CHAPTER LVII

I COME TO MY OWN AGAIN

'Twas a rough, wild journey we made to Portsmouth, my dears, and I think

it must have killed me had not my lady been at my side. We were no

sooner started than she pulled the curtains and opened her portmanteau,

which I saw was near filled with things for my aid and comfort. And I

was made to take a spoonful of something. Never, I believe, was medicine

swallowed with a greater willingness. Talk was impossible, so I lay back

in the corner and looked at her; and now and anon she would glance at my

face, with a troubled guess in her own as to how I might stand the night.

For we were still in London. That I knew by the trot of our horses, and

by the granite we traversed from time to time. But at length we rumbled

over a bridge, there was a sharp call back from our post-boy to him of

the chaise behind, and then began that rocking and pitching and swaying

and creaking, which was to last the whole night long, save for the brief

stops at the post-houses.

After an hour of it, I was holding my breath against the lurches, like a

sea-sick man against that bottomless fall of the ship's bows on the

ocean. I had no pain,--only an over whelming exhaustion,--but the joy

of her touch and her presence kept me from failing. And though Aunt Lucy

dozed, not a wink of sleep did my lady get through all of those weary

twelve hours. Always alert was she, solicitous beyond belief, scanning

ever the dial of her watch to know when to give me brandy and physic; or

reaching across to feel my temples for the fever. The womanliness of

that last motion was a thing for a man to wonder at. But most marvellous

of all was the instinct which told her of my chief sickening discomfort,

--of the leathery, travelled smell of the carriage. As a relief for this

she charged her pocket-napkin with a most delicate perfume, and held it

to my face.

When we drew up to shift horses, Jack would come to the door to inquire

if there was aught she wanted, and to know how I was bearing up. And

often Mrs. Manners likewise. At first I was for talking with them, but

this Dorothy would not allow. Presently, indeed, it was beyond my power,

and I could only smile feebly at my Lord when I heard Dolly asking him

that the hostlers might be more quiet. Toward morning a lethargy fell

upon me. Once I awoke when the lamp had burned low, to perceive the

curtains drawn back, a black blotch of trees without, and the moonlight

streaming in on my lady's features. With the crack of a whip I was off

again.

When next consciousness came, the tarry, salt smell of a ship was in my

nostrils, and I knew that we were embarked. I lay in a clean bunk in a

fair-sized and sun-washed cabin, and I heard the scraping of ropes and

the tramp of feet on the deck above my head. Framed against the

irregular glass of the cabin window, which was greened by the water

beyond, Dorothy and my Lord stood talking in whispers.

"Jack!" I said.

At the sound they turned and ran toward me, asking how I felt.

"I feel that words are very empty, Jack, to express such a gratitude as

mine," I answered. "Twice you have saved me from death, you have paid

my debts, and have been stanch to us both in our troubles. And--" The

effort was beyond me, and I glanced appealingly at Dolly.

"And it is to you, dear Jack," she finished, "it is to you alone that we

owe the great joy of our lives."

Her eyes were shining through her tears, and her smile was like the sun

out of a rain-swept sky. His Lordship took one of her hands in his own,

and one of mine. He scanned our faces in a long, lingering look.

"You will cherish her, Richard," he said brokenly, "for her like is not

to be found in this world. I knew her worth when first she came to

London, as arrant a baggage as ever led man a dance. I saw then that a

great love alone was needed to make her the highest among women, and from

the night I fought with you at the Coffee House I have felt upon whom

that love would fall. O thou of little faith," he cried, "what little I

may have done has been for her. No, Richard, you do not deserve her, but

I would rather think of her as your wife than that of any man living."

I shall not dwell upon that painful farewell which wrung our hearts, and

made us silent for a long, long while after the ship was tossing in the

short seas of the Channel.

Nor is it my purpose to tell you of that long voyage across the Atlantic.

We reached Lisbon in safety, and after a week of lodgings in that city by

the best of fortune got passage in a swift bark bound for Baltimore. For

the Chesapeake commerce continued throughout the war, and kept alive the

credit of the young nation. There were many excitements ere we sighted

the sand-spits of Virginia, and off the Azores we were chased for a day

and a night by a British sloop of war. Our captain, however, was a cool

man and a seaman, and slipped through the cruisers lying in wait off the

Capes very triumphantly.

But the remembrance of those fair days at sea fills my soul with longing.

The weather was mild and bright for the season, and morning upon morning

two stout topmen would carry me out to a sheltered spot on the deck,

always chosen by my lady herself. There I sat by the hour, swathed in

many layers of wool, and tended by her hands alone. Every nook and

cranny of our lives were revealed to the other. She loved to hear of

Patty and my years at Gordon's, and would listen with bated breath to the

stories of the Ranger and the Bonhomme Richard, and of that strange man

whom we both loved, whose genius had made those cruises famous.

Sometimes, in low voices, we talked of our future; but often, when the

wind blew and the deck rocked and the sun flashed upon the waters, a

silence would fall between us that needed no word to interpret.

Mrs. Manners yielded to my wish for us all to go to Carvel Hall. It was

on a sparkling morning in February that we sighted the familiar toe of

Kent Island, and the good-natured skipper put about and made for the

mouth of our river. Then, as of old, the white cupola of Carvel House

gleamed a signal of greeting, to which our full hearts beat a silent

response. Once again the great windmill waved its welcome, and the same

memory was upon us both as we gazed. Of a hale old gentleman in the

sheets of a sailing pinnace, of a boy and a girl on his knees quivering

with excitement of the days to come. Dorothy gently pressed my hand as

the bark came into the wind, and the boat was dropped into the green

water. Slowly they lowered me into it, for I was still helpless, Dorothy

and her mother and Aunt Lucy were got down, and finally Mr. Marmaduke

stepped gingerly from the sea-ladder over the gunwale. The cutter leaped

under the strong strokes up the river with the tide. Then, as we rounded

the bend, we were suddenly astonished to see people gathered on the

landing at the foot of the lawn, where they had run, no doubt, in a

flurry at sight of the ship below. In the front of the group stood

out a strangely familiar figure.

"Why," exclaimed Dolly, "it is Ivie Rawlinson!"

Ivie it was, sure enough. And presently, when we drew a little closer,

he gave one big shout and whipped off the hat from his head; and off,

too, came the caps from the white heads of Scipio and Chess and Johnson

behind him. Our oars were tossed, Ivie caught our bows, and reached his

hand to Dorothy. It was fitting that she should be the first to land at

Carvel Hall.

"'Twas yere bonny face I seed first, Miss Dolly," he cried, the tears

coursing down the scars of his cheeks. "An' syne I kennt weel the young

master was here. Noo God be praised for this blythe day, that Mr.

Richard's cam to his ain at last!"

But Scipio and Chess could only blubber as they helped him to lift me

out, Dolly begging them to be careful. As they carried me up the

familiar path to the pillared porch, the first I asked Ivie was of Patty,

and next why he had left Gordon's. She was safe and well, despite the

Tories, and herself had sent him to take charge of Carvel Hall as soon as

ever Judge Bordley had brought her the news of its restoration to me. He

had supplied her with another overseer. Thanks to the good judge and to

Colonel Lloyd, who had looked to my interests since Grafton was fled,

Ivie had found the old place in good order, all the negroes quiet, and

impatient with joy against my arrival.

It is time, my children, to bring this story to a close. I would I might

write of those delicious spring days I spent with Dorothy at Carvel Hall,

waited on by the old servants of my grandfather. At our whim my chair

would be moved from one to another of the childhood haunts; on cool days

we sat in the sun by the dial, where the flowers mingled their odours

with the salt breezes off the Chesapeake; or anon, when it was warmer, in

the summer-house my mother loved, or under the shade of the great trees

on the lawn, looking out over the river. And once my lady went off very

mysteriously, her eyes brimful of mischief, to come back with the first

strawberries of the year staining her apron.

We were married on the fifteenth of June, already an anniversary for us

both, in the long drawing-room. General Clapsaddle was there from the

army to take Dorothy in his arms, even as he had embraced another bride

on the same spot in years gone by. She wore the wedding gown that was

her mother's, but when the hour was come to dress her Aunt Lucy and Aunt

Hester failed in their task, and it was Patty who performed the most of

that office, and hung the necklace of pearls about her neck.

Dear Patty! She hath often been with us since. You have heard your

mothers and fathers speak of Aunt Patty, my dears, and they will tell

you how she spoiled them when they went a-visiting to Gordon's Pride.

Ere I had regained my health, the war for Independence was won. I pray

God that time may soften the bitterness it caused, and heal the breach in

that noble race whose motto is Freedom. That the Stars and Stripes and

the Union Jack may one day float together to cleanse this world of

tyranny!

AFTERWORD

The author makes most humble apologies to any who have, or think they

have, an ancestor in this book. He has drawn the foregoing with a very

free hand, and in the Maryland scenes has made use of names rather than

of actual personages. His purpose, however poorly accomplished, was to

give some semblance of reality to this part of the story. Hence he has

introduced those names in the setting, choosing them entirely at random

from the many prominent families of the colony.

No one may read the annals of these men, who were at once brave and

courtly, and of these women, who were ladies by nature as well as by

birth, and not love them. The fascination of that free and hospitable

life has been so strong on the writer of this novel that he closes it

with a genuine regret and the hope that its perusal may lead others to

the pleasure he has derived from the history of Maryland.

As few liberties as possible have been taken with the lives of Charles

James Fox and of John Paul Jones. The latter hero actually made a voyage

in the brigantine 'John' about the time he picked up Richard Carvel from

the Black Moll, after the episode with Mungo Maxwell at Tobago. The

Scotch scene, of course, is purely imaginary. Accuracy has been aimed at

in the account of the fight between the 'Bonhomme Richard' and the

'Serapis', while a little different arrangement might have been better

for the medium of the narrative. To be sure, it was Mr. Mease, the

purser, instead of Richard Carvel, who so bravely fought the quarter-deck

guns; and in reality Midshipman Mayrant, Commodore Jones's aide, was

wounded by a pike in the thigh after the surrender. No injustice is done

to the second and third lieutenants, who were absent from the ship during

the action.

The author must acknowledge that the only good anecdote in the book and

the only verse worth printing are stolen. The story on page concerning

Mr. Garrick and the Archbishop of York may be found in Fitzgerald's life

of the actor, much better told. The verse (in Chapter X) is by an

unknown author in the Annapolis Gazette, and is republished in Mr. Elihu

Riley's excellent "History of Annapolis."

PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

A bold front is half the battle

A man ought never to be frightened by appearances

Affections warm despite absence, and years, and interest

Ever been my nature to turn forward instead of back

Genius honored but never encouraged

God bless their backs, which is the only part I ever care to see

He was our macaroni of Annapolis

Human multitude with its infinity of despairs and joys

It is sorrow which lifts us nearest to heaven

No real prosperity comes out of double-dealing

Shaped his politics according to the company he was in

Sight of happiness is often a pleasure for those who are sad

Sir, I have not yet begun to fight

The worse the disease, the more remarkable the cure

Their lines belonged rather to the landscape (cottages)

Thy politics are not over politic

Tis no so bad it micht-na be waur

Within every man's province to make himself what he will

Ya maun ken th' incentive's the maist o' the battle

Youth is in truth a mystery

A MODERN CHRONICLE

By Winston Churchill

CONTENTS

BOOK I.

Volume 1.

I. WHAT'S IN HEREDITY?

II. PERDITA RECALLED

III. CONCERNING PROVIDENCE

IV. OF TEMPERAMENT

V. IN WHICH PROVIDENCE BEEPS FAITH

VI. HONORA HAS A GLIMPSE OF THE WORLD

Volume 2.

VII. THE OLYMPIAN ORDER

VIII. A CHAPTER OF CONQUESTS

IX. IN WHICH THE VICOMTE CONTINUES HIS STUDIES

X. IN WHICH HONORA WIDENS HER HORIZON

XI. WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

XII. WHICH CONTAINS A SURPRISE FOR MRS. HOLT

BOOK II

Volume 3.

I. SO LONG AS YE BOTH SHALL LIVE

II. "STAFFORD PARK"

III. THE GREAT UNATTACHED

IV. THE NEW DOCTRINE

V. QUICKSANDS

VI. GAD AND MENI

Volume 4.

VII. OF CERTAIN DELICATE MATTERS

VIII. OF MENTAL PROCESSES-FEMININE AND INSOLUBLE

IX. INTRODUCING A REVOLUTIONIZING VEHICLE

X. ON THE ART OF LION TAMING

XI. CONTAINING SOME REVELATIONS

BOOK III

Volume 5.

I. ASCENDI

II. THE PATH OF PHILANTHROPY

III. VINELAND

IV. THE VIKING

V. THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

Volume 6.

VI. CLIO, OR THALIA?

VII "LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS"

VIII. IN WHICH THE LAW BETRAYS A HEART

IX. WYLIE STREET

X. THE PRICE OF FREEDOM

Volume 7.

XI. IN WHICH IT IS ALL DONE OVER AGAIN

XII. THE ENTRANCE INTO EDEN

XIII. OF THE WORLD BEYOND THE GATES.

XIV. CONTAINING PHILOSOPHY FROM MR. GRAINGER

XV. THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY

Volume 8.

