out of a daily paper. It read as follows:
[Illustration:
MARRILL
SCHOFF.—At the by the Rev. Dr. Kroiel, BISCHOFF, daughter of off. to
THEODORE BREUSING, of Osnabruen, many.
CHESTER—COPERNICUS.—At the rectory of the Church of St. James the
Greater, by the Rev. Dr. Wilson Wilson. D. D., FLORETTA, daughter
of Thomas Copernicus, of New York, to DUDLEY WINTHROP CHESTER, of
Baltimore. Md. No cards.
Marriage o h noti ad, without extra char then the London
v Re ter.]
* * * * *
And yet, within six months, Mr. Mitts received cards. They bade him to
a reception given by Mr. and Mrs. Chester at the house of Mr. Thomas
Copernicus.
“_I_ couldn’t have done that,” said Mr. Mitts to himself.
[Illustration]
HECTOR.
[Illustration: “_Three slats!—and a vast black body leaped high in the
air._”]
HECTOR.
It was such a quiet old home, so comfortably covered with wistaria from
basement to chimney–tops, and it stood on the corner of two such quiet,
old–fashioned streets on the East side of New York that you would never
have imagined that it held six of the most agitated and perturbed women
in the great city. But the three Miss Pellicoes, their maid, their
waitress and their cook, could not have been more troubled in their
feminine minds had they been six exceptionally attractive Sabines with
the Roman soldiery in full cry.
[Illustration]
For twenty years—ever since the death of old Mr. Pellicoe—these six
women had lived in mortal fear of the marauding man, and the Man had
come at last. That very evening, at a quarter past eight o’clock, a
creature who called himself a book–agent had rung the front door bell.
Honora, the waitress, had opened the door a couple of inches, inquired
the stranger’s business, learned it, told him to depart, tried to close
the door, and discovered that the man had inserted his toe in the
opening. She had closed the door violently, and the man had emitted a
single oath of deep and sincere profanity. He had then kicked the door
and departed, with a marked limp.
At least this was the story as Honora first related it. But as she
stood before the assembled household and recounted it for the seventh
time, it had assumed proportions that left no room for the charitable
hypothesis that an innocent vendor of literature had been the hapless
victim of his own carelessness or clumsiness.
“And whin he had the half of his big ugly body in the crack o’ th’
dure,” she said, in excited tones and with fine dramatic action, “and
him yellin’ an’ swearin’ and cussin’ iv’ry holy name he could lay his
black tongue to, and me six years cook in a convent, and I t’rew th’
whole weight o’ me on th’ dure, an’—“
“That will do, Honora,” said Miss Pellicoe, who was the head of the
household. She perceived that the combat was deepening too rapidly.
“You may go. We will decide what is to be done.”
And Miss Pellicoe had decided what was to be done.
“Sisters,” she said to her two juniors, “we must keep a dog.”
“A dog!” cried Miss Angela, the youngest; “oh, how nice!”
“I do not think it is nice at all,” said Miss Pellicoe, somewhat
sternly, “nor would you, Angela, if you had any conception of what it
really meant. I do not propose to keep a lap–dog, or a King Charles
spaniel, but a _dog_—a mastiff, or a bloodhound, or some animal of that
nature, such as would spring at the throat of an invader, and bear him
to the ground!”
“Oh, dear!” gasped Miss Angela. “I should be afraid of him!”
“You do not understand as yet, Angela,” Miss Pellicoe explained,
knitting her brows. “My intention is to procure the animal as a—in
fact—a puppy, and thus enable him to grow up and to regard us with
affection, and be willing to hold himself at all times in readiness to
afford us the protection we desire. It is clearly impossible to have a
man in the house. I have decided upon a mastiff.”
When Miss Pellicoe decided upon a thing, Miss Angela Pellicoe and her
other sister promptly acquiesced. On this occasion they did not, even
in their inmost hearts, question the wisdom of the decision of the
head of the house. A man, they knew, was not to be thought of. For
twenty years the Pellicoe house had been a bower of virginity. The only
men who ever entered it were the old family doctor, the older family
lawyer, and annually, on New Year’s Day, in accordance with an obsolete
custom, Major Kitsedge, their father’s old partner, once junior of the
firm of Pellicoe & Kitsedge. Not ever the butcher or the baker or the
candlestick–maker forced an entrance to that innocent dovecote. They
handed in their wares through a wicket–gate in the back yard and were
sent about their business by the chaste Honora.
