Although very young, I felt intuitively that Morton Park was not a

pleasant topic of conversation, and I rarely spoke of it to him after

that, but I often thought of it, with its Corinthian pillars for which I

had a great reverence, and of the blacks, and the maple-trees, and the

solid silver from which my aunts dined every day, and wondered when they

were so rich why we were so poor and why my father worked as hard as I

knew he did, for he often lay upon the couch, saying he was tired, and

looking very pale about his mouth, with a bright red spot on either

cheek. I heard some one call these spots “the hectic,” but did not know

what this meant until later on, when he stayed in bed all the time and

the doctor said he was dying with quick consumption. Then there came a

day when I was called from school and hurried home to find him dead,—my

handsome young father, who had always been so loving to me, and whose

last words were, “Tell little Doris to be a good girl and kind to her

mother. God bless her!”

The blow was so sudden that for a time my mother seemed stunned and

incapable of action, but she was roused at last by a letter from my Aunt

Keziah, to whom she had written after my father’s death. I say a letter,

but it was only an envelope containing a check for a hundred dollars and

a slip of paper with the words, “For Gerold’s child,” and when my mother

saw it there was a look on her face which I had never seen before, and I

think her first impulse was to tear up the check, but, reflecting that

it was not hers to destroy, she only burned the paper and put the money

in the bank for me, and then went bravely to work to earn her living and

mine, sometimes taking boarders, sometimes going out to nurse sick

people, and at last doing dressmaking at home and succeeding so well

that I never knew what real poverty was, and was as happy and free from

care as children usually are.

My father had been an artist, painting landscapes and portraits when he

could find sale for them, and, when he could not, painting houses, barns

and fences, for although he had been reared in the midst of luxury, and,

as I now know, belonged to one of the best families in Kentucky, he held

that all kinds of labor, if necessary, were honorable, and was not

ashamed to stand in his overalls side by side with men who in birth and

education were greatly his inferiors. At the time of his death he had in

his studio a few pictures which had not been sold. Among them was a

small one of the house in Morton Park, with its huge white pillars and

tall trees in front, and one or two negroes playing under the trees.

This I claimed for my own, and also another, which was a picture of his

four aunts taken in a group in what seemed to be a summer-house. “The

Quartette,” he called it, and I had watched him with a great deal of

interest as he brought into seeming real life the four faces so unlike

each other, Aunt Kizzy, stern and severe and prim, with a cap on her

head after the English style, which she affected because her grandfather

was English,—Aunt Dizzy, who was very pretty and very youthfully

dressed, with flowers in her hair,—Aunt Rier, a gentle, matronly woman,

with a fat baby in her lap which I did not think particularly

good-looking,—and Aunt Brier, with a sweet face like a Madonna and a

far-away look in her soft gray eyes which reminded one of Evangeline.

Behind the four was my father, leaning over Aunt Rier and holding a rose

before the baby, who was trying to reach it. The picture fascinated me

greatly, and when I heard it was to be sold, with whatever other effects

there were in the studio, I begged to keep it. But my mother said No,

with the same look on her face which I had seen when she burned Aunt

Kizzy’s letter. And so it was sold to a gentleman from Boston, who was

spending the summer in Meadowbrook, and I thought no more of it until

years after, when it was brought to my mind in a most unexpected manner.

I was ten when I lost my father, and fourteen when my mother, too, died

suddenly, and I was alone, with no home except the one the rector kindly

offered me until something should be heard from my aunts. My mother had

seemed so well and active, and, with her brilliant color and beautiful

blue eyes and chestnut hair which lay in soft waves all over her head,

had been so pretty and young and girlish-looking, that it was hard to

believe her dead, and the hearts of few girls of fourteen have ever been

wrung with such anguish as I felt when, after her funeral, I lay down

upon a bed in the rectory and sobbed myself into a disturbed sleep, from

which I was roused by the sound of voices in the adjoining room, where a

neighbor was talking with Mrs. Wilmot, the rector’s wife, of me and my

future.

“Her aunts will have to do something now. They will be ashamed not to.

Do you know why they have so persistently ignored Mr. and Mrs. Gerold

Morton?”

It was Mrs. Smith, the neighbor, who asked the question, and Mrs. Wilmot

replied, “I know but little, as Mrs. Morton was very reticent upon the

subject. I think, however, that the aunts were angry because Gerold, who

had always lived with them, made what they thought a misalliance by

marrying the daughter of the woman with whom he boarded when in college.

They had in mind another match for him, and when he disappointed them,

they refused to recognize his wife or to see him again.”

“But did he have nothing from his father? I thought the Mortons were

very rich,” Mrs. Smith said, and Mrs. Wilmot answered her, “Nothing at

all, for his father, too, had married against the wishes of _his_

father, a very hard and strange man, I imagine, who promptly

disinherited his son. But when the young wife died at the birth of her

child, the aunts took the little boy Gerold and brought him up as their

own. I do not at all understand it, but I believe the Morton estate is

held by a long lease and will eventually pass from the family unless

some one of them marries somebody in the family of the old man who gave

the lease.”

“They seem to be given to misalliances,” Mrs. Smith rejoined; “but if

they could have seen Gerold’s wife they must have loved her, she was so

sweet and pretty. Doris is like her. She will be a beautiful woman, and

her face alone should commend her to her aunts.”

No girl of fourteen can hear unmoved that she is lovely, and, although I

was hot with indignation at my aunts for their treatment of my father

and their contempt for my mother, I was conscious of a stir of

gratification, and as I went to the washstand to bathe my burning

forehead I glanced at myself in the mirror. My face was swollen with

weeping, and my eyes were very red, with dark circles around them, but

they were like my mother’s, and my hair was like hers, too, and there

was an expression about my mouth which brought her back to me. I was

like my mother, and I was glad she had left me her heritage of beauty,

although I cared but little whether it commended me to my aunts or not,

as I meant to keep aloof from them, if possible. I could take care of

myself, I thought, and any hardship would be preferable to living with

them, even should they wish to have me do so, which was doubtful.

To Mrs. Wilmot I said nothing of what I had overheard, but waited in

some anxiety for Aunt Kizzy’s letter, which came about two weeks after

my mother’s death. It was directed to Mr. Wilmot, and was as follows:

“MORTON PARK, September 10, 18—.

“REV. J. S. WILMOT:

“DEAR SIR,—Your letter is received, and I have delayed my reply until

we could give our careful consideration as to what to do, or rather

how to do it. We have, of course, no option in the matter as to _what_

to do, for naturally we must care for Gerold’s daughter, but we shall

do it in the way most agreeable to ourselves. As you will have

inferred, we are all elderly people, and I am old. I shall be sixty

next January. Miss Desire, my sister, is forty-seven. (Between her and

myself there were two boys who died in infancy.) Maria, my second

sister, would, if living, be forty-five, and Beriah is nearly

thirty-eight. Thus, you see, we are no longer young, but are just

quiet people, with our habits too firmly fixed to have them broken in

upon by a girl who probably talks slang and would fill the house with

noise and chatter, singing at most inopportune moments, banging the

doors, pulling the books from the shelves and the chairs into the

middle of the rooms, and upsetting things generally. No, we couldn’t

bear it, and just the thought of it has given me a chill.

“We expect to educate the girl,—Doris, I think you called her,—but it

must be at the North. If there is a good school in Meadowbrook,

perhaps it will be well for her to remain there for a while, and if

you choose to retain her in your family you will be suitably

remunerated for all the expense and trouble. When she is older I shall

place her in some institution where she will receive a thorough

education, besides learning the customs of good society. After that we

may bring her to Morton Park. For the present, however, I prefer that

she should remain with you, for, as you are a clergyman, you will

attend to her moral training and see that she is staunch and true in

every respect. I hate deception of all kinds, and I wish her to learn

the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments and the Creed, and to be

confirmed at the proper age. She is about ten now, is she not?

“Enclosed you will find a check sufficient, I think, for the present

necessities. If more is needed, it will be sent. Please let me know if

there is a good school in Meadowbrook, and if there is none, will you

kindly recommend one which you think suitable?

“Yours truly,

“MISS KEZIAH MORTON.”

This was the letter which I read, looking over Mr. Wilmot’s shoulder,

and growing more and more angry as I read, it was so heartless and cold,

with no word of real interest or sympathy for me, who was merely a

burden which must be carried, whether she were willing or not.

“I’ll never accept a penny from her,” I exclaimed, “and you may tell her

so. I’d rather scrub than be dependent upon these proud relatives, who

evidently think me a heathen. The Lords Prayer, indeed! and I fourteen

years old! I wonder if she thinks I know how to read!”

I was very defiant and determined, but after a little I grew calmer, and

as the graded school in Meadowbrook, which I had always attended, was

excellent of its kind, and the Wilmots were glad to have me with them, I

consented at last that a letter to that effect should be forwarded to

Kentucky. But when Mr. Wilmot suggested that I, too, should write and

thank my aunt for her kindness, I stoutly refused. I was not thankful, I

said, neither did I think her kind as I understood kindness, and I could

not tell a lie. Later, however, it occurred to me that as she had said

she wished me to be true and staunch, and that she hated deception, it

might be well to let her know just how I felt towards her, so as not to

occupy a false position in the future. Accordingly I wrote a letter, of

which the following is a copy:

“MEADOWBROOK, MASS., September—, 18—.

“MISS KEZIAH MORTON:

“DEAR MADAM,—Mr. Wilmot has told you that there is a good school in

Meadowbrook and that he is glad to keep me in his family. He wished me

also to thank you for your kindness in furnishing the means for my

education, and if I really felt thankful I would do so. But I don’t,

and I cannot pretend to be grateful, for I do not think your offer was

made in kindness, but because, as you said in your letter, you had no

option except to care for me. You said, too, that you did not like

deception of any kind, and I think I’d better tell you how I feel

about accepting help from you. Since my mother died I have

accidentally heard how you treated her and neglected my father because

of her, and naturally I am indignant, for a sweeter, lovelier woman

than my mother never lived. When she died and left me alone, there was

a leaning in my heart towards you and the other aunts, because you

were the only relatives I have in the world, and if you had shown the

least sympathy for me I could have loved you so much. But in your

letter you never said one word of pity or comfort. You offered to

educate me, that was all. But I prefer to care for myself, and I can

do it, too. I am fourteen, and can earn my own living. I can make

dresses, as mother did after father died, or I can do second work

until I have enough to pay for my schooling. And I would rather do it

than be indebted to any one, and if, when you get this, you think best

to change your mind, I shall be glad. But if you do not, I shall try

to improve every moment and get a thorough education as soon as

possible, and when I can I shall pay you every dollar you expend for

me, and you need have no fears that I shall ever disgrace my father’s

name, or you either.

“I used to think that I should like to see Morton Park, as it was once

my father’s home, but since reading your letter I have no desire to go

there and bang doors, and pull the books from the shelves, and sing,

whether invited to or not, and shock you with slang. I suppose I do

use some,—all the girls do, and example is contagious,—and I am fond

of singing, and would like nothing better than to take lessons in

vocal and instrumental music, but I am not quite a heathen, and can

hardly remember when I did not know the Lord’s Prayer, and Ten

Commandments, and Creed. But I have not been confirmed, and do not

intend to be until I am a great deal better than I am now, for I

believe there is something necessary to confirmation besides mere

intellectual knowledge. Father and mother taught me that, and they

were true Christians.

“Father used sometimes to tell me of his home and his aunts, who were

kind to him, and so, perhaps, you would like to know how peacefully he

died, and how handsome he was in his coffin, just as if he were

asleep. But mother was lovelier still, with such a sweet smile on her

face, and her dear little hands folded upon her bosom. There were

needle-pricks and marks of the hard work she had done on her fingers,

but I covered them with great bunches of the white pond-lilies she

loved so much, and then kissed her good-bye forever, with a feeling

that my heart was broken; and, oh, it aches so now when I remember

that in all the world there is no one who cares for me, or on whom I

have any claim.

“I don’t know why I have written this to you, who, of course, have no

interest in it, but guess I did it because I am sure you once loved

father a little. I do not expect you to love me, but if I can ever be

of any service to you I will, for father’s sake; and something tells

me that in the future, I don’t know when or how, I shall bring you

some good. Until then adieu.

“DORIS MORTON.”

I knew this was not the kind of letter which a girl of fourteen should

send to a woman of sixty, but I was indignant and hot-headed and young,

and felt that in some way I was avenging my mother’s wrongs, and so the

letter was sent, unknown to the Wilmots, and I waited anxiously for the

result. But there was none, so far as I knew. Aunt Kizzy did not answer

it, and in her letter to Mr. Wilmot she made no reference to it. She

merely said she was glad I was to live in a clergyman’s family under

religious influence, and added that if I had a good voice and he thought

it desirable I was to have instruction in both vocal and instrumental

music.

