. I threw down a piece

of silver on his little stand, seized a small tin basin in which he had

his choicest coins, emptied them on the ground, and saying, in my poor

Italian, "Lady--ill--water," I had filled the basin at the old stone

fountain near by, and was half way up the first flight of stairs again,

before he knew what had happened.

When I reached the place where I had left the beautiful stranger she was

not there. Unutterable horror seized me. Had I, after all, left her too

near that crumbling edge? I groaned aloud and turned to run down. A feeble

voice stopped me--a whisper rather than a voice, for there was hardly

strength to speak,--

"Who is there?"

"Oh, thank God," I exclaimed, "you are not dead!" and I sprang to the next

of the cross corridors, from which the sound had come.

She was there, sitting up, leaning against the wall. She looked almost

more terrified than relieved when she saw me. I bathed her face and hands

in the water, and told her how I had found her insensible, and had drawn

her away from the outer edge before I had gone for the water. She did not

speak for some moments, but looked at me earnestly and steadily, with

tears standing in her large blue eyes.

Then she said, "I did not know that any one but myself ever came to the

Coliseum so early. I thought I should die here alone; and Robert was not

willing I should come."

"I owe you my life," she added, bursting into hysterical crying.

Then in a few moments she half laughed, as if at some droll thought, and

said, "But how could you drag me? You are not nearly so big as I am. The

angels must have helped you;" and holding up the poor crushed asphodels,

she went on: "As soon as I came to myself, I saw the asphodels in my hand,

and I said, 'Asphodel for burial;' and tried to throw them away, so that

if Robert came he would not find me dead with them in my hand, for only

yesterday he said to me, 'Please never pick an asphodel--I can't bear to

see you touch one.'"

Slowly I soothed her and she recovered her color and strength. The owner

of the basin, followed by a half-dozen chattering vetturini, had climbed

up to us, but we had peremptorily sent them all away. It was evident that

she was not seriously hurt. The terror, rather than the fall, had caused

her fainting. It was probably a sudden dizziness which had come as she

drew back and turned after picking the flowers. Had she fallen in the act

of picking them she must have been dashed to the ground below. At the end

of an hour she was so nearly well, that she walked slowly down the long

stairs, leaning on my arm, and taking frequent rests by the way. I was

about to beckon to one of the vetturini, when she said, "Oh no! my own

carriage is near here, up by the gate of the Palace of the Cæsars. I

rambled on, without thinking at first of coming to the Coliseum: it will

do me good to walk back; every moment of the air makes me feel better."

So we went slowly on, up the solemn hill, arm in arm like friends, sitting

down now and then on old fallen columns to rest, and looking back at the

silent, majestic ruins, which were brightened almost into a look of life

under the vivid sun. My companion spoke little; the reaction after her

fearful shock had set in; but every few moments her beautiful eyes would

fill with tears as she looked in my face and pressed my arm. I left her at

her apartment on the Via Felice; my own was a mile farther on, in the

Piazza del Popolo, and I would not let her drive so far.

"It grieves me not to go with you to your door," she said, as she bade me

good-bye, "but I shall come and see you to-morrow and bring my husband."

"No, you must not," I replied. "To-morrow you will be wise enough--or, if

you are not wise enough, you will be kind enough to me because I ask

it--to lie in bed all day, and I shall come very early in the morning to

see how you are."

She turned suddenly on the carriage-steps, and, leaning both her hands on

my knees, exclaimed, in a voice full of emotion.

"Will you let me kiss you? Not even my mother gave me what you have given.

For you have given me back life, when it was too infinitely precious to

lose. Surely you will not think me presuming?" and her cheek flushed a

little.

"Presuming! my dear child, I loved you the first moment I saw you lying

there on the stones; and I am almost old enough to be your mother, too," I

replied, and I kissed her sweet face warmly.

This was the beginning of my acquaintance and friendship with Dora

Maynard.

At eleven o'clock the next morning I went to see her. I was shown into a

room, whose whole air was so unlike that of a Roman apartment, that I

could scarcely believe I had not been transported to English or American

soil. In spite of its elegance, the room was as home-like and cozy as if

it nestled in the Berkshire hills or stood on Worcestershire meadows. The

windows were heavily curtained, and the furniture covered with gay chintz

of a white ground, with moss-rose buds thickly scattered over it between

broad stripes of rose-pink. The same chintz was fluted all around the

cornice of the room, making the walls look less high and stately; the

doorways, also, were curtained with it. Great wreaths and nodding masses

of pampas grass were above the doors; a white heron and a rose-colored

spoonbill stood together on a large bracket in one corner, and a huge gray

owl was perched on what looked like a simple old apple-tree bough, over an

inlaid writing-table which stood at an odd slant near one of the windows.

Books were everywhere--in low swinging shelves, suspended by large green

cords with heavy tassels; on low bracket shelves, in unexpected places,

with deep green fringes or flutings of the chintz; in piles on Moorish

stools or old Venice chests. Every corner looked as if somebody made it a

special haunt and had just gone out. On a round mosaic table stood an

exqusite black-and-gilt Etruscan patera filled with white anemones; on

another table near by stood a silver one filled with the same flowers,

pink and yellow. Each was circled round the edge with fringing masses of

maiden-hair fern. Every lounge and chair had a low, broad foot-stool

before it, ruffled with the chintz; and in one corner of the room were a

square pink and white and green Moorish rug, with ten or a dozen

chintz-covered pillows, piled up in a sort of chair-shaped bed upon it,

and a fantastic ebony box standing near, the lid thrown back, and

battledoors and shuttlecocks, and many other gay-colored games, tossed in

confusion. The walls were literally full of exquisite pictures; no very

large or rare ones, all good for every-day living; some fine old

etchings, exquisite water-colors, a swarthy Campagna herds-boy with a

peacock feather and a scarlet ribbon in his black hat, and for a

companion-picture, the herds-boy of the mountains, fair, rosy, standing

out on a opaline snow-peak, with a glistening Edelweiss in his hand;

opposite these a large picture of Haag's, a camel in the desert, the Arab

wife and baby in a fluttering mass of basket and fringe and shawl and

scarf, on his back; the Arab father walking a few steps in advance,

playing on musical pipes, his tasseled robe blowing back in the wind; on

one side of this a Venice front, and on another a crag of Norway pines;

here and there, small leaves of photographs from original drawings by the

old masters, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian, and Luini; and everywhere, in all

possible and impossible places, flowers and vines. I never saw walls so

decorated. Yellow wall-flowers waved above the picture of the Norway

pines; great scarlet thistles branched out each side of the Venetian

palace; cool maiden-hair ferns seemed to be growing all around the glowing

crimson and yellow picture of the Arabs in the Desert. Afterward I learned

the secret of this beautiful effect; large, flat, wide-mouthed bottles,

filled with water, were hung on the backs of the picture frames, and in

these the vines and flowers were growing; only a worshipper of flowers

would have devised this simple method of at once enshrining them, and

adorning the pictures.

In one of the windows stood a superbly-carved gilt table, oblong, and with

curiously-twisted legs which bent inward and met a small central shelf

half-way between the top and the floor, then spread out again into four

strange claw-like vases, which bore each two golden lilies standing

upright. On this stood the most singular piece of wood-carving I ever saw.

It was of very light wood, almost yellow in tint; it looked like rough

vine trellises with vines clambering over them; its base was surrounded by

a thick bed of purple anemones; the smaller shelf below was also filled

with purple anemones, and each of the golden lilies held all the purple

anemones it could--not a shade of any other color but the purple and

gold--and rising above them the odd vine trellises in the pale yellow

wood. As I stood looking at this in mute wonder and delight, but sorely

perplexed to make out the design of the carving, I heard a step behind me.

I turned and saw, not my new friend, as I had expected, but her husband. I

thought, in that first instant, I had never seen a manlier face and form,

and I think so to-day. Robert Maynard was not tall; he was not handsome;

but he had a lithe figure, square-shouldered, straight, strong, vitalized

to the last fibre with the swift currents of absolutely healthy blood, and

the still swifter currents of a passionate and pure manhood. His eyes were

blue, his hair and full beard of the bright-brown yellow which we call,

rightly or wrongly, Saxon. He came very quickly toward me with both hands

outstretched and began to speak. "My dear madam," he said, but his voice

broke, and with a sudden, uncontrollable impulse, he turned his back full

upon me for a second, and passed his right hand over his eyes. The next

instant he recovered himself and went on.

"I do not believe you will wonder that I can't speak, and I do not believe

you will ever wonder that I do not thank you--I never shall," and he

raised both my hands to his lips.

"Dora is in bed as you bade her to be," he continued. "She is well, but

very weak. She wants to see you immediately, and she has forbidden me to

come back to her room without you. I think, perhaps," he added

hesitatingly, "she is not quite calm enough to talk long. Forgive me for

saying it. I know you love her already."

"Indeed I do," replied I, "as if I had known her all my life. I will not

stay long;" and I followed him through a small dining-room, also gay with

flowers and vines, to a little room which had one side almost wholly of

glass and opened on a _loggia_ full of orange-trees and oleanders,

geraniums and roses. I will not describe Dora Maynard's bed-room. It was

the dainty room of a dainty woman, but spiritualized and individualized

and made wonderful, just as her sitting-room was, by a creative touch and

a magnetic presence such as few women possess. I believe that she could

not be for twenty-four hours in the barrenest and ugliest room possible,

without contriving to diffuse a certain enchantment through all its

emptiness.

She looked far more beautiful this morning than she had looked the day

before. I never forgot the picture of her face as I saw it then, lying on

the white pillow and turned toward the door, with the eager expression

which her waiting for me had given it. Neither of us spoke for some

seconds, and when we did speak we took refuge in commonplaces. Our hearts

were too full--mine with a sudden and hardly explicable overflow of

affection toward this beautiful being whom I had saved from dying; hers

with a like affection for me, heightened a thousand fold by the intense

love of love and of living that filled her whole soul and made her

gratitude to me partake almost of the nature of adoration. I think it was

years before she could see me without recalling the whole scene so vividly

that tears would fill her eyes. Often she would suddenly seize both my

hands in hers, kiss them and say, "Oh! but for these dear, strong, brave

little hands, where should I be!" And whenever we parted for a length of

time she was overshadowed by presentiment. "I know it is superstitious and

silly," she would say, "but I cannot shake off the feeling that I am safer

in the same town with you. I believe if any harm were to threaten me you

would be near."

But the story I am to tell now is not the story of Dora Maynard's life

after I knew her, nor of our friendship and love for each other, rare and

beautiful as they were. It is the story of her girlhood, and of the

strange wood-carving which stood on the gilded table in the bed of purple

anemones.