XVI. IN WHICH A MIRROR IS HELD UP

XVII. THE RENEWAL OF AN ANCIENT HOSPITALITY

XVIII. IN WHICH MR. ERWIN SEES PARIS

A MODERN CHRONICLE

CHAPTER I

WHAT'S IN HEREDITY

Honora Leffingwell is the original name of our heroine. She was born in

the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century, at Nice, in France, and she

spent the early years of her life in St. Louis, a somewhat conservative

old city on the banks of the Mississippi River. Her father was Randolph

Leffingwell, and he died in the early flower of his manhood, while

filling with a grace that many remember the post of United States Consul

at Nice. As a linguist he was a phenomenon, and his photograph in the

tortoise-shell frame proves indubitably, to anyone acquainted with the

fashions of 1870, that he was a master of that subtlest of all arts,

dress. He had gentle blood in his veins, which came from Virginia through

Kentucky in a coach and six, and he was the equal in appearance and

manners of any duke who lingered beside classic seas.

Honora has often pictured to herself a gay villa set high above the

curving shore, the amethyst depths shading into emerald, laced with

milk-white foam, the vivid colours of the town, the gay costumes; the

excursions, the dinner-parties presided over by the immaculate young

consul in three languages, and the guests chosen from the haute noblesse

of Europe. Such was the vision in her youthful mind, added to by degrees

as she grew into young-ladyhood and surreptitiously became familiar with

the writings of Ouida and the Duchess, and other literature of an

educating cosmopolitan nature.

Honora's biography should undoubtedly contain a sketch of Mrs. Randolph

Leffingwell. Beauty and dash and a knowledge of how to seat a table seem

to have been the lady's chief characteristics; the only daughter of a

carefully dressed and carefully, preserved widower, likewise a

linguist,--whose super-refined tastes and the limited straits to which

he, the remaining scion of an old Southern family, had been reduced by a

gentlemanly contempt for money, led him 'to choose Paris rather than New

York as a place of residence. One of the occasional and carefully planned

trips to the Riviera proved fatal to the beautiful but reckless Myrtle

Allison. She, who might have chosen counts or dukes from the Tagus to the

Danube, or even crossed the Channel; took the dashing but impecunious

American consul, with a faith in his future that was sublime. Without

going over too carefully the upward path which led to the post of their

country's representative at the court of St. James, neither had the

slightest doubt that Randolph Leffingwell would tread it.

It is needless to dwell upon the chagrin of Honora's maternal

grandfather, Howard Allison Esquire, over this turn of affairs, this

unexpected bouleversement, as he spoke of it in private to his friends in

his Parisian club. For many years he had watched the personal attractions

of his daughter grow, and a brougham and certain other delights not to be

mentioned had gradually become, in his mind, synonymous with old age. The

brougham would have on its panels the Allison crest, and his

distinguished (and titled) son-in-law would drop in occasionally at the

little apartment on the Boulevard Haussmann. Alas, for visions, for

legitimate hopes shattered forever! On the day that Randolph Leffingwell

led Miss Allison down the aisle of the English church the vision of the

brougham and the other delights faded. Howard Allison went back to his

club.

Three years later, while on an excursion with Sir Nicholas Baker and a

merry party on the Italian aide, the horses behind which Mr. and Mrs.

Leffingwell were driving with their host ran away, and in the flight

managed to precipitate the vehicle, and themselves, down the side of one

of the numerous deep valleys of the streams seeking the Mediterranean.

Thus, by a singular caprice of destiny Honors was deprived of both her

parents at a period which--some chose to believe--was the height of their

combined glories. Randolph Leffingwell lived long enough to be taken back

to Nice, and to consign his infant daughter and sundry other unsolved

problems to his brother Tom.

Brother Tom--or Uncle Tom, as we must call him with Honora--cheerfully

accepted the charge. For his legacies in life had been chiefly blessings

in disguise. He was paying teller of the Prairie Bank, and the

thermometer registered something above 90 deg. Fahrenheit on the July

morning when he stood behind his wicket reading a letter from Howard

Allison, Esquire, relative to his niece. Mr. Leffingwell was at this

period of his life forty-eight, but the habit he had acquired of assuming

responsibilities and burdens seemed to have had the effect of making his

age indefinite. He was six feet tall, broad-shouldered, his mustache and

hair already turning; his eyebrows were a trifle bushy, and his eyes

reminded men of one eternal and highly prized quality--honesty. They were

blue grey. Ordinarily they shed a light which sent people away from his

window the happier without knowing why; but they had been known, on rare

occasions, to flash on dishonesty and fraud like the lightnings of the

Lord. Mr. Isham, the president of the bank, coined a phrase about him. He

said that Thomas Leffingwell was constitutionally honest.

Although he had not risen above the position of paying teller, Thomas

Leffingwell had a unique place in the city of his birth; and the esteem

in which he was held by capitalists and clerks proves that character

counts for something. On his father's failure and death he had entered

the Prairie Bank, at eighteen, and never left it. If he had owned it, he

could not have been treated by the customers with more respect. The city,

save for a few notable exceptions, like Mr. Isham, called him Mr.

Leffingwell, but behind his back often spoke of him as Tom.

On the particular hot morning in question, as he stood in his seersucker

coat reading the unquestionably pompous letter of Mr. Allison announcing

that his niece was on the high seas, he returned the greetings of his

friends with his usual kindness and cheer. In an adjoining compartment a

long-legged boy of fourteen was busily stamping letters.

"Peter," said Mr. Leffingwell, "go ask Mr. Isham if I may see him."

It is advisable to remember the boy's name. It was Peter Erwin, and he

was a favourite in the bank, where he had been introduced by Mr.

Leffingwell himself. He was an orphan and lived with his grandmother, an

impoverished old lady with good blood in her veins who boarded in

Graham's Row, on Olive Street. Suffice it to add, at this time, that he

worshipped Mr. Leffingwell, and that he was back in a twinkling with the

information that Mr. Isham was awaiting him.

The president was seated at his desk. In spite of the thermometer he gave

no appearance of discomfort in his frock-coat. He had scant, sandy-grey

whiskers, a tightly closed and smooth-shaven upper lip, a nose with-a

decided ridge, and rather small but penetrating eyes in which the blue

pigment had been used sparingly. His habitual mode of speech was both

brief and sharp, but people remarked that he modified it a little for Tom

Leffingwell.

"Come in, Tom," he said. "Anything the matter?"

"Mr. Isham, I want a week off, to go to New York."

The request, from Tom Leffingwell, took Mr. Isham's breath. One of the

bank president's characteristics was an extreme interest in the private

affairs of those who came within his zone of influence and especially

when these affairs evinced any irregularity.

"Randolph again?" he asked quickly.

Tom walked to the window, and stood looking out into the street. His

voice shook as he answered:

"Ten days ago I learned that my brother was dead, Mr. Isham."

The president glanced at the broad back of his teller. Mr. Isham's voice

was firm, his face certainly betrayed no feeling, but a flitting gleam of

satisfaction might have been seen in his eye.

"Of course, Tom, you may go," he answered.

Thus came to pass an event in the lives of Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary, that

journey to New York (their first) of two nights and two days to fetch

Honora. We need not dwell upon all that befell them. The first view of

the Hudson, the first whiff of the salt air on this unwonted holiday, the

sights of this crowded city of wealth,--all were tempered by the thought

of the child coming into their lives. They were standing on the pier when

the windows were crimson in the early light, and at nine o'clock on that

summer's morning the Albania was docked, and the passengers came crowding

down the gang-plank. Prosperous tourists, most of them, with servants and

stewards carrying bags of English design and checked steamer rugs; and at

last a ruddy-faced bonne with streamers and a bundle of ribbons and

laces--Honora--Honora, aged eighteen months, gazing at a subjugated

world.

"What a beautiful child! exclaimed a woman on the pier."

Was it instinct or premonition that led them to accost the bonne?

"Oui, Leffingwell!" she cried, gazing at them in some perplexity. Three

children of various sizes clung to her skirts, and a younger nurse

carried a golden-haired little girl of Honora's age. A lady and gentleman

followed. The lady was beginning to look matronly, and no second glance

was required to perceive that she was a person of opinion and character.

Mr. Holt was smaller than his wife, neat in dress and unobtrusive in

appearance. In the rich Mrs. Holt, the friend of the Randolph

Leffingwells, Aunt Mary was prepared to find a more vapidly fashionable

personage, and had schooled herself forthwith.

"You are Mrs. Thomas Leffingwell?" she asked. "Well, I am relieved." The

lady's eyes, travelling rapidly over Aunt Mary's sober bonnet and brooch

and gown, made it appear that these features in Honora's future guardian

gave her the relief in question. "Honora, this is your aunt."

Honora smiled from amidst the laces, and Aunt Mary, only too ready to

capitulate, surrendered. She held out her arms. Tears welled up in the

Frenchwoman's eyes as she abandoned her charge.

"Pauvre mignonne!" she cried.

But Mrs. Holt rebuked the nurse sharply, in French,--a language with

which neither Aunt Mary nor Uncle Tom was familiar. Fortunately, perhaps.

Mrs. Holt's remark was to the effect that Honora was going to a sensible

home.

"Hortense loves her better than my own children," said that lady.

Honora seemed quite content in the arms of Aunt Mary, who was gazing so

earnestly into the child's face that she did not at first hear Mrs.

Holt's invitation to take breakfast with them on Madison Avenue, and then

she declined politely. While grossing on the steamer, Mrs. Holt had

decided quite clearly in her mind just what she was going to say to the

child's future guardian, but there was something in Aunt Mary's voice and

manner which made these remarks seem unnecessary--although Mrs. Holt was

secretly disappointed not to deliver them.

"It was fortunate that we happened to, be in Nice at the time," she said

with the evident feeling that some explanation was due. "I did not know

poor Mrs. Randolph Leffingwell very--very intimately, or Mr. Leffingwell.

It was such a sudden--such a terrible affair. But Mr. Holt and I were

only too glad to do what we could."

"We feel very grateful to you," said Aunt Mary, quietly.

Mrs. Holt looked at her with a still more distinct approval, being

tolerably sure that Mrs. Thomas Leffingwell understood. She had cleared

her skirts of any possible implication of intimacy with the late Mrs.

Randolph, and done so with a master touch.

In the meantime Honora had passed to Uncle Tom. After securing the little

trunk, and settling certain matters with Mr. Holt, they said good-by to

her late kind protectors, and started off for the nearest street-cars,

Honora pulling Uncle Tom's mustache. More than one pedestrian paused to

look back at the tall man carrying the beautiful child, bedecked like a

young princess, and more than one passenger in the street cars smiled at

them both.

CHAPTER II

PERDITA RECALLED

Saint Louis, or that part of it which is called by dealers in real estate

the choice residence section, grew westward. And Uncle Tom might be said

to have been in the vanguard of the movement. In the days before Honora

was born he had built his little house on what had been a farm on the

Olive Street Road, at the crest of the second ridge from the river. Up

this ridge, with clanking traces, toiled the horse-cars that carried

Uncle Tom downtown to the bank and Aunt Mary to market.

Fleeing westward, likewise, from the smoke, friends of Uncle Tom's and

Aunt Mary's gradually surrounded them--building, as a rule, the high

Victorian mansions in favour at that period, which were placed in the

centre of commodious yards. For the friends of Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary

were for the most part rich, and belonged, as did they, to the older

families of the city. Mr. Dwyer's house, with its picture gallery, was

across the street.

In the midst of such imposing company the little dwelling which became

the home of our heroine sat well back in a plot that might almost be

called a garden. In summer its white wooden front was nearly hidden by

the quivering leaves of two tall pear trees. On the other side of the

brick walk, and near the iron fence, was an elm and a flower bed that was

Uncle Tom's pride and the admiration of the neighbourhood. Honora has but

to shut her eyes to see it aflame with tulips at Eastertide. The eastern

wall of the house was a mass of Virginia creeper, and beneath that

another flower bed, and still another in the back-yard behind the lattice

fence covered with cucumber vine. There were, besides, two maples and two

apricot trees, relics of the farm, and of blessed memory. Such apricots!

Visions of hot summer evenings come back, with Uncle Tom, in his

seersucker coat, with his green watering-pot, bending over the beds, and

Aunt Mary seated upright in her chair, looking up from her knitting with

a loving eye.

Behind the lattice, on these summer evenings, stands the militant figure

of that old retainer, Bridget the cook, her stout arms akimbo, ready to

engage in vigorous banter should Honora deign to approach.

"Whisht, 'Nora darlint, it's a young lady yell be soon, and the beaux

a-comin' 'round!" she would cry, and throw back her head and laugh until

the tears were in her eyes.

And the princess, a slim figure in an immaculate linen frock with red

ribbons which Aunt Mary had copied from Longstreth's London catalogue,

would reply with dignity:

"Bridget, I wish you would try to remember that my name is Honora."

Another spasm of laughter from Bridget.

"Listen to that now!" she would cry to another ancient retainer, Mary

Ann, the housemaid, whose kitchen chair was tilted up against the side of

the woodshed. "It'll be Miss Honora next, and George Hanbury here to-day

with his eye through a knothole in the fence, out of his head for a sight

of ye."

George Hanbury was Honora's cousin, and she did not deem his admiration a

subject fit for discussion with Bridget.

