“I got a headache.” Zarelda took off her hat and commenced drawing the

pins out of her hair. She untied the red ribbon and rolled it tightly

around three fingers to smooth out the creases.

“Well, you wasn’t puttin’ your headache ’n your writin’-desk, was you?”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Now, see here, ’Reldy,” said Mrs. Winser, very kindly, coming closer and

resting one large hand on the bureau; “there’s somethin’ ails you besides

a headache, an’ you ain’t a-goin’ to pull any wool over my eyes. You’ve

hed lots an’ lots o’ headaches an’ et your supper just the same. What

ails you?”

“Nothin’ ails me, maw.”

“There does, too, somethin’ ail you. I guess I know. Now, what is it? You

might just as well spit it right out an’ be done with it.”

Zarelda was silent. She began brushing her hair with a dingy brush from

which tufts of bristles had been worn in several places. Her mother

watched her patiently for a few moments, then she said—“Well, ’Reldy, be

you goin’ to tell me what ails you?”

Still there was no reply.

“You ain’t turned off in the fact’ry, be you?”

Zarelda shook her head.

“Well, then,” said Mrs. Winser slowly, as if reluctantly admitting a

thought that she had been repelling, “it’s somethin’ about Jim Sheppard.”

The girl paled and brushed her hair over her face to screen it from her

mother’s searching gaze.

“Have you fell out with him?”

“No, I ain’t fell out with him. Hadn’t you best eat your supper before it

gets cold, maw?”

“No, I hadn’t best. I ain’t a-goin’ to budge a blessed step out o’ this

here room tell I know what ails you. Not if I have to stay here tell

daylight.” After a brief reflection she added—“Now, don’t you tell me

he’s been cuttin’ up any! I always said he was a fine young man, an’ I

say so still.”

“He ain’t been cuttin’ up any,” said Zarelda. “At least, not as I know

of.”

She laid down the brush and pushing her hair all back with both hands,

fronted her mother suddenly, pale but resolute.

“If you want to know so bad,” she said, “I’ll tell you. He’s threw off on

me.”

Mrs. Winser sunk helplessly into a chair. “Threw off on you!” she gasped.

“Yes, threw off on me.” Zarelda kept her dry, burning eyes on her

mother’s face. “D’ you feel any better for makin’ me tell it?”

Certainly her revenge for the persecution was all that heart could

desire. Her mother sat limp and motionless, save for the slow, mechanical

sliding back and forth of one thumb on the arm of her chair.

After a while Zarelda resumed the hair-brushing, calmly. Then her mother

revived.

“Who—who in the name of all that’s merciful has he took up with now?” she

asked, weakly.

“Em Brackett.”

“What!” Mrs. Winser almost screamed. “That onery hussy! ’Reldy Winser, be

you a-tellin’ me the truth?”

“Yes, maw. He took her to the dance up at Canemah las’ night, an’ she

told me about it this mornin’!”

“The deceitful jade. Smiled sweet as honey at me when she went by. You’d

of thought sugar wouldn’t melt in her mouth. I answered her ’s short as

lard pie-crust—I’m glad of it now. Has he took her any place else?”

“He took her walkin’ at noontime. Stepped right up when she was standin’

alongside o’ me an’ never looked at me, an’ ast her—right out loud so’s

all of ’em could hear, too.”

“Well, he’d ought to be ashamed of hisself! After bein’ your stiddy

comp’ny for more’n a year—well onto two years—an’ a-lettin’ all of us

think he was serious!”

“He never said he was, maw.”

“He never said he was, aigh? ’Reldy Winser, you ain’t got enough spunk to

keep a chicken alive, let alone a woman! ‘He never said he was,’ aigh?

Well, ain’t he been a-comin’ here three nights a week nigh onto two year,

an’ a-takin’ you every place, an’ never a-lookin’ at any other girl? An’

didn’t he give you an amyfist ring las’ Christmas, an’ a reel garnet pin

on your birthday? An’ didn’t he come here one evenin’, a-laffin’ an’

a-actin’ up foolish in a great way an’ holler out—‘Hello, maw Winser?’

Now, don’t you go a-tellin’ me he never meant anything serious.”

“Well, he never said so,” said the girl, stubbornly.

“I don’t care if he _never_ said so. He acted so. Why, for pity’s

sake! You’ve got a grease-spot on your dress. I never see you with a

grease-spot before—you’re so tidy. How’d you get it on?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“Benzine’ll take it out. Well—I’m a-goin’ to give him a piece o’ my mind!”

Zarelda lifted her body suddenly. She looked tall. Her eyes flamed out

their proud fire.

“Now, see here, maw,” she said, “you don’t say a word to him—not a word.

This ain’t your affair; it’s mine. It’s the fashion in fact’ry society

for a girl an’ a fellow to go together, an’ give each other things,

without bein’ real engaged; an’ she has to take her chances o’ some other

girl gettin’ him away from her. If he wants to throw off on her, all he’s

got to do ’s to take some other girl to a dance or out walkin’. An’ then,

if he’s give her a ring or anything, it’s etiquette for her to send it

back to him, an’ he’ll most likely give it to the other girl. I don’t

think it’s right, an’ I don’t say but what it’s hard—” her voice trembled

and broke, but she conquered her emotion stubbornly and went on—“but it’s

the way in fact’ry society. There ain’t a girl in the fact’ry but what’s

had to stand it some time or other, an’ I guess I can. You don’t want me

to be a laffin’-stawk, do you?”

“No, I don’t.” Her mother looked at her in a kind of admiring despair.

“But I never hear tell of such fashions an’ such doin’s in all my born

days. It’s shameful. Your paw an’ me ’d set our minds on your a-marryin’

him an’ gettin’ a home o’ your own. It’s been a burden off o’ our minds

for a year past—”

“Oh, maw!”

“Just to feel that you’d be fixed so’s you could take care o’ your little

sisters in case we dropped off. An’ there I’ve went an’ made up all them

underclo’s!” She leaned her head upon her hand and sat looking at the

floor with a forlornly reminiscent expression. “An’ put tattin’ on three

sets, an’ crochet lace on three, an’ serpentine edgin’ on three. An’

inserting on all of ’em! That ain’t the worst of it. I’ve _worked his

initial in button-hole stitch_ on every blessed thing!”

“Oh, maw, you never did that, did you?”

“Yes, I did. An’ what’s more, I showed ’em all to old Miss Bradley, too.”

“You might just as well of showed ’em to the whole town!” said poor

Zarelda, bitterly.

“They looked so nice I had to show ’em to somebody.”

“Sister,” piped a little voice at the foot of the stairs, “Mis’ Riley’s

boy’s come to find out how soon you’re a-comin’ over to set up with the

sick baby.”

“Oh, I’d clear forgot.” Zarelda braided her hair rapidly. “Tell him I’ll

be over ’n a few minutes.”

“Now, see here, ’Reldy,” said her mother, getting up and laying her hand

affectionately on the girl’s arm, “you ain’t a-goin’ to budge a single

step over there to-night. You just get to bed an’ put an arnicky plaster

on your forehead—”

Zarelda laughed in a kind of miserable mirth.

“Oh, you can laff, but it’ll help lots. I’ll go over an’ set up with that

baby myself.”

“No, you won’t, maw.” She slipped the last pin in her hair and set her

hat firmly on the glistening braids. “I said I’d set up with the baby,

an’ I will. I ain’t goin’ to shirk just because I’m in trouble.”

She went out into the cool autumn twilight. Her mother followed her and

stood looking after her with sympathetic eyes. At last she turned and

went slowly into the poor and gloomy house; as she closed the door she

put all her bitterness and disappointment into one heavy sigh.

The roar of the Falls came loudly to Zarelda as she walked along

rapidly. The dog-fennel was still in blossom, and its greenish snow

was drifted high on both sides of her path. Still higher were billows

of everlasting flowers, undulating in the soft wind. The fallen leaves

rustled mournfully as she walked through them. Some cows were feeding on

the commons near by; she heard their deep breathing on the grass before

they tore and crushed it with their strong teeth; she smelled their warm,

fragrant breaths.

She came to a narrow bridge under the cotton-woods where she saw the

Willamette, silver and beautiful, moving slowly and noiselessly between

its emerald walls. The slender, yellow sickle of the new moon quivered

upon its bosom.

Zarelda stood still. The noble beauty of the night—all its tenderness,

all its beating passion—shook her to the soul. Her life stretched out

before her, hard and narrow as the little path running through the

dog-fennel—a life of toil and duty, of clamor and unrest, of hurried

breakfasts, cold lunches and half-warm suppers, of longing for knowledge

that would never be hers—the hard and bitter treadmill of the factory

life.

A sob came up into her dry throat, but it did not reach her lips.

“I won’t!” she said, setting her teeth together hard. “I hate people who

whine after what they can’t have, instead o’ makin’ the best o’ what

they’ve got.”