One morning in April, as I climbed the long stone stairs which led to her

apartment, I met Anita, the flower-woman who carried flowers to her every

day. Anita looked troubled.

"What is the matter, my Anita?" said I; "is the Signora ill?"

"Ah no, thank the Blessed Virgin!" said Anita; "the dearest, most

beautiful of Signoras is well, but I am obliged to tell her to-day that

there are no more anemones. Biagio went yesterday to the farthest corner

of the Villa Doria, to a dark shady spot beyond the Dove-Cote, which the

strangers know not, hoping to find some; but the heavy rains had beaten

them all down--there is no longer one left. And the Signora had tears in

her eyes when I told her; and she did not care for all the other beautiful

flowers; she said none of them could go on the gold table; never yet has

the Signora put any flowers on the gold table except the purple anemones,"

and real tears stood in old Anita's eyes.

"Why, Anita," said I, "I am sure some other flowers would look very pretty

there. I do not believe the Signora will be unhappy about it."

Anita shook her head and half smiled with a look of pitying compassion.

"But, Signora, you do not know; that dearest and most beautiful of

Signoras has visions from the angels about her flowers. Holy Virgin! if

she would but come and hang flowers around the Bambino in our church! None

of the Holy Sisters can so weave them as she does; she makes Festa forever

in the house for the Signor; and I think, Signora," crossing herself and

looking sharply at me, "perhaps the gold table is the shrine of her

religion: does the Signora know?"

I could not help laughing. "Oh no, Anita," I said; "we do not have shrines

in our religion."

Anita's face clouded. "Iddio mio!" she said, "but the Virgin will keep the

dearest Signora Maynardi. Biagio and I have vowed to keep a candle always

burning for her in Ara Coeli! The dearest, most beautiful of Signoras;"

and Anita walked disconsolately on, down the stairs.

I found Dora kneeling before the "gold table," arranging great masses of

maiden-hair fern around the wood carving and in the shelf below. As I saw

the rapt and ecstatic expression of her face, I understood why Anita had

believed the gold table to be a shrine.

"They do not suit it like the anemones," said she, sadly; "and I can have

no more anemones this year."

"So poor Anita told me just now on the stairs," replied I. "She was almost

crying, she was so sorry she could not get them for you. But I am sure,

dear, the ferns are beautiful on it. I think the pale green looks even

better than the purple with the gold and the pale yellow wood."

"I like the purple best," said Dora; "besides, we always had purple at

home," and her eyes filled with tears. Then, turning suddenly to me, she

said, "Why have you never asked me what this is? I know you must have

wondered: it looks so strange--this poor little clumsy bit of American

pine, on my gilt table shrined with flowers!"

"Yes, I have wondered, I acknowledge, for I could not make out the

design," I replied; "but I thought it might have some story connected with

it, which you would tell me if you wished I should know. I did not think

it clumsy; I think it is fantastic, and has a certain sort of weird

life-likeness about it."

"Do you really think it has any life-like look about it?" and Dora's face

flushed with pleasure. "I think so, but I supposed nobody else could see

anything in it. No one of my acquaintance has ever alluded to it,"

continued she, half laughing, half crying, "but I see them trying to

scrutinize it slyly when they are not observed. As for poor old Anita, I

believe she thinks it is our Fetish. She walks round it on tiptoe with her

hands clasped on her apron."

"But now," she continued, "I will show you the same design in something

else;" and she led the way through her own bedroom to Robert's, which was

beyond. On the threshold she paused, and kissing me, said: "If you can

stay with me to-day, I will tell you the whole story, dear; but I want you

to look at this chintz first." Then she walked to the window, and drawing

out one of the curtains to its full width, held it up for me to see. It

was a green and white chintz, evidently of cheap quality. At first I did

not distinguish any meaning in the pattern; presently I saw that the

figures were all of vines and vine-leaves, linked in a fantastic fashion

together, like those in the wood-carving on the gold table.

"Oh, yes," I said, "I see; it is exactly like the carving, only it looks

different, being on a flat surface."

Dora did not speak; she was gazing absently at the chintz she held in her

hand. Her face looked as if her soul were miles and years away. Presently

I saw a tear roll down her cheek. I touched her hand. She started, and

smiling sweetly, said: "Oh! forgive me. Don't think I am crying for any

sorrow; it is for joy. I am so happy, and my life has been so wonderful.

Now would you really have patience to listen to a long story?" she said,

beseechingly; "a long story all about me--and--Robert? I have been

wanting to tell you ever since I knew you. I think you ought to know all

about us."

For my answer, I sank into a large chair, drew her down into my lap, and

said: "Begin, you dearest child. Nothing could give me such pleasure.

Begin at the beginning."

She slipped from my lap to a low footstool at my feet, and resting both

her arms on my knees in a graceful way she had, looked up into my face,

and began by a sentence which made me start.

"I used to work in a factory." My start was so undisguised, so

uncontrollable, that Dora drew back and her cheeks turned red.

"Perhaps I ought to have told you before."

"Oh, my dear, beautiful, marvellous child!" I exclaimed; "you cannot so

misjudge me. I was startled only because you had always seemed to me so

much like one born to all possible luxury. I supposed you had been

nurtured on beauty."

"So I have been," she replied, earnestly, smiling through tears;

"nevertheless, three years ago I was working in a factory in America."

I did not interrupt her again; hour after hour passed by; not until

twilight was deepening into dusk did the story come to end. I shall try to

give it in Dora's own words--their simplicity adds so much to it; but I

cannot give the heightened effect with which they fell upon my ears as I

looked down into her sweet child-woman's face.

"I do not remember much about mamma. It is strange, too, that I do not,

because I was thirteen when she died; but I always loved papa best, and

stayed all the time I could in his study. Mamma was very pretty; the

prettiest woman I ever saw; but I don't know how it was, all her

prettiness did not seem to make papa care about her. He was a

clergyman--an Episcopal clergyman--and his father and his father's father

had been too; so you see for three whole generations it had been all books

and study in the family; but mamma's father was a farmer, and mamma was

stronger than papa; she liked to live in the country and be out of doors,

which he hated. I think I know now just how it all was; but it used to

puzzle me till I grew up. When I was sixteen, my Aunt Abby, papa's sister,

told me that mamma was said to be the most beautiful girl in the whole

State, and that papa fell so in love with her when he was just out of

college, that he came very near dying because his father did not wish them

to be married. Poor papa! it was just so always with him; he had such a

poor feeble body that any trouble or worry made him ill. I can see now

that it was because he and all his family had been such scholars, and

lived in the house, and sat still all their lives; their bodies were not

good for anything: and I am thankful enough that my body is like mamma's;

but I don't know what good it would do me, either, if dear papa hadn't

taught me all his ways of seeing things and feeling things. Mamma never

seemed to care much about anything, except when Dick or Abby were sick,

and she always used to go to sleep in church while papa was saying the

most beautiful things; sometimes it used to make me almost hate her. I

hated everybody that didn't listen to him. But Aunt Abby said once that

very few people could understand him, and that was the reason we never

stayed long in one place. People got tired of hearing him preach. This

made me so angry I did not speak to Aunt Abby for two years, except when I

was obliged to. But I see now that she was right. As I read over papa's

sermons I see that they would seem very strange to common men and women.

He saw much more in every little thing than people generally do. I used to

tell him sometimes he 'saw double,' and he would sigh and say that the

world was blind, and did not see half; he never could take any minute by

itself; there was the past to cripple it and the future to shadow it.

Poor, poor papa! I really think I have learned in a very strange way to

understand his capacity for sadness. I understand it by my own capacity

for joy. I often smile to think how I used to accuse him of seeing double,

for it is the very thing which Robert says to me again and again when a

sight or a sound gives me such intense pleasure that I can hardly bear it.

And I see that while I have nearly the same sensitiveness to all

impressions from things or from people which he had, my body compels the

impressions to be joyous. This is what I owe mamma. If papa could have

been well and strong, he would have sung joy such as no poet has ever sung

since suns began to shine.

"But most that he wrote was sad; and I am afraid most that he taught the

people was sad too, or, at any rate, not hopeful as it ought to be in this

beautiful, blessed world, which 'God so loved' and loves. So perhaps it

was better for people that papa never preached in any one parish more than

three or four years. Probably God took care to send next a man who would

make everybody take courage again. However, it was very hard for mamma,

and very hard for us; although for us there was excitement and fun in

getting into new houses and getting acquainted with new people; but the

worst thing was that we had very little money, and it used it up so to

move from place to place, and buy new things. I knew all about this before

I was ten years old as well as if I had been forty; and by the time I was

twelve, I was a perfect little miser of both clothes and money--I had such

a horror of the terrible days, which sometimes came, when we sorely wanted

both.

"Early in the spring after I was thirteen--my birthday was in December--we

went to live in a little place called Maynard's Mills. It was a suburban

village near the largest manufacturing town in the State. The other two

homes which I could remember had been very small country villages, where

none of the people were rich, and only a few attended the Episcopal

church. In Maynard's Mills there were many rich people, and almost

everybody went to our church. The whole place was owned by Mr. Maynard,

Robert's father. He had gone out there to live near his mills, and the

place was so beautiful that family after family of the rich mill-owners

had moved out there. At first they used to go into town to church; but it

was a long drive, cold in winter and hot in summer, and so Mr. Maynard

built a beautiful chapel near his house and sent for papa to come and

preach in it. Mr. Maynard had been his classmate in college and loved him

very much, just because they were 'so different,' papa said, and I think

it must have been so, for Mr. Maynard is the merriest man I ever saw. He

laughs as soon as he sees you, whether there is anything to laugh at or

not, and he makes you feel just like laughing yourself, simply by asking

you how you do. I never saw papa so happy as he was the day Mr. Maynard's

letter came asking him to go there.

"It was a very kind letter, and the salary, of which Mr. Maynard spoke

almost apologetically, saying that it would be increased in a few years as

the village grew, was more than twice as large as papa had ever received,

and there was a nice parsonage besides.

"We moved in April. I always associate our moving with blue hepaticas, for

I carried a great basketful of them, which I had taken up roots and all,

in the woods, the morning we set out; and what should I find under papa's

study window but a great thicket of wild ferns and cornel bushes

growing--just the place for my hepaticas, and I set them out before I went

into the house. The house was very small, but it was so pretty that papa

and I were perfectly happy in it. Poor mamma did not like the closets and

the kitchen. The house we had left was a huge, old-fashioned house, with

four square rooms on a floor; one of these was the kitchen, and mamma

missed it very much. But she lived only a few days after we moved in. I

never knew of what disease she died. She was ill but a few hours and

suffered great pain. They said she had injured herself in some way in

lifting the furniture. It was all so sudden and so terrible, and we were

surrounded by such confusion and so many strange faces, that I do not

remember anything about it distinctly. I remember the funeral, and the

great masses of white and purple flowers all over the table on which the

coffin stood, and I remember how strangely papa's face looked.