"Sure," declared Mary Ann, "it's the air of a princess the child has."

That she should be thought a princess did not appear at all remarkable to

Honora at twelve years of age. Perdita may have had such dreams. She had

been born, she knew, in some wondrous land by the shores of the summer

seas, not at all like St. Louis, and friends and relatives had not

hesitated to remark in her hearing that she resembled--her father,--that

handsome father who surely must have been a prince, whose before-mentioned

photograph in the tortoise-shell frame was on the bureau in her little

room. So far as Randolph Leffingwell was concerned, photography had not

been invented for nothing. Other records of him remained which Honora had

likewise seen: one end of a rose-covered villa--which Honora thought was

a wing of his palace; a coach and four he was driving, and which had

chanced to belong to an Englishman, although the photograph gave no

evidence of this ownership. Neither Aunt Mary nor Uncle Tom had ever

sought--for reasons perhaps obvious--to correct the child's impression of

an extraordinary paternity.

Aunt Mary was a Puritan of Southern ancestry, and her father had been a

Presbyterian minister, Uncle Tom was a member of the vestry of a church

still under Puritan influences. As a consequence for Honora, there were

Sunday afternoons--periods when the imaginative faculty, in which she was

by no means lacking, was given full play. She would sit by the hour in

the swing Uncle Tom had hung for her under the maple near the lattice,

while castles rose on distant heights against blue skies. There was her

real home, in a balconied chamber that overlooked mile upon mile of

rustling forest in the valley; and when the wind blew, the sound of it

was like the sea. Honora did not remember the sea, but its music was

often in her ears.

She would be aroused from these dreams of greatness by the appearance of

old Catherine, her nurse, on the side porch, reminding her that it was

time to wash for supper. No princess could have had a more humble

tiring-woman than Catherine.

Honora cannot be unduly blamed. When she reached the "little house under

the hill" (as Catherine called the chamber beneath the eaves), she beheld

reflected in the mirror an image like a tall, white flower that might

indeed have belonged to a princess. Her hair, the colour of burnt sienna,

fell evenly to her shoulders; her features even then had regularity and

hauteur; her legs, in their black silk stockings, were straight; and the

simple white lawn frock made the best of a slender figure. Those frocks

of Honora's were a continual source of wonder and sometimes of envy--to

Aunt Mary's friends; who returned from the seaside in the autumn, after a

week among the fashions in Boston or New York, to find Honora in the

latest models, and better dressed than their own children. Aunt Mary made

no secret of the methods by which these seeming miracles were performed,

and showed Cousin Eleanor Hanbury the fashion plates in the English

periodicals. Cousin Eleanor sighed.

"Mary, you are wonderful," she would say. "Honora's clothes are

better-looking than those I buy in the East, at such fabulous prices,

from Cavendish."

Indeed, no woman was ever farther removed from personal vanity than Aunt

Mary. She looked like a little Quakeress. Her silvered hair was parted in

the middle and had, in spite of palpable efforts towards tightness and

repression, a perceptible ripple in it. Grey was her only concession to

colour, and her gowns and bonnets were of a primness which belonged to

the past. Repression, or perhaps compression, was her note, for the

energy confined within her little body was a thing to have astounded

scientists: And Honora grew to womanhood and reflection before she had.

guessed or considered that her aunt was possessed of intense emotions

which had no outlet. Her features were regular, her shy eye had the

clearness of a forest pool. She believed in predestination, which is to

say that she was a fatalist; and while she steadfastly continued to

regard this world as a place of sorrow and trials, she concerned herself

very little about her participation in a future life. Old Dr. Ewing, the

rector of St. Anne's, while conceding that no better or more charitable

woman existed, found it so exceedingly difficult to talk to her, on the

subject of religion that he had never tried it but once.

Such was Aunt Mary. The true student of human nature should not find it

surprising that she spoiled Honora and strove--at what secret expense,

care, and self-denial to Uncle Tom and herself, none will ever know--to

adorn the child that she might appear creditably among companions whose

parents were more fortunate in this world's goods; that she denied

herself to educate Honora as these other children were educated. Nor is

it astonishing that she should not have understood the highly complex

organism of the young lady we have chosen for our heroine, who was

shaken, at the age of thirteen, by unfulfilled longings.

Very early in life Honora learned to dread the summer, when one by one

the families of her friends departed until the city itself seemed a

remote and distant place from what it had been in the spring and winter.

The great houses were closed and blinded, and in the evening the servants

who had been left behind chattered on the front steps. Honora could not

bear the sound of the trains that drifted across the night, and the sight

of the trunks piled in the Hanburys' hall, in Wayland Square, always

filled her with a sickening longing. Would the day ever come when she,

too, would depart for the bright places of the earth? Sometimes, when she

looked in the mirror, she was filled with a fierce belief in a destiny to

sit in the high seats, to receive homage and dispense bounties, to

discourse with great intellects, to know London and Paris and the marts

and centres of the world as her father had. To escape--only to escape

from the prison walls of a humdrum existence, and to soar!

Let us, if we can, reconstruct an August day when all (or nearly all) of

Honora's small friends were gone eastward to the mountains or the

seaside. In "the little house under the hill," the surface of which was a

hot slate roof, Honora would awake about seven o'clock to find old

Catherine bending over her in a dun-coloured calico dress, with the light

fiercely beating against the closed shutters that braved it so

unflinchingly throughout the day.

"The birds are before ye, Miss Honora, honey, and your uncle waterin' his

roses this half-hour."

Uncle Tom was indeed an early riser. As Honora dressed (Catherine

assisting as at a ceremony), she could see him, in his seersucker coat,

bending tenderly over his beds; he lived enveloped in a peace which has

since struck wonder to Honora's soul. She lingered in her dressing, even

in those days, falling into reveries from which Catherine gently and

deferentially aroused her; and Uncle Tom would be carving the beefsteak

and Aunt Mary pouring the coffee when she finally arrived in the dining

room to nibble at one of Bridget's unforgettable rolls or hot biscuits.

Uncle Tom had his joke, and at quarter-past eight precisely he would kiss

Aunt Mary and walk to the corner to wait for the ambling horse-car that

was to take him to the bank. Sometimes Honora went to the corner with

him, and he waved her good-by from the platform as he felt in his pocket

for the nickel that was to pay his fare.

When Honora returned, Aunt Mary had donned her apron, and was

industriously aiding Mary Ann to wash the dishes and maintain the

customary high polish on her husband's share of the Leffingwell silver

which, standing on the side table, shot hither and thither rays of green

light that filtered through the shutters into the darkened room. The

child partook of Aunt Mary's pride in that silver, made for a Kentucky

great-grandfather Leffingwell by a famous Philadelphia silversmith

three-quarters of a century before. Honora sighed.

"What's the matter, Honora?" asked Aunt Mary, without pausing in her

vigorous rubbing.

"The Leffingwells used to be great once upon a time, didn't they, Aunt

Mary?"

"Your Uncle Tom," answered Aunt Mary, quietly, "is the greatest man I

know, child."

"And my father must have been a great man, too," cried Honora, "to have

been a consul and drive coaches."

Aunt Mary was silent. She was not a person who spoke easily on difficult

subjects.

"Why don't you ever talk to me about my father, Aunt Mary? Uncle Tom

does."

"I didn't know your father, Honora."

"But you have seen him?"

"Yes," said Aunt Mary, dipping her cloth into the whiting; "I saw him at

my wedding. But he was very, young."

"What was he like?" Honora demanded. "He was very handsome, wasn't he?"

'Yes, child."

"And he had ambition, didn't he, Aunt Mary?"

Aunt Mary paused. Her eyes were troubled as she looked at Honora, whose

head was thrown back.

"What kind of ambition do you mean, Honora?"

"Oh," cried Honora, "to be great and rich and powerful, and to be

somebody."

"Who has been putting such things in your head, my dear?"

"No one, Aunt Mary. Only, if I were a man, I shouldn't rest until I

became great."

Alas, that Aunt Mary, with all her will, should have such limited powers

of expression! She resumed her scrubbing of the silver before she spoke.

"To do one's duty, to accept cheerfully and like a Christian the

responsibilities and burdens of life, is the highest form of greatness,

my child. Your Uncle Tom has had many things to trouble him; he has

always worked for others, and not for himself. And he is respected and

loved by all who know him."

"Yes, I know, Aunt Mary. But--"

"But what, Honora?"

"Then why isn't he rich, as my father was?"

"Your father wasn't rich, my dear," said Aunt Mary, sadly.

"Why, Aunt Mary!" Honora exclaimed, "he lived in a beautiful house, and

owned horses. Isn't that being rich?"

Poor Aunt Mary!

"Honora," she answered, "there are some things you are too young to

understand. But try to remember, my dear, that happiness doesn't consist

in being rich."

"But I have often heard you say that you wished you were rich, Aunt Mary,

and had nice things, and a picture gallery like Mr. Dwyer."

"I should like to have beautiful pictures, Honora."

"I don't like Mr. Dwyer," declared Honora, abruptly.

"You mustn't say that, Honora," was Aunt Mary's reproof. "Mr. Dwyer is an

upright, public-spirited man, and he thinks a great deal of your Uncle

Tom."

"I can't help it, Aunt Mary," said Honora. "I think he enjoys being

--well, being able to do things for a man like Uncle Tom."

Neither Aunt Mary nor Honora guessed what a subtle criticism this was of

Mr. Dwyer. Aunt Mary was troubled and puzzled; and she began to speculate

(not for the first time) why the Lord had given a person with so little

imagination a child like Honora to bring up in the straight and narrow

path.

"When I go on Sunday afternoons with Uncle Tom to see Mr. Dwyer's

pictures," Honora persisted, "I always feel that he is so glad to have

what other people haven't or he wouldn't have any one to show them to."

Aunt Mary shook her head. Once she had given her loyal friendship, such

faults as this became as nothing.

"And when" said Honora, "when Mrs. Dwyer has dinner-parties for

celebrated people who come here, why does she invite you in to see the

table?"

"Out of kindness, Honora. Mrs. Dwyer knows that I enjoy looking at

beautiful things."

"Why doesn't she invite you to the dinners?" asked Honora, hotly. "Our

family is just as good as Mrs. Dwyer's."

The extent of Aunt Mary's distress was not apparent.

"You are talking nonsense, my child," she said. "All my friends know that

I am not a person who can entertain distinguished people, and that I do

not go out, and that I haven't the money to buy evening dresses. And even

if I had," she added, "I haven't a pretty neck, so it's just as well."

A philosophy distinctly Aunt Mary's.

Uncle Tom, after he had listened without comment that evening to her

account of this conversation, was of the opinion that to take Honora to

task for her fancies would be waste of breath; that they would right

themselves as she grew up.

"I'm afraid it's inheritance, Tom," said Aunt Mary, at last. "And if so,

it ought to be counteracted. We've seen other signs of it. You know

Honora has little or no idea of the value of money--or of its ownership."

"She sees little enough of it," Uncle Tom remarked with a smile.

"Tom."

"Well."

"Sometimes I think I've done wrong not to dress her more simply. I'm

afraid it's given the child a taste for--for self-adornment."

"I once had a fond belief that all women possessed such a taste," said

Uncle Tom, with a quizzical look at his own exception. "To tell you the

truth, I never classed it as a fault."

"Then I don't see why you married me," said Aunt Mary--a periodical

remark of hers. "But, Tom, I do wish her to appear as well as the other

children, and (Aunt Mary actually blushed) the child has good looks."

"Why don't you go as far as old Catherine, and call her a princess?" he

asked.

"Do you want me to ruin her utterly?" exclaimed Aunt Mary.

Uncle Tom put his hands on his wife's shoulders and looked down into her

face, and smiled again. Although she held herself very straight, the top

of her head was very little above the level of his chin.

"It strikes me that you are entitled to some little indulgence in life,

Mary," he said.

One of the curious contradictions of Aunt Mary's character was a never

dying interest, which held no taint of envy, in the doings of people more

fortunate than herself. In the long summer days, after her silver was

cleaned and her housekeeping and marketing finished, she read in the

book-club periodicals of royal marriages, embassy balls, of great town

and country houses and their owners at home and abroad. And she knew, by

means of a correspondence with Cousin Eleanor Hanbury and other

intimates, the kind of cottages in which her friends sojourned at the

seashore or in the mountains; how many rooms they had, and how many

servants, and very often who the servants were; she was likewise informed

on the climate, and the ease with which it was possible to obtain fresh

vegetables. And to all of this information Uncle Tom would listen,

smiling but genuinely interested, while he carved at dinner.

One evening, when Uncle Tom had gone to play piquet with Mr. Isham, who

was ill, Honora further surprised her aunt by exclaiming: "How can you

talk of things other people have and not want them, Aunt Mary?"

"Why should I desire what I cannot have, my dear? I take such pleasure

out of my friends' possessions as I can."

"But you want to go to the seashore, I know you do. I've heard you say

so," Honora protested.

"I should like to see the open ocean before I die," admitted Aunt Mary,

unexpectedly. "I saw New York harbour once, when we went to meet you. And

I know how the salt water smells--which is as much, perhaps, as I have

the right to hope for. But I have often thought it would be nice to sit

for a whole summer by the sea and listen to the waves dashing upon the

beach, like those in the Chase picture in Mr. Dwyer's gallery."

