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+Project Gutenberg's The Indifference of Juliet, by Grace S. Richmond
+
+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: The Indifference of Juliet
+
+Author: Grace S. Richmond
+
+Illustrator: Henry Hutt
+
+Release Date: August 9, 2008 [EBook #26233]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INDIFFERENCE OF JULIET ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank, Bruce Albrecht and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "The rich voice of the bishop was as impressive as it
+had ever been." (See page 77)]
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+THE INDIFFERENCE OF JULIET
+
+By GRACE S. RICHMOND
+
+Author of
+"The Second Violin" "The Dixons"
+
+With Illustrations
+By HENRY HUTT
+
+A. L. BURT COMPANY,
+PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Copyright,
+1902, 1903, 1904,
+by The Curtis
+Publishing Company
+
+Copyright, 1905, by
+Doubleday, Page
+& Company
+
+Published,
+March, 1905
+
+All rights reserved, including that of
+translation--also right of translation
+into the Scandinavian languages
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+To
+Father and Mother
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER                                           PAGE
+     I.  An Audacious Proposition                    3
+    II.  Measurements                               12
+   III.  Shopping with a Chaperon                   17
+    IV.  The Cost of Frocks                         23
+     V.  Muslins and Tackhammers                    30
+    VI.  A Question of Identity                     36
+   VII.  An Argument Without Logic                  46
+  VIII.  On Account of the Tea-Kettle               57
+    IX.  A Bishop and a Hay-Wagon                   69
+     X.  On a Threshold                             80
+   XII.  The Bachelor Begs a Dish-Towel            101
+  XIII.  Smoke and Talk                            114
+   XIV.  Strawberries                              120
+    XV.  Anthony Plays Maid                        136
+   XVI.  A House-Party--Outdoors                   144
+  XVII.  Rachel Causes Anxiety                     155
+ XVIII.  An Unknown Quantity                       164
+   XIX.  All the April Stars Are Out               175
+    XX.  A Prior Claim                             181
+   XXI.  Everybody Gives Advice                    191
+  XXII.  Roger Barnes Proves Invaluable            201
+ XXIII.  Two Not of a Kind                         215
+  XXIV.  The Careys Are at Home                    233
+   XXV.  The Robeson Will                          246
+  XXVI.  On Guard                                  266
+ XXVII.  Lockwood Pays a Call                      282
+XXVIII.  A High-Handed Affair                      294
+  XXIX.  Juliet Proves Herself Still Indifferent   303
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
+
+HORATIO MARCY, an elderly New Englander of some wealth.
+
+ANTHONY ROBESON, the last young male representative of the Kentucky
+ROBESONS, now making his own way in Massachusetts.
+
+WAYNE CAREY, Robeson's former college chum, an office clerk on a salary.
+
+DR. ROGER WILLIAMS BARNES, a surgeon.
+
+LOUIS LOCKWOOD, an attorney-at-law.
+
+STEVENS CATHCART, an architect.
+
+MRS. DINGLEY, sister of Horatio Marcy.
+
+JULIET MARCY, daughter of Horatio Marcy.
+
+JUDITH DEARBORN, Juliet's friend since school-days.
+
+SUZANNE GERARD, MARIE DRESSER, other friends of Juliet.
+
+RACHEL REDDING, a poor country girl--of education.
+
+MARY MCKAIM--in the background, but valuable.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+THE INDIFFERENCE OF JULIET
+
+I.--AN AUDACIOUS PROPOSITION
+
+
+Anthony Robeson glanced about him in a satisfied way at the shaded nook
+under the low-hanging boughs into which he had guided the boat. Then he
+drew in his oars and let the little craft drift.
+
+"This is an ideal spot," said he, looking into his friend's face, "in
+which to tell you a rather interesting piece of news."
+
+"Oh, fine!" cried his friend, settling herself among the cushions in the
+stern and tilting back her parasol so that the light through its white
+expanse framed her health-tinted face in a sort of glory. "Tell me at
+once. I suspected you came with something on your mind. There couldn't be
+a lovelier place on the river than this for confidences. But I can guess
+yours. Tony, you've found 'her'!"
+
+"And you'll be my friend just the same?" questioned Anthony anxiously. "My
+chum--my confidante?"
+
+"Oh, well, Tony, that's absurd," declared Juliet Marcy severely. "As if
+_she_ would allow it!"
+
+"She's three thousand miles away."
+
+"I'm ashamed of you!"
+
+"Just in the interval, then," pleaded Anthony. "I need you now worse than
+ever. For I've a tremendous responsibility on my hands. The--the--you
+know--is to come off in September, and this is June--and I've a house to
+furnish. Will you help me do it, Juliet?"
+
+"_Anthony Robeson!_" she said explosively under her breath, with a laugh.
+Then she sat up and leaned forward with a commanding gesture. "Tell me all
+about it. What is her name and who is she? Where did you meet her? Are you
+very much----"
+
+"Would I marry a girl if I were not 'very much'?" demanded Anthony.
+"Well--I'll tell you--since you insist on these non-essentials before you
+really come down to business. Her name is Eleanor Langham, and she lives
+in San Francisco. Her family is old, aristocratic, wealthy--yet she
+condescends to me."
+
+He looked up keenly into her eyes, and her brown lashes fell for an
+instant before something in his glance, but she said quickly: "Go on."
+
+"When the--affair--is over I want to bring my bride straight home,"
+Anthony proceeded, with a tinge of colour in his smooth, clear cheek. "I
+shall have no vacation to speak of at that time of year, and no time to
+spend in furnishing a house. Yet I want it all ready for her. So you see I
+need a friend. I shall have two weeks to spare in July, and if you would
+help me--"
+
+"But, Tony," she interrupted, "how could I? If--if we were seen shopping
+together----"
+
+"No, we couldn't go shopping together in New York without being liable to
+run into a wondering crowd of friends, of course--not in the places where
+you would want to go. But here you are only a couple of hours from Boston;
+you will be here all summer; you and Mrs. Dingley and I could run into
+Boston for a day at a time without anybody's being the wiser. I know--that
+is--I'm confident Mrs. Dingley would do it for me----"
+
+"Oh, of course. Did Auntie ever deny you anything since the days when she
+used to give you jam as often as you came across to play with me?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Have you _her_ photograph?" inquired Miss Marcy with an emphasis which
+left no possible doubt as to whose photograph she meant.
+
+"I expected that," said Anthony gravely. "I expected it even sooner. But I
+am prepared."
+
+She sat watching him curiously as he slowly drew from his breast-pocket a
+tiny leather case, and gazed at it precisely as a lover might be expected
+to gaze at his lady's image before jealously surrendering it into other
+hands. She had never seen Anthony Robeson look at any photograph except
+her own with just that expression. She had often wondered if he ever
+would. She had recommended this course of procedure to him many times,
+usually after once more gently refusing to marry him. She had begun at
+last to doubt whether it would ever be possible to divert Tony's mind from
+its long-sought object. But that trip to San Francisco, and the months he
+had spent there in the interests of the firm he served, had evidently
+brought about the desired change. She had not seen him since his return
+until to-day, when he had run up into the country where was the Marcy
+summer home, to tell her, as she now understood, his news and to make his
+somewhat extraordinary request.
+
+She accepted the photograph with a smile, and studied it with attention.
+
+"Oh, but isn't she pretty?" she cried warmly--and generously, for she was
+thinking as she looked how much prettier was Miss Langham than Miss
+Marcy.
+
+"Isn't she?" agreed Anthony with enthusiasm.
+
+"Lovely. What eyes! And what a dear mouth!"
+
+"You're right."
+
+"She looks clever, too."
+
+"She is."
+
+"How tall is she?"
+
+"About up to my shoulder."
+
+"She's little, then."
+
+"Well, I don't know," objected Anthony, surveying his own stalwart length
+of limb. "A girl doesn't have to be a dwarf not to be on a level with me.
+I should say she must be somewhere near your height."
+
+"What a magnificent dresser!"
+
+"Is she? She never irritates one with the fact."
+
+"Oh, but I can see. And she's going to marry you. Tony, what can you give
+her?"
+
+"A little box of a house, one maidservant, an occasional trip into town,
+four new frocks a year--moderate ones, you know, in keeping with her
+circumstances--and my name," replied Anthony composedly.
+
+"You won't let her live in town, then?"
+
+"Let her! Good heavens, what sort of a place could I give her in town on
+my salary? Now, in the very rural suburb I've picked out she can live in
+the greatest comfort, and we can have a real home--something I haven't had
+since Dad died and the old home and the money and all the rest of it
+went."
+
+His face was grave now, and he was staring down into the water as if he
+saw there both what he had lost and what he hoped to gain.
+
+"Yes," said Juliet sympathetically, though she did not know how to imagine
+the girl whose photograph she held in the surroundings Anthony suggested.
+Presently she went on in her gentlest tone: "I'm not saying that the name
+isn't a proud one to offer her, Tony--and if she is willing to share your
+altered fortunes I've no doubt she will be happy. Along with your name
+you'll give her a heart worth having."
+
+"Thank you," said Anthony without looking up.
+
+Miss Marcy coloured slightly, and hastened to supplement this speech with
+another.
+
+"The question is--since the home is to be hers--why not let her furnish
+it? Her tastes and mine might not agree. Besides----"
+
+"Well----"
+
+"Why--you know, Tony," explained Juliet in some confusion, "I shouldn't
+know how to be economical."
+
+"I'm aware that you haven't been brought up on the most economical basis,"
+Anthony acknowledged frankly. "But I'll take care of my funds, no matter
+how extravagant you are inclined to be. If I should hand you five dollars
+and say, 'Buy a dining-table,' you could do it, couldn't you? You couldn't
+satisfy your ideals, of course, but you could give me the benefit of your
+discriminating choice within the five-dollar limit."
+
+Juliet laughed, but in her eyes there grew nevertheless a look of doubt.
+"Tony," she demanded, "how much have you to spend on the furnishing of
+that house?"
+
+"Just five hundred dollars," said Anthony concisely. "And that must cover
+the repairing and painting of the outside. Really, Juliet, haven't I done
+fairly well to save up that and the cost of the house and lot--for a
+fellow who till five years ago never did a thing for himself and never
+expected to need to? Yes, I know--the piano in your music-room cost twice
+that, and so did the horses you drive, and a very few of your pretty gowns
+would swallow another five. But Mrs. Anthony Robeson will have to chasten
+her ideas a trifle. Do you know, Juliet--I think she will--for love of
+me?"
+
+He was smiling at his own audacious confidence. Juliet attempted no reply
+to this very unanswerable statement. She studied the photograph in
+silence, and he lay watching her. In her blue-and-white boating suit she
+was a pleasant object to look at.
+
+"Will you help me?" he asked again at length. "I'm more anxious than I can
+tell you to have everything ready."
+
+"I shouldn't like to fail you, Tony, since you really wish it, though I'm
+very sure you'll find me a poor adviser. But you haven't been a brother to
+me since the mud-pie days for nothing, and if I can help you with
+suggestions as to colour and style I'll be glad to. Though I shall all the
+while be trying to live up to this photograph, and that will be a little
+hard on the five-dollar-dining-table scale."
+
+"You've only to look out that everything is in good taste," said Anthony
+quietly, "and that you can't help doing. My wife will thank you, and the
+new home will be sweet to her because of you. It surely will to me."
+
+
+
+
+II.--MEASUREMENTS
+
+
+It was on the first day of Robeson's two-weeks' July vacation that he came
+to take Juliet Marcy and her aunt, Mrs. Dingley, who had long stood to her
+in the place of the mother she had early lost, to see the home he had
+bought in a remote suburb of a great city. It was a three-hours' journey
+from the Marcy country place, but he had insisted that Juliet could not
+furnish the house intelligently until she had studied it in detail.
+
+So at eleven o'clock of a hot July morning Miss Marcy found herself
+surveying from the roadway a small, old-fashioned white house, with green
+blinds shading its odd, small-paned windows; a very "box of a house," as
+Anthony had said, set well back from the quiet street and surrounded by
+untrimmed trees and overgrown shrubbery. The whole place had a neglected
+appearance. Even the luxuriant climbing-rose, which did its best to hide
+the worn white paint of the house-front, served to intensify the look of
+decay.
+
+"Charming, isn't it?" asked Robeson with the air of the delighted
+proprietor. "Of course everything looks gone to seed, but paint and a
+lawn-mower and a few other things will make another place of it. It's good
+old colonial, that's sure, and only needs a bit of fixing up to be quite
+correct, architecturally, small as it is."
+
+He led the way up the weedy path, Mrs. Dingley and Juliet exchanging
+amused glances behind his back. He opened the doors with a flourish and
+waved the ladies in. They entered with close-held skirts and noses
+involuntarily sniffing at the musty air. Anthony ran around opening
+windows and explaining the "points" of the house. When they had been over
+it Mrs. Dingley, warm and weary, subsided upon the door-step, while Juliet
+and Anthony fell to discussing the possibilities of the place.
+
+"You see," said Anthony, mopping his heated brow, "it isn't like having
+big, high rooms to decorate. These little rooms,"--he put up his hand and
+succeeded, from his fine height, in touching the ceiling of the lower
+front room in which they stood--"won't stand anything but the most simple
+treatment, and expensive papers and upholsteries would be out of place. It
+will take only very small rugs to suit the floors. The main thing for you
+to think of will be colours and effects. You'll find five hundred dollars
+will go a long way, even after the repairs and outside painting are
+disposed of."
+
+He looked so appealing that Juliet could but answer heartily: "Yes, I'm
+sure of it. And now, Tony, don't you think you'd better draw a plan of the
+house, putting in all the measurements, so we shall know just how to go to
+work? And I will go around and dream a while in each room. Give me the
+photograph, you devoted lover, so I can plan things to suit _her_."
+
+Anthony laughed and put his hand into his breast-pocket. But he drew it
+out empty.
+
+"Why--I've left it behind," he admitted in some embarrassment. "I really
+thought I had it."
+
+"Oh, Tony! And on this very trip when we needed it most! How could you
+leave it behind? Don't you always carry it next your heart?"
+
+"Is that the prescribed place?"
+
+"Certainly. I should doubt a man's love if he did not constantly wear my
+likeness right where it could feel his heart beating for me."
+
+"Now I never supposed," remarked Anthony, considering her attentively,
+"that you had so much romance about you. Do you realise that for an
+extremely practical young person such as you have--mostly--appeared to be,
+that is a particularly sentimental suggestion? Er--should you wear his in
+the same way, may I inquire?"
+
+"Of course," returned Juliet with defiance in her eyes, whose lashes, when
+they fell at length before his steadily interested gaze, swept a daintily
+colouring cheek.
+
+"Have you ever worn one?" inquired this hardy young man, nothing daunted
+by these signs of righteous indignation. But all he got for answer was a
+vigorous:
+
+"You absurd boy! Now go to work at your measurements. I'm going upstairs.
+There's one room up there, the one with the gable corners and the little
+bits of windows, that's perfectly fascinating. It must be done in Delft
+blue and white. Since I haven't the photograph"--she turned on the
+threshold to smile roguishly back at him--"memory must serve. Beautiful
+dark hair; eyes like a Madonna's; a perfect nose; the dearest mouth in the
+world--oh, yes----"
+
+She vanished around the corner only to put her head in again with the air
+of one who fires a parting shot at a discomfited enemy: "But, Tony--do you
+honestly think the house is large enough for such a queen of a woman?
+Won't her throne take up the whole of the first floor?"
+
+Then she was gone up the diminutive staircase, and her light footsteps
+could be heard on the bare floors overhead. Left alone, Anthony Robeson
+stood still for a moment looking fixedly at the door by which she had
+gone. The smile with which he had answered her gay fling had faded; his
+eyes had grown dark with a singular fire; his hands were clenched.
+Suddenly he strode across the floor and stopped by the door. He was
+looking down at the quaint old latch which served instead of a knob. Then,
+with a glance at the unconscious back of Mrs. Dingley, sitting sleepily on
+the little porch outside, he stooped and pressed his lips upon the iron
+where Juliet's hand had lain.
+
+
+
+
+III.--SHOPPING WITH A CHAPERON
+
+
+"Five hundred dollars," mused Miss Marcy, on the Boston train next
+morning. "Six rooms--living-room, dining-room, kitchen, and three
+bedrooms. That's----"
+
+"You forget," warned Anthony Robeson from the seat where he faced Juliet
+and Mrs. Dingley. "That must cover the outside painting and repairs. You
+can't figure on having more than three hundred dollars left for the
+inside."
+
+"Dear me, yes," frowned Juliet. She held Anthony's plan in her hand, and
+her tablets and pencil lay in her lap. "Well, I can spend fifty dollars on
+each room--only some will need more than others. The living-room will take
+the most--no, the dining-room."
+
+"The kitchen will take the most," suggested Mrs. Dingley. "Your range will
+use up the most of your fifty. And kitchen utensils count up very
+rapidly."
+
+"It will be a very small range," Anthony said. "A little toy stove would
+be more practical for our--the kitchen. How big is it, Juliet?"
+
+"'Ten by fourteen,'" read Juliet. "From the centre of the room you can hit
+all the side walls with the broom. Speaking of walls, Tony--those must be
+our first consideration. If we get our colour scheme right everything else
+will follow. I have it all in my head."
+
+So it proved. But it also proved, when they had been hard at work for an
+hour at a well-known decorator's, that the tints and designs for which
+Miss Marcy asked were not readily to be found in the low-priced
+wall-papers to which Anthony rigidly held her.
+
+"I must have the softest, most restful greens for the living-room," she
+announced. "There--_that_----"
+
+"But that is a dollar a roll," whispered Anthony.
+
+"Then--_that_!"
+
+"Eighty-five cents."
+
+"But for that little room, Tony----"
+
+"Twenty-five cents a roll is all we can allow," insisted Anthony firmly.
+"And less than that everywhere else."
+
+The salesman was very obliging, and showed the best things possible for
+the money. It was impossible to resist the appeal in the eyes of this
+critical but restricted young buyer.
+
+"There, that will do, I think," said Juliet at length, with a long breath.
+"The green for the living-room and for the bit of a hall--No, no, Tony;
+I've just thought! You must take away that little partition and let the
+stairs go up out of the living-room. That will improve the apparent size
+of things wonderfully."
+
+"All right," agreed Anthony obediently.
+
+"Then we'll put that rich red in the dining-room. For upstairs there is
+the tiny rose pattern, and the Delft blue, and that little pale yellow and
+white stripe. In the kitchen we'll have the tile pattern. We won't have a
+border anywhere--the rooms are too low; just those simplest mouldings, and
+the ivory white on the ceilings. The woodwork must all be white. There
+now, that's settled. Next come the floors."
+
+There could be no doubt that Juliet was becoming interested in her task.
+Though the July heat was intense she led the way with rapid steps to the
+place where she meant to select her rugs. Here the three spent a trying
+two hours. It was hard to please Miss Marcy with Japanese jute rugs,
+satisfactory in colouring though many of them were, when she longed to buy
+Persian pieces of distinction. If Juliet had a special weakness it was for
+choice antique rugs.
+
+She cornered Anthony at last, while Mrs. Dingley and the salesman were
+politely but unequivocally disputing over the quality of a certain piece
+of Chinese weaving.
+
+"Tony," she begged, "please let me get that one dear Turkish square for
+the living-room. It will give character to the whole room, and the colours
+are perfectly exquisite. I simply can't get one of those cheap things to
+go in front of that beautiful old fireplace. Imagine the firelight on that
+square; it would make you want to spend your evenings at home. Please!"
+
+"Do you imagine that I shall ever want to spend them anywhere else?" asked
+Tony softly, looking down into her appealing face. "Why, chum, I'd like to
+get that Tabriz you admire so much, if it would please you, in spite of
+the fact that we should have to pull the whole house up forty notches to
+match it. But even the Turkish square is out of the question."
+
+"But, Tony"--Juliet was whispering now with her head a little bent and her
+eyes on the lapel of his coat--"won't you let me do it as my--my
+contribution? I'd like to put something of my own into your house."
+
+"You dear little girl," Anthony answered--and possibly for her own peace
+of mind it was fortunate that Miss Langham, of California, could not see
+the look with which he regarded Miss Marcy, of Massachusetts--"I'm sure
+you would. And you are putting into it just what is priceless to me--your
+individuality and your perfect taste. But I can't let even you help
+furnish that house. She--must take what I--and only I--can give her."
+
+"You're perfectly ridiculous," murmured Juliet, turning away with an
+expression of deep displeasure. "As if she wouldn't bring all sorts of
+elegant stuff with her, and make your cheap things look insignificant."
+
+"I don't think she will," returned Anthony with conviction. "She'll bring
+nothing out of keeping with the house."
+
+"I thought you told me she was of a wealthy family."
+
+"She is. But if she marries me she leaves all that behind. I'll have no
+wife on any other basis."
+
+"Well--for a son of the Robesons of Kentucky you are absolutely the most
+absurd boy anybody ever heard of," declared the girl hotly under her
+breath. Then she walked over and ordered a certain inexpensive rug for the
+living-room with the air of a princess and the cheeks of a poppy.
+
+
+
+
+IV.--THE COST OF FROCKS
+
+
+It may have been that Miss Marcy was piqued into trying to see how little
+she could spend, but certain it was that from the time she left the carpet
+shop she begged for no exceptions to Mr. Robeson's rule of strict economy.
+She selected simple, delicate muslins for the windows, one and all,
+without a glance at finer draperies; bought denims and printed stuffs as
+if she had never heard of costlier upholsteries; and turned away from
+seductive pieces of Turkish and Indian embroideries offered for her
+inspection with a demure, "No, I don't care to look at those now," which
+more than once brought a covert smile to Anthony's lips and a twinkle to
+the eyes of the salesman. It was so very evident that the fair buyer did
+not pass them by for lack of interest.
+
+Altogether, it was an interesting week these three people spent--for a
+week it took. Anthony began to protest after the first two days, and said
+he could not ask so much of his friends. But Juliet would not be hindered
+from taking infinite pains, and Mrs. Dingley good humouredly lent the two
+her chaperonage and her occasional counsel, such as only the gray-haired
+matron of long housewifely experience can furnish.
+
+The selection of the furniture took perhaps the most time, and was the
+hardest, because of the difficulty of finding good styles in keeping with
+the limited purse. Anthony possessed a number of good pieces of antique
+character, but beyond these everything was to be purchased. Juliet turned
+in despair from one shop after another, and when it came to the fitting of
+the dining-room she grew distinctly indignant.
+
+"It's a perfect shame," she said, "that they can't offer really good
+designs in the cheap things. Did you ever see anything so hideous? Tony,
+if I were you I'd rather eat my breakfast off one of those white kitchen
+tables--or----"
+
+She broke off suddenly, rushed away down the long room to a group of
+chastely elegant dining-room furniture and came back after a little with a
+face of great eagerness to drag her companions away with her. She took
+them to survey a set of the costliest of all.
+
+"Have you gone crazy?" Anthony inquired.
+
+"Not at all. Tony, just study that table. It's massive, but it's
+simple--simple as beauty always is. Look at those perfectly straight
+legs--what clever cabinet maker couldn't copy that in--in ash, Tony? Then
+there are stains--I've heard of them--that rub into wood and then finish
+in some way so it's smooth and satiny. You could do that--I'm sure you
+could. Then you'd get the lovely big top you want. And the chairs--do you
+see the plain, solid-looking things? I know they could be made this way.
+Then the dining-room would be simply dear!"
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Juliet, you're coming on," declared Anthony with satisfaction that
+evening as the two, back at the Marcy country place, strolled slowly over
+the lawn toward the river edge. "At this rate you'll do for a poor man's
+wife yourself some day. That frock you have on now--isn't that a sort of
+concession to the humble company you're in?"
+
+"In what way?" Juliet glanced down at the pale-green gown whose delicate
+skirts she was daintily lifting, and in which she looked like a flower in
+its calyx. She had rejoiced to exchange the dusty dress in which she had
+come home from town for this, which suggested coolness in each fresh
+fold.
+
+"Why, it strikes me as about the simplest dress I ever saw you wear. Isn't
+it really--well--the least expensive thing you have had in that line in
+some time?"
+
+The amused laugh with which this observation was greeted might have been
+disconcerting to anybody but Anthony Robeson, but he maintained his ground
+with calmness.
+
+"How many of these do you think you can furnish Mrs. Anthony with in a
+year?" Juliet inquired, her lips forcing themselves to soberness, but the
+laughter lingering in her eyes.
+
+"Several, as girlishly demure as that, I fancy," asserted the young man
+with confidence.
+
+But Juliet's momentary gravity broke down. "Oh, you clever boy!" she said.
+"I shall advise Mrs. Anthony to send you shopping for her when she needs a
+new frock. You will order home just what she wants without stopping to ask
+the price, you will be so confident that you know a cheap thing when you
+see it. Afterward you will pay the bill--and then the awful frown on your
+brow! You will have to live on bread and milk for a month to get your
+accounts straightened out. Oh, Tony!--No, I shouldn't do for a poor man's
+wife--not judging by this 'girlishly demure' gown, you poor lamb.--But,
+Tony," with a swift change of manner, "I do think the little house will be
+very charming indeed. I can hardly wait to know that the painting and
+papering are done, so that we can go down and get things in order. I long
+to arrange those fascinating new tin things in that bit of a cupboard.
+Tony"--turning to him solemnly--"does _she_ know how to cook?"
+
+"I think she is learning now," he assured her. "Seems to me she mentioned
+it in to-day's----" He fumbled in his breast-pocket and brought out a
+letter.
+
+Juliet stole an interested glance at it. She observed that there were
+three closely written sheets of the heavy linen paper, and that the
+handwriting was one suggestive of a pleasing individuality. Anthony, in
+the dim twilight, was scanning page after page in a lover's absorbed way.
+Juliet walked along by his side in silence. She was thinking of the face
+in the photograph, and wondering if Miss Eleanor Langham really loved
+Anthony Robeson as he deserved to be loved.
+
+"For he is a dear, dear fellow," she said to herself, "and if she could
+just see him planning so enthusiastically for her comfort, even if he does
+have to economise, she'd----"
+
+"No, it's not in this letter," observed Anthony, putting the sheets
+together with a lingering touch which did not escape his companion's quick
+eyes. "It must have been in yesterday's."
+
+"Does she write every day?"
+
+"Did you ever hear of an engaged pair who didn't write every day?"
+
+"It must take a good deal of your time," she remarked. "But, of course,
+she can cook. Every sane girl takes a cooking-school course nowadays. It's
+as essential as French."
+
+"You did, then?"
+
+"Of course. Don't you remember when I used to edify you with new and
+wonderful dishes every time you dropped in to luncheon?"
+
+"But did you learn the more important things?"
+
+"I paid especial attention to soups, sir," laughed Juliet. "Now, if Mrs.
+Anthony has done that you can live very economically."
+
+"I'll suggest it to her," said Anthony gravely.
+
+
+
+
+V.--MUSLINS AND TACKHAMMERS
+
+
+It took several trips to the small house, and a great deal of hemming and
+ruffling of muslin on the part of Juliet and the Marcy sewing-woman, to
+say nothing of many days of Anthony's hard labour, to get everything in
+place. But it was all done at length, and the hour arrived to close the
+new home and leave it to wait the oncoming day in September when it should
+be permanently opened.
+
+"I'll just go over it once more," said Juliet to Mrs. Dingley. The latter
+lady was lying in a hammock out under the apple trees, waiting for train
+time and her final release from duties which were becoming decidedly
+wearisome. It was the first day of August, and the evening was a warm one.
+Anthony had gone off upon a last errand of some sort. Mrs. Dingley was too
+exhausted to offer to accompany her niece, and Juliet ran back into the
+house alone. She wandered slowly through the rooms, looking about to see
+if there might be any perfecting touch which she could add.
+
+It was a charming place; even a daughter of the house of Marcy could but
+own to that. Under her skilful management the little rooms had blossomed
+into a fresh, satisfying beauty that needed only the addition of the
+personal adornment which Anthony's bride would be sure to bring, to become
+a home--the home not only of a poor man but of a refined and cultured one
+as well. Restricted though she had been to the most inexpensive means of
+bringing about this happy result, Juliet had made them all tell toward an
+effect of great harmony and beauty. Perhaps to nobody was this more of a
+revelation than to the girl herself.
+
+She was very proud of the living-room, as she looked about it. The
+partition between it and the tiny hall had been removed, according to her
+suggestion, and the straight staircase altered by means of a landing and
+an abrupt turn which transformed it into picturesqueness. With its low,
+broad steps, its slender spindles and odd posts, it added much to the
+character of the room.
+
+Like most old New England houses, this one's chief glory was its great
+central chimney, with big fireplaces opening both into the living-room and
+the dining-room. In the former, between the fireplace and the staircase,
+and forming a suggestion of an inglenook, Juliet had contrived a high,
+wide seat, cushioned in dull green, and boasting a number of pretty
+pillows. It must be confessed that she had surreptitiously added a little
+to these in the matter of certain modestly rich bits of material, and she
+contemplated the result with great satisfaction. It may be remarked, with
+no comment whatever, that in spite of their beauty there was not a pillow
+of all those scattered about the house which a weary man might not tuck
+under his head without fear of ruining a creation too delicate for any use
+but to be admired.
+
+Having seized upon the idea of staining cheap material, she had carried it
+out in a set of low bookcases across the end and one side of the room.
+These awaited the coming of the several hundreds of choice books which
+Anthony had saved from his father's library. Two fine old portraits, dear
+to the hearts of many generations of the "Robesons of Kentucky," lent
+distinction to the home of their young descendant. Altogether the room was
+both quaint and artistic, and with its few plain chairs and tables, mostly
+heirlooms, and all of good old colonial design, was a room in which one
+could readily imagine one's self sitting down to a winter evening of cosy
+comfort, such as is not always to be had in far finer abiding-places.
+
+The dining-room was a study in its reds and browns, and its home-made
+furniture was an astonishing success--if one were not too severely
+critical. As she surveyed it Juliet seemed to see the future master and
+mistress of this little home sitting down opposite each other in the
+fireglow, and smiling across.
+
+The coming Mrs. Robeson, if one might judge by her photograph, was a woman
+to lend grace and dignity to her surroundings, whatever they might be.
+Juliet could imagine her pretty, stately way of presiding at such small
+feasts as the room was destined to see, making her guests quite forget
+that she was not mistress of a mansion equal to any in the land. Would she
+be happy? Could she be happy here, after all that she had had of another
+and very different sort of life? For some reason, as Juliet stood and
+looked and thought, her face grew very sober, and a long-drawn breath
+escaped her lips.
+
+The little kitchen was an exceedingly alluring place, gay in the bravery
+of fresh paint and spotless, shining utensils. There were even crisp
+curtains--at eight cents a yard--tied back at the high, wide-silled,
+triple window with its diminutive panes. It needed only a pot or two of
+growing plants in the window, and a neat-handed Phyllis in a figured gown,
+to be the old-time kitchen of one's dreams.
+
+But it was upon the rooms on the upper floor that Juliet had exhausted her
+imagination and effort. Nothing could have been conceived of more dainty
+than they. Here her denims and muslins had run riot. Low dressing-tables
+clad in ruffled hangings, their padded tops delicate with the breath of
+orris; beds valanced with similar stuffs; high-backed chairs, their seats
+cushioned into comfort--everything was done in the cleverest imitation of
+the ancient styles in keeping with the old-fashioned house. It all made
+one think of the patter of high-heeled, buckled slippers, and stiff,
+rustling, brocaded gowns, and powdered hair, and the odours of long ago.
+Anthony would never know what his friendly home-maker had put into these
+rooms of sentiment and charm.
+
+
+
+
+VI.--A QUESTION OF IDENTITY
+
+
+At the door of the blue-and-white room, the one upon which the girl had
+lavished her most tender fancies, she stood at length, looking in. And as
+she looked something swam before her eyes. A sob rose in her throat. She
+choked it back; she brushed her hand across her face. Then she tried to
+laugh. "Oh, what a goose I am!" she said sternly to herself. And then she
+ran across the room, sank upon her knees before the window-seat with its
+blue and white cushions, and burying her face in one of them cried her
+wretched, jealous, longing heart out.
+
+Anthony, coming in hastily but softly through the small kitchen, heard the
+rush of footsteps overhead, and stopped. He waited a moment, listening
+eagerly; then he came noiselessly into the living-room and stood still.
+His face, always strong and somewhat stern in its repose, had in it
+to-night a certain unusual intensity. He looked at his watch and saw that
+there was an hour before train time. Then he sat down where he could see
+the top of the staircase and waited.
+
+By and by light footsteps crossed the floor above and came through the
+little hall. From where he sat Anthony caught the gleam of Juliet's crisp
+linen skirt. Presently she came slowly down. As she turned upon the
+landing she met Anthony's eyes looking up. In a fashion quite unusual to
+the straightforward gaze of his friend her eyes fell. He saw that her
+cheeks were pale. He rose to meet her.
+
+"Come and rest," he said. "You are tired. You have worked too hard. Such a
+helper a man never had before. And you have made a wonderful success.
+Juliet, I can't thank you. It's beyond that."
+
+But she would not be led to the cosy corner by the window. She found
+something needing her attention in the curtain of the bookcase in the
+dimmest corner of the room, and began solicitously to pull it in various
+ways, as if there were something wrong with it. He watched her, standing
+with his arm on the high chimney-piece.
+
+"I think you enjoyed it just a little bit yourself, though," he observed.
+"Didn't you, chum?"
+
+"Yes, indeed," said Juliet.
+
+Her back was toward him, her head bent down, but his quick ear detected a
+peculiar quality in her voice. He questioned her again hurriedly.
+
+"You're not sorry you did it?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Juliet.
+
+Now there is not much in two such simple replies as these to indicate the
+state of one's mind and heart; but when a girl has been crying stormily
+and uninterruptedly for a half-hour, and is only not crying still because
+she is holding back the torrent of her unhappiness by sheer force of will,
+it is radically impossible to say so much as four words in a perfectly
+natural way. Anthony understood in a breath that the unfamiliar note in
+his friend's voice was that of tears. And, strange to say, into his face
+there flashed a look of triumph. But he only said very gently:
+
+"Come here a minute--will you, Juliet?"