She lifted her head and went on. Her face was beautiful; something

sweeter than moonlight shone upon it. She walked proudly and the dry

leaves whirled behind her.

IN THE BITTER ROOT MOUNTAINS

IN THE BITTER ROOT MOUNTAINS

“Go slow, boys, for God’s sake! If we miss this landing, we are lost. The

rapids begin just around that bend.”

Four men stood upon a rude raft, and with roughly-made oars and long

fir poles were trying to guide it out of the current of the swollen

Clearwater River into a small sheltered inlet.

Both shores of the river rose abruptly to steep and terrible mountains.

Not far above was the snow-line.

The men’s faces were white and haggard, their eyes anxious, half

desperate. Huddled upon a stretcher at one end of the raft was a young

man, little more than a boy, whose pallid, emaciated face was turned

slightly to one side. His eyes were closed; the long black lashes

lay like heavy shadows upon his cheeks. The weak November sunshine,

struggling over the fierce mountains, shone through his thin nostrils,

turning them pink, and giving an unearthly look to the face. A collie

crouched close beside him, shivering with fear, yet ever and anon licking

the cold hand lying outside the gray blanket; occasionally he lifted his

head and uttered a long, mournful howl. Each time the four men shuddered

and exchanged looks of despair,—so humanly appealing was it, and so

deeply did it voice the terrible dread in their own hearts.

It was now two months since they had left Seattle on a hunting expedition

in the Bitter Root Mountains in Idaho. For six weeks they had been lost

in those awful snow fastnesses. Their hunting dogs had been killed by

wild beasts. Their twelve pack-ponies had been left to starve to death

when, finding further progress on land impossible on account of the snow,

they constructed a raft and started on their perilous journey down the

Clearwater.

The cook had been sick almost the entire time, and their progress had

been necessarily slow and discouraging. They had now reached a point

where the river was so full of boulders and so swift that they could

proceed no farther on the raft.

For several days the cook had been unconscious, lying in a speechless

stupor; but when they had, with much danger and excitement, landed and

made him comfortable in a protected nook, he suddenly spoke,—faintly but

distinctly.

“Polly,” he said, with deep tenderness, “lay your hand on my head. I

guess it won’t ache so, then.”

The four men, looking at him, grew whiter. They could not look at each

other. The dog, having already taken his place beside him, lifted his

head and looked at him with pitiable eagerness.

“Oh, Polly!”—there was a heart-break in the voice,—“you don’t know what

I’ve suffered! The cold, and then the fever! The pain has been awful.

Oh, I’ve wanted you so, Polly—I’ve wanted you so!... But it’s all right,

now that I’m home again.... Where’s the baby, Polly? Oh, the nights that

I’ve laid, freezing and suffering in the snow, just kept alive by the

thought o’ you an’ the little man! I knew it ’u’d kill you ’f I died—so I

_w’u’dn’t_ give up! An’ now I’m here ’t home again. Polly——”

“We must fix some supper, boys,” said Darnell, roughly, turning away to

hide his emotion. “Let’s get the fire started.”

“We’ve just got enough for one more good meal,” said Roberts, in a

tremulous voice. “There’s no game around here, either. Guide, you must

try to find a way out of this before dark, so we can start early in the

morning.”

Without speaking, the guide obeyed. It was dark when he returned. The men

were sitting by the camp-fire, eating their supper. The dog still lay by

his master, from whom even hunger could not tempt him.

The three men looked at the guide. He sat down and took his cup of

coffee in silence. “Well,” said Darnell, at last, “can we go on?”

“Yes,” said the guide, slowly; “we can. In some places there’ll be only

a few inches’ foothold; an’ we’ll hev to hang on to bushes up above us,

with the river in some places hundreds o’ feet below; but we can do it,

’f we don’t get rattled an’ lose our heads.”

There was a deep and significant silence. Then Brotherton said, with

white lips, “Do you mean that we can’t take _him_?”

“That’s what I mean.” The guide spoke deliberately. He could not lift his

eyes. Some of the coffee spilled as he lifted the cup to his lips. “We

can’t take a thing, ’cept our hands and feet,—not even a blanket. It’ll

be life an’ death to do it, then.”

There was another silence. At last Darnell said: “Then it is for us to

decide whether we shall leave him to die alone while we save ourselves,

or stay and die with him?”

“Yes,” said the guide.

“There is positively not the faintest chance of getting him out with us?”

“By God, no!” burst forth the guide, passionately. “It seems like puttin’

the responsibility on me, but you want the truth, an’ that’s it. He can’t

be got out. It’s leave him an’ save ourselves, or stay with him an’

starve.”

After a long while Roberts said, in a low voice: “He’s unconscious. He

wouldn’t know we had gone.”

“He cannot possibly live three days, under any circumstances,” said

Brotherton. “Mortification has already begun in his legs.”

“Good God!” exclaimed Darnell, jumping up and beginning to walk rapidly

forth and back, before the fire. “I must go home, boys! My wife—when I

think of her, I am afraid of losing my reason! When I think what she is

suffering——”

Brotherton looked at him. Then he sunk his face into both his hands. He,

too, had a wife. The guide put down his coffee; large tears came into his

honest eyes. He had no wife, but there was one——

Roberts got up suddenly. He had the look of a tortured animal in his

eyes. “Boys,” he said, “my wife is dead. My life doesn’t matter so much,

but—I’ve three little girls! I _must_ get back, somehow!”

The sick man spoke. They all started guiltily, and looked toward him.

“Yes, yes, Polly,” he said, soothingly, “I know how you worried about

me. I know how you set strainin’ your eyes out the window day an’ night,

watchin’ fer me. But now I’m home again, an’ it’s all right. I guess you

prayed, Polly; an’ I guess God heard you.... There’s a boy fer you! He

knows me, too.”

The silence that fell upon them was long and terrible. The guide arose at

last, and, without speaking, made some broth from the last of the canned

beef, and forced it between the sick man’s lips. When he came back to the

fire, Darnell took a silver dollar out of his pocket.

“Boys,” he said, brokenly, “I don’t want to be the one to settle this,

and I guess none of you do. It is an awful thing to decide. I shall throw

this dollar high into the air. If it falls heads up, we go; tails—we

stay.”

The men had lifted their heads and were watching him. They were all very

white; they were all trembling.

“Are you willing to decide it in this way?”

Each answered, “Yes.”

“I swear,” said Darnell, slowly and solemnly, “that I will abide by this

decision. Do you all swear the same?”

Each, in turn, took the oath. Trembling now perceptibly, Darnell lifted

his hand slowly and cast the piece of silver into the air. Their eyes

followed its shining course. For a second it disappeared; then it came

singing to the earth.

Like drunken men they staggered to the spot where it had fallen, and fell

upon their knees, staring with straining eyes and bloodless lips.

“It is heads,” said Darnell. He wiped the cold perspiration from his brow.

At that moment the dog lifted his head and sent a long, mournful howl to

die in faint echoes in the mountains across the river.

* * * * *

At daylight they were ready to start. Snow lay on the ground to a depth

of six inches. But a terrible surprise awaited them. At the last moment

they discovered that the cook was conscious.

“You’re not going—to leave me?” he said, in a whisper. His eyes seemed to

be leaping out of their hollow sockets with terror.

“Only for a few hours,” said Brotherton, huskily. “Only to find a way out

of this,—to make a path over which we can carry you.”

“Oh,” he said, faintly; “I thought—— but you wouldn’t. In the name o’

God, don’t leave me to die alone!”

They assured him that they would soon return. Then, making him as

comfortable as possible, they went,—without hesitation, without one

backward look. There was no noise. The snow fell softly and silently

through the firs; the river flowed swiftly through its wild banks. The

sick man lay with closed eyes, trustfully. But the dog knew. For the

first time he left his master. He ran after them, and threw himself

before them, moaning. His lifted eyes had a soul in them. He leaped

before them, and upon them, licking their hands and clothing; he cast

himself prone upon their feet, like one praying. No human being ever

entreated for his life so passionately, so pathetically, as that dog

pleaded for his master’s.

At last, half desperate as they were, they kicked him savagely and flung

him off. With a look in his eyes that haunted them as long as they lived,

he retreated then to his master’s side, and lay down in a heavy huddle of

despair, still watching them. As they disappeared, he lifted his head,

and for the last time they heard that long, heart-breaking howl.

It was answered by a coyote in the canyon above.

* * * * *

A week later the Associated Press sent out the following dispatch:

“The Darnell party, who were supposed to have perished in the

Bitter Root Mountains, returned last night. Their hardships and

sufferings were terrible. There is great rejoicing over their

safe return. They were compelled to leave the cook, who had

been sick the entire time, to die in the mountains. But for

their determined efforts to bring him out alive, they would

certainly have returned a month earlier.”