It did not occur to me to connect this with anything I had written, but

I was very glad, for I was passionately fond of music, as I was of books

generally. And so for two years I was a pupil in the High School in

Meadowbrook, passing from one grade to another, until at last I was

graduated with all the honors which such an institution could give.

During this time not a word had ever been written to me by my aunts. The

bills had been regularly paid through Mr. Wilmot, to whom Aunt Kizzy’s

letters were addressed, and at the end of every quarter a report of my

standing in scholarship and deportment had been forwarded to Kentucky.

And that was all I knew of my relatives, who might have been

Kamschatkans for anything they were to me.

About six months before I was graduated, Mr. Wilmot was told that I was

to be sent to Madame De Moisiere’s School in Boston, and then, three

months later, without any reason for the change, I learned that I was to

go to Wellesley, provided I could pass the necessary examination. Of

this I had no fears, but the change disappointed me greatly, as I had

heard glowing accounts of Madame De Moisiere’s School from a girl friend

who had been there, and at first I rebelled against Wellesley, which I

fancied meant nothing but hard study, with little recreation. But there

was no help for it. Aunt Keziah’s law was the law of the Medes and

Persians, and one morning in September I said good-bye to Meadowbrook

and started for Wellesley, which seemed to me then a kind of

intellectual prison.

CHAPTER II.—BERIAH’S STORY.

DORIS.

MORTON PARK, June —, 18—.

Ten o’clock at night, and I have brought out my old book for a little

chat. I am sure I don’t know why I continue to write in my journal, when

I am nearly forty years old, unless it is because I began it nineteen

years ago, on the day after I said good-bye to Tom forever and felt that

my heart was broken. It was just such a moonlight night as this when we

walked under the elms in the Park and he told me I was a coward, because

I would not brave Kizzy’s wrath and marry out of the “accursed Hepburn

line,” as he called it. Well, I _was_ afraid of Kizzy, and shrank from

all the bitterness and trouble which has come to us through that Hepburn

line. First, there was my brother Douglas, twenty-five years older than

I am, who, because he married the girl he loved, instead of the one he

didn’t, was sent adrift without a dollar. Why didn’t my father, I

wonder, marry into the line himself, and so save all this trouble?

Probably because he was so far removed from the crisis now so fast

approaching, that he ventured to take my mother, to whom he was always

tender and loving, showing that there was kindness in his nature,

although he could be so hard on Douglas and the dear little wife who

died when Gerold was born. Then came the terrible time when both my

father and mother were swept away on the same day by the cholera, and

six months after Douglas died, and his boy Gerold came to live with us,

He was two years my senior, and more like my brother than my nephew, and

I loved him dearly and spoke up for him when Kizzy turned him out, just

as Douglas had been turned out before him. Had I dared I would have

written to him and assured him of my love, but I could not, so great was

my dread of Keziah, who exercises a kind of hypnotic power over us all.

She tried to keep Desire from the man of her choice, and might have

succeeded, if death had not forestalled her. She sent Tom away from me,

and only yielded to Maria, who had a will as strong as her own and

married whom she pleased. But she, too, died just after her husband, who

was shot in the battle of Fredericksburgh, and we have no one left but

her boy Grant, who is almost as dear to me as Gerold was.

Grant is a young man now, and I trust he will marry Dorothea, and so

break the evil spell which that old man must have put upon us when to

the long lease of ninety years given to my grandfather he tacked that

strange condition that if before the expiration of the lease a direct

heir of Joseph Morton, of Woodford County, Kentucky, married a direct

heir of Amos Hepburn, of Keswick, England, only half the value of the

property leased should revert to the Hepburn heir, while the other half

should remain in the Morton family. If no such marriage has taken place,

uniting the houses of Morton and Hepburn, then the entire property goes

to the direct heir of the Hepburns. I believe I have stated it as it is

worded in that old yellow document which Keziah keeps in the family

Bible and reads every day with a growing dread of what will soon befall

us unless Grant marries Dorothea, who, so far as we know, stands first

in the Hepburn line, and to whom the Morton estate will go if it passes

from our hands.

I have sometimes doubted if that clause would stand the test of law, and

have said so to Keziah, suggesting to her to take advice on the subject.

But she treated my suggestion with scorn, charging me with wishing to be

dishonest, and saying that even if it were illegal it was the request of

Amos Hepburn, and father had instilled it into her mind that a dead

man’s wish was law, and she should abide by it. Neither would she allow

me to ask any legal advice, or talk about the matter to any one.

“It is our own business,” she said, “and if we choose to give up our

home it concerns no one but ourselves.”

But she does not expect to give it up, for our hopes are centred on

Grant’s marrying Dorothea; and as one means of accomplishing this end he

must be kept from Doris and all knowledge of her.

Poor little orphaned Doris! I wonder what she is like, and why Keziah is

so hard upon her! She is not to blame because her father married the

daughter of his landlady, whom Keziah calls a cook. How well I recall a

morning two or three years ago when, at the tick of the clock announcing

eight, Kizzy and Dizzy and I marched solemnly down to breakfast just as

we have done for the last twenty years and shall for twenty more if we

live so long, Keziah first in her black dress and lace cap, with her

keys jingling at her side, Desire next, in her white gown and blue

ribbons, which she will wear until she is seventy, and I, in my chintz

wrapper of lavender and white, colors which Tom said were becoming to me

and which I usually select. I can hear the swish of our skirts on the

stairs, and see the round table with its china and glass and flowers,

and old Abe, the butler, bringing in the coffee and toast, and a letter

for Keziah, who read it twice, and then, folding it very deliberately,

said, “Gerold’s widow is dead and has left a little girl, and a Rev. Mr.

Wilmot has written to know what is to be done with her.”

“Oh, bring her here, by all means!” both Dizzy and I exclaimed in a

breath, while Keziah’s face, which is always severe and stern, grew more

so as she replied, in the tone from which there is no appeal, “She will

stay where she is, if there is a decent school there. I shall educate

her, of course; there is no alternative; but she cannot come here until

she is sufficiently cultivated not to mortify us with her bad manners,

as blood will tell. I have never forgiven her mother for marrying

Gerold, and I cannot yet forgive this girl for being that woman’s

daughter.”

Both Desire and myself knew how useless it was to combat Keziah when her

mind was made up. So we said nothing more about the child, and kept as

much as possible out of Keziah’s way, for when she is disturbed she is

not a pleasant person to meet in a _tete-a-tete_. We knew she wrote to

Mr. Wilmot, and that he replied, and then, two days after, when we went

down to breakfast, we found another letter for Keziah. It was from

Doris, and Keziah read it aloud, while her voice and hands shook with

wrath, and Desire and I exchanged glances of satisfaction and touched

each other slyly with our feet in token of sympathy with the child, who

dared write thus to one who had ruled us so long that we submitted to

her now without a protest. It was a very saucy letter, but it showed the

mettle of the girl, and I respected her for it, and my heart went out to

her with a great pity when she said, “If you had shown the least

sympathy for me I could have loved you so much, but you did not. You

offered to care for me because you felt that you must, but you never

sent me one word of pity or comfort.”

“Oh, Keziah,” I exclaimed at this point, “is that true? Did you write to

Mr. Wilmot and say no word to the child?”

“I never say what I do not feel,” was Keziah’s answer, as she read on,

and when she had finished the letter she added, “She is an ungrateful

girl, fitter for a dressmaker or maid, no doubt, than for anything

higher. But she is a Morton, and must not be suffered to do a menial’s

work. I shall educate her in my own way, but shall not recognize her

socially until I know the kind of woman into which she develops. Neither

must you waste any sentimentality upon her, or make any advances in the

shape of letters, for I will not have it. Let her stand alone awhile.

She seems to be equal to it. And——” here she hesitated, while her pale

cheek flushed a little, as she continued, “she is older than I supposed.

She is fourteen,—very pretty, or beautiful, I think Mr. Wilmot said, and

that does not commend her to me. You know how susceptible Grant is to

beauty, and there must be no more mistakes. The time is too short for

that. Grant is going to Andover, which is not far from Meadowbrook, and

if he knew of this girl, who is his second cousin, nothing could keep

him from seeing her, and there is no telling what complications might

arise, for she is undoubtedly designing like her mother, who won Gerold

from the woman he should have married. Consequently you are to say

nothing to Grant of this girl; then, if he chances to meet her and

trouble comes of it, I shall know the hand of fate is in it.”

“But, Keziah,” I remonstrated, “you surely cannot expect that Grant will

never know anything of Doris? That is preposterous!”

“He need know nothing of her until matters are arranged between him and

Dorothea, who is only fifteen now, while he is eighteen,—both too young

as yet for an engagement. But it must be. It shall be!”

She spoke with great energy, and we, who knew her so well, felt sure

that it would be, and knew that so far as Grant or any of us were

concerned, Doris was to remain a myth until such time as Keziah chose to

bring her home. But if we could not speak of her to Grant, Desire and I

talked of her often between ourselves, and two or three times I began a

letter to her, but always burned it, so great was my fear of Keziah’s

displeasure should she find it out. We knew the girl was well cared for

and happy, and that she stood high in all her classes, for the very best

of reports came regularly from her teachers, both with regard to

deportment and to scholarship. Perhaps I am wrong, but I cannot help

thinking that Keziah would have been better pleased if some fault had

been found in order to confirm her theory that blood will tell. But

there has been none, and she was graduated with honor at the High School

in Meadowbrook, and every arrangement was made for her to go to Madame

De Moisiere’s school in Boston, where she particularly wished to go,

when suddenly Keziah changed her mind in favor of Wellesley, where Doris

did not wish to go. “She is bitterly disappointed, and I shall be glad

if you can think best to adhere to your first plan,” Mr. Wilmot wrote,

but did not move Keziah a whit. It was either Wellesley or some

out-of-the-way place in Maine, which I do not recall. Doris has chosen

Wellesley, of course, while Dizzy and I have put our wits to work to

find the cause of the change, and I think we have found it. Dorothea has

suddenly made up her mind to go to Madame De Moisiere.

“I don’t care for books, any way,” she wrote. “I am a dunce, and

everybody knows it and seems to like me just as well. But old Gardy

thinks I ought to go somewhere to be finished, and so I have chosen De

Moisiere, where I expect to have no end of fun provided I can hoodwink

the teachers, and I think I can. Besides, as you may suspect, the fact

that Grant has finished Andover and is now in Harvard has a good deal to

do with my choice, for he will call upon me, of course. I shall be so

proud of him, as I hear he is very popular, and all the girls will be

green with envy!”

“The dear rattle-brained child,” Keziah said, chuckling over the letter,

as she would not have chuckled if it had been from Doris,—“the dear

rattle-brained child! Of course Grant must call, and I shall write to

the professors, giving my permission, and to Madame asking her to allow

him to see her.”

Poor, innocent Kizzy! It is so many years since she was at

boarding-school, where she was kept behind bars and bolts, and she knows

so little how fast the world has moved since then, that she really

believes young people are kept as closely now as they were forty years

ago. What would she say if she knew how many times Grant was at Madame’s

while he was at Andover and during his first year at Harvard, and how

many flirtations he has had with the girls, whom he calls a jolly lot.

All this he confided to Dizzy and myself, when at the vacation he came

home, fresh and breezy and full of fun and frolic and noise, making our

quiet house resound with his college songs and Harvard yells, which I

think are hideous, and rather fast, if not low. But Kizzy never utters a

word of protest, and pays without questioning the enormous bills sent to

her, and seems gratified to know that his rooms are as handsome and his

turnout as fine as any in Cambridge.

Grant has the first place in Kizzy’s heart, and Dorothea the next, and

because she is going to Madame De Moisiere, Doris must not go, for

naturally she would fall in with Dorothea, and through her with Grant,

who would not be insensible to his pretty cousin’s charms, and who would

resent his having been kept from her so long. Mr. Wilmot has written

that she is exceedingly beautiful, with a manner which attracts every

one, while some of her teachers have written the same. Dorothea, on the

contrary, is rather plain. “Ugly as a hedge fence,” Grant once said of

her in a fit of pique, declaring that if he ever married, it would be to

a pretty face. And so he must not see Doris until he is engaged to

Dorothea, as it seems likely he soon will be, and Doris is going to

Wellesley, where Kizzy thinks Grant has never been and never can go

without her permission! Deluded Kizzy! Grant knows at least a dozen

Wellesley girls, each one of whom he designates a brick. Will he find

Doris, I wonder? I cannot help hoping so. Ah, well, the world is a queer

mixture, and _nous verrons_.

It is growing late, and everybody in and around the house is asleep,

except myself and Nero, the watch-dog, who is fiercely baying the moon

or barking at some thieving negro stealing our eggs or chickens. The

clock is striking twelve, and I must say good-night to my journal and to

Tom, if he is still alive, and to dear little Doris: so leaning from my

window into the cool night air, I will kiss my hand to the north and

south and east and west, and say God bless them both, wherever they are.

CHAPTER III.—DORIS’S STORY.

