"WHAT SHALL WE WRITE?"
The hall at the Moorhead Inn seemed very homelike to Jim Airth and Myra,
as they stood together looking around it, on their arrival.
Jim had set his heart upon bringing his wife there, on the evening of
their wedding day. Therefore they had left town immediately after the
ceremony; dined _en route_, and now stood, as they had so often stood
before when bidding one another good-night, in the lamp-light, beside the
marble table.
"Oh, Jim dear," whispered Myra, throwing back her travelling cloak,
"doesn't it all seem natural? Look at the old clock! Five minutes past
ten. The Miss Murgatroyds must have gone up, in staid procession, exactly
four minutes ago. Look at the stag's head! There is the antler, on the
topmost point of which you always hung your cap."
"Myra----"
"Yes, dear. Oh, I hope the Murgatroyds are still here. Let's look in the
book.... Yes, see! Here are their names with date of arrival, but none of
departure. And, oh, dearest, here is 'Jim Airth,' as I first saw it
written; and look at 'Mrs. O'Mara' just beneath it! How well I remember
glancing back from the turn of the staircase, seeing you come out and
read it, and wishing I had written it better. You can set me plenty of
copies now, Jim."
"Myra!----"
"Yes, dear. Do you know I am going to fly up and unpack. Then I will come
out to the honeysuckle arbour and sit with you while you smoke. And we
need not mind being late; because the dear ladies, not knowing we have
returned, will not all be sleeping with doors ajar. But oh Jim, you
_must_--however late it is--plump your boots out into the passage, just
for the fun of making Miss Susannah's heart jump unexpectedly."
"Myra! Oh, I say! My wife----"
"Yes, darling, I know! But I am perfectly certain 'Aunt Ingleby' is
peeping out of her little office at the end of the passage; also, Polly
has finished helping Sam place our luggage upstairs, and I can _feel_
her, hanging over the top banisters! Be patient for just a little while,
my Jim. Let's put our names in the visitors' book. What shall we write?
Really we shall be obliged eventually to let them know who you are. Think
what an excitement for the Miss Murgatroyds. But, just for once, I am
going to write myself down by the name, of all others, I have most wished
to bear."
So, smiling gaily up at her husband, then bending over the table to hide
her happy face from the adoration of his eyes, the newly-made Countess of
Airth and Monteith took up the pen; and, without pausing to remove her
glove, wrote in the visitors' book of the Moorhead Inn, in the clear bold
handwriting peculiarly her own:
Mrs. Jim Airth
----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE MASTER'S VIOLIN
By MYRTLE REED
A Love Story with a musical atmosphere. A picturesque, old German
virtuoso is the reverent possessor of a genuine Cremona. He consents to
take as his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for
technique, but not the soul of the artist. The youth has led the happy,
careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American, and he cannot, with
his meagre past, express the love, the longing, the passion and the
tragedies of life and its happy phases as can the master who has lived
life in all its fulness. But a girl comes into his existence, a beautiful
bit of human driftwood that his aunt had taken into her heart and home;
and through his passionate love for her, he learns the lessons that life
has to give--and his soul awakens.
Founded on a fact well known among artists, but not often recognized or
discussed.
If you have not read "Lavender and Old Lace" by the same author, you have
a double pleasure in store--for these two books show Myrtle Reed in her
most delightful, fascinating vein--indeed they may be considered as
masterpieces of compelling interest.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE PRODIGAL JUDGE
By VAUGHAN KESTER
This great novel--probably the most popular book in this country
to-day--is as human as a story from the pen of that great master of
"immortal laughter and immortal tears," Charles Dickens.
The Prodigal Judge is a shabby outcast, a tavern hanger-on, a genial
wayfarer who tarries longest where the inn is most hospitable, yet with
that suavity, that distinctive politeness and that saving grace of humor
peculiar to the American man. He has his own code of morals--very exalted
ones--but honors them in the breach rather than in the observance.
Clinging to the Judge closer than a brother, is Solomon Mahaffy--fallible
and failing like the rest of us, but with a sublime capacity for
friendship; and closer still, perhaps, clings little Hannibal, a boy
about whose parentage nothing is known until the end of the story.
Hannibal is charmed into tolerance of the Judge's picturesque vices,
while Miss Betty, lovely and capricious, is charmed into placing all her
affairs, both material and sentimental, in the hands of this delightful
old vagabond.
The Judge will be a fixed star in the firmament of fictional characters
as surely as David Harum or Col. Sellers. He is a source of infinite
delight, while this story of Mr. Roster's is one of the finest examples
of American literary craftmanship.
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End of Project Gutenberg's The Mistress of Shenstone, by Florence L. Barclay