Aunt Mary little guessed the unspeakable rebellion aroused in Honora by

this acknowledgment of being fatally circumscribed. Wouldn't Uncle Tom

ever be rich?

Aunt Mary shook her head--she saw no prospect of it.

But other men, who were not half so good as Uncle Tom, got rich.

Uncle Tom was not the kind of man who cared for riches. He was content to

do his duty in that sphere where God had placed him.

Poor Aunt Mary. Honora never asked her uncle such questions: to do so

never occurred to her. At peace with all men, he gave of his best to

children, and Honora remained a child. Next to his flowers, walking was

Uncle Tom's chief recreation, and from the time she could be guided by

the hand she went with him. His very presence had the gift of dispelling

longings, even in the young; the gift of compelling delight in simple

things. Of a Sunday afternoon, if the heat were not too great, he would

take Honora to the wild park that stretches westward of the city, and

something of the depth and intensity of his pleasure in the birds, the

forest, and the wild flowers would communicate itself to her. She learned

all unconsciously (by suggestion, as it were) to take delight in them; a

delight that was to last her lifetime, a never failing resource to which

she was to turn again and again. In winter, they went to the botanical

gardens or the Zoo. Uncle Tom had a passion for animals, and Mr. Isham,

who was a director, gave him a pass through the gates. The keepers knew

him, and spoke to him with kindly respect. Nay, it seemed to Honora that

the very animals knew him, and offered themselves ingratiatingly to be

stroked by one whom they recognized as friend. Jaded horses in the street

lifted their noses; stray, homeless cats rubbed against his legs, and

vagrant dogs looked up at him trustfully with wagging tails.

Yet his goodness, as Emerson would have said, had some edge to it. Honora

had seen the light of anger in his blue eye--a divine ray. Once he had

chastised her for telling Aunt Mary a lie (she could not have lied to

him) and Honora had never forgotten it. The anger of such a man had

indeed some element in it of the divine; terrible, not in volume, but in

righteous intensity. And when it had passed there was no occasion for

future warning. The memory of it lingered.

CHAPTER III

CONCERNING PROVIDENCE

What quality was it in Honora that compelled Bridget to stop her ironing

on Tuesdays in order to make hot waffles for a young woman who was late

to breakfast? Bridget, who would have filled the kitchen with righteous

wrath if Aunt Mary had transgressed the rules of the house, which were

like the laws of the Medes and Persians! And in Honora's early youth Mary

Ann, the housemaid, spent more than one painful evening writing home for

cockle shells and other articles to propitiate our princess, who rewarded

her with a winning smile and a kiss, which invariably melted the honest

girl into tears. The Queen of Scots never had a more devoted chamber

woman than old Catherine,--who would have gone to the stake with a smile

to save her little lady a single childish ill, and who spent her savings,

until severely taken to task by Aunt Mary, upon objects for which a

casual wish had been expressed. The saints themselves must at times have

been aweary from hearing Honora's name.

Not to speak of Christmas! Christmas in the little house was one wild

delirium of joy. The night before the festival was, to all outward

appearances, an ordinary evening, when Uncle Tom sat by the fire in his

slippers, as usual, scouting the idea that there would be any Christmas

at all. Aunt Mary sewed, and talked with maddening calmness of the news

of the day; but for Honora the air was charged with coming events of the

first magnitude. The very furniture of the little sitting-room had a

different air, the room itself wore a mysterious aspect, and the

cannel-coal fire seemed to give forth a special quality of unearthly

light.

"Is to-morrow Christmas?" Uncle Tom would exclaim. Bless me! Honora, I am

so glad you reminded me."

"Now, Uncle Tom, you knew it was Christmas all the time!"

"Kiss your uncle good night, Honora, and go right to sleep, dear,"--from

Aunt Mary.

The unconscious irony in that command of Aunt Mary's!--to go right to

sleep! Many times was a head lifted from a small pillow, straining after

the meaning of the squeaky noises that came up from below! Not Santa

Claus. Honora's belief in him had merged into a blind faith in a larger

and even more benevolent, if material providence: the kind of providence

which Mr. Meredith depicts, and which was to say to Beauchamp: "Here's

your marquise;" a particular providence which, at the proper time, gave

Uncle Tom money, and commanded, with a smile, "Buy this for Honora--she

wants it." All-sufficient reason! Soul-satisfying philosophy, to which

Honora was to cling for many years of life. It is amazing how much can be

wrung from a reluctant world by the mere belief in this kind of

providence.

Sleep came at last, in the darkest of the hours. And still in the dark

hours a stirring, a delicious sensation preceding reason, and the

consciousness of a figure stealing about the room. Honora sat up in bed,

shivering with cold and delight.

"Is it awake ye are, darlint, and it but four o'clock the morn!"

"What are you doing, Cathy?"

"Musha, it's to Mass I'm going, to ask the Mother of God to give ye many

happy Christmases the like of this, Miss Honora." And Catherine's arms

were about her.

"Oh, it's Christmas, Cathy, isn't it? How could I have forgotten it!"

"Now go to sleep, honey. Your aunt and uncle wouldn't like it at all at

all if ye was to make noise in the middle of the night--and it's little

better it is."

Sleep! A despised waste of time in childhood. Catherine went to Mass, and

after an eternity, the grey December light began to sift through the

shutters, and human endurance had reached its limit. Honora, still

shivering, seized a fleecy wrapper (the handiwork of Aunt Mary) and

crept, a diminutive ghost, down the creaking stairway to the

sitting-room. A sitting-room which now was not a sitting-room, but for

to-day a place of magic. As though by a prearranged salute of the

gods,--at Honora's entrance the fire burst through the thick blanket of

fine coal which Uncle Tom had laid before going to bed, and with a little

gasp of joy that was almost pain, she paused on the threshold. That one

flash, like Pizarro's first sunrise over Peru, gilded the edge of

infinite possibilities.

Needless to enumerate them. The whole world, as we know, was in a

conspiracy to spoil Honora. The Dwyers, the Cartwrights, the Haydens, the

Brices, the Ishams, and I know not how many others had sent their

tributes, and Honora's second cousins, the Hanburys, from the family

mansion behind the stately elms of Wayland Square--of which something

anon. A miniature mahogany desk, a prayer-book and hymnal which the

Dwyers had brought home from New York, endless volumes of a more secular

and (to Honora) entrancing nature; roller skates; skates for real ice,

when it should appear in the form of sleet on the sidewalks; a sled;

humbler gifts from Bridget, Mary Ann, and Catherine, and a wonderful

coat, with hat to match, of a certain dark green velvet. When Aunt Mary

appeared, an hour or so later, Honora was surveying her magnificence in

the glass.

"Oh, Aunt Mary!" she cried, with her arms tightly locked around her

aunt's neck, "how lovely! Did you send all the way to New York for it?"

"No, Honora," said her aunt, "it didn't come from New York." Aunt Mary

did not explain that this coat had been her one engrossing occupation for

six weeks, at such times when Honora was out or tucked away safely in

bed.

Perhaps Honora's face fell a little. Aunt Mary scanned it rather

anxiously.

"Does that cause you to like it any less, Honora?" she asked.

"Aunt Mary!" exclaimed Honora, in a tone of reproval. And added after a

little, "I suppose Mademoiselle made it."

"Does it make any difference who made it, Honora?"

"Oh, no indeed, Aunt Mary. May I wear it to Cousin Eleanor's to-day?"

"I gave it to you to wear, Honora."

Not in Honora's memory was there a Christmas breakfast during which Peter

Erwin did not appear, bringing gifts. Peter Erwin, of whom we caught a

glimpse doing an errand for Uncle Tom in the bank. With the complacency

of the sun Honora was wont to regard this most constant of her

satellites. Her awakening powers of observation had discovered him in

bondage, and in bondage he had been ever since: for their acquaintance

had begun on the first Sunday afternoon after Honora's arrival in St.

Louis at the age of eighteen months. It will be remembered that Honora

was even then a coquette, and as she sat in her new baby-carriage under

the pear tree, flirted outrageously with Peter, who stood on one foot

from embarrassment.

"Why, Peter," Uncle Tom had said slyly, "why don't you kiss her?"

That kiss had been Peter's seal of service. And he became, on Sunday

afternoons, a sort of understudy for Catherine. He took an amazing

delight in wheeling Honora up and down the yard, and up and down the

sidewalk. Brunhilde or Queen Elizabeth never wielded a power more

absolute, nor had an adorer more satisfactory; and of all his remarkable

talents, none were more conspicuous than his abilities to tell a story

and to choose a present. Emancipated from the perambulator, Honora would

watch for him at the window, and toddle to the gate to meet him, a

gentleman-in-waiting whose zeal, however arduous, never flagged.

On this particular Christmas morning, when she heard the gate slam,

Honora sprang up from the table to don her green velvet coat. Poor Peter!

As though his subjugation could be more complete!

"It's the postman," suggested Uncle Tom, wickedly.

"It's Peter!" cried Honora, triumphantly, from the hall as she flunk open

the door, letting in a breath of cold Christmas air out of the sunlight.

It was Peter, but a Peter who has changed some since perambulator days,

--just as Honora has changed some. A Peter who, instead of fourteen, is

six and twenty; a full-fledged lawyer, in the office of that most

celebrated of St. Louis practitioners, Judge Stephen Brice. For the Peter

Erwins of this world are queer creatures, and move rapidly without

appearing to the Honoras to move at all. A great many things have

happened to Peter since he had been a messenger boy in the bank.

Needless to say, Uncle Tom had taken an interest in him. And, according

to Peter, this fact accounted for all the good fortune which had

followed. Shortly before the news came of his brother's death, Uncle Tom

had discovered that the boy who did his errands so willingly was going to

night school, and was the grandson of a gentleman who had fought with

credit in the Mexican War, and died in misfortune: the grandmother was

Peter's only living relative. Through Uncle Tom, Mr. Isham became

interested, and Judge Brice. There was a certain scholarship in the

Washington University which Peter obtained, and he worked his way through

the law school afterwards.

A simple story, of which many a duplicate could be found in this country

of ours. In the course of the dozen years or so of its unravelling the

grandmother had died, and Peter had become, to all intents and purposes,

a member of Uncle Tom's family. A place was set for him at Sunday dinner;

and, if he did not appear, at Sunday tea. Sometimes at both. And here he

was, as usual, on Christmas morning, his arms so full that he had had to

push open the gate with his foot.

"Well, well, well, well!" he said, stopping short on the doorstep and

surveying our velvet-clad princess, "I've come to the wrong house."

The princess stuck her finger into her cheek.

"Don't be silly, Peter!" she said; and Merry Christmas!"

"Merry Christmas!" he replied, edging sidewise in at the door and

depositing his parcels on the mahogany horsehair sofa. He chose one, and

seized the princess--velvet coat and all!--in his arms and kissed her.

When he released her, there remained in her hand a morocco-bound diary,

marked with her monogram, and destined to contain high matters.

"How could you know what I wanted, Peter?" she exclaimed, after she had

divested it of the tissue paper, holly, and red ribbon in which he had so

carefully wrapped it. For it is a royal trait to thank with the same

graciousness and warmth the donors of the humblest and the greatest

offerings.

There was a paper-knife for Uncle Tom, and a workbasket for Aunt Mary,

and a dress apiece for Catherine, Bridget, and Mary Ann, none of whom

Peter ever forgot. Although the smoke was even at that period beginning

to creep westward, the sun poured through the lace curtains into the

little dining-room and danced on the silver coffeepot as Aunt Mary poured

out Peter's cup, and the blue china breakfast plates were bluer than ever

because it was Christmas. The humblest of familiar articles took on the

air of a present. And after breakfast, while Aunt Mary occupied herself

with that immemorial institution,--which was to lure hitherwards so many

prominent citizens of St. Louis during the day,--eggnogg, Peter surveyed

the offerings which transformed the sitting-room. The table had been

pushed back against the bookcases, the chairs knew not their

time-honoured places, and white paper and red ribbon littered the floor.

Uncle Tom, relegated to a corner, pretended to read his newspaper, while

Honora flitted from Peter's knees to his, or sat cross-legged on the

hearth-rug investigating a bottomless stocking.

"What in the world are we going to do with all these things?" said Peter.

"We?" cried Honora.

"When we get married, I mean," said Peter, smiling at Uncle Tom. "Let's

see!" and he began counting on his fingers, which were long but very

strong--so strong that Honora could never loosen even one of them when

they gripped her. "One--two--three--eight Christmases before you are

twenty-one. We'll have enough things to set us up in housekeeping. Or

perhaps you'd rather get married when you are eighteen?"

"I've always told you I wasn't going to marry you, Peter," said Honora,

with decision.

"Why by not?" He always asked that question.

Honora sighed.

"I'll make a good husband," said Peter; "I'll promise. Ugly men are

always good husbands."

"I didn't say you were ugly," declared the ever considerate Honora.

"Only my nose is too big," he quoted; "and I am too long one way and not

wide enough."

"You have a certain air of distinction in spite of it," said Honora.

Uncle Tom's newspaper began to shake, and he read more industriously than

ever.

"You've been reading--novels!" said Peter, in a terrible judicial voice.

