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diff --git a/18665.txt b/18665.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..718cbce --- /dev/null +++ b/18665.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3650 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Molly Make-Believe, by Eleanor Hallowell Abbott + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Molly Make-Believe + +Author: Eleanor Hallowell Abbott + +Illustrator: Walter Tittle + +Release Date: June 23, 2006 [EBook #18665] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sankar Viswanathan, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + [Illustration: The so-called delicious, intangible joke] + + + Molly + + Make-Believe + + + + By + + Eleanor Hallowell Abbott + + + With Illustrations by + + Walter Tittle + + + + New York + + The Century Co. + + 1911 + + + + Copyright, 1910, by + + THE CENTURY CO. + + + + + * * * * * + +TO + +MY SILENT PARTNER + + * * * * * + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + +The so-called delicious, intangible joke _Frontispiece_ + +"Good enough!" he chuckled + +Every girl like Cornelia had to go South sometime between November and +March + +An elderly dame + +A much-freckled messenger-boy appeared dragging an exceedingly +obstreperous fox-terrier + +"Well I'll be hanged," growled Stanton, "if I'm going to be strung by +any boy!" + +Some poor old worn-out story-writer + +"Maybe she is--'colored,'" he volunteered at last + +"Oh! Don't I look--gorgeous!" she stammered + +"What?" cried Stanton, plunging forward in his chair + +Cornelia's mother answered this time + +He unbuckled the straps of his suitcase and turned the cover backward on +the floor + +"Are you a good boy?" she asked + +"It's only Carl," he said + + * * * * * + + + + +MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE + +I + + +The morning was as dark and cold as city snow could make it--a dingy +whirl at the window; a smoky gust through the fireplace; a shadow +black as a bear's cave under the table. Nothing in all the cavernous +room, loomed really warm or familiar except a glass of stale water, +and a vapid, half-eaten grape-fruit. + +Packed into his pudgy pillows like a fragile piece of china instead of +a human being Carl Stanton lay and cursed the brutal Northern winter. + +Between his sturdy, restive shoulders the rheumatism snarled and +clawed like some utterly frenzied animal trying to gnaw-gnaw-gnaw its +way out. Along the tortured hollow of his back a red-hot plaster fumed +and mulled and sucked at the pain like a hideously poisoned fang +trying to gnaw-gnaw-gnaw its way in. Worse than this; every four or +five minutes an agony as miserably comic as a crashing blow on one's +crazy bone went jarring and shuddering through his whole abnormally +vibrant system. + +In Stanton's swollen fingers Cornelia's large, crisp letter rustled +not softly like a lady's skirts but bleakly as an ice-storm in +December woods. + +Cornelia's whole angular handwriting, in fact, was not at all unlike a +thicket of twigs stripped from root to branch of every possible +softening leaf. + + "DEAR CARL" crackled the letter, "In spite of your + unpleasant tantrum yesterday, because I would not kiss you + good-by in the presence of my mother, I am good-natured + enough you see to write you a good-by letter after all. But + I certainly will not promise to write you daily, so kindly + do not tease me any more about it. In the first place, you + understand that I greatly dislike letter-writing. In the + second place you know Jacksonville quite as well as I do, so + there is no use whatsoever in wasting either my time or + yours in purely geographical descriptions. And in the third + place, you ought to be bright enough to comprehend by this + time just what I think about 'love-letters' anyway. I have + told you once that I love you, and that ought to be enough. + People like myself do not change. I may not talk quite as + much as other people, but when I once say a thing I mean it! + You will never have cause, I assure you, to worry about my + fidelity. + + "I will honestly try to write you every Sunday these next + six weeks, but I am not willing to literally promise even + that. Mother indeed thinks that we ought not to write very + much at all until our engagement is formally announced. + + "Trusting that your rheumatism is very much better this + morning, I am + + "Hastily yours, + + "CORNELIA. + + "P. S. Apropos of your sentimental passion for letters, I + enclose a ridiculous circular which was handed to me + yesterday at the Woman's Exchange. You had better + investigate it. It seems to be rather your kind." + +As the letter fluttered out of his hand Stanton closed his eyes with a +twitch of physical suffering. Then he picked up the letter again and +scrutinized it very carefully from the severe silver monogram to the +huge gothic signature, but he could not find one single thing that he +was looking for;--not a nourishing paragraph; not a stimulating +sentence; not even so much as one small sweet-flavored word that was +worth filching out of the prosy text to tuck away in the pockets of +his mind for his memory to munch on in its hungry hours. Now everybody +who knows anything at all knows perfectly well that even a business +letter does not deserve the paper which it is written on unless it +contains at least one significant phrase that is worth waking up in +the night to remember and think about. And as to the Lover who does +not write significant phrases--Heaven help the young mate who finds +himself thus mismated to so spiritually commonplace a nature! Baffled, +perplexed, strangely uneasy, Stanton lay and studied the barren page +before him. Then suddenly his poor heart puckered up like a persimmon +with the ghastly, grim shock which a man experiences when he realizes +for the first time that the woman whom he loves is not shy, +but--_stingy_. + +With snow and gloom and pain and loneliness the rest of the day +dragged by. Hour after hour, helpless, hopeless, utterly impotent as +though Time itself were bleeding to death, the minutes bubbled and +dripped from the old wooden clock. By noon the room was as murky as +dish-water, and Stanton lay and fretted in the messy, sudsy +snow-light like a forgotten knife or spoon until the janitor wandered +casually in about three o'clock and wrung a piercing little wisp of +flame out of the electric-light bulb over the sick man's head, and +raised him clumsily out of his soggy pillows and fed him indolently +with a sad, thin soup. Worst of all, four times in the dreadful +interim between breakfast and supper the postman's thrilly footsteps +soared up the long metallic stairway like an ecstatically towering +high-note, only to flat off discordantly at Stanton's door without +even so much as a one-cent advertisement issuing from the +letter-slide.--And there would be thirty or forty more days just like +this the doctor had assured him; and Cornelia had said that--perhaps, +if she felt like it--she would write--six--times. + +Then Night came down like the feathery soot of a smoky lamp, and +smutted first the bedquilt, then the hearth-rug, then the +window-seat, and then at last the great, stormy, faraway outside +world. But sleep did not come. Oh, no! Nothing new came at all except +that particularly wretched, itching type of insomnia which seems to +rip away from one's body the whole kind, protecting skin and expose +all the raw, ticklish fretwork of nerves to the mercy of a gritty +blanket or a wrinkled sheet. Pain came too, in its most brutally high +night-tide; and sweat, like the smother of furs in summer; and thirst +like the scrape of hot sand-paper; and chill like the clammy horror of +raw fish. Then, just as the mawkish cold, gray dawn came nosing over +the house-tops, and the poor fellow's mind had reached the point where +the slam of a window or the ripping creak of a floorboard would have +shattered his brittle nerves into a thousand cursing tortures--then +that teasing, tantalizing little friend of all rheumatic invalids--the +Morning Nap--came swooping down upon him like a sponge and wiped out +of his face every single bit of the sharp, precious evidence of pain +which he had been accumulating so laboriously all night long to +present to the Doctor as an incontestable argument in favor of an +opiate. + +Whiter than his rumpled bed, but freshened and brightened and +deceptively free from pain, he woke at last to find the pleasant +yellow sunshine mottling his dingy carpet like a tortoise-shell cat. +Instinctively with his first yawny return to consciousness he reached +back under his pillow for Cornelia's letter. + +Out of the stiff envelope fluttered instead the tiny circular to which +Cornelia had referred so scathingly. + +It was a dainty bit of gray Japanese tissue with the crimson-inked +text glowing gaily across it. Something in the whole color scheme and +the riotously quirky typography suggested at once the audaciously +original work of some young art student who was fairly splashing her +way along the road to financial independence, if not to fame. And this +is what the little circular said, flushing redder and redder and +redder with each ingenuous statement: + + THE SERIAL-LETTER COMPANY. + + Comfort and entertainment Furnished for Invalids, Travelers, + and all Lonely People. + + Real Letters + + from + + Imaginary Persons. + + Reliable as your Daily Paper. Fanciful as your Favorite + Story Magazine. Personal as a Message from your Best Friend. + Offering all the Satisfaction of _receiving_ Letters with no + Possible Obligation or even Opportunity of Answering Them. + +SAMPLE LIST. + +Letters from a Japanese Fairy. (Especially acceptable + Bi-weekly. to a Sick Child. Fragrant + with Incense and + Sandal Wood. Vivid + with purple and orange + and scarlet. Lavishly + interspersed with the + most adorable Japanese + toys that you ever saw + in your life.) + +Letters from a little Son. (Very sturdy. Very + Weekly. spunky. Slightly profane.) + +Letters from a Little Daughter. (Quaint. Old-Fashioned. + Weekly. Daintily Dreamy. + Mostly about Dolls.) + +Letters from a Banda-Sea Pirate. (Luxuriantly tropical. + Monthly. Salter than the Sea. + Sharper than Coral. + Unmitigatedly murderous. + Altogether blood-curdling.) + +Letters from a Gray-Plush Squirrel. (Sure to please Nature + Irregular. Lovers of Either + Sex. Pungent with + wood-lore. Prowly. + Scampery. Deliciously + wild. Apt to be just a + little bit messy perhaps + with roots and leaves + and nuts.) + +Letters from Your Favorite (Biographically consistent. + Historical Character. Historically reasonable. + Fortnightly. Most vivaciously + human. Really unique.) + +Love Letters. (Three grades: Shy. + Daily. Medium. Very Intense.) + + In ordering letters kindly state approximate age, prevalent + tastes,--and in case of invalidism, the presumable severity + of illness. For price list, etc., refer to opposite page. + Address all communications to Serial Letter Co. Box, etc., + etc. + +As Stanton finished reading the last solemn business detail he +crumpled up the circular into a little gray wad, and pressed his blond +head back into the pillows and grinned and grinned. + +"Good enough!" he chuckled. "If Cornelia won't write to me there seem +to be lots of other congenial souls who will--cannibals and rodents +and kiddies. All the same--" he ruminated suddenly: "All the same I'll +wager that there's an awfully decent little brain working away behind +all that red ink and nonsense." + +Still grinning he conjured up the vision of some grim-faced +spinster-subscriber in a desolate country town starting out at last +for the first time in her life, with real, cheery self-importance, +rain or shine, to join the laughing, jostling, deliriously human +Saturday night crowd at the village post-office--herself the only +person whose expected letter never failed to come! From Squirrel or +Pirate or Hopping Hottentot--what did it matter to her? Just the +envelope alone was worth the price of the subscription. How the +pink-cheeked high school girls elbowed each other to get a peep at the +post-mark! How the--. Better still, perhaps some hopelessly unpopular +man in a dingy city office would go running up the last steps just a +little, wee bit faster--say the second and fourth Mondays in the +month--because of even a bought, made-up letter from Mary Queen of +Scots that he knew absolutely without slip or blunder would be +waiting there for him on his dusty, ink-stained desk among all the +litter of bills and invoices concerning--shoe leather. Whether 'Mary +Queen of Scots' prattled pertly of ancient English politics, or +whimpered piteously about dull-colored modern fashions--what did it +matter so long as the letter came, and smelled of faded +fleur-de-lis--or of Darnley's tobacco smoke? Altogether pleased by the +vividness of both these pictures Stanton turned quite amiably to his +breakfast and gulped down a lukewarm bowl of milk without half his +usual complaint. + +[Illustration: "Good enough!" he chuckled] + +It was almost noon before his troubles commenced again. Then like a +raging hot tide, the pain began in the soft, fleshy soles of his feet +and mounted up inch by inch through the calves of his legs, through +his aching thighs, through his tortured back, through his cringing +neck, till the whole reeking misery seemed to foam and froth in his +brain in an utter frenzy of furious resentment. Again the day dragged +by with maddening monotony and loneliness. Again the clock mocked him, +and the postman shirked him, and the janitor forgot him. Again the +big, black night came crowding down and stung him and smothered him +into a countless number of new torments. + +Again the treacherous Morning Nap wiped out all traces of the pain and +left the doctor still mercilessly obdurate on the subject of an +opiate. + +And Cornelia did not write. + +Not till the fifth day did a brief little Southern note arrive +informing him of the ordinary vital truths concerning a comfortable +journey, and expressing a chaste hope that he would not forget her. +Not even surprise, not even curiosity, tempted Stanton to wade twice +through the fashionable, angular handwriting. Dully impersonal, bleak +as the shadow of a brown leaf across a block of gray granite, +plainly--unforgivably--written with ink and ink only, the stupid, +loveless page slipped through his fingers to the floor. + +After the long waiting and the fretful impatience of the past few days +there were only two plausible ways in which to treat such a letter. +One way was with anger. One way was with amusement. With conscientious +effort Stanton finally summoned a real smile to his lips. + +Stretching out perilously from his snug bed he gathered the +waste-basket into his arms and commenced to dig in it like a sportive +terrier. After a messy minute or two he successfully excavated the +crumpled little gray tissue circular and smoothed it out carefully on +his humped-up knees. The expression in his eyes all the time was +quite a curious mixture of mischief and malice and rheumatism. + +"After all" he reasoned, out of one corner of his mouth, "After all, +perhaps I have misjudged Cornelia. Maybe it's only that she really +doesn't know just what a love-letter OUGHT to be like." + +Then with a slobbering fountain-pen and a few exclamations he +proceeded to write out a rather large check and a very small note. + + "TO THE SERIAL-LETTER CO." he addressed himself brazenly. + "For the enclosed check--which you will notice doubles the + amount of your advertised price--kindly enter my name for a + six weeks' special 'edition de luxe' subscription to one of + your love-letter serials. (Any old ardor that comes most + convenient) Approximate age of victim: 32. Business status: + rubber broker. Prevalent tastes: To be able to sit up and + eat and drink and smoke and go to the office the way other + fellows do. Nature of illness: The meanest kind of + rheumatism. Kindly deliver said letters as early and often + as possible! + + "Very truly yours, etc." + +Sorrowfully then for a moment he studied the depleted balance in his +check-book. "Of course" he argued, not unguiltily, "Of course that +check was just the amount that I was planning to spend on a +turquoise-studded belt for Cornelia's birthday; but if Cornelia's +brains really need more adorning than does her body--if this special +investment, in fact, will mean more to both of us in the long run than +a dozen turquoise belts--." + +Big and bland and blond and beautiful, Cornelia's physical personality +loomed up suddenly in his memory--so big, in fact, so bland, so blond, +so splendidly beautiful, that he realized abruptly with a strange +little tucked feeling in his heart that the question of Cornelia's +"brains" had never yet occurred to him. Pushing the thought +impatiently aside he sank back luxuriantly again into his pillows, and +grinned without any perceptible effort at all as he planned adroitly +how he would paste the Serial Love Letters one by one into the +gaudiest looking scrap-book that he could find and present it to +Cornelia on her birthday as a text-book for the "newly engaged" girl. +And he hoped and prayed with all his heart that every individual +letter would be printed with crimson ink on a violet-scented page and +would fairly reek from date to signature with all the joyous, ecstatic +silliness that graces either an old-fashioned novel or a modern +breach-of-promise suit. + +So, quite worn out at last with all this unwonted excitement, he +drowsed off to sleep for as long as ten minutes and dreamed that he +was a--bigamist. + +The next day and the next night were stale and mean and musty with a +drizzling winter rain. But the following morning crashed +inconsiderately into the world's limp face like a snowball spiked with +icicles. Gasping for breath and crunching for foothold the sidewalk +people breasted the gritty cold. Puckered with chills and goose-flesh, +the fireside people huddled and sneezed around their respective +hearths. Shivering like the ague between his cotton-flannel blankets, +Stanton's courage fairly raced the mercury in its downward course. By +noon his teeth were chattering like a mouthful of cracked ice. By +night the sob in his thirsty throat was like a lump of salt and snow. +But nothing outdoors or in, from morning till night, was half as +wretchedly cold and clammy as the rapidly congealing hot-water bottle +that slopped and gurgled between his aching shoulders. + +It was just after supper when a messenger boy blurted in from the +frigid hall with a great gust of cold and a long pasteboard box and a +letter. + +Frowning with perplexity Stanton's clumsy fingers finally dislodged +from the box a big, soft blanket-wrapper with an astonishingly +strange, blurry pattern of green and red against a somber background +of rusty black. With increasing amazement he picked up the +accompanying letter and scanned it hastily. + +"Dear Lad," the letter began quite intimately. But it was not signed +"Cornelia". It was signed "Molly"! + + + + +II + + +Turning nervously back to the box's wrapping-paper Stanton read once +more the perfectly plain, perfectly unmistakable name and +address,--his own, repeated in absolute duplicate on the envelope. +Quicker than his mental comprehension mere physical embarrassment +began to flush across his cheek-bones. Then suddenly the whole truth +dawned on him: The first installment of his Serial-Love-Letter had +arrived. + +"But I thought--thought it would be type-written," he stammered +miserably to himself. "I thought it would be a--be a--hectographed +kind of a thing. Why, hang it all, it's a real letter! And when I +doubled my check and called for a special edition de luxe--I wasn't +sitting up on my hind legs begging for real presents!" + +But "Dear Lad" persisted the pleasant, round, almost childish +handwriting: + + "DEAR LAD, + + "I could have _cried_ yesterday when I got your letter + telling me how sick you were. Yes!