The world read the dispatch and rejoiced with those rejoicing. But one

woman, reading it, fell, as one dead, beside her laughing boy.

PATIENCE APPLEBY’S CONFESSING-UP

PATIENCE APPLEBY’S CONFESSING-UP

“It must be goin’ to rain! My arm aches me so I can hardly hold my

knitting needles.”

“Hunh!” said Mrs. Wincoop. She twisted her thread around her fingers two

or three times to make a knot; then she held her needle up to the light

and threaded it, closing one eye entirely and the other partially, and

pursing her mouth until her chin was flattened and full of tiny wrinkles.

She lowered her head and looking at Mrs. Willis over her spectacles with

a kind of good-natured scorn, said—“Is that a sign o’ rain?”

“It never fails.” Mrs. Willis rocked back and forth comfortably. “Like as

not it begins to ache me a whole week before it rains.”

“I never hear tell o’ such a thing in all my days,” said Mrs. Wincoop,

with unmistakable signs of firmness, as she bent over the canton flannel

night-shirt she was making for Mr. Wincoop.

“Well, mebbe you never. Mebbe you never had the rheumatiz. I’ve had it

twenty year. I can’t get red of it, anyways. I’ve tried the Century

liniment—the one that has the man riding over snakes an’ things—and the

arnicky, and ev’ry kind the drug-store keeps. I’ve wore salt in my shoes

tell they turned white all over; and I kep’ a buckeye in my pocket tell

it wore a hole and fell out. But I never get red o’ the rheumatiz.”

Mrs. Wincoop took two or three stitches in silence; then she

said—“Patience, now, she _can_ talk o’ having rheumatiz. She’s most bent

in two with it when she has it—and that’s near all the time.”

The rocking ceased abruptly. Mrs. Willis’s brows met, giving a look of

sternness to her face.

“That’s a good piece o’ cotton flannel,” she said. “Hefty! Fer pity’s

sake! D’ you put ruffles on the bottom o’ Mr. Wincoop’s night-shirt?

Whatever d’you do that fer?”

“Because he likes ’em that way,” responded Mrs. Wincoop, tartly. “There’s

no call fer remarks as I see, Mis’ Willis. You put a pocket ’n Mr.

Willis’s, and paw never’d have that—never!” firmly.

“Well, I never see ruffles on a man’s night-shirt before,” said Mrs.

Willis, laughing rather aggravatingly. “But they do look reel pretty,

anyways.”

“The longer you live the more you learn.” Mrs. Wincoop spoke

condescendingly. “But talking about Patience—have you see her lately?”

“No, I ain’t.” Mrs. Willis got up suddenly and commenced rummaging about

on the table; there were two red spots on her thin face. “I’d most fergot

to show you my new winter underclo’s. Ain’t them nice and warm, though?

They feel so good to my rheumatiz. I keep thinking about them that can’t

get any. My, such hard times! All the banks broke, and no more prospect

of good times than of a hen’s being hatched with teeth! It puts me all of

a trimble to think o’ the winter here and ev’rybody so hard up. It’s a

pretty pass we’ve come to.”

“I should say so. I don’t see what Patience is a-going to live on this

winter. She ain’t fit to do anything; her rheumatiz is awful. She ain’t

got any fine wool underclo’s.”

Mrs. Willis sat down again, but she did not rock; she sat upright,

holding her back stiff and her thin shoulders high and level.

“I guess this tight spell’ll learn folks to lay by money when they got

it,” she said, sternly. “I notice we ain’t got any mortgage on our place,

and I notice we got five thousand dollars invested. We got some cattle

besides. We ain’t frittered ev’rything we made away on foolishness, like

some that I know of. We have things good and comf’terble, but we don’t

put on any style. Look at that Mis’ Abernathy! I caught her teeheeing

behind my back when I was buying red checked table clo’s. Her husband a

bookkeeper! And her a-putting on airs over me that could buy her up any

day in the week! Now, he’s lost his place, and I reckon she’ll come down

a peg or two.”

“She’s been reel good to Patience, anyways,” said Mrs. Wincoop.

Mrs. Willis knitted so fast her needles fairly rasped together.

“She takes her in jell and perserves right frequent. You mind Patience

always liked sweet things even when her ’n’ Lizy was girls together,

Eunice.”

It was so unusual for one of these two women to speak the other’s name

that they now exchanged quick looks of surprise. Indeed, Mrs. Wincoop

seemed the more surprised of the two. But the hard, matter-of-fact

expression returned at once to each face. If possible, Mrs. Willis looked

more grim and sour than before the unwonted address had startled her out

of her composure.

“Well,” she said, scarcely unclosing her thin lips, “I reckon she had all

the sweet things she was a-hankering after when she was a girl. I reckon

she had a plenty and to spare, and I expect they got to tasting pretty

bitter a good spell ago. Too much sweet always leaves a bit’rish taste

in the mouth. My religion is—do what’s right, and don’t wink at them that

does wrong. I’ve stuck to my religion, I reckon you can’t get anybody

to stand up and put their finger on anything wrong I’ve done—nor any of

my fambly, either.” Mrs. Wincoop put her hand on her chest and coughed

mournfully. “Let them that’s _sinned_,” went on Mrs. Willis, lifting her

pale, cold eyes and setting them full on her visitor, “make allowance fer

sinners, say I. Mis’ Abernathy, or Mis’ Anybody Else, can pack all the

clo’s and all the sweet things they’ve got a mind to over to Patience

Appleby; mebbe they’ve sinned, too—_I_ don’t know! But I do know that I

ain’t, and so I don’t pack things over to her, even if she is all doubled

up with the rheumatiz,” unconsciously imitating Mrs. Wincoop’s tone. “And

I don’t make no allowance for her sins, either, Mis’ Wincoop.”

A faint color came slowly, as if after careful consideration, to Mrs.

Wincoop’s face.

“There wa’n’t no call fer you a-telling that,” she said, with a great

calmness. “The whole town knows you wouldn’t fergive a sin, if your

fergiving it ’u’d save the sinner hisself from being lost! The whole town

knows what your religion is, Mis’ Willis. You set yourself up and call

yourself perfeck, and wrap yourself up in yourself—”

“There come the men—sh!” said Mrs. Willis. Her face relaxed, but with

evident reluctance. She began to knit industriously. But the temptation

to have the last word was strong.

“It ain’t my religion, either,” she said, her voice losing none of its

determination because it was lowered. “I’d of fergive her if she’d

a-confessed up. We all tried to get her to. I tried more ’n anybody. I

told her”—in a tone of conviction—“that nobody but a brazen thing ’u’d

do what she’d done and not confess up to ’t—and it never fazed her. She

_wouldn’t_ confess up.”

The men were scraping their feet noisily now on the porch, and Mrs.

Willis leaned back with a satisfied expression, expecting no reply. But

Mrs. Wincoop surprised her. She was sewing the last pearl button on Mr.

Wincoop’s night-shirt, and as she drew the thread through and fastened

it with scrupulous care, she said, without looking up—“I don’t take

much stock in confessings myself, Mis’ Willis. I don’t see just how

confessings is good for the soul when they hurt so many innocent ones as

well as the guilty ones. Ev’ry confessing affex somebody else; and so I

say if you repent and want to atone you can do ’t without confessing and

bringing disgrace on others. It’s nothing but curiosity that makes people

holler out—‘Confess-up now! Confess-up now.’ It ain’t anybody’s business

but God’s—and I reckon _He_ knows when a body’s sorry he’s sinned and

wants to do better, and I reckon He helps him just as much as if he got

up on a church tower and kep’ a-hollering out—‘Oh, good grieve, I’ve

sinned! I’ve sinned!’—so’s the whole town could run and gap’ at him! Mis’

Willis, if some confessing-ups was done in this town that I know of,

some people ’u’d be affected that ’u’d surprise you.” Then she lifted up

her voice cheerfully—“That you, father? Well, d’ you bring the lantern?

I reckon we’d best go right home; it’s getting latish, and Mis’ Willis

thinks, from the way her arm aches her, that it’s going to rain.”

Mrs. Willis sat knitting long after Mr. Willis had gone to bed. Her face

was more stern even than usual. She sat uncomfortably erect and did not

rock. When the clock told ten, she arose stiffly and rolled the half

finished stocking around the ball of yarn, fastening it there with the

needles. Then she laid it on the table and stood looking at it intently,

without seeing it. “I wonder,” she said, at last, drawing a deep breath,

“what she was a-driving at! I’d give a pretty to know.”

* * * * *

“Mother, where’s my Sund’y pulse-warmers at?”

“_I_ don’t know where your Sund’y pulse-warmers are at. Father, you’d

aggravate a body into her grave! You don’t half look up anything—and then

begin asking me where it’s at. What’s under that bunch o’ collars in your

drawer? Looks some like your Sund’y pulse-warmers, don’t it? This ain’t

Sund’y, anyways. Wa’n’t your ev’ryday ones good enough to wear just to a

church meeting?”