Honora flushed guiltily, and resumed her inspection of the stocking. Miss

Rossiter, a maiden lady of somewhat romantic tendencies, was librarian of

the Book Club that year. And as a result a book called "Harold's Quest,"

by an author who shall be nameless, had come to the house. And it was

Harold who had had "a certain air of distinction."

"It isn't very kind of you to make fun of me when I pay you a

compliment," replied Honora, with dignity.

"I was naturally put out," he declared gravely, "because you said you

wouldn't marry me. But I don't intend to give up. No man who is worth his

salt ever gives up."

"You are old enough to get married now," said Honora, still considerate.

"But I am not rich enough," said Peter; "and besides, I want you."

One of the first entries in the morocco diary--which had a lock and key

to it--was a description of Honora's future husband. We cannot violate

the lock, nor steal the key from under her pillow. But this much, alas,

may be said with discretion, that he bore no resemblance to Peter Erwin.

It may be guessed, however, that he contained something of Harold, and

more of Randolph Leffingwell; and that he did not live in St. Louis.

An event of Christmas, after church, was the dinner of which Uncle Tom

and Aunt Mary and Honora partook with Cousin Eleanor Hanbury, who had

been a Leffingwell, and was a first cousin of Honora's father. Honora

loved the atmosphere of the massive, yellow stone house in Wayland

Square, with its tall polished mahogany doors and thick carpets, with its

deferential darky servants, some of whom had been the slaves of her great

uncle. To Honora, gifted with imagination, the house had an odour all its

own; a rich, clean odour significant, in later life, of wealth and luxury

and spotless housekeeping. And she knew it from top to bottom. The

spacious upper floor, which in ordinary dwellings would have been an

attic, was the realm of young George and his sisters, Edith and Mary

(Aunt Mary's namesake). Rainy Saturdays, all too brief, Honora had passed

there, when the big dolls' house in the playroom became the scene of

domestic dramas which Edith rehearsed after she went to bed, although

Mary took them more calmly. In his tenderer years, Honora even fired

George, and riots occurred which took the combined efforts of Cousin

Eleanor and Mammy Lucy to quell. It may be remarked, in passing, that

Cousin Eleanor looked with suspicion upon this imaginative gift of

Honora's, and had several serious conversations with Aunt Mary on the

subject.

It was true, in a measure, that Honora quickened to life everything she

touched, and her arrival in Wayland Square was invariably greeted with

shouts of joy. There was no doll on which she had not bestowed a history,

and by dint of her insistence their pasts clung to them with all the

reality of a fate not by any means to be lived down. If George rode the

huge rocking-horse, he was Paul Revere, or some equally historic figure,

and sometimes, to Edith's terror, he was compelled to assume the role of

Bluebeard, when Honora submitted to decapitation with a fortitude

amounting to stoicism. Hide and seek was altogether too tame for her, a

stake of life and death, or imprisonment or treasure, being a necessity.

And many times was Edith extracted from the recesses of the cellar in a

condition bordering on hysterics, the day ending tamely with a Bible

story or a selection from "Little Women" read by Cousin Eleanor.

In autumn, and again in spring and early summer before the annual

departure of the Hanbury family for the sea, the pleasant yard with its

wide shade trees and its shrubbery was a land of enchantment threatened

by a genie. Black Bias, the family coachman, polishing the fat carriage

horses in the stable yard, was the genie; and George the intrepid knight

who, spurred by Honora, would dash in and pinch Bias in a part of his

anatomy which the honest darky had never seen. An ideal genie, for he

could assume an astonishing fierceness at will.

"I'll git you yit, Marse George!"

Had it not been for Honora, her cousins would have found the paradise in

which they lived a commonplace spot, and indeed they never could realize

its tremendous possibilities in her absence. What would the Mediterranean

Sea and its adjoining countries be to us unless the wanderings of Ulysses

and AEneas had made them real? And what would Cousin Eleanor's yard have

been without Honora? Whatever there was of romance and folklore in Uncle

Tom's library Honora had extracted at an early age, and with astonishing

ease had avoided that which was dry and uninteresting. The result was a

nomenclature for Aunt Eleanor's yard, in which there was even a terra

incognita wherefrom venturesome travellers never returned, but were

transformed into wild beasts or monkeys.

Although they acknowledged her leadership, Edith and Mary were sorry for

Honora, for they knew that if her father had lived she would have had a

house and garden like theirs, only larger, and beside a blue sea where it

was warm always. Honora had told them so, and colour was lent to her

assertions by the fact that their mother, when they repeated this to her,

only smiled sadly, and brushed her eyes with her handkerchief. She was

even more beautiful when she did so, Edith told her,--a remark which

caused Mrs. Hanbury to scan her younger daughter closely; it smacked of

Honora.

"Was Cousin Randolph handsome?" Edith demanded. Mrs. Hanbury started, so

vividly there arose before her eyes a brave and dashing figure, clad in

grey English cloth, walking by her side on a sunny autumn morning in the

Rue de la Paix. Well she remembered that trip abroad with her mother,

Randolph's aunt, and how attentive he was, and showed them the best

restaurants in which to dine. He had only been in France a short time,

but his knowledge of restaurants and the world in general had been

amazing, and his acquaintances legion. He had a way, which there was no

resisting, of taking people by storm.

"Yes, dear," answered Mrs. Hanbury, absently, when the child repeated the

question, "he was very handsome."

"Honora says he would have been President," put in George. "Of course I

don't believe it. She said they lived in a palace by the sea in the south

of France, with gardens and fountains and a lot of things like that, and

princesses and princes and eunuchs--"

"And what!" exclaimed Mrs. Hanbury, aghast.

"I know," said George, contemptuously, "she got that out of the Arabian

Nights." But this suspicion did not prevent him, the next time Honora

regaled them with more adventures of the palace by the summer seas, from

listening with a rapt attention. No two tales were ever alike. His

admiration for Honora did not wane, but increased. It differed from that

of his sisters, however, in being a tribute to her creative faculties,

while Edith's breathless faith pictured her cousin as having passed

through as many adventures as Queen Esther. George paid her a

characteristic compliment, but chivalrously drew her aside to bestow it.

He was not one to mince matters.

"You're a wonder, Honora," he said. "If I could lie like that, I wouldn't

want a pony."

He was forced to draw back a little from the heat of the conflagration he

had kindled.

"George Hanbury," she cried, "don't you ever speak to me again! Never! Do

you understand?"

It was thus that George, at some cost, had made a considerable discovery

which, for the moment, shook even his scepticism. Honora believed it all

herself.

Cousin Eleanor Hanbury was a person, or personage, who took a deep and

abiding interest in her fellow-beings, and the old clothes of the Hanbury

family went unerringly to the needy whose figures most resembled those of

the original owners. For Mrs. Hanbury had a wide but comparatively

unknown charity list. She was, secretly, one of the many providence which

Honora accepted collectively, although it is by no means certain whether

Honora, at this period, would have thanked her cousin for tuition at Miss

Farmer's school, and for her daily tasks at French and music concerning

which Aunt Mary was so particular. On the memorable Christmas morning

when, arrayed in green velvet, she arrived with her aunt and uncle for

dinner in Wayland Square, Cousin Eleanor drew Aunt Mary into her bedroom

and shut the door, and handed her a sealed envelope. Without opening it,

but guessing with much accuracy its contents, Aunt Mary handed it back.

"You are doing too much, Eleanor," she said.

Mrs. Hanbury was likewise a direct person.

"I will, take it back on one condition, Mary. If you will tell me that

Tom has finished paying Randolph's debts."

Mrs. Leffingwell was silent.

"I thought not," said Mrs. Hanbury. "Now Randolph was my own cousin, and

I insist."

Aunt Mary turned over the envelope, and there followed a few moments'

silence, broken only by the distant clamour of tin horns and other

musical instruments of the season.

"I sometimes think, Mary, that Honora is a little like Randolph, and-Mrs.

Randolph. Of course, I did not know her."

"Neither did I," said Aunt Mary.

"Mary," said Mrs. Hanbury, again, "I realize how you worked to make the

child that velvet coat. Do you think you ought to dress her that way?"

"I don't see why she shouldn't be as well dressed as the children of my

friends, Eleanor."

Mrs. Hanbury laid her hand impulsively on Aunt Mary's.

"No child I know of dresses half as well," said Mrs. Hanbury. "The

trouble you take--"

"Is rewarded," said Aunt Mary.

"Yes," Mrs. Hanbury agreed. "If my own daughters were half as good

looking, I should be content. And Honora has an air of race. Oh, Mary,

can't you see? I am only thinking of the child's future."

"Do you expect me to take down all my mirrors, Eleanor? If she has good

looks," said Aunt Mary, "she has not learned it from my lips."

It was true: Even Aunt Mary's enemies, and she had some, could not accuse

her of the weakness of flattery. So Mrs. Hanbury smiled, and dropped the

subject.

CHAPTER IV

OF TEMPERAMENT

We have the word of Mr. Cyrus Meeker that Honora did not have to learn to

dance. The art came to her naturally. Of Mr. Cyrus Meeker, whose

mustaches, at the age of five and sixty, are waxed as tight as ever, and

whose little legs to-day are as nimble as of yore. He has a memory like

Mr. Gladstone's, and can give you a social history of the city that is

well worth your time and attention. He will tell you how, for instance,

he was kicked by the august feet of Mr. George Hanbury on the occasion of

his first lesson to that distinguished young gentleman; and how, although

Mr. Meeker's shins were sore, he pleaded nobly for Mr. George, who was

sent home in the carriage by himself,--a punishment, by the way, which

Mr. George desired above all things.

This celebrated incident occurred in the new ballroom at the top of the

new house of young Mrs. Hayden, where the meetings of the dancing class

were held weekly. Today the soot, like the ashes of Vesuvius, spouting

from ten thousand soft-coal craters, has buried that house and the whole

district fathoms deep in social obscurity. And beautiful Mrs. Hayden what

has become of her? And Lucy Hayden, that doll-like darling of the gods?

All this belongs, however, to another history, which may some day be

written. This one is Honora's, and must be got on with, for it is to be a

chronicle of lightning changes. Happy we if we can follow Honora, and we

must be prepared to make many friends and drop them in the process.

Shortly after Mrs. Hayden had built that palatial house (which had a high

fence around its grounds and a driveway leading to a porte-cochere) and

had given her initial ball, the dancing class began. It was on a blue

afternoon in late November that Aunt Mary and Honora, with Cousin Eleanor

and the two girls, and George sulking in a corner of the carriage, were

driven through the gates behind Bias and the fat horses of the Hanburys.

Honora has a vivid remembrance of the impression the house made on her,

with its polished floors and spacious rooms filled with a new and

mysterious and altogether inspiring fashion of things. Mrs. Hayden

represented the outposts in the days of Richardson and Davenport--had

Honora but known it. This great house was all so different from anything

she (and many others in the city) had ever seen. And she stood gazing

into the drawing room, with its curtains and decorously drawn shades, in

a rapture which her aunt and cousins were far from guessing.

"Come, Honora," said her aunt. "What's the matter, dear?"

How could she explain to Aunt Mary that the sight of beautiful things

gave her a sort of pain--when she did not yet know it herself? There was

the massive stairway, for instance, which they ascended, softly lighted

by a great leaded window of stained glass on the first landing; and the

spacious bedrooms with their shining brass beds and lace spreads (another

innovation which Honora resolved to adopt when she married); and at last,

far above all, its deep-set windows looking out above the trees towards

the park a mile to the westward, the ballroom,--the ballroom, with its

mirrors and high chandeliers, and chairs of gilt and blue set against the

walls, all of which made no impression whatever upon George and Mary and

Edith, but gave Honora a thrill. No wonder that she learned to dance

quickly under such an inspiration!

And how pretty Mrs. Hayden looked as she came forward to greet them and

kissed Honora! She had been Virginia Grey, and scarce had had a gown to

her back when she had married the elderly Duncan Hayden, who had built

her this house and presented her with a checkbook,--a check-book which

Virginia believed to be like the widow's cruse of oil-unfailing. Alas,

those days of picnics and balls; of dinners at that recent innovation,

the club; of theatre-parties and excursions to baseball games between the

young men in Mrs. Hayden's train (and all young men were) who played at

Harvard or Yale or Princeton; those days were too care-free to have

endured.

"Aunt Mary," asked Honora, when they were home again in the lamplight of

the little sitting-room, "why was it that Mr. Meeker was so polite to

Cousin Eleanor, and asked her about my dancing instead of you?"

Aunt Mary smiled.

"Because, Honora," she said, "because I am a person of no importance in

Mr. Meeker's eyes."

"If I were a man," cried Honora, fiercely, "I should never rest until I

had made enough money to make Mr. Meeker wriggle."

"Honora, come here," said her aunt, gazing in troubled surprise at the

tense little figure by the mantel. "I don't know what could have put such

things into your head, my child. Money isn't everything. In times of real

trouble it cannot save one."

"But it can save one from humiliation!" exclaimed Honora, unexpectedly.

Another sign of a peculiar precociousness, at fourteen, with which Aunt

Mary was finding herself unable to cope. "I would rather be killed than

humiliated by Mr. Meeker."