--But crying wouldn't + 'comfy' you any, would it? So just to send you + right-off-quick something to prove that I'm thinking of you, + here's a great, rollicking woolly wrapper to keep you snug + and warm this very night. I wonder if it would interest you + any at all to know that it is made out of a most larksome + Outlaw up on my grandfather's sweet-meadowed farm,--a + really, truly Black Sheep that I've raised all my own + sweaters and mittens on for the past five years. Only it + takes two whole seasons to raise a blanket-wrapper, so + please be awfully much delighted with it. And oh, Mr. Sick + Boy, when you look at the funny, blurry colors, couldn't you + just please pretend that the tinge of green is the flavor + of pleasant pastures, and that the streak of red is the + Cardinal Flower that blazed along the edge of the noisy + brook? + + "Goodby till to-morrow, + + "MOLLY." + +With a face so altogether crowded with astonishment that there was no +room left in it for pain, Stanton's lame fingers reached out +inquisitively and patted the warm, woolly fabric. + +"Nice old Lamb--y" he acknowledged judicially. + +Then suddenly around the corners of his under lip a little balky smile +began to flicker. + +"Of course I'll save the letter for Cornelia," he protested, "but no +one could really expect me to paste such a scrumptious blanket-wrapper +into a scrap-book." + +Laboriously wriggling his thinness and his coldness into the black +sheep's luxuriant, irresponsible fleece, a bulging side-pocket in the +wrapper bruised his hip. Reaching down very temperishly to the pocket +he drew forth a small lace-trimmed handkerchief knotted pudgily across +a brimming handful of fir-balsam needles. Like a scorching hot August +breeze the magic, woodsy fragrance crinkled through his nostrils. + +"These people certainly know how to play the game all right," he +reasoned whimsically, noting even the consistent little letter "M" +embroidered in one corner of the handkerchief. + +Then, because he was really very sick and really very tired, he +snuggled down into the new blessed warmth and turned his gaunt cheek +to the pillow and cupped his hand for sleep like a drowsy child with +its nose and mouth burrowed eagerly down into the expectant draught. +But the cup did not fill.--Yet scented deep in his curved, empty, +balsam-scented fingers lurked--somehow--somewhere--the dregs of a +wonderful dream: Boyhood, with the hot, sweet flutter of summer woods, +and the pillowing warmth of the soft, sunbaked earth, and the crackle +of a twig, and the call of a bird, and the drone of a bee, and the +great blue, blue mystery of the sky glinting down through a +green-latticed canopy overhead. + +For the first time in a whole, cruel tortuous week he actually smiled +his way into his morning nap. + +When he woke again both the sun and the Doctor were staring pleasantly +into his face. + +"You look better!" said the Doctor. "And more than that you don't look +half so 'cussed cross'." + +"Sure," grinned Stanton, with all the deceptive, undauntable optimism +of the Just-Awakened. + +"Nevertheless," continued the Doctor more soberly, "there ought to be +somebody a trifle more interested in you than the janitor to look +after your food and your medicine and all that. I'm going to send you +a nurse." + +"Oh, no!" gasped Stanton. "I don't need one! And frankly--I can't +afford one." Shy as a girl, his eyes eluded the doctor's frank stare. +"You see," he explained diffidently; "you see, I'm just engaged to be +married--and though business is fairly good and all that--my being +away from the office six or eight weeks is going to cut like the deuce +into my commissions--and roses cost such a horrid price last Fall--and +there seems to be a game law on diamonds this year; they practically +fine you for buying them, and--" + +The Doctor's face brightened irrelevantly. "Is she a Boston young +lady?" he queried. + +"Oh, yes," beamed Stanton. + +"Good!" said the Doctor. "Then of course she can keep some sort of an +eye on you. I'd like to see her. I'd like to talk with her--give her +just a few general directions as it were." + +A flush deeper than any mere love-embarrassment spread suddenly over +Stanton's face. + +"She isn't here," he acknowledged with barely analyzable +mortification. "She's just gone south." + +"_Just_ gone south?" repeated the Doctor. "You don't mean--since +you've been sick?" + +Stanton nodded with a rather wobbly grin, and the Doctor changed the +subject abruptly, and busied himself quickly with the least +bad-tasting medicine that he could concoct. + +Then left alone once more with a short breakfast and a long morning, +Stanton sank back gradually into a depression infinitely deeper than +his pillows, in which he seemed to realize with bitter contrition that +in some strange, unintentional manner his purely innocent, +matter-of-fact statement that Cornelia "had just gone south" had +assumed the gigantic disloyalty of a public proclamation that the lady +of his choice was not quite up to the accepted standard of feminine +intelligence or affections, though to save his life he could not +recall any single glum word or gloomy gesture that could possibly have +conveyed any such erroneous impression to the Doctor. + +[Illustration: Every girl like Cornelia had to go South sometime +between November and March] + +"Why Cornelia _had_ to go South," he reasoned conscientiously. "Every +girl like Cornelia _had_ to go South sometime between November and +March. How could any mere man even hope to keep rare, choice, +exquisite creatures like that cooped up in a slushy, snowy New +England city--when all the bright, gorgeous, rose-blooming South +was waiting for them with open arms? 'Open arms'! Apparently it was +only 'climates' that were allowed any such privileges with girls like +Cornelia. Yet, after all, wasn't it just exactly that very quality of +serene, dignified aloofness that had attracted him first to Cornelia +among the score of freer-mannered girls of his acquaintance?" + +Glumly reverting to his morning paper, he began to read and reread +with dogged persistence each item of politics and foreign news--each +gibbering advertisement. + +At noon the postman dropped some kind of a message through the slit in +the door, but the plainly discernible green one-cent stamp forbade any +possible hope that it was a letter from the South. At four o'clock +again someone thrust an offensive pink gas bill through the +letter-slide. At six o'clock Stanton stubbornly shut his eyes up +perfectly tight and muffled his ears in the pillow so that he would +not even know whether the postman came or not. The only thing that +finally roused him to plain, grown-up sense again was the joggle of +the janitor's foot kicking mercilessly against the bed. + +"Here's your supper," growled the janitor. + +On the bare tin tray, tucked in between the cup of gruel and the slice +of toast loomed an envelope--a real, rather fat-looking envelope. +Instantly from Stanton's mind vanished every conceivable sad thought +concerning Cornelia. With his heart thumping like the heart of any +love-sick school girl, he reached out and grabbed what he supposed was +Cornelia's letter. + +But it was post-marked, "Boston"; and the handwriting was quite +plainly the handwriting of The Serial-Letter Co. + +Muttering an exclamation that was not altogether pretty he threw the +letter as far as he could throw it out into the middle of the floor, +and turning back to his supper began to crunch his toast furiously +like a dragon crunching bones. + +At nine o'clock he was still awake. At ten o'clock he was still awake. +At eleven o'clock he was still awake. At twelve o'clock he was still +awake.... At one o'clock he was almost crazy. By quarter past one, as +though fairly hypnotized, his eyes began to rivet themselves on the +little bright spot in the rug where the "serial-letter" lay gleaming +whitely in a beam of electric light from the street. Finally, in one +supreme, childish impulse of petulant curiosity, he scrambled +shiveringly out of his blankets with many "O--h's" and "O-u-c-h-'s," +recaptured the letter, and took it growlingly back to his warm bed. + +Worn out quite as much with the grinding monotony of his rheumatic +pains as with their actual acuteness, the new discomfort of straining +his eyes under the feeble rays of his night-light seemed almost a +pleasant diversion. + +The envelope was certainly fat. As he ripped it open, three or four +folded papers like sleeping-powders, all duly numbered, "1 A. M.," "2 +A. M.," "3 A. M.," "4 A. M." fell out of it. With increasing +inquisitiveness he drew forth the letter itself. + +"Dear Honey," said the letter quite boldly. Absurd as it was, the +phrase crinkled Stanton's heart just the merest trifle. + + "DEAR HONEY: + + "There are so many things about your sickness that worry me. + Yes there are! I worry about your pain. I worry about the + horrid food that you're probably getting. I worry about the + coldness of your room. But most of anything in the world I + worry about your _sleeplessness_. Of course you _don't_ + sleep! That's the trouble with rheumatism. It's such an old + Night-Nagger. Now do you know what I'm going to do to you? + I'm going to evolve myself into a sort of a Rheumatic Nights + Entertainment--for the sole and explicit purpose of trying + to while away some of your long, dark hours. Because if + you've simply _got_ to stay awake all night long and + think--you might just as well be thinking about ME, Carl + Stanton. What? Do you dare smile and suggest for a moment + that just because of the Absence between us I cannot make + myself vivid to you? Ho! Silly boy! Don't you know that the + plainest sort of black ink throbs more than some blood--and + the touch of the softest hand is a harsh caress compared to + the touch of a reasonably shrewd pen? Here--now, I say--this + very moment: Lift this letter of mine to your face, and + swear--if you're honestly able to--that you can't smell the + rose in my hair! A cinnamon rose, would you say--a yellow, + flat-faced cinnamon rose? Not quite so lusciously fragrant + as those in your grandmother's July garden? A trifle paler? + Perceptibly cooler? Something forced into blossom, perhaps, + behind brittle glass, under barren winter moonshine? And + yet--A-h-h! Hear me laugh! You didn't really mean to let + yourself lift the page and smell it, did you? But what did I + tell you? + + "I mustn't waste too much time, though, on this nonsense. + What I really wanted to say to you was: Here are four--not + 'sleeping potions', but waking potions--just four silly + little bits of news for you to think about at one o'clock, + and two, and three--and four, if you happen to be so + miserable to-night as to be awake even then. + + "With my love, + + "MOLLY." + +Whimsically, Stanton rummaged around in the creases of the bed-spread +and extricated the little folded paper marked, "No. 1 o'clock." The +news in it was utterly brief. + +"My hair is red," was all that it announced. + +With a sniff of amusement Stanton collapsed again into his pillows. +For almost an hour then he lay considering solemnly whether a +red-headed girl could possibly be pretty. By two o'clock he had +finally visualized quite a striking, Juno-esque type of beauty with a +figure about the regal height of Cornelia's, and blue eyes perhaps +just a trifle hazier and more mischievous. + +But the little folded paper marked, "No. 2 o'clock," announced +destructively: "My eyes are brown. And I am _very_ little." + +With an absurdly resolute intention to "play the game" every bit as +genuinely as Miss Serial-Letter Co. was playing it, Stanton refrained +quite heroically from opening the third dose of news until at least +two big, resonant city clocks had insisted that the hour was ripe. By +that time the grin in his face was almost bright enough of itself to +illuminate any ordinary page. + +"I am lame," confided the third message somewhat depressingly. Then +snugglingly in parenthesis like the tickle of lips against his ear +whispered the one phrase: "My picture is in the fourth paper,--if you +should happen still to be awake at four o'clock." + +Where now was Stanton's boasted sense of honor concerning the ethics +of playing the game according to directions? "Wait a whole hour to see +what Molly looked like? Well he guessed not!" Fumbling frantically +under his pillow and across the medicine stand he began to search for +the missing "No. 4 o'clock." Quite out of breath, at last he +discovered it lying on the floor a whole arm's length away from the +bed. Only with a really acute stab of pain did he finally succeed in +reaching it. Then with fingers fairly trembling with effort, he +opened forth and disclosed a tiny snap-shot photograph of a +grim-jawed, scrawny-necked, much be-spectacled elderly dame with a +huge gray pompadour. + +[Illustration: An elderly dame] + +"Stung!" said Stanton. + +Rheumatism or anger, or something, buzzed in his heart like a bee the +rest of the night. + +Fortunately in the very first mail the next morning a postal-card came +from Cornelia--such a pretty postal-card too, with a bright-colored +picture of an inordinately "riggy" looking ostrich staring over a neat +wire fence at an eager group of unmistakably Northern tourists. +Underneath the picture was written in Cornelia's own precious hand the +heart-thrilling information: + +"We went to see the Ostrich Farm yesterday. It was really very +interesting. C." + + + + +III + + +For quite a long time Stanton lay and considered the matter judicially +from every possible point of view. "It would have been rather +pleasant," he mused "to know who 'we' were." Almost childishly his +face cuddled into the pillow. "She might at least have told me the +name of the ostrich!" he smiled grimly. + +Thus quite utterly denied any nourishing Cornelia-flavored food for +his thoughts, his hungry mind reverted very naturally to the +tantalizing, evasive, sweetly spicy fragrance of the 'Molly' +episode--before the really dreadful photograph of the unhappy +spinster-lady had burst upon his blinking vision. + +Scowlingly he picked up the picture and stared and stared at it. +Certainly it was grim. But even from its grimness emanated the same +faint, mysterious odor of cinnamon roses that lurked in the +accompanying letter. "There's some dreadful mistake somewhere," he +insisted. Then suddenly he began to laugh, and reaching out once more +for pen and paper, inscribed his second letter and his first complaint +to the Serial-Letter Co. + +"To the Serial-Letter Co.," he wrote sternly, with many ferocious +tremors of dignity and rheumatism. + + "Kindly allow me to call attention to the fact that in my + recent order of the 18th inst., the specifications + distinctly stated 'love-letters', and _not_ any + correspondence whatsoever,--no matter how exhilarating from + either a 'Gray-Plush Squirrel' or a 'Banda Sea Pirate' as + evidenced by enclosed photograph which I am hereby + returning. Please refund money at once or forward me + without delay a consistent photograph of a 'special edition + de luxe' girl. + + "Very truly yours." + +The letter was mailed by the janitor long before noon. Even as late as +eleven o'clock that night Stanton was still hopefully expecting an +answer. Nor was he altogether disappointed. Just before midnight a +messenger boy appeared with a fair-sized manilla envelope, quite stiff +and important looking. + + "Oh, please, Sir," said the enclosed letter, "Oh, please, + Sir, we cannot refund your subscription money because--we + have spent it. But if you will only be patient, we feel + quite certain that you will be altogether satisfied in the + long run with the material offered you. As for the + photograph recently forwarded to you, kindly accept our + apologies for a very clumsy mistake made here in the office. + Do any of these other types suit you better? Kindly mark + selection and return all pictures at your earliest + convenience." + +Before the messenger boy's astonished interest Stanton spread out on +the bed all around him a dozen soft sepia-colored photographs of a +dozen different girls. Stately in satin, or simple in gingham, or +deliciously hoydenish in fishing-clothes, they challenged his +surprised attention. Blonde, brunette, tall, short, posing with +wistful tenderness in the flickering glow of an open fire, or smiling +frankly out of a purely conventional vignette--they one and all defied +him to choose between them. + +"Oh! Oh!" laughed Stanton to himself. "Am I to try and separate her +picture from eleven pictures of her friends! So that's the game, is +it? Well, I guess not! Does she think I'm going to risk choosing a +tom-boy girl if the gentle little creature with the pansies is really +herself? Or suppose she truly is the enchanting little tom-boy, would +she probably write me any more nice funny letters if I solemnly +selected her sentimental, moony-looking friend at the heavily draped +window?" + +Craftily he returned all the pictures unmarked to the envelope, and +changing the address hurried the messenger boy off to remail it. Just +this little note, hastily scribbled in pencil went with the envelope: + + "DEAR SERIAL-LETTER CO.: + + "The pictures are not altogether satisfactory. It isn't a + 'type' that I am looking for, but a definite likeness of + 'Molly' herself. Kindly rectify the mistake without further + delay! or REFUND THE MONEY." + +Almost all the rest of the night he amused himself chuckling to think +how the terrible threat about refunding the money would confuse and +conquer the extravagant little Art Student. + +But it was his own hands that did the nervous trembling when he opened +the big express package that arrived the next evening, just as his +tiresome porridge supper was finished. + + "Ah, Sweetheart--" said the dainty note tucked inside the + package--"Ah, Sweetheart, the little god of love be praised + for one true lover--Yourself! So it is a picture of _me_ + that you want? The _real me_! The _truly me_! No mere pink + and white likeness? No actual proof even of 'seared and + yellow age'? No curly-haired, coquettish attractiveness that + the shampoo-lady and the photograph-man trapped me into for + that one single second? No deceptive profile of the best + side of my face--and I, perhaps, blind in the other eye? Not + even a fair, honest, every-day portrait of my father's and + mother's composite features--but a picture of _myself_! + Hooray for you! A picture, then, not of my physiognomy, but + of my _personality_. Very well, sir. Here is the + portrait--true to the life--in this great, clumsy, + conglomerate package of articles that + represent--perhaps--not even so much the prosy, literal + things that I am, as the much more illuminating and + significant things that _I would like to be_. It's what we + would 'like to be' that really tells most about us, isn't + it, Carl Stanton? The brown that I have to wear talks loudly + enough, for instance, about the color of my complexion, but + the forbidden pink that I most crave whispers infinitely + more intimately concerning the color of my spirit. And as to + my Face--_am I really obliged to have a face_? Oh, no--o! + 'Songs without words' are surely the only songs in the world + that are packed to the last lilting note with utterly + limitless meanings. So in these 'letters without faces' I + cast myself quite serenely upon the mercy of your + imagination. + + "What's that you say? That I've simply _got_ to have a face? + Oh, darn!