+
+She bent lower over the curtain. Then she stood up, without looking at
+him, and moved toward the door.
+
+"I believe I'm rather tired," she said in a low tone. "It has been so warm
+all day, and I--I have a headache."
+
+In three steps he came after her, stopping her with his hand grasping hers
+as she would have left the room.
+
+"Come back--please," he urged. "Your aunt is asleep out there, I think. I
+wanted to go over the house once more with you, if you would. But you're
+too tired for that. Just come back and sit down in this nook of yours, and
+let's talk a little."
+
+She could not well refuse, and he put her into a nest of cushions,
+arranging them carefully behind her back and head, and sat down facing
+her. He had placed her just where the waning light from the western sky
+fell full on her face; his own was in the shadow. He was watching her
+unmercifully--she felt that, and desperately turned her face aside,
+burying in a friendly pillow the cheek which was colouring under his
+gaze.
+
+"Is the headache so bad?" he asked softly. "I never knew Juliet Marcy to
+have a headache before. Poor little girl--dear little girl--who has worked
+so hard to please her old friend." He leaned forward and she felt his hand
+upon her hair. The tenderness in his voice and touch were carrying away
+all her defences. But he went on without giving her respite.
+
+"Do you think _she_ will be happy here, chum? Will it take the place of
+the old life for a few years, till I can give her more? She'll have
+nothing here, you know, outside of this little home, but my love. That
+wouldn't be enough for any ordinary woman, would it?"
+
+She was not looking at him, but she could see him as plainly as if she
+were. Always she had thought him the strongest, best fellow she knew. He
+had been her devoted friend so long; she had not realised in the least
+until lately how it was going to seem to get on without him. But she knew
+now.
+
+She felt a dreadful choking in her throat again. It seemed to be closely
+connected with another peculiar sensation, as if her heart had turned into
+a lump of lead. In another minute she knew that she should break down,
+which would be humiliating beyond words. She started up from her cushions
+with a fierce attempt to keep a grip upon herself.
+
+"I know you're very happy," she breathed, "and I'm very glad. But really
+I--I'm not at all sentimental to-night. I'm afraid a headache does not
+make one sympathetic."
+
+But she could not get past him; Anthony's stalwart figure barred the way.
+His strong hands put her gently back among the cushions. She turned her
+head away, fighting hard for that thing she could not keep--her
+self-control.
+
+"Is it really a headache?" asked the low voice in her ear. "Just a
+headache? Not by any chance--a heartache, Juliet?"
+
+"Anthony Robeson!" she cried, but guardedly, lest the open window betray
+her. "What do you mean? You say very strange things. Why should I have a
+heartache? Because you are marrying the girl you love? How often have I
+begged you to go and find her? Do you think I would have done all this for
+her--and you--if I had cared?"
+
+She tried to look defiantly into his eyes--those fine eyes of his which
+were watching her so intently--tried to meet them steadily with her own
+lovely, tear-stained ones--and failed. Swiftly an intense colour dyed her
+cheeks, and she dropped her head like a guilty child.
+
+"Of course I care--that is, in a way," she was somehow forced to admit
+before the bar of his silence. "Why shouldn't I hate to lose the friend
+who used to carry my books to school, and fought the other boys for my
+sake, and has been a brother to me all these years? Of course I do. And
+when I am tired I cry for nothing--just nothing. I----"
+
+It was certainly a brave attempt at eloquence, but perhaps it was not
+wonderfully convincing. At all events it did not keep Anthony from taking
+possession of one of her hands and interrupting her with a most irrelevant
+speech.
+
+"Juliet, do you remember telling me that you should expect a man who loved
+you to carry your likeness always with him? And you asked me for
+_hers_--and I had to own I had left it behind. Yet I had one with me
+then--it is always with me--and that was why I forgot the other. Look."
+
+He drew out a little silver case, and Juliet, reluctantly releasing one
+eye from the shelter of the friendly sofa pillow, saw with a start her own
+face look smiling back at her. It was a little picture of her girlish self
+which she had given him long ago when he went away to college.
+
+"No," he said quickly, as he recognised the indignant question which
+instantly showed in her eyes, "I'm not disloyal to Eleanor Langham.
+Because--dear--there is no such person."
+
+With a little cry she flung herself away from him among the pillows,
+hiding her face from sight. There was a moment's silence while Anthony
+Robeson, his own face growing pale with the immensity of the stakes for
+which he played, made his last venture.
+
+"The little home is only for you, Juliet. If you won't share it with me it
+shall be closed and sold. Perhaps it was an audacious thing to do--it has
+come over me a great many times that it was too audacious ever to be
+forgiven. But I couldn't help the hope that if you should make the home
+yourself you might come to feel that life with a man who had his way to
+make could be borne after all--if you loved him enough. It all depended on
+that. As I said, I didn't mean to be presumptuous, but it was a desperate
+chance with me, dear. I couldn't give you up, and I thought perhaps--just
+_perhaps_--you cared--more than you knew. Anyhow--I loved you so--I had to
+risk it."
+
+Juliet's charming brown head was buried so deep in the pillows that only
+its back with the masses of waving, half-rumpled hair was visible. But up
+from the depths came a smothered question:
+
+"The photograph?"
+
+Anthony's face lightened as if the sun had struck it, but he kept his
+voice quiet. "Borrowed--it's my old friend Dennison's. I never even saw
+the girl--though I ought to beg her pardon for the use I have made of her
+face. She's married now, and lives abroad somewhere. Will you forgive
+me?"
+
+He was standing over her, leaning down so that his cheek touched the
+rumpled hair. "How is it, Juliet? Could you live in the little home--with
+love--and me?"
+
+It was a long time before he got any answer. But at last a flushed, wet,
+radiant face came into view, an arm was reached out, and as with an
+inarticulate, deep note of joy he drew her up into his embrace, a voice,
+half tears, half laughter, cried:
+
+"Oh, Tony--you dear, bad, darling, insolent boy! I did think I could do
+without you--but I can't. And--oh, Tony"--she was sobbing in his arms now,
+while he regarded the top of her head with laughing, exultant eyes--"I'm
+so glad--so glad--_so glad_--there isn't any Eleanor Langham! Oh, _how_ I
+hated her!"
+
+"Did you, sweetheart?" he answered, laughing aloud now. Then bending, with
+his lips close to hers--"well, to tell the truth--to tell the honest
+truth, little girl--_so did I_!"
+
+
+
+
+VII.--AN ARGUMENT WITHOUT LOGIC
+
+
+"I don't like it," repeated Mr. Horatio Marcy, obstinately, and shook his
+head for the fifth time. "I've not a word to say against Anthony, my
+dear--not a word. He's a fine fellow and comes of a good family, and I
+respect him and the start he has made since things went to pieces,
+but----"
+
+Juliet waited, her eyes downcast, her cheeks very much flushed, her mouth
+in lines of mutiny.
+
+"But--" her father continued, settling back in his chair with an air of
+decision, "you will certainly make the mistake of your life if you think
+you can be happy in the sort of existence he offers you. You're not used
+to it. You've not been brought up to it. You can spend more money in a
+forenoon than he can earn in a twelve-month. You don't know how to adapt
+yourself to life on a basis of rigid economy. I----"
+
+"You don't forbid it, sir?"
+
+"Forbid it?--no. A man can't forbid a twenty-four year old woman to do as
+she pleases. But I advise you--I warn you--I ask you seriously to consider
+what it all means. You are used to very many habits of living which will
+be entirely beyond Anthony's means for many years to come. You are fond of
+travel--of dress--of social----"
+
+"Father dear," said his daughter, interrupting him gently by a change of
+tactics. She came to him and sat upon the arm of his chair, and rested her
+cheek lightly upon the top of his thick, iron-gray locks.--"Let's drop all
+this for the present. Let's not discuss it. I want you to do me a
+particular favour before we say another word about it. Come with me down
+to see the house. It's only three hours away. We can go after breakfast
+to-morrow and be back for dinner at seven. It's all I ask. My arguments
+are all there. Please!--_Please!_"
+
+So it came about that at eleven o'clock on a certain morning in August,
+Mr. Horatio Marcy discovered himself to be eyeing with critical, reluctant
+gaze a quaintly attractive, low-spreading white house among trees and
+vines. He became aware at the same time of a sudden close clasp on his
+arm.
+
+"Here it is," said a low voice in his ear. "Does it look habitable?"
+
+"Very pretty, very pretty, my dear," Mr. Marcy admitted. No sane man could
+do otherwise. The little house might have been placed very comfortably
+between the walls of the dining-room at the Marcy country house, but there
+was an indefinable, undeniable air of gracious hospitality and
+homelikeness about its aspect, and its surroundings gave it an appearance
+of being ample for the accommodation of any two people not anxious to get
+away from each other.
+
+Juliet produced an antique door-key of a clumsy pattern, and opened the
+door into the living-room. She ran across to the windows and threw them
+open, then turned to see what expression might be at the moment illumining
+Mr. Marcy's face. He was glancing about him with curious eyes, which
+rested finally upon the portrait of a courtly gentleman in ruffles and
+flowing hair, hanging above the fireplace. He adjusted a pair of
+eyeglasses and gave the portrait the honour of his serious attention.
+
+"That is an ancestor," Juliet explained. "Doesn't he give distinction to
+the room? And isn't the room--well--just a little bit distinguished-looking
+itself, in spite of its simplicity?--because of it, perhaps. The tables
+and most of the chairs are what Anthony found left in the old Kentucky
+homestead after the sale last year, and bought in with--the last of his
+money." Her eyes were very bright, but her voice was quiet.
+
+Mr. Marcy looked at the furniture in question, stared at the walls, then
+at the rug on the polished floor. The rug held his attention for two long
+minutes, then he glanced sharply at his daughter.
+
+"The colourings of that rug are very good, don't you think?" she asked
+with composure. "It will last until Anthony can afford a better one."
+
+Mr. Marcy turned significantly toward the door of the dining-room, and
+Juliet led him through. He surveyed the room in silence, laying a hand
+upon a chair back; then looked suddenly down at the chair and brought his
+eyeglasses to bear upon it.
+
+"The furniture was made by a country cabinet-maker who charged country
+prices for doing it. Tony rubbed in a very thin stain and rubbed the wood
+in oil afterward till it got this soft polish."
+
+The visitor looked incredulous, but he accepted the explanation with a
+polite though exceedingly slight smile. Then he was taken to inspect the
+kitchen. From here he was led through the pantry back to the living-room,
+and so upstairs. He looked, still silently, in at the door of each room,
+exquisite in its dainty readiness for occupancy. As he studied the
+blue-and-white room his daughter observed that he retained less of the air
+of the connoisseur than he had elsewhere exhibited. She had shown him this
+place last with artful intent. No room in his own homes of luxury could
+appeal to him with more of beauty than was visible here.
+
+When Mr. Marcy reached the living-room again he found himself placed
+gently but insistently in the easiest chair the room afforded, close by an
+open window through which floated all the soft odours of country air
+blowing lightly across apple orchards and gardens of old-fashioned
+flowers. His daughter, bringing from the ingle seat a plump cushion,
+dropped upon it at his feet. But instead of beginning any sort of argument
+she laid her arm upon his knee, and her head down upon her arm, and became
+as still as a kitten who has composed itself for sleep. Only through the
+contact of the warm young arm, her father could feel that she was alive
+and waiting for his speech.
+
+When he spoke at last it was with grave quiet, in a gentler tone than that
+which he had used the day before in his own library.
+
+"You helped Anthony furnish this house?"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"Do you mind telling me how much you had at your disposal?"
+
+"Five hundred dollars." Juliet maintained her position without moving, and
+her face was out of sight.
+
+"Did this include the repairs upon the place?"
+
+"Yes--but you know wages are low just now and lumber is cheap. Having no
+roof to the porch made it inexpensive. The painting Anthony helped at
+himself. He worked every minute of his two weeks' vacation on whatever
+would cost most to hire done."
+
+"Anthony worked at painting the house?" There was astonishment in Mr.
+Marcy's voice. He had known the Robesons of Kentucky all his life. He had
+never seen one of them lift his hand to do manual labour. There had been
+no need.
+
+"Yes," said Juliet, and the cheek which rested against her father's knee
+began to grow warm.
+
+"You have obtained a somewhat extraordinary effect of harmony and comfort
+inside the house," Mr. Marcy pursued. "It is difficult to understand just
+how you brought it about with so small an expenditure of money."
+
+It was quite impossible now for Juliet to keep her head down. She looked
+up eagerly, but she still managed to speak quietly.
+
+"It _is_ effect, father, and it is art--not money. The paper on the wall
+cost twenty-five cents a roll, but it is the right paper for the place,
+and the wrong paper at ten times that sum wouldn't give the room such a
+background of soft restfulness. Then, you see, the old white woodwork is
+in very good style, and the green walls bring it out. The old floor was
+easily dressed to give that beautiful waxed finish. They told me how to do
+that at the best decorator's in Boston. The rug fits the colourings very
+well. Anthony's old furniture would give any such room dignity. The
+portrait lends the finishing touch, I think. You see, when you analyse it
+all there's nothing in the least wonderful. But it looks like a
+home--doesn't it? And when the little things are in which grow in a
+home--the photographs, a bowl of sweet-williams from the garden, the
+lovely old copper lamp you gave me on my birthday--can't you think how
+dear it will all be?"
+
+Mr. Marcy glanced down keenly into his daughter's face.
+
+"There are a great many things of your own at home which would naturally
+come into your married home," he said.
+
+Juliet coloured richly. "Yes," she answered with steady eyes, "but except
+for the lamp, and the photographs, and a few such very little things, I
+should not bring them. Anthony is poor, but he is very proud. I couldn't
+hurt him by furnishing his home with the overflow of mine. Besides--I
+don't need those things. I don't want them. All I want out of the old home
+is--your love--your blessing, dear!"
+
+The sharp eyes meeting hers softened suddenly. Juliet drew herself to her
+knees, and leaning forward across her father's lap, reached both arms up
+and flung them about his neck. He held her close, her head upon his
+shoulder, and all at once he found the slender figure in his arms shaken
+with feeling. Juliet was not crying, but she was drawing long, deep
+breaths like a child who tries to control itself.
+
+"You need have no doubt of either of those things, my little girl," said
+her father in her ear. "Both are ready. It is only your happiness I want.
+I distrust the power of any poor man to give it to you. That is all. Since
+I have seen this house the question looks less doubtful to me--I admit
+that gladly. But I still am anxious for the future. Even in this
+attractive place there must be monotony, drudgery, lack of many things you
+have always had and felt you must have. You have never learned to do
+without them. I understand that Robeson will not accept them at my hand,
+nor at yours. I don't know that I think the less of him for that--but--you
+will have to learn self-denial. I want you to be very sure that you can do
+it, and that it will be worth while."
+
+There was a little silence, then Juliet gently drew herself away and rose
+to her feet. She stood looking down at the imposing figure of the elderly
+man in the chair, and there was something in her face he had never seen
+there before.
+
+"There's just one thing about it, sir," she said. "I can't possibly spare
+Anthony Robeson out of my life. I tried to do it, and I know. I would
+rather live it out in this little home--with him--than share the most
+promising future with any other man. But there's this you must remember: A
+man who was brought up to do nothing but ride fine horses, and shoot, and
+dance, must have something in him to go to work and advance, and earn
+enough to buy even such a home as this, in five years. He has a future of
+his own."
+
+Mr. Marcy looked thoughtful. "Yes, that may be true," he said. "I rather
+think it is."
+
+"And, father----" she bent to lay a roseleaf cheek against his own--"you
+began with mother in a poorer home than this, and were so happy! Don't I
+know that?"
+
+"Yes, yes, dear," he sighed. "That's true, too. But we were both poor--had
+always been so. It was an advance for us--not a coming down."
+
+"It's no coming down for me." There was spirit and fire in the girl's eyes
+now. "Just to wear less costly clothes--to walk instead of drive--to live
+on simpler food--what are those things? Look at these," she pointed to the
+rows of books in the bookcases which lined two walls of the room. "I'm
+marrying a man of refinement, of family, of the sort of blood that tells.
+He's an educated man--he loves the things those books stand for. He's good
+and strong and fine--and if I'm not safe with him I'll never be safe with
+anybody. But besides all that--I--I love him with all there is of me.
+Oh--_are_ you satisfied now?"
+
+Blushing furiously she turned away. Her father got to his feet, stood
+looking after her a moment with something very tender coming into his
+eyes, then took a step toward her and gathered her into his arms.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.--ON ACCOUNT OF THE TEA-KETTLE
+
+
+"This is the nineteenth day of August," observed Anthony Robeson. "We
+finished furnishing the house for my future bride on the third day of the
+month. Over two weeks have gone by since then. The place must need
+dusting."
+
+He glanced casually at the figure in white which sat just above him upon
+the step of the great porch at the back of the Marcy country house. It was
+past twilight, the moon was not yet up, and only the glow from a distant
+shaded lamp at the other end of the porch served to give him a hint as to
+the expression upon his companion's face.
+
+"I'm beginning to lie awake nights," he continued, "trying to remember
+just how my little home looks. I can't recall whether we set the
+tea-kettle on the stove or left it in the tin-closet. Can you think?"
+
+"You put it on the stove yourself," said Juliet. "You would have filled it
+if Auntie Dingley hadn't told you it would rust."
+
+Anthony swerved about upon the heavy oriental rug, which covered the
+steps, until his back rested against the column; he clasped his arms about
+one knee, and inclined his head at the precise angle which would enable
+him to study continuously the shadowy outlines of the face above him, shot
+across with a ruby ray from the lamp. "I wish I could recollect," he
+pursued, "whether I left the porch awning up or down. It has rained three
+times in the two weeks. It ought not to be down."
+
+"I'm sure it isn't," Juliet assured him. There was a hint of laughter in
+her voice.
+
+"It was rather absurd to put up that awning at all, I suppose. But when
+you can't afford a roof to your piazza, and compromise on an awning
+instead, you naturally want to see how it is going to look, and you rush
+it up. Besides, I think there was a strong impression on my mind that only
+a few days intervened before our occupancy of the place. It shows how
+misled one can be."
+
+There was no reply to this observation, made in a depressed tone. After a
+minute Anthony went on.
+
+"These cares of the householder--they absorb me. I'm always wondering if
+the lawn needs mowing, and if the new roof leaks. I get anxious about the
+blinds--do any of them work loose and swing around and bang their lives
+out in the night? Have the neighbours' chickens rooted up that row of
+hollyhock seeds? Then those books I placed on the shelves so hurriedly.
+Are any of them by chance upside down? Is Volume I. elbowed by Volume II.
+or by Volume VIII.? And I can't get away to see. Coming up here every
+Saturday night and tearing back every Sunday midnight takes all my time."
+
+"You might spend next Sunday in the new house."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"Of course. You have so many cares they would keep you from getting
+lonely."
+
+Anthony made no immediate answer to this suggestion, beyond laughing up at
+his companion in the dim light for an instant, then growing immediately
+sober again. But presently he began upon a new aspect of the subject.
+
+"Juliet, are we to be married in church?"
+
+"Tony!--I don't know."
+
+"But what do you think?"
+
+"I--don't think."
+
+"What! Do you mean that?"
+
+"No-o."
+
+"Of course you don't. Well--what about it?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Are we to have a big wedding?"
+
+"Do you want one?"
+
+"I--but that's not the question. Do you want a big wedding?"
+
+She hesitated an instant. Then she answered softly, but with decision:
+"No."
+
+Anthony drew a long breath. "Thank the Lord!" he said devoutly.
+
+"Why?" she asked in some surprise.
+
+"I've never exactly understood why the boys I've been best man for were so
+miserable over the prospect of a show wedding--but I know now. A runaway
+marriage appeals to me now as it never did before. I want to be
+married--tremendously--but I want to get it over."
+
+A soft laugh answered him. "We'll get it over."
+
+Anthony sat up suddenly. "Will we?" he asked with eagerness. "When?"
+
+"I didn't say 'when'!"
+
+"Juliet--when are you going to say it?"
+
+"Why, Tony--dear----"
+
+"That's right--put in the 'dear,'" he murmured. "I've heard mighty few of
+'em yet, and they sound great to me----"
+
+"We've been engaged only two weeks--"
+
+"And two days----"
+
+"And the little house isn't spoiling, even though you're not sure about
+the tea-kettle and the awning. I--you don't want to hurry things----"
+
+"Don't I!"--rebelliously.
+
+"If I'm very good and say 'Christmas'----"
+
+"'Christmas!'--Great Caesar!"
+
+"But, Tony----"
+
+"Now see here--" he leaned forward and stared up at her, without touching
+her--he was as yet allowed few of the lover's favours and prized them the
+more for that--"do you think our case is just like other people's? Here
+I've been waiting for you all my days--waiting and waiting, and tortured
+all the time by suspense. Then I lived that month of July with my heart in
+my mouth--you'll never know what you put me through those days, talking
+and jollying about 'Eleanor Langham,' and never for one instant, until
+just that last day, giving me the smallest pinch of hope that it was
+anything to you except just what it pretended to be. Then--I've been a
+long time without a home--and the little house--sweetheart--it looks like
+Heaven to me. Must I stay outside till Christmas--when everything's all
+ready? Confound it--I don't want to play the pathetic string, and the Lord
+knows I'm happy as a fellow can be who's got the desire of his life.
+But----"
+
+A warm hand came gently upon his hair, and for joy at the touch he fell
+silent. Once he turned his head and put his lips against the white sleeve
+as it fell near, and looked up an instant with eyes whose expression the
+person above him felt rather than saw through the subdued light. By and by
+she took up the conversation.
+
+"So you are rejoiced that I don't want a great wedding?"
+
+"Immensely relieved."
+
+"What would you like best?"
+
+"I don't dare tell you."
+
+"You may."
+
+"Tell me what you would like, Julie."
+
+"Of course father would say the town house, even if it were a small
+affair. Auntie Dingley would probably agree to having it here--if that
+were what you--we--wanted--that is----"
+
+Anthony looked up quickly. "Even at Christmas?"
+
+"Why--yes. We could come back. People do that sometimes."
+
+"Yes. Must we do what other people do?"
+
+"Would you rather not?"
+
+"Ten thousand times. It seems to me that the biggest mistake people make
+is the way they do this thing. Juliet--think of the little house. We made
+it--you made it. For years, without doubt, it's to hold us and our
+experiences. Do you know I'd like to give it this one to begin with?--I'm
+holding my breath!"
+
+Plainly she was holding hers. Her head was turned away--he could just see
+her profile outlined against the ruby light. And at the moment there were
+footsteps inside a long French window near at hand which lay open into the
+library. Mr. Horatio Marcy came out and stood still just behind them.
+
+Anthony sprang to his feet, and came forward up the steps. The older man
+greeted him cordially. Anthony pulled a big chair into position, and Mr.
+Marcy sat down. He was smoking and wore an air of relaxation. He and his
+guest fell to talking, the younger man entering into the conversation with
+as much ease and spirit as if he were not fresh from what was to him at
+this hour a much more interesting discussion. Juliet sat quietly and
+listened.
+
+It grew into an absorbing argument after a little, the two men taking
+opposite sides of a great governmental question just then claiming public
+interest. Mrs. Dingley came out and joined the group, and she and Juliet
+listened with increasing delight in a contest of brains such as was now
+offered them. Mr. Marcy himself, while he put forth his arguments with
+conviction and with skill, was evidently enjoying the keen wit and wisdom
+of his young opponent. The elder man met objection with objection, set up
+men of straw to be knocked down, and ended at last with a hearty laugh and
+a frankly appreciative:
+
+"Well, Anthony--you have convinced me of one thing, certainly. There are
+more sides to the question than I had understood. I will admit that you've
+made a strong argument. But when I come back I'll down you with fresh
+material. I shall have plenty of it."
+
+"Are you going away soon, sir?" Anthony asked with some surprise. Mr.
+Marcy was a frequent traveller, preferring to look after various business
+interests in faraway ports himself rather than entrust them to others.
+
+"Yes--I shall be off in a few weeks--and for a longer time than usual. I
+haven't told these ladies of my household yet--but this is as good a time
+as any. Juliet, little girl--I may be gone all winter this time."
+
+She came quickly to him without speaking, and gave him her regretful
+answer silently.
+
+"When do you go, Horatio?" Mrs. Dingley asked.
+
+"About the first of October. I hadn't fully decided till to-day. I had
+thought of inviting you two to go with me."
+
+He looked with a smile at his sister and his daughter, then somewhat
+quizzically at Anthony. The latter was regarding him with an alert face in
+which, as nearly as could be made out in the dim light, were no signs of
+discomfiture.
+
+"Horatio," said Mrs. Dingley, "I wish you would come into the library for
+a few minutes. This reminds me of a letter I had to-day from one of your
+old friends, asking when you were to be at home."
+
+The French window closed on the two older people. Juliet, left sitting on
+the arm of her father's chair, found Anthony behind her.
+
+"Do you want to go on a voyage to the Philippines?" he was asking over her
+shoulder.
+
+"I'm not sure just what I do want," she answered rather breathlessly.
+
+"The tea-kettle would rust while you were gone."
+
+He got no reply.
+
+"The dust would grow inches deep on the dining-table we polished so
+carefully."
+
+Juliet rose and walked slowly to the edge of the steps. Anthony followed.
+"Let's go and walk on the terrace," he proposed, and they ran down to the
+smooth sward below. It was a warm night, with no dew, and the short-shaven
+grass was dry. All the stars were out. Anthony walked beside the figure in
+white, his hands clasped behind his back.
+
+"Do white ruffled curtains like those at our windows ever grow musty from
+being shut up?" he insinuated gently.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Will you write from every port you touch at? It will take a good many
+letters to satisfy me."
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"Suppose what? That you will write?"
+
+Juliet stood still. "You're the greatest wheedler I ever saw," she said.
+
+"Is that a compliment?"
+
+"It's not meant for one. What am I to do when I'm----"
+
+"Married to me?--I don't know, poor child. I can only pity you. What do
+you think the prospect is for me, never to be able to get the smallest
+concession from you except by every art of coaxing? Yet--if I can get this
+thing I want, by any means--I warn you I shall not give up until I've seen
+you sail."
+
+"You'll not see me sail."
+
+He wheeled upon her. He had her hand in his grasp. "And if you don't go?"
+
+"I'll stay."
+
+"With me?"
+
+She laughed irresistibly. "How could I stay without you?"
+
+"Will you marry me before your father goes?"
+
+"Oh, Tony, Tony----"
+
+"We can't be married without his blessing, can we?"
+
+"No--dear father."
+
+"Then----"
+
+"I'll tell you to-morrow," said she.
+
+
+
+
+IX.--A BISHOP AND A HAY-WAGON
+
+
+Juliet Marcy's prospective maid-of-honour found Anthony Robeson's best man
+at her elbow the moment she entered the waiting-room of the big railway
+station. Now, although she greeted him with a charming little conscious
+look, there was nothing either new or singular about the quiet rush he had
+made across the waiting-room the instant he saw her. The rest of the party
+of twenty people who were going down into the country to the Marcy-Robeson
+wedding understood it perfectly, although the engagement had not been
+announced and probably would not be until Wayne Carey should have an
+income decidedly larger than he had at present.
+
+Judith Dearborn joined the group at once, and Carey reluctantly followed
+her. Judith had a way of joining groups and of giving her betrothed many
+impatient half-hours thereby.
+
+"Just think of this," she said to the others. "When I knew Juliet had
+really given in to Anthony Robeson at last I thought I should be asked to
+assist at an impressive church wedding. But here we are going down to what
+Tony describes as 'a box of a house' in the most rural of suburbs. If it's
+really as small as he says even twenty people will be a tight fit."
+
+"How in the world did they come to be married there?" asked the sister of
+the best man. Everybody had been summoned to this wedding so hurriedly and
+so informally that nobody knew much about it.
+
+The son of the Bishop--whose father was going down to perform the
+ceremony--answered promptly:
+
+"Tony tells me its Juliet's own choice. You see they furnished the house
+together, with her aunt, Mrs. Dingley; and Juliet fell so in love with it
+that she must needs be married in it. What's occurred to that girl I don't
+know. After the Robesons of Kentucky lost their money and everything else
+but their social standing I thought it was all up with Anthony. But he's
+plucky. He's made a way for himself, and he's won Juliet somehow. He seems
+to be a late edition of that obstinate chap who remarked 'I will find a
+way or make one.' By Jove--he must have made one when he convinced Juliet
+Marcy that she could be happy in a house where twenty people are a tight
+fit."
+
+When the train stopped at the small station Judith Dearborn said in Wayne
+Carey's ear, as he glanced wonderingly from the train: "Is this it? Juliet
+Marcy must be perfectly crazy!"
+
+"She certainly must," admitted Robeson's best man. But he stifled a sigh.
+If Juliet Marcy could do so crazy a thing as to marry Anthony Robeson on
+the comparatively small salary that young man--brought up to do nothing at
+all--was now earning, why must Wayne Carey wait for several times that
+income before he could have Juliet's closest friend? Was there really such
+a difference in girls?
+
+But at the next instant he was shouting hilariously, and so was everybody
+else except the Bishop and the Bishop's wife, who only smiled indulgently.
+The rest of the party were young people, and their glee brooked no
+repression. The moment they reached the little platform they comprehended
+not only that they were coming to a most informal wedding--they were also
+in for a decidedly novel lark.
+
+Close to the edge of the platform stood a great hay-wagon, cushioned with
+fragrant hay and garlanded with goldenrod and purple asters. Standing
+erect on the front, one hand grasping the reins which reached out over a
+four-in-hand of big, well-groomed, flower-bedecked farm horses, the other
+waving a triumphant greeting to his friends, was Anthony Robeson, in white
+from head to foot, his face alight with happiness and fun. He looked like
+a young king; there could be no other comparison for his splendid outlines
+as he towered there. And better yet, he looked as he had ever looked,
+through prosperity and through poverty, like a "Robeson of Kentucky."
+
+Below him, prettier than she had ever been--and that was saying much--her
+eyes brilliant with the spirit of the day, laughing, dressed also in
+white, a big white hat drooping over her brown curls, stood Juliet Marcy.
+
+In a storm of salutations and congratulations the guests rushed toward
+this extraordinary equipage and the radiant pair who were its charioteers.
+All regrets over the probable commonplaceness of a small country wedding
+had vanished.
+
+[Illustration: "Standing erect ... one hand grasping the reins ... was
+Anthony Robeson."]
+
+"Might have known they would do things up in shape somehow," grunted the
+Bishop's son approvingly. "This is the stuff. Conventionality be tabooed.
+They're going to the other extreme, and that's the way to do. If you don't
+want an altar and candles, and a high-mucky-muck at the organ, have a
+hay-wagon. _Gee!_--Let me get up here next to Ben Hur and the lady!"
+
+Even the Bishop, sitting with clerical coat-tails carefully parted, his
+handsome face beaming benevolently from under his round hat, and Mrs.
+Bishop, granted by special dispensation a cushion upon the hay seat,
+enjoyed that drive. Anthony, plying a long, beribboned lash, aroused his
+heavy-footed steeds into an exhilarating trot, and the hay-wagon, carrying
+safely its crew of young society people in their gayest mood, swept over
+the half-mile from the station to the house like a royal barge.
+
+As they drew up a chorus of "Oh's!" not merely polite but sincerely
+surprised and admiring, recognised the quaint beauty of the little house.
+It was no commonplace country home now, though the changes wrought had
+been comparatively slight. It looked as if it might have stood for years
+in just this fashion, yet it was as far removed from its primitive
+characterless condition as may be an artist's drawing of a face upon which
+he has altered but a line.
+
+Mrs. Dingley and Mr. Horatio Marcy--a pair whose presence anywhere would
+have been a voucher for the decorum of the most unconventional
+proceedings--welcomed the party upon the wide, uncovered porch.
+
+"We're going to be married very soon, to have it over," called Anthony.
+"But you may explore the house first, so your minds shall be at rest
+during the crisis. Just don't wander too far away in examining this
+ancestral mansion. There are six rooms. I should advise your going in
+line, otherwise complications may occur in the upper hall. Please don't
+all try to get into the kitchen at once; it can't be done. It will hold
+Juliet and me at the same time--all the rooms have been stretched to do
+that--they had to be; but I'm not sure as to their capacity for more. Now
+make yourselves absolutely at home. The place is yours--for a few hours.
+After that it's mine--and Juliet's."
+
+He glanced, laughing, at his bride, as he spoke from where he stood in the
+doorway. She was on the little landing of the staircase, at the opposite
+end of the living-room. She looked down and across at him, and nearly
+everybody in the room--they were thronging through at the moment--caught
+that glance. She was smiling back at him, and her eyes lingered only an
+instant after they met his, but her friends all saw. There could be no
+question that the Juliet Marcy who, since she had laid aside her
+pinafores, had kept many men at bay, had at last surrendered. As for
+Anthony----
+
+"Why, he's always been in love with her," said the Bishop's son in the ear
+of the best man, as in accordance with their host's permission they peeped
+admiringly in at the little kitchen, "but any idiot can see that he's
+fairly off his feet now. Ideal condition--eh? Say, this dining-room's
+great--Jove, it is. I'm going to get asked out here to dinner as soon as
+they are back. Let's go upstairs. The girls are just coming down--hear 'em
+gurgling over what they saw?"
+
+Upstairs the best man looked in at the blue-and-white room with eyes which
+one with penetration might have said were envious. Indeed, he stared at
+everything with much the same expression. He was the soberest man present.
+Ordinarily he could be counted on to enliven such occasions, but to-day
+his fits of hilarity were only momentary, and during the intervals he was
+observed by the Bishop's son to be gazing somewhat yearningly into space
+with an abstraction new to him.
+
+Nobody knew just how the moment for the ceremony arrived. But when the
+survey of the house was over and everybody had instinctively come back to
+the living-room, the affair was brought about most naturally. The Bishop,
+at a word from the best man, took his place in the doorway opening upon
+the porch, which had been set in a great nodding border of goldenrod.