Whereupon she flew out of the room and upstairs, where old Catherine, in

dismay, found her sobbing a little later.

Poor Aunt Mary! Few people guessed the spirit which was bound up in her,

aching to extend its sympathy and not knowing how, save by an unswerving

and undemonstrative devotion. Her words of comfort were as few as her

silent deeds were many.

But Honora continued to go to the dancing class, where she treated Mr.

Meeker with a hauteur that astonished him, amused Virginia Hayden, and

perplexed Cousin Eleanor. Mr. Meeker's cringing soul responded, and in a

month Honora was the leading spirit of the class, led the marches, and

was pointed out by the little dancing master as all that a lady should be

in deportment and bearing.

This treatment, which succeeded so well in Mr. Meeker's case, Honora had

previously applied to others of his sex. Like most people with a future,

she began young. Of late, for instance, Mr. George Hanbury had shown a

tendency to regard her as his personal property; for George had a

high-handed way with him,--boys being an enigma to his mother. Even in

those days he had a bullet head and a red face and square shoulders, and

was rather undersized for his age--which was Honora's.

Needless to say, George did not approve of the dancing class; and let it

be known, both by words and deeds, that he was there under protest. Nor

did he regard with favour Honora's triumphal progress, but sat in a

corner with several congenial spirits whose feelings ranged from scorn to

despair, commenting in loud whispers upon those of his sex to whom the

terpsichorean art came more naturally. Upon one Algernon Cartwright, for

example, whose striking likeness to the Van Dyck portrait of a young king

had been more than once commented upon by his elders, and whose velveteen

suits enhanced the resemblance. Algernon, by the way, was the favourite

male pupil of Mr. Meeker; and, on occasions, Algernon and Honora were

called upon to give exhibitions for the others, the sight of which filled

George with contemptuous rage. Algernon danced altogether too much with

Honora,--so George informed his cousin.

The simple result of George's protests was to make Honora dance with

Algernon the more, evincing, even at this period of her career, a

commendable determination to resent dictation. George should have lived

in the Middle Ages, when the spirit of modern American womanhood was as

yet unborn. Once he contrived, by main force, to drag her out into the

hall.

"George," she said, "perhaps, if you'd let me alone perhaps I'd like you

better."

"Perhaps," he retorted fiercely, "if you wouldn't make a fool of yourself

with those mother's darlings, I'd like you better."

"George," said Honora, "learn to dance."

"Never!" he cried, but she was gone. While hovering around the door he

heard Mrs. Hayden's voice.

"Unless I am tremendously mistaken, my dear," that lady was remarking to

Mrs. Dwyer, whose daughter Emily's future millions were powerless to

compel youths of fourteen to dance with her, although she is now happily

married, "unless I am mistaken, Honora will have a career. The child will

be a raving beauty. And she has to perfection the art of managing men."

"As her father had the art of managing women," said Mrs. Dwyer. "Dear me,

how well I remember Randolph! I would have followed him to--to Cheyenne."

Mrs. Hayden laughed. "He never would have gone to Cheyenne, I imagine,"

she said.

"He never looked at me, and I have reason to be profoundly thankful for

it," said Mrs. Dwyer.

Virginia Hayden bit her lip. She remembered a saying of Mrs. Brice,

"Blessed are the ugly, for they shall not be tempted."

"They say that poor Tom Leffingwell has not yet finished paying his

debts," continued Mrs. Dwyer, "although his uncle, Eleanor Hanbury's

father, cancelled what Randolph had had from him in his will. It was

twenty-five thousand dollars. James Hanbury, you remember, had him

appointed consul at Nice. Randolph Leffingwell gave the impression of

conferring a favour when he borrowed money. I cannot understand why he

married that penniless and empty-headed beauty."

"Perhaps," said Mrs. Hayden, "it was because of his ability to borrow

money that he felt he could afford to."

The eyes of the two ladies unconsciously followed Honora about the room.

"I never knew a better or a more honest woman than Mary Leffingwell, but

I tremble for her. She is utterly incapable of managing that child. If

Honora is a complicated mechanism now, what will she be at twenty? She

has elements in her which poor Mary never dreamed of. I overheard her

with Emily, and she talks like a grown-up person."

Mrs. Hayden's dimples deepened.

"Better than some grown-up women," she said. "She sat in my room while I

dressed the other afternoon. Mrs. Leffingwell had sent her with a note

about that French governess. And, by the way, she speaks French as though

she had lived in Paris."

Little Mrs. Dwyer raised her hands in protest.

"It doesn't seem natural, somehow. It doesn't seem exactly--moral, my

dear."

"Nonsense," said Mrs. Hayden. "Mrs. Leffingwell is only giving the child

the advantages which her companions have--Emily has French, hasn't she?"

"But Emily can't speak it--that way," said Mrs. Dwyer. "I don't blame

Mary Leffingwell. She thinks she is doing her duty, but it has always

seemed to me that Honora was one of those children who would better have

been brought up on bread and butter and jam."

"Honora would only have eaten the jam," said Mrs. Hayden. "But I love

her."

"I, too, am fond of the child, but I tremble for her. I am afraid she has

that terrible thing which is called temperament."

George Hanbury made a second heroic rush, and dragged Honora out once

more.

"What is this disease you've got?" he demanded.

"Disease?" she cried; "I haven't any disease."

"Mrs Dwyer says you have temperament, and that it is a terrible thing."

Honora stopped him in a corner.

"Because people like Mrs. Dwyer haven't got it," she declared, with a

warmth which George found inexplicable.

"What is it?" he demanded.

"You'll never know, either, George," she answered; "it's soul."

"Soul!" he repeated; "I have one, and its immortal," he added promptly.

In the summer, that season of desolation for Honora, when George Hanbury

and Algernon Cartwright and other young gentlemen were at the seashore

learning to sail boats and to play tennis, Peter Erwin came to his own.

Nearly every evening after dinner, while the light was still lingering

under the shade trees of the street, and Aunt Mary still placidly sewing

in the wicker chair on the lawn, and Uncle Tom making the tour of flowers

with his watering pot, the gate would slam, and Peter's tall form appear.

It never occurred to Honora that had it not been for Peter those evenings

would have been even less bearable than they were. To sit indoors with a

light and read in a St. Louis midsummer was not to be thought of. Peter

played backgammon with her on the front steps, and later on--chess.

Sometimes they went for a walk as far as Grand Avenue. And sometimes when

Honora grew older--she was permitted to go with him to Uhrig's Cave.

Those were memorable occasions indeed!

What Saint Louisan of the last generation does not remember Uhrig's Cave?

nor look without regret upon the thing which has replaced it, called a

Coliseum? The very name, Uhrig's Cave, sent a shiver of delight down

one's spine, and many were the conjectures one made as to what might be

enclosed in that half a block of impassible brick wall, over which the

great trees stretched their branches. Honora, from comparative infancy,

had her own theory, which so possessed the mind of Edith Hanbury that she

would not look at the wall when they passed in the carriage. It was a

still and sombre place by day; and sometimes, if you listened, you could

hear the whisperings of the forty thieves on the other side of the wall.

But no one had ever dared to cry "Open, Sesame!" at the great wooden

gates.

At night, in the warm season, when well brought up children were at home

or at the seashore, strange things were said to happen at Uhrig's Cave.

Honora was a tall slip of a girl of sixteen before it was given her to

know these mysteries, and the Ali Baba theory a thing of the past. Other

theories had replaced it. Nevertheless she clung tightly to Peter's arm

as they walked down Locust Street and came in sight of the wall. Above

it, and under the big trees, shone a thousand glittering lights: there

was a crowd at the gate, and instead of saying, "Open, Sesame," Peter

slipped two bright fifty-cent pieces to the red-faced German ticketman,

and in they went.

First and most astounding of disillusions of passing childhood, it was

not a cave at all! And yet the word "disillusion" does not apply. It was,

after all, the most enchanting and exciting of spots, to make one's eye

shine and one's heart beat. Under the trees were hundreds of tables

surrounded by hovering ministering angels in white, and if you were

German, they brought you beer; if American, ice-cream. Beyond the tables

was a stage, with footlights already set and orchestra tuning up, and a

curtain on which was represented a gentleman making decorous love to a

lady beside a fountain. As in a dream, Honora followed Peter to a table,

and he handed her a programme.

"Oh, Peter," she cried, "it's going to be 'Pinafore'!"

Honora's eyes shone like stars, and elderly people at the neighbouring

tables turned more than once to smile at her that evening. And Peter

turned more than once and smiled too. But Honora did not consider Peter.

He was merely Providence in one of many disguises, and Providence is

accepted by his beneficiaries as a matter of fact.

The rapture of a young lady of temperament is a difficult thing to

picture. The bird may feel it as he soars, on a bright August morning,

high above amber cliffs jutting out into indigo seas; the novelist may

feel it when the four walls of his room magically disappear and the

profound secrets of the universe are on the point of revealing

themselves. Honora gazed, and listened, and lost herself. She was no

longer in Uhrig's Cave, but in the great world, her soul a-quiver with

harmonies.

"Pinafore," although a comic opera, held something tragic for Honora, and

opened the flood-gates to dizzy sensations which she did not understand.

How little Peter, who drummed on the table to the tune of:

"Give three cheers and one cheer more

For the hearty captain of the Pinafore,"

imagined what was going on beside him! There were two factors in his

pleasure; he liked the music, and he enjoyed the delight of Honora.

What is Peter? Let us cease looking at him through Honora's eyes and

taking him like daily bread, to be eaten and not thought about. From one

point of view, he is twenty-nine and elderly, with a sense of humour

unsuspected by young persons of temperament. Strive as we will, we have

only been able to see him in his role of Providence, or of the piper. Has

he no existence, no purpose in life outside of that perpetual gentleman

in waiting? If so, Honora has never considered it.

After the finale had been sung and the curtain dropped for the last time,

Honora sighed and walked out of the garden as one in a trance. Once in a

while, as he found a way for them through the crowd, Peter glanced down

at her, and something like a smile tugged at the corners of a decidedly

masculine mouth, and lit up his eyes. Suddenly, at Locust Street, under

the lamp, she stopped and surveyed him. She saw a very real, very human

individual, clad in a dark nondescript suit of clothes which had been

bought ready-made, and plainly without the bestowal of much thought, on

Fifth Street. The fact that they were a comparative fit was in itself a

tribute to the enterprise of the Excelsior Clothing Company, for Honora's

observation that he was too long one way had been just. He was too tall,

his shoulders were too high, his nose too prominent, his eyes too

deep-set; and he wore a straw hat with the brim turned up.

To Honora his appearance was as familiar as the picture of the Pope which

had always stood on Catherine's bureau. But to-night, by grace of some

added power of vision, she saw him with new and critical eyes. She was

surprised to discover that he was possessed of a quality with which she

had never associated him--youth. Not to put it too strongly--comparative

youth.

"Peter," she demanded, "why do you dress like that?"

"Like what?" he said.

Honora seized the lapel of his coat.

"Like that," she repeated. "Do you know, if you wore different clothes,

you might almost be distinguished looking. Don't laugh. I think it's

horrid of you always to laugh when I tell you things for your own good."

"It was the idea of being almost distinguished looking that--that gave me

a shock," he assured her repentantly.

"You should dress on a different principle," she insisted.

Peter appeared dazed.

"I couldn't do that," he said.

"Why not?"

"Because--because I don't dress on any principle now."

"Yes, you do," said Honora, firmly. "You dress on the principle of the

wild beasts and fishes. It's all in our natural history at Miss Farmer's.

The crab is the colour of the seaweed, and the deer of the thicket. It's

a device of nature for the protection of weak things."

Peter drew himself up proudly.

"I have always understood, Miss Leffingwell, that the king of beasts was

somewhere near the shade of the jungle."

Honora laughed in spite of this apparent refutation of her theory of his

apparel, and shook her head.

"Do be serious, Peter. You'd make much more of an impression on people if

you wore clothes that had--well, a little more distinction."

"What's the use of making an impression if you can't follow it up?" he

said.

"You can," she declared. "I never thought of it until to-night, but you

must have a great deal in you to have risen all the way from an errand

boy in the bank to a lawyer."

"Look out!" he cautioned her; "I shall become insupportably conceited."

"A little more conceit wouldn't hurt you," said Honora, critically.

"You'll forgive me, Peter, if I tell you from time to time what I think.

It's for your own good."

"I try to realize that," replied Peter, humbly. "How do you wish me to

dress--like Mr. Rossiter?"

The picture evoked of Peter arrayed like Mr. Harland Rossiter, who had

sent flowers to two generations and was preparing to send more to a

third, was irresistible. Every city, hamlet, and village has its Harland

Rossiter. He need not be explained. But Honora soon became grave again.

"No, but you ought to dress as though you were somebody, and different

from the ordinary man on the street."

"But I'm not," objected Peter.

"Oh," cried Honora, "don't you want to be? I can't understand any man not

wanting to be. If I were a man, I wouldn't stay here a day longer than I

had to."

Peter was silent as they went in at the gate and opened the door, for on

this festive occasion they were provided with a latchkey. He turned up

the light in the hall to behold a transformation quite as wonderful as

any contained in the "Arabian Nights" or Keightley's "Fairy Mythology."