--well, do your worst. Conjure up for me then, here + and now, any sort of features whatsoever that please your + fancy. Only, Man of Mine, just remember this in your + imaginings: Gift me with Beauty if you like, or gift me with + Brains, but do not make the crude masculine mistake of + gifting me with both. Thought furrows faces you know, and + after Adolescence only Inanity retains its heavenly + smoothness. Beauty even at its worst is a gorgeously + perfect, flower-sprinkled lawn over which the most ordinary, + every-day errands of life cannot cross without scarring. And + brains at their best are only a ploughed field teeming + always and forever with the worries of incalculable + harvests. Make me a little pretty, if you like, and a little + wise, but not too much of either, if you value the verities + of your Vision. There! I say: do your worst! Make me that + face, and that face only, that you _need the most_ in all + this big, lonesome world: food for your heart, or fragrance + for your nostrils. Only, one face or another--I insist upon + having _red hair_! + + "MOLLY." + +With his lower lip twisted oddly under the bite of his strong white +teeth, Stanton began to unwrap the various packages that comprised the +large bundle. If it was a "portrait" it certainly represented a +puzzle-picture. + +First there was a small, flat-footed scarlet slipper with a fluffy +gold toe to it. Definitely feminine. Definitely small. So much for +that! Then there was a sling-shot, ferociously stubby, and rather +confusingly boyish. After that, round and flat and tantalizing as an +empty plate, the phonograph disc of a totally unfamiliar song--"The +Sea Gull's Cry": a clue surely to neither age nor sex, but indicative +possibly of musical preference or mere individual temperament. After +that, a tiny geographical globe, with Kipling's phrase-- + + "For to admire an' for to see, + For to be'old this world so wide-- + It never done no good to me, + But I can't drop it if I tried!"-- + +written slantingly in very black ink across both hemispheres. Then an +empty purse--with a hole in it; a silver-embroidered gauntlet such as +horsemen wear on the Mexican frontier; a white table-doily partly +embroidered with silky blue forget-me-nots--the threaded needle still +jabbed in the work--and the small thimble, Stanton could have sworn, +still warm from the snuggle of somebody's finger. Last of all, a fat +and formidable edition of Robert Browning's poems; a tiny black +domino-mask, such as masqueraders wear, and a shimmering gilt picture +frame inclosing a pert yet not irreverent handmade adaptation of a +certain portion of St. Paul's epistle to the Corinthians: + + "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and + have not a Sense of Humor, I am become as sounding brass, or + a tinkling symbol. And though I have the gift of + Prophecy--and all knowledge--so that I could remove + Mountains, and have not a Sense of Humor, I am nothing. And + though I bestow all my Goods to feed the poor, and though I + give my body to be burned, and have not a Sense of Humor it + profiteth me nothing. + + "A sense of Humor suffereth long, and is kind. A Sense of + Humor envieth not. A Sense of Humor vaunteth not itself--is + not puffed up. Doth not behave itself Unseemly, seeketh not + its own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil--Beareth + all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, + endureth all things. A Sense of Humor never faileth. But + whether there be unpleasant prophecies they shall fail, + whether there be scolding tongues they shall cease, whether + there be unfortunate knowledge it shall vanish away. When I + was a fault-finding child I spake as a fault-finding child, + I understood as a fault-finding child,--but when I became a + woman I put away fault-finding things. + + "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three. _But the + greatest of these is a sense of humor!_" + +With a little chuckle of amusement not altogether devoid of a very +definite consciousness of being _teased_, Stanton spread all the +articles out on the bed-spread before him and tried to piece them +together like the fragments of any other jig-saw puzzle. Was the young +lady as intellectual as the Robert Browning poems suggested, or did +she mean simply to imply that she _wished_ she were? And did the +tom-boyish sling-shot fit by any possible chance with the dainty, +feminine scrap of domestic embroidery? And was the empty purse +supposed to be especially significant of an inordinate fondness for +phonograph music--or what? + +Pondering, puzzling, fretting, fussing, he dozed off to sleep at last +before he even knew that it was almost morning. And when he finally +woke again he found the Doctor laughing at him because he lay holding +a scarlet slipper in his hand. + + + + +IV + + +The next night, very, very late, in a furious riot of wind and snow +and sleet, a clerk from the drug-store just around the corner appeared +with a perfectly huge hot-water bottle fairly sizzling and bubbling +with warmth and relief for aching rheumatic backs. + +"Well, where in thunder--?" groaned Stanton out of his cold and pain +and misery. + +"Search me!" said the drug clerk. "The order and the money for it came +in the last mail this evening. 'Kindly deliver largest-sized hot-water +bottle, boiling hot, to Mr. Carl Stanton,... 11.30 to-night.'" + +"OO-w!" gasped Stanton. "O-u-c-h! G-e-e!" then, "Oh, I wish I could +purr!" as he settled cautiously back at last to toast his pains +against the blessed, scorching heat. "Most girls," he reasoned with +surprising interest, "would have sent ice cold violets shrouded in +tissue paper. Now, how does this special girl know--Oh, Ouch! O-u-c-h! +O-u-c-h--i--t--y!" he crooned himself to sleep. + +The next night just at supper-time a much-freckled messenger-boy +appeared dragging an exceedingly obstreperous fox-terrier on the end +of a dangerously frayed leash. Planting himself firmly on the rug in +the middle of the room, with the faintest gleam of saucy pink tongue +showing between his teeth, the little beast sat and defied the entire +situation. Nothing apparently but the correspondence concerning the +situation was actually transferable from the freckled messenger boy to +Stanton himself. + + "Oh, dear Lad," said the tiny note, "I forgot to tell you my + real name, didn't I!--Well, my last name and the dog's first + name are just the same. Funny, isn't it? (You'll find it in + the back of almost any dictionary.) + + "With love, + + "MOLLY. + + "P. S. Just turn the puppy out in the morning and he'll go + home all right of his own accord." + +With his own pink tongue showing just a trifle between his teeth, +Stanton lay for a moment and watched the dog on the rug. Cocking his +small, keen, white head from one tippy angle to another, the little +terrier returned the stare with an expression that was altogether and +unmistakably mirthful. "Oh, it's a jolly little beggar, isn't it?" +said Stanton. "Come here, sir!" Only a suddenly pointed ear +acknowledged the summons. The dog himself did not budge. "Come here, I +say!" Stanton repeated with harsh peremptoriness. Palpably the +little dog winked at him. Then in succession the little dog dodged +adroitly a knife, a spoon, a copy of Browning's poems, and several +other sizable articles from the table close to Stanton's elbow. +Nothing but the dictionary seemed too big to throw. Finally with a +grin that could not be disguised even from the dog, Stanton began to +rummage with eye and hand through the intricate back pages of the +dictionary. + +[Illustration: A much-freckled messenger-boy appeared dragging an +exceedingly obstreperous fox-terrier] + +"You silly little fool," he said. "Won't you mind unless you are +spoken to by name?" + +"Aaron--Abidel--Abel--Abiathar--" he began to read out with petulant +curiosity, "Baldwin--Barachias--Bruno (Oh, hang!) Cadwallader--Caesar--Caleb +(What nonsense!) Ephraim--Erasmus (How could a girl be named anything like +that!) Gabriel--Gerard--Gershom (Imagine whistling a dog to the name of +Gershom!) Hannibal--Hezekiah--Hosea (Oh, Hell!)" Stolidly with unheedful, +drooping ears the little fox-terrier resumed his seat on the rug. +"Ichabod--Jabez--Joab," Stanton's voice persisted, experimentally. By nine +o'clock, in all possible variations of accent and intonation, he had quite +completely exhausted the alphabetical list as far as "K." and the little +dog was blinking himself to sleep on the far side of the room. Something +about the dog's nodding contentment started Stanton's mouth to yawning and +for almost an hour he lay in the lovely, restful consciousness of being at +least half asleep. But at ten o'clock he roused up sharply and resumed the +task at hand, which seemed suddenly to have assumed really vital +importance. "Laban--Lorenzo--Marcellus," he began again in a loud, clear, +compelling voice. "Meredith--" (Did the little dog stir? Did he sit up?) +"Meredith? Meredith?" The little dog barked. Something in Stanton's brain +flashed. "It is 'Merry' for the dog?" he quizzed. "Here, MERRY!" In another +instant the little creature had leaped upon the foot of his bed, and was +talking away at a great rate with all sorts of ecstatic grunts and growls. +Stanton's hand went out almost shyly to the dog's head. "So it's 'Molly +Meredith'," he mused. But after all there was no reason to be shy about it. +It was the _dog's_ head he was stroking. + +Tied to the little dog's collar when he went home the next morning was +a tiny, inconspicuous tag that said "That was easy! The pup's +name--and yours--is 'Meredith.' Funny name for a dog but nice for a +girl." + +The Serial-Letter Co.'s answers were always prompt, even though +perplexing. + + "DEAR LAD," came this special answer. "You are quite right + about the dog. And I compliment you heartily on your + shrewdness. But I must confess,--even though it makes you + very angry with me, that I have deceived you absolutely + concerning my own name. Will you forgive me utterly if I + hereby promise never to deceive you again? Why what could I + possibly, possibly do with a great solemn name like + 'Meredith'? My truly name, Sir, my really, truly, + honest-injun name is 'Molly Make-Believe'. Don't you know + the funny little old song about 'Molly Make-Believe'? Oh, + surely you do: + + "'Molly, Molly Make-Believe, + Keep to your play if you would not grieve! + For Molly-Mine here's a hint for you, + Things that are true are apt to be blue!' + + "Now you remember it, don't you? Then there's something + about + + "'Molly, Molly Make-a-Smile, + Wear it, swear it all the while. + Long as your lips are framed for a joke, + Who can prove that your heart is broke?' + + "Don't you love that 'is broke'! Then there's the last + verse--my favorite: + + "'Molly, Molly Make-a-Beau, + Make him of mist or make him of snow, + Long as your DREAM stays fine and fair, + _Molly, Molly what do you care!_'" + +"Well, I'll wager that her name _is_ 'Meredith' just the same," vowed +Stanton, "and she's probably madder than scat to think that I hit it +right." + +Whether the daily overtures from the Serial-Letter Co. proved to be +dogs or love-letters or hot-water bottles or funny old songs, it was +reasonably evident that something unique was practically guaranteed to +happen every single, individual night of the six weeks' subscription +contract. Like a youngster's joyous dream of chronic Christmas Eves, +this realization alone was enough to put an absurdly delicious thrill +of expectancy into any invalid's otherwise prosy thoughts. + +Yet the next bit of attention from the Serial-Letter Co. did not +please Stanton one half as much as it embarrassed him. + +Wandering socially into the room from his own apartments below, a +young lawyer friend of Stanton's had only just seated himself on the +foot of Stanton's bed when an expressman also arrived with two large +pasteboard hat-boxes which he straightway dumped on the bed between +the two men with the laconic message that he would call for them again +in the morning. + +"Heaven preserve me!" gasped Stanton. "What is this?" + +Fearsomely out of the smaller of the two boxes he lifted with much +rustling snarl of tissue paper a woman's brown fur-hat,--very soft, +very fluffy, inordinately jaunty with a blush-pink rose nestling deep +in the fur. Out of the other box, twice as large, twice as rustly, +flaunted a green velvet cavalier's hat, with a green ostrich feather +as long as a man's arm drooping languidly off the brim. + +"Holy Cat!" said Stanton. + +Pinned to the green hat's crown was a tiny note. The handwriting at +least was pleasantly familiar by this time. + +"Oh, I say!" cried the lawyer delightedly. + +With a desperately painful effort at nonchalance, Stanton shoved his +right fist into the brown hat and his left fist into the green one, +and raised them quizzically from the bed. + +"Darned--good-looking--hats," he stammered. + +"Oh, I say!" repeated the lawyer with accumulative delight. + +Crimson to the tip of his ears, Stanton rolled his eyes frantically +towards the little note. + +"She sent 'em up just to show 'em to me," he quoted wildly. "Just +'cause I'm laid up so and can't get out on the streets to see the +styles for myself.--And I've got to choose between them for her!" he +ejaculated. "She says she can't decide alone which one to keep!" + +"Bully for her!" cried the lawyer, surprisingly, slapping his knee. +"The cunning little girl!" + +Speechless with astonishment, Stanton lay and watched his visitor, +then "Well, which one would you choose?" he asked with unmistakable +relief. + +The lawyer took the hats and scanned them carefully. "Let--me--see" he +considered. "Her hair is so blond--" + +"No, it's red!" snapped Stanton. + +With perfect courtesy the lawyer swallowed his mistake. "Oh, excuse +me," he said. "I forgot. But with her height--" + +"She hasn't any height," groaned Stanton. "I tell you she's little." + +"Choose to suit yourself," said the lawyer coolly. He himself had +admired Cornelia from afar off. + +The next night, to Stanton's mixed feelings of relief and +disappointment the "surprise" seemed to consist in the fact that +nothing happened at all. Fully until midnight the sense of relief +comforted him utterly. But some time after midnight, his hungry mind, +like a house-pet robbed of an accustomed meal, began to wake and fret +and stalk around ferociously through all the long, empty, aching, +early morning hours, searching for something novel to think about. + +By supper-time the next evening he was in an irritable mood that made +him fairly clutch the special delivery letter out of the postman's +hand. It was rather a thin, tantalizing little letter, too. All it +said was, + + "To-night, Dearest, until one o'clock, in a cabbage-colored + gown all shimmery with green and blue and September + frost-lights, I'm going to sit up by my white birch-wood + fire and read aloud to you. Yes! Honest-Injun! And out of + Browning, too. Did you notice your copy was marked? What + shall I read to you? Shall it be + + "'If I could have that little head of hers + Painted upon a background of pale gold.' + + "or + + 'Shall I sonnet-sing you about myself? + Do I live in a house you would like to see?' + + "or + + 'I am a Painter who cannot paint, + ----No end to all I cannot do. + _Yet do one thing at least I can, + Love a man, or hate a man!_' + + "or just + + 'Escape me? + Never, + Beloved! + While I am I, and you are you!' + + "Oh, Honey! Won't it be fun? Just you and I, perhaps, in all + this Big City, sitting up and thinking about each other. + Can you smell the white birch smoke in this letter?" + +[Illustration: "Well I'll be hanged," growled Stanton, "if I'm going +to be strung by any boy!"] + +Almost unconsciously Stanton raised the page to his face. +Unmistakably, up from the paper rose the strong, vivid scent--of a +briar-wood pipe. + +"Well I'll be hanged," growled Stanton, "if I'm going to be strung by +any boy!" Out of all proportion the incident irritated him. + +But when, the next evening, a perfectly tremendous bunch of yellow +jonquils arrived with a penciled line suggesting, "If you'll put these +solid gold posies in your window to-morrow morning at eight o'clock, +so I'll surely know just which window is yours, I'll look up--when I +go past," Stanton most peremptorily ordered the janitor to display the +bouquet as ornately as possible along the narrow window-sill of the +biggest window that faced the street. Then all through the night he +lay dozing and waking intermittently, with a lovely, scared feeling in +the pit of his stomach that something really rather exciting was about +to happen. By surely half-past seven he rose laboriously from his bed, +huddled himself into his black-sheep wrapper and settled himself down +as warmly as could be expected, close to the draughty edge of the +window. + + + + +V + + +"Little and lame and red-haired and brown-eyed," he kept repeating to +himself. + +Old people and young people, cab-drivers and jaunty young girls, and +fat blue policeman, looked up, one and all with quick-brightening +faces at the really gorgeous Spring-like flame of jonquils, but in a +whole chilly, wearisome hour the only red-haired person that passed +was an Irish setter puppy, and the only lame person was a +wooden-legged beggar. + +Cold and disgusted as he was, Stanton could not altogether help +laughing at his own discomfiture. + +"Why--hang that little girl! She ought to be s-p-a-n-k-e-d," he +chuckled as he climbed back into his tiresome bed. + +Then as though to reward his ultimate good-nature the very next mail +brought him a letter from Cornelia, and rather a remarkable letter +too, as in addition to the usual impersonal comments on the weather +and the tennis and the annual orange crop, there was actually one +whole, individual, intimate sentence that distinguished the letter as +having been intended solely for him rather than for Cornelia's +dressmaker or her coachman's invalid daughter, or her own youngest +brother. This was the sentence: + + "Really, Carl, you don't know how glad I am that in spite of + all your foolish objections, I kept to my original purpose + of not announcing my engagement until after my Southern + trip. You've no idea what a big difference it makes in a + girl's good time at a great hotel like this." + +This sentence surely gave Stanton a good deal of food for his day's +thoughts, but the mental indigestion that ensued was not altogether +pleasant. + +Not until evening did his mood brighten again. Then-- + + "Lad of Mine," whispered Molly's gentler letter. "Lad of + Mine, _how blond your hair is_!