The next morning, having awakened to find themselves and the silver
still safe, Miss Pellicoe and Miss Angela set out for a dog store which
they had seen advertised in the papers. It was in an unpleasantly low
and ill–bred part of the town, and when the two ladies reached it, they
paused outside the door, and listened, with lengthened faces, to the
combined clamor and smell that emanated from its open door.
[Illustration]
“This,” said Miss Pellicoe, after a brief deliberation, “is not a place
for _us_. If we are to procure a dog, he must be procured in some other
way. It need not entail a loss of self–respect.”
“I have it!” she added with a sudden inspiration. “I will write to
Hector.”
Hector was the sole male representative of the Pellicoe family. He was
a second cousin of the Misses Pellicoe. He lived out West—his address
varying from year to year. Once in a long while Miss Pellicoe wrote
to him, just to keep herself in communication with the Man of the
family. It made her feel more secure, in view of possible emergencies.
She had not seen Hector since he was nineteen. He was perhaps the last
person of any positive virility who had had the freedom of the Pellicoe
household. He had used that freedom mainly in making attempts to kiss
Honora, who was then in her buxom prime, and in decorating the family
portraits with cork moustaches and whiskers. Miss Pellicoe clung to the
Man of the family as an abstraction; but she was always glad that he
lived in the West. Addressing him in his capacity of Man of the family,
she wrote to him and asked him to supply her with a young mastiff, and
to send her bill therefor. She explained the situation to him, and made
him understand that the dog must be of a character to be regarded as a
male relative.
Hector responded at once. He would send a mastiff pup within a week.
The pup’s pedigree was, unfortunately, lost, but the breed was high.
Fifty dollars would cover the cost and expenses of transportation. The
pup was six months old.
For ten days the Pellicoe household was in a fever of expectation.
Miss Pellicoe called in a carpenter, and, chaperoned by the entire
household, held an interview with him, and directed him how to
construct a dog–house in the back–yard—a dog–house with one door about
six inches square, to admit the occupant in his innocent puphood, and
with another door about four feet in height to emit him, when, in the
pride of his mature masculinity, he should rush forth upon the burglar
and the book–agent. The carpenter remarked that he “never seen no such
a dorg as that;” but Miss Pellicoe thought him at once ignorant and
ungrammatical, and paid no heed to him.
In conclave assembled, the Misses Pellicoe decided to name the dog
Hector. Beside the consideration of the claims of gratitude and family
affection, they remembered that Hector was a classical hero.
The ten days came to an end when, just at dusk of a dull January
day, two stalwart expressmen, with much open grumbling and smothered
cursing, deposited a huge packing–case in the vestibule of the Pellicoe
house, and departed, slamming the doors behind them. From this box
proceeded such yelps and howls that the entire household rushed
affrighted to peer through the slats that gridironed the top. Within
was a mighty black beast, as high as a table, that flopped itself
wildly about, clawed at the sides of the box, and swung in every
direction a tail as large as a policeman’s night–club.
It was Hector. There was no mistake about it, for Mr. Hector Pellicoe’s
card was nailed to a slat. It was Hector, the six–months–old pup, for
whose diminutive proportions the small door in the dog–house had been
devised; Hector, for whom a saucer of lukewarm milk was even then
waiting by the kitchen range.
“Oh, Sister!” cried Miss Angela, “we _never_ can get him out! You’ll
have to send for a _man_!”
“I certainly shall not send for a _man_ at this hour of the evening,”
said Miss Pellicoe, white, but firm; “and I shall not leave the poor
creature imprisoned during the night.” Here Hector yawped madly.
“I shall take him out,” concluded Miss Pellicoe, “_myself_!”
They hung upon her neck, and entreated her not to risk her life; but
Miss Pellicoe had made up her mind. The three maids shoved the box
into the butler’s pantry, shrieking with terror every time that Hector
leaped at the slats, and at last, with the two younger Pellicoes
holding one door a foot open, and the three maids holding the other
door an inch open, Miss Pellicoe seized the household hatchet, and
began her awful task. One slat! Miss Pellicoe was white but firm. Two
slats! Miss Pellicoe was whiter and firmer. Three slats!—and a vast
black body leaped high in the air. With five simultaneous shrieks,
the two doors were slammed to, and Miss Pellicoe and Hector were left
together in the butler’s pantry.
The courage of the younger Pellicoes asserted itself after a moment,
and they flung open the pantry door. Miss Pellicoe, looking as though
she needed aromatic vinegar, leaned against the wall. Hector had his
fore–paws on her shoulders, and was licking her face in exuberant
affection.