Mr. Willis had never been known to utter an oath; but sometimes he looked

as if his heart were full of them.

“I reckon you don’t even know where your han’ke’cher’s at, father.”

“Yes, I do, mother. I guess you might stop talking, an’ come on now—I’m

all ready.”

He preceded his wife, leaving the front door open for her to close and

lock. He walked stiffly, holding his head straight, lest his collar

should cramp his neck or prick his chin. He had a conscious, dressed-up

air. He carried in one hand a lantern, in the other an umbrella. It

was seven o’clock of a Thursday evening and the bell was ringing for

prayer-meeting. There was to be a church meeting afterward, at which the

name of Patience Appleby was to be brought up for membership. Mrs. Willis

breathed hard and deep as she thought of it.

She walked behind her husband to receive the full light of the lantern,

holding her skirts up high above her gaiter-tops which were so large and

so worn as to elastic, that they fairly ruffled around her spare, flat

ankles. Her shadow danced in piece-meal on the picket fence. After a

while she said—

“Father, I wish you wouldn’t keep swinging that lantern so! A body can’t

see where to put their feet down. Who’s that ahead o’ us?”

“I can’t make out yet.”

“No wonder—you keep swinging that lantern so! Father, what does _possess_

you to be so aggravating? If I’d of asked you to swing it, you couldn’t

of b’en _drug_ to do it!”

Mrs. Willis was guiltless of personal vanity, but she did realize the

importance of her position in village society, and something of this

importance was imparted to her carriage as she followed Mr. Willis up the

church aisle. She felt that every eye was regarding her with respect, and

held her shoulders so high that her comfortable shawl fell therefrom in

fuller folds than usual. She sat squarely in the pew, looking steadily

and unwinkingly at the wonderful red velvet cross that hung over the

spindle-legged pulpit, her hands folded firmly in her lap. She had never

been able to understand how Sister Wirth who sat in the pew in front

of the Willises, could always have her head a-lolling over to one side

like a giddy, sixteen-year-old. Mrs. Willis abominated such actions in a

respectable, married woman of family.

Mr. Willis crouched down uneasily in the corner of the seat and sat

motionless, with a self-conscious blush across his weak eyes. His

umbrella, banded so loosely that it bulged like a soiled-clothes bag,

stood up against the back of the next pew.

At the close of prayer-meeting no one stirred from his seat. An ominous

silence fell upon the two dozen people assembled there. The clock ticked

loudly, and old lady Scranton, who suffered of asthma, wheezed with every

breath and whispered to her neighbor that she was getting so phthisicy

she wished to mercy they’d hurry up or she’d have to go home without

voting. At last one of the deacons arose and said with great solemnity

that he understood sister Wincoop had a name to propose for membership.

When Mrs. Wincoop stood up she looked pale but determined. Mrs. Willis

would not turn to look at her, but she caught every word spoken.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Wincoop, “I want to bring up the name of Patience

Appleby. I reckon you all know Patience Appleby. She was born here,

and she’s always lived here. There’s them that says she done wrong

onct, but I guess she’s about atoned up for that—if any mortal living

has. I’ve know her fifteen year, and I don’t know any better behaving

woman anywheres. She never talks about anybody”—her eyes went to Mrs.

Willis’s rigid back—“and she never complains. She’s alone and poor, and

all crippled up with the rheumatiz. She wants to join church and live a

Christian life, and I, fer one, am in favor o’ us a-holding out our hand

to her and helping her up.”

“Amen!” shrilled out the minister on one of his upper notes. There was

a general rustle of commendation—whispers back and forth, noddings of

heads, and many encouraging glances directed toward sister Wincoop.

But of a sudden silence fell upon the small assembly. Mrs. Willis had

arisen. Her expression was grim and uncompromising. At that moment sister

Shidler’s baby choked in its sleep, and cried so loudly and so gaspingly

that every one turned to look at it.

In the momentary confusion Mr. Willis caught hold of his wife’s dress and

tried to pull her down; but the unfortunate man only succeeded in ripping

a handful of gathers from the band. Mrs. Willis looked down at him from

her thin height.

“You let my gethers be,” she said, fiercely. “You might of knew you’d

tear ’em, a-taking holt of ’em that way!”

Then quiet was restored and the wandering eyes came back to Mrs. Willis.

“Brothers and sisters,” she said, “it ain’t becoming in me to remind you

all what Mr. Willis and me have done fer this church. It ain’t becoming

in me to remind you about the organ, and the new bell, and the carpet fer

the aisles—let alone our paying twenty dollars more a year than any other

member. I say it ain’t becoming in me, and I never ’d mention it if it

wa’n’t that I don’t feel like having Patience Appleby in this church. If

she does come in, _I_ go out.”

A tremor passed through the meeting. The minister turned pale and stroked

his meagre whiskers nervously. He was a worthy man, and he believed in

saving souls. He had prayed and plead with Patience to persuade her to

unite with the church, but he had not felt the faintest presentiment that

he was quarreling with his own bread and butter in so doing. One soul

scarcely balances a consideration of that kind—especially when a minister

has six children and a wife with a chronic disinclination to do anything

but look pretty and read papers at clubs and things. It was small wonder

that he turned pale.

“I want that you all should know just how I feel about it,” continued

Mrs. Willis. “I believe in doing what’s right yourself and not excusing

them that does wrong. I don’t believe in having people like Patience

Appleby in this church; and she don’t come in while _I’m_ in, neither.

That’s all I got to say. I want that you all should understand plain that

her coming in means my going out.”

Mrs. Willis sat down, well satisfied. She saw that she had produced a

profound sensation. Every eye turned to the minister with a look that

said, plainly—“What have you to say to _that_?”

But the miserable man had not a word to say to it. He sat helplessly

stroking his whiskers, trying to avoid the eyes of both Mrs. Wincoop and

Mrs. Willis. At last Deacon Berry said—“Why, sister Willis, I think if

a body repents and wants to do better, the church ’ad ort to help ’em.

That’s what churches are for.”

Mrs. Willis cleared her throat.

“I don’t consider that a body’s repented, Deacon Berry, tell he

confesses-up. Patience Appleby’s never done that to this day. When she

does, I’m willing to take her into this church.”

“Brothers and sisters,” said Mrs. Wincoop, in a voice that held a kind

of cautious triumph, “I fergot to state that Patience Appleby reckoned

mebbe somebody ’u’d think she’d ort to confess before she come into the

church; and she wanted I should ask the meeting to a’point Mis’ Willis a

committee o’ one fer her to confess up to. Patience reckoned if she could

satisfy Mis’ Willis, ev’rybody else ’u’d be satisfied.”

“Why—yes,” cried the minister, with cheerful eagerness. “That’s all

right—bless the Lord!” he added, in that jaunty tone with which so many

ministers daily insult our God. “I know Mrs. Willis and Patience will be

able to smooth over all difficulties. I think we may now adjourn.”

“Whatever did she do that fer?” said Mrs. Willis, following the lantern

homeward. “She’s got something in her mind, _I_ know, or she’d never want

me a’p’inted. Father, what made you pull my gethers out? D’you think you

could make me set down when I’d once made up my mind to stand up? You’d

ought to know me better by this time. This is my secon’-best dress, and

I’ve only wore it two winters—and now look at all these gethers tore

right out!”

“You hadn’t ought to get up and make a fool o’ yourself, mother. You’d

best leave Patience Appleby be.”

“You’d ort to talk about anybody a-making a fool o’ hisself! After you

a-pulling my gethers clean out o’ the band—right in meeting! You’d ort

to tell me I’d best leave Patience Appleby be! I don’t mean to leave her

be. I mean to let her know she can’t ac’ scandalous, and then set herself

up as being as good’s church folks and Christians. _I’ll_ give her her

come-uppings!”

For probably the first time in his married life Mr. Willis yielded to

his feelings. “God-a’mighty, mother,” he said; “sometimes you don’t seem

to have common sense! I reckon you’d best leave Patience Appleby be, if

you know when you’re well off.” Then, frightened at what he had said, he

walked on, hurriedly, swinging the lantern harder than ever.

Mrs. Willis walked behind him, dumb.

* * * * *

The day was cold and gray. Mrs. Willis opened with difficulty the

broken-down gate that shut in Patience Appleby’s house. “And no wonder,”

she thought, “it swags down so!”

There was a foot of snow on the ground. The path to the old, shabby house

was trackless. Not a soul had been there since the snow fell—and that was

two days ago! Mrs. Willis shivered under her warm shawl.

Patience opened the door. Her slow, heavy steps on the bare floor of the

long hall affected Mrs. Willis strangely.

Patience was very tall and thin. She stooped, and her chest was sunken.