--Even across the + chin-tickling tops of those yellow jonquils this morning, I + almost laughed to see the blond, blond shine of you.--Some + day I'm going to stroke that hair." (Yes!) + + "P. S. The Little Dog came home all right." + +With a gasp of dismay Stanton sat up abruptly in bed and tried to +revisualize every single, individual pedestrian who had passed his +window in the vicinity of eight o'clock that morning. "She evidently +isn't lame at all," he argued, "or little, or red-haired, or anything. +Probably her name isn't Molly, and presumably it isn't even +'Meredith.' But at least she did go by: And is my hair so very +blond?" he asked himself suddenly. Against all intention his mouth +began to prance a little at the corners. + +As soon as he could possibly summon the janitor, he despatched his +third note to the Serial-Letter Co., but this one bore a distinctly +sealed inner envelope, directed, "For Molly. Personal." And the +message in it, though brief was utterly to the point. "Couldn't you +_please_ tell a fellow who you are?" + +But by the conventional bed-time hour the next night he wished most +heartily that he had not been so inquisitive, for the only +entertainment that came to him at all was a jonquil-colored telegram +warning him-- + + "Where the apple reddens do not pry, + Lest we lose our Eden--you and I." + +The couplet was quite unfamiliar to Stanton, but it rhymed sickeningly +through his brain all night long like the consciousness of an +over-drawn bank account. + +It was the very next morning after this that all the Boston papers +flaunted Cornelia's aristocratic young portrait on their front pages +with the striking, large-type announcement that "One of Boston's +Fairest Debutantes Makes a Daring Rescue in Florida waters. Hotel Cook +Capsized from Row Boat Owes His Life to the Pluck and Endurance--etc., +etc." + +With a great sob in his throat and every pulse pounding, Stanton lay +and read the infinite details of the really splendid story; a group of +young girls dallying on the Pier; a shrill cry from the bay; the +sudden panic-stricken helplessness of the spectators, and then with +equal suddenness the plunge of a single, feminine figure into the +water; the long hard swim; the furious struggle; the final victory. +Stingingly, as though it had been fairly branded into his eyes, he +saw the vision of Cornelia's heroic young face battling above the +horrible, dragging-down depths of the bay. The bravery, the risk, the +ghastly chances of a less fortunate ending, sent shiver after shiver +through his already tortured senses. All the loving thoughts in his +nature fairly leaped to do tribute to Cornelia. "Yes!" he reasoned, +"Cornelia was made like that! No matter what the cost to herself--no +matter what was the price--Cornelia would never, never fail to do her +_duty_!" When he thought of the weary, lagging, riskful weeks that +were still to ensue before he should actually see Cornelia again, he +felt as though he should go utterly mad. The letter that he wrote to +Cornelia that night was like a letter written in a man's own +heart-blood. His hand trembled so that he could scarcely hold the pen. + +Cornelia did not like the letter. She said so frankly. The letter did +not seem to her quite "nice." "Certainly," she attested, "it was not +exactly the sort of letter that one would like to show one's mother." +Then, in a palpably conscientious effort to be kind as well as just, +she began to prattle inkily again about the pleasant, warm, sunny +weather. Her only comment on saving the drowning man was the mere +phrase that she was very glad that she had learned to be a good +swimmer. Never indeed since her absence had she spoken of missing +Stanton. Not even now, after what was inevitably a heart-racking +adventure, did she yield her lover one single iota of the information +which he had a lover's right to claim. Had she been frightened, for +instance--way down in the bottom of that serene heart of hers had she +been frightened? In the ensuing desperate struggle for life had she +struggled just one little tiny bit harder because Stanton was in that +life? Now, in the dreadful, unstrung reaction of the adventure, did +her whole nature waken and yearn and cry out for that one heart in all +the world that belonged to her? Plainly, by her silence in the matter, +she did not intend to share anything as intimate even as her fear of +death with the man whom she claimed to love. + +It was just this last touch of deliberate, selfish aloofness that +startled Stanton's thoughts with the one persistent, brutally nagging +question: After all, was a woman's undeniably glorious ability to save +a drowning man the supreme, requisite of a happy marriage? + +Day by day, night by night, hour by hour, minute by minute, the +question began to dig into Stanton's brain, throwing much dust and +confusion into brain-corners otherwise perfectly orderly and sweet and +clean. + +Week by week, grown suddenly and morbidly analytical, he watched for +Cornelia's letters with increasingly passionate hopefulness, and met +each fresh disappointment with increasingly passionate resentment. +Except for the Serial-Letter Co.'s ingeniously varied attentions there +was practically nothing to help him make either day or night bearable. +More and more Cornelia's infrequent letters suggested exquisitely +painted empty dishes offered to a starving person. More and more +"Molly's" whimsical messages fed him and nourished him and joyously +pleased him like some nonsensically fashioned candy-box that yet +proved brimming full of real food for a real man. Fight as he would +against it, he began to cherish a sense of furious annoyance that +Cornelia's failure to provide for him had so thrust him out, as it +were, to feed among strangers. With frowning perplexity and real +worry he felt the tingling, vivid consciousness of Molly's personality +begin to permeate and impregnate his whole nature. Yet when he tried +to acknowledge and thereby cancel his personal sense of obligation to +this "Molly" by writing an exceptionally civil note of appreciation to +the Serial-Letter Co., the Serial-Letter Co. answered him tersely-- + +"Pray do not thank us for the jonquils,--blanket-wrapper, etc., etc. +Surely they are merely presents from yourself to yourself. It is your +money that bought them." + +And when he had replied briefly, "Well, thank you for your brains, +then!" the "company" had persisted with undue sharpness, "Don't thank +us for our brains. Brains are our business." + + + + +VI + + +It was one day just about the end of the fifth week that poor +Stanton's long-accumulated, long-suppressed perplexity blew up noisily +just like any other kind of steam. + +It was the first day, too, throughout all his illness that he had made +even the slightest pretext of being up and about. Slippered if not +booted, blanket-wrappered if not coated, shaven at least, if not +shorn, he had established himself fairly comfortably, late in the +afternoon, at his big study-table close to the fire, where, in his low +Morris chair, with his books and his papers and his lamp close at +hand, he had started out once more to try and solve the absurd little +problem that confronted him. Only an occasional twitch of pain in his +shoulder-blade, or an intermittent shudder of nerves along his spine +had interrupted in any possible way his almost frenzied absorption in +his subject. + +Here at the desk very soon after supper-time the Doctor had joined +him, and with an unusual expression of leisure and friendliness had +settled down lollingly on the other side of the fireplace with his +great square-toed shoes nudging the bright, brassy edge of the fender, +and his big meerschaum pipe puffing the whole bleak room most +deliciously, tantalizingly full of forbidden tobacco smoke. It was a +comfortable, warm place to chat. The talk had begun with politics, +drifted a little way toward the architecture of several new city +buildings, hovered a moment over the marriage of some mutual friend, +and then languished utterly. + +With a sudden narrowing-eyed shrewdness the Doctor turned and watched +an unwonted flicker of worry on Stanton's forehead. + +"What's bothering you, Stanton?" he asked, quickly. "Surely you're not +worrying any more about your rheumatism?" + +"No," said Stanton. "It--isn't--rheumatism." + +For an instant the two men's eyes held each other, and then Stanton +began to laugh a trifle uneasily. + +"Doctor," he asked quite abruptly, "Doctor, do you believe that any +possible conditions could exist--that would make it justifiable for a +man to show a woman's love-letter to another man?" + +"Why--y-e-s," said the Doctor cautiously, "I think so. There might +be--circumstances--" + +Still without any perceptible cause, Stanton laughed again, and +reaching out, picked up a folded sheet of paper from the table and +handed it to the Doctor. + +"Read that, will you?" he asked. "And read it out loud." + +With a slight protest of diffidence, the Doctor unfolded the paper, +scanned the page for an instant, and began slowly. + + "Carl of Mine. + + "There's one thing I forgot to tell you. When you go to buy + my engagement ring--I don't want any! No! I'd rather have + two wedding-rings instead--two perfectly plain gold + wedding-rings. And the ring for my passive left hand I want + inscribed, 'To Be a Sweetness More Desired than Spring!' and + the ring for my active right hand I want inscribed, 'His + Soul to Keep!' Just that. + + "And you needn't bother to write me that you don't + understand, because you are not expected to understand. It + is not Man's prerogative to understand. But you are + perfectly welcome if you want, to call me crazy, because I + am--utterly crazy on just one subject, and _that's you_. + Why, Beloved, if--" + +"Here!" cried Stanton suddenly reaching out and grabbing the letter. +"Here! You needn't read any more!" His cheeks were crimson. + +The Doctor's eyes focused sharply on his face. "That girl loves you," +said the Doctor tersely. For a moment then the Doctor's lips puffed +silently at his pipe, until at last with an almost bashful gesture, he +cried out abruptly: "Stanton, somehow I feel as though I owed you an +apology, or rather, owed your fiancee one. Somehow when you told me +that day that your young lady had gone gadding off to Florida +and--left you alone with your sickness, why I thought--well, most +evidently I have misjudged her." + +Stanton's throat gave a little gasp, then silenced again. He bit his +lips furiously as though to hold back an exclamation. Then suddenly +the whole perplexing truth burst forth from him. + +"That isn't from my fiancee!" he cried out. "That's just a +professional love-letter. I buy them by the dozen,--so much a week." +Reaching back under his pillow he extricated another letter. "_This_ +is from my fiancee," he said. "Read it. Yes, do." + +"Aloud?" gasped the Doctor. + +Stanton nodded. His forehead was wet with sweat. + + "DEAR CARL, + + "The weather is still very warm. I am riding horseback + almost every morning, however, and playing tennis almost + every afternoon. There seem to be an exceptionally large + number of interesting people here this winter. In regard to + the list of names you sent me for the wedding, really, Carl, + I do not see how I can possibly accommodate so many of your + friends without seriously curtailing my own list. After all + you must remember that it is the bride's day, not the + groom's. And in regard to your question as to whether we + expect to be home for Christmas and could I possibly arrange + to spend Christmas Day with you--why, Carl, you are + perfectly preposterous! Of course it is very kind of you to + invite me and all that, but how could mother and I possibly + come to your rooms when our engagement is not even + announced? And besides there is going to be a very smart + dance here Christmas Eve that I particularly wish to attend. + And there are plenty of Christmases coming for you and me. + + "Cordially yours, + + "CORNELIA. + + "P. S. Mother and I hope that your rheumatism is much + better." + +"That's the girl who loves me," said Stanton not unhumorously. Then +suddenly all the muscles around his mouth tightened like the facial +muscles of a man who is hammering something. "I mean it!" he insisted. +"I mean it--absolutely. That's the--girl--who--loves--me!" + +Silently the two men looked at each other for a second. Then they +both burst out laughing. + +"Oh, yes," said Stanton at last, "I know it's funny. That's just the +trouble with it. It's altogether too funny." + +Out of a book on the table beside him he drew the thin gray and +crimson circular of The Serial-Letter Co. and handed it to the Doctor. +Then after a moment's rummaging around on the floor beside him, he +produced with some difficulty a long, pasteboard box fairly bulging +with papers and things. + +"These are the--communications from my make-believe girl," he +confessed grinningly. "Oh, of course they're not all letters," he +hurried to explain. "Here's a book on South America.--I'm a rubber +broker, you know, and of course I've always been keen enough about the +New England end of my job, but I've never thought anything so very +special about the South American end of it. But that girl--that +make-believe girl, I mean--insists that I ought to know all about +South America, so she sent me this book; and it's corking reading, +too--all about funny things like eating monkeys and parrots and +toasted guinea-pigs--and sleeping outdoors in black jungle-nights +under mosquito netting, mind you, as a protection against prowling +panthers.--And here's a queer little newspaper cutting that she sent +me one blizzardy Sunday telling all about some big violin maker who +always went out into the forests himself and chose his violin woods +from the _north_ side of the trees. Casual little item. You don't +think anything about it at the moment. It probably isn't true. And to +save your soul you couldn't tell what kind of trees violins are made +out of, anyway. But I'll wager that never again will you wake in the +night to listen to the wind without thinking of the great +storm-tossed, moaning, groaning, slow-toughening forest +trees--learning to be violins!... And here's a funny little old silver +porringer that she gave me, she says, to make my 'old gray gruel taste +shinier.' And down at the bottom of the bowl--the ruthless little +pirate--she's taken a knife or a pin or something and scratched the +words, 'Excellent Child!'--But you know I never noticed that part of +it at all till last week. You see I've only been eating down to the +bottom of the bowl just about a week.--And here's a catalogue of a +boy's school, four or five catalogues in fact that she sent me one +evening and asked me if I please wouldn't look them over right away +and help her decide where to send her little brother. Why, man, it +took me almost all night! If you get the athletics you want in one +school, then likelier than not you slip up on the manual training, +and if they're going to schedule eight hours a week for Latin, why +where in Creation--?" + +Shrugging his shoulders as though to shrug aside absolutely any +possible further responsibility concerning, "little brother," Stanton +began to dig down deeper into the box. Then suddenly all the grin came +back to his face. + +"And here are some sample wall papers that she sent me for 'our +house'," he confided, flushing. "What do you think of that bronze one +there with the peacock feathers?--say, old man, think of a +library--and a cannel coal fire--and a big mahogany desk--and a +red-haired girl sitting against that paper! And this sun-shiny tint +for a breakfast-room isn't half bad, is it?--Oh yes, and here are the +time-tables, and all the pink and blue maps about Colorado and Arizona +and the 'Painted Desert'. If we can 'afford it,' she writes, she +'wishes we could go to the Painted Desert on our wedding trip.'--But +really, old man, you know it isn't such a frightfully expensive +journey. Why if you leave New York on Wednesday--Oh, hang it all! +What's the use of showing you any more of this nonsense?" he finished +abruptly. + +With brutal haste he started cramming everything back into place. "It +is nothing but nonsense!" he acknowledged conscientiously; "nothing in +the world except a boxful of make-believe thoughts from a make-believe +girl. And here," he finished resolutely, "are my own fiancee's +thoughts--concerning me." + +Out of his blanket-wrapper pocket he produced and spread out before +the Doctor's eyes five thin letters and a postal-card. + +"Not exactly thoughts concerning _you_, even so, are they?" quizzed +the Doctor. + +Stanton began to grin again. "Well, thoughts concerning the weather, +then--if that suits you any better." + +Twice the Doctor swallowed audibly. Then, "But it's hardly fair--is +it--to weigh a boxful of even the prettiest lies against five of even +the slimmest real, true letters?" he asked drily. + +"But they're not lies!" snapped Stanton. "Surely you don't call +anything a lie unless not only the fact is false, but the fancy, also, +is maliciously distorted! Now take this case right before us. Suppose +there isn't any 'little brother' at all; suppose there isn't any +'Painted Desert', suppose there isn't any 'black sheep up on a +grandfather's farm', suppose there isn't _anything_; suppose, I say, +that every single, individual fact stated is _false_--what earthly +difference does it make so long as the _fancy_ still remains the +truest, realest, dearest, funniest thing that ever happened to a +fellow in his life?" + +"Oh, ho!" said the Doctor. "So that's the trouble is it! It isn't just +rheumatism that's keeping you thin and worried looking, eh? It's only +that you find yourself suddenly in the embarrassing predicament of +being engaged to one girl and--in love with another?" + +"N--o!" cried Stanton frantically. "N--O! That's the mischief of +it--the very mischief! I don't even know that the Serial-Letter Co. +_is_ a girl. Why it might be an old lady, rather whimsically inclined. +Even the oldest lady, I presume, might very reasonably perfume her +note-paper with cinnamon roses. It might even be a boy. One letter +indeed smelt very strongly of being a boy--and mighty good tobacco, +too! And great heavens! what have I got to prove that it isn't even an +old man--some poor old worn out story-writer trying to ease out the +ragged end of his years?" + +[Illustration: Some poor old worn-out story-writer] + +"Have you told your fiancee about it?" asked the Doctor. + +Stanton's jaw dropped. "Have I told my fiancee about it?" he mocked. +"Why it was she who sent me the circular in the first place! But, +'tell her about it'? Why, man, in ten thousand years, and then some, +how could I make any sane person understand?" + +"You're beginning to make me understand," confessed the Doctor. + +"Then you're no longer sane," scoffed Stanton. "The crazy magic of it +has surely then taken possession of you too. Why how could I go to any +sane person like Cornelia--and Cornelia is the most absolutely, +hopelessly sane person you ever saw in your life--how could I go to +anyone like that, and announce: 'Cornelia, if you find any perplexing +change in me during your absence--and your unconscious neglect--it is +only that I have fallen quite madly in love with a person'--would you +call it a person?