+Anthony, making his way among his guests, came with a quiet face up to
+Juliet and, bending, said softly, "Now, dear?" A hush followed instantly,
+and the guests fell back to places at the sides of the room. Anthony's
+best man was at his elbow, and the two went over to the Bishop, to stand
+by his side. Mr. Marcy moved quietly into his place. Juliet, with Judith,
+who had kept beside her, walked across the floor, and Anthony, meeting
+her, led her a step farther to face the Bishop. It was but a suggestion of
+the usual convention, and Anthony, in his white clothes, surrounded as he
+was by men in frock-coats, was assuredly the most unconventional
+bridegroom that had ever been seen. Juliet, too, wore the simplest of
+white gowns, with no other adornment than that of her own beauty. Yet,
+somehow, as the guests, grown sober in an instant, looked on and noted
+these things, there was not one who felt that either grace or dignity was
+lacking. The rich voice of the Bishop was as impressive as it had ever
+been in chancel or at altar; the look on Anthony's face was one which
+fitted the tone in which he spoke his vows; and Juliet, giving herself to
+the man whose altered fortunes she was agreeing to share, bore a
+loveliness which made her a bride one would remember long--and envy.
+
+"There, that's done," said the Bishop's son with a gusty sigh of relief,
+which brought the laugh so necessary to the relaxing of the tension which
+accompanies such scenes. "Jove, it's a good thing to see a fellow like
+Robeson safely tied up at last. You never can tell where these quixotic
+ideas about houses and hay-wagons and weddings may lead. It's a terrible
+strain, though, to see people married. I always tremble like a leaf--I
+weigh only a hundred and ninety-eight now, and these things affect me.
+It's so frightful to think what might happen if they should trip up on
+their specifications."
+
+There was a simple wedding breakfast served--by whom nobody could tell. It
+was eaten out in the orchard--a pleasant place, for the neglected grass
+had been close cut, and an old-fashioned garden at one side perfumed the
+air with late September flowers. The trim little country maids who brought
+the plates came from a willow-bordered path which led presumably to the
+next house, some distance down the road. There were several innovations in
+the various dishes, delicious to taste. Altogether it was a little feast
+which everybody enjoyed with unusual zest. And the life of the party was
+the bridegroom.
+
+"I never saw a fellow able to scintillate like that at his own wedding,"
+remarked the son of the Bishop to the best man's sister. "Usually they are
+so completely dashed by their own temerity in getting into such an
+irretrievable situation that they sit with their ears drooping and their
+eyes bleared. Do you suppose it's getting married in tennis clothes that's
+done it?"
+
+"Tennis clothes!" cried the best man's sister with a merry laugh. "If you
+realised how much handsomer he looks than you men in your frock-coats you
+would not make fun."
+
+"Make fun!" repeated the Bishop's son solemnly. "I joke only to keep my
+head above water. I never in my life was so completely submerged in the
+desire to get married instantly and live in a picturesque band-box.
+Nothing can keep me from it longer than it takes to find the girl and the
+band-box. If--if--" his voice dropped to a whisper, and a hint of redness
+crept into his face which belied his jesting words, "you knew of the
+girl--I--er--say--should you mind living in a band-box?"
+
+The best man's sister was the sort of girl who can discern when even an
+inveterate joker is daring to be somewhat more than half in earnest, and
+she flushed so prettily that the son of the Bishop caught her hand
+boyishly under the little table. He had hitherto been considered a
+hopeless old bachelor, so it may readily be seen that, now the contagion
+had caught him, his was quite a serious case.
+
+
+
+
+X.--ON A THRESHOLD
+
+
+When it was all over Judith Dearborn went upstairs with Juliet to help her
+dress for her going away. The maid-of-honour looked about the
+blue-and-white room with thoughtful eyes.
+
+"This is certainly the dearest room I ever saw," she said. "Oh, Juliet, do
+you think you really will be happy here?"
+
+"What do you think about it, dear?" asked Juliet.
+
+"Oh--I--well, really--I never imagined that a little old house like this
+could be made so awfully attractive. But, Juliet--you--you must be very,
+very fond of Anthony to give up so many things. How well he looked to-day.
+Seems to me he's grown gloriously in every way since he--since his family
+came into so many misfortunes."
+
+Juliet smiled, but answered nothing.
+
+"And you're so different, too. Never in my life would I have imagined you
+having a wedding like this--and yet it's been absolutely the prettiest one
+I ever saw. That's a sweet gown to go away in--but it's the simplest thing
+you ever wore, I'm sure. Juliet, where are you going?"
+
+"We are going to drive through the Berkshires in a cart."
+
+"Juliet Marcy!"
+
+"'Robeson,'" corrected Juliet with a little laugh, but in a tone which it
+was a pity Anthony could not hear. "Don't forget that. I'm so proud of the
+name. And I think a drive through the Berkshires will be a perfectly ideal
+trip."
+
+Judith Dearborn was not assisting the bride at all. Instead she was
+sitting in a chair, staring at Juliet with much the same abstraction of
+manner observable in the best man throughout the day.
+
+"Of course you didn't need to live this way," observed Miss Dearborn at
+length. "You could have afforded to live much more expensively."
+
+"No, I couldn't," said Juliet with a flash in her eyes, though she smiled;
+"I couldn't have afforded to do one thing that would hurt Tony's pride.
+Why, Judith--he's a 'Robeson of Kentucky.'"
+
+"Well, he looks it," admitted Judith. "And you're a Marcy of
+Massachusetts. The two go well together. Juliet, do you know--somehow--I
+thought it was a fearful sacrifice you were making, even for such a man as
+Anthony--but--this blue-and-white room----"
+
+"Ah, this blue-and-white room----" repeated Juliet. Then she came over and
+dropped on her knees by her friend in her impulsive way and put both arms
+around her. The plain little going-away gown touched folds with the one
+whose elegance was equalled only by its cost. Anthony Robeson's wife
+looked straight up into the eyes of her maid-of-honour and whispered:
+
+"Judith, don't put Wayne--and--your blue-and-white room off too long. You
+will not be any happier to wait--if you love him."
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Drawn up close to the door stood the cart. Beside it waited Anthony.
+Around the cart crowded twenty people. When Juliet came through them to
+say good-bye the son of the Bishop murmured:
+
+"Er--Mrs. Robeson----"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Farnham----" said Juliet promptly, her delicate flush answering
+the name, as it had answered it many times that day.
+
+"When are you going to be at home to your friends?"
+
+"The fifteenth day of October," said Juliet. "And from then on, every day
+in the week, every week in the year. Come and see us--everybody. But don't
+expect any formal invitations."
+
+"I'll be down," declared the Bishop's son. "I'll be down once a week."
+
+"Please don't stay long after we are gone," requested Anthony, putting his
+bride into the cart and springing in beside her. He gathered up the reins.
+"Good-bye," he called. "Take this next train home. It goes in an hour.
+Lock the door, Carey, and hang the key up in plain sight by the window
+there. We live in the country now, and that's the way we do.
+Good-bye--good-bye!"
+
+Then he drove rapidly away down the road.
+
+"And that pair," said the son of the Bishop gravely, looking after them
+and speaking to the company in general, "married, so to speak, in a
+hay-wagon, and going for a wedding trip in a wheel-barrow through the
+Berkshires, is Juliet Marcy and Anthony Robeson."
+
+"No, my son," said the Bishop slowly--and everybody always listened when
+the Bishop spoke: "It is Anthony and Juliet Robeson--and that makes all
+the difference. I think two happier young people I never married. And may
+God be with them."
+
+The best man said that he and the maid-of-honour would walk the half-mile
+to the station. The son of the Bishop and the sister of the best man had
+already taken this course without saying anything about it. Nearly
+everybody murmured something about it being a lovely evening and a
+glorious sunset and a charming road, and, pairing off advisedly, adopted
+the same plan. The Bishop and Mrs. Bishop, Mrs. Dingley and Mr. Marcy
+decided on being driven over to the station in a light surrey provided for
+this anticipated emergency.
+
+The best man and the maid-of-honour succeeded in dropping behind the rest
+of the pedestrians. Their friends were used to that, and let them
+mercifully alone.
+
+"Mighty pretty affair," observed Carey in a melancholy tone.
+
+"Yes--in its way," admitted Judith Dearborn with apparent reluctance.
+
+"Cosy house."
+
+"Very."
+
+"Tony seemed happy."
+
+"Ecstatic." Judith's inflection was peculiar.
+
+"Nobody would have suspected Juliet of feeling blue about living off
+here."
+
+"She doesn't seem to."
+
+"What's made the difference?"
+
+"Anthony Robeson, probably."
+
+"Must seem pretty good to him to have her care like that."
+
+"I presume so."
+
+"It isn't everybody that could inspire such an--affection--in such a
+girl."
+
+"No, indeed."
+
+Carey looked intensely gloomy. The two walked on in silence, Miss Dearborn
+studying the sunset, Carey studying Miss Dearborn. Suddenly he spoke
+again.
+
+"Judith, do all our plans for the future seem as desirable to you as they
+did this morning?"
+
+"Which ones?"
+
+"Apartment in the locality we've picked out--life in the style the
+locality calls for--and _wait_ for it all until I'm _gray_----" with a
+burst of tremendous energy. "Good heavens, darling, what's the use?
+Why--if I could have you and a little home like that----"
+
+He bit his lip hard. The maid-of-honour walked on, her head turned still
+farther away than before. They were nearing the station. Just ahead lay a
+turn in the road--the last turn. The rest of the party, with a shout back
+at this dilatory pair, disappeared around it. From the distance came the
+long, shrill whistle of the approaching train.
+
+The maid-of-honour glanced behind: there was not a soul in sight; ahead:
+and saw nothing to alarm a girl with an impulse in her heart. At a point
+where great masses of reddening sumac hid a little dip in the road from
+everything earthly she stopped suddenly, and turning, put out both hands.
+She looked up into a face which warmed on the instant into a
+half-incredulous joy and said very gently: "You may."
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sun had been gone only two hours, and the soft early autumn darkness
+had but lately settled down upon the silent little house, waiting alone
+for its owners to come back some October day, when a cart, driven slowly,
+rolled along the road. In front of the house it stopped.
+
+"Where are we?" asked Juliet's voice. "This is a private house. I thought
+we--Why, Tony--do you see?--We've come around in a circle instead of going
+on to that little inn you spoke of. This is--_home_!"
+
+"Is it?" said Anthony's voice in a tone of great surprise. "So it is!" He
+leaped out and came around to Juliet's side. "What a fluke!" But the happy
+laugh in his voice betrayed him.
+
+"Anthony Robeson," cried Juliet softly, "you need not pretend to be
+surprised. You meant to do it."
+
+"Did I?" He reached out both arms to take her down. "Perhaps I did. Do you
+mind--Mrs. Robeson? Shall we go on?"
+
+Juliet looked down at him. "No, I don't think I mind," she said.
+
+He swung her down, and they went slowly up the walk. "Somehow," said
+Anthony Robeson, looking up at the house, lying as if asleep in the
+September night, "when I thought of taking you to that little public inn,
+and then remembered that we might have this instead--We can go on with our
+wedding journey to-morrow, dear-but--to-night----"
+
+He led her silently upon the porch. He found the key, where in jest he had
+bade his best man put it, and unlocked the door and threw it open.
+
+He stepped first upon the threshold, and, turning, held out his arms.
+
+"Come," he said, smiling in the darkness.
+
+XI.--A BACHELOR AT DINNER
+
+"Hallo there--Anthony Robeson--don't be in such a hurry you can't notice a
+fellow."
+
+The big figure rushing through the snow paused, wheeled, and thrust out a
+hand of hearty greeting. "That you, Carey? Hat over your eyes like a train
+robber--electric lights all behind you--and you expect me to smile at you
+as I go by! How are you? How's Judith?"
+
+"Infernally lonely--I mean I am--Judith's off on a visit to her mother.
+Say, Tony--take me home with you--will you? I want some decent things to
+eat, so I'm holding you up on purpose."
+
+"Good--come on. Train goes in a few minutes. Juliet will be delighted."
+
+The two hurried on together into the station from which the suburban
+trains were constantly leaving. As they entered they encountered a mutual
+friend, at whom both flung themselves enthusiastically with alternate
+greetings:
+
+"Roger Barnes----"
+
+"Roger--old fellow--glad to see you back!"
+
+"Patient safely landed?"
+
+"Get a big fee?"
+
+"Where you going?"
+
+"Let's take him home with us, Tony----" The third man looked smiling at
+Tony. "I'll challenge you to," said he.
+
+"That's easy--come on," responded Anthony Robeson with cordiality. "I'll
+just telephone Mrs. Robeson."
+
+"That's it," said Dr. Roger Barnes. "You don't dare not to. I understand.
+Go ahead. But if she's too much dashed let me know, will you?"
+
+Anthony turned, laughing, into a telephone closet, from which he emerged
+in time to catch his train with his guests.
+
+"It's all right," he assured them. "But it's only fair to let her know a
+few minutes ahead. You like to understand, Roger, before you start, don't
+you, whether your emergency case is a hip-fracture or a cut lip, so you
+can tell whether to take your glue or your sewing-silk?"
+
+"By all means," said the bachelor of the party. "And I suppose you think
+Mrs. Juliet Marcy Robeson is now smiling happily to herself over this
+little surprise. I'll lay you anything you please that if I can make her
+own up she'll admit that she said '_Merciful heavens!_' into the telephone
+when she got your message."
+
+Anthony shook his head. "Evidently you don't know what guests in the
+remote suburbs on a stormy February night mean to a poor girl whose
+nearest neighbour is five hundred feet away. Your ideas of married life
+need a little freshening, too. They're pretty antique."
+
+It was a half-mile from the station to the house--the "box of a
+house"--which had been Anthony's home for five months, and toward which he
+now led his friends with the air of a man about to show his most treasured
+possessions. He strode through the deepening snow as if he enjoyed the
+strenuous tramp, setting a pace which Wayne Carey, with his office life,
+if not the doctor, more vigorously built and bred, found difficult to
+maintain.
+
+"Here we are," called the leader, pointing toward windows glowing with a
+ruddy light. The doctor looked up with interest. Carey was a frequent
+visitor, but the busy surgeon, old school-and-college chum of Anthony's
+though he was, was about to have his first introduction to a place of
+which he had heard much, but of whose nearness to Paradise he doubted with
+the strong skepticism of a man who has seen many a fair beginning end in
+all unhappiness and desolation.
+
+As they stamped upon the little porch the door flew open, the brilliancy
+and comfort of a fire-and-lamplit room leaped out at them, a delicious
+faint odour of cookery assailed their hungry nostrils, and the welcome
+which makes all worth having met them on the threshold.
+
+"Wayne," said the rich young voice of the mistress of the house, "I'm so
+glad. Roger Barnes, this is just downright good of you; it's so long
+you've promised us this. Tony----"
+
+What she said to Tony must have been whispered in his ear if voiced at
+all, for the two guests, looking on with laughing, envious eyes, saw their
+hostess swept unceremoniously into a bearlike embrace, swung into the air
+as one thrusts up a child, poised there an instant, laughing and
+protesting, then slowly lowered to be kissed, and set down once more
+lightly upon the floor.
+
+"It's all right. I didn't tumble your hair a bit," said Anthony coolly.
+"Excuse me, gentlemen, but Wayne understands--and Roger will some day, I
+hope--that a man who has been thinking about it all the way home can't put
+it off on account of a couple of idiots who stand and stare instead of
+politely turning their backs. Oh, don't mention it--it doesn't disturb me
+at all; and Mrs. Robeson is becoming reconciled to my impetuosity by
+degrees. Make yourselves at home, boys. Juliet----"
+
+"Take them upstairs, Tony, please. Of course we can't let them go back
+to-night, now we have them. It's beginning to storm heavily, isn't it? I
+thought so. Take them to the guest-room, Tony--and dinner will be served
+as soon as you are down."
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+"By Jupiter, I believe she means it," declared the doctor, with approval,
+as the door of the bedroom closed on his host. "I think I can tell when a
+woman is shamming. She's improved, hasn't she, tremendously? Pretty girl
+always, but--well--bloomed now. Nice little house. Believe I'll have to
+stay, though I ought not--just to take observations on Tony. His
+enthusiasm has all the appearance of reality. In fact, it strikes me he
+has rather----"
+
+It was on his lips to say "rather more than you have," but it occurred to
+him in time that jokes on this ground are dangerous. Wayne Carey had been
+married in November, was living in a somewhat unpretentious way in a
+downtown boarding-house, and certainly had to-night so much of a lost-dog
+air that it made the doctor pause. So he substituted: "--rather more than
+I should have expected, even of a fellow who has got the girl he has
+wanted all his life," and fell to washing and brushing vigorously, eyeing
+meanwhile the little room with a critical bachelor's appreciation of
+beauty and comfort in the quarters he is to occupy. It was very simply
+furnished, certainly, but it struck him as a place where his dreams were
+likely to be pleasant for every reason in the world.
+
+Downstairs, Juliet, in the dining-room, was surveying her table with the
+hostess's satisfaction. Opposite her stood a tall and slender girl,
+black-haired, black-eyed, with a face of great attractiveness.
+
+"I wish, Mrs. Robeson," she was saying eagerly, "you would let me serve
+you as your maid, and not make a guest of me. Really, I should love to do
+it. I don't need to meet your friends, and I don't mind seeming what I
+really am--your----"
+
+"Rachel Redding," Juliet interrupted, lifting an affectionate glance
+across the table, "if you want to seem what you really are--my friend--you
+will let me do as I like."
+
+"My shabby clothes----" murmured the girl.
+
+"If I could look as much like a princess as you do in them----"
+
+"Mrs. Robeson, in that lovely dull red you're a queen----"
+
+"--dowager," finished Juliet gayly. "Well, I'll be proud of you, and you
+can be proud of me, if you like, and together we'll make those hungry men
+think there's nothing like us. The dinner's the thing. Isn't it the
+luckiest chance in the world I sent for those oysters this morning? Doctor
+Barnes is perfectly fine, but he never would believe in the happiness of
+married life if the coffee were poor or the beefsteak too much broiled.
+Doesn't the table look pretty? Those red geranium blossoms you brought me
+give it just the gay touch it needed this winter night."
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three men, standing about the wide fireplace, warming cold hands at its
+friendly blaze, turned expectantly as their youthful hostess came in,
+followed by a graceful girl in gray. Juliet presented her guests with the
+air of conferring upon them a favour, and they seemed quite ready to
+accept it as such.
+
+Anthony looked on with interest to see a person whom he had known hitherto
+only as a pretty but poor young neighbour whom Juliet had engaged to help
+her for a certain part of every day, introduced as his wife's friend, and
+greeted by Doctor Barnes and Wayne Carey with quite evident admiration and
+pleasure. He looked hard at her, as Carey seated her, noticing for the
+first time that she was really worth consideration, and remembering
+vaguely that Juliet had more than once tried to impress him with the fact.
+If it had not been for the other fellows, with whose eyes as their host he
+was now stimulated to observe her, he might have been still some time
+longer in coming to the realisation that Juliet had found somebody in whom
+her genuine interest was not misplaced. But Anthony Robeson had all his
+life been singularly blind to the fascinations of most other women than
+Juliet. As he turned his keen gaze from Rachel Redding to the charming
+figure that sat on the other side of the table the satisfaction in his
+eyes became so pronounced that it could mean, Dr. Roger Barnes admitted to
+himself, as he caught it, nothing less than a very real happiness.
+
+It was not an elaborate dinner. It was not by any means the sort of dinner
+Juliet might have prepared had she known that morning whom she was to
+entertain. It was merely a dinner planned with affectionate care to please
+and satisfy one hungry man who liked good things to eat--and amplified as
+much as possible in quantity after Anthony's message reached her. And by
+that admirable collusion between hostess and feminine friend which can
+sometimes be effected when the situation demands it, the dinner prepared
+for three seemed ample for five.
+
+[Illustration: "Three men, standing about the wide fireplace ... turned
+expectantly as their youthful hostess came in, followed by a
+graceful girl in gray."]
+
+Between them Juliet and Rachel Redding served the various dishes and
+changed the plates which Anthony handed from his place. It was gracefully
+done and so simply that the absence of a maid was a thing to be enjoyed
+rather than regretted. When Juliet, in the softly sweeping dull-red frock
+which made of her a warm picture for a winter's night, slipped from her
+chair and moved about the room, or brought in from the kitchen a steaming
+dish, she seemed the ideal hostess, herself bestowing what her own hands
+had prepared. And when Rachel Redding offered a man a cup of fragrant
+coffee, smiling down in the general direction of his uplifted face without
+meeting his eyes, there was certainly nothing lost from his enjoyment of
+the beverage.
+
+"Say, but this dinner has tasted just about right," was Wayne Carey's
+satisfied observation as he leaned back in his chair at last, after
+draining his third cup of coffee--and the pot itself, if he had but known
+it.
+
+"Went to the spot?" asked Anthony, leaning back also with the expression
+of the friendly host. He was young to cultivate that expression, but he
+appeared to find no difficulty about it.
+
+"It did--every last mouthful."
+
+"Good. Now, if you fellows will come back to the fire and have a pipeful
+of talk we shall not be missed. In this house on ordinary occasions we
+reverse the order of after-dinner privileges--the men retire to the
+atmosphere of the sofa-pillows, and the women--I'm not allowed to tell
+what they do. But after remaining discreetly out of sight for some little
+time, during which faint sounds as of the rattle of china penetrate
+through closed doors, they reappear, pleasantly flushed and full of a sort
+of relieved joy."
+
+"I know what I wish," said Roger Barnes, looking back from the dining-room
+doorway at young Mrs. Robeson; "I wish that when the dishes are all ready
+you would let me know. I should like nothing better than to have a
+dish-towel at them. I know all about it--my mother taught me how."
+
+He looked so precisely as if he meant it, and the glance he sent past
+Juliet at Rachel Redding was so suggestive of his dislike to be separated
+for the coming hour from the feminine portion of the household, that his
+hostess answered promptly: "Of course you may. We never refuse an offer
+like that. We will try you--on promise of good behaviour."
+
+
+
+
+XII.--THE BACHELOR BEGS A DISH-TOWEL
+
+
+When the door closed on the three Juliet produced from somewhere two
+aprons--attractive affairs on the pinafore order--one of which she slipped
+upon Rachel, the other donned herself.
+
+"These are my kitchen party-aprons," she said gayly, noting how the pretty
+garment became the girl, "calculated to impress the masculine mind with
+the charm of domesticity in women. The doctor needs a little illustrated
+lesson of the sort. Life in boarding-houses isn't adapted to encourage a
+man in the belief that real comfort is to be found anywhere outside of a
+bachelor's club."
+
+Before he was called the doctor forsook a half-smoked cigar and the
+seductive hollows of Anthony's easiest chair and marched briskly out to
+the kitchen.
+
+"You see I distrust you," he announced, putting in his head at the door.
+"I'm afraid you will get them all done without me."
+
+"Not a bit of it. Here you are," and Juliet tied a big white apron about a
+large-sized waist. "Here's your towel. No, don't touch the glass; a man is
+too unconscious of his strength."
+
+"A surgeon?" demurred Rachel softly, from over her steaming dishpan.
+
+"Thank you, Miss Redding," said the doctor, smiling.
+
+"Ah, how stupid of me," Juliet made amends swiftly. "Miss Redding
+remembers that when I got my telephone message to-night I told her that
+the most distinguished young specialist in the city was coming here to
+dinner. A hand trained to such delicate tasks as those of surgery--here,
+Dr. Roger Barnes, forgive me, and wipe my most precious goblets."
+
+"You'll have my nerves unsteady with such speeches as that," said he, but
+he accepted the trust. He held the goblets and the other daintily cut and
+engraved pieces of glass with evident pleasure in the task.
+
+Meanwhile Juliet and Rachel made rapid work of the greater part of the
+dishes, handling thin china with the dexterity of housewives who love
+their work--and their china. Talk and laughter flowed brightly through it
+all, and when the doctor had finished his glass he looked disappointed at
+seeing not much left to do. At the moment Rachel was scrubbing and
+scraping a big baking-dish, portions of whose surface strongly resisted
+her efforts, in spite of previous soaking. The assistant, looking about
+him for new worlds to conquer, fell upon this dish.
+
+"Here, here," said he, "let me have it. I'll use on it some of the
+unconscious strength Mrs. Robeson credits me with."
+
+But Rachel clung to the dish. "Proper housekeepers," she averred, "always
+say 'That's all, thank you,' as soon as the china is done, and finish the
+pots and kettles after the guest has gone back to pleasanter things."
+
+"I see. Did you ever have a man for dish-wiper before?"
+
+"Never a surgeon," admitted Miss Redding.
+
+"Then you don't appreciate the fact that a man likes to do big things
+which make the most show and get the credit for them."
+
+He took the dish away from her by a dexterous little twist in which
+conscious strength certainly asserted itself. Rachel, laughing, with a
+dash of colour in cheeks which were normally of dark ivory tints, accepted
+the dish-towel he handed her.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Hallo, there," cried Wayne Carey's voice from the door. "You're having
+more fun out here than we are in there, and that's not fair. The lord of
+the manor is getting so chesty over the delights of a country home in a
+February snowbank that he's becoming heavy company."
+
+"No room for you here," returned the doctor, removing with a flourish the
+last candied sugar lump from the bottom of the big dish, and beginning to
+swash about vigorously in the hot water. "We do something besides talk out
+here; we work. Our kitchen is so small we have to waste no time in steps;
+as we dry the things we chuck them straight into their places."
+
+Suiting the action to the word he caught up a shining cake-tin and cast it
+straight at Carey. That gentleman dodged, but Anthony caught it, performed
+upon it an imitation of the cymbals, then turned about and laid it in a
+nest of similar tins upon a shelf in an open closet.
+
+"Ah, but I'm well trained," he boasted.
+
+"If you were you wouldn't put it away wet," observed Rachel slyly.
+
+Anthony withdrew the tin, wiped it with much solicitude, and replaced it.
+
+"These little technicalities are beyond me," he apologised. "Your real
+athlete in kitchen work is your scientific man. See him dry that bean-pot
+with the glass-towel. Now, I know better than that."
+
+"Go away, all of you," commanded the mistress of the place. "Go back to
+the fire and we'll join you. If you are very good we'll bring you a
+special treat by-and-by."
+
+"That settles it," said the doctor, and led the retreat, but not without a
+backward glance at the little kitchen.
+
+Juliet had gone into the dining-room with a trayful of glass and silver.
+Rachel Redding was plunging half a dozen white towels into a pan of
+steaming water. Barnes stood an instant, staring hard at the slender
+figure in the white pinafore, the round young arms gleaming in the
+lamplight--then he turned to follow the others. There are some pictures
+which linger long in a man's memory; why, he can hardly tell. With all his
+varied experiences Dr. Roger Barnes had never before discovered how
+attractive a background a well-kept kitchen makes for a beautiful woman,
+so that she be there mistress of the situation. Long after he had gone
+back to the fire his absent eyes, while the others talked, were studying
+the--to him--unaccustomed and singularly charming scene he had just left
+in the kitchen.
+
+When Juliet and Rachel came in at length they found a plan afoot for their
+entertainment. Wayne Carey was standing at the window showing cause why
+the whole party should go out and coast upon the hill near by.
+
+"You admit," he argued with Anthony, "that you know where we can get a
+pair of bobs--and if you can't I'll bribe some of those youngsters out
+there to let us have theirs. The storm has stopped; the boys have swept
+off the whole hill, I should judge, by the way their track shines again
+under the moonlight. I haven't had a good coast since I left college."
+
+He turned to Juliet. "Will you go?" he asked coaxingly.
+
+"Of course we will," promised Juliet. "Tony wants to go--he's just
+enjoying making you tease. As for the doctor----"
+
+"If my right hand has not forgot her cunning," he agreed.
+
+In ten minutes the party was off. A young matron of five months' standing
+is not so materially changed from the girl she used to be that she can
+fail to be the gayest of company, perhaps with the more zest that the old
+good times seem a bit far away already and she is glad to bring them
+back.
+
+As for the real girl of the party, in this case it chanced to be a country
+lass who had been away to school and half-way through college, had been
+brought home by love and duty to some elderly people who needed her, and
+had known many hours of stifled longing for the sort of companionship with
+which she had grown happily familiar.
+
+Matron and maid--they were a pair for whose sakes the men who were with
+them gladly made slaves of themselves to give them an evening of glorious
+outdoor fun--and at small sacrifice.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What a night!" exulted the doctor, striding up the long hill beside
+Rachel Redding breathing deep. "I'm thanking all my lucky stars that they
+led my path across Anthony Robeson's to-night. I've been intending to come
+out here ever since he was married--and might not have done it for another
+six months if I hadn't got started. He'll have all he wants of me now.
+It's the most delightful spot I've been in for many moons."
+
+"It is a dear little home," agreed Rachel warmly. "Mrs. Robeson would make
+the most commonplace house in the world one where everybody would want to
+come."
+
+"That's evident. Yet, somehow, knowing her well as a girl, I never should
+have suspected just those home-making qualities. You didn't know her then,
+I suppose? She was a girl other girls liked heartily, and men
+enthusiastically--one of the 'I'll be a good friend, but don't come too
+near' sort, you know. But she was very fond of travel and change, ready
+for everything in the way of sport--and, well, I certainly never saw her
+before in anything resembling an apron of any description. What a
+delightful article of attire an apron is, anyhow. I think I never
+appreciated it before to-night."
+
+"That's because you never saw one of Mrs. Robeson's aprons. Hers are not
+like other people's."
+
+"She makes hers poetic, does she?"
+
+"She certainly does--even the ones for baking and sweeping. Not ruffled or
+beribboned, but cut with an eye to attractiveness, and always of becoming
+colour."
+
+"I see. She's an artist--that was noticeable in the oysters--if she made
+the dish."
+
+"Of course she did."
+
+"The coffee was the best I ever drank."
+
+"Was it?"
+
+"You made that, then," remarked the doctor astutely.
+
+"I'm glad it was good," said Rachel demurely.
+
+They had reached the top of the hill. Doctor Barnes insisted that Anthony
+had been the best steerer of coasting parties known to the juvenile world,
+and placed him at the helm. Next came Juliet, with both arms clasped as
+far about her husband's stalwart frame as they would go. Carey had wanted
+to be the end man, but Doctor Barnes would have none of it. "You have to
+take care of Mrs. Robeson," he said firmly, and placed him next. This
+brought Miss Redding last, and Dr. Roger Barnes, knowing man, as hanger-on
+behind upon bobs already fairly full. The last man, as every coaster
+understands, has to be alert to help out any possible bad steering, and so
+keeps a watchful head thrust half over the shoulder in front.
+
+The foregoing explanation will show how it came about that all down the
+long, swift descent, Rachel, breathless with the unaccustomed delight of
+the flight, felt upon her cheek a warm breath, and was conscious of a most
+extraordinary nearness of the lips which kept saying merry things into her
+ear. The ear itself grew warm before the bottom of the track was reached.
+
+"That was a great coast," cried the doctor as they reached the end of the
+long slide. "Now for another. I'm a boy again. This beats the best thing I
+could have had in town if I hadn't run across Anthony."
+
+So they had another--and another--and one more. Then Rachel Redding,
+stopping in front of a small house which lay at the foot of the hill, said
+good-night to them and slipped away before Barnes had realised what had
+happened.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Does she live there?" he questioned Juliet, as the four who were left
+moved on toward home. Anthony and Wayne were discussing a subject on which
+they had differed at the top of the hill. "Somehow, I got the impression
+she lived with you."
+
+"No--but she comes over a good deal. I couldn't get on without her."
+
+"As a friend?"
+
+Juliet looked up at him. "I think it would be better that you should know,
+Roger," she said, "and I'm sure Miss Redding herself would prefer it--that
+I pay her for several hours a day of regular work. You've only to see her
+to understand that she does this simply because it's the only thing open
+to her as long as her father and mother can't spare her to go away. She
+gave up her college course in the middle because she said they were pining
+to death for her. They are in very greatly reduced circumstances, after a
+lifetime of prosperity. She's a rare creature--I'm learning to appreciate
+her more every day. She's never said a word about her loneliness here, but
+it shows in her eyes. It's a perfect delight to me to have her with me,
+and I mean to give her all the fun I can. For all that demure manner and
+her Madonna face she's as full of mischief as a kitten when something
+starts her off."
+
+"Juliet," said the doctor soberly, turning to look searchingly down at her
+in the moonlight, "would you be willing to let me come often?"
+
+Juliet looked up quickly. "So that you may see her?" she asked
+straightforwardly.
+
+"Yes. I won't pretend it's anything else. I can tell you honestly that if
+there were no other reason I should want to come because of my old
+friendship for you and Anthony, and because this evening in your little
+home has given me a rare pleasure. I know of no place like it. But I'll
+tell you squarely that I want the chance to meet your friend often and at
+once. If I don't you will have other people coming out from town----"
+
+"Yes," said Juliet, and something in the way she said it made him ask
+quickly: "Has that already happened? Am I too late?"
+
+"I don't know whether you're too late, but I know that we've suddenly
+grown most attractive to another man from town. If you had gone into
+Rachel's home the odour of violets would have met you at the door. He
+sends them every few days."
+
+"_Ah!_" said the doctor. It was not much of a comment, but it spoke
+volumes. He had been keen before--he was determined now. Violets--well,
+there were rarer flowers than those.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.--SMOKE AND TALK
+
+
+At the house there remained for the guests an hour before the fire, where
+Juliet brought in something hot and sweet and sour and spicy, which tasted
+delicious and brought her a shower of compliments while they drank a
+friendly draught to her. When she had left them, standing in an admiring
+group on the hearth-rug and wishing her happy dreams, they settled into
+luxurious positions of ease before the fire--a fire in the last stages of
+red comfort before it dies into a smoulder of torrid ashes.
+
+"Anthony Robeson," said Wayne Carey, regarding the andirons fixedly over
+his bed-time pipe, "you're a happy man."
+
+Anthony laughed contentedly. He had thrown himself down upon the
+hearth-rug with his head on a pillow pulled from the settle, and lay flat
+on his back with his hands clasped behind his neck. It was an attitude
+deeply expressive of masculine comfort.