GRANTLEY MONTAGUE AND DOROTHEA.

It was a lovely morning in September when, with Lucy Pierce, a girl

friend, I took the train for Boston, where I was to spend the night with

Lucy’s aunt, who lived there, and the next day go to Wellesley. Soon

after we were seated, a young man who had formerly lived in Meadowbrook,

but was now a clerk in some house in Chicago and was going to Boston on

business, entered the car, and after the first greetings were over, said

to us, “I saw you get in at Meadowbrook, and have come to speak with you

and have a little rest. The through sleeper from Chicago and Cincinnati

is half full of school-girls and Harvard boys, who have kept up such a

row. Why, it was after twelve last night before they gave us a chance to

sleep. They are having a concert now, and a girl from Cincinnati, whom

they call Thea, and who seems to be the ringleader, is playing the

banjo, while another shakes a tambourine, and a tall fellow from

Kentucky, whom they call General Grant, is whistling an accompaniment. I

rather think Miss Thea is pretty far gone with the general, the way she

turns her great black eyes on him, and I wouldn’t wonder if he were a

little mashed on her, although she is not what I call pretty. And yet

she has a face which one would look at twice, and like it better the

second time than the first; and, by Jove, she handles that banjo well. I

wish you could see her.”

When we reached Worcester, where we were to stop a few minutes, Lucy and

I went into the sleeper, from which many of the passengers had alighted,

leaving it free to the girls and the Harvards, who were enjoying

themselves to their utmost. The concert was at its height, banjo and

tambourine-players and whistler all doing their best, and it must be

confessed that the best was very good. Thea was evidently the centre of

attraction, as, with her hat off and her curly bangs pushed back from

her forehead, her white fingers swept the strings of the banjo with a

certain inimitable grace, and her brilliant, laughing eyes looked up to

the young man, who was bending over her with his back to me so I could

not see his face. I only knew he was tall and broad-shouldered, with

light brown hair which curled at the ends, and that his appearance was

that of one bred in a city, who has never done anything in his life but

enjoy himself. And still he fascinated me almost as much as Thea, who,

as I passed her, said to him, with a soft Southern accent, “For shame,

Grant,—to make so horrid a discord! I believe you did it on purpose, and

I shall not play any more. The concert is ended; pass round the hat;”

and, dropping her banjo on her lap and running her fingers through her

short hair until it stood up all over her head, she leaned back as if

exhausted and fanned herself with her sailor hat. With the exception of

her eyes and hair, she was not pretty in the usual acceptation of the

term. But, as young Herring had said, one would turn to look at her

twice and like her better the second time than the first, for there was

an irresistible charm in her manner and smile and voice, which to me

seemed better than mere beauty of feature and complexion.

When he reached the depot in Boston I saw her again, and then thought

her very pretty as she stood upon the platform, taking her numerous

parcels from “General” Grant, with whom she was gayly chattering.

“Now mind you come soon. I shall be so homesick till I see you. I am

half homesick now,” she said, brushing a tear, either real or feigned,

from her eyes.

“But suppose they won’t let me call? They are awfully stiff when they

get their backs up, and they are not very fond of me,” the young man

said, and she replied, “Oh, they will, for your aunt and Gardy are going

to write and ask permission for me to see you, so that is fixed. _Au

revoir._” And, kissing her fingers to him, she followed her companions,

while Grant went to look for his baggage.

He had been standing with his back to me, but as he turned I saw his

face distinctly and started involuntarily with the thought that I had

seen him before, or somebody like him. Surely there was something

familiar about him, and the memory of my dead father came back to me and

was associated with this young man, thoughts of whom clung to me

persistently, until the strangeness and novelty of Wellesley drove him

and Thea from my mind for a time.

Of my student life at Wellesley, I shall say but little, except that as

a student I was contented and happy. I loved study for its own sake, and

no task was too long, no lesson too hard, for me to master. I stood high

in all my classes, and was popular with my teachers and the few girls

whom I chose as my friends. And still there was constantly with me a

feeling of unrest,—a longing for something I could not have. Mordecai

sat in the gate, and my Mordecai was the restrictions with which my Aunt

Keziah hedged me round, not only in a letter written to my teachers, but

in one which she sent to me when I had been in Wellesley three or four

weeks. I was not expecting it, and at the sight of her handwriting my

heart gave a great bound, for she was my blood relation, and although I

had no reason to love her, I had more than once found myself wishing for

some recognition from her. At last it had come, I thought, and with

moist eyes and trembling hands I opened the letter, which was as

follows:

“DEAR DORIS,—It has come to my knowledge that a great deal more

license is allowed to young people than in my day, and that young men

sometimes call upon or manage to see school-girls without the

permission of their parents or guardians. This is very reprehensible,

and something I cannot sanction. I am at a great expense for your

education, in order that you may do credit to your father’s name, and

I wish you to devote your entire energies and thoughts to your books,

and on no account to receive calls or attentions of any kind from any

one, and especially a Harvard student. My orders are strict in this

respect, and I have communicated them to your Principal. You can, if

accompanied by a teacher, go occasionally to a concert or a lecture in

Boston, but, as a rule you are better in the building, and must have

nothing to do with the Harvarders. Your past record is good and I

expect your future to be the same, and shall be pleased accordingly. I

shall send your quarter’s spending money to Miss ——, who will give it

to you as you need it, and I do this because I hear that girls at

school are sometimes given to buying candy by the box,—French candy,

too,—and sweets by the jar, and to having _spreads_, whatever these

may be. But you can afford none of these extravagancies, and, lest you

should be tempted to indulge in them, I have removed the possibility

from your way by giving your allowance to Miss ——, and I wish you to

keep an account of all your little incidental expenses, and send it to

me with the quarterly reports of your standing.

“I have arranged with the Wilmots for you to spend your vacations with

them. But when your education is finished, if your record is as good

as it has been, you will come to us, of course, if we have a home for

you to come to. There is a dark cloud hanging over us, and whether it

will burst or not I cannot tell. If it does, you may be obliged to

earn your own living, and hence the necessity for you to get a

thorough education. I am thankful to say that, for people of our

years, your aunts and myself are in comfortable health. If you wish to

write me occasionally and tell me of your life at Wellesley, you can

do so, but you must not expect prompt replies, as people at my time of

life are not given to voluminous correspondence.

“Yours truly,

“KEZIAH MORTON.”

I had opened the letter with eager anticipations of what it might

contain, but when I finished it my heart was hardening with a sense of

the injustice done me by treating me as if I were a little child, who

could not be trusted with my own pocket money, and who was to give an

account for every penny spent, from a postage stamp to a car fare. And

this at first hurt me worse than the other restrictions. I did not know

much about the Harvard boys or spreads, and I did not care especially

for French candy and sweets, but now that they were so summarily

forbidden, I began to want them and to rebel against the chains which

bound me, and as the weeks and months went on, I became more and more

conscious of a feeling of desolation and loneliness, which at times made

me very unhappy. In Meadowbrook I had been so kindly cared for by the

Wilmots that, except for the sense of loss when I thought of my mother,

I had not fully realized how alone I was in the world; but at Wellesley,

when I heard my companions talk of their homes and saw their delight

when letters came to them from father or mother or brothers or sisters,

I used to go away and cry with an intense longing for the love of some

one of my own kindred and friends. I had no letters from home and no

home to go to during the vacations except that of the Wilmots, who

always made me welcome. I stood alone, a sort of _goody-goody_, as the

girls called me when I resisted their entreaties to join in violation of

the rules. I took no part in what Aunt Keziah called spreads. I seldom

saw a Harvard student, but heard a good deal about them and learned that

they were not the monsters Aunt Kizzy thought them to be.

My room-mate, Mabel Stearns, had a brother in Harvard, whose intimate

friend was called General Grant, but whose real name was Grantley

Montague, Mabel said, adding that he was a Kentuckian and belonged to a

very aristocratic family. He was reported to be rich, spending his money

freely, and while always managing to have his lessons and stand well

with the professors, still arranging to have a hand in every bit of fun

and frolic that came in his way. I heard, too, of Dorothea Haynes, who

was at Madame De Mosiere’s, She was a great heiress and an orphan, and

lived in Cincinnati with her guardian, whom she called old Gardy, who

gave her all the money she wanted, and whose instructions were that, as

she was delicate, she was not to have too many lessons or study too

hard. Like Grantley Montague, she was very popular, and no one had so

many callers from Harvard. Prominent among these was Grantley Montague,

who was very lover-like in his attentions. Happy Dorothea Haynes, I

thought, envying her for her money,—which was not doled out to her in

quarters and halves,—envying her for her freedom, and envying her most

for her acquaintance with Grantley Montague, who occupied much of my

thoughts, but who seemed as far removed from me as the planets from the

earth.

I never went anywhere, except occasionally to a concert, or a lecture,

and to church. I seldom saw anyone except the teachers and students

around me, and, although I was very fond of my books, time dragged

rather monotonously with me until I had been at Wellesley about two and

a half years, when Mabel who had spent Sunday in Boston came back on

Monday radiant and full of news which she hastened to communicate.

Grantley Montague and her brother Fred were soon to give a tea-party

under the auspices of her married sister, who lived in Cambridge, and

who was to be assisted by two or three other ladies. I had heard of

these receptions, where Thea Haynes usually figured so prominently in

wonderful costumes, but if any wish that I might have part in them ever

entered my mind, it was quickly smothered, for such things were not for

me, fettered as I was by my aunt Keziah’s orders, which were not relaxed

in the least, although I was now nineteen years of age. How then was I

surprised and delighted when with Mabel’s invitation there came one for

me! It was through her influence, I knew, but I was invited, and for a

few moments I was happier than I had ever been in my life. Then came the

thought expressed in words, “Can I go?”

“Certainly,” Mabel said; “you have only to write your aunt, who will say

yes at once, if you tell her how much you desire it, and Miss —— will

give her permission gladly, for you are the model scholar. You never get

into scrapes, and have scarcely had an outing except a few stupid

lectures or concerts with a teacher tacked on, and I don’t believe you

have spoken to a Harvarder since you have been here. Of course she will

let you go; if she don’t, she’s an old she-dragon. Write to her at once,

and blarney her a little, if necessary.”

I did not know how to blarney, and I was horribly afraid of the

she-dragon, as Mabel called her, but I wrote her that day, telling her

what I wanted, and how much pleasure it would give me to go. It was the

first favor I had asked, I said, and I had tried so hard to do what I

thought would please her, that I hoped she would grant it, and, as there

was not very much time for delay, would she please telegraph her answer?

I signed myself, “Your affectionate niece, Doris Morton,” and then

waited, anxiously, for a reply. I knew about how long it took for a

letter to reach Morton Park, and on the fourth day after mine was sent I

grew so nervous that I could scarcely eat or keep my mind upon my

lessons. Encouraged by Mabel, I had come to think it quite sure that my

aunt would consent, and had tried on my two evening dresses to see which

was the more becoming to me, crimson surah with creamy trimmings, or

cream-colored cashmere with crimson trimmings. Mabel decided for the

cashmere, which, she said, softened my brilliant color, and I sewed a

bit of lace into the neck and fastened a bow of ribbon a little more

securely, and was smoothing the folds of the dress and wondering what

Grantley Montague would think of it and me, when there was a knock at my

door and a telegram was handed me. I think the sight of one of those

yellow missives quickens the pulse of every one, and for a moment my

heart beat so fast that I could scarcely stand. I was alone, for Mabel

had gone out, and, dropping into a chair, I opened the envelope with

hands which shook as if I were in a chill. Then everything swam before

my eyes and grew misty, except the one word _No_, which stamped itself

upon my brain so indelibly that I see it now as distinctly as I saw it

then, and I feel again the pang of disappointment and the sensation as

if my heart were beating in my throat and choking me to death. I

remember trying to cry, with a thought that tears might remove the

pressure in my head, which was like a band of steel. But I could not,

and for a few moments I sat staring at the word _No_, which for a time

turned me into stone. Then I arose and hung up the dress I was not to

wear, and put away the long gloves I had bought to go with it, and was

standing by the window, looking drearily out upon the wintry sky, when

Mabel came in, full of excitement and loaded with parcels.

She had been shopping in Boston, and she displayed one after another the

slippers and fan and handkerchief she had bought for the great occasion

of which she had heard so much. Grantley Montague, she said, was sparing

no pains to make it the very finest affair of the season, and Thea

Haynes was having a wonderful costume made, although she already had a

dozen Paris gowns in her wardrobe. Then, as I did not enter very

heartily into her talk, she suddenly stopped, and, looking me in the

face, exclaimed, “What is it, Dorey? Has the answer come?”

I nodded, and spying the dispatch on the table, she snatched it up and

read _No_, and then began pirouetting wildly around the room, with

exclamations not very complimentary to my aunt.