--who doesn't even exist. Therefore for the sake of +this 'person who doesn't exist', I ask to be released." + +"Oh! So you do ask to be released?" interrupted the Doctor. + +"Why, no! Certainly not!" insisted Stanton. "Suppose the girl you love +does hurt your feelings a little bit now and then, would any man go +ahead and give up a real flesh-and-blood sweetheart for the sake of +even the most wonderful paper-and-ink girl whom he was reading about +in an unfinished serial story? Would he, I say--would he?" + +"Y-e-s," said the Doctor soberly. "Y-e-s, I think he would, if what +you call the 'paper-and-ink girl' suggested suddenly an entirely new, +undreamed-of vista of emotional and spiritual satisfaction." + +"But I tell you 'she's' probably a BOY!" persisted Stanton doggedly. + +"Well, why don't you go ahead and find out?" quizzed the Doctor. + +"Find out?" cried Stanton hotly. "Find out? I'd like to know how +anybody is going to find out, when the only given address is a private +post-office box, and as far as I know there's no sex to a post-office +box. Find out? Why, man, that basket over there is full of my letters +returned to me because I tried to 'find out'. The first time I asked, +they answered me with just a teasing, snubbing telegram, but ever +since then they've simply sent back my questions with a stern printed +slip announcing, "Your letter of ---- is hereby returned to you. +Kindly allow us to call your attention to the fact that we are not +running a correspondence bureau. Our circular distinctly states, +etc." + +"Sent you a printed slip?" cried the Doctor scoffingly. "The +love-letter business must be thriving. Very evidently you are by no +means the only importunate subscriber." + +"Oh, Thunder!" growled Stanton. The idea seemed to be new to him and +not altogether to his taste. Then suddenly his face began to brighten. +"No, I'm lying," he said. "No, they haven't always sent me a printed +slip. It was only yesterday that they sent me a rather real sort of +letter. You see," he explained, "I got pretty mad at last and I wrote +them frankly and told them that I didn't give a darn who 'Molly' was, +but simply wanted to know _what_ she was. I told them that it was just +gratitude on my part, the most formal, impersonal sort of gratitude--a +perfectly plausible desire to say 'thank you' to some one who had +been awfully decent to me these past few weeks. I said right out that +if 'she' was a boy, why we'd surely have to go fishing together in the +spring, and if 'she' was an old man, the very least I could do would +be to endow her with tobacco, and if 'she' was an old lady, why I'd +simply be obliged to drop in now and then of a rainy evening and hold +her knitting for her." + +"And if 'she' were a girl?" probed the Doctor. + +Stanton's mouth began to twitch. "Then Heaven help me!" he laughed. + +"Well, what answer did you get?" persisted the Doctor. "What do you +call a realish sort of letter?" + +With palpable reluctance Stanton drew a gray envelope out of the cuff +of his wrapper. + +"I suppose you might as well see the whole business," he admitted +consciously. + +There was no special diffidence in the Doctor's manner this time. His +clutch on the letter was distinctly inquisitive, and he read out the +opening sentences with almost rhetorical effect. + + "Oh, Carl dear, you silly boy, WHY do you persist in + hectoring me so? Don't you understand that I've got only a + certain amount of ingenuity anyway, and if you force me to + use it all in trying to conceal my identity from you, how + much shall I possibly have left to devise schemes for your + amusement? Why do you persist, for instance, in wanting to + see my face? Maybe I haven't got any face! Maybe I lost my + face in a railroad accident. How do you suppose it would + make me feel, then, to have you keep teasing and + teasing.--Oh, Carl! + + "Isn't it enough for me just to tell you once for all that + there is an insuperable obstacle in the way of our ever + meeting. Maybe I've got a husband who is cruel to me. Maybe, + biggest obstacle of all, I've got a husband whom I am + utterly devoted to. Maybe, instead of any of these things, + I'm a poor, old wizened-up, Shut-In, tossing day and night + on a very small bed of very big pain. Maybe worse than being + sick I'm starving poor, and maybe, worse than being sick or + poor, I am most horribly tired of myself. Of course if you + are very young and very prancy and reasonably good-looking, + and still are tired of yourself, you can almost always rest + yourself by going on the stage where--with a little rouge + and a different colored wig, and a new nose, and skirts + instead of trousers, or trousers instead of skirts, and age + instead of youth, and badness instead of goodness--you can + give your ego a perfectly limitless number of happy + holidays. But if you were oldish, I say, and pitifully 'shut + in', just how would you go to work, I wonder, to rest your + personality? How for instance could you take your biggest, + grayest, oldest worry about your doctor's bill, and rouge it + up into a radiant, young joke? And how, for instance, out of + your lonely, dreary, middle-aged orphanhood are you going to + find a way to short-skirt your rheumatic pains, and braid + into two perfectly huge pink-bowed pigtails the hair that + you _haven't got_, and caper round so ecstatically before + the foot-lights that the old gentleman and lady in the front + seat absolutely swear you to be the living image of their + 'long lost Amy'? And how, if the farthest journey you ever + will take again is the monotonous hand-journey from your + pillow to your medicine bottle, then how, for instance, with + map or tinsel or attar of roses, can you go to work to solve + even just for your own satisfaction the romantic, shimmering + secrets of--Morocco? + + "Ah! You've got me now, you think? All decided in your mind + that I am an aged invalid? I didn't say so. I just said + 'maybe'. Likelier than not I've saved my climax for its + proper place. How do you know,--for instance, that I'm not + a--'Cullud Pusson'?--So many people are." + +Without signature of any sort, the letter ended abruptly then and +there, and as though to satisfy his sense of something left +unfinished, the Doctor began at the beginning and read it all over +again in a mumbling, husky whisper. + +"Maybe she is--'colored'," he volunteered at last. + +"Very likely," said Stanton perfectly cheerfully. "It's just those +occasional humorous suggestions that keep me keyed so heroically up to +the point where I'm actually infuriated if you even suggest that I +might be getting really interested in this mysterious Miss Molly! You +haven't said a single sentimental thing about her that I haven't +scoffed at--now have you?" + +"N--o," acknowledged the Doctor. "I can see that you've covered your +retreat all right. Even if the author of these letters should turn out +to be a one-legged veteran of the War of 1812, you still could say, 'I +told you so'. But all the same, I'll wager that you'd gladly give a +hundred dollars, cash down, if you could only go ahead and prove the +little girl's actual existence." + +Stanton's shoulders squared suddenly but his mouth retained at least a +faint vestige of its original smile. + +"You mistake the situation entirely," he said. "It's the little girl's +non-existence that I am most anxious to prove." + +Then utterly without reproach or interference, he reached over and +grabbed a forbidden cigar from the Doctor's cigar case, and lighted +it, and retreated as far as possible into the gray film of smoke. + +It was minutes and minutes before either man spoke again. Then at last +after much crossing and re-crossing of his knees the Doctor asked +drawlingly, "And when is it that you and Cornelia are planning to be +married?" + +"Next April," said Stanton briefly. + +"U--m--m," said the Doctor. After a few more minutes he said, +"U--m--m," again. + +[Illustration: "Maybe she is--'colored,'" he volunteered at last] + +The second "U--m--m" seemed to irritate Stanton unduly. "Is it your +head that's spinning round?" he asked tersely. "You sound like a Dutch +top!" + +The Doctor raised his hands cautiously to his forehead. "Your story +does make me feel a little bit giddy," he acknowledged. Then with +sudden intensity, "Stanton, you're playing a dangerous game for an +engaged man. Cut it out, I say!" + +"Cut what out?" said Stanton stubbornly. + +The Doctor pointed exasperatedly towards the big box of letters. "Cut +those out," he said. "A sentimental correspondence with a girl +who's--more interesting than your fiancee!" + +"W-h-e-w!" growled Stanton, "I'll hardly stand for that statement." + +"Well, then lie down for it," taunted the Doctor. "Keep right on being +sick and worried and--." Peremptorily he reached out both hands +towards the box. "Here!" he insisted. "Let's dump the whole +mischievous nonsense into the fire and burn it up!" + +With an "Ouch," of pain Stanton knocked the Doctor's hands away. "Burn +up my letters?" he laughed. "Well, I guess not! I wouldn't even burn +up the wall papers. I've had altogether too much fun out of them. And +as for the books, the Browning, etc.--why hang it all, I've gotten +awfully fond of those books!" Idly he picked up the South American +volume and opened the fly-leaf for the Doctor to see. "Carl from his +Molly," it said quite distinctly. + +"Oh, yes," mumbled the Doctor. "It looks very pleasant. There's absolutely +no denying that it looks very pleasant. And some day--out of an old trunk, +or tucked down behind your library encyclopedias--your wife will discover +the book and ask blandly, 'Who was Molly? I don't remember your ever saying +anything about a "Molly".--Just someone you used to know?' And your answer +will be innocent enough: 'No, dear, _someone whom I never knew_!' But how +about the pucker along your spine, and the awfully foolish, grinny feeling +around your cheek-bones? And on the street and in the cars and at the +theaters you'll always and forever be looking and searching, and asking +yourself, 'Is it by any chance possible that this girl sitting next to me +now--?' And your wife will keep saying, with just a barely perceptible edge +in her voice, 'Carl, do you know that red-haired girl whom we just passed? +You stared at her so!' And you'll say, 'Oh, no! I was merely wondering +if--' Oh yes, you'll always and forever be 'wondering if'. And mark my +words, Stanton, people who go about the world with even the most innocent +chronic question in their eyes, are pretty apt to run up against an +unfortunately large number of wrong answers." + +"But you take it all so horribly seriously," protested Stanton. "Why +you rave and rant about it as though it was actually my affections +that were involved!" + +"Your affections?" cried the Doctor in great exasperation. "Your +affections? Why, man, if it was only your affections, do you suppose I'd +be wasting even so much as half a minute's worry on you? But it's your +_imagination_ that's involved. That's where the blooming mischief lies. +Affection is all right. Affection is nothing but a nice, safe flame that +feeds only on one special kind of fuel,--its own particular object. +You've got an 'affection' for Cornelia, and wherever Cornelia fails to +feed that affection it is mercifully ordained that the starved flame +shall go out into cold gray ashes without making any further trouble +whatsoever. But you've got an 'imagination' for this make-believe +girl--heaven help you!--and an 'imagination' is a great, wild, seething, +insatiate tongue of fire that, thwarted once and for all in its original +desire to gorge itself with realities, will turn upon you body and soul, +and lick up your crackling fancy like so much kindling wood--and sear +your common sense, and scorch your young wife's happiness. Nothing but +Cornelia herself will ever make you want--Cornelia. But the other girl, +the unknown girl--why she's the face in the clouds, she's the voice in +the sea; she's the glow of the sunset; she's the hush of the June +twilight! Every summer breeze, every winter gale, will fan the embers! +Every thumping, twittering, twanging pulse of an orchestra, every--. Oh, +Stanton, I say, it isn't the ghost of the things that are dead that will +ever come between you and Cornelia. There never yet was the ghost of any +lost thing that couldn't be tamed into a purring household pet. +But--the--ghost--of--a--thing--that--you've--never--yet--found? _That_, +I tell you, is a very different matter!" + +Pounding at his heart, and blazing in his cheeks, the insidious +argument, the subtle justification, that had been teeming in Stanton's +veins all the week, burst suddenly into speech. + +"But I gave Cornelia the _chance_ to be 'all the world' to me," he +protested doggedly, "and she didn't seem to care a hang about it! +Great Scott, man! Are you going to call a fellow unfaithful because +he hikes off into a corner now and then and reads a bit of Browning, +for instance, all to himself--or wanders out on the piazza some night +all sole alone to stare at the stars that happen to bore his wife to +extinction?" + +"But you'll never be able to read Browning again 'all by yourself'," +taunted the Doctor. "Whether you buy it fresh from the presses or +borrow it stale and old from a public library, you'll never find +another copy as long as you live that doesn't smell of cinnamon roses. +And as to 'star-gazing' or any other weird thing that your wife +doesn't care for--you'll never go out alone any more into dawns or +darknesses without the very tingling conscious presence of a wonder +whether the 'other girl' _would_ have cared for it!" + +"Oh, shucks!" said Stanton. Then, suddenly his forehead puckered up. +"Of course I've got a worry," he acknowledged frankly. "Any fellow's +got a worry who finds himself engaged to be married to a girl who +isn't keen enough about it to want to be all the world to him. But I +don't know that even the most worried fellow has any real cause to be +scared, as long as the girl in question still remains the only +flesh-and-blood girl on the face of the earth whom he wishes _did_ +like him well enough to want to be 'all the world' to him." + +"The only 'flesh-and-blood' girl?" scoffed the Doctor. "Oh, you're all +right, Stanton. I like you and all that. But I'm mighty glad just the +same that it isn't my daughter whom you're going to marry, with all +this 'Molly Make-Believe' nonsense lurking in the background. Cut it +out, Stanton, I say. Cut it out!" + +"Cut it out?" mused Stanton somewhat distrait. "Cut it out? What! +Molly Make-Believe?" + +Under the quick jerk of his knees the big box of letters and papers +and things brimmed over in rustling froth across the whole surface of +the table. Just for a second the muscles in his throat tightened a +trifle. Then, suddenly he burst out laughing--wildly, uproariously, +like an excited boy. + +"Cut it out?" he cried. "But it's such a joke! Can't you see that it's +nothing in the world except a perfectly delicious, perfectly +intangible joke?" + +"U--m--m," reiterated the Doctor. + +In the very midst of his reiteration, there came a sharp rap at the +door, and in answer to Stanton's cheerful permission to enter, the +so-called "delicious, intangible joke" manifested itself abruptly in +the person of a rather small feminine figure very heavily muffled up +in a great black cloak, and a rose-colored veil that shrouded her nose +and chin bluntly like the nose and chin of a face only half hewed out +as yet from a block of pink granite. + +"It's only Molly," explained an undeniably sweet little alto voice. +"Am I interrupting you?" + + + + +VII + + +Jumping to his feet, the Doctor stood staring wildly from Stanton's +amazed face to the perfectly calm, perfectly accustomed air of poise +that characterized every movement of the pink-shrouded visitor. The +amazement in fact never wavered for a second from Stanton's blush-red +visage, nor the supreme serenity from the lady's whole attitude. But +across the Doctor's startled features a fearful, outraged +consciousness of having been deceived, warred mightily with a +consciousness of unutterable mirth. + +Advancing toward the fireplace with a rather slow-footed, hesitating +gait, the little visitor's attention focused suddenly on the cluttered +table and she cried out with unmistakable delight. "Why, what are you +people doing with all my letters and things?" + +Then climbing up on the sturdy brass fender, she thrust her pink, +impenetrable features right into the scared, pallid face of the shabby +old clock and announced pointedly, "It's almost half-past seven. And I +can stay till just eight o'clock!" + +When she turned around again the Doctor was gone. + +With a tiny shrug of her shoulders, she settled herself down then in a +big, high-backed chair before the fire and stretched out her overshoed +toes to the shining edge of the fender. As far as any apparent +self-consciousness was concerned, she might just as well have been all +alone in the room. + +Convulsed with amusement, yet almost paralyzed by a certain stubborn, +dumb sort of embarrassment, nothing on earth could have forced +Stanton into making even an indefinite speech to the girl until she +had made at least one perfectly definite and reasonably illuminating +sort of speech to him. Biting his grinning lips into as straight a +line as possible, he gathered up the scattered pages of the evening +paper and attacked them furiously with scowling eyes. + +After a really dreadful interim of silence, the mysterious little +visitor rose in a gloomy, discouraged kind of way, and climbing up +again on the narrow brass fender, peered once more into the face of +the clock. + +"It's twenty minutes of eight, now," she announced. Into her voice +crept for the first time the faintest perceptible suggestion of a +tremor. "It's twenty minutes of eight--now--and I've got to leave here +exactly at eight. Twenty minutes is a rather--a rather stingy little +bit out of a whole--lifetime," she added falteringly. + +Then, and then only did Stanton's nervousness break forth suddenly +into one wild, uproarious laugh that seemed to light up the whole +dark, ominous room as though the gray, sulky, smoldering hearth-fire +itself had exploded into iridescent flame. Chasing close behind the +musical contagion of his deep guffaws followed the softer, gentler +giggle of the dainty pink-veiled lady. + +By the time they had both finished laughing it was fully quarter of +eight. + +"But you see it was just this way," explained the pleasant little +voice--all alto notes again. Cautiously a slim, unringed hand burrowed +out from the somber folds of the big cloak, and raised the pink +mouth-mumbling veil as much as half an inch above the red-lipped speech +line. "You see it was just this way. You paid me a lot of money--all in +advance--for a six weeks' special edition de luxe Love-Letter Serial. +And I spent your money the day I got it; and worse than that I owed +it--long before I even got it! And worst of all, I've got a chance now +to go home to-morrow for all the rest of the winter. No, I don't mean +that exactly. I mean I've found a chance to go up to Vermont and have +all my expenses paid--just for reading aloud every day to a lady who +isn't so awfully deaf. But you see I still owe you a week's +subscription--and I can't refund you the money because I haven't got it. +And it happens that I can't run a fancy love-letter business from the +special house that I'm going to. There aren't enough resources +there--and all that. So I thought that perhaps--perhaps--considering how +much you've been teasing and teasing to know who I was--I thought that +perhaps if I came here this evening and let you really see me--that +maybe, you know--maybe, not positively, but just _maybe_--you'd be +willing to call that equivalent to one week's subscription. _Would +you?