+
+"You're exactly right," said he. "And you would be the same if you would
+give up living in that infernal boarding-house. What do you want to fool
+with your first year of married life like that for? You told me that
+Judith was bowled over by our wedding, and was ready to go in for this
+sort of thing with a will."
+
+"I know it," admitted Carey, "but"--he spoke hesitatingly--"we couldn't
+seem to find this sort of thing. You had corralled all there was."
+
+"Nonsense."
+
+"You had. Everything we looked at was so old and mouldy, or so new and
+inartistic, or so high-priced, or so far away--well, we couldn't seem to
+get at it, so we said we'd board a while and wait until we could look
+around."
+
+"How does it work?"
+
+"Why, I suppose it works very well," said Carey cautiously. "Judith seems
+contented. We have as good meals as the average in such houses, and the
+people are rather a nice lot. We're invited around quite a good deal, and
+Judith likes that. I ought to like it better than I do, somehow. I'm so
+confoundedly tired when I get home nights I can't help thinking of you and
+Juliet here in this jolly room. There's an abominable blue and yellow
+wall-paper on our sitting-room--and it has a way of appearing to turn
+seasick in the evening under the electrics. Sometimes I think it's that
+that makes me feel----"
+
+"Seasick, too?" inquired the doctor with his professional air. He was
+standing with his arm on the chimney-piece, looking alternately down on
+his friends and around the long, low room. It _was_ a jolly room--the very
+essence of comfort and cosiness. It was a beautiful room, too, in a simple
+way; one which satisfied his sense of harmony in colours and fabrics--a
+keen sense with him, as it is apt to be with men of his profession.
+
+"Judith likes this, too, you know," Carey went on loyally. "She thinks
+it's great. But how to get it for ourselves--that's another matter.
+Somehow, you were lucky."
+
+"Did you ever happen to see," asked Anthony, "a photograph I took, just
+for fun, of this house as it was when Juliet saw it first? No? Well, just
+look in that box on the end of the farther bookcase, will you? It's near
+the top--there--that's it."
+
+He lay looking up through half-closed lashes at the two men as they
+studied the photograph, the doctor leaning over Carey's shoulder.
+
+"On your word, man, did it look like that?" cried Barnes.
+
+"Just like that."
+
+"Yes, I've heard it did," admitted Carey; "but I never quite believed it
+could have been as bad as that."
+
+"Who planned it all?" the doctor asked, getting possession of the
+photograph as Carey laid it down, and giving it careful scrutiny.
+
+"My little home-maker."
+
+"Jove--are there any more like her?"
+
+"They're pretty rare, I understand. Juliet has one in training--one with a
+good deal of native capacity, I should judge."
+
+"Let me know when her graduation day approaches," remarked the doctor.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+When he fell asleep that night in the dainty guest-room Barnes was
+wondering whether Mrs. Robeson got her own breakfasts, and hoping that she
+certainly did not, at least when guests were in the house. He was down
+half an hour earlier than necessary, and to his great satisfaction found a
+slender figure brushing up ashes and setting the fireplace in order for
+the morning fire. As he begged leave to help he noted the satin smoothness
+of Miss Redding's heavy black hair and the trim perfection of her attire.
+She reminded him of his hospital nurses in their immaculate blue and
+white. When he saw the mistress of the house and found her similarly
+dressed a certain skepticism grew in his mind.
+
+When he went out to breakfast he murmured in Anthony's ear: "Just tell me,
+old fellow--to satisfy the curiosity of a bachelor--do these girls of your
+household always look like this in the early morning? I know it's
+mean--but you will know how to evade me if I'm too impertinent----"
+
+Anthony glanced from Juliet, resembling a pink carnation in her wash
+frock--February though it was--to Rachel Redding in dark blue and white,
+and smiled mischievously. "Mrs. Robeson--and Miss Redding--you are
+challenged," he announced. "Here's a fine old chump who has an awful
+suspicion that maybe when there are no guests you come down in calico
+wrappers with day-before-yesterday's aprons on."
+
+Juliet gave the doctor a glance which made him pretend to shrink behind
+Carey for protection. "Will you please answer him, Tony?" she said.
+
+"On my word and honour, Roger Barnes, then," said Anthony proudly, "they
+always look like this."
+
+When the doctor left he was weighing carefully in his mind an urgent
+problem: After waiting six months before making his first visit at the
+Robesons, how soon could he decently come again?
+
+
+
+
+XIV.--STRAWBERRIES
+
+
+"Here are yer strawberries, ma'm."
+
+Juliet, alone in her little kitchen, ran to the door in dismay. She looked
+down at a freckle-faced boy carrying a big basket filled with
+strawberry-boxes.
+
+"But my order was for next Wednesday," she said.
+
+"Well, Pa said he cal'lated you'd ruther have 'em when they was at the
+best, an' that's now. This hot weather's a dryin' 'em up. May not be any
+good ones by Wednesday."
+
+Every housekeeper knows that if there is one thing particularly liable to
+happen it is the arrival of fruit for preserving at the most inopportune
+moment of the week. It matters little what the excuse of the sender may
+be--there is always a sufficient reason why the original date set by the
+buyer has been ignored. In this case the strawberries had been engaged
+from a neighbour, and Juliet understood at once that she must not refuse
+to take them.
+
+She stood looking at the rows of baskets upon the table, when the boy had
+placed them there and gone whistling away. She was in the midst of a
+flurry of work. It was Saturday, and she was cooking and baking, putting
+together various dishes to be used upon the morrow. Mr. Horatio Marcy had
+lately returned from abroad. He and Mrs. Dingley were to spend the coming
+Sabbath with Juliet and Anthony--the first occasion on which Juliet's
+father should be entertained in the house. It was an event of importance,
+and his daughter meant to show him several things concerning her fitness
+for her present position.
+
+Rachel Redding was not available upon this Saturday morning. Her mother
+had been taken seriously ill the night before, and Rachel had sent word
+that she could not leave her. Juliet had not minded much, although it was
+a day when Rachel's help would have been especially acceptable. As it was,
+she had reached a point where her housewifely marshalling of the day's
+work was at a critical stage. A cake had been put into the oven. A large
+bowl of soup stock had been brought from a cool retreat to have the smooth
+coating of fat removed from its surface. Various other dishes, in process
+of construction, awaited the skilled touch of the cook.
+
+"I shall have to do them, I suppose," said Mrs. Robeson to herself,
+regarding the strawberries with a disapproving eye. "But _why_ they had to
+come to-day----"
+
+She went at the strawberries, wishing she had ordered less. They were fine
+berries--on top; by degrees, as the boxes lowered, they became less fine.
+It seemed desirable to separate the superior from the inferior and treat
+them differently. Only the best would do for the delectable preserve which
+was to go into glasses and be served on special occasions; the others
+could be made into jam less attractive to the eye if hardly less
+acceptable to the palate. Juliet was obliged to put down her berry-boxes
+every fifth minute to attend to one or other of the various saucepans and
+double-boilers upon the little range. Her cheeks grew flushed, for the day
+was hot and the kitchen hotter. It must be admitted that her occasional
+glance out over the green fields and the woods beyond was a longing one.
+
+The better selection of the berries went into the clear syrup in the
+preserving-kettle. Juliet flew to get her glass pots ready. She stopped to
+stir something in a saucepan. She thrust some eggs into the small
+ice-chest to cool them for the salad dressing soon to be made. She kept
+one eye on the clock, for the strawberry preserve had to be timed to a
+minute--ten, no more, no less. It was a strenuous hour.
+
+As she dipped up the fourth ladleful of crimson richness--translucent as a
+church window--and filled the waiting jar, a peculiar pungent odour
+drifted across the fragrance of the strawberries. Juliet dropped her ladle
+and pulled open the oven door.
+
+The delicate cake which she had compounded with especial care because it
+was Mrs. Dingley's favourite, lay a blackened ruin. Some of it had run
+over upon the oven bottom and become a mass of cinders. Juliet jerked the
+cake-tin out into the daylight and shut the oven door with a slam.
+
+It was at this unpropitious moment that a figure appeared in the
+doorway--a tall, slim figure, in crisp, cool, white linen. A charming
+white hat surmounted Mrs. Wayne Carey's carefully ordered hair, a white
+parasol in her hands completed a particularly chaste and appropriate
+morning toilette for a young woman who had nothing to do with kitchens.
+
+She was regarding with interest the young person at the range. Juliet wore
+one of her characteristic working frocks, and the big pinafore which
+enveloped it from head to foot was of an attractive design. But the
+morning's flurry had set its signs upon her, and the pinafore was not as
+immaculate as it had been three hours earlier. Her hair, curling moistly
+about her flushed face, had been impatiently pushed back more than once,
+and its disorder, while not unpicturesque, was suggestive of a somewhat
+perturbed mind. Her hands were pink with strawberry juice. She looked
+warm, tired, and--if the truth must be told--at the moment not a little
+out of temper. The smile with which she welcomed her friend could hardly
+be said to be one of absolute pleasure.
+
+"I'm afraid I've come at the wrong time," said Judith, regretfully. "Did
+you just burn something? Too bad. I suppose all young housekeepers do
+that. Where's your--assistant?"
+
+"She's not here to-day," said Juliet, ladling up strawberry preserve with
+more haste than caution. Her fingers shook a little but she kept her voice
+tranquil. "It's all right. A number of things had to be done at once,
+that's all. Please don't stay in this hot place. Take off your hat and
+find a cool corner somewhere in the house. I'll be in presently."
+
+"I mustn't bother you. I was going to stay for lunch with you, it was so
+hot in town, but I mustn't think of it when you're so----"
+
+"Of course you'll stay," said Juliet with decision. "What you see before
+you is only the smoke of battle. It will soon clear away. Run off--and
+I'll be with you presently. You'll find the late magazines in the
+living-room."
+
+Her tone was intended to deceive and it was sufficiently successful.
+Judith was anxious to stay. She was also interested in the situation. She
+had heard much from Wayne in praise of Juliet's successful housekeeping,
+and had seen enough of it herself to be curious about its inner workings.
+For the first time she had happened upon a scene which would seem to
+indicate that there were phases in this sort of domestic life less ideal
+than she was asked to believe. She went back into the coolness and quiet
+of the living-room with a full appreciation of the fact that no hot
+kitchens ever threatened her own peace of mind.
+
+Juliet finished her strawberry preserve, saw that everything liable to
+burn was removed to safe quarters; then deliberately took off her apron
+and stole out of the kitchen door. She went swiftly down through the
+orchard to the willow-bordered path by the brook; then, out of sight of
+everything human, ran several rods down it with a sweep of skirts which
+put everything in the bird creation to flight. At a certain pleasant spot
+among the willows, sheltered from all possible observation, she paused and
+flung herself down upon the warm ground.
+
+But not in any attitude of despair. Neither did she cry tears of vexation
+and weariness. She was a healthy girl, with the perfect physical being
+whose poise is not upset by so small a matter as a fatiguing morning.
+Because a cake had burned, an extra amount of work had had to be conquered
+and an unexpected guest had arrived, her nerves were not worn to the
+rending point. But, having been reared in the belief that a breath of
+outdoors is the great antidote for all physical or mental discomforts born
+of confinement indoors, she had acquired a habit of running away from her
+cares at any and all times of day in precisely this fashion--and many were
+the advantages she had reaped from this somewhat unusual course of
+procedure.
+
+Mrs. Anthony Robeson lay upon one side, her arm outstretched, her cheek
+pillowed upon her arm. She was drawing long, deep breaths, and looking
+lazily off at a stretch of blue sky cleft in the exact centre by one great
+graceful elm tree. One would have thought she had forgotten every care in
+the world, not to mention the guest from the city waiting expectantly for
+her hostess to appear. After ten minutes of this sort of indolence the
+figure in the blue and white print dress sat up, clasped both arms about
+her knees and remained regarding with half closed eyes the softly
+fluttering leaves of the willows along the edge of the brook. The hot
+flush died out of her cheeks; the lips whose expression a few minutes
+since had indicated self-control under a combination of trying
+circumstances, relaxed into their natural sweetness with a tendency toward
+mirth; and her whole aspect became that merely of the young athlete
+resting from one encounter and preparing herself for another.
+
+At length she rose, shook out her skirts, and said aloud: "Now, Judith
+Dearborn Carey, I'm ready to upset your expectations. Since you looked in
+at me this morning you've been thinking I wished I hadn't--haven't you?
+Well, you may just understand that I don't wish anything of the sort." And
+in five minutes more she had walked in upon her guest by way of the front
+door, her pretty face serene, her hands full of pink June roses which she
+threw in a fragrant mass of beauty into her friend's lap.
+
+"Put those into bowls for me, will you?" she requested. "Arrange them to
+suit yourself. Aren't they lovely? I suppose you're getting hungry. In
+half an hour you shall be served with a very modest but, I trust, not
+insufficient lunch. Would you like hot chocolate or iced tea?"
+
+"Iced tea, by all means," chose Judith, who, being used to the privileges
+of selection from a variety of offered foods and beverages, was apt to
+want what was not set before her, when at a private table. Juliet
+understood this propensity of her friend and slyly took advantage of it.
+As it happened, she knew that at the moment she was quite out of
+chocolate, but she had counted advisedly upon Judith's choice on a hot
+June day, and she smiled to herself as she chopped ice and sliced lemon.
+
+At the end of the half hour, Judith, who found the coolness of the
+living-room too delightful to allow her to keep watch of her friend in the
+hot kitchen, much as she was tempted to do so, was summoned to an equally
+cool dining-room. Upon the bare table, daintily set out upon some of the
+embroidered white doilies of Juliet's wedding linen, was a simple lunch of
+a character which appealed to the guest's critical appetite in a way which
+made her draw a long breath of satisfaction.
+
+"You certainly do have a trick of serving things to make them taste better
+than other people's," she acknowledged, glancing from the little platter
+of broiled chicken with its bit of parsley to the crisp fruit salad made
+up of she knew not what, but presenting an appetising appearance--then
+regarding fondly a dish of spinach, pleasingly flanked by thin slices of
+boiled egg.
+
+"It's really too hot to eat anything very solid," agreed Juliet with
+guile. "Rachel and I have a way of planning our lunches a day or two
+ahead, so that the leftovers we use up are not yesterday's but the day
+before's, and we remember with surprise how good the original dish was far
+back in the past. I wish Anthony could have his midday meal at
+home--though perhaps if he did the dinners wouldn't strike him so happily.
+Don't you think it's great fun to see a big, hearty man sit down at a
+table and look at it with an expression of adoration? Women may deride the
+fact as they will, but a healthy body does demand good things to eat, and
+shouldn't be blamed for liking them."
+
+"Wayne hasn't much appetite," said Judith, eating away with relish. "He
+dislikes the people at our table--sometimes I think that's why he bolts
+his food and gets off in such a hurry. By the way, Juliet, are you and
+Tony coming in to the Reardons' to-night? Of course you are."
+
+"I suppose we must," admitted Juliet with reluctance. "We have refused a
+good many things since we've been here, but I did promise Mrs. Reardon we
+would try to come to-night."
+
+The little repast over, Judith offered, with well simulated warmth, to
+help her friend with the after work. But Juliet would have none of her.
+She sent her guest out into a hammock under the trees, and despatched the
+business of putting the little kitchen to rights with the celerity of one
+who means to have done with it.
+
+In the middle of the June afternoon Judith awoke from a nap in the hammock
+to find her hostess standing laughing beside her, fresh in a thin gown of
+flowered dimity.
+
+"Well," yawned Judith, heavily, "I must have gone off to sleep. I was
+tired--I am tireder. This is a fatiguing sort of weather--don't you think
+so? But you don't look it. And after all that work I found you in! Why
+aren't you used up? It _kills_ me to do things in the heat."
+
+Juliet dropped a big blue denim pillow on the ground and sat down upon it
+in a flutter of dimity. She lifted a smiling face and said with spirit:
+
+"Last summer I could walk miles over a golf course twice a day and not
+mind it in the least. The year before I was most of the time on the river,
+rowing till I was as strong as a girl could be. I've had gymnasium work
+and fencing lessons and have been brought up to keep myself in perfect
+trim by my baths and exercise. What frail thing am I that a little
+housework should use me up?"
+
+"Yes--I know--you always did go in for that sort of thing," reflected
+Judith, eyeing her companion's fresh colour and bright eyes. "I suppose I
+ought, but I never cared for it--I don't mean the baths and all that--of
+course any self-respecting woman adores warm baths. I don't like the cold
+plunges and showers you always add on."
+
+"Then don't expect the results."
+
+"It isn't everybody who has your energetic temperament. I hate golf,
+despise tennis, never rowed a stroke in my life, and could no more keep
+house as you are doing than I could fly."
+
+"Let me see," said Juliet demurely, pretending to consider. "What is it
+that you do like to do?"
+
+"You know well enough. And little enough of it I can get now with a
+husband who never cares to stir." There was a suspicion of bitterness in
+Judith's voice. But Juliet, ignoring it, went blithely on:
+
+"I've a strong conviction that one can't be happy without being busy. Now
+that I can't keep up my athletic sports I should become a pale
+hypochondriac without these housewifely affairs to employ me. I don't like
+to embroider. I can't paint china. I'm not a musician. I somehow don't
+care to begin to devote myself to clubs in town. I love my books and the
+great outdoors--and plenty of action."
+
+"You're a strange girl," was Judith's verdict, getting languidly out of
+the hammock, an hour later, after an animated discussion with her friend
+on various matters touching on the lives of both. "Either you're a
+remarkable actress or you're as contented as you seem to be. I wish I had
+your enthusiasm. Everything bores me--Look at this frock, after lying in a
+hammock! Isn't white linen the prettiest thing when you put it on and the
+most used up when you take it off, of any fabric known to the shops?"
+
+"It is, indeed. But if anybody can afford to wear it it's you, who never
+sit recklessly about on banks and fences, but keep cool and correct and
+stately and----"
+
+"--discontented. I admit I've talked like a fractious child all day. But
+I've had a good time and want to come oftener than I have. May I?"
+
+"Of course you may. Must you go? I'll keep you to dinner and send for
+Wayne."
+
+"You're an angel, but I've an engagement for five o'clock, and there's the
+Reardons' this evening. You won't forget that? You and Anthony will be
+sure to come?"
+
+"I'll not promise absolutely, but I'll see. Mrs. Reardon was so kind as to
+leave it open. It's an informal affair, I believe?"
+
+"Informal, but very gorgeous, just the same. She wouldn't give anybody but
+you such an elastic invitation as that, and you should appreciate her
+eagerness to get you," declared Judith, who cared very much from whom her
+invitations came and could never understand her friend's careless attitude
+toward the most impressive of them.
+
+Juliet watched her guest go down the street, and waved an affectionate
+hand at her as Judith looked back from her seat in the trolley car. "Poor
+old Judy," she said to herself. "How glad you are you're not I!--And how
+very, very glad I am I'm not you!"
+
+An observation, it must be admitted, essentially feminine. No man is ever
+heard to felicitate himself upon the fact that he is not some other man.
+
+
+
+
+XV.--ANTHONY PLAYS MAID
+
+
+After dinner that night, Juliet, having once more put things in order and
+slipped off the big pinafore which had kept her spotless, joined her
+husband in the garden up and down which he was comfortably pacing, hands
+in pockets, pipe in mouth.
+
+"Jolly spot, isn't it? Come and perambulate," he suggested.
+
+"Just for a minute. Tony, are we going to the Reardons?"
+
+He stood still and considered. "I don't know. Are we? Did you accept?"
+
+"On condition that you felt like it. I represented you as coming home
+decidedly fagged these hot nights and not always caring to stir."
+
+"Wise schemer! I don't mind the aspersion on my physical being. She urged,
+I suppose?"
+
+"She did. I don't know why."
+
+"I do." Anthony smiled down at his wife. "Everybody is a bit curious about
+us these days. Your position, you see, is considered very extraordinary."
+
+"Nonsense, Tony. Shall we go?"
+
+"Possibly we'd better, though it racks my soul to think of dressing. The
+less I wear my festive garments the less I want to. For that very reason,
+suppose we discipline ourselves and go. Do you mind?"
+
+"Not at all. We'll have to dress at once, for it's nearly eight now, and
+by the time we have caught a train and got to Hollyhurst----"
+
+"To be sure. Here goes, then."
+
+Half an hour later Anthony, wrestling with a refractory cuff button,
+looked up to see his wife at his elbow. She was very nearly a vision of
+elegance and beauty; the lacking essential was explained to him by a voice
+very much out of breath and a trifle petulant:
+
+"If you care anything for me, Tony, stop everything and hook me up. I'm
+all mixed up, and I can't reach, and I'm sure I've torn that little lace
+frill at the back."
+
+"All right. Where do I begin?"
+
+"Under my left arm, I think--I can't possibly see."
+
+"Neither can I." He was poking about under the lifted arm, among folds of
+filmy stuff. "Here we are--no, we aren't. Does this top hook go in this
+little pocket on the other side?"
+
+"I suppose so--can't you tell whether it does by the look?"
+
+"It seems a bit blind to me," murmured Anthony, struggling.
+
+"It's meant to be blind--it mustn't show when it's fastened."
+
+"It certainly doesn't now. Hold on--don't wriggle. I've got it now. I've
+found the combination. Three turns to the right, five to the left, clear
+around once, then--Hullo! I've come out wrong. The thing doesn't track at
+the bottom."
+
+"You've missed a hook."
+
+"Oh, no. I hung onto 'em all the way down."
+
+"Then you missed an eye. You'll have to unhook it all and begin again."
+
+Anthony obeyed. "I'm glad I don't have to get into my clothes around the
+corner this way," he commented. "Here you are. We stuck to the schedule
+this time."
+
+"Wait, dear. You haven't fastened the shoulder. There are ever so many
+little hooks along there and around the arm hole."
+
+"I should say there were. What's the good of so many?--Where do they
+begin? Look out--wait a minute--Juliet, if you don't stop twisting around
+so I never can do it. I can do great, heroic acts, it's the little trials
+that floor me--There--no!--that doesn't look right."
+
+Juliet ran to the mirror. "It isn't right," she cried. "Look--that corner
+shouldn't lap over like that. Oh, if I could only reach myself!"
+
+"You can't--I've often tried it. The human anatomy--Stand still,
+Julie--you're getting nervous."
+
+"If there's one thing that's trying----" murmured Juliet.
+
+"Why do you let your dressmakers build your frocks this way? Why not get
+into 'em all in front, where you can see what you're doing?--Now I've got
+it. Isn't that right?"
+
+"Yes. Wait, Tony--here's the girdle. It fastens behind."
+
+Anthony surveyed the incomprehensible affair of silk and velvet ribbon she
+put into his hands. "Looks like a head-stall to me," he said. Juliet
+laughed and fitted it about her own waist. Anthony attempted to make it
+join at the back of the points she held out to him.
+
+"It won't come together," he said.
+
+"Oh, yes, it will. Draw it tight."
+
+"I am drawing it tight. It's smaller than you are. You can't wear it."
+
+Juliet laughed again. Anthony tugged.
+
+"Wait till I hold my breath," she said.
+
+"_Great guns!_" he ejaculated, and by the exertion of much force fastened
+the girdle. Then he stood off a step or two and looked at his wife
+curiously. Flushed and laughing she returned his gaze.
+
+"Can you breathe?" he asked solicitously.
+
+"Of course I can."
+
+"What with?"
+
+"It is a little tight, of course," she admitted. "This is one of my
+trousseau dresses. I've grown a little stouter, I suppose. Never mind, I
+can stand it for to-night. Thank you very much. You must hurry now,
+Tony."
+
+"I haven't had my pay for playing maid," he said, and came close. He
+surveyed his wife's fair neck and shoulders, turned her around and
+deliberately kissed the soft hollow where the firm white flesh of her neck
+met the waving brown hair drawn lightly upwards.
+
+"That's the spot that tantalized me for about six years," he observed.
+
+Hunting hurriedly through various drawers and boxes in the blue-and-white
+room, in search of gloves and fan, Juliet heard her husband come in his
+turn to her open door.
+
+"Will you have the goodness to look at me?" he requested, in a melancholy
+voice. Juliet turned, gave him one glance, and broke into a merry peal.
+
+"Oh, Tony!--What's the matter? Have you been growing stouter, too?"
+
+"It must be," he said solemnly.
+
+His clawhammer coat was so tight across the shoulders that the strain was
+evident. He was holding his arms in the exaggerated position of the small
+boy who wears a last year's suit. Juliet revolved around her husband's
+well built figure with interest.
+
+"It does look tight," she said. "But have you grown heavier all at once?
+It can't be long since you wore that coat before."
+
+"Don't believe I have for months. It's been altogether frock-coats and
+informals. I haven't been to an evening affair with ladies for a good
+while."
+
+"It doesn't look as it feels, I'm sure. It's getting very late--we ought
+to be off," and Juliet gathered up her belongings and gave him a long
+loose coat to hold for her which covered her finery completely.
+
+"Now's the hour when I regret that I haven't a carriage for you," said
+Anthony, as they descended the stairs. He got into his outer coat
+reluctantly. "I shall split something around my back before the evening is
+over," he prophesied resignedly.
+
+"Never mind. Remember how tight my girdle is. It grows tighter every
+minute."
+
+They got out upon the porch and Anthony locked the door. "If I should show
+that door-key to any man I know except Carey he would howl," he remarked,
+holding up the queer old brass affair before he slipped it into his
+pocket. He looked down at Juliet in the gathering June twilight. "Don't
+you wish we didn't have to go?"
+
+"Yes, I do," she agreed frankly.
+
+"Let's not!"
+
+"My dear boy! At this hour?"
+
+"We could telephone."
+
+"Shouldn't you feel rather ashamed to, so late?"
+
+"Not a bit. But of course we'll go if you say so."
+
+She laughed, and he joined her boyishly. She hesitated.
+
+"If I see you looking faint in that girdle shall I throw a glass of cold
+water over you?"
+
+"Please do. If I hear a sound as of rending cloth shall I divert the
+attention of the company?"
+
+"By all means."
+
+They were laughing like two children. Anthony sat down in one of the porch
+chairs. He drew a long sigh. "I never hated to leave my dear home so since
+I came into it," he said gloomily.
+
+Juliet pulled off her coat. "If you'll do the telephoning I'll stay," she
+said.
+
+He jumped to his feet. "Let me loosen that girdle for you. I haven't been
+breathing below the fifth rib myself since you put it on, just in
+sympathy," he declared.
+
+
+
+
+XVI.--A HOUSE-PARTY--OUTDOORS
+
+
+"The trouble is," said Anthony Robeson, shifting his position on the step
+below Juliet so that he could rest his head against her knee, "the trouble
+is we're getting too popular."
+
+Juliet laughed and ran her fingers through his thick locks, gently
+tweaking them. The two were alone together in the warm darkness of a July
+evening, upon their own little porch.
+
+"It's the first evening we've had to ourselves since the big snowdrift
+under the front windows melted. That was about the date Roger Barnes met
+Louis Lockwood here the first time. Ye gods--but they've kept each other's
+footprints warm since then, haven't they? And now Cathcart is giving
+indications of having contracted the fatal malady. Can't Rachel Redding be
+incarcerated somewhere until the next moon is past? I notice they all have
+worse symptoms each third quarter. That girl looks innocent, but--by
+heaven, Julie, I think she has it down fine."
+
+"No, you don't," said Juliet persuasively. "I should catch her at it if
+she were deliberately trying to keep two such men as Roger and Louis
+pitted against each other. They're doing it all themselves. I've known her
+to run away when she saw one of them coming--so that she couldn't be
+found. But, Tony dear, I've a plan."
+
+"Good. I hope it's a duel between the two principals. If it is I'm going
+to tamper with the weapons and see that each injures himself past help.
+I'm getting a little weary of playing the hospitable host to a trio of
+would-bes."
+
+"Listen. We'll entertain them all at once for a week, with some extra
+girls, and Judith and Wayne, and then we'll announce that we're not at
+home for a month."
+
+"All at once--a house-party?" Anthony sat up and laughed uproariously.
+"I've tremendous faith in you, love, but where in the name of all the
+French sardines that ever were dovetailed would you put such a crowd?"
+
+"I've a practical plan. Louis Lockwood belongs to a fishing club that
+spends every August up in Canada. They have a big tent, twenty by
+twenty-five, for he told me so the other day. He would get it for us; we
+would put it out in the orchard, close to the river. You and Wayne, and
+Roger and Louis, and Stevens Cathcart could sleep down there, and I could
+easily take care of Judith and Suzanne Gerard and Marie Dresser, here in
+the house. Rachel should stay here, too. And Auntie Dingley would send
+down Mary McKaim to cook for us, I'm sure."
+
+"That's not so bad. But why Rachel--when you have so little room?"
+
+"Because I want her to have all the fun; because if I don't keep her here
+she will be running away half the time; and because----"
+
+"Now comes the real reason," observed Anthony sagely.
+
+"I don't want the other girls thinking she has the unfair advantage of
+taking a man away from the party every evening to walk down home with
+her."
+
+"Wise little chaperon. I can see Roger and Louis now, glaring at each
+other as the hour approaches for her departure."
+
+"What do you think of my plan? It's only a plan, you know, Tony--subject
+to your approval."
+
+"Diplomat!" murmured Anthony, reaching up one arm and drawing it about her
+shoulders. "You know you're safe to have my approval when you put it in
+that tone. Well, provided you can figure out the finances--and I know you
+wouldn't propose it if you hadn't done that already--I don't see any
+objection. On one condition, though, Julie, mind you--on one condition."
+
+"Name it."
+
+"Of course, I can only be here evenings during your house party. So my
+condition is that I have you and the home all to myself for my vacation
+afterward. Not a wooer nor a chum admitted. No overdressed women out from
+town, taking afternoon tea--no invitations to lonesome husbands out to
+dinner. Just you and I. Did you ever imagine life in the rural localities
+would be so gay, anyhow? I want to go fishing with you--tramping through
+the woods with you--sitting out here on the porch with you--in short, have
+you all to myself--and"--he turned completely about, kneeling below her on
+the step, crushing her in both arms so vigorously that he stopped her
+breath--"eat--you--up!"
+
+"What a prospect," she cried softly, when she found herself partially
+released. "Are you sure you need a vacation, just for that?"
+
+"Certain of it. I've had to share you with other people all the year--and
+now I've got to give you up to a jealous lovers' assemblage. So after
+that, mind you, I have my satisfaction."
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Doctor Barnes was told of the plan he looked gloomy. "Going to ask
+Lockwood?" he inquired at once.
+
+"Of course," assented Juliet promptly.
+
+"I don't see any 'of course' about it."
+
+"What would Marie Dresser do to me if I didn't invite him?"
+
+"He doesn't care for her----"
+
+"Oh, yes, he does. Why, last winter he seemed to be on the point of asking
+her to marry him. Everybody expected the announcement any day."
+
+"Last winter and this summer are two different propositions."
+
+"Marie doesn't think so."
+
+"She'll get mightily undeceived, then. Whom else are you asking?"
+
+"Stevens Cathcart."
+
+The doctor groaned. "Is this a dose you're fixing for me? I'm going to be
+too busy--I can't come."
+
+"Very well," said Juliet placidly. She was sewing, upon the porch, and the
+doctor sat on the step.
+
+He looked up with a grimace. "I suppose you think I'll be out on the next
+train after the rest arrive."
+
+"I certainly do, Dr. Roger Williams Barnes."
+
+"I presume you are inviting Suzanne?" he queried.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"No reason why not. Cathcart admires her immensely--or did, before he
+began to cultivate this place."
+
+Juliet laughed. "Suzanne would never forgive you if she heard that."
+
+"By-the-way," said the doctor slowly, "has she ever met--Miss Redding?"
+
+"No."
+
+He meditated for several minutes in silence, while Juliet sewed, glancing
+from time to time at one of the most attractive masculine profiles with
+which she was familiar. He was not as handsome a man as Louis Lockwood,
+but every line of his face stood for strength, not without some
+pretensions to good looks. He looked up at length and straight at her.
+
+"Would you mind telling me," he began, "just what you intend to effect
+with this combination? I never gave you credit, you know, Juliet, for
+wanting to manage Fate, and I don't believe it now."
+
+"No, I don't want to manage Fate," said Juliet, smiling over her work,
+"but I admit I want two things: I want you to see Rachel Redding beside
+Suzanne Gerard, and--I want Rachel to see you beside Louis Lockwood
+and--Suzanne."
+
+"I see," said the doctor grimly. "In other words, you want your protegee
+to have fair play."
+
+"Just that," Juliet answered, more gravely now. "I think lots of you,
+Roger, and well of you--you know I do--and yet----"
+
+"And yet----"
+
+"Let me guard my girl. She's not like the others, and you and Louis are
+making it tremendously hard for her between you."
+
+"You seem to be planning to make it infinitely harder."
+
+Juliet shook her head. "Trust me, Roger, please."
+
+"All right, I will," promised the doctor. "But just assure me that you're
+on my side."
+
+"I'm on nobody's side," was all the comfort he got.
+
+Juliet's invitations received delighted acceptances, though Wayne Carey
+and Doctor Barnes would be able to come out only for the nights--in time,
+however, for late and festive suppers outdoors. The tent in the orchard,
+with its comfortable bunks, was accepted by all the men with enthusiasm.
+
+"And to satisfy the men is the essential thing, you know, Tony," Juliet
+had observed sagely when she saw their pleasure in their quarters. "The
+girls will accept any crowding together if they have a mirror and room to
+tie a sash in, as long as devoted admirers are not wanting."
+
+The moment Miss Dresser and Miss Gerard saw Miss Rachel Redding--to quote
+Anthony--the fun began. Mrs. Wayne Carey had already met her, and had been
+carefully coached by Juliet as to the bearing she must assume toward
+Juliet's new friend. So when Marie and Suzanne began to inquire of Judith
+the latter was prepared to answer them.
+
+"She's a beauty in her way, isn't she?" Judith asserted. "Juliet's
+immensely fond of her, I should judge."
+
+"But who is she?" demanded Suzanne.
+
+"A neighbour, a country girl, a school and college girl, a comparatively
+poor girl--and a lucky girl, for Juliet likes her."
+
+"Have the men met her before?"