She wore a dingy gray dress, mended in many places. There was a small,

checked shawl folded in a “three-cornered” way about her shoulders. She

coughed before she could greet her visitor.

“How d’you do, Mis’ Willis,” she said, at last. “Come in, won’t you?”

“How are you, Patience?” Mrs. Willis said, and, to her own amazement, her

voice did not sound as stern as she had intended it should.

She had been practicing as she came along, and this voice bore no

resemblance whatever to the one she had been having in her mind. Nor, as

she preceded Patience down the bare, draughty hall to the sitting-room,

did she bear herself with that degree of frigid dignity which she had

always considered most fitting to her position, both socially and morally.

Somehow, the evidences of poverty on every side chilled her blood. The

sitting-room was worse, even, than the hall. A big, empty room with a

small fireplace in one corner, wherein a few coals were turning gray; a

threadbare carpet, a couple of chairs, a little table with the Bible on

it, ragged wall-paper, and a shelf in one corner filled with liniment

bottles.

Mrs. Willis sat down in one of the rickety chairs, and Patience, after

stirring up the coals, drew the other to the hearth.

“I’m afraid the room feels kind o’ coolish,” she said. “I’ve got the last

o’ the coal on.”

“D’you mean,” said Mrs. Willis—and again her voice surprised her—“that

you’re all out o’ coal?”

“All out.” She drew the tiny shawl closer to her throat with trembling,

bony fingers. “But Mis’ Abernathy said she’d send me a scuttleful over

to-day. I hate to take it from her, too; her husband’s lost his position

and they ain’t overly well off. But sence my rheumatiz has been so bad I

can’t earn a thing.”

Mrs. Willis stared hard at the coals. For the life of her she could think

of nothing but her own basement filled to the ceiling with coal.

“I reckon,” said Patience, “you’ve come to hear my confessing-up?”

“Why—yes.” Mrs. Willis started guiltily.

“What’s the charges agen me, Mis’ Willis?”

Mrs. Willis’s eyelids fell heavily.

“Why, I reckon you know, Patience. You done wrong onct when you was a

girl, and I don’t think we’d ort to take you into the church tell you own

up to it.”

There was a little silence. Then Patience said, drawing her breath

in heavily—“Mebbe I did do wrong onct when I was a little girl—only

fourteen, say. But that’s thirty year ago, and that’s a long time, Mis’

Willis. I don’t think I’d ort to own up to it.”

“_I_ think you’d ort.”

“Mis’ Willis,”—Patience spoke solemnly. “D’you think I’d ort to own up if

it ’u’d affec’ somebody else thet ain’t never b’en talked about?”

“Yes, I do,” said Mrs. Willis, firmly. “If they deserve to be talked

about, they’d _ort_ to be talked about.”

“Even if it was about the best folks in town?”

“Yes.” Mrs. Willis thought of the minister.

“Even if it was about the best-off folks? Folks that hold their head the

highest, and give most to churches and missionary; and thet ev’rybody

looks up to?”

“Ye-es,” said Mrs. Willis. That did not describe the minister, certainly.

She could not have told you why her heart began to beat so violently.

Somehow, she had been surprised out of the attitude she had meant to

assume. Instead of walking in boldly and haughtily, and giving Patience

her “come-uppings,” she was finding it difficult to conquer a feeling of

pity for the enemy because she was so poor and so cold. She must harden

her heart.

“Even”—Patience lowered her eyes to the worn carpet—“if it was folks thet

had b’en loudest condemin’ other folks’s sins, and that had bragged high

and low thet there wa’n’t no disgrace in their fambly, and never had b’en

none, and who’d just be about killed by my confessing-up?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Willis, sternly. But she paled to the lips.

“I don’t think so,” said Patience, slowly. “I think a body’d ort to have

a chance if they want to live better, without havin’ anybody a-pryin’

into their effairs exceptin’ God. But if you don’t agree with me, I’m

ready to confess-up all _I’ve_ done bad. I guess you recollect, Mis’

Willis, thet your ’Lizy and me was just of an age, to a day?”

Mrs. Willis’s lips moved, but the words stuck in her throat.

“And how we ust to play together and stay nights with each other. We

_loved_ each other, Mis’ Willis. You ust to give us big slices o’

salt-risin’ bread, spread thick with cream and sprinkled with brown

sugar—I can just see you now, a-goin’ out to the spring-house to get the

cream. And I can just taste it, too, when I get good and hungry.”

“What’s all this got to do with your a-owning up?” demanded Mrs. Willis,

fiercely. “What’s my ’Lizy got to do with your going away that time?

Where was you at, Patience Appleby?”

“I’m comin’ to that,” said Patience, calmly; but a deep flush came upon

her face. “I’ve attoned-up fer that time, if any mortal bein’ ever did,

Mis’ Willis. I’ve had a hard life, but I’ve never complained, because I

thought the Lord was a-punishin’ me. But I have suffered.... Thirty year,

Mis’ Willis, of prayin’ to be fergive fer one sin! But I ain’t ever see

the day I could confess-up to ’t—and I couldn’t now, except to ’Lizy’s

mother.”

An awful trembling shook Mrs. Willis’s heart. She looked at Patience with

straining eyes. “Go on,” she said, hoarsely.

“’Lizy and me was fourteen on the same day. She was goin’ to Four Corners

to visit her a’nt, but I had to stay at home and work. I was cryin’ about

it when, all of a sudden, ’Lizy says—“Patience, let’s up and have a good

time on our birthday!”

“Well, let’s,” I says, “but how?”

“I’ll start fer Four Corners and then you run away, and I’ll meet you,

and we’ll go to Springville to the circus and learn to ride bareback”—

Mrs. Willis leaned forward in her chair. Her face was very white; her

thin hands were clenched so hard the knuckles stood out half an inch.

“Patience Appleby,” she said, “you’re a wicked, sinful liar! May the Lord

A’mighty fergive you—_I_ won’t.”

“I ain’t askin’ you to take my word; you can ask Mr. Willis hisself. He

didn’t go to Springville to buy him a horse, like he told you he did.

’Lizy and me had been at the circus two days when she tuk sick, and I

sent fer Mr. Willis unbeknownst to anybody. He come and tuk her home

and fixed it all up with her a’nt at Four Corners, and give out thet

she’d been a-visitin’ there. But I had to sneak home alone and live an

outcast’s life ever sense, and see her set up above me—just because Mr.

Willis got down to beg me on his knees never to tell she was with me.

And I never did tell a soul, Mis’ Willis, tell last winter I was sick

with a fever and told Mis’ Wincoop when I was out o’ my head. But she’s

never told anybody, either, and neither of us ever will. Mr. Willis has

helped me as much as he could without your a-findin’ it out, but I know

how it feels to be hungry and cold, and I know how it feels to see ’Lizy

set up over me, and marry rich, and have nice children; and ride by me ’n

her kerriage without so much as lookin’ at me—and me a-chokin’ with the

dust off o’ her kerriage wheels. But I never complained none, and I ain’t

a-complainin’ now, Mis’ Willis; puttin ’Lizy down wouldn’t help me any.

But I do think it’s hard if I can’t be let into the church.”

Her thin voice died away and there was silence. Patience sat staring at

the coals with the dullness of despair on her face. Mrs. Willis’s spare

frame had suddenly taken on an old, pathetic stoop. What her haughty

soul had suffered during that recital, for which she had been so totally

unprepared, Patience would never realize. The world seemed to be slipping

from under the old woman’s trembling feet. She had been so strong in

her condemnation of sinners because she had felt so sure she should

never have any trading with sin herself. And lo! all these years her

own daughter—her one beloved child, dearer than life itself—had been as

guilty as this poor outcast from whom she had always drawn her skirts

aside, as from a leper. Ay, her daughter had been the guiltier of the

two. She was not spared that bitterness, even. Her harsh sense of justice

forced her to acknowledge, even in that first hour, that this woman had

borne herself nobly, while her daughter had been a despicable coward.

It had been an erect, middle-aged woman who had come to give Patience

Appleby her “come-uppings;” it was an old, broken-spirited one who went

stumbling home in the early, cold twilight of the winter day. The fierce

splendor of the sunset had blazed itself out; the world was a monotone in

milky blue—save for one high line of dull crimson clouds strung along the

horizon.

A shower of snow-birds sunk in Mrs. Willis’s path, but she did not see

them. She went up the path and entered her comfortable home; and she fell

down upon her stiff knees beside the first chair she came to—and prayed

as she had never prayed before in all her hard and selfish life.

* * * * *

When Mr. Willis came home to supper he found his wife setting the table

as usual. He started for the bedroom, but she stopped him.

“We’re a-going to use the front bedroom after this, father,” she said.

“Why, what are we going to do that fer, mother?”

“I’m a-going to give our’n to Patience Appleby.”