This was not the Honora with whom he had left the house scarce three

hours before! The cambric dress, to be sure, was still no longer than the

tops of her ankles and the hair still hung in a heavy braid down her

back. These were positively all that remained of the original Honora, and

the change had occurred in the incredibly brief space required for the

production of the opera "Pinafore." This Honora was a woman in a strange

and disturbing state of exaltation, whose eyes beheld a vision. And

Peter, although he had been the subject of her conversation, well knew

that he was not included in the vision. He smiled a little as he looked

at her. It is becoming apparent that he is one of those unfortunate

unimaginative beings incapable of great illusions.

"You're not going!" she exclaimed.

He glanced significantly at the hall clock.

"Why, it's long after bedtime, Honora."

"I don't want to go to bed. I feel like talking," she declared. "Come,

let's sit on the steps awhile. If you go home, I shan't go to sleep for

hours, Peter."

"And what would Aunt Mary say to me?" he inquired.

"Oh, she wouldn't care. She wouldn't even know it."

He shook his head, still smiling.

"I'd never be allowed to take you to Uhrig's Cave, or anywhere else,

again," he replied. "I'll come to-morrow evening, and you can talk to me

then."

"I shan't feel like it then," she said in a tone that implied his

opportunity was now or never. But seeing him still obdurate, with

startling suddenness she flung her arms mound his neck--a method which at

times had succeeded marvellously--and pleaded coaxingly: "Only a quarter

of an hour, Peter. I've got so many things to say, and I know I shall

forget them by to-morrow."

It was a night of wonders. To her astonishment the hitherto pliant Peter,

who only existed in order to do her will, became transformed into a

brusque masculine creature which she did not recognize. With a movement

that was almost rough he released himself and fled, calling back a "good

night" to her out of the darkness. He did not even wait to assist her in

the process of locking up. Honora, profoundly puzzled, stood for a while

in the doorway gazing out into the night. When at length she turned, she

had forgotten him entirely.

It was true that she did not sleep for hours, and on awaking the next

morning another phenomenon awaited her. The "little house under the hill"

was immeasurably shrunken. Poor Aunt Mary, who did not understand that a

performance of "Pinafore" could give birth to the unfulfilled longings

which result in the creation of high things, spoke to Uncle Tom a week

later concerning an astonishing and apparently abnormal access of

industry.

"She's been reading all day long, Tom, or else shut up in her room, where

Catherine tells me she is writing. I'm afraid Eleanor Hanbury is right

when she says I don't understand the child. And yet she is the same to me

as though she were my own."

It was true that Honora was writing, and that the door was shut, and that

she did not feel the heat. In one of the bookcases she had chanced upon

that immortal biography of Dr. Johnson, and upon the letters of another

prodigy of her own sex, Madame d'Arblay, whose romantic debut as an

authoress was inspiration in itself. Honora actually quivered when she

read of Dr. Johnson's first conversation with Miss Burney. To write a

book of the existence of which even one's own family did not know, to

publish it under a nom de plume, and to awake one day to fetes and fame

would be indeed to live!

Unfortunately Honora's novel no longer exists, or the world might have

discovered a second Evelina. A regard for truth compels the statement

that it was never finished. But what rapture while the fever lasted!

Merely to take up the pen was to pass magically through marble portals

into the great world itself.

The Sir Charles Grandison of this novel was, needless to say, not Peter

Erwin. He was none other than Mr. Randolph Leffingwell, under a very thin

disguise.

CHAPTER V

IN WHICH PROVIDENCE BEEPS FAITH

Two more years have gone by, limping in the summer and flying in the

winter, two more years of conquests. For our heroine appears to be one of

the daughters of Helen, born to make trouble for warriors and others

--and even for innocent bystanders like Peter Erwin. Peter was debarred

from entering those brilliant lists in which apparel played so great a

part. George Hanbury, Guy Rossiter, Algernon Cartwright, Eliphalet Hopper

Dwyer--familiarly known as "Hoppy"--and other young gentlemen whose names

are now but memories, each had his brief day of triumph. Arrayed like

Solomon in wonderful clothes from the mysterious and luxurious East, they

returned at Christmas-tide and Easter from college to break lances over

Honora. Let us say it boldly--she was like that: she had the world-old

knack of sowing discord and despair in the souls of young men. She

was--as those who had known that fascinating gentleman were not slow to

remark--Randolph Leffingwell over again.

During the festival seasons, Uncle Tom averred, they wore out the latch

on the front gate. If their families possessed horses to spare, they took

Honora driving in Forest Park; they escorted her to those anomalous

dances peculiar to their innocent age, which are neither children's

parties nor full-fledged balls; their presents, while of no intrinsic

value--as one young gentleman said in a presentation speech--had an

enormous, if shy, significance.

"What a beautiful ring you are wearing, Honora," Uncle Tom remarked slyly

one April morning at breakfast; "let me see it."

Honora blushed, and hid her hand under the table-cloth.

And the ring-suffice it to say that her little finger was exactly

insertable in a ten-cent piece from which everything had been removed but

the milling: removed with infinite loving patience by Mr. Rossiter, and

at the expense of much history and philosophy and other less important

things, in his college bedroom at New Haven. Honora wore it for a whole

week; a triumph indeed for Mr. Rossiter; when it was placed in a box in

Honora's bedroom, which contained other gifts--not all from him--and many

letters, in the writing of which learning had likewise suffered. The

immediate cause of the putting away of this ring was said to be the

renowned Clinton Howe, who was on the Harvard football eleven, and who

visited Mr. George Hanbury that Easter. Fortunate indeed the tailor who

was called upon to practise his art on an Adonis like Mr. Howe, and it

was remarked that he scarcely left Honora's side at the garden party and

dance which Mrs. Dwyer gave in honour of the returning heroes, on the

Monday of Easter week.

This festival, on which we should like to linger, but cannot, took place

at the new Dwyer residence. For six months the Victorian mansion opposite

Uncle Tom's house had been sightless, with blue blinds drawn down inside

the plate glass windows. And the yellow stone itself was not so yellow as

it once had been, but had now the appearance of soiled manilla wrapping

paper, with black streaks here and there where the soot had run. The new

Dwyer house was of grey stone, Georgian and palatial, with a

picture-gallery twice the size of the old one; a magnificent and fitting

pioneer in a new city of palaces.

Westward the star of Empire--away from the smoke. The Dwyer mansion, with

its lawns and gardens and heavily balustraded terrace, faced the park

that stretched away like a private estate to the south and west. That

same park with its huge trees and black forests that was Ultima Thule in

Honora's childhood; in the open places there had been real farms and

hayricks which she used to slide down with Peter while Uncle Tom looked

for wild flowers in the fields. It had been separated from the city in

those days by an endless country road, like a Via Claudia stretching

towards mysterious Germanian forests, and it was deemed a feat for Peter

to ride thither on his big-wheeled bicycle. Forest Park was the country,

and all that the country represented in Honora's childhood. For Uncle Tom

on a summer's day to hire a surrey at Braintree's Livery Stable and drive

thither was like--to what shall that bliss be compared in these days when

we go to Europe with indifference?

And now Lindell Road--the Via Claudia of long, ago--had become Lindell

Boulevard, with granitoid sidewalks. And the dreary fields through which

it had formerly run were bristling with new houses in no sense Victorian,

and which were the first stirrings of a national sense of the artistic.

The old horse-cars with the clanging chains had disappeared, and you

could take an electric to within a block of the imposing grille that

surrounded the Dwyer grounds. Westward the star!

Fading fast was the glory of that bright new district on top of the

second hill from the river where Uncle Tom was a pioneer. Soot had killed

the pear trees, the apricots behind the lattice fence had withered away;

asphalt and soot were slowly sapping the vitality of the maples on the

sidewalk; and sometimes Uncle Tom's roses looked as though they might

advantageously be given a coat of paint, like those in Alice in

Wonderland. Honora should have lived in the Dwyers' mansion-people who

are capable of judging said so. People who saw her at the garden party

said she had the air of belonging in such surroundings much more than

Emily, whom even budding womanhood had not made beautiful. And Eliphalet

Hopper Dwyer, if his actions meant anything, would have welcomed her to

that house, or built her another twice as fine, had she deigned to give

him the least encouragement.

Cinderella! This was what she facetiously called herself one July morning

of that summer she was eighteen.

Cinderella in more senses than one, for never had the city seemed more

dirty or more deserted, or indeed, more stifling. Winter and its

festivities were a dream laid away in moth balls. Surely Cinderella's

life had held no greater contrasts! To this day the odour of matting

brings back to Honora the sense of closed shutters; of a stifling south

wind stirring their slats at noonday; the vision of Aunt Mary, cool and

placid in a cambric sacque, sewing by the window in the upper hall, and

the sound of fruit venders crying in the street, or of ragmen in the

alley--"Rags, bottles, old iron!" What memories of endless, burning,

lonely days come rushing back with those words!

When the sun had sufficiently heated the bricks of the surrounding houses

in order that he might not be forgotten during the night, he slowly

departed. If Honora took her book under the maple tree in the yard, she

was confronted with that hideous wooden sign "To Let" on the Dwyer's iron

fence opposite, and the grass behind it was unkempt and overgrown with

weeds. Aunt Mary took an unceasing and (to Honora's mind) morbid interest

in the future of that house.

"I suppose it will be a boarding-house," she would say, "it's much too

large for poor people to rent, and only poor people are coming into this

district now."

"Oh, Aunt Mary!"

"Well, my dear, why should we complain? We are poor, and it is

appropriate that we should live among the poor. Sometimes I think it is a

pity that you should have been thrown all your life with rich people, my

child. I am afraid it has made you discontented. It is no disgrace to be

poor. We ought to be thankful that we have everything we need."

Honora put down her sewing. For she had learned to sew--Aunt Mary had

insisted upon that, as well as French. She laid her hand upon her aunt's.

"I am thankful," she said, and her aunt little guessed the intensity of

the emotion she was seeking to control, or imagined the hidden fires.

"But sometimes--sometimes I try to forget that we are poor. Perhaps

--some day we shall not be."

It seemed to Honora that Aunt Mary derived a real pleasure from the

contradiction of this hope. She shook her head vigorously.

"We shall always be, my child. Your Uncle Tom is getting old, and he has

always been too honest to make a great deal of money. And besides," she

added, "he has not that kind of ability."

Uncle Tom might be getting old, but he seemed to Honora to be of the same

age as in her childhood. Some people never grow old, and Uncle Tom was

one of these. Fifteen years before he had been promoted to be the cashier

of the Prairie Bank, and he was the cashier to-day. He had the same quiet

smile, the same quiet humour, the same calm acceptance of life. He seemed

to bear no grudge even against that ever advancing enemy, the soot, which

made it increasingly difficult for him to raise his flowers. Those which

would still grow he washed tenderly night and morning with his

watering-pot. The greatest wonders are not at the ends of the earth, but

near us. It was to take many years for our heroine to realize this.

Strong faith alone could have withstood the continued contact with such a

determined fatalism as Aunt Mary's, and yet it is interesting to note

that Honora's belief in her providence never wavered. A prince was to

come who was to bear her away from the ragmen and the boarding-houses and

the soot: and incidentally and in spite of herself, Aunt Mary was to come

too, and Uncle Tom. And sometimes when she sat reading of an evening

under the maple, her book would fall to her lap and the advent of this

personage become so real a thing that she bounded when the gate slammed

--to find that it was only Peter.

It was preposterous, of course, that Peter should be a prince in

disguise. Peter who, despite her efforts to teach him distinction in

dress, insisted upon wearing the same kind of clothes. A mild kind of

providence, Peter, whose modest functions were not unlike those of the

third horse which used to be hitched on to the street car at the foot of

the Seventeenth-Street hill: it was Peter's task to help pull Honora

through the interminable summers. Uhrig's Cave was an old story now:

mysteries were no longer to be expected in St. Louis. There was a great

panorama--or something to that effect--in the wilderness at the end of

one of the new electric lines, where they sometimes went to behold the

White Squadron of the new United States Navy engaged in battle with mimic

forts on a mimic sea, on the very site where the country place of Madame

Clement had been. The mimic sea, surrounded by wooden stands filled with

common people eating peanuts and popcorn, was none other than Madame

Clement's pond, which Honora remembered as a spot of enchantment. And

they went out in the open cars with these same people, who stared at

Honora as though she had got in by mistake, but always politely gave her

a seat. And Peter thanked them. Sometimes he fell into conversations with

them, and it was noticeable that they nearly always shook hands with him

at parting. Honora did not approve of this familiarity.

"But they may be clients some day," he argued--a frivolous answer to

which she never deigned to reply.

Just as one used to take for granted that third horse which pulled the

car uphill, so Peter was taken for granted. He might have been on the

highroad to a renown like that of Chief Justice Marshall, and Honora had

been none the wiser.

"Well, Peter," said Uncle Tom at dinner one evening of that memorable

summer, when Aunt Mary was helping the blackberries, and incidentally

deploring that she did not live in the country, because of the cream one

got there, "I saw Judge Brice in the bank to-day, and he tells me you

covered yourself with glory in that iron foundry suit."

"The Judge must have his little joke, Mr. Leffingwell," replied Peter,

but he reddened nevertheless.