"And then Aunt Abby came to live with us, and we settled down into such a

new, different life, that it seemed to me as if it had been in some other

world that I had known mamma. My sister Abby was two years old, and my

darling brother Nat was ten, when mamma died. It is very hard to talk

about dear Nat, I love him so. He is so precious, and his sorrow is so

sacred, that I am hardly willing to let strangers pity him, ever so

tenderly. When he was a baby he sprang out of mamma's lap, one day, as she

was reaching up to take something from the mantel piece. He fell on the

andiron-head and injured his spine so that he could never walk. He is

twenty years old now; his head and chest and arms are about as large as

those of a boy of sixteen, but all the rest of his poor body is shrunken

and withered; he has never stood upright, and he cannot turn himself in

his chair or bed. But his head and face are beautiful. It is not only I

who think so. Artists have seen him sitting at the window, or being drawn

about in his little wagon, and have begged permission to paint his face,

for the face of a saint or of a hero, in their pictures. It is the face of

both saint and hero; and after all that must be always so, I think; for

how could a man be one without being the other? I know some very brave men

have been very bad men, but I do not call them heroes. Nat is the only

hero I ever knew; if I were a poet I would write a poem about him. It

should be called 'THE CROWNLESS KING.' Oh, how he _does_ reign over

suffering, and loss, and humiliation, and what a sweet kingdom spreads out

around him wherever he is! He does everybody good, and everybody loves

him. Poor papa used to say sometimes, 'My son is a far better preacher

than I; see, I sit at his feet to learn;' and it was true. Even when he

was a little fellow Nat used to keep up papa's courage. Many a time, when

papa looked dark and sad, Nat would call to him, 'Dear papa, will you

carry me up and down a little while by the window? I want the sky.' Then,

while they were walking, Nat would say such sweet things about the beauty

of the sky, and the delight it gave him to see it, that the tears would

come into papa's eyes, and he would say, 'Who would think that we could

ever forget for a moment this sky which is above us?' and he would go away

to his study comforted.

"As I said, when mamma died, Nat was ten and I was thirteen. From that

time I took all the care of him. Aunt Abby, was not strong, and she did

not love children. She was just, and she meant to be always kind to us;

but that sort of kindness is quite different from loving-kindness. Poor

Nat never could bear to have her do anything for him, and so it very soon

came about that I took all the care of him. It was not hard, for he was

never ill; he suffered constant pain but in spite of it he was always

cheerful, always said he felt well, and never had any of the small

ailments and diseases which healthy children are apt to have. 'I

shouldn't know what to do without the ache, Dot,' he said to me one day

when he was only twelve years old. 'I've got so used to it, I should miss

it as much as I should miss you said it helps me to be good. I don't think

I should dare have it go away.' A few years later he wrote some lovely

little verses called 'The Angel of Pain,' which I will show you. Our life

after mamma died was very happy and peaceful. It makes me grieve for her,

even now, to think how little she was missed. We had all loved her. She

was always pleasant and good, and took the best possible care of us and of

everything; but she was not one of those persons whose presence makes

itself necessary to people. It seems hardly right to say such a thing, but

I really think papa seemed more cheerful without her, after the first. I

think that while she lived he was always groping and reaching after

something in her which did not exist. The hourly sight of her reminded him

hourly of his ideal of what a wife might be, and he was forever hoping

that she might come a little nearer to it--enter a little more into his

world of thought and feeling. This is how it has looked to me since I have

been married, and can understand just how terrible it must be to have the

person whom you love best, disappoint you in any way.

"Nat was in all my classes in school. Although he was three years younger

he was much cleverer than I, and had had nothing to do, poor dear, all his

life, but lie in his chair and read. I used to draw him to and from school

in a little wagon; the boys lifted it up and down the steps so carefully

it did not jar him; and papa had a special desk built for him, so high

that part of the wagon could roll under it, and the lid could rest just

wherever Nat needed it for writing or studying. When we went home, there

was always a sort of procession with us; a good many of the children had

to go in the same direction, but many went simply to walk by Nat's wagon

and talk with him. Whenever there was a picnic or a nutting frolic, we

always took him; the boys took turns in drawing him; nobody would hear a

word of his staying at home; he used to sit in his wagon and look on while

the rest played, and sometimes he would be left all alone for a while, but

his face was always the happiest one there. At school the boys used to

tell him everything, and leave things to his decision. Almost every day,

somebody would call out, at recess or intermission, 'Well, I'll leave it

to Nat'--or 'I'll tell Nat.' One day somebody shouted, 'Take it before the

king--let's call him King Nat.' But it almost made Nat cry. He exclaimed,

'Oh, boys, please don't ever say that again;' and they never did. He had a

great deal more influence over them than any teacher. He could make them

do anything. Sometimes the teachers themselves used to come to him

privately and tell him of things they did not like, which the boys were

getting into the way of doing, and ask him to try to stop them. If Nat had

not been a saint, as I said before, all this would have spoiled him; but

he never thought of its being any special power in him. He used to think

it was only because the boys were so kind-hearted that they could not bear

to refuse any request which a poor cripple made.

"When I think how happy those days were and how fast the darkest days of

our lives were drawing near, it makes me shrink from happiness almost as

much as from grief. It seems only grief's forerunner. On the evening of my

sixteenth birthday, we were all having a very merry time in papa's study,

popping corn over the open fire. We had wheeled Nat near the fire, and

tied the corn-popper on a broom-handle, so that he could shake the popper

himself; and I never saw him laugh so heartily at anything. Papa laughed

too, quite loud, which was a thing that did not happen many times a year.

It was the last time we heard the full sound of dear papa's voice. Late

that night he was called out to see a poor man, one of the factory

operatives, who was dying. It was a terrible snow-storm, and papa had been

so heated over the fire and in playing with us that he took a severe cold.

The next morning he could not speak aloud. The doctor said it was an acute

bronchitis and would pass off; but it did not, and in a very few weeks it

was clear that he was dying of consumption. Probably the cold only

developed a disease which had been long there.

"I can't tell you about the last months of papa's life. I think I shall

never be able to speak of them. We saw much worse days afterward, but none

that seemed to me so hard to bear; even when I thought Nat and I would

have to go to the almshouse it was not so hard. The love which most

children divide between father and mother I concentrated on my father. I

loved him with an adoration akin to that which a woman feels for her

husband, and with the utmost of filial love added. Nat loved him almost as

much. The most touching thing I ever saw was to see Nat from his wagon,

or wheeled chair, reaching out to take care of papa in the bed. Nobody

else could give him his medicine so well; nobody could prepare his meals

for him, after he was too weak to use a knife and fork, so well as Nat.

How he could do all this with only one hand--for he could not bend himself

in his chair enough to use the hand farthest from the bed--nobody could

understand; but he did, and the very last mouthful of wine papa swallowed

he took, the morning he died, from poor Nat's brave little hand, which did

not shake nor falter, though the tears were rolling down his cheeks.

"Papa lived nearly a year; but the last nine months he was in bed, and he

never spoke a loud word after that birthday night when we had been so

happy in the study. He died in November, on a dreary stormy day. I never

shall forget it. He had seemed easier that morning, and insisted on our

all going out to breakfast together and leaving him alone, the doors being

open between the study and the dining-room. We had hardly seated ourselves

at the table when his bell rang. Aunt Abby reached him first. It could not

have been a minute, but he did not know her. For the first and only time

in my life I forgot Nat, and was out of the room when I heard him sob.

Dear Nat! not even then would he think of himself. I turned back. 'Oh,

don't stop to take me, Dot,' he said. 'Run!' But I could not; and when I

reached the door, pushing his chair before me, all was over. However, the

doctor said that, even if we had been there at the first, papa could not

have bid us good-by; that the death was from instantaneous suffocation,

and that he probably had no consciousness of it himself. Papa's life had

been insured for five thousand dollars and he had saved, during the three

years we had lived at Maynard's Mills, about one thousand more. This was

all the money we had in the world.

"Mr. Maynard had been very kind throughout papa's illness. He had

persuaded the church to continue the salary; every day he had sent

flowers, and grapes, and wine, and game, and everything he could think of

that papa could eat; and, what was kindest of all, he had come almost

every day to talk with him and cheer him up. But he did not mean to let

his kindness stop here. The day after the funeral he came to see us, to

propose to adopt me. I forgot to say that Aunt Abby was to be married soon

and would take little Abby with her; so they were provided for, and the

only question was about Nat and me.

"Fortunately, dear Nat was in the dining-room and did not see Mr. Maynard

when he came. I have told you what a merry man Mr. Maynard is, and how

kind he is, but he is also a very obstinate and high-tempered man. He had

never loved Nat; I do not know why; I think he was the only human being

who ever failed to love him. He pitied him, of course; but he was so

repelled by his deformity that he could not love him. As soon as Mr.

Maynard said, 'Now, my dear child, you must come to my house and make it

your home always,' I saw that he intended to separate me from Nat.

"I replied, 'I cannot leave Nat, Mr. Maynard. I thank you very much; you

are very good; but it would break my heart to leave him, and I am sure

papa would never forgive me if I should do it.'

"He made a gesture of impatience. He had foreseen this, and come prepared

for it; but he saw that I promised to prove even more impracticable than

he had feared.

"'You have sacrificed your whole life already to that miserable

unfortunate boy,' he said, 'and I always told your father he ought not to

permit it.'

"At this I grew angry, and I replied:--

"'Mr. Maynard, Nat does more for us all, every hour of his life, than we

ever could do for him: dear papa used to say so too.'

"No doubt papa had said this very thing to Mr. Maynard often, for tears

came into his eyes and he went on:--

"'I know, I know--he is a wonderful boy, and we might all learn a lesson

of patience from him; but I can't have the whole of your life sacrificed

to him. I will provide for him amply; he shall have every comfort which

money can command.'

"'But where?' said I.

"'In an institution I know of, under the charge of a friend of mine.'

"'A hospital!' exclaimed I; and the very thought of my poor Nat, who had

been the centre of a loving home-circle, of a merry school playground,

ever since he could remember--the very thought of his finding himself

alone among diseased people, and tended by hired attendants, so overcame

me that I burst into floods of tears.