+
+"Goodness, yes. Haven't you heard how they beg invitations home to dinner
+of Anthony, just to see her?" Judith was enjoying the situation. This
+statement, however, was no part of Juliet's coaching.
+
+"I didn't see anything particularly attractive about her," said Marie
+promptly. "She's a demure thing. One wouldn't think she ever lifted those
+long lashes to look at a man--but that's just the kind. Awfully plainly
+dressed."
+
+"That's her style," said Suzanne. "These poor, pretty girls are once in a
+while just clever enough to make capital out of their poverty by wearing
+simply fetching things in pale gray dimity and dark blue lawn and
+sunbonnets. Stevens Cathcart would be just the kind to be carried away
+with her. Roger Barnes wouldn't look at her twice."
+
+"Louis might pretend to admire her, to please Juliet," admitted Marie. "He
+has a way of making every girl think he is in love with her--and he is, to
+a certain extent. But it's never serious."
+
+Whether it were serious in this instance Miss Dresser soon had opportunity
+to judge.
+
+After dinner that first night Anthony proposed taking all his guests out
+upon the river in a big flat-boat he had rented. But when he made up the
+party Rachel was not to be found.
+
+"I'm afraid she's gone home," said Juliet.
+
+"I'll run down and see," proposed Lockwood instantly, and was suiting the
+action to the word when Cathcart got off ahead of him.
+
+"I'll have her back presently," he called as he dashed down the road. "You
+people go on--we'll catch you."
+
+"We'll wait for you," Lockwood shouted after him.
+
+"Why should we wait?" demurred Marie, beginning to walk away toward the
+river.
+
+"If we don't he's liable not to find it convenient to catch up with us,"
+Lockwood retorted.
+
+"If they prefer their own company why not let them have it?" she said over
+her shoulder.
+
+"Run along, Louis," murmured Doctor Barnes. "One girl at a time."
+
+He turned to Juliet. "Shall we go?" he said.
+
+Anthony caught his glance, and, laughing, turned to Suzanne. "Will you
+console an old married man, Miss Gerard?" he inquired.
+
+But when Cathcart reappeared, which he did very soon, Rachel was not with
+him. "She said she had to stay with her mother," he explained in a tone
+which so closely resembled a growl that everybody laughed.
+
+"Bear up, Stevie, boy," chaffed Wayne Carey. "I'm confident she likes you,
+but she may not like you all the time, you know. They seldom do."
+
+
+
+
+XVII.--RACHEL CAUSES ANXIETY
+
+
+In spite of all Juliet's efforts to bring about Rachel's presence as one
+of her guests she found herself unable to accomplish it. Whenever she was
+needed for help Rachel was never absent, but the moment she was free the
+girl was off, and that quite without the appearance of running away. The
+men of the party followed her, but they were not allowed to remain. The
+girls, confident that her disappearances were part of a very deep game,
+begged her to stay; it was useless. Rachel's excuses were ready, her
+manner charmingly regretful in a quiet way, but stay she would not.
+
+Dr. Roger Barnes waylaid her one evening as she was vanishing down the
+willow-bordered path by the brook, leading to her own home.
+
+"Here you go again," he began discontentedly. "I wish I knew why."
+
+Rachel paused. It was difficult to do otherwise with a large and
+determined figure blocking a very narrow path.
+
+"I have ever so many things waiting at home for me to do."
+
+"At nine o'clock in the evening?"
+
+"At whatever hour I am through at Mrs. Robeson's."
+
+"I wish I could imagine something of what they are. It might relieve my
+mind a little."
+
+"Why, I will tell you," said Rachel with great appearance of frankness. "I
+have to do some mending for mother, read the evening paper for father, and
+set the bread. Then the clothes must be sprinkled for ironing in the
+morning."
+
+The doctor studied her face in the dimming light. "Who washed the
+clothes?" he asked bluntly.
+
+"Do you think you ought to ask?" said Rachel.
+
+"Yes. I'm in the habit of asking questions."
+
+"Of patients----"
+
+"Of everybody I care for. You don't have to answer, but if you don't I
+shall know who did the washing."
+
+"Yes, I did it," said Rachel steadily. "It is easily done."
+
+"And then you came over here and got breakfast?"
+
+"Not at all. I helped Mrs. Robeson and Mary McKaim get it. Doctor Barnes,
+do you know that you are standing directly in my path?"
+
+"Certainly," said the doctor. "It's what I'm here for."
+
+"Then I shall have to go back and take the road home."
+
+"If you do you will evade me only to encounter another man. Lockwood's
+keeping a ferret's eye on the Robeson house door; and I think Cathcart is
+already patrolling the road in front of your house."
+
+The girl turned. "You are making me feel very absurd," she said. "I want
+to go home, Doctor Barnes. Please let me pass you."
+
+"May I go with you?"
+
+"I would rather not."
+
+"Well, that's frank," he said, amusement and chagrin struggling for the
+uppermost. "I wonder I don't stalk angrily away----"
+
+"I wish you would."
+
+Roger Barnes threw back his head and laughed. "I wish you would give some
+other girls a leaf out of your book," he said. "The more you turn me down
+the more ardently I long to be with you; while the opposite sort of
+thing--I'll tell you, Miss Redding, if you want to be rid of me try these
+tactics: Say with a languishing smile, 'Oh, Doctor Barnes, won't you take
+me a little way down this lovely path?' Perhaps that will accomplish your
+ends. I've often felt an instant desire not to do the thing I'm begged
+to."
+
+"'Oh, Doctor Barnes,'" said Rachel Redding--and he caught the mischief in
+her tone--even Rachel could be mischievous, as Juliet had said--"'won't
+you take me a little way down this lovely path?'"
+
+"With the greatest pleasure in the world," replied the doctor promptly,
+and stood aside to let her pass him. Whereupon she slipped by him, and
+before he could realise that she had gone was running fleetly away in the
+twilight down the winding, willow-hung path. With an exclamation he was
+off after her, but though he dashed at the pace of a hunter through the
+intricacies of the way he presently discovered that he was following
+nothing but the summer breeze rustling the willow leaves and wafting into
+his face the breath of new-cut hay, the aftermath of late July. He stopped
+at length and stared about him, baffled and half angry.
+
+"There never was a girl like you," he muttered. "If you are deliberately
+trying to make men mad to get you you are succeeding infuriatingly well.
+If I catch you to-night it will be your fault if I tell you what I think
+of you. I'll tell you now, for I suppose you are hiding somewhere in this
+undergrowth till I give it up and you can get away home. You shall listen
+to me if you are here, for you can't help yourself."
+
+He was speaking in a low, even tone, walking slowly along the path and
+peering sharply into the bushes on both sides. Suddenly he stood still. He
+had detected a spot beside a low-hanging willow which showed nearly white
+in the deepening darkness. Rachel was wearing white to-night, he
+remembered. His heart quickened its paces and he paused an instant to get
+past a certain tightening in his throat.
+
+Then he bent forward and whispered: "If that's not you there I can say
+what I like, and there'll be some satisfaction in that. If you'll speak
+now you may save yourself, but if you don't I've no reason to think it's
+you, and so I can say----"
+
+There was a sharply perceptible noise farther down the path toward the
+Redding home. Barnes turned quickly and stood up straight, waiting.
+Footsteps came rapidly along the path--no footsteps of hers, evidently. A
+man's voice humming a tune grew momentarily plainer--then the voice
+stopped humming and began to sing in a subdued but clear and fine
+barytone:
+
+                       "Down through the lane
+                       Come I again
+                       Seeking, my love, for you;
+                       Run to me, dear,
+                       Losing all fear,
+                       Love and----"
+
+The voice stopped. Two men's figures confronted each other in an extremely
+narrow path. It was not too dark yet for each to be plainly recognisable
+to the other.
+
+"Hallo--that you, Lockwood?"
+
+"Hi there, Roger Barnes; what you doing here? Fishing?"
+
+"Looking for something I've lost."
+
+"Getting pretty dark to find it. Something valuable?"
+
+"Rather. Think I'll give it up for to-night."
+
+"Too bad. Nice night." Lockwood was hastening toward the end of the path
+which came out near Anthony's house. Barnes looked after him grimly.
+
+"That voice of yours, young man," he thought, "handicaps me from the
+start. Now, if I could just warble my emotions that way----"
+
+He turned and peered again at the white place by the tree. He moved
+stealthily toward it, and ascertained presently that it was not what it
+seemed. He rose to his feet and walked rapidly down the path to the
+Redding house. When he came in sight of it he saw that the kitchen windows
+were lighted and that a man stood with his arm on the sill of one of them.
+Silhouetted against the light were the familiar outlines of Stevens
+Cathcart. As Barnes stood staring amazedly at this, a slender figure in
+white came to the window, and in the stillness he could hear the quiet
+voice:
+
+"Please let me close the window, Mr. Cathcart. Thank you--no--and
+good-night."
+
+"'Three Men in a Boat,' by Rachel Redding," murmured the doctor to
+himself, and slipped back to the willow path, from which he at length
+emerged to join the group upon the porch--which then, it may be observed,
+held for the first time that night its full complement of men.
+
+Three big Chinese lanterns shed a softly pleasant light upon the porch and
+the lawn at its foot. Suzanne Gerard and Marie Dresser made a most
+attractive picture, one in a low chair, the other upon a pile of cushions
+on the step. Suzanne lightly picked a mandolin. Marie was singing softly:
+
+                     "Down through the lane
+                     Come I again
+                     Seeking, my love, for you;
+                     Run to me, dear,
+                     Losing all fear,
+                     Love and my life will be true."
+
+It was one of the songs of the summer--foolish words, seductive
+music--everybody hummed it half the time. Roger Barnes smiled to himself,
+remembering where he had heard it last.
+
+"Come here and give account," commanded Suzanne the instant he appeared.
+"Every unmarried man vanished the moment twilight fell. You are the last
+to show your face. I challenge you, one and all, to swear that you have
+not been within sight of a certain small brown house at the foot of the
+hill since supper."
+
+Her voice was music; in her eyes was laughter. Marie sang on, pointing her
+words with smiles at one and another of the culprits.
+
+From his seat on the threshold of the door, where his head rested against
+Juliet's knee as she sat behind him, Anthony laughed to himself. Then he
+turned his head and whispered to his wife: "Feel the claws through the
+velvet? Poor boys, they have my sympathy."
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.--AN UNKNOWN QUANTITY
+
+
+"Rachel," said Juliet decisively, next morning, "to-night is the last of
+my house party, and I refuse to let you off. I'm asking ten or twelve more
+people out from town. You must spend this evening with my guests, or
+forfeit my friendship."
+
+She was smiling as she said it, but her tone was not to be denied.
+
+"If that is the alternative," Rachel answered, returning the smile with an
+affectionate look of a sort which neither Louis Lockwood nor Stevens
+Cathcart nor Dr. Roger Barnes had ever seen on her face--though they had
+dreamed of it--"of course I shall stay. But I'll tell you frankly I would
+rather not."
+
+"Why not, Rachel?"
+
+"I think you know why not, Mrs. Robeson," Rachel answered.
+
+"Yes, I know why not," admitted Juliet. "Girls are queer things, Ray. They
+defeat their own ends all the time--lots of them. Suzanne and Marie are
+dear girls, with ever so many nice things about them, but they don't--they
+don't know enough not to pursue, chase, run down, the object of their
+desires. And, of course, the object, being run down panting, into a
+corner, dodges, evades, gets out and runs away. Rachel, dear, what are you
+going to wear to-night?"
+
+"My best frock," said Rachel, smiling.
+
+"Which is----"
+
+"White."
+
+"Cut out at the neck?"
+
+"A little."
+
+"Short in the sleeves?"
+
+"To the elbows. It was my sophomore evening dress."
+
+"It will be all right, I know. Rachel, wear a white rose in those low
+black braids of yours--will you?"
+
+"No, I think I won't," refused Rachel.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Rachel did not answer. Into her cool cheek crept a tinge of rebellious,
+telltale colour.
+
+Juliet studied her a minute in silence, then came up to her and laying
+both hands on her shoulders looked up into her eyes.
+
+"You try to 'play fair,' don't you, dear?" she said heartily, "whatever
+the rest may do. And whatever they may do, Rachel Redding, don't you care.
+It's not your fault that they are as jealous of you as girls can be and
+keep sweet outside. I'd be jealous of you myself if----" She paused,
+laughing.
+
+"When you grow jealous," said Rachel, "it will be because you have grown
+blind. If anybody ever wore his heart on his sleeve--no, not there--but
+beating sturdily in the right place for one woman in the world it's----"
+
+"Right you are," said Anthony Robeson, coming up behind them, "and I hope
+you may convince her of it. She has no confidence in her own powers."
+
+Rachel stood looking at them a moment, her dark eyes very bright. "To see
+you two," she said slowly at length, "is to believe it all."
+
+The evening promised to be a gay one. The men of the party had sent to
+town for many lanterns, flags and decorations of the sort, and had made
+the porch and lawn the setting for a brilliant scene. A dozen young people
+had been asked out, and came enthusiastically.
+
+"We'll wind up with a flourish," said Anthony in his wife's ear as they
+descended the stairs together, "and then we'll send them all off to-morrow
+where they'll cease from troubling. I think it was the best plan in the
+world, but I'll be glad to prowl about my beloved home without observing
+Cathcart scowling at Lockwood, Roger Barnes evading Suzanne, or even my
+good boy Wayne with that eternal wonder on his face as to why his flat
+does not look like our Eden."
+
+"Hush--and don't look too happy to-morrow, Tony. Oh, here comes Rachel.
+Isn't she lovely?"
+
+"Now, watch," murmured Anthony, his face full of amusement. "It's as good
+as the best comedy I ever saw. See Suzanne. She never looked toward
+Rachel, but don't tell me she wasn't aware of the very instant Rachel came
+upon the porch. I believe she read it in Roger Barnes's face. I'll wager
+ten to one his pulse isn't countable at the present instant."
+
+"I don't blame him," Juliet answered, smiling at her guests. "She's my
+ideal of a girl who won't hold out a finger to the men."
+
+"Yes, she's your sort," admitted Anthony. "I know what it is--poor
+fellows--I've been through it. Your cold shoulder used to warm up my heart
+hotter than any other girl's kindness. Look at the boys now. They can't
+jump and run away from the other girls, but they'd like to. And they're
+all deadly anxious for fear the others will get the start. Say, Julie, you
+ought not to have asked those new youngsters down from town. They'll catch
+it, sure as fate; they're at the susceptible age. I see five of them now,
+all staring at Rachel."
+
+"You positively mustn't stay here with me any longer," whispered Juliet.
+"Go and devote yourself to her and keep them off for a little."
+
+"Not on your life," Anthony returned "She can take care of herself. If I
+mix up in this fray you're likely to be husbandless. Lockwood and Roger
+are getting dangerous, and I'm going to keep on the outskirts where it's
+safe."
+
+They were all upon the lawn--Rachel, unable to help herself, according to
+Anthony's intimation, the centre of a group of men who would not give each
+other a chance--when a stranger appeared upon the edge of the circle of
+light. He stood watching the scene for a moment--a tall, slender fellow,
+with a pale face and deep-set eyes. Then he asked somebody to tell Miss
+Redding that Mr. Huntington would like to speak with her. Rachel, thus
+summoned, rose, looked about her, caught sight of the stranger, and went
+swiftly down the lawn. A dozen people, among them all the men who had been
+the guests of the week, saw the meeting. They observed that the newcomer
+put out both hands, that his smile was very bright, and that he stood
+looking down into Miss Redding's face as if at sight of it he had
+instantly forgotten everything else in the world.
+
+Rachel, leaving him, came back up the lawn to find her hostess. As she
+passed it became evident to a good many pairs of sharp eyes that her
+beauty had received a keen accession from the sweeping over her cheeks of
+a burning blush--so unusual that they could not fail to take note of it.
+
+Juliet came back down the lawn with Rachel, who presented Mr. Huntington;
+and presently, without a word of leave-taking to any one else, the two
+went away down the road.
+
+"Now, who under the heavens was that?" grunted Louis Lockwood in Anthony's
+ear, catching his host around the corner of the house.
+
+"Don't know."
+
+"Brother, perhaps?"
+
+"Hasn't any."
+
+"Relative?"
+
+"Don't know."
+
+"Just a messenger, maybe?"
+
+"Give it up."
+
+"She blushed like anything."
+
+"Did she? Man she is going to marry, probably."
+
+"Oh, that can't be!"
+
+"The lady looks marriageable to me," observed Anthony, strolling away.
+
+He ran into Cathcart.
+
+"Say, who was that fellow, Tony?" began Stevens.
+
+"Don't ask me."
+
+"He looked confoundedly as if he meant to embrace her on the spot."
+
+"So he did," agreed Anthony soothingly. "Don't blame him, do you? He may
+not have seen her for a month. What condition do you suppose you'd be in
+if a week should get away from you out of her vicinity?"
+
+"Bother you, Tony--don't you know who he was?"
+
+"Intimate friend, I should judge."
+
+"She turned pink as a carnation."
+
+"Say hollyhock," suggested Anthony, "or peony. Only a vivid colour could
+do justice to it."
+
+"That's right," groaned Cathcart. "She never looked like that for any of
+us."
+
+"Never," said Anthony promptly, and got away, chuckling.
+
+"Hold on, there, Robeson, man," said the voice of Dr. Roger Barnes, and
+Anthony found himself again held up.
+
+"Come on, old Roger boy," said his host pleasantly. "We'll amble down the
+road a bit and give you a chance to get a grip on yourself. No, I don't
+know who he is. I'm all worn out assuring Louis and Steve of that. She did
+turn red, she did look upset--with joy, I infer. That girl has made more
+havoc in one short week--playing off all the while, too--than Suzanne and
+Marie have accomplished in the biggest season they ever knew. And I
+believe, Roger boy, you're about the hardest hit of any of them."
+
+The doctor did not answer. The two had walked away from the house and were
+marching arm in arm at a good pace down the road.
+
+"She's as poor as a church mouse," suggested Anthony.
+
+There was no reply.
+
+"She has a dead weight of a helpless father and mother."
+
+The doctor put match to a cigar.
+
+"Juliet says her brother died of dissipation in a gambling-house."
+
+Doctor Barnes began to chew hard on a cigar that he had failed to light.
+
+"But she's a mighty sweet girl," said Anthony softly.
+
+"See here, Tony," the doctor burst out.--"Oh, hang it all--"
+
+"I see," said his friend, with a hand on his shoulder. "Go ahead, Roger
+Barnes--there's nothing in life like it; and the good Lord have mercy on
+you, for the sort of girl worth caring for doesn't know the meaning of the
+word."
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+"All gone, little girl," said Anthony jubilantly, as he turned back into
+the house the next evening, after watching out of sight the big
+touring-car of Lockwood's which had carried all his house-party away at
+once. "They are mighty fine people and I like them all immensely--but--I
+have enjoyed to the full this speeding the parting guest. And now for my
+vacation. It begins to-morrow."
+
+"What shall we do?" asked Juliet, allowing him to draw her into his
+favourite settle corner.
+
+"Go fishing. If you'll put up a jolly little--I mean a jolly big--lunch,
+and array yourself in unspoilable attire, I'll give you a day's great
+sport, whether we catch any fish or not. There's one fish you're sure
+of--he's always on the end of your line: hooked fast, and resigned to his
+fate. Juliet, are they really all gone?"
+
+"I'm sure they are."
+
+"Good Mary McKaim--peace be to her ashes, for she never gets any on the
+toast--has she gone, too?"
+
+"She's packing."
+
+"Rachel safe at home with her presumable fiance?"
+
+"He can't be her fiance, Tony--"
+
+"That's what Lockwood said--but I suppose he can, just the same. Rachel
+away, do you say?"
+
+"Yes. She didn't come over to-day at all, you know."
+
+"I noticed it--by the gloom on three stalwart men's faces. Well, if
+everybody's safely out of the way I'm going to commit myself."
+
+"To what, Tony?"
+
+She was laughing, for he had risen, looked all about him with great
+anxiety, tiptoed to each door and listened at it, and was now come back to
+stand before her, smiling down at her and holding out his arms.
+
+"To the statement," he said, gathering her close and speaking into her
+upturned rosy face, "that without doubt this is the dearest home in the
+world, and that you are the sweetest woman who ever has stood or ever will
+stand here in it."
+
+
+
+
+XIX.--ALL THE APRIL STARS ARE OUT
+
+
+It was an April night--balmy with the breath of an exceptionally early
+spring. All the April stars were out as Anthony came to the door of the
+little house, and opening it flung himself out upon the porch, drawing
+great breaths. He looked up into the sky and clasped his arms tightly over
+his breast.
+
+"O God," he said aloud, "take care of her--"
+
+He went back into the house after a minute, and paced the floor back and
+forth, back and forth, stopping at each turn to listen at the foot of the
+stairs; then took up his stride again, his lips set, his eyes dark with
+anxiety. Over and over he went to the open door to look up at the stars,
+as if somehow he could bear his ordeal best outdoors.
+
+When half the night had gone Mrs. Dingley came downstairs. Anthony met her
+at the foot. She smiled reassuringly into his face.
+
+"This is hard for you, dear boy," she said. "But they think by
+morning----"
+
+"Morning!" he cried.
+
+"Everything is going well----"
+
+"It's only two o'clock. Morning!"
+
+"She says tell you she's going to be very happy soon."
+
+But at that Anthony turned away, where his face could not be seen, and
+stood by the open door. Mrs. Dingley laid an affectionate hand on his
+arm.
+
+"Don't worry, Tony," she said gently.
+
+"I can't help it."
+
+"This is new to you. Juliet is young and strong--and full of courage."
+
+"Bless her!"
+
+"In the morning you'll both be very happy."
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"Why, Anthony, dear," said the kindly little woman, "I never knew you to
+be so faint of heart."
+
+Anthony faced around again. "If my strength could do her any good I'd be a
+lion for her," he said. "But when all I can do is to wait--and think what
+I'd do if----"
+
+He was gone suddenly into the night. With a tender smile on her lips Mrs.
+Dingley went on upon the errand which had brought her downstairs. "It's
+worth something to a woman to be able to make a man's heart ache like
+that," she said to herself with a little sigh. Anthony would not have
+understood, but even in this hour the older woman, in her wisdom, was
+envying Juliet.
+
+Morning came at last, as mornings do. With the first streaks of the gray
+dawn Anthony heard a little, high-keyed, strange cry--new to his ears. He
+leaped up the stairs, four at a time, and paused, breathless, by the
+closed door of the blue-and-white room. After what seemed to him an
+interminable time Mrs. Dingley came out. At sight of Anthony her face
+broke into smiles, and at the same moment tears filled her eyes.
+
+"It's a splendid boy, Tony," she said. "I meant to come to you the first
+minute, but I waited to be perfectly sure. He didn't breathe well at
+first."
+
+But Anthony pushed this news aside impatiently. "Juliet?" he questioned
+eagerly.
+
+"She's all right, you poor man," Mrs. Dingley assured him. "You shall see
+her presently, just for a minute. The first thing she said was, 'Tell
+Tony.' Go down now--I'll call you soon."
+
+Anthony stole away downstairs to the outer door again. This time he ran
+out upon the porch and down the lawn and orchard, in the early half-light,
+to the willow path by the brook. He dashed along this path to its end and
+back again, as if he must in some way give expression to his relief from
+the tension of the night. But he was back and waiting impatiently long
+before he received his summons to his wife's room.
+
+On his way up he wrung the friendly hand of Dr. Joseph Wilberforce, the
+best man in the city at times like these, and thanked him in a few uneven
+words. Then he came to the door of the blue-and-white room.
+
+"Don't be afraid, Tony," said a very sweet, clear voice; "we're ever so
+well--Anthony Robeson, Junior, and I."
+
+Anthony Robeson, Senior, walked across the room in a dim, gray fog which
+obscured nearly everything except the sight of a pair of eyes which were
+shining upon him brightly enough to penetrate any fog. At the bedside he
+dropped upon his knees.
+
+"I suppose I'm an awful chump," he murmured, "but nothing ever broke me up
+so in all my life."
+
+Juliet laughed. It was not a sentimental greeting, but she understood all
+it meant. "But I'm so happy, dear," she said.
+
+"Are you? Somehow I can't seem to be--yet. I'm too badly scared."
+
+"He's such a beautiful big boy."
+
+"I suppose I shall be devoted to him some time, but all I can think of now
+is to make sure I've got you."
+
+The pleasant-faced nurse in her white cap came softly in and glanced at
+Tony meaningly.
+
+"If you'll come in here you may see your son, Mr. Robeson," she said, and
+went out again.
+
+Anthony bent over his wife. "_Little mother_," he whispered, with a kiss,
+and obediently went.
+
+Across the hall he stood looking dazedly down at the round, warm bundle
+the nurse laid in his arms.
+
+"My son," he said; "how odd that sounds."
+
+Then he hastily gave the bundle back to the nurse and got away downstairs,
+wiping the perspiration from his brow.
+
+"Never dreamed it was going to knock me over like this," he was saying to
+himself. "I can't look at her; I can't look at him; I feel like a big boy
+who has seen a little fellow take his thrashing for him."
+
+And in this humble--albeit most sincerely thankful--frame of mind he
+absently drank his breakfast coffee, and never realised that in her
+confusion of spirit good Mary McKaim, who was here again in time of need,
+had brewed him instead a powerful cup of tea.
+
+
+
+
+XX.--A PRIOR CLAIM
+
+
+"Come up, come up--you're just the people we want," cried Anthony heartily
+from his own porch. "Thought you'd be getting out to see us some of these
+fine August nights. Sit down--Juliet will be out in a minute."
+
+"Baby asleep?" asked Judith Carey, as she and Wayne settled comfortably
+into two of the deep bamboo chairs with which the porch was furnished.
+
+"To be sure he's asleep at this hour," Anthony assured her proudly; "been
+asleep for two hours. Regular as a clock, that youngster. Nurse trained
+him right at the beginning, and Juliet has kept it up. Four months old
+now, and sleeps from six at night till four in the morning without waking.
+How's that?"
+
+"I suppose it's remarkable," agreed Wayne meekly, "but I don't know
+anything about it. He might sleep twenty-three hours out of twenty-four--I
+shouldn't understand whether to call him a prodigy or an idiot."
+
+"Why, yes, you would," Judith interposed with spirit. "Think of that baby
+on the floor above us. They're walking the floor half the night with
+her."
+
+"Girl babies may be different," Carey suggested diffidently, at which
+Anthony shouted. "I don't care--all the girls I ever knew wanted to sit up
+nights," Carey insisted with a feeble grin.
+
+Juliet came out, welcoming her friends with the cordiality for which she
+was famous. "It's so hot in town," she condoled with them. "You should get
+out into our delicious air oftener. Somehow, with our breezes we don't
+mind the heat."
+
+"It's heaven here, anyhow," sighed Carey, stretching back in his chair
+with a long breath. Judith looked sober.
+
+"You say it's heaven," commented Anthony, staring hard at his friend, "and
+you profess to admire everything we do, and eat, and say, but you continue
+to pay good money every week for a lot of extremely dubious comforts--from
+my point of view."
+
+"It's one of the very best places in that part of the city," protested
+Judith.
+
+Anthony eyed her keenly. "Yes; if that's what you're paying for you've got
+it, I admit. If it's a consolation to you to know that the address you
+give when you go shopping is one that you're not ashamed of--why, you're
+all right. But I reckon Juliet here doesn't blush when she orders things
+sent home to the country."
+
+"Oh, Juliet--" began Judith; "she doesn't need an address to make all the
+salespeople pay her their most respectful attention. She----"
+
+"I understand," said Anthony. "That sweetly imperious way of hers when she
+shops--I remember it the first time I ever went shopping with her----"
+
+Juliet gave him a laughing glance. "If I remember," she said, "it wasn't I
+who did all the dictating on that historic expedition when we furnished
+this house."
+
+"We've got to go shopping again," Anthony informed them. "We're planning
+to put a little wing on the house, opening from under the stairs in the
+living-room, for a nursery and a den."
+
+"Going to put the two together?" asked a new voice from the dimness of the
+lawn.
+
+"Oh--hullo, Roger Barnes, M.D., F.R.C.S.--come up. No, I think we'll have
+a partition between. But I want a room below stairs for Tony, Junior, so
+his mother won't wear herself out carrying him up and down. That youngster
+weighs seventeen pounds and a fraction already."
+
+"I was confident I'd get some statistics if I came out," said the doctor,
+settling himself near Juliet--with a purpose, as she instantly recognised.
+"It seemed to me I couldn't wait longer to learn how much he had gained
+since I met Tony day before yesterday. It was seventeen without the
+fraction then."
+
+"That's right--guy me," returned Anthony comfortably. "I don't mind--I've
+the boy."
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I want a talk with you," said the doctor softly to Juliet, as the others
+fell to discussing the project of the enlarged house. "I've got to have
+it, too--or go off my head."
+
+Juliet nodded, understanding him. Presently she rose. "I have an errand to
+do," she said. "Will you walk over to the Evanstons' with me, Roger?"
+
+"Now, tell me," began the doctor the instant they were off, "is she going
+to persist in this awful sacrifice?"
+
+"Poor Rachel," breathed Juliet. "So many lovers--and so unhappy."
+
+"Is she unhappy?" begged the doctor. "Is she? If I only were sure of
+it----"
+
+"What girl wouldn't be unhappy--to be making even one man out of two as
+miserable as you?"
+
+"But you know what I mean. Is she going to marry Huntington out of love as
+well as pity--or only pity?"
+
+"Roger"--Juliet stood still in the road, regarding him in the dim light
+with kind eyes--"if I knew I wouldn't tell you. That's Rachel's secret.
+But I don't know. She's as loyal as a magnet, and as reserved as--you
+would want her to be if you were Mr. Huntington."
+
+"She's everything she ought to be. I'm a dastard for saying it, but I
+could forgive her for being disloyal enough to him to show me just a
+corner of her heart. Even if she loves him it's what I called it--an awful
+sacrifice--a man dying with consumption. If she doesn't--except as the
+friend of her early girlhood, when she didn't know men or her own
+heart--Juliet, it's impious."
+
+"Roger, dear, keep hold of yourself," Juliet replied. "You're too strong
+and fine to want to come between her and her own decision--if she has made
+it."
+
+"If you were a man," said he hotly, "would you let a woman marry
+you--dying?"
+
+"Yes," answered Juliet stoutly, "if she insisted."
+
+"Women are capable of saying anything in an argument," he growled. "I say
+it's outrageous to let her do it. She doesn't love him--she does love me,"
+he blurted.
+
+Juliet turned to him anxiously. "Roger, do you know what you are saying?"
+
+"Yes, I do. I've got to tell somebody, and there's nobody but you--you
+perfect woman. If ever a man knew a thing without its being put into words
+I know that. It was only a look, weeks ago, but I'm as sure of it as I am
+of myself. I've had nothing but coolness from her since, but that's in
+self-defense. And the thought that, loving me, she's going to give herself
+to him--a wreck--do you wonder it's driving me mad?"
+
+"You ought not to have told me this," said Juliet, tears in her voice. "If
+Rachel is doing this it's because she's sure she ought----"
+
+"Of course she is. And that's why I tell you. You have more influence with
+her than any one. Can't you show her that duty, the most urgent in the
+world, never requires a thing like that? Let her be his friend to the
+last--the sort of friend she knows how to be, with a warm hand in his cold
+one. But never his----"
+
+The doctor grew choky with his vehemence, and stopped short. Juliet was
+silent, full of distress. She thought of the two men--Huntington, a frail
+ghost, in the grip of a deadly illness, yet fighting it desperately, and
+desperately clinging to the girl he loved: a clever fellow, educated as a
+mining engineer, successful, even beginning to be distinguished in his
+work until his health gave out; Barnes, the embodiment of strength,
+standing high in his profession, life and the world before him, a fit mate
+for the girl who deserved the best there could be for her--Juliet thought
+of them both and found her heart aching for them--and for Rachel Redding.
+
+They were slowly approaching the brown house at the foot of the hill, the
+errand at the Evanstons' forgotten, when suddenly a familiar figure in
+white came toward them from the doorway. The doctor started at sight of
+it, and Juliet grew breathless all at once.
+
+"I thought it was you two," said Rachel. "This rising moon struck you full
+just now, and I could see you plainly. I've wanted to see you both--and
+this is my last chance. I am going away to-morrow."
+
+There was an instant's silence, while Roger Barnes tried to choose which
+of all the things he wanted to say to her should come first. Juliet broke
+the stillness.
+
+"Walk back up the road with us, dear," she said, "and tell us how and
+where you go."
+
+"I have but a minute to spare," said Rachel. "Let me say good-bye to you
+both here----"
+
+"No, by heaven, you shall not," burst out the doctor in a suppressed voice
+of fire which startled Juliet. "You owe me ten minutes, in place of the
+last letter you haven't answered. There are a score of them, you know--but
+the last has to be answered somehow."
+
+Rachel hesitated. "Very well," she said at length, "but only with Mrs.
+Robeson."
+
+"Can't you trust me?" He was angry now.
+
+"Yes--but not myself," she answered, so low he barely caught the words. He
+seized her hand.
+
+"Then trust me for us both," he said, so instantly gentle and tender that
+Juliet found it possible to say what a moment before she had thought
+unwise enough: "Go with him, Ray, dear. I think it is his right."
+
+So presently she found herself crossing her own lawn alone, while the two
+who had just left her went slowly on up the road together. Her heart was
+beating hard and painfully, for she loved them both, and foresaw for them
+only the hardest interview of their lives.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the end of half an hour Rachel Redding stood again upon her own porch,
+and Roger Barnes looked up at her from the walk below with heavy eyes.
+
+"At least," he said, "you have done what I never would have believed even
+you could do--convinced me against my will that you are right. You love
+him--he worships you. There is a promise of life for him in Arizona--with
+you. I can't forbid the bans. But I shall always believe, what you dare
+not dispute, that if I had come first--you----"
+
+She held out her hand. "That you must not say," she said. "But there is
+one thing you may say--that you are my best friend, whom I can count
+on----"
+
+"As long as there is life left in me," he answered fervently. He wrung her
+hand in both his, looked long and steadily up into her face as if his eyes
+could never leave the lovely outlines showing clear in the light from the
+windows, then turned away and strode off toward the station without a look
+behind.