_" + +In the sharp eagerness of her question she turned her shrouded face +full-view to Stanton's curious gaze, and he saw the little nervous, +mischievous twitch of her lips at the edge of her masking pink veil +resolve itself suddenly into a whimper of real pain. Yet so vivid were +the lips, so blissfully, youthfully, lusciously carmine, that every +single, individual statement she made seemed only like a festive +little announcement printed in red ink. + +"I guess I'm not a very--good business manager," faltered the +red-lipped voice with incongruous pathos. "Indeed I know I'm not +because--well because--the Serial-Letter Co. has 'gone broke! +Bankrupt', is it, that you really say?" + +With a little mockingly playful imitation of a stride she walked the +first two fingers of her right hand across the surface of the table to +Stanton's discarded supper dishes. + +"Oh, please may I have that piece of cold toast?" she asked +plaintively. No professional actress on the stage could have spoken +the words more deliciously. Even to the actual crunching of the toast +in her little shining white teeth, she sought to illustrate as +fantastically as possible the ultimate misery of a bankrupt person +starving for cold toast. + +Stanton's spontaneous laughter attested his full appreciation of her +mimicry. + +"But I tell you the Serial-Letter Co. _has_ 'gone broke'!" she +persisted a trifle wistfully. "I guess--I guess it takes a man to +really run a business with any sort of financial success, 'cause you +see a man never puts anything except his head into his business. And +of course if you only put your head into it, then you go right along +giving always just a little wee bit less than 'value received'--and so +you can't help, sir, making a profit. Why people would think you were +plain, stark crazy if you gave them even one more pair of poor rubber +boots than they'd paid for. But a woman! Well, you see my little +business was a sort of a scheme to sell sympathy--perfectly good +sympathy, you know--but to sell it to people who really needed it, +instead of giving it away to people who didn't care anything about it +at all. And you have to run that sort of business almost entirely with +your heart--and you wouldn't feel decent at all, unless you delivered +to everybody just a little tiny bit more sympathy than he paid for. +Otherwise, you see you wouldn't be delivering perfectly good sympathy. +So that's why--you understand now--that's why I had to send you my +very own woolly blanket-wrapper, and my very own silver porringer, and +my very own sling-shot that I fight city cats with,--because, you see, +I had to use every single cent of your money right away to pay for the +things that I'd already bought for other people." + +"For other people?" quizzed Stanton a bit resentfully. + +"Oh, yes," acknowledged the girl; "for several other people." Then, +"Did you like the idea of the 'Rheumatic Nights Entertainment'?" she +asked quite abruptly. + +"Did I like it?" cried Stanton. "Did I _like_ it?" + +With a little shrugging air of apology the girl straightened up very +stiffly in her chair. + +"Of course it wasn't exactly an original idea," she explained +contritely. "That is, I mean not original for you. You see, it's +really a little club of mine--a little subscription club of rheumatic +people who can't sleep; and I go every night in the week, an hour to +each one of them. There are only three, you know. There's a youngish +lady in Boston, and a very, very old gentleman out in Brookline, and +the tiniest sort of a poor little sick girl in Cambridge. Sometimes I +turn up just at supper-time and jolly them along a bit with their +gruels. Sometimes I don't get around till ten or eleven o'clock in the +great boo-black dark. From two to three in the morning seems to be the +cruelest, grayest, coldest time for the little girl in Cambridge.... +And I play the banjo decently well, you know, and sing more or +less--and tell stories, or read aloud; and I most always go dressed up +in some sort of a fancy costume 'cause I can't seem to find any other +thing to do that astonishes sick people so much and makes them sit up +so bravely and look so shiny. And really, it isn't such dreadfully +hard work to do, because everything fits together so well. The short +skirts, for instance, that turn me into such a jolly prattling +great-grandchild for the poor old gentleman, make me just a perfectly +rational, contemporaneous-looking play-mate for the small Cambridge +girl. I'm so very, very little!" + +"Only, of course," she finished wryly; "only, of course, it costs such +a horrid big lot for costumes and carriages and things. That's what's +'busted' me, as the boys say. And then, of course, I'm most dreadfully +sleepy all the day times when I ought to be writing nice things for my +Serial-Letter Co. business. And then one day last week--" the vivid +red lips twisted oddly at one corner. "One night last week they sent +me word from Cambridge that the little, little girl was going to +die--and was calling and calling for the 'Gray-Plush Squirrel Lady'. +So I hired a big gray squirrel coat from a furrier whom I know, and I +ripped up my muff and made me the very best sort of a hot, gray, +smothery face that I could--and I went out to Cambridge and sat three +hours on the footboard of a bed, cracking jokes--and nuts--to beguile +a little child's death-pain. And somehow it broke my heart--or my +spirit--or something. Somehow I think I could have stood it better +with my own skin face! Anyway the little girl doesn't need me any +more. Anyway, it doesn't matter if someone did need me!... I tell you +I'm 'broke'! I tell you I haven't got one single solitary more thing +to give! It isn't just my pocket-book that's empty: it's my head +that's spent, too! It's my heart that's altogether stripped! _And I'm +going to run away! Yes, I am!_" + +Jumping to her feet she stood there for an instant all out of breath, +as though just the mere fancy thought of running away had almost +exhausted her. Then suddenly she began to laugh. + +"I'm so tired of making up things," she confessed; "why, I'm so tired +of making up grandfathers, I'm so tired of making up pirates, I'm so +tired of making-up lovers--that I actually cherish the bill collector +as the only real, genuine acquaintance whom I have in Boston. +Certainly there's no slightest trace of pretence about him!... Excuse +me for being so flippant," she added soberly, "but you see I haven't +got any sympathy left even for myself." + +"But for heaven's sake!" cried Stanton, "why don't you let somebody +help you? Why don't you let me--" + +"Oh, you _can_ help me!" cried the little red-lipped voice excitedly. +"Oh, yes, indeed you can help me! That's why I came here this evening. +You see I've settled up now with every one of my creditors except you +and the youngish Boston lady, and I'm on my way to her house now. +We're reading Oriental Fairy stories together. Truly I think she'll be +very glad indeed to release me from my contract when I offer her my +coral beads instead, because they are dreadfully nice beads, my real, +unpretended grandfather carved them for me himself.... But how can I +settle with you? I haven't got anything left to settle with, and it +might be months and months before I could refund the actual cash +money. So wouldn't you--couldn't you please call my coming here this +evening an equivalent to one week's subscription?" + +[Illustration: "Oh! Don't I look--gorgeous!" she stammered] + +Wriggling out of the cloak and veil that wrapped her like a +chrysalis she emerged suddenly a glimmering, shimmering little +oriental figure of satin and silver and haunting sandalwood--a +veritable little incandescent rainbow of spangled moonlight and +flaming scarlet and dark purple shadows. Great, heavy, jet-black curls +caught back from her small piquant face by a blazing rhinestone +fillet,--cheeks just a tiny bit over-tinted with rouge and +excitement,--big, red-brown eyes packed full of high lights like a +startled fawn's,--bold in the utter security of her masquerade, yet +scared almost to death by the persistent underlying heart-thump of her +unescapable self-consciousness,--altogether as tantalizing, altogether +as unreal, as a vision out of the Arabian Nights, she stood there +staring quizzically at Stanton. + +"_Would_ you call it--an--equivalent? _Would_ you?" she asked +nervously. + +Then pirouetting over to the largest mirror in sight she began to +smooth and twist her silken sash into place. Somewhere at wrist or +ankle twittered the jingle of innumerable bangles. + +"Oh! Don't I look--gorgeous!" she stammered. "O--h--h!" + + + + +VIII + + +Everything that was discreet and engaged-to-be-married in Stanton's +conservative make-up exploded suddenly into one utterly irresponsible +speech. + +"You little witch!" he cried out. "You little beauty! For heaven's +sake come over here and sit down in this chair where I can look at +you! I want to talk to you! I--" + +Pirouetting once more before the mirror, she divided one fleet glance +between admiration for herself and scorn for Stanton. + +"Oh, yes, I felt perfectly sure that you'd insist upon having me +'pretty'!" she announced sternly. Then courtesying low to the ground +in mock humility, she began to sing-song mischievously: + + "So Molly, Molly made-her-a-face, + Made it of rouge and made it of lace. + Long as the rouge and the lace are fair, + Oh, Mr. Man, what do you care?" + +"You don't need any rouge or lace to make _you_ pretty!" Stanton +fairly shouted in his vehemence. "Anybody might have known that that +lovely, little mind of yours could only live in a--" + +"Nonsense!" the girl interrupted, almost temperishly. Then with a +quick, impatient sort of gesture she turned to the table, and picking +up book after book, opened it and stared in it as though it had been a +mirror. "Oh, maybe my mind is pretty enough," she acknowledged +reluctantly. "But likelier than not, my face is not becoming--to me." + +Crossing slowly over to Stanton's side she seated herself, with much +jingling, rainbow-colored, sandalwood-scented dignity, in the chair +that the Doctor had just vacated. + +"Poor dear, you've been pretty sick, haven't you?" she mused gently. +Cautiously then she reached out and touched the soft, woolly cuff of +his blanket-wrapper. "Did you really like it?" she asked. + +Stanton began to smile again. "Did I really like it?" he repeated +joyously. "Why, don't you know that if it hadn't been for you I should +have gone utterly mad these past few weeks? Don't you know that if it +hadn't been for you--don't you know that if--" A little over-zealously +he clutched at the tinsel fringe on the oriental lady's fan. "Don't +you know--don't you know that I'm--engaged to be married?" he finished +weakly. + +The oriental lady shivered suddenly, as any lady might shiver on a +November night in thin silken clothes. "Engaged to be married?" she +stammered. "Oh, yes! Why--of course! Most men are! Really unless you +catch a man very young and keep him absolutely constantly by your +side you cannot hope to walk even into his friendship--except across +the heart of some other woman." Again she shivered and jingled a +hundred merry little bangles. "But why?" she asked abruptly, "why, if +you're engaged to be married, did you come and--buy love-letters of +me? My love-letters are distinctly for lonely people," she added +severely. + +"How dared you--How dared you go into the love-letter business in the +first place?" quizzed Stanton dryly. "And when it comes to asking +personal questions, how dared you send me printed slips in answer to +my letters to you? Printed slips, mind you!... How many men are you +writing love-letters to, anyway?" + +The oriental lady threw out her small hands deprecatingly. "How many +men? Only two besides yourself. There's such a fad for nature study +these days that almost everybody this year has ordered the 'Gray-Plush +Squirrel' series. But I'm doing one or two 'Japanese Fairies' for sick +children, and a high school history class out in Omaha has ordered a +weekly epistle from William of Orange." + +"Hang the High School class out in Omaha!" said Stanton. "It was the +love-letters that I was asking about." + +"Oh, yes, I forgot," murmured the oriental lady. "Just two men besides +yourself, I said, didn't I? Well one of them is a life convict out in +an Illinois prison. He's subscribed for a whole year--for a +fortnightly letter from a girl in Killarney who has got to be named +'Katie'. He's a very, very old man, I think, but I don't even know his +name 'cause he's only a number now--'4632'--or something like that. +And I have to send all my letters over to Killarney to be mailed--Oh, +he's awfully particular about that. And it was pretty hard at first +working up all the geography that he knew and I didn't. But--pshaw! +You're not interested in Killarney. Then there's a New York boy down +in Ceylon on a smelly old tea plantation. His people have dropped him, +I guess, for some reason or other; so I'm just 'the girl from home' to +him, and I prattle to him every month or so about the things he used +to care about. It's easy enough to work that up from the social +columns in the New York papers--and twice I've been over to New York +to get special details for him; once to find out if his mother was +really as sick as the Sunday paper said, and once--yes, really, once I +butted in to a tea his sister was giving, and wrote him, yes, wrote +him all about how the moths were eating up the big moose-head in his +own front hall. And he sent an awfully funny, nice letter of thanks to +the Serial-Letter Co.--yes, he did! And then there's a crippled French +girl out in the Berkshires who is utterly crazy, it seems, about the +'Three Musketeers', so I'm d'Artagnan to her, and it's dreadfully hard +work--in French--but I'm learning a lot out of that, and--" + +"There. Don't tell me any more!" cried Stanton. + +Then suddenly the pulses in his temples began to pound so hard and so +loud that he could not seem to estimate at all just how loud he was +speaking. + +"Who are you?" he insisted. "Who are you? Tell me instantly, I say! +_Who are you anyway?_" + +The oriental lady jumped up in alarm. "I'm no one at all--to you," she +said coolly, "except just--Molly Make-Believe." + +Something in her tone seemed to fairly madden Stanton. + +"You shall tell me who you are!" he cried. "You shall! I say you +shall!" + +Plunging forward he grabbed at her little bangled wrists and held them +in a vise that sent the rheumatic pains shooting up his arms to add +even further frenzy to his brain. + +"Tell me who you are!" he grinned. "You shan't go out of here in ten +thousand years till you've told me who you are!" + +Frightened, infuriated, quivering with astonishment, the girl stood +trying to wrench her little wrists out of his mighty grasp, stamping +in perfectly impotent rage all the while with her soft-sandalled, +jingling feet. + +"I won't tell you who I am! I won't! I won't!" she swore and reswore +in a dozen different staccato accents. The whole daring passion of +the Orient that costumed her seemed to have permeated every fiber of +her small being. + +Then suddenly she drew in her breath in a long quivering sigh. Staring +up into her face, Stanton gave a little groan of dismay, and released +her hands. + +"Why, Molly! Molly! You're--crying," he whispered. "Why, little girl! +Why--" + +Backing slowly away from him, she made a desperate effort to smile +through her tears. + +"Now you've spoiled everything," she said. + +"Oh no, not--everything," argued Stanton helplessly from his chair, +afraid to rise to his feet, afraid even to shuffle his slippers on the +floor lest the slightest suspicion of vehemence on his part should +hasten that steady, backward retreat of hers towards the door. + +Already she had re-acquired her cloak and overshoes and was groping +out somewhat blindly for her veil in a frantic effort to avoid any +possible chance of turning her back even for a second on so dangerous +a person as himself. + +"Yes, everything," nodded the small grieved face. Yet the tragic, +snuffling little sob that accompanied the words only served to add a +most entrancing, tip-nosed vivacity to the statement. + +"Oh, of course I know," she added hastily. "Oh, of course I know +perfectly well that I oughtn't to have come alone to your rooms like +this!" Madly she began to wind the pink veil round and round and round +her cheeks like a bandage. "Oh, of course I know perfectly well that it +wasn't even remotely proper! But don't you think--don't you think that +if you've always been awfully, awfully strict and particular with +yourself about things all your life, that you might have +risked--safely--just one little innocent, mischievous sort of a half +hour? Especially if it was the only possible way you could think of to +square up everything and add just a little wee present besides? 