"Mr. Maynard, who hated the presence of tears and suffering, as mirthful

people always do, rose at once and said kindly, 'Poor child, you are not

strong enough to talk it over yet; but as your aunt must go away so soon,

I thought it better to have it all settled at once.'

"'It is settled, Mr. Maynard,' said I, in a voice that half frightened me.

'I shall never leave Nat--never, so long as I live.'

"'Then you'll do him the greatest unkindness you can--that's all,' replied

Mr. Maynard angrily, and walked out of the room. I locked myself up in my

own room and thought the whole matter over. How I could earn my own living

and Nat's, I did not know. We should have about four hundred dollars a

year. I had learned enough in my childhood of poverty to know that we need

not starve while we had that; but simply not starving is a great way off

from really living; and I felt convinced that it would be impossible for

me to keep up courage or hope unless I could contrive, in some way, to

earn money enough to surround our home with at least a semblance of the

old atmosphere. We must have books; we must have a flower sometimes; we

must have sun and air.

"At last an inspiration came to me. Down stairs, in the saddened empty

study, sat little Miss Penstock, the village dressmaker, sewing on our

gloomy black dresses. She lived all alone in a very small house near Mr.

Maynard's mill. I remembered that I had heard her say how lonely she found

it living by herself since her married sister, who used to live with her,

had gone to the West. Since then, Miss Penstock had sometimes consented to

go for a few days at a time to sew in the houses of her favorite

employers, just to keep from forgetting how to speak,' the poor little

woman said. But she disliked very much to do this. She was a gentlewoman;

and though she accepted with simple dignity the necessity of earning her

bread, it was bitterly disagreeable to her to sit as a hired sewer in

other people's houses. She liked to come to our house better than to any

other. We also were poor. My Aunt Abby was a woman of great simplicity,

and a quiet, stately humility, like Miss Penstock's own; and they enjoyed

sitting side by side whole days, sewing in silence. Miss Penstock had

always spoken with a certain sort of tender reverence to Nat, and I

remembered that he liked to be in the room where she sewed. All these

thoughts passed through my mind in a moment. I sprang to my feet and

exclaimed, 'That is it--that is it!' and I ran hastily down to the study.

Miss Penstock was alone there. She looked up in surprise at my

breathlessness and my red eyes. I knelt down by her side and took the work

out of her hands.

"'Dear Miss Penstock,' said I, 'would you rent part of your house?'

"She looked up reflectively, took off her spectacles with her left hand,

and tapped her knees slowly with them, as she always did when puzzling

over a scanty pattern.

"'I don't know, Dora, but I might; I've thought of it; it's awful lonely

for me as 'tis. But it's such a risk taking in strangers; is it any

friends of yours you're thinking of?'

"'Nat and me,' said I, concisely. Miss Penstock's spectacles dropped from

her fingers, and she uttered an ejaculation I never heard from her lips on

any other occasion. 'Good Heavens!'

"'Yes,' said I, beginning to cry, 'Nat and me! I've got to take care of

Nat, and if you would only let us live with you I think I could manage

beautifully.' Then I told her the whole story of Mr. Maynard's proposal.

While we were talking Aunt Abby came in. The problem was no new one to

her. Papa and she had talked it over many a time in the course of the past

sad year. It seemed that he had had to the last a strong hope that Mr.

Maynard would provide for us both. Poor papa! as he drew near the next

world, all the conventionalities and obligations of this seemed so small

to him, he did not shrink from the thought of dependence upon others as he

would have done in health.

"'But I always told him,' said Aunt Abby, 'that Mr. Maynard wasn't going

to do anything for Nat beyond what money'd do. He'd give him a thousand a

year, or two, if need be, but he'd never set eyes on him if he could help

it.'

"'Aunt Abby,' exclaimed I, 'please don't say another word about Mr.

Maynard's helping Nat. I'd die before Nat should touch a cent of his

money.'

"'There is no use talking that way,' said Aunt Abby, whose tenderest

mercies were often cruelly worded. 'Mr. Maynard's a good, generous man,

and I'm sure he's been the saving of us all. But that's no reason he

should set up to take you away from Nat now; and I know well enough Nat

can't live without you; but I don't see how it's to be managed. And Aunt

Abby sighed. Then I told her my plans; they grew clearer and clearer to me

as I unfolded them; the two gentle-faced spinster women looked at me with

surprise. Miss Penstock wiped her eyes over and over.

"'If I could only be sure I wasn't going against your best interests to

let you come,' said she.

"'Oh, Miss Penstock,' exclaimed I, 'don't think so--don't dare to say no

for that reason; for I tell you, I shall go away to some other town with

Nat if you don't take us; there is no other house here that would do;

think how much better it would be for Nat to stay among friends.'

"'It's lucky I am their guardian,' said Aunt Abby, with an unconscious

defiance in her tone. 'There can't anybody hinder their doing anything I

am willing to have them do. My brother wanted to have Mr. Maynard, too;

but I told him no; I'd either be whole guardian or none.'

"'I think good Aunt Abby had had a dim foreboding that Mr. Maynard's

kindness might take a shape which it would be hard to submit to. Great as

her gratitude was, her family pride resented dictation, and resented also

the implied slight to poor Nat. As I look back now, I can see that, except

for this reaction of feeling, she never would have consented so easily to

my undertaking all I undertook, in going to housekeeping alone with that

helpless child, on four hundred dollars a year. Before night it was all

settled, and Miss Penstock went home two hours before her time, 'so

stirred up, somehow,' as she said, 'to think of those blessed children's

coming to live in my house, I couldn't see to thread a needle.' After tea

Mr. Maynard came again: Aunt Abby saw him alone. When she came up-stairs

she had been crying, but her lips were closed more rigidly than I ever saw

them. Aunt Abby could be as determined as Mr. Maynard. All she said to me

of the interview was, 'I don't know now as he'll really give in that he

can't have things as he wants to. For all his laughing and for all his

goodness, I don't believe he is any too comfortable to live with. I

shouldn't wonder if he never spoke to one of us again.'

"But Mr. Maynard was too well-bred a man for any such pettiness as that.

His resentment showed itself merely in a greater courtesy than ever,

combined with a careful absence of all inquiries as to our plans. It hurt

me very much, for I knew how it would have hurt dear papa. But I knew,

too, that I was right and Mr. Maynard was wrong, and that comforted me.

"Four weeks from the day papa was buried, the pretty parsonage was locked

up, cold, dark, empty. Aunt Abby had gone with little Abby to her new

home, and Nat and I were settled at Miss Penstock's. The night before we

moved, Mr. Maynard left a note at the door for me. It contained five

hundred dollars and these words:--

"'Miss Dora will not refuse to accept this from one who hoped to be her

father.'

"But I could not take it. I sent it back to him with a note like this:--

"'DEAR MR. MAYNARD:--I shall never forget that you were willing to be my

father, and I shall always be grateful to you; but I cannot take money

from one who is displeased with me for doing what I think right. I promise

you, however, for papa's sake and for Nat's, that if I ever need help I

will ask it of you, and not of any one else.'

* * * * *

"The next time I saw Mr. Maynard he put both his hands on my shoulders and

said: 'You are a brave girl; I wish I could forgive you; but remember your

promise.' And that was the last word Mr. Maynard spoke to me for three

years.

"Our new home was so much pleasanter than we supposed it could be, that at

first, in spite of our grief, both Nat and I were almost gay. It was like

a sort of picnic, or playing at housekeeping. The rooms were sunny and

cozy. Rich people in splendid houses do not dream how pleasant poor

people's little rooms can be, if the sun shines in and there are a few

pretty things. We kept all the books which could ever be of use to Nat,

and a picture of the Sistine Madonna which Mr. Maynard had given us on the

last Christmas Day, and papa's and mamma's portraits. The books, and

these, made our little sitting-room look like home. We had only two rooms

on the first floor; one of these was a tiny one, but it held our little

cooking-stove and a cupboard, with our few dishes; the other we called

'sitting-room;' it had to be dear Nat's bedroom also, because he could not

be carried up and down stairs. But I made a chintz curtain, which shut off

his bed from sight, and really made the room look prettier, for I put it

across a corner and had a shelf put up above it, on which Nat's stuffed

owl sat. My room was over Nat's, and a cord went up from his bed to a

bell over mine, so that he could call me at any moment if he wanted

anything in the night. Then we had one more little chamber, in which we

kept the boxes of papa's sermons, and some trunks of old clothes, and

things which nobody wanted to buy at the auction, and papa's big chair and

writing-table. We would not sell those. I thought perhaps some day we

should have a house of our own--I could not imagine how; but if we did we

should be glad of that chair and table, and so Aunt Abby let us keep them,

though they were of handsome wood, beautifully carved, and would have

brought a good deal of money. For these four rooms we paid Miss Penstock

three dollars a month; the rent would have been a dollar a week, but she

said it was really worth a dollar a month to her to have people who would

not trouble her nor hurt the house; and as Aunt Abby thought so too, I

believed her.

"My plan was to have Nat keep on at school, and to take in sewing myself,

or to work for Miss Penstock. For the first year all went so smoothly that

I was content. I used to draw Nat to and from school twice a day, and that

gave me air and exercise. Everybody was very kind in giving me sewing, and

I earned four and five dollars a week. We did not have to buy any clothes,

and so we laid up a little money. But the next year people did not give me

so much sewing; they had given it to me the first year because they were

sorry for us, but now they had forgotten. Very often I would sit idle a

whole week, with no work. Then I used to read and study, but I could not

enjoy anything, because I was so worried. I felt that trouble was coming.

Early in the fall dear Nat was taken ill--the first illness of his life.

It was a slow fever. He was ill for three months. I often wonder how I

lived through those months. When he recovered he seemed better than ever.

The doctor said he had passed a sort of crisis and would always be

stronger for it. The doctor was very kind. Several nights he sat up with

Nat and made me go to bed, and he would not let me pay him a cent, though

he came every day for weeks. When I urged him to let us pay the bill he

grew half angry, and said, 'Do you think I am going to take money from

your father's daughter?' and then I felt more willing to take it for

papa's sake. But the medicines had cost a great deal, and I had not earned

anything; and so, at the end of the second year, we had been obliged to

take quite a sum out of our little capital. I did not tell Nat, and I did

not go to Mr. Maynard. I went on from day to day, in a sort of stupor,

wondering what would happen next. I was seventeen years old, but I knew of

nothing I could do except to sew; I did not know enough to teach. All this

time I never once thought of the mills. I used to watch the men and women

going in and out, and envy them, thinking how sure they were of their

wages; and yet it never crossed my mind that I could do the same thing. I

am afraid it was unconscious pride which prevented my thinking of it.