+
+
+
+
+XXI.--EVERYBODY GIVES ADVICE
+
+
+"I should do it in brown leather," said Cathcart decidedly, looking about
+him.
+
+He stood in the centre of Anthony's den. The carpenters had gone, the
+plasterers had finished their work, and the floor had just been swept up.
+
+"You're all right as far as you go," observed Anthony, who stood at his
+elbow, "but you don't go far enough. If you want me to hang these walls
+with brown leather you'll have to put up the money. I may be sufficiently
+prosperous to afford the addition to my house, but I haven't reached the
+stage of covering the walls with cloth-of-gold."
+
+"Burlap would be the thing, Tony," Judith suggested.
+
+Anthony was surrounded by people--the room was half full of them, elbowing
+each other about.
+
+"Paint the walls," advised Lockwood.
+
+"There are imitation-leather papers," said Cathcart, with the air of one
+condescending to lower a high standard for the sake of those who could not
+live up to it.
+
+"I suppose so," admitted Anthony, "at four dollars a roll. I saw a simple
+thing on that order that struck me the other day at Heminways'. I thought
+it might be about forty cents a roll. It was a dollar a square yard. I
+told them I would think it over. I haven't got through thinking it over
+yet."
+
+"You want a plate-rail," said Wayne Carey.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Why, to put plates, and steins, and things on."
+
+"Haven't a plate--or a stein. Baby has a silver mug. Would that do?"
+
+Cathcart smiled in a superior way. "You had a lot of mighty fine stuff in
+your Yale days," he remarked. "Pity you let it all go."
+
+"I shouldn't have cared for that truck now," Anthony declared easily,
+though he deceived nobody by it. Most of them remembered, if Cathcart had
+forgotten, how the college boy had sacrificed all his treasures at a blow
+when the news of his family's misfortunes had come. It had yielded little
+enough, after all, to throw into the abyss of their sudden poverty, but
+the act had proved the spirit of the elder son of the house.
+
+"You certainly will want plenty of rugs and hangings of the right sort,"
+Cathcart pursued.
+
+Anthony looked at him good-humouredly. "I can see that you have got to be
+suppressed," he said, with a hand on Stevens's collar. "I can tell you in
+a breath just what's going into this room at present. The floor is to have
+a matting, one of those heavy, cloth-like mattings. Auntie Dingley has
+presented me with one fine old Persian rug from the Marcy library, which
+she insists is out of key with the rest of the stuff. I'm glad it
+is--it'll furnish the key to my decorations. Then I've a splendid old desk
+I picked up in a place where they temporarily forgot themselves in setting
+a price on it. That's going by the window. I've a little Duerer engraving,
+and a few good foreign photographs Juliet has put under glass for me. For
+the rest I have--what I like best--clear space, pipe-and-hearth room, the
+bamboo chairs off the porch with some winter cushions in, my books--and
+that."
+
+He pointed to the windows, outside which lay a long country vista
+stretching away over fields and river to the woods in the distance,
+turning rich autumn tints now under the late October frosts.
+
+"It's enough," said Carey, with the suppressed sigh which usually
+accompanied any allusion of his to Anthony's environment. "Dens are too
+stuffy, as a rule. Fellows try to see how much useless lumber they can
+accumulate in altogether inadequate space."
+
+"But you ought to have a couch," said Judith.
+
+"Oh, yes, I'm going to have a couch," assented Anthony, laughing across
+her head at Juliet. "A gem of a couch--we're making it ourselves. You're
+not to see it till it's done. It'll be no brickbat couch, either--it'll be
+a flowery bed of ease--or, if not flowery, invitingly covered with some
+stunning stuff Juliet has fished out of a neighbour's attic."
+
+"Now, come and see the nursery," Juliet proposed, and the party crowded
+through the door into the living-room, around to the one by its side which
+opened into an attractive room behind the den, all air and sunshine.
+
+"I refuse to suggest," said Cathcart instantly, "the decorations for this
+place."
+
+"That's good," remarked Anthony cheerfully. "So much verbiage out of the
+way."
+
+"It'll be pink and white, I suppose," said Judith. "Pink is the colour for
+boys, I'm told."
+
+Behind all their backs Anthony glanced at his wife, affection and
+amusement in his face. She read the look and smiled back. It was no part
+of their plan to let the boy grow up alone. And as a mother she seemed to
+him far more beautiful than she had ever been.
+
+"We are going to have a little paper with nursery-rhyme pictures all over
+it," explained Juliet. "There are all sorts of softly harmonising colours
+in it. And just a matting on the floor with a rug to play on, his white
+crib, and some gay little curtains at the windows."
+
+"Have you made the partition double-thick, old man?" asked Lockwood. "This
+den-nursery combination strikes me as a little dubious."
+
+"It's no use explaining to a fiendish old bachelor," said Anthony, leading
+the way out of the place, "that I'd think I was missing a good deal if I
+should get so far away that I couldn't hear little Tony laugh--or cry.
+Julie, where's the boy? May I bring him down?"
+
+He disappeared upstairs, whence sounds of hilarity were at once heard.
+Presently he reappeared on the stairs, bearing aloft upon his shoulder a
+rosy cherub of a baby, smiling and waving a chubby fist at the company.
+The beauty in his face was an exquisite mixture of that belonging to both
+father and mother. Anthony and his son together made a picture worth
+seeing.
+
+Once more Wayne Carey smothered a sigh. But Judith hardened her heart.
+Since Baby Anthony had come Wayne had been difficult to manage.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lockwood stayed after the others had gone. Sitting smoking before the fire
+with Anthony after Juliet had left them alone he brought the conversation
+around to a point which Anthony had expected.
+
+"What do you hear of that man Huntington?" he asked, as indifferently as a
+man is ever able to ask a question which means much to him.
+
+"Huntington? Why, the last was that he was improving a little, I believe.
+Arizona is a great place for that sort of thing."
+
+"Good deal of a sacrifice for her people to go with her way out there."
+
+"She couldn't leave them behind. Father half-blind--mother a cripple. I
+understand that Arizona air is bracing them, too."
+
+"The fellow's own mother was one of the party, wasn't she?"
+
+"I believe so. He's all she has."
+
+"I don't see, with all those people to chaperon her, why she couldn't have
+gone along with him without marrying him," observed Lockwood in a gruff
+tone.
+
+Anthony smiled. "That would have been a Tantalus draught indeed," he
+remarked. "I imagine poor Huntington will need all the concessions he can
+get if he keeps on breathing even Arizona air."
+
+"Anthony," said Lockwood, after a silence of some minutes, during which he
+had puffed away with his eyes intent on the fire, "do you fancy Rachel
+Redding cared enough for that man to immolate herself like that?"
+
+"Looks very much like it."
+
+"I know it looks like it; but if I read that girl right she was the sort
+to stick to anything she'd said she'd do, if it took the breath out of her
+body. How long had she known him--any idea?"
+
+"A good while, I believe."
+
+"I thought so. Early engagement, you see--ought never to have stood."
+
+"If you'd been Huntington you'd probably have had the unreasonable notion
+that it should."
+
+"She's a magnificent girl," said Lockwood, blowing a great volume of smoke
+into the air with head elevated and half-shut eyes. "She made those two
+who were here with her last summer seem like thirty cents beside her. Nice
+girls, too--fine girls--elegant dressers; I don't know what the matter
+was. Neither did they." He chuckled a little. "They couldn't believe their
+own eyes when they saw three of us going daft over a girl they wouldn't
+have staked a copper on in a free-for-all with themselves. They took it
+gamely, I'll say that for them. Marie won't have me back."
+
+"I don't blame her."
+
+"Neither do I. Haven't got to the want-to-be-taken-back stage--sometimes
+think I never shall. One experience like that spoils a man for the
+average girl. The truth is, Tony, the most of them--er--overdo the
+meet-you-half-way act. I want a girl to keep me guessing till the last
+minute."
+
+"Tell that to the girl," advised Anthony.
+
+"I wish I could. Yet there were a good many times when I thought if Rachel
+Redding would just look my way I shouldn't take it ill of her. I wonder if
+she'd have been like that if she hadn't been engaged to another fellow."
+
+"Probably." Anthony got up and stretched himself. He was growing weary of
+other men's confidences.
+
+"You're right she would. She's built that way. Yet when you get to
+fancying what she'd be if she just let herself go and show she cared----"
+
+"Look here, my young friend," said Anthony, "I advise you to go home and
+go to bed. Sitting here dreaming over Mrs. Alexander Huntington isn't good
+for you. What you want to be doing is to forget her. Huntington's going to
+get well, and they're going to live happily ever after, and you fellows
+out here can look up other girls. Plenty of 'em. Only, for the love of
+heaven, see if you can avoid all setting your affections on the same girl
+next time. It's too rough on your friends!"
+
+
+
+
+XXII.--ROGER BARNES PROVES INVALUABLE
+
+
+Time went swinging on, and by and by it came to be Tony Robeson, Junior's,
+second Christmas day. He rode down to breakfast on his father's shoulder,
+crowing loudly on a gorgeous brown and scarlet rooster, which he had found
+on his Christmas tree the evening before. He had been put to bed
+immediately thereafter and had gone to sleep with the rooster in his arms.
+The fowl had a charmingly realistic crow, operated by a pneumatic device
+upon which the baby had promptly learned to blow. He performed upon it
+uninterruptedly throughout breakfast.
+
+"See here, my son," said Anthony, hurriedly finishing his coffee, "let's
+see if you can't appreciate some of your less voiceful toys. Here's a
+rabbit with fine soft ears for you to pull. There's a train of cars. Let
+me wind it for you. Your Grandfather Marcy must have expended several good
+dollars on that--you want to show up an interest in it when he comes out
+to see you to-day. And here's Auntie Dingley's pickaninny boy-doll--well,
+I don't blame you for failing to embrace that. Auntie Dingley was born in
+Massachusetts."
+
+[Illustration: "Toys which can be relied upon to please a twenty
+months old infant."]
+
+The boy cast an indifferently polite eye on these gifts as their charms
+were exhibited to him, and clasped the brown and scarlet rooster to his
+breast. There were moments, half hours even, when he became sufficiently
+diverted from his fowl to cease from making it crow, but at intervals
+throughout the day the family were given to understand once for all that
+it is not the most expensive and ornate toys which can be relied upon to
+please a twenty-months-old infant. Even the automobile presented by Dr.
+Roger Barnes, and warranted to go three times around the room without
+stopping, was a tame affair to the recipient compared with the rooster's
+shrill salute.
+
+"Remember, Tony," Juliet had said, a month before Christmas, "you are not
+to give me any expensive personal gift this year. I care for nothing half
+so much as for making the home complete. If--if--you cared to give me
+something toward the bathroom fund----"
+
+"All right," said Anthony promptly, for he had learned by this time to
+know his wife well. The bathroom fund was dear to her heart. The small
+room at the front of the house upstairs, which had been left unfurnished,
+had been temporarily fitted up as a bathroom by sundry ingenious devices
+in the way of a tin bath and a hot and cold water connection, but a full
+equipment of the best sort was to be put in as soon as practicable, and
+there was a growing fund therefor.
+
+On Christmas morning, nevertheless, in addition to a generous addition to
+the fund, Juliet found beside her plate an exceedingly "personal gift" in
+the shape of a little pearl-and-turquoise brooch of rare design, bearing
+the stamp of a superior maker.
+
+"Must I scold you?" she asked, smiling up at him as he stood beside her,
+watching her face flush with pleasure.
+
+"Kiss me, instead," he answered promptly. "And don't expect me to give up
+making you now and then a real present, even though it has to be a small
+one. It's too much fun."
+
+Beside his own plate he found her gift, a set of histories he had long
+wanted. It was a beautiful edition, and he would have looked reproachfully
+at the giver if she had not forestalled him by running around the table to
+say softly in his ear, both arms about his neck: "Just at Christmas time,
+dearest, let me have my way."
+
+The day was a happy one. Mr. Horatio Marcy and Mrs. Dingley arrived on the
+morning train and stayed until evening. At the Christmas dinner Judith and
+Wayne Carey and Dr. Roger Barnes were the additional guests, and Mary
+McKaim was in the kitchen. Dinner over, everybody sat about the fireplace
+talking, when Juliet came in to carry little Tony off to bed.
+
+"Five minutes more," begged Dr. Barnes, on whose knee the child sat, a
+willing captive to the arts of his entertainer. His eyes, bright with the
+excitement of this great day, were fixed upon the doctor's face.
+
+"And so"--Barnes continued the story he had begun--"the rooster climbed
+right up the man's leg"--the toy obeyed his command and scaled the
+eminence from the floor where it had been hiding behind a Noah's ark--"and
+perched on his knee, and cried"--the rooster crowed lustily and little
+Tony laughed ecstatically. "Then the rooster flew up on the man's shoulder
+and flapped his wings, and all at once he fell right over backwards and
+tumbled on his head on the floor.--Got to go to bed, Tony? Shall the
+rooster go too? All right. May I carry him up for you, Juliet? Anthony's
+deep in that discussion. Get on my back, old man--that's the way!"
+
+Everybody looked after the two as the doctor mounted the stairs.
+
+"That rooster has captivated the child more than all the mechanical toys
+he has had to-day," said Mrs. Dingley.
+
+"What a handsome fellow he is," said Carey, his eyes following little Tony
+till he disappeared. "I never saw a healthier, happier child. How sturdy
+he is on his legs--have you noticed? He's saying a good many words, too.
+It was as good as a play to see him imitate that rooster."
+
+Juliet's father and Mrs. Dingley left on an early evening train, and only
+the three younger guests remained when Juliet came downstairs after
+putting her boy to bed. She set about gathering up the toys scattered over
+the floor, and Barnes helped her. In the midst of this labour, during
+which they all made merry with some of the more elaborate mechanical
+affairs, Juliet suddenly said "What's that?" and went to the bottom of the
+stairs.
+
+"Let me go," offered Anthony. "He's probably too excited to get to sleep
+easily after all this dissipation.--Hullo!--he's crowing with the rooster
+yet."
+
+But Juliet went up, and he followed her, saying from the landing to his
+guests, "Excuse me for a little. I'll get the boy quiet, and let his
+mother come down. I've a fine talent for that sort of thing. That rooster
+will have to be given some soothing syrup--he's too lively a fowl."
+
+"I never saw a man fonder of his youngster than Tony," Carey observed.
+
+"The child is a particularly fine specimen," the doctor said. "I think I
+never saw a more ideal development than he shows."
+
+He began to tell an incident in which little Tony had been involved, when
+he was interrupted.
+
+"Barnes!"--called Anthony's voice from the top of the stairs. "Come up
+here, please."
+
+There was something in the imperative quality of this summons which made
+the doctor run up the stairs, two at a time. Judith and Wayne listened.
+The rooster could still be heard crowing, faintly but distinctly.
+
+"Perhaps he's grown too excited over it," Judith suggested. "They ought to
+take it away."
+
+Carey went to the bottom of the stairs and listened. There were rapid
+movements overhead. The doctor's voice could be heard giving directions
+through which sounded the steady crowing of the toy. "Hold him so--now
+move him that way as I thump--now the other----"
+
+Carey turned pale. "He's got that rooster in his throat," he said
+solemnly. The rooster was nearly life-size, but the incongruity of this
+suggestion did not strike him. Judith hastily rose from her chair and went
+to him.
+
+"Had we better go up?" he whispered.
+
+"Heavens--no!" Judith clutched his arm. "We couldn't do any good. The
+doctor's there. Such things make me ill. They ought not to have let him
+have the toy to take to bed with him. How could it get into his throat?
+Perhaps they are making it crow to divert him. Perhaps he's hurt himself
+somehow."
+
+"He's got the crow part of that thing in his throat," Carey persisted in
+an anxious whisper. "The manufacturers ought to be prosecuted for making a
+toy that will come apart like that."
+
+"Don't stand there," protested his wife. "Maybe it's nothing. Come here
+and sit down."
+
+But Carey stood still. Presently Anthony came to the head of the stairs.
+
+"Wayne," said he rapidly, "telephone Roger's office. Ask the trained
+nurse, Miss Hughes, to send a messenger with the doctor's emergency
+surgical case by the first train--he can catch the 9:40 if he's quick.
+Tell Miss Hughes to follow as soon as she can get ready, prepared to stay
+all night."
+
+Then he disappeared. His voice had been steady and quiet, but his eyes had
+showed his friend that the order was given under tension. Carey sprang to
+the telephone, and his hand shook as he took down the receiver.
+
+Upstairs Roger Barnes, in command, was giving cool, concise orders, his
+eyes on his little patient. When he had despatched Juliet for various
+things, including boiling water which she must get downstairs, he said to
+Anthony in a conversational tone:
+
+"It will probably not be safe to wait till my instruments get here, and
+there's no surgeon near enough to call. I'm not going to take any chances
+on this boy. If I see the necessity I'm going to get into that throat and
+give him air. I shall want you and Carey to hold him. Juliet must be
+downstairs."
+
+Anthony nodded. He did not quite understand; but a few minutes later, when
+Juliet had brought the boiling water, he suddenly perceived what his
+friend meant.
+
+"Alcohol, now, please," said the doctor. When Juliet had disappeared again
+Barnes drew from his pocket a pearl-handled pocket-knife and tried its
+blades. "It's a fortunate thing somebody made me a present of such a good
+one to-day," he observed, "but it needs sharpening a bit. Have you an
+oil-stone handy?"
+
+With tightly shut lips Anthony watched the doctor put a bright edge on his
+smallest blade, then, satisfied, drop the open knife into the water
+bubbling over a spirit-lamp. Anthony turned his head away for an instant
+from the struggling little figure on the bed. Barnes eyed him keenly.
+
+"You're game, of course?" he said.
+
+Anthony's eyes met his and flashed fire. "Don't you know me better than
+that?"
+
+"All right," and the young surgeon smiled. "But I've seen a medical man
+himself go to pieces over his own child. This is a simple matter," he went
+on lightly. "Luckily, boiling water is a more potent antiseptic than all
+the drugs on the market--and alcohol's another. I shall want a new hairpin
+or two--if Juliet has a wire one.--That the alcohol? Thank you. Now if
+you've the hairpins, Juliet--ah--a silver one--all the better."
+
+This also he dropped into the boiling water. Then he spoke very quietly to
+Tony's mother, as she bent over her child, fighting for his breath.
+
+"It's a bit tough to watch," he said, "but we'll have him all right
+presently. Suppose you go and get his crib ready for him. You might fill
+some hot-water bags and bottles and have things warm and comfortable."
+
+The telephone-bell rang below. After a minute Carey dashed upstairs. He
+looked into the room and spoke anxiously. "The messenger just missed the
+9:40. He and the nurse will come on the 10:15."
+
+"All right," said the doctor, as if the delay were of small consequence.
+"We're going to want your help presently, Carey, I think. Just ask Mrs.
+Carey to keep Mrs. Robeson with her for a few minutes, if she can."
+
+Carey went down and gave his wife the message, then he hurried back and
+stood waiting just outside the door. And all at once the summons came. In
+a breath the doctor had changed his role. He spoke sharply:
+
+"_Now, Robeson--now, Carey--we've waited up to the limit. Keep cool--hold
+him like a rock--_"
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Wayne Carey came down to his wife, ten minutes later, smiled tremulously,
+sank into a chair, and fell to crying like a baby--softly, so that he
+could not be heard.
+
+"But Juliet says he'll be all right," murmured Judith unsteadily.
+
+"Yes, yes----" Carey wiped his eyes and blew his nose. "I'm just a little
+unnerved, that's all. Lord--and he's dropped off to sleep as quiet as a
+lamb--with Barnes holding the gash in his throat open with a hairpin to
+let the air in. When it comes to emergency surgery I tell you it's a lucky
+thing to have an expert in the house. Completely worn out--the little
+chap. When the nurse comes they'll get out the whistle and sew the place
+up. She ought to be here--I'll go meet that train."
+
+He sprang to his feet and hurried out of the house. Presently he was back,
+followed by an erect young woman who wore a long coat over the uniform she
+had not taken time to change. Carey carried the long black bag she had
+brought with her.
+
+By and by Anthony and Roger Barnes came down. The former was pale, but as
+quietly composed as ever; the latter nonchalant, yet wearing that gleam of
+satisfaction in his eye which is ever the badge of the successful
+surgeon.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Carey," said the doctor, smiling, "why not relax that tension
+a bit? The youngster is right as a trivet."
+
+"I suppose that's your idea of being right as a trivet," Judith retorted.
+"In bed, with a trained nurse watching you, and a doctor staying all night
+to make sure."
+
+"Bless you--what better would you have? If it were any other boy the
+doctor would have been home and in bed an hour ago, I assure you.
+Carey--if you don't stop acting like a great fool I'll put you to bed
+too."
+
+For Carey was wringing Barnes' hand, and the tears were running unashamed
+down his cheeks. "I gave him that rooster myself," he said, and choked.
+
+Upstairs all was quiet. The little life was safe, rescued at the crucial
+moment when interference became necessary, by the skill and daring which
+do not hesitate to use the means at hand when the authorized tools can not
+be had. Every precaution had been taken against harm from these same
+unconventional means, and the doctor, when he left his patient in the
+hands of his nurse, felt small anxiety for the ultimate outcome.
+
+He said this very positively to the boy's father and mother, holding a
+hand of each and bidding them go peacefully to sleep. He would have
+slipped away then, but they would not let him go. There were no tears, no
+fuss; but Juliet said, her eyes with their heavy shadows of past suspense
+meeting his steadily, "Roger, nothing can ever tell you what I feel about
+this," and Anthony, gripping his friend's hand with a grip of steel,
+added: "We shall never thank the Lord enough for having you on hand, Roger
+Barnes."
+
+But when the young surgeon had gone, warm with pleasure over the service
+he had done those he loved this night, the ones he had left behind found
+their self-control had reached the ragged edge. Turning to her husband
+Juliet flung herself into his arms, and met there the tenderest reception
+she had ever known. So does a common anxiety knit hearts which had thought
+they could be no tighter bound.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Judith and Wayne Carey, walking along silent streets in the early dawn of
+the day after Christmas on their way to take their train home, had little
+to say. Only once Judith ventured an observation to her heavy-eyed
+companion:
+
+"Surely, such a scene as you went through last night must diminish a
+trifle that envy you are always possessed with, when you're at that
+house."
+
+But Wayne, staring up at the wintry sky, answered, more roughly than his
+wife had ever heard him speak: "_No_--God knows I envy them even at a time
+like this!"
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.--TWO NOT OF A KIND
+
+
+"Yes, they are very pleasant rooms," Juliet admitted, with the air of one
+endeavouring to be polite. She sat upon a many-hued divan, and glanced
+from the blue-and-yellow wall-paper to the green velvet chairs, the
+dull-red carpet and the stiff "lace" curtains. "You get the afternoon sun,
+and the view opposite isn't bad. The vestibule seemed to be well kept, and
+I rang only three times before I made you hear."
+
+"The janitor promised to fix that bell," said Judith hastily. "Oh, I know
+the colour combinations are dreadful, but one can't help that in rented
+rooms. Of course our things look badly with the ones that belong here. But
+as soon as we can we are going to move into a still better place."
+
+"Going to keep house?"
+
+"No-o, not just yet." Judith hesitated. "You seem to think there's nothing
+in the world to do but to keep house."
+
+"I'm sure of it."
+
+"I can't see why. A girl doesn't need to assume all the cares of life the
+minute she marries. Why can't she keep young and fresh for a while?"
+
+Juliet glanced toward a mirror opposite. "How old and haggard I must be
+looking," she observed, with--it must be confessed--a touch of
+complacency. The woman who could have seen that image reflected as her own
+without complacency must have been indifferent, indeed.
+
+"Of course, you manage it somehow--I suppose because Anthony takes such
+care of you. But you wait till five years more have gone over your head,
+and see if you're not tired of it."
+
+"If I'm as tired of it as you are--" began Juliet, and stopped. "But
+seriously, Judith, is it nothing to you to please Wayne?"
+
+"Why, of course." Judith flushed. "But Wayne is satisfied."
+
+"Are you sure of it?"
+
+"Certainly. Oh, sometimes, when we go to see you, and you make things so
+pleasant with your big fire and your good things to eat, he gets a spasm
+of wishing we were by ourselves, but----"
+
+Juliet shook her head. "Wayne doesn't say a word," she said, "and he's as
+devoted to you as a man can be. But, Judith, if I know the symptoms, that
+husband of yours is starving for a home, and--do I dare say it?"
+
+Judith was staring out of the window at the ugly walls opposite. It was
+her bedroom window, and the opposite walls were not six feet away.
+
+"I suppose you dare say anything," she answered, looking as if she were
+about to cry. "I'm sure I envy you, you're so supremely contented. I don't
+think I was made to care for children."
+
+"That might come," said Juliet softly. "I'm sure it would, Judith. As for
+Wayne, if you could see the look on his face I've surprised there more
+than once, when he had little Anthony, and he thought nobody noticed, it
+would make your heart ache, dear. Don't deny him--or yourself--the best
+thing that can happen to either of you. At least, don't deny it for lack
+of a home. I'm sure I can't imagine Tony, Junior, in these rooms of yours.
+They don't look," she explained, smiling, "exactly babyish."
+
+She rose to go. She looked so young and fair and sweet as she spoke her
+gentle homily that Judith, half doubting, half believing, admitted to
+herself that of one thing there could be no question: Mrs. Anthony Robeson
+envied nobody upon the face of the earth.
+
+The visits of the Robesons to the various apartments which were in
+rotation occupied by the Careys were few. Somehow it seemed much easier
+and simpler for the pair who had no children, and no housekeeping to
+hamper them, to run out into the suburbs than for their friends to get
+into town. So the Careys came with ever increasing frequency, always
+warmly welcomed, and enjoyed the hours within the little house so
+thoroughly that in time the influence of the content they saw so often
+began to have its inevitable effect.
+
+"I've great news for you," said Anthony, coming home one March day, when
+little Tony was nearing his second birthday. "It's about the Careys.
+Guess."
+
+"They are going to housekeeping."
+
+"How did you know?"
+
+"I didn't know, but Judith told me weeks ago she supposed she should have
+to come to it. Have they found a house?"
+
+"Carey thinks he has. Judith doesn't like the place, for about fifty good
+and sufficient reasons--to her. He's trying to persuade her. He has an
+option on it for ten days. He wants us to come out and look at it with
+them."
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+"About as far east of the city as we are north. If to-morrow is a good day
+I promised we would run out with them on the ten-fifteen. I suspect they
+need us badly. Wayne looks like a man distracted. The great trouble, I
+fancy, is going to be that Judith Dearborn Carey is still too much of a
+Dearborn to be able to make a home out of anything. And Carey can't do it
+alone."
+
+"Indeed he can't, poor fellow. I never saw a man in my life who wanted a
+home as badly as Wayne does. Let's do our best to help them."
+
+"We will. But the only way to do it thoroughly is to make Judith over.
+Even you can't accomplish that."
+
+"There's hope, if she has agreed at all to trying the experiment," Juliet
+declared, and thought about her friends all the rest of the day.
+
+It was but five minutes' walk, from the suburban station where the party
+got off next morning, to the house which Carey eagerly pointed out as the
+four approached.
+
+"There it is," he said. "Don't tell me what you think of it till you've
+seen the whole thing. I know it doesn't look promising as yet, but I keep
+remembering the photographs of your home, Robeson, before you went at it.
+I'm inclined to think this can be made right, too."
+
+Anthony and Juliet studied Carey's choice with interest. Judith looked on
+dubiously. It was plain that if she should consent it would be against her
+will.
+
+"It looks so commonplace and ugly," she said aside to Juliet, as the four
+completed the tour around the house and prepared to enter. "Your home is
+old-fashioned enough to be interesting, but this is just modern enough to
+be ugly. Look at that big window in front with the cheap coloured glass
+across the top. What could you do with that?"
+
+"Several things," said her friend promptly. "You might put in a row of
+narrow casement windows across the front, with diamond panes. No--the
+porch isn't attractive with all that gingerbread work, but you could take
+it away and have something plain and simple. The general lines of the
+house are not bad. It has been an old-fashioned house, Judith, but
+somebody who didn't know how has altered it and spoiled it. People are
+always doing that. There must have been a fanlight over this door. You
+could restore it. And do you see that quaint round window in the gable?
+Probably they looked at that and longed to do away with it, but happily
+for you didn't know how."
+
+Carey glanced curiously at his friend's wife, then anxiously at his own.
+Juliet's face was alight with interest; Judith's heavy with
+dissatisfaction. He wondered for the thousandth time what made the
+difference. He would have given a year's salary to see Judith look
+interested in this desire of his heart. It was hard to push a thing like
+this against the will of the only person whose help he could not do
+without. Carey was determined to have the home. Even Judith acknowledged
+that she had not been happy in any of the seven apartments they had tried
+during the less than four years of their married life. Carey believed with
+all his heart that their only chance for happiness lay in getting away
+from a manner of living which was using up every penny he could earn
+without giving them either satisfaction or comfort. His salary would not
+permit him to rent the sort of thing in the sort of neighbourhood which
+Judith longed for. And if it should, he did not believe his wife would
+find such environments any more congenial than the present one. Carey had
+a theory that a woman, like a man, must be busy to be contented. He meant
+to try it with his handsome, discontented wife.
+
+"Oh, what a pretty hall!" cried Mrs. Robeson, with enthusiasm. "How lucky
+that the vandals who made the house over didn't lay their desecrating
+hands on that staircase."
+
+"The hall looks gloomy to me," said Mrs. Carey, with a disapproving glance
+at the walls.
+
+"Of course--with that dingy brown paper and the woodwork stained that
+hideous imitation of oak. You can scrape all that off, paint it white, put
+on a warm, rich paper, restore your fanlight, and you'll have a
+particularly attractive hall."
+
+"I wish I could see things that are not visible, as you seem to be able
+to," sighed Judith, looking unconvinced. "I never did like a long,
+straight staircase like that. And there's not room to make a turn."
+
+"You don't want to, do you? It's so wide and low it doesn't need to turn,
+and the posts and rails are extremely good. How about this front room?"
+
+She stood in the center of the front room, and the two men, watching her
+vivid face as it glowed above her furs, noting the capable, womanly way
+she had of looking at the best side of everything and discerning in a
+flash of imagination and intuition what could be done with unpromising
+material, appreciated her with that full masculine appreciation which it
+is so well worth the trouble of any woman to win.
+
+Judith was not blind; she saw little by little as Juliet went from room to
+room--seizing in each upon its possibilities, ignoring its poorer features
+except to suggest their betterment, giving her whole-hearted, friendly
+counsel in a way which continually took the prospective homemakers into
+consideration--that she herself was losing something immeasurably valuable
+in not attempting to cultivate these same winning characteristics. And in
+the same breath Judith was forced to admit to herself that she did not
+know how to begin.
+
+"There is really a very pretty view from the dining-room," she said, as a
+first effort at seeing something to admire. Both Juliet and Anthony agreed
+to this statement with a cordiality which came very near suggesting that
+it was a relief to find Mrs. Carey on the optimistic side of the
+discussion even in this small detail. As for Carey, he looked so surprised
+and grateful that Judith's heart smote her with a vigour to which she was
+unaccustomed.
+
+"I suppose you could use this room as a sort of den?" she was prompted to
+suggest to her husband; and such a delighted smile illumined Carey's face
+that the sight of it was almost pathetic to his friends, who understood
+his situation rather better than he did himself. In his pleasure Carey put
+his arm about his wife's shoulders.
+
+"Couldn't I, though?" he agreed enthusiastically. "And you could use it
+for a retreat while I was away for the day."
+
+"A retreat from what? Too much excitement?" began Judith, the old habit of
+scorn of everything which was not of the city returning upon her
+irresistibly. But it chanced that she caught Juliet's eyes, unconsciously
+wearing such an expression of solicitude to see her friend complaisant in
+this matter which meant so much, that Judith hurriedly followed her ironic
+question with the more kindly supplement: "But doubtless I should have
+plenty, and be glad to get away."
+
+"You certainly would," asserted Anthony. "We never guessed how much there
+would be to occupy us in the country, but there seems hardly time to write
+letters. Nobody can believe, till he tries, how much pleasure there is in
+wheedling a garden into growing, nor how well the labour makes him sleep
+o' nights."
+
+"Yes--I think I could sleep here," said Carey, and passed a hand over a
+brow which was aching at that very moment. "I haven't done that
+satisfactorily for six months."
+
+"You'll do it here," Anthony prophesied confidently. "It's a fine air with
+a good breath of the salt sea in it, which we don't get. Your sleeping
+rooms are all well aired and lighted--a thing you don't always find in
+more pretentious houses. And when the paint and paper go on you'll own
+yourselves surprised at the transformation. I was never so astonished in
+my life as I was at the change in the little bedroom in our house which
+has that pale yellow-and-white stripe on the wall. It was a north room,
+and the old wall was a forlorn slate, like a thundercloud. My little
+artist here, with her eye for colours, instantly announced that she would
+get the sunshine into that room. And so she did--with no more potent a
+charm than that fifteen-cent paper and a fresh coat of white paint."
+
+Carey looked at Juliet with longing in his eye. He wanted to ask her to
+supervise the alterations in his purchase, if he should make it. But he
+remembered other occasions when he had held the sayings and doings of Mrs.
+Robeson before the eyes of Mrs. Carey with disastrous result, and he dared
+not make the suggestion. He hoped, however, that Judith might be inclined
+to ask the assistance of her friend, and himself hinted at it, cautiously.
+But Judith, beyond inquiring what Juliet thought of certain possible
+changes, seemed inclined to shoulder her own responsibilities.
+
+Anthony left his wife upon the home-bound train, to return to his work;
+the Careys accompanied him, so that he had no chance to talk things over
+until he came home to dinner at night. But when he saw Juliet again almost
+her first words showed him where her thoughts were.
+
+"Tony, I can't get those people off my mind. Do you suppose they will ever
+make a home out of anything?"