“You’re a-going to—_what_, mother?”

“I’m a-going to give our’n to Patience Appleby, I say. I’m a-going to

bring her here to live, and she’s got to have the warmest room in the

house, because her rheumatiz is worse ’n mine. I’m a-going after her

myself to-morrow in the kerriage.” She turned and faced her husband

sternly. “She’s confessed-up ev’rything. I was dead set she should, and

she has. I know where she was at that time, and I know who was with her.

I reckon I’d best be attoning up as well as Patience Appleby; and I’m

going to begin by making her comf’terble and taking her into the church.”

“Why, mother,” said the old man, weakly. His wife repressed him with one

look.

“Now, don’t go to talking back, father,” she said, sternly. “I reckon you

kep’ it from me fer the best, but it’s turrable hard on me now. You get

and wash yourself. I want that you should hold this candle while I fry

the apple-fritters.”

THE MOTHER OF “PILLS”

THE MOTHER OF “PILLS”

“Pills! Oh, Pills! You Pillsy!”

The girl turned from the door of the drug-store, and looked back under

bent brows at her mother, who was wiping graduated glasses with a stained

towel, at the end of the prescription counter.

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” she said; her tone was impatient but

not disrespectful.

Her mother laughed. She was a big, good-natured looking woman, with

light-blue eyes and sandy eyebrows and hair. She wore a black dress that

had a cheap, white cord-ruche at the neck. There were spots down the

front of her dress where acids had been spilled and had taken out the

color.

“How particular we are gettin’,” she said, turning the measuring glass

round and round on the towel which had been wadded into it. “You didn’t

use to mind if I called you ‘Pills,’ just for fun.”

“Well, I mind now.”

The girl took a clean towel from a cupboard and began to polish the

show-cases, breathing upon them now and then. She was a good-looking

girl. She had strong, handsome features, and heavy brown hair, which she

wore in a long braid down her back. A deep red rose was tucked in the

girdle of her cotton gown and its head lolled to and fro as she worked.

Her hands were not prettily shaped, but sensitive, and the ends of the

fingers were square.

“Well, Mariella, then,” said Mrs. Mansfield, still looking amused; “I was

goin’ to ask you if you knew the Indians had all come in on their way

home from hop pickin’.”

Mariella straightened up and looked at her mother.

“Have they, honest, ma?”

“Yes, they have; they’re all camped down on the beach.”

“Oh, I wonder where!”

“Why, the Nooksacks are clear down at the coal-bunkers, an’ the Lummies

close to Timberline’s Row; an’ the Alaskas are all on the other side of

the viaduct.”

“Are they goin’ to have the canoe race?”

“Yes, I guess so. I guess it’ll be about sundown to-night. There, you

forgot to dust that milk-shake. An’ you ain’t touched that shelf o’

patent medicines!”

She set down the last graduate and hung the damp towel on a nail. Then

she came out into the main part of the store and sat down comfortably

behind the counter.

Long before Mariella was born her father had opened a drug-store in

the tiny town of Sehome, on Puget Sound. There was a coal mine under

the town. A tunnel led down into it, and the men working among the

black diamonds, with their families, made up the town. But there was

some trouble, and the mine was abandoned and flooded with salt water.

The men went away, and for many years Sehome was little more than a

name. A mail boat wheezed up from Seattle once a week; and two or three

storekeepers—Mr. Mansfield among them—clung to the ragged edge of hope

and waited for the boom. Before it came, Mr. Mansfield was bumped over

the terrible road to the graveyard and laid down among the stones and

ferns. Then Mrs. Mansfield “run” the store. The question “Can you fill

perscriptions?” was often put to her fearfully by timid customers, but

she was equal to the occasion.

“Well, I guess I can,” she would say, squaring about and looking her

questioner unwaveringly in the eye. “I guess I’d ought to. I’ve been

in the store with my husband, that’s dead, for twenty years. I’m not a

regular, but I’m a practical—an’ that’s better than a regular any day.”

“It’s not so much what you know in a drug-store as what you _look_ like

you know,” she sometimes confided to admiring friends.

It is true Mrs. Mansfield was often perplexed over the peculiar curdled

appearance of some mixture—being as untaught in the mysterious ways of

emulsions as a babe—but such trifles were dismissed with a philosophical

sigh, and the prescriptions were handed over the counter with a

complaisance that commanded confidence. The doctor hinted, with extreme

delicacy, at times, that his emulsions did not turn out as smooth as he

had expected; or that it would be agreeable to find some of his aqueous

mixtures tinged with cochineal; or that it was possible to make pills in

such a way that they would not—so to speak—melt in the patient’s mouth

before he could swallow them. But Mrs. Mansfield invariably laughed at

him in a kind of motherly way, and reminded him that he ought to be glad

to have even a “practical” in a place like Sehome. And really this was so

true that it was unanswerable.

So Mrs. Mansfield held the fort; and as her medicines, although

abominable to swallow, never killed any one, she was looked upon with

awe and respect by the villagers and the men in the neighboring

logging-camps.

Mariella was brought up in the drug-store. She had the benefit of

her mother’s experience, and, besides that, she had studied the

“dispensatory”—a word, by the way, which Mrs. Mansfield began with a

capital letter because of the many pitfalls from which it had rescued her.

“Mariella is such a good girl,” her mother frequently declared; “she got

a real good education over at the Whatcom schools, an’ she’s such a help

in the drug-store. She does make a beautiful pill.”

Indeed, the girl’s pill-making accomplishment was so appreciated by Mrs.

Mansfield that she had nick-named her “Pills”—a name that had been the

cause of much mirth between them.

Mariella was now sixteen, and the long-deferred “boom” was upon them.

Mrs. Mansfield and her daughter contemplated it from the store door

daily with increasing admiration. The wild clover no longer velveted the

middle of the street. New buildings, with red, green or blue fronts and

nondescript backs, leaped up on every corner and in between corners. The

hammers and saws made music sweeter than any brass band to Sehome ears.

Day and night the forests blazed backward from the town. When there were

no customers in the store Mariella stood in the door, twisting the

rope of the awning around her wrist, and watched the flames leaping

from limb to limb up the tall, straight fir-trees. When Sehome hill

was burning at night, it was a magnificent spectacle; like hundreds of

torches dipped into a very hell of fire and lifted to heaven by invisible

hands—while in the East the noble, white dome of Mount Baker burst out

of the darkness against the lurid sky. The old steamer _Idaho_ came down

from Seattle three times a week now. When she landed, Mrs. Mansfield

and Mariella, and such customers as chanced to be in the store, hurried

breathlessly back to the little sitting-room, which overlooked the bay,

to count the passengers. The old colony wharf, running a mile out across

the tide-lands to deep water, would be “fairly alive with ’em,” Mrs.

Mansfield declared daily, in an ecstasy of anticipation of the good times

their coming foretold. She counted never less than a hundred and fifty;

and so many walked three and four abreast that it was not possible to

count all.

Really, that summer everything seemed to be going Mrs. Mansfield’s way.

Mariella was a comfort to her mother and an attraction to the store;

business was excellent; her property was worth five times more than it

had ever been before; and, besides—when her thoughts reached this point

Mrs. Mansfield smiled consciously and blushed—there was Mr. Grover! Mr.

Grover kept the dry-goods store next door. He had come at the very

beginning of the boom. He was slim and dark and forty. Mrs. Mansfield was

forty and large and fair. Both were “well off.” Mr. Grover was lonely

and “dropped into” Mrs. Mansfield’s little sitting-room every night. She

invited him to supper frequently, and he told her that her fried chicken

and “cream” potatoes were better than anything he had eaten since his

mother died. Of late his intentions were not to be misunderstood, and

Mrs. Mansfield was already putting by a cozy sum for a wedding outfit.

Only that morning she had looked at herself in the glass more attentively

than usual while combing her hair. Some thought made her blush and smile.

“You ought to be ashamed!” she said, shaking her head at herself in the

glass as at a gay, young thing. “To be thinkin’ about gettin’ married!

With a big girl like Pills too. One good thing: He really seems to think

as much of Pills as you do yourself, Mrs. Mansfield. That’s what makes me

so—happy, I guess. I believe it’s the first time I ever was real happy

before.” She sighed unconsciously as she glanced back over her years of

married life. “An’ I don’t know what makes me so awful happy now. But

sometimes when I get up of a mornin’ I just feel as if I could go out on

the hill an’ sing—foolish as any of them larks holler’n’ for joy.

“Mariella,” she said, watching the duster in the girl’s hands, “what made

you flare up so when I called you ‘Pills?’ You never done that before,

an’ I don’t see what ails you all of a sudden.”

“I didn’t mean to flare up,” said Mariella. She opened the cigar-case and

arranged the boxes carefully. Then she closed it with a snap and looked

at her mother. “But I wish you’d stop it, ma. Mr. Grover said——”

“Well, what ’id he say?”