"But the day came. It was in the early spring. I had been to the

grave-yard to set out some fresh hepaticas on papa's grave. His grave and

mamma's were in an inclosure surrounded by a high, thick hedge of pines

and cedars close to the public street As I knelt down, hidden behind the

trees, I heard steps and voices. They paused opposite me. The persons were

evidently looking over the fence. Then I distinguished the voice of our

kind doctor.

"'Poor Kent!' he said, 'how it would distress him to see his children now!

That Nat barely pulled through his fever; but he seems to have taken a new

turn since then and is stronger than ever. But I am afraid they are very

poor.'

"To my astonishment, the voice that replied was Mr. Maynard's.

"'Of course they are,' said he impatiently; 'but nobody will ever have a

chance to help them till the last cent's gone. That Dora would work her

fingers off in the mills rather than ask or receive help.'

"'But good heavens! Maynard, you'd never stand by and see Tom Kent's

daughter in the mills?' exclaimed the doctor.

"I could not hear the reply, for they were walking away. But the words 'in

the mills' rang in my ears. A new world seemed opening before me. I had no

particle of false pride; all I wanted was to earn money honestly. I could

not understand why I had never thought of this way. I knew that many of

the factory operatives, who were industrious and economical, supported

large families of children on their wages. 'It would be strange enough if

I could not support Nat and myself,' thought I, and I almost ran home, I

was so glad. I said nothing to Nat; I knew instinctively that it would

grieve him.

"The next day after I left him at school I went to the largest mill and

saw the overseer. He was a coarse, disagreeable man; but he had known my

father and he treated me respectfully. He said they could not give me very

good wages at first; but if I learned readily, and was skillful in tending

the looms, I might in time make a very good living. The sums that he named

seemed large, tried by my humble standard. Even at the beginning I should

earn more than I had been able to for many months at my needle. After tea

I told Nat. He lay very still for some moments; the tears rolled down his

cheeks; then he reached up both hands and drew my face down to his, and

said, 'Dear sister, it would be selfish to make it any harder for you than

it must be at best. But oh, Dot, Dot! do you think you can dream what it

is for me to have to lie here and be such a burden on you?'

"'Oh, Nat!' I said, 'if you don't want to break my heart, don't speak so.

I don't have to earn any more for two than I should have to alone; it does

not cost anything for you; and if it did, you darling, don't you know that

I could not live without you? you are all I have got in the world.' Nat

did not reply; but all that evening his face looked as I never saw it

before. Nat was fifteen; instinct was beginning to torture him with a

man's sense of his helplessness, and it was almost more than even his

childlike faith and trust could bear.

"The next day I told Miss Penstock. She had been as kind to us as a mother

through this whole year and a half, and I really think we had taken the

place of children in her lonely old heart. But she never could forget that

we were her minister's children; she always called me Miss Dora, and does

to this day. She did not interrupt me while I told her my plan, but the

color mounted higher and higher in her face. As soon as I stopped

speaking, she exclaimed:--

"'Dora Kent, are you mad--a girl with a face like yours to go into the

mills? you don't know what you're about.'

"'Yes I do, dear Pennie,' I said (Nat had called her Pennie ever since his

sickness, when she had taken tender care of him night and day). 'I know

there are many rude, bad men there, but I do not believe they will trouble

me. At any rate I can but try. I must earn more money, Pennie; you know

that as well as I do.'

"She did indeed know it; but it was very hard for her to give approbation

to this scheme. It was not until after a long argument that I induced her

to promise not to write to Aunt Abby till I had tried the experiment for

one month.

"The next day I went to the mill. Everything proved much better than I had

feared. Some of the women in the room in which I was placed had belonged

to papa's Sunday-school, and they were all very kind to me, and told the

others who I was; so from the outset I felt myself among friends. In two

weeks I had grown used to the work; the noise of the looms did not

frighten or confuse me, and it did not tire me to stand so many hours. I

found that I should soon be able to do most of my work mechanically, and

think about what I pleased in the mean time. So I hoped to be able to

study at home and recite my lessons to myself in the mill. The only thing

that troubled me was that I could not take Nat to and from school, and he

had to be left alone sometimes. But I found a very pleasant and faithful

Irish boy, who was glad to earn a little money by drawing him back and

forth, often staying with him after school till I came home at six

o'clock. This boy was the son of the Irish gardener on the overseer's

place. The overseer was an Englishman; his name was Wilkins. He is the

only human being I ever disliked so that it was hard to speak to him. His

brother, too, the agent who had charge of all Mr. Maynard's business, was

almost as disagreeable as he. They both looked like bloated frogs; their

wide, shapeless mouths, flat noses, and prominent eyes, made me shudder

when I looked at them.

"Little Patrick soon grew fond of Nat, as everybody did who came into

close contact with him; and he used often to stay at our house till late

at night, hearing Nat's stories, and watching him draw pictures on the

blackboard. One of the things I had kept was a great blackboard which papa

had made for him. It was mounted on a stout standard, so that it could be

swung close in front of his chair or wagon, and he would lie there and

draw for hours together. Some of the pictures he drew were so beautiful I

could not bear to have them rubbed out. It seemed almost like killing

things that were alive. Whenever I dared to spend a penny for anything not

absolutely needful, I always bought a sheet of drawing-paper or a crayon;

for Nat would rather have them than anything else in the world--even than

a book--unless the book had pictures.

"One night, when I went home, I found him sitting up very straight in his

wagon, with his cheeks crimson with excitement. Patrick was with him, and

the table and the whole floor were covered with queer, long, jointed

paste-board sheets, with pieces of gay-colored calicoes, pasted on them.

Patrick looked as excited as Nat, and as soon as I opened the door he

exclaimed, 'Och, Miss Dora, see how he's plazed with um.' I was almost

frightened at Nat's face. 'Why Nat, dear,' said I, 'what are they? I don't

think they are very pretty;' and I picked up one of the queer things and

looked at it. 'The colors are bright and pretty, but I am sure almost all

the patterns are hideous.'

"'Of course they are,' shouted Nat hysterically. 'That's just it. That's

what pleases me so,' and he burst out crying. I was more frightened still.

Trampling the calicoes under my feet, I ran and knelt by his chair, and

put my arms around him. 'Oh, Nat, Nat, what is the matter?' cried I.

'Patrick, what have you done to him?' Poor Patrick could not speak; he was

utterly bewildered; he began hastily picking up the prints and shuffling

them out of sight.

"'Don't you touch one!' screamed Nat, lifting up his head again, with

tears rolling down his cheeks. 'Dot, Dot,' he went on, speaking louder and

louder, 'don't you see? those are patterns; Patrick says Mr. Wilkins buys

them. I can earn money too; I can draw a million times prettier ones than

those.'

"Like lightning the thing flashed through my brain. Of course he could. He

drew better ones every day of his life, by dozens, on the old blackboard,

with crumbling bits of chalk. Again and again I had racked my brains to

devise some method by which he might be taught, as artists are taught, and

learn to put his beautiful conceptions into true shapes for the world to

see. But I knew that materials and instruction were both alike out of our

reach, and I had hoped earnestly that such longing had never entered his

heart. I sat down and covered my face with my hands.

"'You see, sister,' said Nat in a calmer tone, sobered himself by my

excitement--'you see, don't you?'

"'Yes, dear, I do see,' said I; 'you will earn much more money than I ever

can, and take care of me, after all.'

"To our inexperience, it seemed as if a mine had opened at our feet. Poor

Patrick stood still, unhappy and bewildered, twisting one of the

pattern-books in his hand.

"'An' is it these same that Misther Nat'll be afther tryin' to make?' said

he.

"'Oh no, Patrick,' said Nat, laughing, 'only the pictures from which these

are to be made.'

"Then we questioned Patrick more closely. All he knew was that Mr.

Wilkins' sister made many of the drawings; Patrick had seen them lying in

piles on Mr. Wilkins' desk; some of them colored, some of them merely in

ink. The pieces of paper were about the size of these patterns, some six

or eight inches square.

"'Will I ask Miss Wilkins to come and show yees?' said Patrick.

"'No, no,' said we both, hastily; 'you must not tell anybody. Of course

she would not want other people to be drawing them too.'

"'Especially if she can't make anything better than these,' said Nat,

pityingly. Already his tone had so changed that I hardly recognized it. In

that moment the artist-soul of my darling brother had felt its first

breath of the sweetness of creative power.

"Patrick promised not to speak of it to a human being; as he was going out

of the door he turned back, with a radiant face, and said: 'An 'twas

meself that only thought maybe the calikers'd amuse him for a minnit with

their quare colors,' and he almost somerseted off the door-steps, uttering

an Irish howl of delight.

"'You've made our fortunes! there'll always be calicoes wanted, and I can

draw fifty patterns a day, and I'll give you half of the first pay I get

for them,' called the excited Nat; but Patrick was off.

"We sat up till midnight. I was scarcely less overwrought than Nat. He

drew design after design and rejected them as not quite perfect.

"'You know,' he said, 'I must send something so very good to begin with,

that they can't help seeing at first sight how good it is.'

"'But not so good that you can't ever make another equal to it,' suggested

I out of my practical but inartistic brain.

"'No danger of that, Dot,' said Nat, confidently. 'Dot, there isn't

anything in this world I can't make a picture of, if I can have paper

enough, and pencils and paint.'

"At last he finished three designs which he was willing to send. They

were all for spring or summer dresses. One was a curious block pattern,

the blocks of irregular shapes, but all fitting into each other, and all

to be of the gayest colors. Here and there came a white block with one

tiny scarlet dot upon it; 'That's for a black-haired girl, Dot,' said Nat;

'you couldn't wear it.'

"The second was a group of ferns tied by a little wreath of pansies;

nothing could be more beautiful. The third was a fantastic mixture of

pine-tassels and acorns. I thought it quite ugly, but Nat insisted on it

that it would be pretty for a summer muslin; and so it was the next year,

when it was worn by everybody, the little plumy pine-tassels of a bright

green (which didn't wash at all), and the acorns all tumbling about on

your lap, all sides up at once.

"It was one o'clock before we went to bed, and we might as well have sat

up all night, for we did not sleep. The next morning I got up before light

and walked into town, to a shop where they sold paints. I had just time to

buy a box of water-colors and get back to the mill before the bell stopped

ringing. All the forenoon the little white parcel lay on the floor at my

feet. As often as I looked at it, I seemed to see Nat's pictures dancing

on the surface. I had given five dollars for the box; I trembled to think

what a sum that was for us to spend on an uncertainty; but I had small

doubt. At noon I ran home; I ate little dinner--Nat would not touch a

mouthful. 'You must see the pansies and ferns done before you go,' he

said.