“The vile old cat!” she said. “What does she mean by treating you so,

and you the model who never do anything out of the way, and have never

been known to join in the least bit of a lark? But I would spite the

hateful old woman. I’d be bad if I were you. Suppose you jump out of the

window to-night, or do something to assert your rights. Will you? A lot

of us will help.”

She had expressed aloud much that had passed through my mind during the

last hour. What was the use of being a _goody-goody_, as I was so often

called? Why not be a _bady-bady_ and taste forbidden fruit for once? I

had asked myself, half resolving to throw off all restraint and see how

bad I could be. But when I thought of my teachers, who trusted me and

whom I loved, and more than all when I remembered my dead mother’s

words, “If your aunts care for you, respect their wishes as you would

mine,” my mood changed. I would do right whatever came; and I said so to

Mabel, who called me a milksop and sundry other names equally

expressive, and declared she would not tell me a thing about the

reception. But I knew she would, and she did, and for days after it I

heard of little else than the _perfectly elegant_ affair.

“Such beautiful rooms,” she said, “with so many pictures, and among them

such a funny one of four old women sitting in a row, like owls on a

pole, with a moon-faced baby in the lap of one of them, and a young man

behind them. It has a magnificent frame, and I meant to have asked its

history, but forgot it, there was so much else to look at.”

I wonder now that I did not think of my father’s picture of his four

aunts, which was sold to a Boston dealer years before; but I did not,

and Mabel rattled on, telling me of the guests, and the dresses,

especially that of Thea Haynes, which she did not like; it was too low

in front and too low in the back, and fitted her form too closely, and

the sleeves were too short for her thin arms.

“But then it was all right because it was Thea Haynes, and she is very

nice and agreeable and striking, with winning manners and a sweet

voice,” she said. “Everybody was ready to bow down to her, except

Grantley Montague, who was just as polite to one as to another, and who

sometimes seemed annoyed at the way she monopolized him, as if he were

her special property. I am so sorry you were not there, as you would

have thrown her quite in the shade, for you are a thousand times

handsomer than she.”

This was of course flattering to my vanity, but it did not remove the

feeling of disappointment, which lasted for a long time and was not

greatly lessened when about a week after the reception I received from

Aunt Keziah a letter which I knew was meant to be conciliatory. She was

sorry, she said, to have to refuse the first favor I had ever asked, but

she had good reasons, which she might some time see fit to tell me, and

then she referred again to a shadow which was hanging over the family,

and which made her morbid, she supposed. I had no idea what the shadow

was, or what connection it had with my going to Grantley Montague’s

reception, but I was glad she was making even a slight apology for what

seemed to me so unjust. She was much pleased with the good reports of

me, she said, and if I liked I might attend a famous opera which she

heard was soon to be in Boston, and I could have one of those long wraps

trimmed with fur such as young girls wore to evening entertainments, and

a new silk dress, if I needed it. That was very kind, and Mabel, to whom

I showed the letter, declared that the dragon must have met with a

change of heart.

“I’d go to the opera,” she said, “and I’d have the wrap trimmed with

light fur, and the gown a grayish blue, just the color of your eyes when

you are excited. There are some lovely patterns at Jordan & Marsh’s, and

sister Clara will help you pick it out, and we’ll have a box and go with

Clara, and I’ll do your hair beautifully, and you’ll see how many

glasses will be leveled at you.”

Mabel was always comforting and enthusiastic, and I began to feel a good

deal of interest in the box and the dress and the wrap and the opera,

which I enjoyed immensely, and where so many glasses were turned towards

me that my cheeks burned as if I were a culprit caught in some wrong

act. But there was something lacking, and that was Grantley Montague,

whom I fully expected to see. Neither he nor Thea was there, and I heard

afterwards that she was ill with a cold and had written a pathetic note,

begging him not to go and enjoy himself when she was feeling so badly

and crying on her pillow, with her nose a sight to behold. Mabel’s

brother, who reported this to her, added that when Grantley read the

note he gave a mild little swear and said he reckoned he should go if he

liked. But he didn’t, and I neither saw him then, nor any time

afterwards, except in the distance, during my stay at Wellesley.

He was graduated the next summer, and left for Kentucky, with the

reputation of a fair scholar and a first-rate fellow who had spent quite

a fortune during his college course. Thea Haynes also left Madame’s,

where she said she had learned nothing, generously adding, however, that

it was not the fault of her teachers, but because she didn’t try. Some

time during the next autumn I heard that she had gone to Europe with her

guardian and maid and a middle-aged governess who acted as chaperon, and

that Grantley Montague was soon to join her in a trip to Egypt. After

that I knew no more of them except as Mabel occasionally told me what

she heard from her brother, who had also left Harvard and was in San

Francisco. To him Grantley wrote in February that he was with the Haynes

party, which had been increased by a second or third cousin of Thea’s, a

certain Aleck Grady, who was a crank, and perfectly daft on the subject

of a family tree and the missing link in the Hepburn line.

“If he finds the missing link,” Fred wrote to his sister, “Grant says it

will take quite a fortune from Thea, or himself, or both; and he seems

to be a little anxious about the link which Aleck Grady is trying to

find. I don’t know what it means. Think I’ll ask him to explain more

definitely when I write him again.”

Neither Mabel nor I could hazard a guess with regard to the missing link

or the Hepburn line, and I soon forgot them entirely in the excitement

of preparing for my graduation, which was not very far away. I had hoped

that one of my aunts at least would be present, and had written to that

effect to Aunt Keziah, telling her how lonely it would be for me with no

relative present, and how earnestly I wished that either she or Aunt

Desire or Aunt Beriah would come. I even went so far as to thank her for

all she had done for me and to tell her how sorry I was for the saucy

letter I wrote to her six years ago. I had often wanted to do this, but

had never quite made up my mind to it until now, when I hoped it might

bring me a favorable response. But I was mistaken.

It was not possible for herself or either of her sisters to come so far,

she wrote. She appreciated my wish to have her there, she said, and did

not esteem me less for it. But it could not be. She enclosed money for

my graduating dress, and also for my traveling expenses, for after a

brief rest in Meadowbrook I was going to Morton Park, in charge of a

merchant from Frankfort, who would be in New York in July and would meet

me in Albany. And so, with no relative present to encourage me or be

proud of me, I received my diploma and more flowers than I knew what to

do with, and compliments enough to turn my head, and then, amid tears

and kisses and good wishes, bade farewell to my girl friends and

teachers, one of whom said to me at parting: “If all our pupils were

like you, Wellesley would be a Paradise.”

A model in every respect they called me, and it was with quite a high

opinion of myself that I went to Meadowbrook, where I spent a week, and

then, bidding a tearful good-bye to the friends who had been so kind to

me, I joined Mr. Jones at Albany, and was soon on my way to Kentucky.

CHAPTER IV.—GRANTLEY MONTAGUE’S STORY.

ALECK AND THEA.

HOTEL CHAPMAN, FLORENCE, April —, 18—.

Nearly everybody keeps a diary at some time in his life, I think. Aunt

Brier does, I know, and Thea, and Aleck,—confound him, with his Hepburn

lines and missing links!—and so I may as well be in fashion and commence

one, even if I tear it up, as I probably shall. Well, here we are in

Florence, and likely to be until Thea is able to travel. Why did she go

tearing around Rome night and day in all sorts of weather, spooning it

in the Coliseum by moonlight and declaring she was _oh, so hot_, when my

teeth were chattering with cold, and I could see nothing in the beauty

she raved about but some old broken walls and arches, with shadows here

and there, which did not look half as pretty as the shadows in the park

at home? Europe hasn’t panned out exactly as I thought it would, and I

am getting confoundedly bored. Thea is nice, of course,—too nice, in

fact,—but a fellow does not want to be compelled to marry a girl any

way. He’d rather have some choice in the matter, which I haven’t had;

but I like Thea immensely, and we are engaged.

There, I’ve blurted it out, and it looks first-rate on paper, too. Yes,

we are engaged, and this is how it happened. Ever since I was knee-high

Aunt Keziah has dinged it into me that I must marry Thea, or her heart

would be broken, and the Mortons beggared. I wish old Amos Hepburn’s

hand had been paralyzed before he added to that long lease a condition

which has brought grief to my Uncle Douglas and cousin Gerold, who

married an actress, or a cook, or something, because he loved her more

than he did money. By George, I respect him for his independence, and

wish I were more like him, and not a lazy, good-for-nothing fellow who

does not know how to do a single useful thing or to earn a dollar.

Well, the time is drawing near for that lease to expire, and unless a

direct heir of Joseph Morton, my great-grandfather, marries a direct

heir of Amos Hepburn, the entire Morton estate will revert to the

Hepburn heir. Now, I am a direct heir of Joseph Morton, and Thea is old

Hepburn’s direct heir, which means, according to the way it was

explained in the lease, that she is the eldest child, whether son or

daughter, of the eldest child, and so on back to the beginning, when

there were three daughters of old Amos. Thea comes from the second of

these daughters, for where the first one is the Lord only knows. Aleck

Grady descends from old Amos’s third daughter, and has no chance while

Thea lives. Nor does he pretend to want any, as he has money enough of

his own. He joined our party uninvited in Egypt, and has bored us to

death with his family tree, and the missing link, which link means the

eldest daughter of old Hepburn, of whom nothing is known after a certain

date. And it is she and her descendants, if there are any, he is trying

to hunt up. He is a shrewd fellow, and a kind of quack lawyer, too, and

once told me that he did not think the long lease would hold water a

minute in the United States, and asked if Aunt Keziah had consulted a

first-class lawyer, and when I told him that she had not,—that it had

been a rule in our family not to talk about the lease to any one until

compelled to do so, and that even if she knew the document was invalid

she would consider herself bound in honor to respect it as her father

had done before her and enjoined her to do,—he shrugged his shoulders

and said, “_Chacun à son goût_; but I should dispute that lease inch by

inch, and beat the Hepburns too.”

“Why, then,” I asked, “are you so anxious to find the _missing link_, as

you call it? I always supposed that for some reason you wanted to throw

Thea out of the property.”

With that insinuating smile of his which Thea thinks so winning and I

think so disgusting, he replied, “My dear fellow, how you mistake me! I

don’t care a picayune who gets the Morton money, if you are fools enough

to give it up. But I do care for my ancestors; in fact, I have a real

affection for my great-aunt Octavia, and am most anxious to know what

became of her and her progeny. I have her as far as New York, where all

trace of her is lost. Would you like to see the family tree?”

As I had seen it half a dozen times and knew exactly where Octavia

failed to connect, I declined, and then the conversation turned upon

Thea, who, Aleck said, was a very nice girl, but a little too fast, and

had about her too much gush and too much powder to suit him. It was

strange why girls would gush and giggle and plaster their faces with

cosmetics and blacken their eyebrows until they looked like women of the

town, he said, appealing to me for confirmation of his opinion. I had

more than half suspected him of designs on Thea, and I flamed up at once

in her defense, telling him she neither gushed, nor powdered, nor

blackened,—three lies, as I knew,—but I was angry, and when, with that

imperturbable good humor which never fails him, he continued: “Don’t get

so mad, I beg. I am older than you, and know human nature better than

you do, and I know you pretty well. Why, I’ve made you quite a study.

Thea, in spite of her powder and gush, is a splendid girl, and will make

a good wife to the man she loves and who loves her, but she is not your

ideal, and pardon me for suggesting that I don’t believe that you would

marry her if it were not for that clause about the eldest heir, which I

don’t think is worth the paper it is written on,”—I could have knocked

him down, he was so cool and patronizing, and was also telling me a good

deal of truth. But I would not admit it, and insisted that I would marry

Thea if there had never been any Hepburn line and she had not a dollar

in the world.

“Why don’t you propose, then, and done with it? She is dying to have

you,” he said, and I declared I would, and that night I asked her to be

my wife, and I have not regretted it either, although I know she is not

my ideal.

But who is my ideal, and where is she, if I have one? I am sure I don’t

know, unless it is the owner of a face which I have seen but twice, but

which comes back to me over and over again, and which I would not forget

if I could, and could not if I would. The first time I saw it was at a

concert in Boston, not long before I left college. I was in the

dress-circle, and diagonally to my right was an immense bonnet or hat

which hid half the audience from me. Late in the evening it moved, and I

saw beyond it a face which has haunted me ever since. It was that of a

young and beautiful girl, who I instinctively felt belonged to a type

entirely different from the class of girls whom I had known while at

Harvard, and who, without being exactly fast in the worst acceptation of

the term, had come so near the boundary-line between propriety and

impropriety that it was difficult to tell on which side they stood. But

this girl was different, with her deep-blue eyes and her wavy hair which

I was sure had never come in contact with the hot curling-tongs, as

Thea’s does, while her complexion, which reminded me of the roses and

lilies in Aunt Keziah’s garden, owed none of its brilliancy to

cosmetics, as Aleck says most complexions do. She was real, and

inexpressibly lovely, especially when she smiled, as she sometimes did

upon the lady who sat beside her, and who might have been her mother, or

her chaperone, or some elderly relative. When the concert was over I

hurried out, hoping to get near her, but she was lost in the crowd, and

I only saw her once again, three weeks later, in an open street-car

going in the opposite direction from the one in which I was seated. In

her hand she held a paper parcel, which made me think she might possibly

be a seamstress or a saleslady, and I spent a great deal of time

haunting the establishments in Boston which employed girls as clerks,

but I never found her, nor heard of her. She certainly was not at

Moisiere’s and I don’t think she was at Wellesley, as I am sure I should

have heard of her through Fred, who had a sister there. Once I thought I

would tell him about her, but was kept from doing so by a wish to

discover her myself, and when discovered to keep her to myself. But I

have never seen her since the day she went riding so serenely past me,

unconscious of the admiration and strange emotions she was exciting in

me. Who was she, I wonder; and shall I ever see her again? It is not

likely; and if I do, what can it matter to me, now that I am engaged to

Thea?