+
+"They haven't much genius for utilizing raw material, I'm very much
+afraid," Anthony responded thoughtfully. "Carey has the will, and he can
+furnish a moderate amount of funds, but whether Judith can furnish
+anything but objections and contrariety I don't dare to predict. If her
+heart were in it I should have more hope of her. There's one thing I can
+tell her. If she doesn't set her soul to the giving the old boy a taste of
+peace and rest she'll have him worn out before his time. A fellow who
+doesn't know how it feels to sleep soundly, and whose head bothers him
+half the time, needs looking after. He's a slave to his office desk, and
+needs far more than an active chap like me to get out of the city as much
+as he can."
+
+"Yes, he's worried and restless, Tony. He's so devoted to Judith and so
+anxious to make her happy, her dissatisfaction rests on him like a weight.
+Don't you see that every time you see them together?"
+
+"Every time--and more plainly. What's the matter with her anyhow, Julie?
+She seemed promising enough as a girl. You certainly found enough in her
+to make you two congenial. She's no more like you than--electric light is
+like sunshine," said Anthony, picking up the simile with a laugh and a
+glance of appreciation.
+
+"Judith shines in the surroundings she was born and brought up in, misses
+them, and doesn't know how to adapt herself to any others. She ought to
+have been the wife of some high official--she could entertain royally and
+have everybody at her feet."
+
+"Magnificent characteristics, but mighty unavailable in the present
+circumstances. It carries out my electric-light comparison. I prefer the
+sunlight--and I have it.--Poor Carey!"
+
+"We'll hope," said Juliet. "And if we have the smallest chance to help,
+we'll do it."
+
+But, as Anthony had anticipated, there was small chance to help. Meeting
+Carey a fortnight later, Anthony inquired after the new home, and Carey
+replied with apparent lack of enthusiasm that the house had been leased
+for a term of three years, with refusal of the purchase at the expiration
+of the time. He explained that Judith had been unwilling to burn her
+bridges by buying the place outright, and that he thought perhaps the
+present plan was the better one--under these conditions. But the fact that
+the house was not their own made it seem unwise to expend very much upon
+alterations beyond those of paint and paper. With the prospect of a sale
+the owner had unwillingly consented to replace the gingerbread porch with
+one in better style, but refused to do more. The big window, with its
+abominable topping of cheap coloured glass, was to remain for the
+present.
+
+"And I think this whole arrangement is bound to defeat my purpose," said
+Carey unhappily. "The very changes we can't afford to make in a rented
+house are the ones Judith needs to have made to reconcile her to the
+experiment. She says she feels ill every time she comes to the house and
+sees that window. She wants a porcelain sink in the kitchen. She would
+like speaking-tubes and a system of electric bells. We're to have a
+servant--if we can find her. We've put green paper on all the downstairs
+rooms, and it turns out the wrong green. I wanted a sort of corn-colour
+that looked more cheerful, but it seems green is the only thing. I don't
+know what's the matter with me. Perhaps I'm bilious. Green seems to be all
+right in your house, but in mine it makes me want to go outdoors."
+
+"That's precisely what you should do," Anthony advised cheerfully. "Get
+outdoors all you can. Start your garden. Mow your lawn yourself. Make over
+that gravel path to your front door."
+
+"I've only evenings," objected Carey. "And we're not settled yet. The
+paper's only just on. We haven't moved. We're buying furniture. We bought
+a sideboard yesterday. It cost so much we had to get a cheaper range for
+the kitchen than seemed desirable, but Judith liked the sideboard so well
+I was glad to buy it. I don't know when we shall get to living there
+permanently. This furnishing business knocks me out. We don't seem to know
+what we want. I'd like--" he hesitated--"I hoped Mrs. Robeson might be
+able to give us the advantage of her experience, but it turns out that
+Judith has a sort of pride in doing it herself, and of course--I presume
+you made some mistakes yourselves, eh?" He suggested this with eagerness.
+
+"Oh, of course," agreed Anthony readily, though he wondered what they
+were, and inwardly begged Juliet's pardon for this answer, given out of
+masculine sympathy with his friend's helplessness. "You'll come out all
+right," he hastily assured Carey. "Once you are living in the new place
+things will adjust themselves. Keep up your courage. Your daily walk to
+and from the train will do wonders. Lack of exercise will make a rainbow
+look gloomy to a fellow. I think you've great cause for rejoicing that
+Judith has agreed to try the experiment at all. And as with all
+experiments, you must be patient while it works itself out."
+
+"That's so," agreed Carey, a gleam of hope in his eyes; and Anthony got
+away. But by himself the happier man shook his head doubtfully. "Where
+everything depends on the woman," he said to himself, "and you've married
+one that her Maker never fashioned for domestic joys, you're certainly up
+against a mighty difficult proposition!"
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.--THE CAREYS ARE AT HOME
+
+
+Wayne and Judith Carey had been keeping house for two months before Judith
+was willing to accede to her husband's often repeated request that they
+entertain the Robesons.
+
+"We've been there, together and separately, till it's a wonder their
+hospitality doesn't freeze up," he urged. "Let's have them out to-morrow
+night, and keep them over till next day, at least. I'd like to have them
+sleep under this roof. They'd bring us good luck."
+
+"One would think the Robesons were the only people worth knowing," said
+Judith, with a petulance of which she had the grace, as her husband stared
+at her, to be ashamed.
+
+"They're the truest friends we have in the world," he said, with a dignity
+of manner unusual with him. "Sometimes I think they are the only people
+worth knowing--out of all those on your calling list."
+
+"We differ about that. Your ideas of who are worth knowing are very
+peculiar. Heaven knows I'm fond of Juliet, but I get decidedly tired of
+having her held up as a model. And I haven't been anxious to entertain her
+until we were in order."
+
+"We're certainly as much in order now as we shall be for some time. Let's
+have them out. You'll find they'll see everything there is to praise. It's
+their way."
+
+So Anthony and Juliet were asked, and came. Wayne's prophecy was proven a
+true one--even Judith grew complacent as her friends admired the result of
+her house-furnishing. And in truth there was much to admire. Judith was a
+young woman of taste and more or less discretion, and if she could have
+had full sway in her purchasing the result might have been admirable. As
+it was, the unspoken criticism in the minds of both the guests, as they
+followed their hosts about the house, was that Judith had struck a
+key-note in her construction of a home a little too ambitious to be wholly
+satisfactory.
+
+"I believe in buying the best of everything as far as you go," she said,
+indicating a particularly costly lounging chair in a corner of the
+living-room. "Of course that was very expensive, but it will always be
+right, and we can get others to go with it. The bookcases were another
+high-priced purchase, but they give an air to the room worth paying for."
+
+"I've only one objection to this room," said Wayne with some hesitation.
+"As Judith says, the things in it seem to be all right, and it certainly
+looks in good taste, if I'm any judge, but--I don't know just how to
+explain it----" he hesitated again, and smiled deprecatingly at his wife.
+
+"Speak out," said Judith. She was in a very good humour, for her guests
+had shown so fine a tact in their commendation that she was in quite a
+glow of satisfaction, and for the first time felt the pleasure of the
+hostess in an attractive home. "It can't be a serious objection, for
+you've liked every single thing we've put into it."
+
+"Indeed I have," agreed Carey, eagerly glancing about the brilliantly lit
+room. "I like it all awfully well--especially in the daylight. The corner
+by the window is a famous place for reading. But, you see, I'm so little
+here in the daytime, except on Sundays. Of course I know we lack the
+fireplace that makes your living-room jolly, but it seems as if we lack
+something besides that we might have, and for the life of me I can't tell
+what it is."
+
+Anthony knew by a certain curve in the corner of his wife's mouth that she
+longed to tell him what it was. For himself, he could not discover. He
+studied the room searchingly and was unable to determine why, attractive
+as it really was, it certainly did, upon this cool May evening, lack the
+look of warm comfort and hospitality of which his own home was so full.
+
+"Possibly it's because everything is so new," he ventured. "Rooms come to
+have a look of home, you know, just by living in them and leaving things
+about. It's a pretty room, all right, and I fancy it will take on the
+friendly expression you want when you get to strewing your books and
+magazines around a little more, and laying your pipe down on the corner of
+the mantel-piece, you know--and all that. I can upset things for you in
+half a minute if you'll give me leave."
+
+"You have my full permission," said Judith, laughing. "I fancy it's just
+as you say: Wayne isn't used to it yet. He always likes his old slippers
+better than the handsomest new ones I can buy him. Come--dinner has been
+served for five minutes. No more artistic suggestions till afterward."
+
+The dinner was perfect. It should have been so, for a caterer was in the
+kitchen, and a hired waitress served the viands without disaster. As a
+delectable meal it was a success; as an exhibition of Mrs. Carey's
+capacity for home making, it was something of a failure. It certainly did
+not for a moment deceive the guests. For the life of her, as Juliet tasted
+course after course of the elaborate meal, she could not help reckoning up
+what it had cost. Neither could she refrain from wondering what sort of a
+repast Judith would have produced without help.
+
+After dinner, as Wayne and Anthony smoked in front of the fireless
+mantel-piece in the den, each in a more luxurious chair than was to be
+found in Anthony's whole house, Judith took Juliet to task.
+
+"You may try to disguise it," she complained, "but I've known you too long
+not to be able to read you. You would rather have had me cook that dinner
+myself and bring it in, all red and blistered from being over the stove."
+
+"As long as the dinner wasn't red and blistered you wouldn't have been
+unhappy," Juliet returned lightly. "But you mustn't think that she who
+entertains may read my ingenuous face, my dear. It isn't necessary that I
+attempt to convert the world to my way of thinking. And I haven't told you
+that when Auntie Dingley goes abroad with father again this winter I'm to
+have Mary McKaim for eight whole months. I can assure you I know how to
+appreciate the comfort of having a competent cook in the kitchen."
+
+She got up and crossed the room. "Judith, what an exquisite lamp," she
+observed. "I'd forgotten that you had it. Was it one of your wedding
+presents?"
+
+Judith followed her to where she stood examining an imposing,
+foreign-looking lamp, with jeweled inlets in the hand-wrought metal shade.
+"Yes," she said carelessly, "it's pretty enough. I don't care much for
+lamps."
+
+"Not to read by?"
+
+"It's bright enough for anybody but a blind man to read, here." Judith
+glanced at the ornate chandelier of electric lights in the centre of the
+ceiling. "The rooms aren't so high that the lights are out of reach for
+reading."
+
+"But this is beautiful. Have you never used it?"
+
+"It might be used with an electric connection, I suppose. No, I've never
+used it as an oil lamp. I hate kerosene oil."
+
+"But you have some in the house?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I think so. Wayne insisted on getting some little hand-lamps.
+Something's always happening to the wires out here. That's one of the
+numerous joys of living in the suburbs."
+
+"Let's fill this and try it," Juliet suggested, turning a pair of very
+bright eyes upon her friend. "If you've never lit it I don't believe
+you've half appreciated it. You're neglecting one of the prettiest sources
+of decoration you have in the house. Out of sympathy for the giver,
+whoever he was, you ought to let his gift have a chance to show you its
+beauty."
+
+"Stevens Cathcart gave it to us, I believe," said Judith. "Here, let me
+have it. I'll fill it, since you insist. But I never thought very much of
+it. It was put away in a closet until we came here. It took up so much
+room I never found a place for it."
+
+"Mr. Cathcart gave it to you? That proves my point, that it's worth
+admiring. If there's a connoisseur in things of this sort, it's he. He
+probably picked it up in some out-of-the-ordinary European shop."
+
+Smiling to herself, as if something gave her satisfaction, Juliet awaited
+the return of her hostess. She understood, from the manner of Judith's
+exit with the lamp, that the free and easy familiarity with which guests
+invaded every portion of Anthony's little home, was not to be made a
+precedent for the same sort of thing in Judith's.
+
+The lamp reappeared, accompanied by a lamentation over the disagreeable
+qualities of kerosene oil for any use whatever.
+
+"You can put electricity into this and use it as a drop-light, if you
+prefer," said Juliet, as she lit it and adjusted the shade. "May I set it
+on the big table over here? Right in the center, please, if you don't mind
+moving that bowl of carnations. There!--Of course you can send it back to
+oblivion over there on the bookcase if you really don't like it.--But you
+do like it--don't you?"
+
+"It's handsomer than I thought it was," Judith admitted without
+enthusiasm. Juliet glanced up at the blazing chandelier overhead.
+
+"May I turn off some of this light?" she asked. "You won't get the full
+beauty of your lamp till you give it a chance by itself."
+
+Judith assented. Juliet snapped off three out of the four lights, and
+smiled mischievously at her friend. Then she extinguished the fourth, so
+that the only luminary left in the room was the lamp. Judith groaned.
+
+"Maybe you like a gloomy room like this. I don't. Look at it. I can hardly
+see anything in the corners."
+
+"Wait a little bit. You're so used to the glare your eyes are not good for
+seeing what I mean. Study the lamp itself a minute. Did you ever see
+anything so fascinating as the gleam through those jewels? An electric
+bulb inside would add to the brilliancy, though it's not so soft a light
+to read by, and the effect in the room isn't so warm. Observe those
+carnations under the lamplight, honey? Come over here to the doorway and
+look at your whole room under these new conditions. Isn't it
+charming?--enticing?--Let's draw that lovely Morris chair up close to the
+table, as if you were expecting Wayne to come in and read the evening
+paper by the lamp. _There!_"
+
+Juliet softly clapped her hands, her face shining with friendly
+enthusiasm. There could be no question that the whole room, as she had
+said, had taken on a new look of homelike comfort and cheer which it had
+lacked before. Even Judith was forced to see it.
+
+"It looks very well," she admitted. "But I should have more light from
+above. I like plenty of light."
+
+"So do I, if you manage it well." Whereupon the guest, having gained her
+point and made sufficient demonstration of it, turned the conversation
+into other channels. But the lamp was not yet through with its position of
+reformer. The two men, having finished their cigars, and hearing sounds of
+merriment from the adjoining room, came strolling in. Anthony,
+comprehending at a glance the change which had come over the aspect of the
+room and the cause thereof, advanced, smiling. But Carey came to a
+standstill upon the threshold, his lips drawn into an astonished whistle.
+
+"What's happened?" he ejaculated, and stood staring.
+
+"Do you like it?" asked his wife.
+
+"I should say I did. But what's done it? What makes the room look so
+different? It looks--why it looks like your rooms!" he cried, gazing at
+Anthony.
+
+"He can say nothing more flattering than that," said Judith, evidently not
+altogether pleased. "It's the highest compliment he knows."
+
+Carey stared at the lamp. "I didn't know we had that," he said. "Is it
+that that does it?"
+
+"I fancy it is," said Anthony. "I never understood it till I was taught,
+but it seems to be a fact that a low light in a room gives it a more
+homelike effect than a high one. I don't know why. It's one of my wife's
+pet theories."
+
+"Well, I must say this is a pretty convincing demonstration of it," Carey
+agreed, sitting down in a chair in a corner, his hands in his pockets,
+still studying this, to him, remarkable transformation. "It certainly does
+look like a happy home now. Before, it was a place to receive calls in."
+He turned, smiling contentedly, to his wife. Something about the glance
+which she returned warned him that further admiration was unnecessary. The
+contented smile faded a little. He got up and came over to the table.
+"Now, let's have a good four-handed talk," he proposed.
+
+Two hours later, in the seclusion of the guest-room upstairs, Anthony said
+under his breath:
+
+"They're coming on, aren't they? Don't you see glimmerings of hope that
+some day this will resemble a home, in a sort of far-off way? Isn't Judith
+becoming domesticated a trifle? She didn't get up that dinner?"
+
+Juliet turned upon him a smiling face, and laid her finger on her lip.
+"Don't tempt me to discuss it," she warned him. "My feelings might run
+away with me, and that would never do under their very roof."
+
+"Exemplary little guest! May I say as much as this, then? I'd give a good
+deal to see Wayne speak his mind once in a way, without a side glance to
+see if Her Royal Majesty approves."
+
+But Juliet shook her head. "Don't tempt me," she begged again. "There's
+something inside of me that boils and boils with rage, and if I should
+just take the cover off----"
+
+"Might I get scalded? All right--I'll leave the cover on. Just one
+observation more. When I get inside our own four walls again I'm going to
+give a tremendous whoop of joy and satisfaction that'll raise the roof
+right off the house!"
+
+
+
+
+XXV.--THE ROBESON WILL
+
+
+When people are busy and happy the years may go by like a dream. So the
+months rolled around and brought little Tony past the third anniversary of
+his birth, and into another summer of lusty development. Except to the
+growing child, however, time seemed to bring slight changes to the little
+home under whose roof he grew. The mistress thereof lost no charm either
+for her husband or her friends--Anthony indeed insisted that she grew
+younger; certainly, as time taught her new lessons without laying hands
+upon her beauty, she gained attractiveness in every way.
+
+"You look as much like a girl as ever," Anthony said to her one morning,
+as dressed for a trip into town she came out upon the porch where he and
+little Tony were frolicing together.
+
+"You had ever a sweetly blarneying tongue," said she, and bestowed a
+parting caress impartially upon both the persons before her. "I feel a bit
+guilty at making a nursemaid of you for even one morning of your vacation,
+but----"
+
+"That's all right. Do your errands with an easy conscience. I'll enjoy
+looking after the boy, and am rather glad your usual little maid is away.
+That's one thing my vacation is for--to get upon a basis of mutual
+understanding and confidence with my son. We see too little of each
+other."
+
+So Juliet caught the early car, and left the two male Robesons together,
+father and son, waving good-bye to her from the porch. When she was out of
+sight the elder Robeson turned to the younger.
+
+"Now, son," he said, "I'm going to mow the lawn. What are you going to
+do?"
+
+"I is going to mow lawn, too," announced Tony, Junior, with decision.
+
+"All right, sir. Here we are. Get in front of me and mind you push hard.
+That's the stuff!"
+
+All went joyously for ten minutes. Then little Tony wriggled out from
+between his father's arms and went over to the porch step. He sat down and
+crossed two fat legs. He leaned his head upon his hand, his elbow on his
+knee, and watched with serious eyes the progress of the lawn-mower three
+times across before he said wistfully:
+
+"Favver, I wis' you'd p'ay wiv me."
+
+"When I get this job done perhaps I will," said Anthony, and made the
+grass fly merrily. Presently he put away the lawn-mower, and stood looking
+down at the sturdy little figure in the blue Russian blouse. "What do you
+want to play?" he asked. Tony's face lit up.
+
+"Le's play fire-endjun," he proposed enthusiastically.
+
+"Where shall we play the fire is?"
+
+"Le's have weal fire," said Tony eagerly.
+
+"Real fire? Well, I don't know about that, son," his father responded
+doubtfully. "Young persons of three are not considered old enough to play
+with the real thing. Won't make believe do just as well?"
+
+"No, no--weal fire," repeated the child. "Le's put it out wiv sqi'yt
+watto. P'ease, favver--p'ease!"
+
+"Sqi'wt watto," repeated Anthony, laughing. "What do you mean by----? Oh,
+I see----" as Tony demonstrated his meaning by running to the garden hose
+which remained attached to a hydrant behind the house. "Well, son--if I
+let you have a real fire and put it out with real water, will you promise
+me never to try anything of that sort by yourself?"
+
+Tony walked over to his father and laid a little brown fist in Anthony's.
+"Aw wight," he said solemnly. Anthony looked down at the clasped hands and
+smiled at the serious uplifted face. "Is that the way mother teaches you
+to promise her?" he asked, with interest.
+
+Tony nodded. "Aw wight," he said. "Come on. Le's make fire!"
+
+The fire was made, out of a packing-box brought up from the cellar. It
+burned realistically down by the orchard, and was only discovered by
+chance when Anthony Robeson, Junior, happened to glance that way.
+
+"_Fire!--fire!_" he shouted, and alarmed the fire company, who, as fire
+companies should be, were ready to start on the instant. The hose-cart,
+propelled by a pair of stout legs, made a gallant dash down the edge of
+the garden, followed by the hook-and-ladder company, their equipment just
+three feet long. It took energetic and skilful work to quench the
+conflagration, which raged furiously and made plenty of good black smoke.
+The fire chief rushed dramatically about, ordering his men with ringing
+commands. Once he stubbed his bare toe and fell, and for a moment it
+looked as though he must cry, but like the brave fellow that he was he
+smothered his pain behind an uplifted elbow, and in a moment was again in
+the thick of the fray. His men obeyed him with admirable promptitude,
+although, contrary to the usual custom of fire chiefs, he himself took
+hold of the hose and poured its volume upon the blazing structure.
+
+When the fire was out the chief, breathless, his blue blouse bearing the
+marks of the encounter with flood and flame, sat down upon the overturned
+hose-cart and beamed upon his company.
+
+"Vat was awful nice fire," he said. "Le's have anuver."
+
+"Another? Oh, no," protested the company, hastily. "No more of that just
+now. Pick up your hook-and-ladder wagon and put it back where it belongs.
+I'll see to the hose."
+
+Anthony gently displaced the fire chief and rolled away the hose. Then he
+looked back down the garden and saw his son poking among the ruins of the
+fire. "Come here, Tony," he called, "and bring the hook-and-ladder."
+
+Tony came slowly, but without the toy wagon. Anthony stood still. When the
+boy reached him he said, "Why didn't you bring the hook-and-ladder cart?"
+
+"'Cause I'm ve chief," Tony responded gravely. "My mens'll bring ve
+cart."
+
+"Your men aren't there. You'll have to bring it yourself."
+
+Tony shook his head. "I'm ve chief," he repeated, and looked his father in
+the eye. Anthony understood. It was not the first time. There were moments
+in one's experience with Anthony Robeson, Junior, when one seemed to
+encounter a deadlock in the child's will. Reasoning and commands were apt
+at such times to be alike futile. The odd thing about it was that it was
+impossible to predict when these moments were at hand. They arose without
+warning, when the boy was apparently in the best of tempers, and they did
+not seem to be the result of any previous mismanagement on the part of
+those in authority over him.
+
+Of one point Anthony, Senior, was sure. The child, like all children, and
+possibly more than most, possessed a vivid imagination. When he announced
+himself to be a fire chief, there could be no question that he believed
+himself to be for the time that which he pretended to be. His father
+understood, therefore, that to make progress with the boy it was necessary
+to get back to the standpoint of reality before commands could be expected
+to take hold. So he sat down on a rustic seat near Juliet's roses and
+spoke in a pleasantly matter-of-fact way.
+
+"Yes, you've been a fire chief, son, and a good one. That was a great
+game. But the game is over now, and you're not a fire chief any more.
+You're Tony Robeson, and the little hook-and-ladder cart is your
+plaything. Father wants you to bring it here and put it in its place in
+the house. It looks a little bit like rain, and the cart mustn't be left
+out to get wet. See?"
+
+But Tony still shook his head. "My men'll put it in," he said, with
+calmness undisturbed.
+
+"You haven't any men. You played there were some, but the play is over and
+there aren't any men. If you don't put the cart in it may get wet."
+
+"I'm ve chief," said little Tony. "Chiefs don't draw carts."
+
+"When they've turned back to little boys they do. You've turned back to a
+little boy."
+
+"No, I hasn't," said Tony, and his eyes met his father's unflinchingly.
+"I's going to be a chief all ve time."
+
+The argument seemed unanswerable. Anthony considered swiftly what to do.
+He studied the grave brown eyes an instant in silence, their beauty and
+the inflexibility in their depths appealing to him with equal force. He
+loved the tough little will. He recognised it as his own--the same
+powerful quality which had brought him thus far on the road to fortune
+after being landed at the furthermost end from the goal. He would not for
+worlds deal with his son's will in any but the way which should seem to
+him wisest.
+
+He rose from his seat. He spoke quietly but with force. "Very well," he
+said. "If you're still a fire chief, of course you're too big to play. I'm
+much obliged to you for putting out my fire. But now that it's out I don't
+want your hook-and-ladder in my garden any longer. When your men take it
+away I shall be glad. But of course we can't play any more till you stop
+being a fire chief and the hook-and-ladder is back in its corner in the
+nursery. Good-bye. When you are ready to be Tony Robeson again, you'll
+find me in my den."
+
+He smiled at his son and walked away. Tony watched him go. Tony's hands
+were clasped behind his back, his legs planted wide apart.
+
+Anthony, Senior, found it difficult to remain in the den. He was obliged
+to keep track of a small figure in a blue blouse from whichever of the
+various windows commanded the doings of that young person. He perceived
+that the fire chief was still holding dominion over the scene.
+
+At the end of an hour small footsteps were heard approaching. Anthony
+looked up from the letter he was attempting to write. "Favver, may I have
+a bread and butter?" asked a pleasant voice. Anthony turned about in his
+chair.
+
+"Is the hook-and-ladder in the nursery?" he inquired gravely.
+
+Tony shook his head.
+
+"Oh, then you are still the fire chief. Fire chiefs go to the hotel for
+their bread and butter. I haven't any bread and butter for the fire
+chief."
+
+He turned back to his desk. The small figure in the doorway stood still a
+moment, then the footsteps were heard retreating. Five minutes later,
+Anthony, looking out, saw Tony careering about the garden on a
+hobby-horse.
+
+"Obstinate little duffer," he said affectionately to himself. "He's
+playing go to the hotel, I suppose. Perhaps when that imagination of his
+gets to work at hypothetical bread and butter he'll find the reality
+preferable to the fancy."
+
+In a short time Anthony again reconnoitred. The garden was empty. He
+looked out at the front of the house. No small figure in blue was to be
+seen. He went out and took a turn about the place. He called the boy;
+there was no response. From past experience and from the statements of
+Juliet and the young girls of the neighbourhood, whom, at various times,
+she was in the habit of engaging to assist her in the oversight of the
+child at his play, he knew that Tony had a trick of getting himself out of
+sight in an incredibly brief space of time.
+
+"As a fire chief he may consider himself free to do what he pleases," said
+Anthony to himself, and set about a thorough search of the place, having
+no doubt that at any moment he should come upon the boy carrying out the
+details of his imaginary vocation. After a time he went back into the
+house and scoured it from top to bottom. And when, even here, there was to
+be discovered no trace of the child, he began to feel a slight
+uneasiness.
+
+There was no source of immediate danger to a stray child in the
+neighbourhood, of which he was aware, except the electric line, and little
+Tony had never manifested the slightest inclination to approach this by
+himself. There were no open ponds, no traps of any kind for the incautious
+feet of a three-year-old. Everybody knew Tony, and everybody admired and
+loved him, so that, as Anthony took up his hat and started upon a more
+extended search, he had no doubt whatever of finding the runaway without
+delay.
+
+In a very short time it became a rousing of the neighbourhood. It was
+Saturday, and all the children who knew Tony were at hand. They were soon
+eagerly searching for him near and far, without finding the slightest
+trace of his passing. Anthony, now thoroughly alarmed, telephoned in every
+direction, warned every police station in the city, and took every
+possible step for the discovery of the child. It occurred to him with
+tremendous force that the boy might have been stolen. Such things did
+happen. It seemed almost the only way to account for such a sudden and
+mysterious disappearance.
+
+Before it seemed possible two hours had slipped past. And now, on every
+car which whirled by the corner, Anthony began to expect Juliet. He
+dreaded yet longed to see her. He turned cold at the thought of telling
+her the situation, yet at the same time he felt as if she might have some
+sort of a solution ready which nobody else had thought of. And while,
+still searching over and over the entire ground, he kept watch of the
+arriving cars, he saw his wife suddenly appear. He went to meet her.
+
+"What is it?" she said, the instant her eye met his.
+
+"I think it's all right, dear," he told her, as quietly as he could, "but
+somehow we can't find Tony. He disappeared during five minutes when I was
+in the house--too short a time for him to have got very far away, but--we
+can't find him. Do you think he may be hiding? Does he ever hide himself
+so effectually as that?"
+
+The bright colour in her face had slipped out of it on the instant, for he
+could not keep the anxiety out of his voice. But she said no word of
+reproach, nor did she lose command of herself in any way.
+
+"How long has he been gone?" she asked, going straight toward the house,
+Anthony close behind her.
+
+"I think--I am afraid--nearly two hours. I will tell you what happened. It
+is possible something I said is responsible for all this, though I don't
+know."
+
+She was going swiftly about the house, as he told her the story of his
+attempt to teach the boy a lesson, and she was listening closely to every
+word as she examined for herself each nook and corner. She disclosed
+several possible hiding places of which Anthony had not thought,
+explaining that Tony knew them all and sometimes betook himself to them in
+the course of various games. The two came out upon the porch, and Juliet
+stood still, thinking.
+
+"You have done everything to intercept him, if he should really have--got
+far away?"
+
+"Everything I can think of, except start out myself. I am ready to do
+that, if you think best."
+
+"Not until I have gone over the neighbourhood myself. I don't believe he
+is far away--I believe he is near. He may have heard every call you and
+the children have made, and wouldn't answer. If by any chance his pride
+has been a little hurt, he is very likely to do this sort of thing.
+Wait--have you looked--I wonder if the children know----"
+
+She was off without stopping to explain, through the garden and down the
+old willow-bordered path by the brook. Anthony followed. "I've been down
+here a dozen times," he called. "The brook is too shallow to hurt him, and
+he's certainly not anywhere on it within a mile. The children have been
+all over the ground."
+
+But Juliet did not pause. She ran along the path for some distance, then
+turned abruptly at a point where an abandoned lot filled with stumps
+joined the area by the brook. She made her swift way among these stumps,
+Anthony following, his hope rising as he noted the directness of his
+wife's aim. At the biggest stump she came to a standstill, carefully swung
+out-ward like a door a great slab of bark, and disclosed a hollow. The
+sunlight streamed in upon a little heap of blue, and a tangled brown mass
+of hair. Anthony Robeson, Junior, lay fast asleep in his cunningly devised
+retreat.
+
+Without a word his father stood looking down at the boy's flushed cheeks.
+Then he turned to Juliet, standing beside him, smiling through the tears
+which had not come until the anxiety was past. His own eyes were wet.
+
+"That was a bad scare," he said softly. "Thank God it's over."
+
+Then he stooped and gently lifted the fire chief and carried him home
+without waking him. Twenty children flocked joyfully from all about to
+see, and hushed their shouts of congratulation at Juliet's smiling
+warning.
+
+Anthony went alone down the garden to the place where the hook-and-ladder
+cart had stood. It was still there. He stood and looked at it, his eyes
+very tender but his lips firm. "The little chap didn't give in," he said
+to himself. "It's going to be hard to make him, but for the sake of the
+Robeson will I think we'll have to take up the job where we left it. I'd
+mightily like to flunk the whole business now, but I should be a pretty
+weak sort of a beggar if I did."
+
+When little Tony had wakened from his nap, and had been washed and brushed
+and fed, and made fresh in a clean frock, his mother brought him to his
+father.
+
+"Is this Tony Robeson?" Anthony asked soberly. Tony considered for a
+moment, then shook his head.
+
+"I's ve fire chief," he said, with polite stubbornness.
+
+"Have your men put away the hook-and-ladder cart?"
+
+"No, favver."
+
+"Are they going to do it?"
+
+"I didn't tell vem to."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Didn't want to."
+
+"Listen, son," said Anthony. "I could make the fire chief put away the
+cart. I'm stronger than he is, you know. I could make him walk out to
+where it lies in the garden, and I could make his hands pick it up and
+carry it into the house, and then it would be done.--Don't you think I
+could?"
+
+Tony considered. "Es, I fink 'ou could," he admitted. Evidently the
+question was one he could reflect upon from the standpoint of the
+outsider.
+
+"But I don't want to do that. I want Tony Robeson to put the cart away
+because his father asks him to do it. Don't you think he ought to do
+that?"
+
+"I isn't Tony Robeson, I'se ve fire chief."
+
+"Were you the fire chief when you woke up, and mother washed you and
+dressed you and gave you your lunch? I don't think she thought you were.
+If you had been the fire chief she would have left you to take care of
+yourself."
+
+Tony thought about it. "I dess I'se Tony wiv muvver," he said.
+
+"Then you aren't Tony with me?"
+
+The thick locks shook vehemently in the sir with the negative response. "I
+said I was ve fire chief, and I'se got to _be_ ve fire chief," he
+reiterated.
+
+Without question it was a battle of wills. But Anthony's mind was made up.
+For lack of time to deal with them previous similar issues had been dodged
+in various ways, compromises had been effected. It was plain that argument
+and reasoning, the wiles of the affectionately wise adversary who does not
+want to bring the matter to a direct conflict, had been tried. Anthony
+could see no way out except to dominate the child by the force of his own
+resolute character. It was not the way by which he wanted to obtain the
+mastery, but it was becoming plain to him that, in this case, at least, it
+was the only way left.
+
+His face grew stern all at once, his eyes, though still kind, met his
+son's with determination. "Tony," he said very gravely--and there was a
+new quality in his tone to which the child was not accustomed--"You are
+not the fire chief now. You are Tony Robeson. _I shall not let you be the
+fire chief any longer._ Do you understand?"
+
+There was no threat in the words, only a decisiveness of the sort before
+which men give way, because they see that there is no alternative. Tony
+stared into his father's eyes curiously. His own grew big with wonder,
+with something which was not alarm, but akin to it. He gazed and gazed, as
+if fascinated. Anthony's look held his; the man's powerful eyes did not
+flinch--neither did the boy's. It is possible that both pulses quickened a
+beat.
+
+Little Tony drew his eyes away at last, turned and started for the door.
+Silently Anthony watched him as he reached for the knob, turned again, and
+looked back at his father. On the very threshold the child stood still and
+stared back. His brown eyes filled, his red lips quivered. The stern face
+which watched his melted into a winning smile, and Anthony held out his
+arms. An instant longer, and his son had run across the floor and flung
+himself into them.
+
+When the childish storm of tears had quieted, and several big hugs had
+been exchanged, Anthony set the boy down upon the floor and took his hand.
+Silently the two walked out of the house and down the garden. The
+hook-and-ladder cart stood patiently waiting, just where it had waited all
+day. Little Tony ran to it and picked it up. Over his exquisite face broke
+the first smile that had been seen there since the earliest disregarded
+command of the morning.
+
+"Ve fire chief's gone," he said. "He was a bad fire chief."