“Sisters,” gasped Miss Pellicoe, “will you kindly remove him? I should
like to faint.”
[Illustration]
But Hector had already released her to dash at Miss Angela, who
frightened him by going into such hysterics that Miss Pellicoe was
obliged to deny herself the luxury of a faint. Then he found the
maids, and, after driving them before him like chaff for five minutes,
succeeded in convincing Honora of the affectionate purpose of his
demonstrations, and accepted her invitation to the kitchen, where he
emptied the saucer of milk in three laps.
“I think, Honora,” suggested Miss Pellicoe, who had resumed command,
“that you might, perhaps, give him a slice or two of last night’s leg
of mutton. Perhaps he needs something more sustaining.”
Honora produced the mutton–leg. It was clearly what Hector wanted. He
took it from her without ceremony, bore it under the sink and ate all
of it except about six inches of the bone, which he took to bed with
him.
[Illustration]
The next day, feeling the need of masculine advice, Miss Pellicoe
resolved to address herself to the policeman on the beat, and she
astonished him with the following question:
“Sir,” she said, in true Johnsonian style, “what height should a
mastiff dog attain at the age of six months?”
The policeman stared at her in utter astonishment.
“They do be all sizes, Mum,” he replied, blankly, “like a piece of
cheese.”
“My relative in the West,” explained Miss Pellicoe, “has sent me a
dog, and I am given to understand that his age is six months. As he is
phenomenally large, I have thought it best to seek for information.
Has my relative been imposed upon?”
“It’s har–r–rd to tell, Mum,” replied the policeman, dubiously. Then
his countenance brightened. “Does his feet fit him?” he inquired.
“What—what do you mean?” asked Miss Pellicoe, shrinking back a little.
“Is his feet like blackin’–boxes on th’ ind of his legs?”
“They are certainly very large.”
“Thin ’tis a pup. You see, Mum, with a pup, ’tis this way. The feet
starts first, an’ the pup grows up to ’em, like. Av they match him,
he’s grown. Av he has arctics on, he’s a pup.”
* * * * *
Hector’s growth in the next six months dissipated all doubts as to
his puphood. He became a four–legged Colossus, martial toward cats,
aggressive toward the tradesmen at the wicket–gate, impartially
affectionate toward all the household, and voracious beyond all
imagining. But he might have eaten the gentle ladies out of house and
home, and they would never have dreamed of protesting. The house had
found a Head—even a Head above Miss Pellicoe.
The deposed monarch gloried in her subjection. She said “Hector
likes this,” or “Hector likes that,” with the tone of submissive
deference in which you may hear a good wife say, “Mr. Smith _will not_
eat cold boiled mutton,” or “Mr. Smith is very particular about his
shirt–bosoms.”
As for Miss Angela, she never looked at Hector, gamboling about the
back–yard in all his superabundance of strength and vitality, without
feeling a half–agreeable nervous shock, and a flutter of the heart.
He stood for her as the type of that vast outside world of puissant
manhood of which she had known but two specimens—her father and Cousin
Hector. Perhaps, in the old days, if Cousin Hector had not been so
engrossed in frivolity and making of practical jokes, he might have
learned of something to his advantage. But he never did.
* * * * *
For the first time in her life, Miss Angela found herself left to
watch the house through the horrors of the Fourth of July. This had
always been Miss Pellicoe’s duty; but this year Miss Pellicoe failed
to come back from the quiet place in the Catskills, where no children
were admitted, and where the Pellicoe family, two at a time, spent the
Summer in the society of other old maids and of aged widows.
[Illustration]
“I feel that you are safe with Hector,” she wrote.
Alack and alack for Miss Pellicoe’s faith in Hector! The first
fire–cracker filled him with excitement, and before the noises of the
day had fairly begun, he was careering around the yard, barking in
uncontrollable frenzy. At twelve o’clock, when the butcher–boy came
with the chops for luncheon, Hector bounded through the open wicket,
right into the arms of a dog–catcher. Miss Angela wrung her hands as
she gazed from her window and saw the Head of the House cast into the
cage with a dozen curs of the street and driven rapidly off.
In her lorn anguish she sought the functionary who was known in the
house as “Miss Pellicoe’s policeman.”
“Be aisy, Miss,” he said. “Av the dog is worth five dollars, say, to
yez, I have a friend will get him out for th’ accommodation.”
“Oh, take it, take it!” cried Miss Angela, trembling and weeping.