"And before my hour was up they were so nearly done that I danced around

Nat's chair with delight.

"'I know Mr. Wilkins never saw anything so pretty in his life,' said Nat,

calmly.

"The thought of Mr. Wilkins was a terrible damper to me. Nat had not seen

him: I had.

"'Nat,' said I, slowly, 'Mr. Wilkins won't know that it is pretty. He is

not a man; he is a frog, and he looks as if he lied. I believe he will

cheat us.'

"Nat looked shocked. 'Why Dora, I never in my life heard you speak so. You

shall not take them to him. I will have Patrick take me there.'

"'No, no, dear,' I exclaimed, 'I would not have you see Mr. Wilkins for

the world. He is horrible. But I am not afraid of him.'

"I meant that I would not for the world have him see Nat. He was coarse

and brutal enough to be insulting to a helpless cripple, and I knew it.

But Nat did not dream of my reason for insisting so strongly on going

myself, and he finally yielded.

"I took the pictures to the overseer's office at noon. I knew that 'Agent

Wilkins,' as he was called to distinguish him from his brother, was always

there at that time. He looked up at me, as I drew near the desk, with an

expression which almost paralyzed me with disgust. But for Nat's sake I

kept on. I watched him closely as he looked at the pictures. I thought I

detected a start of surprise, but I could not be sure. Then he laid them

down, saying carelessly, 'I am no judge of these things; I will consult

some one who is, and let you know to-morrow noon if we can pay your

brother anything for the designs.'

"'Of course you know that the market is flooded with this sort of thing,

Miss Kent,' he added, as I was walking away. I made no reply; I was

already revolving in my mind a plan for taking them to another mill in

town, whose overseer was a brother of one of papa's wardens. The next day

at noon I went to the office; my heart beat fast, but I tried to believe

that I did not hope. Both the brothers were there. The overseer spoke

first, but I felt that the agent watched me sharply.

"'So your lame brother drew these designs, did he, Miss Dora?'

"'My brother Nat drew them, sir; I have but one brother, said I, trying

hard to speak civilly.

"'Well' said he, 'they are really very well done--quite remarkable,

considering that they are the work of a child who has had no instruction;

they would have to be rearranged and altered before we could use them, but

we would like to encourage him and to help you too,' he continued,

patronizingly, 'and so we shall buy them just as they are.'

"'My brother Nat is not a child,' replied I, 'and we do not wished to be

helped. If the designs are not worth money, will you be so good as to give

them back to me?' and I stepped nearer the desk and stretched out my hand

toward the pictures which were lying there. But Agent Wilkins snatched

them up quickly, and casting an angry glance at his brother, exclaimed:--

"'Oh, you quite mistake my brother, Miss Kent; the designs are worth money

and we are glad to buy them; but they are not worth so much as they would

be if done by an experienced hand. We will give you ten dollars for the

three,' and he held out the money to me. Involuntarily I exclaimed, 'I had

not dreamed that they would be worth so much.' Nat could earn then in four

hours' work as much as I could in a week; in that one moment the whole of

life seemed thrown open for us. All my distrust vanished. And when the

agent added, kindly, 'Be sure and bring us all the designs which your

brother makes. I think we shall want to buy as many as he will draw; he

certainly has rare talent,'--I could have fallen on the floor at his feet

to thank him, so grateful did I feel for this new source of income for us,

and still more for the inexpressible pleasure for my poor Nat.

"From that day Nat was a changed boy. He would not go to school in the

afternoons, but spent the hours from two till five in drawing. I had a

cord arranged from our room to Miss Penstock's, so that he could call her

if at any moment he needed help, and she was only too glad to have him in

the house. When I reached home at six, I always found him lying back in

his chair with his work spread out before him, and such a look of content

and joy on his face, that more than once it made me cry instead of

speaking when I bent over to kiss him. 'Oh, Dot--oh, Dot!' he used to say

sometimes, 'it isn't all for the sake of the money, splendid as that is;

but I do feel as if I should yet do something much better than making

designs for calicoes. I feel it growing in me. Oh, if I could only be

taught; if there were only some one here who could tell me about the

things I don't understand!'

"'But you shall be taught, dear,' I replied; 'we will lay up all the

money you earn. I can earn enough for us to live on, and then, with your

money, in a few years we can certainly contrive some way for you to

study.'

"It seemed not too visionary a hope, for Nat's designs grew prettier and

prettier, and the agent bought all I carried him. One week I remember he

paid me thirty dollars; and as he handed it to me, seeing how pleased I

looked, he said,--

"'Your brother is getting quite rich, is he not, Miss Kent?' Something

sinister in his smile struck me at that moment as it had not done for a

long time, and I resolved to go more seldom to the office.

"We did not lay up so much as we hoped to; we neither of us had a trace of

the instinct of economy or saving. I could not help buying a geranium or

fuchsia to set in the windows; Nat could not help asking me to buy a book

or a picture sometimes, and his paints and pencils and brushes and paper

cost a good deal in the course of six months. Still we were very happy and

very comfortable, and the days flew by. Our little room was so cozy and

pretty, that Miss Penstock's customers used often to come in to see it;

and if they happened to come when Nat was there, they almost always sent

him something afterward; so, at the end of two years you never would have

known the bare little room. We had flowers in both windows, and as each

window had sun, the flowers prospered; and we had a great many pretty

pictures on the walls, and Nat's sketches pinned up in all sorts of odd

places. A big beam ran across the ceiling in the middle, and that was

hung full of charcoal sketches, with here and there a sheet just painted

in bars of bright color--no meaning to them, except to 'light up,' Nat

said. I did not understand him then, but I could see how differently all

the rest looked after the scarlet and yellow were put by their side. Some

of our pictures had lovely frames to them, which Nat had carved out of old

cigar-boxes that Patrick brought him. Sometimes he used to do nothing but

carve for a week, and he would say, 'Dot, I do not believe drawing is the

thing I want to do, after all. I want more; I hate to have everything

flat.' Then he would get discouraged and think all he had done was good

for nothing. 'I never can do anything except to draw till I go somewhere

to be taught,' he would say, and turn back to the old calico patterns with

fresh zeal.

"One day a customer of Miss Penstock's brought Nat a book about grapes,

which had some pictures of the different methods of grape-culture in

different countries. One of these pictures pleased him very much. It

showed the grape-vines looped on low trees, in swinging festoons. He had

the book propped up open at that picture day after day, and kept drawing

it over and over on the blackboard and on paper till I was tired of the

sight of it. It did not seem to me remarkably pretty. But Nat said one

day, when I told him so,--

"'It isn't the picture itself, but what I want to make from it. Don't you

see that the trees look a little like dancers whirling round, holding each

other by the hand--one-legged dancers?'

"I could not see it. 'Well,' said Nat, 'look at this, and see if you can

see it any better;' and he drew out of his portfolio a sheet with a rough

charcoal sketch of six or seven low, gnarled, bare trees, with their

boughs inter-locked in such a fantastic manner that the trees seemed

absolutely reeling about in a crazy dance. I laughed as soon as I saw it.

'There!' said Nat triumphantly; 'now, if I can only get the vines to go

just as I want them to, in and out, you see that will dress up the

dancers.' He worked long over this design. The fancy seemed to have taken

possession of his brain. He gave names to the trees, but he called them

all men: 'It's a jolly crew of old kings,' he said; 'that's Sesostris at

the head, and there's Herod; that old fellow with the gouty stomach under

his left arm.' Nat was now so full of freaks and fun, that our little room

rang with laughter night after night. Patrick used to sit on the floor

sometimes, with his broad Irish mouth stiffened into a perpetual grin at

the sight of the mirth, which, though he could not comprehend it, he found

contagious.

"'But what will you do with it, Nat?' said I. 'It will never do for a

calico pattern.'

"'I don't know,' said he reflectively; 'I might make it smaller and hide

the faces, and not make the limbs of the trees look so much like legs, and

call it the "vine pattern," and I guess old Wilkins would think it was

graceful, and I dare say Miss Wilkins would wear it, if nobody else did.'

"'Oh! Nat, Nat, how can you,' exclaimed I, 'when they have been so good to

pay us so much money?'

"'I know it,' said Nat, 'it's too bad; I'm ashamed now. But doesn't this

look like the two Wilkins brothers? You said they looked like frogs?' he

ran on, holding up a most ludicrous picture of two tall, lank frogs

standing behind a counter, and stretching out four front legs like greedy

hands across the counter, with a motto coming out of the right-hand frog's

mouth: 'More designs, if you please, Mr. Kent--something light and

graceful for summer wear.'

"These were the words of a note which Mr. Wilkins had sent to Nat a few

weeks before. I laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks, for really the

frogs did look like the brothers Wilkins. The picture haunted my mind for

weeks afterward, and seemed somehow to revive my old distrust of them.

"A few days after this Nat had finished a set of designs 'for summer

wear,' as the order said, and among them he had put in the 'One-Legged

Dancers.'

"'It'll do no harm to try it,' said he. 'I think it would be lovely

printed in bright-green on a white ground, and nobody but you and me would

ever see the kings' legs in it.'

"It really was pretty; still I could not help seeing legs and heads and

King Herod's stomach in it; and, moreover, it was entirely too large a

figure for that year's fashions in calico or muslin. However, I said

nothing and carried it with the rest. When I went the next day, Mr.

Wilkins said, as he handed me the money,--

"'Oh, by the way, Miss Kent, one of the drawings has been mislaid. I

suppose it is of no consequence; we could not use it; it was quite too

large a figure, and seemed less graceful than your brother's work usually

is; it was a picture of grape-vines.'

"'Oh,' said I, 'I told Nat I didn't believe that would be good for

anything. No, it is not of the least consequence.'

"When I repeated this to Nat, he did not seem surprised at their refusal

of the design; they had already refused several others in the course of

the year. But he seemed singularly disturbed at the loss of the drawing.

At last he urged me to go and ask if it had not been found.

"'I may do something with it yet, Dot,' he said. 'I know it is a good

design for something, if not for calico, and I don't believe they have

lost it. It is very queer.'

"But Mr. Wilkins assured me, with great civility and many expressions of

regret, that the design was lost: that they had made careful search for it

everywhere.

"The thing would have passed out of my mind in a short time but for Nat's

pertinacious reference to it. Every few days he would say, 'It is very

queer, Dot, about the One-Legged Dancers. How could such a thing be lost?

They never lost a drawing before. I believe Miss Wilkins has got it, and

is going to paint a big picture from it herself!'