'Cause +nothing, you know, that you can _afford_ to give ever seems exactly like +giving a really, truly present. It's got to hurt you somewhere to be a +'present'. So my coming here this evening--this way--was altogether the +bravest, scariest, unwisest, most-like-a-present-feeling-thing that I +could possibly think of to do--for you. And even if you hadn't spoiled +everything, I was going away to-morrow just the same forever and ever +and ever!" + +Cautiously she perched herself on the edge of a chair, and thrust her +narrow, gold-embroidered toes into the wide, blunt depths of her +overshoes. "Forever and ever!" she insisted almost gloatingly. + +"Not forever and _ever_!" protested Stanton vigorously. "You don't +think for a moment, do you, that after all this wonderful, jolly +friendship of ours, you're going to drop right out of sight as though +the earth had opened?" + +Even the little quick, forward lurch of his shoulders in the chair +sent the girl scuttling to her feet again, one overshoe still in her +hand. + +Just at the edge of the door-mat she turned and smiled at him +mockingly. Really it had been a long time since she had smiled. + +"Surely you don't think that you'd be able to recognize me in my +street clothes, do you?" she asked bluntly. + +Stanton's answering smile was quite as mocking as hers. + +"Why not?" he queried. "Didn't I have the pleasure of choosing your +winter hat for you? Let me see,--it was brown, with a pink +rose--wasn't it? I should know it among a million." + +With a little shrug of her shoulders she leaned back against the door +and stared at him suddenly out of her big red-brown eyes with singular +intentness. + +"Well, _will_ you call it an equivalent to one week's subscription?" +she asked very gravely. + +Some long-sleeping devil of mischief awoke in Stanton's senses. + +"Equivalent to one whole week's subscription?" he repeated with mock +incredulity. "A whole week--seven days and nights? Oh, no! No! No! I +don't think you've given me, yet, more than about--four days' worth to +think about. Just about four days' worth, I should think." + +Pushing the pink veil further and further back from her features, with +plainly quivering hands, the girl's whole soul seemed to blaze out at +him suddenly, and then wince back again. Then just as quickly a droll +little gleam of malice glinted in her eyes. + +"Oh, all right then," she smiled. "If you really think I've given you +only four days' and nights' worth of thoughts--here's something for +the fifth day and night." + +Very casually, yet still very accurately, her right hand reached out +to the knob of the door. + +"To cancel my debt for the fifth day," she said, "do you really +'honest-injun' want to know who I am? I'll tell you! First, you've +seen me before." + +"What?" cried Stanton, plunging forward in his chair. + +Something in the girl's quick clutch of the door-knob warned him quite +distinctly to relax again into his cushions. + +"Yes," she repeated triumphantly. "And you've talked with me too, as +often as twice! And moreover you've danced with me!" + +Tossing her head with sudden-born daring she reached up and snatched +off her curly black wig, and shook down all around her such a great, +shining, utterly glorious mass of mahogany colored hair that Stanton's +astonishment turned almost into faintness. + +"What?" he cried out. "What? You say I've seen you before? Talked with +you? Waltzed with you, perhaps? Never! I haven't! I tell you I +haven't! I never saw that hair before! If I had, I shouldn't have +forgotten it to my dying day. Why--" + +With a little wail of despair she leaned back against the door. "You +don't even remember me _now_?" she mourned. "Oh dear, dear, dear! And +I thought _you_ were so beautiful!" Then, woman-like, her whole +sympathy rushed to defend him from her own accusations. "Oh, well, it +was at a masquerade party," she acknowledged generously, "and I +suppose you go to a great many masquerades." + +Heaping up her hair like so much molten copper into the hood of her +cloak, and trying desperately to snare all the wild, escaping tendrils +with the softer mesh of her veil, she reached out a free hand at last +and opened the door just a crack. + +"And to give you something to think about for the sixth day and +night," she resumed suddenly, with the same strange little glint in +her eyes, "to give you something to think about the sixth day, I'll +tell you that I really was hungry--when I asked you for your toast. I +haven't had anything to eat to-day; and--" + +[Illustration: "What?" cried Stanton, plunging forward in his chair] + +Before she could finish the sentence Stanton had sprung from his +chair, and stood trying to reason out madly whether one single more +stride would catch her, or lose her. + +"And as for something for you to think about the seventh day and +night," she gasped hurriedly. Already the door had opened to her hand +and her little figure stood silhouetted darkly against the bright, +yellow-lighted hallway, "here's something for you to think about for +_twenty_-seven days and nights!" Wildly her little hands went +clutching at the woodwork. "I didn't know you were engaged to be +married," she cried out passionately, "and I _loved_ you--_loved_ +you--_loved_ you!" + +Then in a flash she was gone. + + + + +IX + + +With absolute finality the big door banged behind her. A minute later +the street door, four flights down, rang out in jarring reverberation. +A minute after that it seemed as though every door in every house on +the street slammed shrilly. Then the charred fire-log sagged down into +the ashes with a sad, puffing sigh. Then a whole row of books on a +loosely packed shelf toppled over on each other with soft jocose +slaps. + +Crawling back into his Morris chair with every bone in his body aching +like a magnetized wire-skeleton charged with pain, Stanton collapsed +again into his pillows and sat staring--staring into the dying fire. +Nine o'clock rang out dully from the nearest church spire; ten +o'clock, eleven o'clock followed in turn with monotonous, chiming +insistency. Gradually the relaxing steam-radiators began to grunt and +grumble into a chill quietude. Gradually along the bare, bleak +stretches of unrugged floor little cold draughts of air came creeping +exploringly to his feet. + +And still he sat staring--staring into the fast graying ashes. + +"Oh, Glory! Glory!" he said. "Think what it would mean if all that +wonderful imagination were turned loose upon just one fellow! Even if +she didn't love you, think how she'd play the game! And if she did +love you--Oh, lordy; Lordy! LORDY!" + +Towards midnight, to ease the melancholy smell of the dying lamp, he +drew reluctantly forth from his deepest blanket-wrapper pocket the +little knotted handkerchief that encased the still-treasured handful +of fragrant fir-balsam, and bending groaningly forward in his chair +sifted the brittle, pungent needles into the face of the one glowing +ember that survived. Instantly in a single dazzling flash of flame the +tangible forest symbol vanished in intangible fragrance. But along the +hollow of his hand,--across the edge of his sleeve,--up from the +ragged pile of books and papers,--out from the farthest, remotest +corners of the room, lurked the unutterable, undestroyable sweetness +of all forests since the world was made. + +Almost with a sob in his throat Stanton turned again to the box of +letters on his table. + +By dawn the feverish, excited sleeplessness in his brain had driven +him on and on to one last, supremely fantastic impulse. Writing to +Cornelia he told her bluntly, frankly, + + "DEAR CORNELIA: + + "When I asked you to marry me, you made me promise very + solemnly at the time that if I ever changed my mind + regarding you I would surely tell you. And I laughed at you. + Do you remember? But you were right, it seems, and I was + wrong. For I believe that I have changed my mind. That + is:--I don't know how to express it exactly, but it has been + made very, very plain to me lately that I do not by any + manner of means love you as little as you need to be loved. + + "In all sincerity, + + "CARL." + +To which surprising communication Cornelia answered immediately; but +the 'immediately' involved a week's almost maddening interim, + + "DEAR CARL: + + "Neither mother nor I can make any sense whatsoever out of + your note. By any possible chance was it meant to be a joke? + You say you do not love me 'as little' as I need to be + loved. You mean 'as much', don't you? Carl, what do you + mean?" + +Laboriously, with the full prospect of yet another week's agonizing +strain and suspense, Stanton wrote again to Cornelia. + + "DEAR CORNELIA: + + "No, I meant 'as little' as you need to be loved. I have no + adequate explanation to make. I have no adequate apology to + offer. I don't think anything. I don't hope anything. All I + know is that I suddenly believe positively that our + engagement is a mistake. Certainly I am neither giving you + all that I am capable of giving you, nor yet receiving from + you all that I am capable of receiving. Just this fact + should decide the matter I think. + + "CARL." + +Cornelia did not wait to write an answer to this. She telegraphed +instead. The message even in the telegraph operator's handwriting +looked a little nervous. + +"Do you mean that you are tired of it?" she asked quite boldly. + +With miserable perplexity Stanton wired back. "No, I couldn't exactly +say that I was tired of it." + +Cornelia's answer to that was fluttering in his hands within twelve +hours. + +"Do you mean that there is someone else?" The words fairly ticked +themselves off the yellow page. + +It was twenty-four hours before Stanton made up his mind just what to +reply. Then, "No, I couldn't exactly say there is anybody else," he +confessed wretchedly. + +Cornelia's mother answered this time. The telegram fairly rustled with +sarcasm. "You don't seem to be very sure about anything," said +Cornelia's mother. + +Somehow these words brought the first cheerful smile to his lips. + +"No, you're quite right. I'm not at all sure about anything," he wired +almost gleefully in return, wiping his pen with delicious joy on the +edge of the clean white bed-spread. + +Then because it is really very dangerous for over-wrought people to +try to make any noise like laughter, a great choking, bitter sob +caught him up suddenly, and sent his face burrowing down like a +night-scared child into the safe, soft, feathery depths of his +pillow--where, with his knuckles ground so hard into his eyes that all +his tears were turned to stars, there came to him very, very slowly, +so slowly in fact that it did not alarm him at all, the strange, +electrifying vision of the one fact on earth that he _was_ sure of: a +little keen, luminous, brown-eyed face with a look in it, and a look +for him only--so help him God!--such as he had never seen on the face +of any other woman since the world was made. Was it possible?--was it +really possible? Suddenly his whole heart seemed to irradiate light +and color and music and sweet smelling things. + +[Illustration: Cornelia's mother answered this time] + +"Oh, Molly, Molly, Molly!" he shouted. "I want _you_! I want _you_!" + +In the strange, lonesome days that followed, neither burly +flesh-and-blood Doctor nor slim paper sweetheart tramped noisily over +the threshold or slid thuddingly through the letter-slide. + +No one apparently was ever coming to see Stanton again unless actually +compelled to do so. Even the laundryman seemed to have skipped his +usual day; and twice in succession the morning paper had most +annoyingly failed to appear. Certainly neither the boldest private +inquiry nor the most delicately worded public advertisement had proved +able to discover the whereabouts of "Molly Make-Believe," much less +succeeded in bringing her back. But the Doctor, at least, could be +summoned by ordinary telephone, and Cornelia and her mother would +surely be moving North eventually, whether Stanton's last message +hastened their movements or not. + +In subsequent experience it seemed to take two telephone messages to +produce the Doctor. A trifle coolly, a trifle distantly, more than a +trifle disapprovingly, he appeared at last and stared dully at +Stanton's astonishing booted-and-coated progress towards health. + +"Always glad to serve you--professionally," murmured the Doctor with +an undeniably definite accent on the word 'professionally'. + +"Oh, cut it out!" quoted Stanton emphatically. "What in creation are +you so stuffy about?" + +"Well, really," growled the Doctor, "considering the deception you +practised on me--" + +"Considering nothing!" shouted Stanton. "On my word of honor, I tell +you I never consciously, in all my life before, ever--ever--set eyes +upon that wonderful little girl, until that evening! I never knew that +she even existed! I never knew! I tell you I never knew--_anything_!" + +As limply as any stout man could sink into a chair, the Doctor sank +into the seat nearest him. + +"Tell me instantly all about it," he gasped. + +"There are only two things to tell," said Stanton quite blithely. "And +the first thing is what I've already stated, on my honor, that the +evening we speak of was actually and positively the first time I ever +saw the girl; and the second thing is, that equally upon my honor, I +do not intend to let it remain--the last time!" + +"But Cornelia?" cried the Doctor. "What about Cornelia?" + +Almost half the sparkle faded from Stanton's eyes. + +"Cornelia and I have annulled our engagement," he said very quietly. +Then with more vehemence, "Oh, you old dry-bones, don't you worry +about Cornelia! I'll look out for Cornelia. Cornelia isn't going to +get hurt. I tell you I've figured and reasoned it all out very, very +carefully; and I can see now, quite plainly, that Cornelia never +really loved me at all--else she wouldn't have dropped me so +accidentally through her fingers. Why, there never was even the ghost +of a clutch in Cornelia's fingers." + +"But you loved _her_," persisted the Doctor scowlingly. + +It was hard, just that second, for Stanton to lift his troubled eyes +to the Doctor's face. But he did lift them and he lifted them very +squarely and steadily. + +"Yes, I think I did--love Cornelia," he acknowledged frankly. "The +very first time that I saw her I said to myself. 'Here is the end of +my journey,' but I seem to have found out suddenly that the mere fact +of loving a woman does not necessarily prove her that much coveted +'journey's end.' I don't know exactly how to express it, indeed I feel +beastly clumsy about expressing it, but somehow it seems as though it +were Cornelia herself who had proved herself, perfectly amiably, no +'journey's end' after all, but only a way station not equipped to +receive my particular kind of a permanent guest. It isn't that I +wanted any grand fixings. Oh, can't you understand that I'm not +finding any fault with Cornelia. There never was any slightest +pretence about Cornelia. She never, never even in the first place, +made any possible effort to attract me. Can't you see that Cornelia +_looks_ to me to-day exactly the way that she looked to me in the +first place; very, amazingly, beautiful. But a traveler, you know, +cannot dally indefinitely to feed his eyes on even the most wonderful +view while all his precious lifelong companions,--his whims, his +hobbies, his cravings, his yearnings,--are crouching starved and +unwelcome outside the door. + +"And I can't even flatter myself," he added wryly; "I can't even +flatter myself that my--going is going to inconvenience Cornelia in +the slightest; because I can't see that my coming has made even the +remotest perceptible difference in her daily routine. Anyway--" he +finished more lightly, "when you come right down to 'mating', or +'homing', or 'belonging', or whatever you choose to call it, it seems +to be written in the stars that plans or no plans, preferences or no +preferences, initiatives or no initiatives, we belong to those--and +to those only, hang it all!--who happen to love _us_ most!" + +Fairly jumping from his chair the Doctor snatched hold of Stanton's +shoulder. + +"Who happen to love _us_ most?" he repeated wildly. "Love _us_? _us_? +For heaven's sake, who's loving you _now_?" + +Utterly irrelevantly, Stanton brushed him aside, and began to rummage +anxiously among the books on his table. + +"Do you know much about Vermont?" he asked suddenly. "It's funny, but +almost nobody seems to know anything about Vermont. It's a darned good +state, too, and I can't imagine why all the geographies neglect it +so." Idly his finger seemed to catch in a half open pamphlet, and he +bent down casually to straighten out the page. "Area in square +miles--9,565," he read aloud musingly. "Principal products--hay, oats, +maple-sugar--" Suddenly he threw down the pamphlet and flung +himself into the nearest chair and began to laugh. "Maple-sugar?" he +ejaculated. "Maple-sugar? Oh, glory! And I suppose there are some +people who think that maple-sugar is the sweetest thing that ever came +out of Vermont!" + +The Doctor started to give him some fresh advice--but left him a +bromide instead. + + + + +X + + +Though the ensuing interview with Cornelia and her mother began quite +as coolly as the interview with the Doctor, it did not happen to end +even in hysterical laughter. + +It was just two days after the Doctor's hurried exit that Stanton +received a formal, starchy little note from Cornelia's mother +notifying him of their return. + +Except for an experimental, somewhat wobbly-kneed journey or two to +the edge of the Public Garden he had made no attempts as yet to resume +any outdoor life, yet for sundry personal reasons of his own he did +not feel over-anxious to postpone the necessary meeting. In the +immediate emergency at hand strong courage was infinitely more of an +asset than strong knees. Filling his suitcase at once with all the +explanatory evidence that he could carry, he proceeded on cab-wheels +to Cornelia's grimly dignified residence. The street lamps were just +beginning to be lighted when he arrived. + +As the butler ushered him gravely into the beautiful drawing room he +realized with a horrid sinking of the heart that Cornelia and her +mother were already sitting there waiting for him with a dreadful +tight lipped expression on their faces which seemed to suggest that +though he was already fifteen minutes ahead of his appointment they +had been waiting for him there since early dawn. + +The drawing room itself was deliciously familiar to him; +crimson-curtained, green carpeted, shining with heavy gilt picture +frames and prismatic chandeliers. Often with posies and candies and +theater-tickets he had strutted across that erstwhile magic threshold +and fairly lolled in the big deep-upholstered chairs while waiting for +the silk-rustling advent of the ladies. But now, with his suitcase +clutched in his hand, no Armenian peddler of laces and ointments could +have felt more grotesquely out of his element. + +Indolently Cornelia's mother lifted her lorgnette and gazed at him +skeptically from the spot just behind his left ear where the barber +had clipped him too short, to the edge of his right heel that the +bootblack had neglected to polish. Apparently she did not even see the +suitcase but, + +"Oh, are you leaving town?" she asked icily. + +Only by the utmost tact on his part did he finally succeed in +establishing tete-a-tete relations with Cornelia herself; and even +then if the house had been a tower ten stories high, Cornelia's +mother, rustling up the stairs, could not have swished her skirts any +more definitely like a hissing snake. + +In absolute dumbness Stanton and Cornelia sat listening until the +horrid sound died away. Then, and then only, did Cornelia cross the +room to Stanton's side and proffer him her hand. The hand was very +cold, and the manner of offering it was very cold, but Stanton was +quite man enough to realize that this special temperature was purely a +matter of physical nervousness rather than of mental intention. + +Slipping naturally into the most conventional groove either of word or +deed, Cornelia eyed the suitcase inquisitively. + +"What are you doing?" she asked thoughtlessly. "Returning my +presents?" + +"You never gave me any presents!" said Stanton cheerfully. + +"Why, didn't I?" murmured Cornelia slowly. Around her strained mouth a +smile began to flicker faintly. "Is that why you broke it off?" she +asked flippantly. + +"Yes, partly," laughed Stanton. + +Then Cornelia laughed a little bit, too. + +After this Stanton lost no possible time in getting down to facts. + +Stooping over from his chair exactly after the manner of peddlers whom +he had seen in other people's houses, he unbuckled the straps of his +suitcase, and turned the cover backward on the floor. + +Cornelia followed every movement of his hand with vaguely perplexed +blue eyes. + +"Surely," said Stanton, "this is the weirdest combination of +circumstances that ever happened to a man and a girl--or rather, I +should say, to a man and two girls." Quite accustomed as he now was to +the general effect on himself of the whole unique adventure with the +Serial-Letter Co. his heart could not help giving a little extra jump +on this, the verge of the astonishing revelation that he was about to +make to Cornelia. "Here," he stammered, a tiny bit out of breath, +"here is the small, thin, tissue-paper circular that you sent me from +the Serial-Letter Co. with your advice to subscribe, and there--" +pointing earnestly to the teeming suitcase,--"there are the minor +results of--having taken your advice." + +In Cornelia's face the well-groomed expression showed sudden signs of +immediate disorganization. + +Snatching the circular out of his hand she read it hurriedly, once, +twice, three times. Then kneeling cautiously down on the floor with +all the dignity that characterized every movement of her body, she +began to poke here and there into the contents of the suitcase. + +[Illustration: He unbuckled the straps of his suitcase and turned the +cover backward on the floor] + +"The 'minor results'?" she asked soberly. + +"Why yes," said Stanton. "There were several things I didn't have room +to bring. There was a blanket-wrapper. And there was a--girl, and +there was a--" + +Cornelia's blonde eyebrows lifted perceptibly. "A girl--whom you +didn't know at all--sent you a blanket-wrapper?" she whispered. + +"Yes!" smiled Stanton. "You see no girl whom I knew--very well--seemed +to care a hang whether I froze to death or not." + +"O--h," said Cornelia very, very slowly, "O--h." Her eyes had a +strange, new puzzled expression in them like the expression of a +person who was trying to look outward and think inward at the same +time. + +"But you mustn't be so critical and haughty about it all," protested +Stanton, "when I'm really trying so hard to explain everything +perfectly honestly to you--so that you'll understand exactly how it +happened." + +"I should like very much to be able to understand exactly how it +happened," mused Cornelia. + +Gingerly she approached in succession the roll of sample wall-paper, +the maps, the time-tables, the books, the little silver porringer, the +intimate-looking scrap of unfinished fancy-work. One by one Stanton +explained them to her, visualizing by eager phrase or whimsical +gesture the particularly lonesome and susceptible conditions under +which each gift had happened to arrive. + +At the great pile of letters Cornelia's hand faltered a trifle. + +"How many did I write you?" she asked with real curiosity. + +"Five thin ones, and a postal-card," said Stanton almost +apologetically. + +Choosing the fattest looking letter that she could find, Cornelia +toyed with the envelope for a second. "Would it be all right for me to +read one?" she asked doubtfully. + +"Why, yes," said Stanton. "I think you might read one." + +After a few minutes she laid down the letter without any comment. + +"Would it be all right for me to read another?" she questioned. + +"Why, yes," cried Stanton. "Let's read them all. Let's read them +together. Only, of course, we must read them in order." + +Almost tenderly he picked them up and sorted them out according to +their dates. "Of course," he explained very earnestly, "of course I +wouldn't think of showing these letters to any one ordinarily; but +after all, these particular letters represent only a mere business +proposition, and certainly this particular situation must justify one +in making extraordinary exceptions." + +One by one he perused the letters hastily and handed them over to +Cornelia for her more careful inspection. No single associate detail +of time or circumstance seemed to have eluded his astonishing memory. +Letter by letter, page by page he annotated: "That was the week you +didn't write at all," or "This was the stormy, agonizing, God-forsaken +night when I didn't care whether I lived or died," or "It was just +about that time, you know, that you snubbed me for being scared about +your swimming stunt." + +Breathless in the midst of her reading Cornelia looked up and faced +him squarely. "How could any girl--write all that nonsense?" she +gasped. + +It wasn't so much what Stanton answered, as the expression in his eyes +that really startled Cornelia. + +"Nonsense?" he quoted deliberatingly. "But I like it," he said. "It's +exactly what I like." + +"But I couldn't possibly have given you anything like--that," +stammered Cornelia. + +"No, I know you couldn't," said Stanton very gently. + +For an instant Cornelia turned and stared a bit resentfully into his +face. Then suddenly the very gentleness of his smile ignited a little +answering smile on her lips. + +"Oh, you mean," she asked with unmistakable relief; "oh, you mean that +really after all it wasn't your letter that jilted me, but my +temperament that jilted you?" + +"Exactly," said Stanton. + +Cornelia's whole somber face flamed suddenly into unmistakable +radiance. + +"Oh, that puts an entirely different light upon the matter," she +exclaimed. "Oh, now it doesn't hurt at all!" + +Rustling to her feet, she began to smooth the scowly-looking wrinkles +out of her skirt with long even strokes of her bright-jeweled hands. + +"I think I'm really beginning to understand," she said pleasantly. +"And truly, absurd as it sounds to say it, I honestly believe that I +care more for you this moment than I ever cared before, but--" +glancing with acute dismay at the cluttered suitcase on the floor, +"but I wouldn't marry you now, if we could live in the finest asylum +in the land!" + +Shrugging his shoulders with mirthful appreciation Stanton proceeded +then and there to re-pack his treasures and end the interview. + +Just at the edge of the threshold Cornelia's voice called him back. + +"Carl," she protested, "you are looking rather sick. I hope you are +going straight home." + +"No, I'm not going straight home," said Stanton bluntly. "But here's +hoping that the 'longest way round' will prove even yet the very +shortest possible route to the particular home that, as yet, doesn't +even exist. I'm going hunting, Cornelia, hunting for Molly +Make-Believe; and what's more, I'm going to find her if it takes me +all the rest of my natural life!" + + + + +XI + + +Driving downtown again with every thought in his head, every plan, +every purpose, hurtling around and around in absolute chaos, his +roving eyes lit casually upon the huge sign of a detective bureau that +loomed across the street. White as a sheet with the sudden new +determination that came to him, and trembling miserably with the very +strength of the determination warring against the weakness and fatigue +of his body, he dismissed his cab and went climbing up the first +narrow, dingy stairway that seemed most liable to connect with the +brain behind the sign-board. + +It was almost bed-time before he came down the stairs again, yet, "I +think her name is Meredith, and I think she's gone to Vermont, and +she has the most wonderful head of mahogany-colored hair that I ever +saw in my life," were the only definite clues that he had been able to +contribute to the cause. + +In the slow, lagging week that followed, Stanton did not find himself +at all pleased with the particular steps which he had apparently been +obliged to take in order to ferret out Molly's real name and her real +city address, but the actual audacity of the situation did not +actually reach its climax until the gentle little quarry had been +literally tracked to Vermont with detectives fairly baying on her +trail like the melodramatic bloodhounds that pursue "Eliza" across the +ice. + +"Red-headed party found at Woodstock," the valiant sleuth had wired +with unusual delicacy and caution. + +"Denies acquaintance, Boston, everything, positively refuses +interview, temper very bad, sure it's the party," the second message +had come. + +The very next northward-bound train found Stanton fretting the +interminable hours away between Boston and Woodstock. Across the +sparkling snow-smothered landscape his straining eyes went plowing on to +their unknown destination. Sometimes the engine pounded louder than his +heart. Sometimes he could not even seem to hear the grinding of the +brakes above the dreadful throb-throb of his temples. Sometimes in +horrid, shuddering chills he huddled into his great fur-coat and cursed +the porter for having a disposition like a polar bear. Sometimes almost +gasping for breath he went out and stood on the bleak rear platform of +the last car and watched the pleasant, ice-cold rails go speeding back +to Boston. All along the journey little absolutely unnecessary villages +kept bobbing up to impede the progress of the train. All along the +journey innumerable little empty railroad-stations, barren as bells +robbed of their own tongues, seemed to lie waiting--waiting for the +noisy engine-tongue to clang them into temporary noise and life. + +Was his quest really almost at an end? Was it--was it? A thousand +vague apprehensions tortured through his mind. + +And then, all of a sudden, in the early, brisk winter twilight, +Woodstock--happened! + +Climbing out of the train Stanton stood for a second rubbing his eyes +at the final abruptness and unreality of it all. Woodstock! What was +it going to mean to him? Woodstock! + +Everybody else on the platform seemed to be accepting the astonishing +geographical fact with perfect simplicity. Already along the edge of +the platform the quaint, old-fashioned yellow stage-coaches set on +runners were fast filling up with utterly serene passengers. + +A jog at his elbow made him turn quickly, and he found himself gazing +into the detective's not ungenial face. + +"Say," said the detective, "were you going up to the hotel first? Well +you'd better not. You'd better not lose any time. She's leaving town +in the morning." It was beyond human nature for the detective man not +to nudge Stanton once in the ribs. "Say," he grinned, "you sure had +better go easy, and not send in your name or anything." His grin +broadened suddenly in a laugh. "Say," he confided, "once in a magazine +I read something about a lady's 'piquant animosity'. That's her! And +_cute_? Oh, my!" + +Five minutes later, Stanton found himself lolling back in the +quaintest, brightest, most pumpkin-colored coach of all, gliding with +almost magical smoothness through the snow-glazed streets of the +little narrow, valley-town. + +"The Meredith homestead?" the driver had queried. "Oh, yes. All right; +but it's quite a journey. Don't get discouraged." + +A sense of discouragement regarding long distances was just at that +moment the most remote sensation in Stanton's sensibilities. If the +railroad journey had seemed unhappily drawn out, the sleigh-ride +reversed the emotion to the point of almost telescopic calamity: a +stingy, transient vista of village lights; a brief, narrow, +hill-bordered road that looked for all the world like the aisle of a +toy-shop, flanked on either side by high-reaching shelves where +miniature house-lights twinkled cunningly; a sudden stumble of hoofs +into a less-traveled snow-path, and then, absolutely unavoidable, +absolutely unescapable, an old, white colonial house with its great +solemn elm trees stretching out their long arms protectingly all +around and about it after the blessed habit of a hundred years. + +Nervously, and yet almost reverently, Stanton went crunching up the +snowy path to the door, knocked resonantly with a slim, much worn old +brass knocker, and was admitted promptly and hospitably by "Mrs. +Meredith" herself--Molly's grandmother evidently, and such a darling +little grandmother, small, like Molly; quick, like Molly; even young, +like Molly, she appeared to be. Simple, sincere, and oh, so +comfortable--like the fine old mahogany furniture and the dull-shining +pewter, and the flickering firelight, that seemed to be everywhere. + +"Good old stuff!" was Stanton's immediate silent comment on everything +in sight. + +It was perfectly evident that the little old lady knew nothing +whatsoever about Stanton, but it was equally evident that she +suspected him of being neither a highwayman nor a book agent, and was +really sincerely sorry that Molly had "a headache" and would be unable +to see him. + +"But I've come so far," persisted Stanton. "All the way from Boston. +Is she very ill? Has she been ill long?" + +The little old lady's mind ignored the questions but clung a trifle +nervously to the word Boston. + +"Boston?" her sweet voice quavered. "Boston? Why you look so +nice--surely you're not that mysterious man who has been annoying +Mollie so dreadfully these past few days. I told her no good would +ever come of her going to the city." + +"Annoying Molly?" cried Stanton. "Annoying _my_ Molly? I? Why, it's +to prevent anybody in the whole wide world from ever annoying her +again about--anything, that I've come here now!" he persisted rashly. +"And don't you see--we had a little misunderstanding and--" + +Into the little old lady's ivory cheek crept a small, bright, +blush-spot. + +"Oh, you had a little misunderstanding," she repeated softly. "A +little quarrel? Oh, is that why Molly has been crying so much ever +since she came home?" + +Very gently she reached out her tiny, blue-veined hand, and turned +Stanton's big body around so that the lamp-light smote him squarely on +his face. + +"Are you a good boy?" she asked. "Are you good enough for--my--little +Molly?" + +Impulsively Stanton grabbed her small hands in his big ones, and +raised them very tenderly to his lips. + +[Illustration: "Are you a good boy?" she asked] + +"Oh, little Molly's little grandmother," he said; "nobody on the face +of this snow-covered earth is good enough for your Molly, but won't +you give me a chance? Couldn't you please give me a chance? Now--this +minute? Is she so very ill?" + +"No, she's not so very ill, that is, she's not sick in bed," mused the +old lady waveringly. "She's well enough to be sitting up in her big +chair in front of her open fire." + +"Big chair--open fire?" quizzed Stanton. "Then, are there two chairs?" +he asked casually. + +"Why, yes," answered the little-grandmother in surprise. + +"And a mantelpiece with a clock on it?" he probed. + +The little-grandmother's eyes opened wide and blue with astonishment. + +"Yes," she said, "but the clock hasn't gone for forty years!" + +"Oh, great!" exclaimed Stanton. "Then won't you please--please--I tell +you it's a case of life or death--won't you _please_ go right upstairs +and sit down in that extra big chair--and not say a word or anything +but just wait till I come? And of course," he said, "it wouldn't be +good for you to run upstairs, but if you could hurry just a little I +should be _so_ much obliged." + +As soon as he dared, he followed cautiously up the unfamiliar stairs, +and peered inquisitively through the illuminating crack of a loosely +closed door. + +The grandmother as he remembered her was dressed in some funny sort of +a dullish purple, but peeping out from the edge of one of the chairs +he caught an unmistakable flutter of blue. + +Catching his breath he tapped gently on the woodwork. + +Round the big winged arm of the chair a wonderful, bright aureole of +hair showed suddenly. + +"Come in," faltered Molly's perplexed voice. + +All muffled up in his great fur-coat he pushed the door wide open and +entered boldly. + +"It's only Carl," he said. "Am I interrupting you?" + +The really dreadful collapsed expression on Molly's face Stanton did +not appear to notice at all. He merely walked over to the mantelpiece, +and leaning his elbows on the little cleared space in front of the +clock, stood staring fixedly at the time-piece which had not changed +its quarter-of-three expression for forty years. + +"It's almost half-past seven," he announced pointedly, "and I can stay +till just eight o'clock." + +Only the little grandmother smiled. + +Almost immediately: "It's twenty minutes of eight now!" he announced +severely. + +"My, how time flies!" laughed the little grandmother. + +When he turned around again the little grandmother had fled. + +But Molly did not laugh, as he himself had laughed on that faraway, +dreamlike evening in his rooms. Instead of laughter, two great tears +welled up in her eyes and glistened slowly down her flushing cheeks. + +"What if this old clock hasn't moved a minute in forty years?" +whispered Stanton passionately, "it's such a _stingy_ little time to +eight o'clock--even if the hands never get there!" + +Then turning suddenly to Molly he held out his great strong arms to +her. + +"Oh, Molly, Molly!" he cried out beseechingly, "I love you! And I'm +free to love you! Won't you please come to me?" + +[Illustration: "It's only Carl," he said] + +Sliding very cautiously out of the big, deep chair, Molly came walking +hesitatingly towards him. Like a little wraith miraculously tinted +with bronze and blue she stopped and faced him piteously for a second. + +Then suddenly she made a little wild rush into his arms and burrowed +her small frightened face in his shoulder. + +"Oh, Carl, Sweetheart!" she cried. "I can really love you now? Love +you, Carl--love you! And not have to be just Molly Make-Believing any +more!" + + +THE END. + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Molly Make-Believe, by Eleanor Hallowell Abbott + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE *** + +***** This file should be named 18665.txt or 18665.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/6/6/18665/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sankar Viswanathan, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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