Honora thought winning an iron foundry suit a strange way to cover one's

self with glory. It was not, at any rate, her idea of glory. What were

lawyers for, if not to win suits? And Peter was a lawyer.

"In five years," said Uncle Tom, "the firm will be 'Brice and Erwin'. You

mark my words. And by that time," he added, with a twinkle in his eye,

"you'll be ready to marry Honora."

"Tom," reproved Aunt Mary, gently, "you oughtn't to say such things."

This time there was no doubt about Peter's blush. He fairly burned.

Honora looked at him and laughed.

"Peter is meant for an old bachelor," she said.

"If he remains a bachelor," said Uncle Tom, "he'll be the greatest waste

of good material I know of. And if you succeed in getting him, Honora,

you'll be the luckiest young woman of my acquaintance."

"Tom," said Aunt Mary, "it was all very well to talk that way when Honora

was a child. But now--she may not wish to marry Peter. And Peter may not

wish to marry her."

Even Peter joined in the laughter at this literal and characteristic

statement of the case.

"It's more than likely," said Honora, wickedly. "He hasn't kissed me for

two years."

"Why, Peter," said Uncle Tom, "you act as though it were warm to-night.

It was only seventy when we came in to dinner."

"Take me out to the park," commanded Honora.

"Tom," said Aunt Mary, as she stood on the step and watched them cross

the street, "I wish the child would marry him. Not now, of course," she

added hastily,--a little frightened by her own admission, "but later.

Sometimes I worry over her future. She needs a strong and sensible man. I

don't understand Honora. I never did. I always told you so. Sometimes I

think she may be capable of doing something foolish like--like

Randolph."

Uncle Tom patted his wife on the shoulder.

"Don't borrow trouble, Mary," he said, smiling a little. "The child is

only full of spirits. But she has a good heart. It is only human that she

should want things that we cannot give her."

"I wish," said Aunt Mary, "that she were not quite so good-looking."

Uncle Tom laughed. "You needn't tell me you're not proud of it," he

declared.

"And I have given her," she continued, "a taste for dress."

"I think, my dear," said her husband, "that there were others who

contributed to that."

"It was my own vanity. I should have combated the tendency in her," said

Aunt Mary.

"If you had dressed Honora in calico, you could not have changed her,"

replied Uncle Tom, with conviction.

In the meantime Honora and Peter had mounted the electric car, and were

speeding westward. They had a seat to themselves, the very first one on

the "grip"--that survival of the days of cable cars. Honora's eyes

brightened as she held on to her hat, and the stray wisps of hair about

her neck stirred in the breeze.

"Oh, I wish we would never stop, until we came to the Pacific Ocean!" she

exclaimed.

"Would you be content to stop then?" he asked. He had a trick of looking

downward with a quizzical expression in his dark grey eyes.

"No," said Honora. "I should want to go on and see everything in the

world worth seeing. Sometimes I feel positively as though I should die if

I had to stay here in St. Louis."

"You probably would die--eventually," said Peter.

Honora was justifiably irritated.

"I could shake you, Peter!"

He laughed.

"I'm afraid it wouldn't do any good," he answered.

"If I were a man," she proclaimed, "I shouldn't stay here. I'd go to New

York--I'd be somebody--I'd make a national reputation for myself."

"I believe you would," said Peter sadly, but with a glance of admiration.

"That's the worst of being a woman--we have to sit still until something

happens to us."

"What would you like to happen?" he asked, curiously. And there was a

note in his voice which she, intent upon her thoughts, did not remark.

"Oh, I don't know," she said; "anything--anything to get out of this rut

and be something in the world. It's dreadful to feel that one has power

and not be able to use it."

The car stopped at the terminal. Thanks to the early hour of Aunt Mary's

dinner, the western sky was still aglow with the sunset over the forests

as they walked past the closed grille of the Dwyer mansion into the park.

Children rolled on the grass, while mothers and fathers, tired out from

the heat and labour of a city day, sat on the benches. Peter stooped down

and lifted a small boy, painfully thin, who had fallen, weeping, on the

gravel walk. He took his handkerchief and wiped the scratch on the

child's forehead.

"There, there!" he said, smiling, "it's all right now. We must expect a

few tumbles."

The child looked at him, and suddenly smiled through his tears.

The father appeared, a red-headed Irishman.

"Thank you, Mr. Erwin; I'm sure it's very kind of you, sir, to bother

with him," he said gratefully. "It's that thin he is with the heat, I

take him out for a bit of country air."

"Why, Tim, it's you, is it?" said Peter. "He's the janitor of our

building down town," he explained to Honora, who had remained a silent

witness to this simple scene. She had been, in spite of herself,

impressed by it, and by the mingled respect and affection in the

janitor's manner towards Peter. It was so with every one to whom he

spoke. They walked on in silence for a few moments, into a path leading

to a lake, which had stolen the flaming green-gold of the sky.

"I suppose," said Honora, slowly, "it would be better for me to wish to

be contented where I am, as you are. But it's no use trying, I can't."

Peter was not a preacher.

"Oh," he said, "there are lots of things I want."

"What?" demanded Honora, interested. For she had never conceived of him

as having any desires whatever.

"I want a house like Mr. Dwyer's," he declared, pointing at the distant

imposing roof line against the fading eastern sky.

Honora laughed. The idea of Peter wishing such a house was indeed

ridiculous. Then she became grave again.

"There are times when you seem to forget that I have at last grown up,

Peter. You never will talk over serious things with me."

"What are serious things?" asked Peter.

"Well," said Honora vaguely, "ambitions, and what one is going to make of

themselves in life. And then you make fun of me by saying you want Mr.

Dwyer's house." She laughed again. "I can't imagine you in that house!"

"Why not?" he asked, stopping beside the pond and thrusting his hands in

his pockets. He looked very solemn, but she knew he was smiling inwardly.

"Why--because I can't," she said, and hesitated. The question had forced

her to think about Peter. "I can't imagine you living all alone in all

that luxury. It isn't like you."

"Why I all alone?" asked Peter.

"Don't--Don't be ridiculous," she said; "you wouldn't build a house like

that, even if you were twice as rich as Mr. Dwyer. You know you wouldn't.

And you're not the marrying kind," she added, with the superior knowledge

of eighteen.

"I'm waiting for you, Honora," he announced.

"You know I love you, Peter,"--so she tempered her reply, for Honora's

feelings were tender. What man, even Peter, would not have married her if

he could? Of course he was in earnest, despite his bantering tone, "but I

never could--marry you."

"Not even if I were to offer you a house like Mr. Dwyer's?" he said. A

remark which betrayed--although not to her--his knowledge of certain

earthly strains in his goddess.

The colours faded from the water, and it blackened.

As they walked on side by side in the twilight, a consciousness of

repressed masculine force, of reserve power, which she had never before

felt about Peter Erwin, invaded her; and she was seized with a strange

uneasiness. Ridiculous was the thought (which she lost no time in

rejecting) that pointed out the true road to happiness in marrying such a

man as he. In the gathering darkness she slipped her hand through his

arm.

"I wish I could marry you, Peter," she said.

He was fain to take what comfort he could from this expression of

good-will. If he was not the Prince Charming of her dreams, she would

have liked him to be. A little reflection on his part ought to have shown

him the absurdity of the Prince Charming having been there all the time,

and in ready-made clothes. And he, too, may have had dreams. We are not

concerned with them.

............................

If we listen to the still, small voice of realism, intense longing is

always followed by disappointment. Nothing should have happened that

summer, and Providence should not have come disguised as the postman. It

was a sultry day in early September-which is to say that it was

comparatively cool--a blue day, with occasional great drops of rain

spattering on the brick walk. And Honora was reclining on the hall sofa,

reading about Mr. Ibbetson and his duchess, when she perceived the

postman's grey uniform and smiling face on the far side of the screen

door. He greeted her cordially, and gave her a single letter for Aunt

Mary, and she carried it unsuspectingly upstairs.

"It's from Cousin Eleanor," Honora volunteered.

Aunt Mary laid down her sewing, smoothed the ruffles of her sacque,

adjusted her spectacles, opened the envelope, and began to read.

Presently the letter fell to her lap, and she wiped her glasses and

glanced at Honora, who was deep in her book once more. And in Honora's

brain, as she read, was ringing the refrain of the prisoner:

"Orleans, Beaugency!

Notre Dame de Clery!

Vendome! Vendome!

Quel chagrin, quel ennui

De compter toute la nuit

Les heures, les heures!".

The verse appealed to Honora strangely; just as it had appealed to

Ibbetson. Was she not, too, a prisoner. And how often, during the summer

days and nights, had she listened to the chimes of the Pilgrim Church

near by?

"One, two, three, four!

One, two, three, four!"

After Uncle Tom had watered his flowers that evening, Aunt Mary followed

him upstairs and locked the door of their room behind her. Silently she

put the letter in his hand. Here is one paragraph of it:

"I have never asked to take the child from you in the summer,

because she has always been in perfect health, and I know how lonely

you would have been without her, my dear Mary. But it seems to me

that a winter at Sutcliffe, with my, girls, would do her a world of

good just now. I need not point out to you that Honora is, to say

the least, remarkably good looking, and that she has developed very

rapidly. And she has, in spite of the strict training you have

given her, certain ideas and ambitions which seem to me, I am sorry

to say, more or less prevalent among young American women these

days. You know it is only because I love her that I am so frank.

Miss Turner's influence will, in my opinion, do much to counteract

these tendencies."

Uncle Tom folded the letter, and handed it back to his wife.

"I feel that we ought not to refuse, Tom. And I am afraid Eleanor is

right."

"Well, Mary, we've had her for seventeen years. We ought to be willing to

spare her for--how many months?"

"Nine," said Aunt Mary, promptly. She had counted them. "And Eleanor says

she will be home for two weeks at Christmas. Seventeen years! It seems

only yesterday when we brought her home, Tom. It was just about this time

of day, and she was asleep in your arms, and Bridget opened the door for

us." Aunt Mary looked out of the window. "And do you remember how she

used to play under the maple there, with her dolls?"

Uncle Tom produced a very large handkerchief, and blew his nose.

"There, there, Mary," he said, "nine months, and two weeks out at

Christmas. Nine months in eighteen years."

"I suppose we ought to be very thankful," said Aunt Mary. "But, Tom, the

time is coming soon--"

"Tut tut," exclaimed Uncle Tom. He turned, and his eyes beheld a work of

art. Nothing less than a porcelain plate, hung in brackets on the wall,

decorated by Honora at the age of ten with wild roses, and presented with

much ceremony on an anniversary morning. He pretended not to notice it,

but Aunt Mary's eyes were too quick. She seized a photograph on her

bureau, a photograph of Honora in a little white frock with a red sash.

"It was the year that was taken, Tom."

He nodded. The scene at the breakfast table came back to him, and the

sight of Catherine standing respectfully in the hall, and of Honora, in

the red sash, making the courtesy the old woman had taught her.

Honora recalled afterwards that Uncle Tom joked even more than usual that

evening at dinner. But it was Aunt Mary who asked her, at length, how she

would like to go to boarding-school. Such was the matter-of-fact manner

in which the portentous news was announced.

"To boarding-school, Aunt Mary?"

Her aunt poured out her uncle's after-dinner coffee.

"I've spilled some, my dear. Get another saucer for your uncle."

Honora went mechanically to the china closet, her heart thumping. She did

not stop to reflect that it was the rarest of occurrences for Aunt Mary

to spill the coffee.

"Your Cousin Eleanor has invited you to go this winter with Edith and

Mary to Sutcliffe."

Sutcliffe! No need to tell Honora what Sutcliffe was--her cousins had

talked of little else during the past winter; and shown, if the truth be

told, just a little commiseration for Honora. Sutcliffe was not only a

famous girls' school, Sutcliffe was the world--that world which, since

her earliest remembrances, she had been longing to see and know. In a

desperate attempt to realize what had happened to her, she found herself

staring hard at the open china closet, at Aunt Mary's best gold dinner

set resting on the pink lace paper that had been changed only last week.

That dinner set, somehow, was always an augury of festival--when, on the

rare occasions Aunt Mary entertained, the little dining room was

transformed by it and the Leffingwell silver into a glorified and

altogether unrecognizable state, in which any miracle seemed possible.

Honora pushed back her chair.

Her lips were parted.

"Oh, Aunt Mary, is it really true that I am going?" she said.

"Why," said Uncle Tom, "what zeal for learning!"

"My dear," said Aunt Mary, who, you may be sure, knew all about that

school before Cousin Eleanor's letter came, "Miss Turner insists upon

hard work, and the discipline is very strict."

"No young men," added Uncle Tom.

"That," declared Aunt Mary, "is certainly an advantage."

"And no chocolate cake, and bed at ten o'clock," said Uncle Tom.

Honora, dazed, only half heard them. She laughed at Uncle Tom because she

always had, but tears were shining in her eyes. Young men and chocolate

cake! What were these privations compared to that magic word Change?

Suddenly she rose, and flung her arms about Uncle Tom's neck and kissed

his rough cheek, and then embraced Aunt Mary. They would be lonely.

"Aunt Mary, I can't bear to leave you--but I do so want to go! And it

won't be for long--will it? Only until next spring."

"Until next summer, I believe," replied Aunt Mary, gently; "June is a

summer month-isn't it, Tom?"