"'Why, Nat!' I exclaimed, 'aren't you ashamed? that would be stealing.'

"'I don't care, Dot,' he said again and again, 'I never shall believe that

paper was lost.'

"I grew almost out of patience with him; I never knew him to be unjust to

any one, and it grieved me that he should be so to people who had been our

benefactors.

"About four months later, one warm day in April, I walked over to the

town after my day's work was done, to buy a gown for myself, and a new box

of paints for Nat. I did not go to town more than two or three times a

year, and the shop-windows delighted me as much as if I had been only

eleven years old. As I walked slowly up and down, looking at everything, I

suddenly started back at the sight of a glossy green and white chintz,

which was displayed conspicuously in the central window of one of the

largest shops. There they were, just as Nat had drawn them on the missing

paper, 'The One-Legged Dancers!' Nat was right. It was a pretty pattern, a

very pretty pattern for a chintz; and there was--I laughed out in spite of

myself, as I stood in the crowd on the sidewalk--yes, there was the ugly

great knot in one of the trees which had made King Herod's stomach. But

what did it mean? No chintzes were made in any of Mr. Maynard's mills,

nor, so far as I knew, in any mill in that neighborhood. I was hot with

indignation. Plainly Nat's instinct had been a true one. The Wilkinses had

stolen the design and had sold it to some other manufacturers, not

dreaming that the theft could ever be discovered by two such helpless

children as Nat and I.

"I went into the shop and asked the price of the chintz in the window.

"'Oh, the grape-vine pattern? that is a new pattern, just out this spring;

it is one of the most popular patterns we ever had. A lovely thing, miss,'

said the clerk, as he lifted down another piece of it.

"'I will take one yard,' said I with a choking voice. I was afraid I

should cry in the shop. 'Do you know where this chintz is made?' I added.

"The clerk glanced at the price-ticket and read me the name. It was made

by a firm I had never heard of, in another State. No wonder the Wilkinses

thought themselves safe.

"When I showed Nat the chintz he seemed much less excited than I expected.

He was not so very much surprised; and, to my great astonishment, he was

not at first sure that it would be best to let the Wilkinses know that we

had discovered their cheating. But I was firm; I would have no more to do

with them. My impulse was to go to Mr. Maynard. Although during these

three years he had never come to see us, I felt sure that, in the bottom

of his heart, there still was a strong affection for us; and, above all,

he was a just man. He would never keep in his employ for one day any

person capable of such wrong as the Wilkinses had done us.

"'But,' persisted Nat, 'you do not know that either of the Mr. Wilkinses

had anything to do with it. They may both have honestly supposed it was

lost. It's much more likely that their sister stole it.'

"I had not thought of this before. Poor Miss Wilkins! Nat's artistic soul

had been so outraged by some of her flagrant calicoes that he believed her

capable of any crime.

"At last I consented to go first to the Wilkinses themselves, and I

promised to speak very calmly and gently in the beginning, and betray no

suspicion of them. I carried the chintz. When I entered the office, the

overseer was talking in one corner with a gentleman whose back was turned

to me. The agent sat by the counter.

"'Mr. Wilkins,' said I, 'do you remember the grape-vine pattern my brother

drew last winter--the one which you refused?'

"The instant I spoke, I saw that he did remember. I saw that he was

guilty, and I saw it all with such certainty that it enabled me to be very

calm.

"'Let me see,' said he, trying to pretend to be racking his memory; 'the

grape-vine pattern? It seems to me that I do recall something about a

design with that name. Did you say we refused it?'

"'Yes, you refused it, but you did not return the drawing. You said it had

been lost,' I replied.

"'Ah, yes, yes--now I recollect,' he said, recovering himself somewhat;

'we made great search for the drawing; I remember all about it now;' and

he paused as if waiting civilly to know what more there could possibly be

to be said on that point. But I watched him closely and saw that he was

agitated. I looked him steadily in the eye and did not speak, while I

slowly opened my little bundle and unrolled the piece of chintz.

"'Can you possibly explain this mystery, then, sir, that here is my

brother's design printed on this chintz?' said I, in a clear, distinct

tone, holding out the yard of chintz at its full length. As I said the

words 'my brother's design,' the gentleman who had been talking with the

overseer turned quickly round, and I saw that it was Mr. Maynard's

youngest son Robert, who a year before had come home from Germany, and had

recently been taken into the firm as partner. He stepped a little nearer

me, and was evidently listening to my words.

"'Come into this room, Mr. Maynard, if you please, and we will finish

discussing the matter we were speaking of,' said Overseer Wilkins, turning

pale, and speaking very hurriedly, and trying to draw Mr. Maynard into the

inner office-room.

"'And--if you will call some other time, Miss Kent,' said Agent Wilkins,

turning away from me and walking toward Mr. Maynard, in his anxiety to

prevent my being seen or heard, 'I will try to attend to this matter; but

just now I have not another moment to spare,' and he began at once to talk

in a loud and voluble manner.

"I do not know how I had strength and courage to do what I did then; I do

not know where the voice came from with which I spoke then; Robert has

always said that I looked like a young lioness, and that my voice sounded

like the voice of one crying 'fire.' I stepped swiftly up to him, and

before the astounded Wilkins could speak a word, I had held up the chintz

and exclaimed, 'But Mr. Maynard will have time to spare, and I thank God

he is here. Mr. Maynard, this design is one of my brother's drawing; he

has made most of the calico designs printed in your father's mills for a

year and a half: I brought this one to the agent; he said it was not good

for anything, but he stole the paper and sold it, and here it is!' and

then suddenly my strength all disappeared, great terror seized me, and I

burst into tears. Both the agent and the overseer began to speak at once.

"'Be silent,' thundered Robert, in the most commanding tone I ever heard

out of human lips. 'Be silent, both of you!' Then he took the chintz away

from me, and taking both my hands in his, led me to a chair, saying, in a

voice as sweet and gentle as the other was terrible, 'Pray be calm, my

dear young lady--this matter shall be looked into. Sit down and do not try

to speak for a few minutes.'

"Then he walked over to the brothers; even through my tears I could see

how terrified they looked; they seemed struck dumb with fright; he spoke

to them now in the most courteous manner, but the courtesy was almost

worse than the anger had been before.

"'I shall have to ask you for the use of the office for a short time,

gentlemen. This is an affair I prefer to investigate immediately, and I

would like to see this young lady alone.' They both began to speak again,

but he interrupted them.

"'I will send for you presently; not a word more now, if you please;' and

in spite of themselves they were obliged to walk out of the room. As they

turned to shut the door their faces frightened me.

"'Oh!' I exclaimed; 'oh, Mr. Maynard, they will kill Nat I must go home at

once,' and I rose trembling in every nerve. He made me sit down again, and

brought me a glass of wine, and said, 'Do not be afraid, my dear child,

they will not dare harm your brother. Drink this, and tell me your whole

story.'

"Then I told him all. He interrupted me only once, to ask me about the

prices paid us for two or three especial patterns which he happened to

recollect. When I stopped, he jumped up from his chair and walked up and

down in front of me, ejaculating, 'By Jove! this is infernal--I never

heard of such a contemptible bit of rascality in my life. I have told my

father ever since I came home that these men had bad faces, and I have

looked carefully for traces of cheating in their accounts. But they were

too cowardly to try it on a large scale.'

"He then told me that the originality and beauty of the designs which the

Wilkinses had furnished the firm of late had attracted general attention;

that they had said the best ones were the work of a sister in England, the

others of the sister living with them. When he told me the prices which

had been paid for them, I could not help groaning aloud and burying my

face in my hands. 'Oh, my poor Nat!' I exclaimed, 'you might have had

everything you wanted for that.'

"'But he shall have it still, Miss Kent,' said Robert--'I shall give you a

check for the whole amount before you leave this room, and I do assure you

that your brother has a fortune in his talent for drawing. Probably this

work is only the beginning of what he will do.'

"As Robert opened the office-door for me to pass out, I saw the two Mr.

Wilkinses standing together at the gate through which I must go. Robert

answered my look of alarm by saying, 'I shall walk home with you, Miss

Kent. They shall not annoy you.'

"As we came near, they both lifted their hats with obsequious, angry bows.

Robert did not look at them, but said in a low tone, as we passed, 'Go to

the office and wait there till I return.'

"When he bade me good-by at my door, he said, 'I shall go now to find my

father, and if he is at home the brothers Wilkins will be dismissed from

our employ in less than one hour,' I looked after him as long as I could

see him. Then I went into our little sitting-room, sank into a chair, and

sat motionless, turning the check over and over in my hand, and wondering

if I really were awake and alive, or if all were a dream. In a few moments

Nat came home. As Patrick lifted the wagon up over the door-steps, and Nat

caught sight of my face, he called out, 'Oh, sister, what is the

matter--are you ill?' I ran to him and put the check into his hands, but

it was some minutes before I could speak. The wonderful fortune did not

overwhelm Nat as it had me. He was much stronger than I. Every stroke of

his pencil during the last year had developed and perfected his soul. He

was fast coming to have that consciousness of power which belongs to the

true artist, and makes a life self-centred.

"'I have felt that all this would come, dear,' he said, 'and more than

this too,' he added dreamily, 'we shall go on; this is only the outer gate

of our lives,'

"He prophesied more truly than he knew when he said that--my dear blessed

artist-souled martyr!

"I need not dwell on the details of the next half-year. A few words can

tell them; and then, again, worlds of words could not tell them.

"Three months from the day I carried the piece of chintz into the

overseer's office, Robert and I were married in the beautiful chapel where

papa used to preach. All the mills were shut, and the little chapel was

crowded with the workmen and workwomen. When we came out they were all

drawn up in lines on the green, and Robert and Mr. Maynard both made them

little speeches. Nat and Miss Penstock and Patrick were in Mr. Maynard's

carriage, and Robert and I stood on the ground by the carriage-door. After

the people had gone, Mr. Maynard came up to me and put both his hands on

my shoulders, just as he had done three years before, and said, 'You were

a brave girl, but you had to take me for your father, after all.'

"Nat's wedding-present to me was a wood-carving of the 'One-Legged

Dancers'--the one which stands on the little gilt table. I shall never be

separated from it.

"When I first found out how very rich Robert was, I was afraid; it seemed

to me almost wrong to have so much money. But I hope we shall not grow

selfish. And I cannot but be grateful for it, when I see what it has done

for my darling brother. He is living now in a beautiful apartment in New

York. Patrick is with him, his devoted servant, and Miss Penstock has gone

to keep house for them. Nat is studying and working hard; the best artists

in the city are his friends, and his pictures are already known and

sought. When Robert first proposed this arrangement, Nat said, 'Oh no, no!