“He said it wasn’t a nice name to call a girl by.” Mariella’s face

reddened, but she was stooping behind the counter.

Mrs. Mansfield drummed on the show-case with broad fingers and looked

thoughtful.

“Well,” she said with significance, after a pause, “if he don’t like it,

I won’t do it. We’ve had lots o’ fun over it, Pills, ain’t we—I mean

Mariella—but I guess he has a right to say what you’ll be called, Pi—— my

dear.”

“Oh, ma,” said Mariella. Her face was like a poppy.

“Well, I guess you won’t object, will you? I’ve been wond’rin’ how you

felt about it.”

“Oh, ma,” faltered the girl; “do you think, honest, he—— he——”

“Yes, I do,” replied her mother, laughing comfortably and blushing

faintly. “I’m sure of it. An’ I’m happier ’n I ever was in my life over

it. I don’t think I could give you a better stepfather, or one that would

think more of you.”

Mariella stood up slowly behind the counter and looked—stared—across the

room at her mother, in a dazed, uncomprehending way. The color ebbed

slowly out of her face. She did not speak, but she felt the muscles about

her mouth jerking. She pressed her lips more tightly together.

“I hope you don’t think I oughtn’t to marry again,” said her mother,

returning her look without understanding it in the least. “Your pa’s

been dead ten years”—this in an injured tone. “There ain’t many women——

Oh, good mornin’, Mr. Lester? Mariella, ’ll you wait on Mr. Lester?

Well”—beaming good naturedly on her customer—“how’s real estate this

mornin’? Any new sales afoot?”

“_Are_ there?” repeated that gentleman, leaning on the show-case and

lighting his cigar, innocent of intentional discourtesy. “Well, I should

_smile_—and smile broadly too, Mrs. Mansfield. There’s a Minneapolis chap

here that’s buyin’ right an’ left; just _slashin’_ things! He’s bought a

lot o’ water-front property, too; an’ let me tell _you_, right now, that

Jim Hill’s behind him; an’ Jim Hill’s the biggest railroad man in the U.

S. to-day, an’ the Great Northern’s behind _him_!”

“Well, I hope so.” Mrs. Mansfield drew a long breath of delight. Mr.

Lester smiled, shrugged his shoulders, spread out his hands, and

sauntered out with the air of a man who has the ear of railroad kings.

“Are you goin’ to the canoe races to-night, Mariella?” began her mother,

in a conciliatory tone.

“I don’t know. Might as well, I guess.”

The girl was wiping the shelf bottles now; her face was pale, but her

back was to her mother.

“Well, we will have an early supper, so you can get off. Mercy, child!

Did you break one o’ them glass labels? How often ’v’ I told you not to

press on ’em so hard? What one is it? The tincture cantharides! Well, tie

a string around it, so we’ll know what it is. There ain’t no label on the

aconite bottle, nor the Jamaica ginger either—an’ them settin’ side by

side, too. I hate guessin’ at things in a drug-store—specially when one’s

a poison. Have you scoured up them spatulas?”

“Yes’m.”

“Well, I’ll go in an’ do up the dishes, an’ leave you to ’tend store.

Don’t forget to make Mr. Benson’s pills.”

But Mr. Benson’s pills were not made right away. When her mother was

gone, Mariella got down from the step-ladder and leaned one elbow on the

show-case and rested her chin in her hand. Her throat swelled in and out

fitfully, and the blue veins showed, large and full, on her temples. For

a long time she stood thus, twisting the towel in her hand and looking

at the fires on the hill without seeing them. Some of their dry burning

seemed to get into her own eyes.

Mr. Grover, passing, glanced in.

“Mariella,” he said, putting one foot across the threshold, “are you

goin’ to the canoe races?”

The girl had darted erect instantly, and put on a look of coquettish

indifference.

“Yes, I am.” Her eyes flashed at him over her shoulder from the corners

of their lids as she started back to the prescription-case. “I’m goin’

with Charlie Walton!”

When Mariella had gone to the races that night, and customers were

few and far between, Mr. Grover walked with a determined air through

Mrs. Mansfield’s store and, pushing aside the crimson canton-flannel

portieres, entered her cheerful sitting-room. On the floor was a Brussels

carpet, large-flowered and vivid. A sewing-machine stood in one corner

and Mariella’s organ in another. The two narrow windows overlooking the

sound were gay with blooming geraniums and white curtains tied with

red ribbons. There was a trunk deceptively stuffed and cretonned into

the semblance of a settee; and there was a wicker-chair that was full

of rasping, aggravating noises when you rocked in it. It had red ribbon

twisted through its back and arms. Mrs. Mansfield was sitting in it now,

reading a novel, and the chair was complaining unceasingly.

Mr. Grover sat down on the trunk.

“Mrs. Mansfield,” he said, looking squarely at her, “I’ve got somethin’

to ask of you, an’ I’m goin’ to do it while Mariella’s away.”

“That so?” said Mrs. Mansfield.

The color in her cheek deepened almost to a purple. She put one hand up

to her face, and with the other nervously wrinkled the corners of the

leaves of her novel. She lowered her lids resolutely to hide the sudden

joy in her eyes.

“I guess you know what I’ve been comin’ here so much for. I couldn’t help

thinkin’, too, that you liked the idea an’ was sort of encouragin’ me.”

Mrs. Mansfield threw one hand out toward him in a gesture at once

deprecating, coquettish and helpful.

“Oh, you!” she exclaimed, laughing and coloring more deeply. There was

decided encouragement in her honest blue eyes under their sandy lashes.

“Well, didn’t you, now?” Mr. Grover leaned toward her.

She hesitated, fingering the leaves of her book. She turned her head to

one side; the leaves swished softly as they swept past her broad thumb;

the corners of her mouth curled in a tremulous smile; the fingers of her

other hand moved in an unconscious caress across her warm cheek; she

remembered afterward that the band across the bay on the long pier, where

the races were, was playing “Annie Laurie,” and that the odor of wild

musk, growing outside her window in a box, was borne in, sweet and heavy,

by the sea winds. It was the one perfect moment of Mrs. Mansfield’s

life—in which there had been no moments that even approached perfection;

in which there had been no hint of poetry—only dullest, everyday prose.

She had married because she had been taught that women should marry; and

Mr. Mansfield had been a good husband. She always said that; and she did

not even know that she always sighed after saying it. Her regard for Mr.

Grover was the poetry—the wine—of her hard, frontier life. Never before

that summer had she stood and listened to the message of the meadow-lark

with a feeling of exaltation that brought tears to her eyes; or gone out

to gather wild pink clover with the dew on it; or turned her broad foot

aside to spare a worm. Not that Mr. Grover ever did any of these things;

but that love had lifted the woman’s soul and given her the new gift of

seeing the beauty of common things. No one had guessed that there was a

change in her heart, not even Mariella.

It was well that Mrs. Mansfield prolonged that perfect moment. When she

did lift her eyes there was a kind of appealing tenderness in them.

“I guess I did,” she said.

“Well, then,”—Mr. Grover drew a breath of relief—“you might’s well say I

can have her. I want it all understood before she gets home. I want to

stop her runnin’ with that Walton. Once or twice I’ve been afraid you’d

just as leave she’d marry him as me. I don’t like to see girls gallivant

with two or three fellows.”

Mrs. Mansfield sat motionless, looking at him. Her eyes did not falter;

the smile did not wholly vanish from her face. Only the blood throbbed

slowly away, leaving it paler than Mariella’s had been that morning. She

understood her mistake almost before his first sentence. While he was

speaking her thoughts were busy. She felt the blood coming back when she

remembered what she had said to Mariella. If _only_ she had not spoken!

“Well,” she said, calmly, “have you said anything to Mariella?”

“Yes, I have; lots o’ times. An’ I know she likes me; but she’s some

flirtish, and that’s what I want to put a stop to. So, with your

permission, I’ll have a talk with her to-night.”

“I’d like to talk to her first myself.” Mrs. Mansfield looked almost

stern. “But I guess it’ll be all right, Mr. Grover. If you’d just as soon

wait till to-morrow, I’d like to be alone and make up my mind what to say

to her.”

Mr. Grover got up and shook hands with her awkwardly.

“I’ll make her a good husband,” he said, earnestly.

“I don’t doubt that,” replied Mrs. Mansfield.

Then he went out and the crimson curtain fell behind him.

* * * * *

When Mariella came home her mother was sitting, rocking, by the window.

The lamp was lighted.

“Pills,” she said, “I want you to stop goin’ with that fello’.”

The girl looked at her in silence. Then she took off her turban and stuck

the long black pins back into it.

“I thought you liked him,” she said, slowly.

“I do, but Mr. Grover wants you—an’ I like him better.”

“Wants _me_!” Mariella drew up her shoulders proudly.