* * * * *
After six hours of anxious waiting, Miss Angela received Hector at the
front door, from a boy who turned and fled as soon as his mission was
accomplished. Hector was extremely glad to be at home, and his health
seemed to be unimpaired; but to Miss Angela’s delicate fancy, contact
with the vulgar of his kind had left a vague aroma of degradation about
him. With her own hands she washed him in tepid water and sprinkled him
with eau de cologne. And even then she could not help feeling that to
some extent the bloom had been brushed from the peach.
* * * * *
Hector was ill—very ill. The family conclave assembled every night and
discussed the situation with knit brows and tearful eyes. They could
not decide whether the cause of his malady was the unwholesomeness of
the Summer air in the city, or whether it was simply over–feeding. He
was certainly shockingly fat, and much indisposed to exertion. He had
lost all his activity; all his animal spirits. He spent most of the
time in his house. Even his good–nature was going. He had actually
snapped at Honora. They had tried to make up their minds to reduce his
rations; but their hearts had failed them. They had hoped that the cool
air of September would help him; but September was well nigh half gone;
and Hector grew worse and worse.
“Sisters,” said Miss Pellicoe, at last, “we shall have to send for a
Veterinary!” She spoke as though she had just decided to send for an
executioner. And even as the words left her lips there came from Hector
such a wail of anguish that Miss Pellicoe’s face turned a ghastly white.
“He is going mad!” she cried.
There was no sleep in the Pellicoe household that night, although
Hector wailed no more. At the break of day, Miss Pellicoe led five
other white–faced women into the back yard.
Hector’s head lay on the sill of his door. He seemed too weak to rise,
but he thrashed his tail pleasantly against the walls, and appeared
amiable and even cheerful. The six advanced.
Miss Pellicoe knelt down and put her hand in to pet him. Then a strange
expression came over her face.
[Illustration]
“Sister,” she said, “I _think_—a cat has got in and bitten him.”
She closed her hand on something soft, lifted it out and laid it on the
ground. It was small, it was black, it was dumpy. It moved a round head
in an uncertain, inquiring way, and tried to open its tightly–closed
eyes. Then it squeaked.
Thrice more did Miss Pellicoe thrust her hand into the house. Thrice
again did she bring out an object exactly similar.
“Wee–e–e–e!” squeaked the four objects. Hector thrashed her tail
about and blinked joyfully, all unconscious of the utter wreck of her
masculinity, looking as though it were the most natural thing in the
world for her to have a litter of pups—as, indeed, it was.
Honora broke the awful silence,—Miss Angela was sobbing so softly you
could scarcely hear her.
“Be thim Hector’s?” Honora inquired.
“Honora!” said Miss Pellicoe, rising, “never utter that name in my
presence again.”
“An’ fwat shall I call the dog?”
“Call _it_”—and Miss Pellicoe made a pause of impressive severity,
“call _it_—Andromache.”
[Illustration]
A SISTERLY SCHEME.
[Illustration: “_The young man looked up and saw a saucy face laughing
at him._”]
A SISTERLY SCHEME.
Away up in the very heart of Maine there is a mighty lake among the
mountains. It is reached after a journey of many hours from the place
where you “go in.” That is the phrase of the country, and when you
have once “gone in,” you know why it is not correct to say that you
have gone _through_ the woods, or, simply, _to_ your destination. You
find that you have plunged into a new world—a world that has nothing
in common with the world that you live in; a world of wild, solemn,
desolate grandeur, a world of space and silence; a world that oppresses
your soul—and charms you irresistibly. And after you have once “come
out” of that world, there will be times, to the day of your death, when
you will be homesick for it, and will long with a childlike longing to
go back to it.
Up in this wild region you will find a fashionable Summer–hotel, with
electric bells and seven–course dinners, and “guests” who dress three
times a day. It is perched on a little flat point, shut off from the
rest of the mainland by a huge rocky cliff. It is an impertinence in
that majestic wilderness, and Leather–Stocking would doubtless have
had a hankering to burn such an affront to Nature; but it is a good
hotel, and people go to it and breathe the generous air of the great
woods.
[Illustration]
On the beach near this hotel, where the canoes were drawn up in line,
there stood one Summer morning a curly–haired, fair young man—not so
very young, either—whose cheeks were uncomfortably red as he looked
first at his own canoe, high and dry, loaded with rods and landing–net
and luncheon–basket, and then at another canoe, fast disappearing down
the lake, wherein sat a young man and a young woman.
“Dropped again, Mr. Morpeth?”