In her letter of congratulation Aunt Keziah, who was wild with delight,

wrote to me that nothing could make her so happy as my marriage with

Thea, and that she knew I would keep my promise, no matter whom I might

meet, for no one of Morton blood ever proved untrue to the woman he

loved. Of course I shall prove true; and who is there to meet, unless it

is my Lost Star, as I call her, for whom I believe I am as persistently

searching as Aleck is for the missing link, for I never see a group of

young American girls that I do not manage to get near enough to see if

she is among them, and I never see a head of chestnut-brown hair set on

shoulders just as hers was that I don’t follow it until I see the face,

which as yet has not been hers. And in this I am not disloyal to Thea,

whom I love better than any girl I have ever known, and whom I will make

happy, if possible. She has been ill now nearly four weeks, but in a few

days we hope to move on to Paris, where we shall stay until June, then

go to Switzerland, and some time in the autumn sail for home, and the

aunts who have vied with each other in spoiling me and are the dearest

aunts in the world, although so unlike each other,—Aunt Keziah, with her

iron will but really kind heart, Aunt Dizzy, with her invalid airs and

pretty youthful ways which suit her so well in spite of her years, and

Aunt Brier, whose name is a misnomer, she is so soft and gentle, with

nothing scratchy about her, and who has such a sad, sweet face, with a

look in her brown eyes as if she were always waiting or listening for

something. I believe she has a history, and that it is in some way

connected with that queer chap, Bey Atkins they called him, whose dress

was half Oriental and half European, and whom I met at Shepheard’s in

Cairo. I first saw him the night after our return from the trip up the

Nile. He registered just after I had written the names of our party, at

which he looked a long time, and then fairly shadowed me until he had a

chance to speak to me alone. It was after dinner, and we were sitting

near each other in front of the hotel, when he began to talk to me, and

in an inconceivably short space of time had learned who I was, and where

I lived, and about my aunts, in whom he seemed so greatly interested,

especially Aunt Brier, that I finally asked if he had ever been to

Morton Park.

“Yes,” he answered, knocking the ashes from his cigar and leaning back

in the bamboo chair in the graceful, lounging way he has,—“yes, years

ago I was in Versailles and visited at Morton Park. Your aunt Beriah and

I were great friends. Tell her when you go home that you saw Tom Atkins

in Cairo, and that he has become a kind of wandering Ishmael and wears a

red fez and white flannel suit. Tell her, too—” but here he stopped

suddenly, and, rising, went into the street, where his dragoman was

holding the white donkey he always rode, sometimes alone and sometimes

with a little girl beside him, who called him father.

Of course, then, he is married, and his wife must be an Arab, for the

child was certainly of that race, with her great dark eyes and her tawny

hair all in a tangle. I meant to ask him about her, but when next day I

inquired for him, I was told that he had gone to his home near

Alexandria, where, I dare say, there is a host of little Arabs, and a

woman with a veil stretched across her nose, whom he calls his wife.

Alas for Aunt Brier if my conjecture is right!

CHAPTER V.—BERIAH’S STORY.

DORIS AND THE GLORY HOLE.

It is a long time since I have opened my journal, for there is so little

to record. Life at Morton Park goes on in the same monotonous routine,

with no change except of servants, of which we have had a sufficiency

ever since the negroes became “ekels,” as our last importation from

Louisville, who rejoiced in the high-sounding name of Helena Maude,

informed us they were. Such things make Keziah furious, for she is a

regular fire-eater, but I shall admit their equality provided they spare

my best bonnet and do not insist upon putting their knives into our

butter. Helena Maude is a pretty good girl, and when some of her friends

come to the front door and ask if Miss Smithson lives here I tell them

yes, and send them round to the cabins and say nothing to Keziah, who

for the last few weeks has been wholly absorbed in other matters than

colored gentry.

Doris is coming home to-morrow, and just the thought of it makes me so

nervous with gladness that I can scarcely write legibly. I think it was

a struggle for Keziah to consent to her coming, and she only did so

after she heard Grant was engaged to Dorothea. I never saw Keziah as

happy as she was upon the receipt of Grant’s letter, for his marriage

with Dorothea means keeping our old home, and she allowed Helena Maude

to whistle “Marching Through Georgia” as she cleared the table, and did

not reprove her. It was soon after this that she announced her intention

to bring Doris to Morton Park after her graduation, and that night Dizzy

and I held a kind of jubilee in our sitting-room, we were so glad that

at last Gerold’s daughter was coming to her father’s old home.

We need young blood here to keep us from stagnating, and although

Grantley will be with us in the autumn, and possibly Dorothea, we know

what they are, and are anxious for something new and fresh and pretty

like Doris. I have a photograph of her, and it stands before me as I

write, a picture of a wondrously beautiful young girl, with great

earnest eyes confronting mine so steadfastly, and masses of soft,

natural curls all over her head after the fashion of the present day. I

know they are natural, although Keziah says they are the result of hot

tongs, and that she shall stop it at once, for she will not have the gas

turned on half the time while the irons are heating. That is Dorothea’s

style; but she is in the Hepburn line, and is to marry Grant, which

makes a difference.

Doris sent such a nice letter to Keziah, asking pardon for the saucy

things she wrote to her years ago, and begging that some one of us would

come to see her graduated. How I wanted to go! but Keziah said we could

not afford it, as she intended buying a new upright Steinway in place of

the old spindle-legged thing on which she used to thrum when a girl. We

have heard that Doris is a fine musician, but Keziah will not admit that

the piano was bought for her. Dorothea will visit us in the autumn, she

says, and she wishes to make it as pleasant as possible for her. Dizzy

and I both know what Dorothea’s playing is like, and that it does not

matter much whether it is on a Steinway or a tin pan, but we are glad

for something modern in our ancient drawing-room, where every article of

furniture is nearly as old as I am, and where the new Steinway is now

standing with one of Keziah’s shawls thrown over it to keep it from the

dust.

For once in our lives Dizzy and I have waged a fierce battle with

Keziah, who came off victor as usual. The battle was over Doris’s room,

which Keziah thinks is of little consequence. Looking at our house from

the outside, one would say it was large enough to accommodate a dozen

school-girls; but looks are deceptive, and it seems it can hardly

accommodate one. There is a broad piazza in front, and through the

centre a long and wide hall, after the fashion of most Southern houses.

On the south side of the hall are the drawing-room and sitting-room,

with fireplaces in each. On the north side are the dining-room and

Keziah’s sleeping-room, where she usually sits and receives her intimate

friends. On the floor above are also four rooms,—Dizzy’s and mine, which

open together on the north side of the hall, and on the other side

Grantley’s, and the guest-room, which has not been occupied in fifteen

years, for when Dorothea is here she has always had a cot in my room or

Dizzy’s. At the end of the hall is a small room, ten by twelve perhaps,

and communicating with the guest-chamber, for which it was originally

intended as a dressing-room, but which we use as a store-room for a most

heterogeneous mass of rubbish, such as broken chairs and stands and

trunks and chests, and old clothes and warming-pans and water-bags and

Grantley’s fishing-tackle. The Glory Hole, we call it, though what the

name has to do with the room I have no idea. There is a tradition that

Gerold, when he first looked into it, exclaimed, “Oh, glory, what a

hole!” and hence the name, which clung to it even after it was cleared

of its rubbish for him, for he once occupied it when a little boy, and

now it is to be his daughter’s.

Dizzy and I pleaded for the large guest-chamber, but Keziah said that

was reserved for Dorothea who, as an engaged young lady, was too old to

sleep in a cot. And nothing we could say was of any avail to turn her

from her purpose. The Glory Hole was good enough for the daughter of a

cook, she said, and so the room has been emptied of its contents, and,

except that it is so small, it is quite presentable, with its matting

and muslin hangings and willow chair and table by the window, under

which there is a box of flowers, as one often sees in London. Just where

she will put her trunk or hang her dresses I don’t know,—possibly in my

closet, which is large enough for us both. She will be here to-morrow

afternoon, and Keziah is nearly ill with dread of her coming, and

worrying as to what she will be like, and whether she will bring a

banjo, and worst of all, if she will want to ride a bicycle! This

bicycle-riding is in Kizzy’s mind the most disreputable thing a woman

can do, and the sight of a girl on a wheel, or a boy either, for that

matter, is like a red flag to a bull, especially since the riders have

taken to the sidewalks. She will never turn out, she declares, and I

have seen her stand like a rock and face the enemy bearing down upon

her, and once she raised her umbrella with a hiss and a shoo, as if she

were scaring chickens. I dare say Thea will have one as soon as she

lands in America, but for Doris there are no bicycles, or banjoes, or

hot irons,—nothing but the Glory Hole. Poor little Doris!

I hope she will be happy with us, and I know I am glad because she is

coming. So few have ever come home to make me glad, and the one who

could make me the gladdest will never come again, for somewhere in the

wide world the sun is shining on his grave, I am sure, or he would come

back to me, and I should bid him stay, or rather go with him, whether to

the sands of Arabia or to the shores of the Arctic Sea. My hair is

growing gray, the bloom has faded from my cheek, and I shall be

forty-four my next birthday, and it is twenty-four years since I saw

Tom; but a woman’s love at forty-four is just as strong, I think, as a

girl’s at twenty, and there is scarcely a night that I do not hear in my

dreams the peculiar whistle with which he used to summon me to our

trysting-place after Kizzy had forbidden him the house, and I see again

his great, dark eyes full of entreaty and love, and hear his voice

urging me to do what, if it were to do over again, I would do. That is

an oddly-worded sentence; but I am too tired to change it, and will

close my journal until after I have seen Doris.

CHAPTER VI.—DORIS’S STORY.

MORTON PARK.

I have been here four weeks, and begin to feel quite like the daughter

of the house, with some exceptions. I am in love with Aunt Beriah, very

intimate with Aunt Desire, and not as much in awe of Aunt Keziah as I

was at first. It was a lovely afternoon when the coach from Frankfort

set me down at the gate to the Morton grounds, where a little,

brown-eyed, brown-haired lady was waiting for me. She had one of the

sweetest faces I ever saw, and one of the sweetest voices, too, as she

came towards me, holding out both her soft white hands, and saying to

me, “I am sure you are Doris, and I am your aunt Beriah. Welcome to

Morton Park!”

It was not so much what she said as the way she said it, which stirred

me so strangely. It was the first word of affection I had heard from my

own kin since my mother died, and, taking her hands in mine, I kissed

them passionately, and cried like a child. I think she cried a little,

too, but am not sure. I only know that she put her arm around my neck

and said, soothingly, “There, there, dear. Don’t cry, when I am so

glad.”

Then taking my bag and umbrella, she gave them to a colored girl, whom

she called Vine, and who, after bobbing me a courtesy, disappeared

through the gateway.

“It is not far, and I thought you would like to walk,” Aunt Brier said,

leading the way, while I followed her into the park, at the rear of

which stood the house, with its white walls and Corinthian pillars,

looking so cool and pleasant in the midst of grass and flowers and

maples and elms, with an immense hawthorn-tree in full bloom.

“Oh, this is lovely, and just as papa told me it was,” I exclaimed, and

then, stopping short, Aunt Brier drew me close to her, and scrutinizing

me earnestly, said, with a tremor in her voice, “Yes, Gerold told you of

his old home. I was so fond of him. We were like brother and sister, and

I was so sorry when he died. You are not as much like him as I fancied

you were from your photograph.”

“No?” I said, interrogatively, wondering if she were disappointed in me;

but she soon set me right on that point by saying, “Gerold was

good-looking, but you are beautiful.”

I had been told that so often, and I knew it so well without being told,

that I did not feel at all elated. I was only glad that she liked my

looks, and replied, “And you are lovely, and so young, too. My great

aunt ought to look older.”

She smiled at that, and said, “I am nearly forty-four, and feel

sometimes as if I were a hundred. But there is Kizzy on the piazza. I

think we’d better hurry. She does not like to wait for anything.”