I cannot accept such a weight of obligation from any man, not even from a

brother.'

"Robert rose and knelt down by Nat's chair, and even then he was so far

above him he had to bend over.

"'Nat,' said he, in a low tone, 'I never knelt to any human being before:

I didn't kneel to Dora when I asked her to give herself to me, for I was

sure I could so give myself to her as to make her happy; but it is to

you, after all, that I owe it that she is mine; I never can forget it for

an hour, and I never can repay you--no, not in my whole life-time, nor

with all my fortune.'

"Then he told him that the sum which it would need to support him and Miss

Penstock and Patrick in this way was so small, in comparison with our

whole income, that it was not worth mentioning. 'And at any rate,' he

said, 'it is useless for you to remonstrate, Nat, for I have already made

fifty thousand dollars' worth of stock so entirely yours, that you cannot

escape from it. The papers are all in my father's hands, and the income

will be paid to you, or left subject to your order, quarterly. If you do

not spend it, nobody else will;' and then Robert bent down lower, and

lifting Nat's thin hands tenderly in his, pressed them both against his

check, in the way I often did. It was one of the few caresses Nat loved. I

stood the other side of the chair, and I stooped down and kissed him, and

said:--

"'And, Nat, I cannot be quite happy in any other way.'

"So Nat yielded.

"It was hard to come away and leave him. For some time I clung to the hope

that he might come with us; but the physicians all said it would be

madness for him to run the risk of a sea-voyage. However, I know that for

him, the next best thing to seeing Europe himself is to see it through my

eyes. I write to him every week, and I shall carry home to him such

art-treasures as he has never dreamed of possessing.

"Next year we shall go home, and then he will come back to Maynard's

Mills and live with us. Robert is having a large studio built for him on

the north side of the house, with a bed-room and little sitting-room

opening out of it. Miss Penstock, too, will always live with us; we shall

call her 'housekeeper,' to keep her contented, and Patrick is to stay as

Nat's attendant. Poor fellow, he is not quite full-witted, we think; but

he loves Nat so devotedly that he makes a far better servant than a

cleverer boy would with a shade less affection.

"And now you have heard the story of my life, dear friend," said Dora, as

she rose from the seat and lighted the rose-colored tapers in two low

swinging Etruscan candlesticks just above our heads--"all that I can tell

you," she added slowly. "You will understand that I cannot speak about the

happiest part of it. But you have seen Robert. The only thing that

troubles me is that I have no sorrow. It seems dangerous. Dear Nat,

although he has all he ever hoped for, need not fear being too happy,

because he has the ever-present pain, to make him earnest and keep him

ready for more pain. I said so to him the day before I came away, and he

gave me those verses I told you of, called 'The Angel of Pain,'"

Then she repeated them to me:--

The Angel of Pain.

Angel of Pain, I think thy face

Will be, in all the heavenly place,

The sweetest face that I shall see,

The swiftest face to smile on me.

All other angels faint and tire;

Joy wearies, and forsakes desire;

Hope falters, face to face with Fate,

And dies because it cannot wait;

And Love cuts short each loving day,

Because fond hearts cannot obey

That subtlest law which measures bliss

By what it is content to miss.

But thou, O loving, faithful Pain--

Hated, reproached, rejected, slain--

Dost only closer cling and bless

In sweeter, stronger steadfastness.

Dear, patient angel, to thine own

Thou comest, and art never known

Till late, in some lone twilight place

The light of thy transfigured face

Sudden shines out, and, speechless, they

Know they have walked with Christ all day.

When she had done we sat for some time silent. Then I rose, and kissing

her, still silent, went out into the unlighted room where the gilt table

stood. A beam of moonlight fell, broad and white, across its top, and

flickered on the vine-leaves and the ferns. In the dim weird light their

shapes were more fantastic than ever.

The door into the outer hall stood open. As I went toward it, I saw old

Anita toiling slowly up the stairs, with a flat basket on her head. Her

wrinkled face was all aglow with delight. As soon as she reached the

threshold she set the basket down, and exclaiming, "Oh look, look,

Signora!" lifted off the cover. It was full of fresh and beautiful

anemones of all colors. She moved a few on top and showed me that those

beneath were chiefly purple ones.

"Iddio mio! will not the dearest of Signoras be pleased now!" she said.

"The saints wish that she shall have all she desires; did not my Biagio's

brother come in from Albano this morning? and as I was in the Piazza

Navona, buying oranges, I heard him calling from a long way off, 'Ho

Anita, my Anita, here are anemones for your beautiful Signora with the

bright hair.'

"They grow around an old tomb a mile away from his vineyard, and he set

out from his home long before light to get them for me; for he once saw

the Signora and he had heard me say that she never could have enough of

anemones. Iddio mio! but my heart is glad of them. Ah, the dearest of

Signoras!" and, with a tender touch, Anita laid the cool vine-leaves

lightly back upon the anemones and hurried on in search of Dora.

How One Woman Kept Her Husband.

Why my sister married John Gray, I never could understand. I was

twenty-two and she was eighteen when the marriage took place. They had

known each other just one year. He had been passionately in love with her

from the first day of their meeting. She had come more slowly to loving

him: but love him she did, with a love of such depth and fervor as are

rarely seen. He was her equal in nothing except position and wealth. He

had a singular mixture of faults of opposite temperaments. He had the

reticent, dreamy, procrastinating inertia of the bilious melancholic man,

side by side with the impressionable sensuousness, the sensitiveness and

sentimentalism of the most sanguine-nervous type. There is great charm in

such a combination, especially to persons of a keen, alert nature. My

sister was earnest, wise, resolute. John Gray was nonchalant, shrewd,

vacillating. My sister was exact, methodical, ready. John Gray was

careless, spasmodic, dilatory. My sister had affection. He had tenderness.

She was religious of soul; he had a sort of transcendental perceptivity,

so to speak, which kept him more alive to the comforts of religion than

to its obligations. My sister would have gone to the stake rather than

tell a lie. He would tell a lie unhesitatingly, rather than give anybody

pain. My sister lived earnestly, fully, actively, in each moment of the

present. It never seemed quite clear whether he were thinking of to-day,

yesterday, or to-morrow. She was upright because she could not help it. He

was upright,--when he was upright,--because of custom, taste, and the

fitness of things. What fatal discrepancies! what hopeless lack of real

moral strength, enduring purpose, or principle in such a nature as John

Gray's! When I said these things to my sister, she answered always, with a

quiet smile, "I love him." She neither admitted nor denied my accusations.

The strongest expression she ever used, the one which came nearest to

being an indignant repelling of what I had said, was one day, when I

exclaimed:--

"Ellen, I would die before I'd risk my happiness in the keeping of such a

man."

"My happiness is already in his keeping," said she in a steady voice, "and

I believe his is in mine. He is to be my husband and not yours, dear; you

do not know him as I do. You do not understand him."

But it is not to give an analysis of her character or of his, nor to give

a narrative of their family history, that I write this tale. It is only

one episode of their life that I shall try to reproduce here, and I do it

because I believe that its lesson is of priceless worth to women.

Ellen had been married fourteen years, and was the mother of five

children, when my story begins. The years had gone in the main peacefully

and pleasantly. The children, three girls and two boys, were fair and

strong. Their life had been a very quiet one, for our village was far

removed from excitements of all kinds. It was one of the suburban villages

of ----, and most of the families living there were the families of

merchants or lawyers doing business in the town, going in early in the

morning, and returning late at night. There is usually in such communities

a strange lack of social intercourse; whether it be that the daily

departure and return of the head of the family keeps up a perpetual

succession of small crises of interest to the exclusion of others, or that

the night finds all the fathers and brothers too tired to enjoy anything

but slippers and cigars, I know not; but certain it is that all such

suburban villages are unspeakably dull and lifeless. There is barely

feeling enough of good neighborhood to keep up the ordinary interchange of

the commonest civilities.

Except for long visits to the city in the winter, and long journeys in the

summer, I myself should have found life insupportably tedious. But Ellen

was absolutely content. Her days were unvaryingly alike, a simple routine

of motherly duties and housekeeping cares. Her evenings were equally

unvaried, being usually spent in sewing or reading, while her husband, in

seven evenings out of ten, dozed, either on the sofa, or on one of the

children's little beds in the nursery. His exquisite tenderness to the

children, and his quiet delight in simply being where they were, were the

brightest points in John Gray's character and life.

Such monotony was not good for either of them. He grew more and more

dreamy and inert. She insensibly but continually narrowed and hardened,

and, without dreaming of such a thing, really came to be less and less a

part of her husband's inner life. Faithful, busy, absorbed herself in the

cares of each day, she never observed that he was living more and more in

his children and his reveries, and withdrawing more and more from her. She

did not need constant play and interchange of sentiment as he did.

Affectionate, loyal, devoted as she was, there was a side of husband's

nature which she did not see nor satisfy, perhaps, never could. But

neither of them knew it.

At this time Mr. Gray was offered a position of importance in the city,

and it became necessary for them to move there to live. How I rejoiced in

the change. How bitterly I regretted it before two years had passed.

Their city home was a beautiful one, and their connections and

associations were such as to surround them at once with the most desirable

companionships. At first it was hard for Ellen to readjust her system of

living and to accustom herself to the demands of even a moderately social

life. But she was by nature very fond of all such pleasures, and her house

soon became one of the pleasantest centres, in a quiet way, of the

comparatively quiet city. John Gray expanded and brightened in the new

atmosphere; he had always been a man of influence among men. All his

friends,--even his acquaintances,--loved him, and asked his advice. It was

a strange thing that a man so inert and procrastinating in his own

affairs, should be so shrewd and practical and influential in the affairs

of others, or in public affairs. This, however, was no stranger than many

other puzzling incongruities in John Gray's character. Since his college

days he had never mingled at all in general society until this winter,

after their removal to town; and it was with delight that I watched his

enjoyment of people, and their evident liking and admiration for him. His

manners were singularly simple and direct; his face, which was not wholly

pleasing in repose, was superbly handsome when animated in conversation;

its inscrutable reticence which baffled the keenest observation when he

was silent, all disappeared and melted in the glow of cordial

good-fellowship which lighted every feature when he talked. I grew very

proud of my brother as I watched him in his new sphere and surroundings;

and I also enjoyed most keenly seeing Ellen in a wider and more

appreciative circle. I spent a large part of the first winter in their

house, and shared all their social pleasures, and looked forward to ever

increasing delight, as my nieces should grow old enough to enter into

society.