“Yes, you,” replied Mrs. Mansfield, laughing. The humor of the situation

was beginning to appeal to her. “He says he’d told you. You must of

laughed after I told you he wanted me.”

“Oh, ma, does he want me, honest?”

“Yes, he does.” She was still laughing.

“An’ don’t you mind, ma?”

“Not a mite,” said the widow, cheerfully. “I’d rather he’d marry you than

me; only, I thought he was too nice a man to be lost to the fam’ly.”

“Oh, ma!”

“Well, get to bed now. He’s comin’ in the mornin’ to see you.”

She took up the lamp and stood holding it irresolutely.

“Pills,” she said, looking embarrassed, “You won’t ever tell him that I——

that I——”

“Never, ma!” exclaimed the girl, earnestly; “as long as I live.”

“All right, then. Look out! You’re droppin’ tallo’ from your candle!

Don’t hold it so crooked, child! I wouldn’t like him to laugh about it.

Good-night.”

As she passed through the kitchen she called out: “Oh, Pills! Mr. Jordan

brought in a mess of trout. We’ll have ’em fried for breakfast.”

The girl came running after her mother, and threw her arms around her.

“Oh, ma, are you sure you don’t care a bit?”

“Not a bit,” said Mrs. Mansfield, kissing her heartily. “I just thought

he ought to be in the family. I’m glad it’s turned out this way. Now, you

go to bed, an’ don’t forget to roll up your bangs.”

She went into her room and shut the door.

MRS. RISLEY’S CHRISTMAS DINNER

MRS. RISLEY’S CHRISTMAS DINNER

She was an old, old woman. She was crippled with rheumatism and bent

with toil. Her hair was gray,—not that lovely white that softens and

beautifies the face, but harsh, grizzled gray. Her shoulders were round,

her chest was sunken, her face had many deep wrinkles. Her feet were

large and knotty; her hands were large, too, with great hollows running

down their backs. And how painfully the cords stood out in her old,

withered neck!

For the twentieth time she limped to the window and flattened her face

against the pane. It was Christmas day. A violet sky sparkled coldly over

the frozen village. The ground was covered with snow; the roofs were

white with it. The chimneys looked redder than usual as they emerged from

its pure drifts and sent slender curls of electric-blue smoke into the

air.

The wind was rising. Now and then it came sweeping down the hill, pushing

a great sheet of snow, powdered like dust, before it. The window-sashes

did not fit tightly, and some of it sifted into the room and climbed

into little cones on the floor. Snow-birds drifted past, like soft, dark

shadows; and high overhead wild geese went sculling through the yellow

air, their mournful “hawnk-e-hawnk-hawnks” sinking downward like human

cries.

As the old woman stood with her face against the window and her weak eyes

strained down the street, a neighbor came to the door.

“Has your daughter an’ her fambly come yet, Mis’ Risley?” she asked,

entering sociably.

“Not yet,” replied Mrs. Risley, with a good attempt at cheerfulness; but

her knees suddenly began shaking, and she sat down.

“Why, she’d ought to ’a’ come on the last train, hadn’t she?”

“Oh, I do’ know. There’s a plenty o’ time. Dinner won’t be ready tell two

past.”

“She ain’t b’en to see you fer five year, has she?” said the neighbor. “I

reckon you’ll have a right scrumptious set-out fer ’em?”

“I will so,” said Mrs. Risley, ignoring the other question. “Her

husband’s comin’.”

“I want to know! Why, he just thinks he’s some punkins, I hear.”

“Well, he’s rich enough to think hisself anything he wants to,” Mrs.

Risley’s voice took on a tone of pride.

“I sh’u’d think you’d want to go an’ live with ’em. It’s offul hard fer

you to live here all alone, with your rheumatiz.”

Mrs. Risley stooped to lay a stick of wood on the fire.

“I’ve worked nigh onto two weeks over this dinner,” she said, “a-seed’n’

raisins an’ cur’nts, an’ things. I’ve hed to skimp harrable, Mis’

Tomlinson, to get it; but it’s just—_perfec’_. Roast goose an’ cranberry

sass, an’ cel’ry soup, an’ mince an’ punkin pie,—to say nothin’ o’

plum-puddin’! An’ cookies an’ cur’nt-jell tarts fer the children. I’ll

hev to wear my old underclo’s all winter to pay fer ’t; but I don’t care.”

“I sh’u’d think your daughter’d keep you more comf’terble, seein’ her

husband’s so rich.”

There was a silence. Mrs. Risley’s face grew stern. The gold-colored cat

came and arched her back for a caress. “My bread riz beautiful,” Mrs.

Risley said then. “I worried so over ’t. An’ my fruit-cake smells that

good when I open the stun crock! I put a hull cup o’ brandy in it. Well,

I guess you’ll hev to excuse me. I’ve got to set the table.”

When Mrs. Tomlinson was gone, the strained look came back to the old

woman’s eyes. She went on setting the table, but at the sound of a wheel,

or a step even, she began to tremble and put her hand behind her ear to

listen.

“It’s funny they _didn’t_ come on that last train,” she said. “I w’u’dn’t

tell her, though. But they’d ort to be here by this time.”

She opened the oven door. The hot, delicious odor of its precious

contents gushed out. Did ever goose brown so perfectly before? And

how large the liver was! It lay in the gravy in one corner of the

big dripping-pan, just beginning to curl at the edges. She tested it

carefully with a little three-tined iron fork.

The mince-pie was on the table, waiting to be warmed, and the pumpkin-pie

was out on the back porch,—from which the cat had been excluded for the

present. The cranberry sauce, the celery in its high, old-fashioned

glass, the little bee-hive of hard sauce for the pudding and the thick

cream for the coffee, bore the pumpkin-pie company. The currant jelly in

the tarts glowed like great red rubies set in circles of old gold; the

mashed potatoes were light and white as foam.

For one moment, as she stood there in the savory kitchen, she thought of

the thin, worn flannels, and how much better her rheumatism would be with

the warm ones which could have been bought with the money spent for this

dinner. Then she flushed with self-shame.

“I must be gittin’ childish,” she exclaimed, indignantly; “to begredge

a Chris’mas dinner to ’Lizy. ’S if I hedn’t put up with old underclo’s

afore now! But I will say there ain’t many women o’ my age thet c’u’d git

up a dinner like this ’n’,—rheumatiz an’ all.”

A long, shrill whistle announced the last train from the city. Mrs.

Risley started and turned pale. A violent trembling seized her. She could

scarcely get to the window, she stumbled so. On the way she stopped at

the old walnut bureau to put a lace cap on her white hair and to look

anxiously into the mirror.

“Five year!” she whispered. “It’s an offul spell to go without seein’

your only daughter! Everything’ll seem mighty poor an’ shabby to her, I

reckon,—her old mother worst o’ all. I never sensed how I’d changed tell

now. My! how no-account I’m a gittin’! I’m all of a trimble!”

Then she stumbled on to the window and pressed her cheek against the pane.

“They’d ort to be in sight now,” she said. But the minutes went by, and

they did not come.

“Mebbe they’ve stopped to talk, meetin’ folks,” site said, again. “But

they’d ort to be in sight now.” She trembled so she had to get a chair

and sit down. But still she wrinkled her cheek upon the cold pane and

strained her dim eyes down the street.

After a while a boy came whistling down from the corner. There was a

letter in his hand. He stopped and rapped, and when she opened the door

with a kind of frightened haste, he gave her the letter and went away,

whistling again.

A letter! Why should a letter come? Her heart was beating in her throat

now,—that poor old heart that had beaten under so many sorrows! She

searched in a dazed way for her glasses. Then she fell helplessly into a

chair and read it:

“DEAR MOTHER,—I am so sorry we cannot come, after all. We

just got word that Robert’s aunt has been expecting us all

the time, because we’ve spent every Christmas there. We feel

as if we _must_ go there, because she always goes to so much

trouble to get up a fine dinner; and we knew you wouldn’t do

that. Besides, she is so rich; and one has to think of one’s

children, you know. We’ll come, _sure_, next year. With a

merry, merry Christmas from all,

“ELIZA.”

It was hard work reading it, she had to spell out so many of the words.

After she had finished, she sat for a long, long time motionless, looking

at the letter. Finally the cat came and rubbed against her, “myowing”

for her dinner. Then she saw that the fire had burned down to a gray,

desolate ash.

She no longer trembled, although the room was cold. The wind was blowing

steadily now. It was snowing, too. The bleak Christmas afternoon and

the long Christmas night stretched before her. Her eyes rested upon the

little fir-tree on a table in one corner, with its gilt balls and strings

of popcorn and colored candles. She could not bear the sight of it. She

got up stiffly.

“Well, kitten,” she said, trying to speak cheerfully, but with a pitiful

break in her voice, “let’s go out an’ eat our Christmas dinner.”

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