I had never really known what fear of any person was, but I felt it now,

and my heart beat violently as I hastened my steps towards the spot

where Aunt Keziah stood, stiff and tall and straight, and looking very

imposing in her black silk gown and lace cap set on a smooth band of

false hair, a bunch of keys dangling at her belt, and a dainty

hemstitched handkerchief clasped in her hands. In spite of her sixty odd

years, she was a handsome woman to look at, with her shoulders thrown

back and her chin in the air as if she were on the alert and the

defensive. Her features were clearly cut, her face smooth and pale,

while her bright black eyes seemed to look me through as they traveled

rapidly from my hat to my boots and back again, evidently taking in

every detail of my dress, and resting finally on my face with what

seemed to be disapproval.

“How do you do, Miss Doris?” she said, with a quick shutting together of

her thin lips, and without the shadow of a smile.

I had cried when Aunt Brier spoke to me, but I did not want to cry now,

for something of the woman’s nature must have communicated itself to

mine and frozen me into a figure as hard and stiff as she was. It was a

trick of mine to imitate any motion or gesture which struck me forcibly,

and I involuntarily threw my shoulders back and my chin in the air, and

gave her two fingers just as she had given me, and told her I was quite

well, and hoped she was the same. For a moment she looked at me

curiously, while it seemed to me that her features did relax a little as

she asked if I were not very tired with the journey and the dusty ride

in the coach from Frankfort.

“It always upsets me,” she said, suggesting that I go at once to my room

and rest until dinner, which would be served sharp at six, “and,” she

added, “we never wait for meals; breakfast at half-past seven in the

summer, lunch at half-past twelve, dinner at six.”

Then she made a stately bow, and I felt that I was dismissed from her

presence, and started to follow Aunt Beriah into the hall just as two

negroes came up the walk bringing one of my trunks, which had been

deposited at the entrance to the park.

“Mass’r Hinton’s man done fotchin’ t’other trunk on his barrer,” the

taller negro said, in response to a look of inquiry he must have seen on

my face, and instantly Aunt Kizzy’s lips came together just as they had

done when she said, “How do you do, Miss Doris?”

“Two trunks?” she asked, in a tone which told me that I had brought

altogether too much luggage.

“Yes,” I replied, stopping until the negroes came up the steps. “Perhaps

I ought to have brought but one, but I have so many books and things,

and, besides, one trunk was father’s and one mother’s, and I could not

give either up. This was father’s, which he said you gave him when he

went to college. See, here is his name.” And I pointed to “Gerald

Morton, Versailles, Ky.,” on the end of the stout leather trunk, which

had withstood the wear of years.

“Yes, I remember it,” she said, in a voice so changed and with so

different an expression on her face that I scarcely knew her as she bent

over the trunk, which she touched caressingly with her hand. “You have

kept it well,” she continued; then, to the negroes, “Take it up-stairs,

and mind you don’t mar the wall nor the banisters. Look sharp, now.”

“Mass’r Hinton’s man” had arrived with the wheelbarrow and the other

trunk, a huge Saratoga, with mother’s name upon it, “Doris Morton, New

Haven, Ct.,” but this Aunt Keziah did not touch. Indeed, it seemed to me

that she recoiled from it, and there was an added severity in her tone

as she told the man to be careful, and chided him for cutting up the

gravel with the wheelbarrow.

“I’s couldn’t tote it, missis; it’s too heavy,” he said, as he waited

for one of the other blacks to help him take it up the stairs.

I had reached the upper hall and was standing by the door of my room,

while Aunt Beriah said, apologetically, “I am sorry it is so small:

perhaps we can change it bye-and-bye.”

It was really a very pretty room, but quite too small for my trunks

unless I moved out either the bedstead, or the bureau, or the washstand,

and, as I could not well dispense with either of these, I looked rather

ruefully at my aunt, who said, “There is a big closet in my room where

you can hang your dresses and put both your trunks when they are

unpacked.” And that was where I did put them, but not until after two

days, for I awoke the next morning with the worst headache I ever had in

my life, and which, I suppose, was induced by the long and rapid journey

from Meadowbrook, added to homesickness and crying myself to sleep. I

could not even sit up, and was compelled to keep my room, where Aunt

Beriah nursed me so tenderly and lovingly, while Aunt Kizzy came three

times a day to ask how I was, and where I first saw my aunt Desire, who

had been suffering with neuralgia and was not present at dinner on the

night of my arrival. She sent me her love, however, and the next day

came into my room, languid and graceful, with a pretty air of invalidism

about her, and a good deal of powder on her face, reminding me of a

beautiful ball-dress which has done service through several seasons and

been turned and made over and freshened up until it looks almost as well

as new. Her dress, of some soft, cream-colored material was artistically

draped around her fine figure and fastened on the left side with a

ribbon bow of baby blue, and her fair hair, in which there was very

little gray, was worn low on her neck in a large, flat knot, from which

a few curls were escaping and adding to her youthful appearance. If I

had not known that she was over fifty, I might, in my darkened room,

easily have mistaken her for a young girl, and I told her so when after

kissing me and telling me who she was, she sank into the rocking-chair

and asked me if she looked at all as I thought she would.

With a merry laugh, which showed her white, even teeth, she said, “I

like that. I like to look young, if I am fifty, which I will confess to

you just because Kizzy will be sure to tell you; otherwise, torture

could not wring it from me. A woman is as old as she feels, and I feel

about twenty-five. Nor do I think it is necessary to blurt out my age

all the time, as Kizzy does. It’s no crime to be old, but public opinion

and women themselves have made it so. Let two of them get to saying

nasty things about a third, and they are sure to add several years to

her age, while even men call a girl right old before she is thirty, and

doesn’t that prove that although age may be honorable it is not

desirable, and should be fought against as long as possible? And I

intend to fight it, too, and thus far have succeeded pretty well, or

should, if it were not for Kizzy, who has the most aggravating way of

saying to me, ‘You ought not to do so at your time of life,’ and ‘at

your age,’ as if I were a hundred.”

I listened to her in amazement and admiration too. She was so pretty and

graceful and earnest that although I thought her rather silly, and

wished that in her fight against time she did not make up quite so much

as I knew she did, I was greatly drawn towards her, and for a while

forgot my headache as she told me of her ailments, which were legion,

and with which Aunt Kizzy had little sympathy. “Kizzy thinks all one has

to do is to exercise his will and make an effort, as Mrs. Chick insisted

poor Fanny should do in ‘Dombey and Son,’” she said, and then went on to

give me glimpses of their family life and bits of family history, all of

which were, of course, very interesting to me. Aunt Brier, I heard, had

been engaged, when young, to a very fine young man, but Aunt Kizzy broke

up the match because she wished Beriah to marry some one in the Hepburn

line, which was frightfully tangled up with the Morton line.

“It would take too long to explain the tangle,” she said, “and so I

shall not try. It estranged your father from us, and his father before

him, because each took the woman of his choice in spite of the line.”

Then she told me of her own dead love, to whose memory she had been

faithful thirty years, and who so often visited her in her dreams that

he was as much a reality now as the day he died.

“And that is why I try to keep young, for where he has gone they know no

lapse of time, and if he can see me, as I believe he can, I do not want

to look old to him,” she said, with a pathetic sob, while her white

hands worked nervously.

Then she told me that I was in the Glory Hole, which my father had so

named, and told me, too, that she and Beriah had fought for the larger

room, but had given in to Kizzy, as they always did.

“I believe she has an invisible cat-o’-nine-tails which makes us all

afraid of her,” she added; “but, really, when you get down to the kernel

it is good as gold, and you can get there if you try. Don’t seem afraid

of her, or fond of her, either. She hates gush, and she hates cowardice

and deceit; but she adores manner and etiquette as she knew it forty

years ago, and dislikes everything modern and new.”

She did not tell me all this at one sitting, for she came to see me

twice during the two days I kept my bed, and at each visit told me so

much that I felt pretty well informed with regard to the family history,

and began to lose my dread of Aunt Keziah and to feel less nervous when

I heard her quick step and sharp voice in the hall. I knew she meant to

be kind, and knew, too, that she was watching me curiously and trying to

make up her mind as to what manner of creature I was, and whether I was

feigning sickness or not. As she had never had a hard headache in her

life, she did not know how to sympathize with one who had, and at the

close of the second day she made me understand that mine had lasted long

enough and that all I required now was an effort and fresh air, and that

she should expect me down to breakfast the next morning. And as I was

better, I made the effort, and at precisely half-past seven followed my

three aunts down the stairs in a methodical, military kind of way, which

reminded me of the school in Meadowbrook, where we used to march to the

sound of a drum and a leader’s call of “Left, right; left, right,” Aunt

Kizzy in this case being the leader and putting her foot down with an

energy which marked all her movements.

The table was laid with great care, and Aunt Keziah said grace with her

eyes open and upon black Tom, who was slyly purloining a lump of sugar

from the bowl on the sideboard, and who nearly choked himself in his

efforts to swallow it in time for his Amen, which was very audible and

made me laugh in spite of my fear of Aunt Kizzy. When breakfast was over

I was invited into her room, where I underwent a rigid cross-examination

as to what I had learned at school, as well as done and left undone. I

was also told what I could do and not do at Morton Park. There was a new

Steinway in the drawing-room, on which I could practice each day from

nine to ten and from three to four, but at no other time unless

specially invited. Nor was I to sing unless asked to do so, while

humming to myself was out of the question, as something very

reprehensible. I was never to cross my feet when I sat down, nor lean

back in my chair, nor put my hands upon the table, and above all things

she hoped I did not whistle, and had not acquired a taste for banjoes

and bicycles, as she heard some young ladies had.

With her sharp eyes upon me I was forced to confess that I could whistle

a little and play the banjo, and had only been kept from buying one by

lack of means, and also that when in Meadowbrook I had tried to ride a

wheel.

“A Morton on a wheel and playing a banjo!” she exclaimed, in horror.

“Surely, surely, you did not inherit this low taste from your father’s

family. It is not the Morton blood which whistles and rides on wheels.

It is your——”

Something in my face must have checked her, for she stopped suddenly and

stared at me, while I said, “Aunt Kizzy, I know you mean my mother, and

I want to tell you now that in every respect she was my father’s equal,

and was the sweetest, loveliest woman I ever saw, and my father was so

fond of her. I know you were angry because he married her, and you were

very unjust to her, but she never said a word against you, and now she

is dead I will hear nothing against her. She was my mother, and I am

more like her than like the Mortons, and I am glad of it.”

This was not very respectful language, I knew, and I half expected her

to box my ears, but she did nothing of the kind, and it seemed to me as

if her expression softened towards me as she went on asking questions

about other and different matters, and finally dismissed me with the

advice that I should lie down awhile, as I looked pale and tired. That

was four weeks ago, and since that time I have learned to know her

better, and have found many good points which I admire. She has never

mentioned my mother to me since that day, but has asked me many

questions about my father and our home in Meadowbrook. In most things,

too, I have my own way and am very happy, for Aunt Keziah has withdrawn

some of her restrictions. I practice now when I like, and sing when I

please, and even hum a little to myself, and once, when she was gone, I

whistled “Annie Rooney” to my own accompaniment, with Aunts Dizzy and

Brier for audience. I have seen a good many of the Versailles people,

and have had compliments enough on my beauty to turn any girl’s head. I

have learned every nook and corner of the house and park, and become

quite attached to my Glory Hole, which I really prefer to the great room

adjoining it, with its high-post bedstead and canopy, and its stiff

mahogany furniture, which Aunt Kizzy says is nearly a hundred years old.

It looks a thousand, as does the furniture in the next room beyond,

which puzzles me a little, it smells so like a man, and a young man,

too. By this I mean that there is in it a decided odor of tobacco and

cigars, and the leather-covered easy-chair looks to me as if some man

had often lounged in it, while I know there are a smoking-jacket and a

pair of men’s slippers there.

Funny that such things should be in this house of the Vestal Virgins, as

I call them, and bye-and-bye I shall get to be one, I suppose, and tend

the sacred fires, and go on errands of mercy, unless, indeed, I fall in

love and am buried alive, as were the erring Vestals of old, which God

forbid.

I wish that room did not bother me as it does. I think it is kept locked

most of the time, but two days ago I saw Rache cleaning it, and walked

in, as a matter of course, and smelled the cigars, and saw the jacket

and the slippers in the closet, and asked Rache whose room it was. She

stammers a little, and I could not quite make out what she said; and

just as I was going to repeat my question Aunt Kizzy appeared and with a

gesture of her hand waived me from the room, which remains to me as much

a mystery as ever. I could, of course, ask one or all of my aunts about

it, but by some intuition I seem to know that they do not care to talk

about it. Indeed, I have felt ever since I have been here that there is

something they are keeping from me, and I believe it is connected with

this room, which may have been my father’s, or grandfather’s, or

great-grandfather’s, although the smell is very much like the cigars of

the Harvard boys, and that smoking-jacket had a modern look. But,

whatever the mystery is, I mean in time to find it out.