The young man looked up and saw a saucy face laughing at him. A girl
was sitting on the string–piece of the dock. It was the face of a girl
between childhood and womanhood. By the face and the figure, it was a
woman grown. By the dress, you would have judged it a girl.
And you would have been confirmed in the latter opinion by the fact
that the young person was doing something unpardonable for a young
lady, but not inexcusable in the case of a youthful tomboy. She had
taken off her canvas shoe, and was shaking some small stones out of
it. There was a tiny hole in her black stocking, and a glimpse of her
pink toe was visible. The girl was sunburnt, but the toe was prettily
pink.
“Your sister,” replied the young man with dignity, “was to have gone
fishing with me; but she remembered at the last moment that she had a
prior engagement with Mr. Brown.”
“She hadn’t,” said the girl. “I heard them make it up last evening,
after you went upstairs.”
The young man clean forgot himself.
“She’s the most heartless coquette in the world!” he cried, and
clinched his hands.
“She is all that,” said the young person on the string–piece of the
dock, “and more too. And yet, I suppose, you want her all the same?”
“I’m afraid I do,” said the young man, miserably.
“Well,” said the girl, putting her shoe on again, and beginning to tie
it up, “I’ll tell you what it is, Mr. Morpeth. You’ve been hanging
around Pauline for a year, and you are the only one of the men she
keeps on a string who hasn’t snubbed me. Now, if you want me to, I’ll
give you a lift.”
“A—a—_what_?”
“A lift. You’re wasting your time. Pauline has no use for devotion.
It’s a drug in the market with her—has been for five seasons. There’s
only one way to get her worked up. Two fellows tried it, and they
nearly got there; but they weren’t game enough to stay to the bitter
end. I think you’re game, and I’ll tell you. You’ve got to make her
jealous.”
“Make her jealous of me?”
“No!” said his friend, with infinite scorn; “make her jealous of the
other girl. _Oh!_ but you men are stupid!”
The young man pondered a moment.
“Well, Flossy,” he began, and then he became conscious of a sudden
change in the atmosphere, and perceived that the young lady was
regarding him with a look that might have chilled his soul.
“Miss Flossy—Miss Belton—” he hastily corrected himself. Winter
promptly changed to Summer in Miss Flossy Belton’s expressive face.
“Your scheme,” he went on, “is a good one. Only—it involves the
discovery of another girl.”
“Yes,” assented Miss Flossy, cheerfully.
“Well,” said the young man, “doesn’t it strike you that if I were to
develop a sudden admiration for any one of these other young ladies
whose charms I have hitherto neglected, it would come tardy off—lack
artistic verisimilitude, so to speak?”
“Rather,” was Miss Flossy’s prompt and frank response; “especially as
there isn’t one of them fit to flirt with.”
“Well, then, where am I to discover the girl?”
Miss Flossy untied and retied her shoe. Then she said, calmly:
“What’s the matter with—” a hardly perceptible hesitation—“_me?_”
“With _you?_” Mr. Morpeth was startled out of his manners.
“Yes!”
Mr. Morpeth simply stared.
“Perhaps,” suggested Miss Flossy, “I’m not good–looking enough?”
“You are good–looking enough,” replied Mr. Morpeth, recovering himself,
“for _anything_—” and he threw a convincing emphasis into the last word
as he took what was probably his first real inspection of his adored
one’s junior—“but—aren’t you a trifle—young?”
“How old do you suppose I am?”
“I know. Your sister told me. You are sixteen.”
“Sixteen!” repeated Miss Flossy, with an infinite and uncontrollable
scorn, “yes, and I’m the kind of sixteen that stays sixteen till your
elder sister’s married. I was eighteen years old on the third of last
December—unless they began to double on me before I was old enough to
know the difference—it would be just like Mama to play it on me in some
such way,” she concluded, reflectively.
“Eighteen years old!” said the young man. “The deuce!” Do not think
that he was an ill–bred young man. He was merely astonished, and he had
much more astonishment ahead of him. He mused for a moment.
“Well,” he said, “what’s your plan of campaign? I am to—to discover
you.”
“Yes,” said Miss Flossy, calmly, “and to flirt with me like fun.”
“And may I ask what attitude you are to take when you are—discovered?”
“Certainly,” replied the imperturbable Flossy. “I am going to dangle
you.”
“To—to dangle me?”
“As a conquest, don’t you know. Let you hang round and laugh at you.”
“Oh, indeed?”
“There, don’t be wounded in your masculine pride. You might as well
face the situation. You don’t think that Pauline’s in love with you, do
you?”
“No!” groaned the young man.