CHAPTER VII.—KEZIAH’S STORY.

A SOLILOQUY.

Doris is here, and has been for four weeks, and in spite of myself I am

drawn to her more and more every day. I did not want her to come, and I

meant to be cold and distant to her, but when she looked at me with

something in her blue eyes like Gerold, I began to soften, while the

sight of Gerold’s trunk unnerved me wholly. I gave it to him when he

first went away to college, and I remember so well how pleased he was,

and how he put his arms around me and kissed me, as he thanked me for

it, and said, “Auntie, the trunk is so big that I shall not bring it

home at my vacations, but leave it in New Haven. So when you see it

again it will be full of honors, and I shall be an A. B., of whom you

will be so proud.”

God forgive me if I have done wrong; that was twenty-five years ago, and

Gerold is dead, and his trunk was brought back to me by his daughter,

whose face is not his face, although very, very beautiful. I acknowledge

that to myself, and rebel against it a little, as I mentally contrast it

with Dorothea’s and wonder what Grant will think of it. I have surely

done well to keep him from all knowledge of her until he was engaged to

Dorothea, and even now I tremble a little for the result when he is

thrown in contact with her every day, for aside from her wonderful

beauty there is a grace and charm about her that Dorothea lacks, and had

I seen her before she came here I should have kept her at the North

until after Grant’s marriage, which I mean shall take place as early as

Christmas.

He is coming home sooner than I expected; indeed he sails in two or

three days, and I must tell her at once that she has a cousin, and in

some way put her on her honor not to try to attract him. It is a

difficult thing to do, for the girl has a spirit of her own, and there

is sometimes a flash in her eyes which I do not like to meet. I saw it

first when I said something derogatory of her mother. How her eyes

blazed, and how grand she was in her defense, and how I respected her

for it!

Ah me, that Hepburn lease! What mischief it has wrought, and how the

ghosts of the past haunt me at times, when I remember the stand I have

taken to save our house from ruin! Beriah says I am a monomaniac on the

subject, and also that she doubts the validity of the lease. But that

does not matter. My father bade me respect Amos Hepburn’s wishes, and I

shall, to the letter, if Grant does not marry Dorothea.

I must stop now and superintend the opening of a box which by some

mistake Grant left at Cambridge and did not think necessary to have

forwarded to us until recently, when he gave orders to have it sent us

by express, It has in it a little of everything, he wrote, and among the

rest a picture which he thinks will interest and puzzle us as it has

him. I hear Tom hammering at the box, and must go and see to it.

CHAPTER VIII.—DORIS’S STORY.

MY COUSIN GRANTLEY.

I have solved the mystery of that room with the smell of cigars and the

smoking-jacket. It does belong to a man, and that man is Grantley

Montague, and Grantley Montague is my second cousin. Aunt Kizzy told me

all about him this morning, and I am still so dazed and bewildered and

glad and indignant that I can scarcely write connectedly about it. Why

was the knowledge that Grant was my cousin kept from me so long, and

from him, too, as he is still as ignorant as I was a few hours ago? Aunt

Kizzy’s explanation was very lame. She said if he had known that he had

a cousin at Wellesley when he was in Harvard, nothing could have kept

him from seeing me so often that we should both have been interrupted in

our studies,—that she did not approve of students visiting the girls

while they were in school,—and that she hardly knew why she did not tell

me as soon as I came here. This was not very satisfactory, and I believe

there is something behind; but when I appealed to Aunts Dizzy and

Beriah, and said I was hurt and angry, Aunt Brier did not answer at all,

but Aunt Dizzy said, “I don’t blame you, and I’d have told you long ago

if I had not been so afraid of Kizzy;” and that is all I could get from

her.

But I know now that Grant is my cousin; and this is how it happened.

This morning, as I was crossing the back piazza, I saw Tom opening a box

which had come by express and which Aunt Kizzy was superintending.

Taking a seat on the side piazza, I thought no more about it until I

heard Aunt Kizzy say, very hurriedly and excitedly, “Go, boy, and call

Miss Desire and Miss Beriah,—quick,” and a moment after I heard them

both exclaim, and caught the sound of my father’s name, Gerold. Then I

arose, and, going around the corner, saw them bending over a picture

which I recognized at once, and in a moment I was kneeling by it and

kissing it as I would have kissed my father’s hand had it suddenly been

reached to me.

“Oh, the picture!” I cried. “It is my father’s; he painted it. I saw him

do it. He said it was a picture of his aunties, and this is himself.

Dear father!” And I touched the face of the young man who was standing

behind the woman with the baby in her lap.

Aunt Kizzy was very white, and her voice shook as she asked me to

explain, which I did rapidly and clearly, telling all I knew of the

picture, which had been sold to some gentleman from Boston for fifty

dollars.

“And,” I added, “that fifty dollars went to pay his funeral expenses,

poor dear father. He was ill so long, and we were so poor.”

I was crying, and in fact we were all crying together, Aunt Kizzy the

hardest of all, so that the hemstitched handkerchief she always carried

so gingerly was quite moist and limp. I was the first to recover myself,

and asked:

“How did it get here? Whose box is this?”

“Our nephew’s, Grantley Montague, who was graduated at Harvard last year

and is now in Europe. He left this box in Cambridge by mistake, and it

was not sent to us until yesterday. We are expecting him home in a short

time. He must have bought the picture for its resemblance to us,

although he could not have known that it was painted for us.”

It was Aunt Kizzy who told me this very rapidly, as if anxious to get it

off her mind, and I noticed that she did not look at me as she spoke,

and that she seemed embarrassed and anxious to avoid my gaze.

“Grantley Montague,—your nephew! Then he is my cousin!” I exclaimed,

while every particular connected with the young man came back to me, and

none more distinctly than the telegram, No, sent in response to my

request that I might attend his tea-party.

I know that my eyes were flashing as they confronted Aunt Kizzy, who

stammered out:

“Your second cousin,—yes. Did you happen to see him while at Wellesley?”

She was trying to be very cool, but I was terribly excited, and, losing

all fear of her, replied:

“No; you took good care that I should meet no Harvard boys; but I saw

Grantley Montague once on the train, and I heard so much about him, but

I never dreamed he was my cousin. If I had, nothing would have kept me

from him. Did he know I was there?”

“He knows nothing of you whatever,” Aunt Kizzy said. “I did not think it

best he should as it might have interfered with the studies of you both.

He is coming soon, and you will of course make his acquaintance.”

I was sitting upon the box and crying bitterly, not only for the

humiliation and injustice done to me, but from a sense of all I had lost

by not knowing that Grantley was my cousin.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said, when she asked why I cried. “It would

have made me so happy, and I have been so lonely at times, with no one

of my own blood to care for me, and I should have been so proud of him;

and when he invited me to his party, why didn’t you let me go? I did

everything to please you. You did nothing to please me!”

I must have been hysterical, for my voice sounded very loud and

unnatural as I reproached her, while she tried to soothe me and explain.

But I would not be soothed, and kept on crying until I could cry no

longer, and still, in the midst of my pain, I was conscious of a great

joy welling up in my heart, as I reflected that Grantley was my cousin,

and that I should soon see him in spite of Aunt Kizzy, who, I think, was

really sorry for me and did not resent what I said to her. She had me in

her room for an hour after lunch, and tried to smooth the matter over.

“You are very pretty,” she said, “and Grant is very susceptible to a

pretty face, and if he had seen yours he might have paid you attentions

which would have turned your head, and perhaps have done you harm as

they would have meant nothing. They couldn’t mean anything; they must

mean nothing.”

She was getting more and more excited, and began to walk the floor as

she went on:

“I may as well tell you that I dread his coming. He is very

magnetic,—with something about him which attracts every one. Your father

had it, and your grandfather before him, and Grant has it, and you will

be influenced by it, but it must not be. Oh, why did I let you come

here, with your fatal beauty, which is sure to work us evil? or, having

come, why are you not in the Hepburn line?”

I thought she had gone crazy, and stared at her wonderingly as she

continued:

“I can’t explain now what I mean, except that Grant _must_ marry money,

and you have none. You have only your beauty, which is sure to impress

him, but it must not be. Promise me, Doris, to be discreet, and not try

to attract him,—not try to win his love.”

“Aunt Keziah! What do you take me for!” I exclaimed, indignantly, and

she replied:

“Forgive me; I hardly know what I am saying; only it must not be. You

must not mar my scheme, though if you were in the line, I’d accept you

so gladly as Grantley’s wife.” And then, to my utter amazement, she

stooped and kissed me, for the first time since I had known her.

A great deal more she said to me, and when the interview was over, there

was on my mind a confused impression that I was not to interfere with

her plan of marrying Grantley to a rich wife,—Dorothea Haynes, probably,

although no mention was made of her,—and also that I was to treat him

very coldly and not in any way try to attract him. The idea was so

ludicrous that after a little it rather amused than displeased me, but

did not in the least lessen my desire to see the young man who had been

the lion at Harvard, and whom I had seen in the car whistling an

accompaniment to Dorothea’s banjo.

I have told Aunts Desire and Beriah of that incident, and of nearly all

I had heard with regard to Grantley and Dorothea, but the only comment

they made was that they had known Miss Haynes since she was a child,

that she had visited at Morton Park, and would probably come there again

in the autumn. Once I thought to ask if she were engaged to Grantley,

but the wall of reserve which they manage to throw about them when the

occasion requires it, kept me silent, and I can only speculate upon it

and anticipate the time when I shall stand face to face with Grantley

Montague.

CHAPTER IX.—THE AUTHOR’S STORY.

GRANTLEY AND DORIS.

It was one of those lovely summer days, neither too hot nor too cold,

which sometimes occur in Kentucky even in August. The grounds at Morton

Park were looking their best, for there had been a heavy shower the

previous night, and since sunrise three negroes had been busy mowing and

rolling and pruning and weeding until there was scarcely a twig or dead

leaf to be seen upon the velvet lawn, while the air was sweet with the

odor of the flowers in the beds and on the broad borders. Mas’r Grantley

was expected home on the morrow, and that was incentive enough for the

blacks to do their best, for the negroes worshiped their young master,

who, while maintaining a proper dignity of manner, was always kind and

considerate and even familiar with them to a certain extent. Within

doors everything was also ready for the young man. Keziah had indulged

in a new cap, Dizzy in a pretty tea-gown, while Beriah had spent her

surplus money for a new fur rug for Grant’s room, which had been made

very bright and attractive with the decorations which had come with the

picture in the box from Cambridge. As for Doris, she had nothing new,

nor did she need anything, and she made a very pretty picture in her

simple muslin dress and big garden-hat, when about four o’clock she took

a book and sauntered down to a summer-house in the rear of the grounds,

near the little gate which opened upon the turnpike and was seldom used

except when some one of the family wished to go out that way to call

upon a neighbor or meet the stage.

Taking a seat in the arbor, Doris was soon so absorbed in her book as

not to hear the stage from Frankfort when it stopped at the gate, or to

see the tall young man with satchel in one hand and light walking-cane

in the other who came up the walk at a rapid rate and quickened his

steps when he caught a glimpse of a light dress among the green of the

summer-house. Grantley, who had been spending a little time with

Dorothea at Wilmot Terrace, which was a mile or more out of Cincinnati,

had not intended to come home until the next day, but there had suddenly

come over him an intense longing to see his aunts and the old place,

which he could not resist, while, to say the truth, he was getting a

little tired of constant companionship with Dorothea and wished to get

away from her and rest. It was all very well, he said to himself, to be

kissed and caressed and made much of by a nice girl for a while, but

there was such a thing as too much of it, and a fellow would rather do

some of the love-making himself. Dorothea was all right, of course, and

he liked her better than any girl he had ever seen, although she was not

his ideal, which he should never find. He had given that up, and the

Lost Star did not now flit across his memory as often as formerly,

although he had not forgotten her, and still saw at times the face which

had shone upon him for a brief moment and then been lost, as he

believed, forever. He was not, however, thinking of it now, when,

wishing to surprise his aunts, he dismounted from the stage at the gate

and came hurrying up the walk,—the short cut to the house. Catching

sight of Doris’s dress, and thinking it was his aunt Desire, he called

out in his loud, cheery voice, “Hello, Aunt Dizzy! You look just like a

young girl in that blue gown and big hat with poppies on it. Are you

glad to see me?”

In an instant Doris was on her feet and confronting him with the bright

color staining her cheeks and a kindling light in her blue eyes as she

went forward to meet him. She knew who it was, and, with a bright smile

which made his heart beat rapidly, she offered him her hand and said, “I

am not your aunt Dizzy, but if you are Grantley Montague I am your

cousin, Doris Morton,—Gerald Morton’s daughter,—and I am very glad to

see you.”

For the first time in his life Grantley’s speech forsook him. Here was

his Lost Star, declaring herself to be his cousin! What did it mean?

Dropping his satchel and taking off his soft hat, with which he fanned

himself furiously, he exclaimed, “Great Scott! My cousin Doris! Gerold

Morton’s daughter! I don’t understand you. I never knew he had a

daughter, or much about him any way. Where have you kept yourself, that

I have never seen or heard of you, and why haven’t my aunts told me of

you?”

He had her hand in his, as he led her back to the summer-house, while

she said to him. “A part of the time I have been at Wellesley. I was

there when you were at Harvard, and used to hear a great deal of you,

although I never dreamed you were my cousin till I came here.”

This took his breath away, and, sitting down beside her, he plied her

with questions until he knew all that she knew of her past and why they

had been kept apart so long.

“By Jove, I don’t like it,” he said. “Why, if I had known you were at

Wellesley I should have spent half my time on the road between there and

Harvard——”

“And the other half between Harvard and Madame De Moisiere’s?” Doris

said, archly, as she moved a little from him, for he had a hand on her

shoulder now.

“What do you mean?” he asked, quickly, while something of the light

faded from his eyes, and the eagerness from his voice.

“I heard a great deal about you from different sources, and about Miss

Haynes, too; and I once saw you with her in the train whistling an

accompaniment to her banjo,” Doris replied.

“The dickens you did!” Grant said, dropping Doris’s hand, which he had

held so closely.

It is a strange thing to say of an engaged young man that the mention of

his betrothed was like a breath of cold wind chilling him suddenly, but

it was so in Grant’s case. With the Lost Star sitting by him, he had for

a moment forgotten Dorothea, whose farewell kiss was only a few hours

old.

“The dickens you did! Well, I suppose you thought me an idiot; but what

did you think of Dorothea?” he asked, and Doris replied:

“I thought her very nice, and wished I might know her, for I felt sure I

should like her. And she is coming to Morton Park in the autumn. Aunt

Brier told me.

“Yes, I believe she is to visit us then,” Grant said, without a great

deal of enthusiasm, and then, changing the conversation, he began to ask

about his aunts, and what Doris thought of them, and if she were happy

with them, and when she first heard he was her cousin, and how.

She told him of the box and the picture which had led to the disclosure,

and which she had recognized at once.

“And your father was the artist!” he exclaimed. “By Jove, that’s funny!

How things come round! I found it in a dealer’s shop and bought it

because it looked so much like my aunts, although I did not really

suppose they were the originals, as I never remembered them as they are

on the canvas. And that moon-faced baby was meant for me, was it? What

did you think of him?”

“I didn’t think him very interesting,” Doris replied; and then they both

laughed, and said the pleasant nothings which two young people who are

pleased with each other are apt to say, and on the strength of their

cousinship became so confidential and familiar that at the end of half

an hour Doris felt that she had known Grant all her life, while he could

scarcely have told how he did feel.

Doris’s beauty, freshness, and vivacity, so different from what he had

been accustomed to in the class of girls he had known, charmed and

intoxicated him, while the fact that she was his cousin and the Lost

Star bewildered and confused him; and added to this was a feeling of

indignation that he had so long been kept in ignorance of her existence.

“I don’t like it in Aunt Kizzy, and I mean to tell her so,” he said, at

last, as he rose to his feet, and, picking up his satchel, went striding

up the walk towards the house, with Doris at his side.

It was now nearly six o’clock, and Aunt Kizzy was adjusting her cap and

giving sundry other touches to her toilet preparatory to dinner, when,

glancing from her window, she saw the young couple as they emerged from

a side path, Doris with her sun-hat in her hand and her hair blowing

about her glowing face, which was lifted towards Grant, who was looking

down at her and talking rapidly. Miss Kizzy knew Doris was pretty, but

never had the girl’s beauty struck her as it did now, when she saw her

with Grant and felt an indefinable foreboding that the Hepburn line was

in danger.

“Doris is a flirt, and Grant is no better, and I’ll send for Dorothea at

once. There is no need to wait until autumn,” she said to herself, as

she went down stairs and out upon the piazza, where Beriah and Desire

were already, for both had seen him from the parlor and had hurried out

to meet him.

“Hello, hello, hello,” he said to each of the three aunts, as he kissed

them affectionately. “I know you didn’t expect me,” he continued, as,

with the trio clinging to him and making much of him, he went into the

house,—“I know you didn’t expect me so soon, but the fact is I was

homesick and wished to see you all and so I came. I hope you are glad.

And, I say, why in the name of all that is good didn’t you ever tell me

I had a cousin,—and at Wellesley, too? And why did you never tell me

more of Cousin Gerold, who, it seems, painted that picture of you all?

It’s awfully queer. Hello, Tom, how d’ye?” he added, as a woolly head

appeared in the doorway and a grinning negro answered:

“Jes’ tol’able, thanky, Mas’r Grant. How d’ye youself?”

Keziah was evidently very glad of this diversion, which turned the

conversation away from Doris, who had remained outside, with a feeling

that for the present the aunts must have Grant to themselves. How

handsome and bright and magnetic he was, and how gay he made the dinner

with his jokes and merry laugh! Once, however, it seemed to Doris that a

shadow flitted across his face, and that was when Miss Keziah asked

after Dorothea.

“Oh, she’s right well,” he answered, indifferently, and when his aunt

continued:

“Didn’t she hate to have you leave so abruptly?” he replied, laughingly:

“She paid me the compliment of saying so, but I reckon Aleck Grady will

console her for awhile.”

“Who is Aleck Grady?” Miss Morton asked, and Grant replied:

“Have I never written you about Aleck Grady? A good fellow enough, but

an awful bore, and a second cousin of Thea’s, who joined us in Egypt and

has been with us ever since.”

Beriah had heard of him, but Miss Morton could not recall him, and

continued to ask questions about him as if she scented danger from him

as well as from Doris. Was he in the Hepburn line and really Thea’s

cousin, and did she like him?

At the mention of the Hepburn line Grant’s face clouded, and he answered

rather stiffly:

“He _is_ in the Hepburn line, one degree removed from Thea, and he is

hunting for a missing link, which, if found, will knock Thea into a

cocked hat.”

Miss Morton knew about the missing link herself; indeed, she had once

tried to trace it, but had given it up with the conviction that it was

extinct, and if she thought so, why, then, it was so, and Aleck Grady

would never find it. But he might be dangerous elsewhere, and she

repeated her question as to whether Thea liked him or not.

“I dare say,—as her cousin,” Grant replied, adding, with a view to tease

his aunt, “and she may get up a warmer feeling, for there is no guessing

what will happen when a young man is teaching a girl to ride a bicycle,

as he is teaching Thea.”

“Ride a bicycle! Thea on a bicycle! Thea astride of a wheel!” Miss

Morton exclaimed, horrified and aghast at the idea.

Was the world all topsy-turvy, or had she lived so long out of it that

she had lost her balance and fallen off? She did not know, and she

looked very white and worried, while Grant laughed at her distress and

told her how picturesque Thea looked in her blue gown and red shoes and

jockey cap, adding:

“And she rides well, too, which is more than can be said of all the

girls. But it is of no use to kick at the bicycles; they have come to

stay, and I mean to get Doris one as soon as I can. She must not be left

out in the cold when Thea and I go racing down the turnpike. She will be

splendid on a wheel.”

“God forbid!” came with a gasp from the highly scandalized lady, while

Doris’s eyes shone with a wonderful brilliancy as they looked their

thanks at Grant.

With a view to change the conversation, Beriah began to question Grant

of his trip to Egypt, without a suspicion of the deep waters into which

she was sailing. After describing some of the excursions on the donkeys,

Grant suddenly exclaimed:

“By the way, Aunt Brier, I met an old acquaintance of yours in Cairo,

Tom Atkins, who said he used to visit Morton Park. Do you remember him?”

Beriah was white to the roots of her hair, and her hand shook so that

her coffee was spilled upon the damask cloth as she answered, faintly:

“Tom Atkins? yes, I remember him.”

It was Keziah who came to the rescue now by giving the signal to leave

the table, and so put an end for the time being to the conversation

concerning Tom Atkins; but that evening, after most of the family had

retired, as Grant sat smoking in the moonlight at the end of the piazza,

a slender figure clad in a gray wrapper with a white scarf on her head

stole up to him and said, very softly and sadly:

“Now, Grant, tell me about Tom.”

Grant told her all he knew, and that night Beriah wrote in her diary as

follows:

“Tom is alive, and wears a fez and a white flannel suit, and has a

little, dark-eyed, tawny-haired girl whom he calls Zaidee. Of course

there is or has been an Oriental wife, and Tom is as much lost to me as

if he were sleeping in his grave. I am glad he is alive, and think I am

glad because of the little girl Zaidee. It is a pretty name, and if she

were motherless I know I could love her dearly for Tom’s sake, but such

happiness is not for me. Ah, well, God knows best.”

CHAPTER X.—DORIS’S STORY.

THEA AT MORTON PARK.

Thea is here, and has brought her wheel and her banjo and her pet dog,

besides three trunks of clothes. The dog, whom she calls Cheek, has

conceived an unaccountable dislike to Aunt Kizzy, at whom he barks so

furiously whenever she is in sight that Thea keeps him tied in her room

except when she takes him into the grounds for exercise. Even then he is

on the lookout for the enemy, and once made a fierce charge at her

shawl, which she had left in the summer-house and which was not rescued

from him until one or two rents had been made in it. Thea laughs, and

calls him a bad boy, and puts her arms around Aunt Kizzy’s neck and

kisses her and tells her she will send Cheek home as soon as she gets a

chance, and then she sings “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,” which she says is all

the rage, and she dances the skirt dance with Grant, to whom she is

teaching a new step, which shows her pretty feet and ankles and consists

mostly of “one-two-three-kick.” And they do kick, or Grant does, so high

that Aunt Kizzy asks in alarm if that is quite proper, and then Thea

kisses her again and calls her “an unsophisticated old darling who

doesn’t know the ways of the world and must be taught.” Her banjo lies

round anywhere and everywhere, just as do her hat and her gloves and

parasol, and Aunt Kizzy, who is so particular with me, never says a

word, but herself picks up after the disorderly girl, who, with Grant,

has turned the house upside down and filled it with laughter and frolic.

Her wheel stays at night in a little room at the end of the piazza, with

Grant’s, for he has one, and with Thea he goes scurrying through the

town, sometimes in the street and sometimes on the sidewalk, to the

terror of the pedestrians. Thea has already knocked down two negroes and

run into the stall of an old apple-woman, who would have brought a suit

if Aunt Kizzy had not paid the damages claimed.

What do I think of Thea? I love her, and have loved her from the moment

she came up to me so cordially and called me Cousin Doris, and told me

Grant had written her all about me, and that because I was at Morton

Park she had come earlier than she had intended doing, and had left her

old Gardy and Aleck Grady disconsolate. “But,” she added, quickly:

“Aleck is coming soon, and then it will be jolly with four of us, Grant

and you, Aleck and me, and if we can’t paint the town red my name is not

Thea.”

I don’t suppose she is really pretty, except her eyes, which are lovely,

but her voice is so sweet and her manners so soft and kittenish and

pleasing that you never stop to think if she is handsome, but take her

as she is and find her charming. She occupies the guest-room of course,

and I share it with her, for she insisted at once that my cot be moved

in there, so we could “talk nights as late as we pleased.” Aunt Kizzy,

who does not believe in talking late, and always knocks on the wall if

she hears me move in the Glory Hole after half-past nine, objected at

first, saying it was more proper for young girls to room alone, but Thea

told her that propriety had gone out of fashion with a lot of other

stuff, and insisted, until the Glory Hole was abandoned and used only

for toilet-purposes.

“Just what it was intended for,” Thea said, “and the idea of penning you

up there is ridiculous. I know Aunt Kizzy, as I always call her, and

know exactly how to manage her.”

And she does manage her beautifully, while I look on amazed. The first

night after her arrival she invited me into her room, where I found her

habited in a crimson dressing-gown, with her hair, which had grown very

long, rippling down her back, and a silver-mounted brush in one hand and

a hand-glass in the other. There was a light-wood fire on the hearth,

for it was raining heavily, and the house was damp and chilly. Drawing a

settee rocker before the fire, she made me sit down close by her, and,

putting her arm around me and laying my head on her shoulder, she said,

“Now, Chickie,—or rather Softie, which suits you better, as you seem

just like the kind of girls who are softies,—now let’s talk.”

“But,” I objected, “Aunt Kizzy’s room is just below, and it’s nearly ten

o’clock, and she will hear us and rap.”

“Let her rap! I am not afraid of Aunt Kizzy. She never raps me; and if

you are so awfully particular, we’ll whisper, while I tell you all my

secrets, and you tell me yours,—about the boys, I mean. Girls don’t

count. Tell me of the fellows, and the scrapes you got into at school.”