+
+So together the man and the boy escorted the hook-and-ladder cart to the
+nursery, and backed it carefully into its stall, between the milk wagon
+and the automobile. Then the child went to his play. But the man drew a
+long breath.
+
+"I would rather manage a hundred striking workmen," he said to himself
+with emphasis.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.--ON GUARD
+
+
+While little Tony had been growing, waxing strong and sturdy: while Juliet
+had been tending and training him, learning, as every mother does, more
+than she could impart: Anthony, in his place, had not stood still. The
+strength and determination he had from the first hour put into his daily
+work had begun to tell. His position in a great mercantile establishment
+had steadily advanced as he had made himself more and more indispensable
+to its heads.
+
+Cathcart, the successful architect, began to talk about a new home for the
+man into whose hands Henderson and Henderson were putting large interests
+to manage for them, and whose salary, he asserted, must now justify,
+indeed call for, life under more ideal surroundings than the little home
+in the unfashionable suburb which poverty had at first made necessary.
+
+"Let me draw some plans for you," urged Cathcart, one evening in June,
+when he had run out to see his friend. Juliet was by chance away, and
+Cathcart took advantage of this to call Anthony's attention, in a politely
+frank fashion, to the shortcomings of his present residence. "It's all
+right in its way," he said, standing upon a corner of the lawn with
+Anthony, and surveying the house critically. "Mrs. Robeson certainly
+deserves full credit for the admirable way in which she restored the old
+house and added just the changes in keeping with its possibilities. I've
+always said it couldn't have been better done, with the means you've told
+me you were able to put at her disposal. But the place is too small for
+you now."
+
+"I don't think we feel it so," said Anthony tentatively, strolling beside
+Cathcart along the edge of the lawn, his hands in his pockets, lifting
+friendly eyes at the little house. "Since we put in the bathroom--that
+small room off the upper hall, you know--and added the nursery and den,
+we're very comfortable. The furnace keeps us warm as toast, and we're soon
+to have the water system out here, so we won't have to depend upon our
+present expedients. I'm fond of the place, and I'm confident Mrs. Robeson
+is devoted to it."
+
+"I can understand that," agreed Cathcart. "Of course, the spot where you
+began life together will always have its charm for you both--in fact the
+sentiment of the matter may blind you to the real inadequacies of the
+place for a man in your position."
+
+"My position isn't so stable that I want to build a marble palace on it
+yet," said Anthony, a humorous twinkle in his eye. He enjoyed watching
+another man manoeuvre for his favourable hearing of a scheme. It was an
+art in which he was himself accomplished; it was one of the points of his
+value to Henderson and Henderson.
+
+"Everybody knows that you're in a fair way to become head man with the
+Hendersons," said Cathcart, "and everybody also knows that you might as
+well have struck a gold-mine. It's superb, the way you have come into the
+confidence of those old conservatives."
+
+"That's all well enough; but I don't see that it entails upon me the duty
+of laying out all I've saved on a new house. I know what you fellows
+are--when you begin to draw plans your love of the ideal runs away with
+the other man's pocketbook."
+
+"Not at all," declared Cathcart. "Particularly when he's a friend and you
+understand just what he can afford to do."
+
+"Why don't you talk about enlarging the old house? That's much more likely
+to appeal to my desires."
+
+The two had reached the back of the house and were close by the kitchen
+windows. Cathcart reached up and took hold of a sill. With a strong hand
+he wrenched and pounded about the window, until he succeeded in showing
+that it was old and uncertain.
+
+"That's why," he said, dusting his hand with his handkerchief. "The house
+is old--fairly rotten in places. The minute you began to enlarge it in any
+ambitious way you'd find it would be cheaper to tear it down and begin
+again. But the site, Robeson--the site isn't desirable. The place is
+respectable enough, but it has no future. The good building is all going
+south, not north, of the city. You don't want to spend a lot of money
+here--you couldn't sell out except at a loss."
+
+"Your arguments are good, very good," admitted Anthony; "so good that I'd
+like to put you on your mettle to draw me a set of plans for just the sort
+of thing you think I ought to have--or Mrs. Robeson ought to have, for
+she's the one to be considered. Anything will do for me. I'll let you do
+this--on one condition."
+
+"Name it."
+
+"That you also do your level best to demonstrate to me what a clever man
+and an artist of your proportions could make out of this house, provided
+he really wanted to show the extent of his ability. Now, that's fair. If
+you really care to convince me you won't fool with this proposition,
+you'll make a study of the one problem as thoroughly as you do of the
+other, and let me decide the case on its merits. If I thought you weren't
+giving the old house a fair chance I should take up its cause out of pure
+affection."
+
+He smiled at Cathcart's discontented face with so brilliant a good humour
+that the architect cleared up.
+
+"By Jove, Robeson," he said, "I think I see what endears you to the
+Hendersons. I wouldn't have said you could have induced me to try my hand
+at the old house, but I'll be hanged if I don't follow your instructions
+to the letter--and win out, too."
+
+"Good," said Anthony. "And don't mention it to my wife. We'll keep it for
+a surprise; and I promise you when the time comes I won't prejudice her in
+any way."
+
+Cathcart drew out a notebook and pencil and entered some memoranda on the
+spot, while Anthony, coming up on the piazza of the dining-room, laid upon
+the old Dutch house-door a hand which seemed to caress it. He was
+wondering if by any possible magic Cathcart could create, in the rarest
+abode in the world, a new door which he should ever care to enter as he
+now cared to enter this.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I think," said Juliet decidedly, "you're wrong about it."
+
+"And I know," returned Anthony with emphasis, "that you are."
+
+The two faced each other. They were walking through a short stretch of
+woodland, which lay as yet untouched by the hand of suburban property
+owners. It was a favourite ground for the diversions of the Robesons, when
+they had not time to spend in getting farther away. They had been
+strolling through it now, in the early June evening, discussing a matter
+relative to the investment of a certain moderate sum of money which had
+come into Anthony's hands. It developed that their ideas about it differed
+radically.
+
+"It's not safe to do as you propose," said Juliet.
+
+"To do what you propose would be only one better than tying it up in an
+old stocking--or putting it away in the coffee pot. It's essentially a
+woman's plan--no man would do it the honour of considering it a moment."
+
+Juliet flushed brilliantly. Even in Anthony's cheek the colour rose a
+little. Their eyes met with a challenge.
+
+"Very well," said Juliet proudly. "I'll offer no more woman's plans.
+Invest the money as you like. Then, when you've lost it----"
+
+Anthony's eyes flashed. "When I've lost it----" he began, and turned away
+with a gesture of impatience. Then he stopped short. "That isn't like
+you," he said.
+
+Juliet stared at him an instant. Then she shut her lips together and
+walked on in silence. Anthony shut his lips together also. It was not
+their habit to indulge in sharp altercation. While both had decided ideas
+about things, both were also much too well bred to be willing to allow
+differences of opinion--which must arise as inevitably as two human beings
+live under the same roof--to degenerate into the deplorable thing commonly
+referred to as a quarrel.
+
+When they had proceeded a few rods Juliet turned abruptly off from the
+path and picked up from the ground a slender straight stick, evidently cut
+and trimmed by some boy and then thrown aside. She looked about her and
+after some search found another, of similar size, untrimmed. She held out
+the latter to Anthony. He accepted it with a look of surprise. Then she
+walked into the path in front of him, stood stiff and straight, her small
+heels together, and made him the fencer's salute. "_On guard!_" she
+cried.
+
+His lips relaxing, Anthony grasped his stick and fell into position. A
+moment more and two accomplished fencers were engaged in close combat.
+
+Juliet happened to be wearing a trim linen skirt of short walking length,
+which impeded her movements as slightly as anything not strictly adapted
+to the exercise could do. Although her fencing lessons were some years
+past, the paraphernalia belonging both to herself and Anthony were in the
+house, and an occasional bout with the masks and foils was a means of
+exercise and diversion which both thoroughly enjoyed. Although Juliet was
+no match for the superior skill and endurance of her husband, she was
+nevertheless no mean antagonist, and her alertness of eye and hand usually
+gave him sufficient to do to make the encounter a stimulating one.
+
+On the present occasion Anthony, challenged to combat with his coat and
+cuffs on, and wielding the more awkward weapon of the two impromptu foils,
+found himself distinctly at a disadvantage. Moreover, he was at the moment
+not precisely in the mood for fun, and he began to defend himself with a
+somewhat lazy indifference. After a minute or two, however, he discovered
+that his adversary's slightly ruffled temper was inspiring her hand and
+wrist to distinctly effective work, and he found himself forced to look to
+his methods.
+
+Attack and parade, disengagement and thrust--the battle was waged over the
+uneven ground of the wood. And presently Anthony discovered that the
+richly glowing face opposite his was a smiling one. The absurdity of the
+match struck him irresistibly and he smiled in return. He tripped a little
+over an obtruding oak-root, and Juliet took advantage of her opportunity
+to press him hard. He fended off the attack and himself assumed the
+aggressive. An instant more and he had disarmed her and had thrown his own
+stick flying after hers. Both were laughing heartily enough.
+
+"Forgive the trick," cried Anthony. "A man must disarm his wife when she
+becomes his enemy."
+
+Breathless, Juliet sank upon a small knoll, her hand at her side. "If I'd
+been dressed for it--" she panted.
+
+"You need coaching on your time thrusts, but you gave me plenty to do as
+it was," Anthony admitted. "More than that, you've presented me with a
+chance to recover my equilibrium. I was hot inside before. Now it's all on
+the outside."
+
+He looked down at her affectionately. She smiled back. "I was crosser than
+sticks," she said. "I really can't imagine why, now. I apologise."
+
+"So do I." He threw himself down on the ground at her feet, lay flat on
+his back, his clasped hands behind his head, and gazed up into the
+tree-tops.
+
+"I'll take your advice into careful consideration," said he.
+
+"I know you won't do anything rash," said she, and they both laughed
+again.
+
+"How much more diplomatic that sort of talk is," he observed. "Why do we
+ever allow ourselves to use any other?"
+
+"Because we are human, I suppose." Juliet was putting a mass of waving
+brown hair, disordered by the fight, into shape again. "It isn't nice. We
+don't do it often. To-night you came home tired, and found a wife who had
+been entertaining people from town all the afternoon. But it's all right
+now, isn't it?"
+
+She bent forward, and Anthony took her outstretched hand in his own and
+gave it a grip which made it sting. He began to whistle cheerfully.
+
+"Should we be happier if we never disagreed?" she asked thoughtfully.
+
+The whistle stopped. "Jupiter, no! I want a thinking being to talk things
+over with, not a mental pincushion."
+
+"Thank you.--Isn't it lovely here?"
+
+"Delightful.--Julie, do you know we'll have been married five years next
+September?"
+
+"It doesn't seem possible."
+
+"I shouldn't know it, to look at you," he observed. He rolled upon his
+left side and regarded her from under intent brows. "You haven't grown a
+day older."
+
+"I'm not sure that's a compliment."
+
+"It's meant for one. Do you know you're a beauty?"
+
+"I never was one and never shall be," she answered laughing, but she could
+not object to the obvious sincerity of his opinion as he delivered it.
+
+"You're near enough to satisfy me. I'd rather have your good looks than
+all the--Well, I sat in front of a newly married pair on the way home
+to-night--that fellow Scrivener and his bride. _She's_ what people call a
+raving beauty, I suppose. I wouldn't have her in the house at a dollar an
+hour. She's a whiner. Had him doing something to satisfy her whim every
+minute. I heard him trying to tell her about something that interested
+him, but she couldn't take time from herself to listen. His voice had a
+note of fatigue in it, already, or I'm not Robeson. I tell you,
+Juliet--that's the sort of thing that makes a bachelor vow to stay single,
+and he can't be blamed."
+
+"Suppose a bachelor had overheard us half an hour ago?"
+
+"I'm glad none did--but if he had it wouldn't have disgusted him the way
+the other sort of thing did me to-day. A brisk little altercation is
+nothing, with unlimited hours of friendliness and understanding before and
+after. But a perpetual drizzle of fault finding and exactions--would make
+a fellow go hang himself. Mrs. Robeson, do you know, you're a very
+exceptional young person?"
+
+"In what way, sir?"
+
+"Whatever you do, you never nag. I've an awful suspicion that Judith Carey
+nags. You know how to let a man alone when he's in the mood for being
+alone. She never does. Carey had me out there not long ago, for what he
+called a quiet, confidential talk on some business matters. We went into
+what is supposed to be his private room and shut the door. Probably she
+came to that door not less than twelve times during that two hours. She
+called Carey away on every sort of pretext. Once she got him to do a
+stroke of work for her that took up at least ten minutes neither of us
+could spare. And she looked like a thundercloud every time I caught a
+glimpse of her face. Caesar!--think of having to live with that sort of
+person. No wonder Carey looks old before his time."
+
+"It's certainly unfortunate. But I'm not an exception, Tony. There are
+plenty of women who know when to keep out of the way."
+
+"Well, then, they're erratic on some other line, that's all. You're
+absolutely the only thoroughly sweet and sane woman I know."
+
+"My dear boy! Remember how snappish I was just this evening."
+
+"I was grouchy enough to match it. I tell you, Julie--the women who don't
+talk you to death on every subject, important or trivial, bore you with
+idiotic questions or impertinence about your affairs. How do I know so
+much about 'em? My dear, dozens of them come into the office every day,
+and Mr. Henderson has acquired a habit lately of turning them all over to
+me. I earn a double salary every hour I spend that way--wish I could put
+in a demand for it. Speaking of salaries, dear"--Anthony suddenly sat
+up--"I've no right to be grouchy, for I'm promised another advance next
+month."
+
+"Splendid!" She put out her hand, and the two shook hands vigorously
+again, like the pair of comrades they were.
+
+"Juliet," said her husband, watching her face closely. "It's been a happy
+five years, hasn't it?"
+
+"A happy five years, Tony."
+
+"Do you mean it?" He smiled at her. "You've never been sorry?" Then he got
+to his feet and held out his hand again to help her up. "The mortal combat
+we engaged in gave you a magnificent colour," he commented, and passed
+affectionate fingers across the smooth cheek near his shoulder.
+"Sweetheart----" he drew her into his arms--"I may fence with you once in
+a while with sharp words for weapons, but--do you know how I love you?"
+
+"I wonder why?"
+
+"It's strange, isn't it?--after all these years. To be really up-to-date,
+we should long since have become interested each in some other----"
+
+A hand came gently but effectually upon his mouth. He kissed the hand.
+"No, I won't say it. It's a cynical philosophy, and I'll not take its
+language on my lips--not with my wife in my arms, giving the lie to that
+sort of thing. Julie, we're not sentimentalists because we still
+care----"
+
+"Who thinks we are?"
+
+"Plenty of envious skeptics, I'll wager. I see it in their green-eyed
+glances. They can't believe it's genuine. Dear--is it genuine? Look up,
+and tell me."
+
+She looked up, and seeing his heart in his eyes, met his deep caress with
+a tenderness which told him more than she could have put into the words
+she suddenly found it impossible to speak.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.--LOCKWOOD PAYS A CALL
+
+
+"Did you know Roger Barnes was back?" asked Wayne Carey of Anthony
+Robeson, on the evening of the twenty-fifth of June, as the two met on the
+street corner from which Anthony was to take his car. Electrics ran within
+a few rods of his home now, but they ran only at fifteen-minute intervals
+and were difficult to catch.
+
+"No. To stay this time, I hope?"
+
+"Off again to-morrow. Never saw such a fellow--restless as a fish. Been
+working all winter in Vienna--off to-morrow on the Overland Limited to
+sail Saturday for Hongkong. Goes to do a special operation on the
+Emperor's brother or some swell of the sort. He's been doing some mighty
+slick operating, according to the medical review I ran across in a throat
+specialist's office."
+
+"I must see him. Where is he?"
+
+"At your house now, more than likely. Said he'd got to see you, and if you
+haven't seen him yet you're sure to before he goes to-morrow night. By the
+way, Anthony, do you know what we heard lately about Rachel
+Redding--Huntington? That she wasn't married to Huntington till the night
+he died, almost three years ago."
+
+Anthony stared.
+
+"Guess it's straight, too," pursued Carey. "Queer she should have kept it
+all this time. Didn't Juliet hear from her at all?"
+
+"Only once or twice, I believe."
+
+"Her father and mother both died last winter."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"The man who told me was a traveller. Said she and Huntington's mother
+were coming back to live East again. He was an Eastern man himself--knew
+Huntington, and got interested when he heard the name out in Arizona.
+'Alexander Huntington's' rather an uncommon name, you know. But what could
+have been her motive for keeping everything so still?"
+
+"I've no idea," said Anthony, and let Carey talk on by himself till the
+car came. He was unwilling to discuss Rachel Redding's affairs on a street
+corner even with Wayne Carey, because she was Juliet's friend. But he had
+an idea as to why Rachel had been so reserved about herself. There were
+three men in the East whose interest in Huntington's life or death had not
+been an altogether unbiased one. He could understand that the girl would
+not be eager to declare herself free to them, though the fact of
+Huntington's death had reached them soon after its occurrence. But this
+other fact--that she had married him only at the last moment--it was
+obvious that the sort of girl Rachel Redding was would never make capital
+out of that strange occurrence, whatever its explanation might be. That
+Roger Barnes knew nothing of it he was quite certain.
+
+He missed Juliet from the corner where she and the boy usually met him,
+and hurrying on to the house came upon his wife just as she was leaving.
+
+"Oh, I didn't realise I was late, dear," she said, while Anthony swung his
+little son up to his shoulder, eliciting triumphant shouts as a reward.
+"Tony, Rachel is here."
+
+"_Rachel?_"
+
+"Hush--yes; she's upstairs, and her window is open. Walk down the orchard
+with me and I'll tell you. Her coming, an hour ago, was what made me
+forget the time."
+
+"Carey was talking about her this afternoon," said Anthony, strolling by
+her side and carrying on a frolic with the boy at the same time. "He'd
+just heard a singular thing--that she wasn't married to Huntington till
+the very night he died."
+
+"She told me. She's going away to-night, she insists; but I shall not let
+her. No, Mr. Huntington wouldn't let her marry him. After they went away
+he said he wouldn't take her unless he got well. Tony, he was a fine
+character; in our sympathy for Roger Barnes we haven't appreciated him. It
+was only at the last that he let her do it. She found out how happy it
+would make him then, and she would have it so."
+
+"I'm glad she did--poor fellow. Juliet, Roger Barnes is in town."
+
+"Really?" Juliet stopped, her breath catching. "Oh, Tony----"
+
+"Came day before yesterday--leaves to-morrow night for Hongkong."
+
+"Tony!"
+
+Anthony looked down at her, smiling. "There's a situation for you. Can you
+be expected to keep your friendly hands off that possibility?"
+
+"He won't go away without coming to see us?"
+
+"Most certainly not."
+
+"Then he will naturally come to-night."
+
+"It's more than probable."
+
+"Tony, I won't be trying to manage fate--that's what the doctor calls
+it--if I keep Rachel here until after----"
+
+"Until after the Overland Limited leaves for San Francisco? Well, fate
+needs a little assistance once in a while. I think you may legitimately
+persuade Rachel to stay, if you can. What is her hurry, anyway?"
+
+"I can't find out, except that I imagine she's afraid of meeting one of
+the men she most assuredly would meet if they knew she had come. She
+thinks Roger Barnes is in Vienna still."
+
+"She does? Ye gods! I think my knees will begin to tremble if I see their
+meeting imminent. Come, son, let's try a race to the house. I'll give you
+to the big, crooked apple tree. One--two--three--go!"
+
+Juliet followed more slowly, thinking busily. Rachel had been very decided
+about going back into the city that night. Mrs. Huntington, Senior, was
+with friends, who had begged her daughter's acceptance of their
+hospitality, and for the elder woman's sake she had acquiesced. Rachel was
+a keeper of promises, Juliet knew. And to tell her of the probability of
+the doctor's appearance would be a doubtful means of securing her
+detention. But if, for any reason, the doctor should fail to
+appear--Juliet made up her mind that she would give fate her chance until
+nine o'clock that night. If by that time Barnes had not come----
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Juliet looked on eagerly while Anthony greeted Rachel. Her friend had
+never seemed to her so lovely as now, in her simple black gown,
+accentuating, as it did, the deep tone of her hair and eyes. Her face had
+gained in colour and contour in the Arizona climate--its tints were
+richer. The delicacy of her features was not changed, but their beauty was
+greater.
+
+"You've lived much outdoors, I see," said Anthony, when dinner was over
+and the three had gone out upon the porch, "and it's been good for you."
+
+"I've even slept outdoors," Rachel told them, "fully half the year; and
+ridden horseback every day. I can't quite think how the electrics are
+going to seem in place of my gallop on Scot. The people on the ranch where
+we were have simply made me do the things they did. The owner was a dear
+old gentleman; he gave me Scot. He wanted to send him after me; but nurses
+have small use for horses, I believe," she ended, smiling.
+
+"That's the plan, is it?"
+
+"Yes. It's what I can do best, I think. I am to enter the training-school
+the first of July, at the Larchmont Memorial Hospital."
+
+"I'll wager tremendous odds you don't," thought Anthony, "in spite of that
+confident tone. If Roger Barnes looks in to-night it's all up with your
+plans--or make a bigger fight than even you can do. A man who can't stay
+in his own town because you are out of it----"
+
+He was sitting--purposely--where he faced the road. He had considerately
+offered Rachel a chair with her back to the highway. Juliet was swinging
+lightly in the hammock behind the vines. Anthony, talking on about Arizona
+and the Larchmont Memorial, kept an eye on the approach to the house from
+the corner where visitors always left the car. His watch was rewarded at
+length by the sight of a figure rapidly turning the corner and making
+straight for the house.
+
+"Now we're in for it," he thought. "From now on the question with Juliet
+and me will be how we can most gracefully efface ourselves without seeming
+to do it. If I remember this young person correctly she's a little
+difficult to leave unchaperoned against her will."
+
+Out of the corner of his eye he kept track of the approaching figure. It
+was coming on at a great pace, and in the twilight could be seen looming
+taller and taller as it crossed the road and turned in across the lawn,
+making a short cut according to Barnes's own fashion, so that the coming
+footsteps were noiseless, even to the moment when the figure reached the
+porch itself.
+
+"Now for it," thought Anthony, feeling as if the curtain were about to
+ascend on the fourth act of a play, when the third had ended amidst all
+possible excitement.
+
+"I found the roses blooming just as they used to do, at the side of the
+house"--Rachel's warm, contralto voice was answering a question from
+Juliet--"only so untended. I think I shall have to come out again before I
+begin my work, to look after them."
+
+Anthony did not turn as the step he had been watching for sounded upon the
+porch. To save his life he could not help keeping his eyes upon Rachel's
+face. Rachel herself looked up with the air of the visitor who does not
+know the guests of the house, and the expression Anthony saw upon her face
+showed only the slightest possible surprise--certainly no other feeling.
+
+Juliet rose. "Ah, Mr. Lockwood," she said, with a cordiality, sincere
+little person though she was, Anthony knew for once she did not feel. "In
+the dusk I couldn't be quite sure."
+
+Lockwood's eyes instantly turned to Rachel. That he had known in some way
+whom he was to see was evident from a most unusual agitation in his
+manner.
+
+"Mrs.--Huntington," he got out somehow, taking her hand, and staring
+eagerly down into her face, "I heard you were home, and I hoped to find
+you here. I--you are--I am extremely glad----"
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Half an hour later Anthony came upon his wife in the darkness of the
+dining-room. "Oh, you shouldn't have left them when I was away," she said.
+"Little Tony cried out and I had to go. I know Rachel doesn't want to be
+left with him to-night."
+
+"Angels and chaperons defend us," muttered Anthony. "I can't stand it
+forever to feel a man wanting to kill me for staying by him through a
+meeting like this, after three years. I didn't know but Lockwood would
+attempt to throw me off my own porch. Give him a chance--he hasn't any,
+anyhow."
+
+"It's after nine," whispered Juliet.
+
+"I know it. Roger's taking a terrible risk."
+
+"He doesn't know she's here. But I thought he cared enough for us to----"
+
+"That's what I've been so sure of. He's probably been detained by some
+case. He's getting so distinguished, the minute he sets foot in town now
+the folks with things the matter with them begin to block his path. I hope
+she knows what she throws over her shoulder if she refuses him now."
+
+"I don't see that she's going to have a chance to refuse him," mourned
+Juliet. "Do you think he'd ever forgive us if we let him get away without
+knowing she was here?"
+
+"Lockwood found it out, somehow. Carey's safe to tell him if he sees
+him--and he's pretty sure to, at Roger's club."
+
+"You couldn't telephone?"
+
+"Where? If he can he'll come here, if only to get news of her. She's never
+let him write to her, has she?"
+
+"He told me she hadn't when he was here last fall. And she didn't know
+where he was."
+
+"Fellow-conspirator," whispered Anthony, "we'll give fate her chance
+to-night. If she bungles the game we'll take it into our own hands
+to-morrow. But I've a feeling I'd like to let it happen by itself, if it
+will."
+
+When Lockwood had gone--which was not until eleven o'clock, in spite of
+the way his hosts remained in his vicinity--Rachel stood still upon the
+porch smiling a little wearily at Juliet.
+
+"My staying all night has been settled for me," she said. "There was no
+way to go."
+
+"Luckily for us," Juliet answered. "Sit here a little longer, dear. It's
+such a perfect night, and I know we shall see little enough of you when
+you get at work."
+
+Rachel dropped into the hammock. "I should like to lie here all night,"
+she said, "and watch the stars until I go to sleep. I've done that so
+many, many nights from under a tent flap."
+
+All at once she looked up, her eyes widening. Upon the porch step stood a
+strong figure--as unlike Lockwood's gracefully slender one as possible. A
+man's eyes were gazing steadily down into hers--determined gray eyes, with
+a light in them. The two faces were plainly visible to each other in the
+radiance from the open door.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.--A HIGH-HANDED AFFAIR
+
+
+If she had not been standing in the doorway Juliet would have run away,
+but she had to welcome Dr. Roger Barnes, a traveler whom she had not seen
+for almost a year. Her presence, however, after one glad greeting, seemed
+not to bother him much. He turned from her to Rachel, who had risen, and
+took her outstretched hand in both his.
+
+"It's been rather a long evening," he said, "wandering around and around
+this place, waiting for the other man to go. I explored the orchard and
+the willow path, and every familiar haunt. I had to refresh myself
+occasionally by stealing up for a glimpse of your face between the vines.
+But, somehow, that only made it harder to wait. I had to march myself off
+again with my fists gripped tight in my pockets to keep them off that
+fellow, eating you up with his eyes--confound him--you, who belong only to
+me."
+
+He did not smile as he said the last words, but stood looking eagerly at
+her with a gaze that never faltered. She tried to draw her hands away; it
+was useless. Juliet slipped off, knowing that neither of them would see
+her go.
+
+"Come down on the lawn with me," he said, but she resisted.
+
+"Please stay here, Doctor Barnes," she said, "and please let me have my
+hand. I can't talk so."
+
+"You needn't talk--for a while," he answered. He sat down facing her. "At
+six o'clock I found out you were here. At eight--as soon as I could get
+away--I came out. I told you how I spent the evening. If I had needed
+anything to sharpen my longing for you that would have done it--but I
+think I had reached about the limit of what I could bear in that line
+already. It has been one constant augmenting thirst for a draught that was
+out of my reach. I shouldn't have kept my promise not to write you another
+day after I had been here this time and heard--what I have heard,
+Rachel."
+
+She did not answer. Her face was turned away; she was very still. Only a
+slightly quickened breathing, of which he was barely conscious, betrayed
+to him that this was not listening of an ordinary sort.
+
+"I shouldn't have said anything could make any difference with my feeling,
+to strengthen it," he went on very quietly, after a while, "but I find it
+has. I don't try to explain it to myself, except by the one thing I am
+sure of--that Alexander Huntington was the noblest and most heroic of men,
+and deserved to the full those last few hours of knowledge that you had
+taken his name. And I can understand your loyalty to him in wishing to
+wear it these three years. But, Rachel, I can't let you wear it any
+longer."
+
+She turned her face a shade farther away.
+
+"I am leaving to-morrow night for another year's absence." He spoke as
+simply as if he were discussing the most ordinary of subjects. "So I can
+see but one thing to do, and that is----"
+
+He got up and came around behind her, standing in the shadow of the vines,
+where the light did not touch him--"and that is, to take you with me."
+
+He had not said it doubtfully, although his inflection was very gentle.
+She moved quickly, startled.
+
+"Doctor Barnes----"
+
+"Yes, I'm ready for them. You can't raise an objection that I'm not ready
+for, not one that I can't meet--except one. And that you can't raise,
+Rachel."
+
+She was silent, the words upon her lips held in check by this last bold
+declaration.
+
+"You see you can't, being truthful," he said, smiling a little. "If I seem
+too confident, forgive me; but I've carried with me all these years that
+one look, when you forgot to veil your eyes away from me as you always
+had--and always have since then. When I get that look from you again----"
+He paused, drawing a long breath. "I don't dare dream of it. Rachel, will
+you go?"
+
+She tried to glance at him, and managed it, but no higher than his
+shoulders.
+
+"I am engaged to take the training for nurses at the Larchmont
+Memorial----" she began.
+
+But he interrupted her joyfully. "You don't say, 'I don't love you'--it's
+only, 'I was intending to be a nurse.' I told you you couldn't say it,
+because it isn't true. You do love me, Rachel. Tell me so."
+
+Her hurried breathing was plainly perceptible now. She rose quickly, as if
+she could not bear the telltale lamplight upon her face any longer, and
+went hurriedly across the porch and down upon the lawn, into the
+starlight. He followed her, his pulses bounding.
+
+"Oh, give up to me," he said in her ear, his own breath coming fast.
+"You've been fighting it four years now--it's no use. We were made for
+each other, and we've known it from the first. You stood heroically by
+your first promise--you gave him all you could; but that's all over. You
+don't have to be true to anything or anybody now but me. Give up, dear,
+and let me know what it feels like to have you pull a man toward you
+instead of pushing him away."
+
+They had reached the edge of the orchard--in deep shadow; and she
+stopped.
+
+"I don't know what I came down here for," she said, in confusion.
+
+"I do; you were running away. It's your instinct to run away--I love you
+for it--it's what first made me want to follow. But I can't stand your
+running away much longer. Look, Rachel, can you see? I'm holding out my
+arms. Rachel--I can't wait----"
+
+For an instant longer she held out, while he stood silent, holding himself
+that he might have the long-dreamed-of joy of receiving her surrender.
+Then, all at once, he realised that it had been worth all his days of
+patient and impatient waiting, for turning to him at last she gave
+herself, with the abandon such natures are capable of showing when they
+yield after long resistance, into the arms which closed hungrily around
+her.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+If anybody could have told what happened during the next twenty-four hours
+it would have been Juliet, for it was she who took the helm of affairs.
+She lay awake half the night, or what there was left of it after the
+doctor had come back with Rachel and told his friends what had happened
+and what was yet to happen, planning to make the hasty wedding as ideal as
+might be. She was a wonderful planner, and a most energetic and
+enthusiastic young matron as well, so by five in the afternoon she had
+accomplished all that had seemed to her good. Rachel's part was only to
+see that her trunk was packed, her explanations offered and good-byes
+said, and her choice made of several exquisite white gowns which Juliet
+had had sent out from town.
+
+"But I can't be married in white, Mrs. Robeson," she had said protestingly
+when Juliet had opened the boxes.
+
+"Yes, you can--and must. This is your only bridal, dear. The other--you
+know that was only what the doctor said of it once--'your hand in his to
+the last'--the hand of a friend. But this--isn't this different?"
+
+Rachel had turned away her face. "Yes, this is different," she had owned.
+"But----"
+
+"He asked me to beg you for him to have it so," Juliet urged, and Rachel
+was silent. So the simplest of the white frocks it was, and in it Rachel
+looked as Juliet had meant she should.
+
+Only Judith and Wayne Carey were asked down to see them married. To humour
+the doctor the ceremony was performed in the orchard, near the entrance to
+the willow path. The time afterward was short, and before she knew it
+Juliet was bidding the two good-bye.
+
+"I've got her," said the doctor, looking from Juliet to Rachel, who stood
+at his side. "She's mine--all mine. I have to keep saying it over and over
+to make sure."
+
+"For your comfort," answered Juliet, smiling at them both, "I'll tell you
+that she looks as if she were yours."
+
+"Does she?" he cried, laughing happily. "How does she look?" He turned and
+surveyed her. "She looks very proud and sweet and still--she's always been
+those things--and very beautiful--more beautiful than ever before. But do
+you think she really looks as if she were mine? Tell me how."
+
+Juliet turned from him, big and eager like a boy, to his bride, "proud and
+sweet and still," as he had said. "I've never seen Rachel look absolutely
+happy before," she told him. "There's always been a bit of a shadow. But
+now--look down into her eyes, Roger; there's no shadow there now."
+
+But when he would have looked Rachel's lashes fell. "Not yet? By-and-by
+then, Rachel," he whispered. Then he turned to Juliet--and Anthony, who
+had come up to stand beside her.
+
+"If it hadn't been for you and your home-making this day would never have
+come for me," he said. "You have been good friends and true, to us both.
+Let us keep you so--and good-bye."
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.--JULIET PROVES HERSELF STILL INDIFFERENT
+
+
+On a July evening, a month later, Cathcart and a great roll of architects'
+paper arrived on the Robeson porch. For an hour Juliet looked and
+listened, while Anthony, as he had promised, said not a word to bias her
+decision. Cathcart laid before her plans for a new house which were--even
+Anthony could but admit to himself beyond praise. From every
+standpoint--the artistic, the domestic, the practical, even the
+economical, so far as the modern architect understands the meaning of the
+word--the plans were ideal. Juliet studied them absorbedly, showing
+plainly her appreciation of them.
+
+"It would be a beautiful home," she said at length. "I can think of
+nothing more perfect than such a house."
+
+Cathcart looked triumphant. Without glancing at Anthony he produced
+another set of plans.
+
+"Just to please myself, Mrs. Robeson," he announced, "I have spent some
+interesting hours in trying to show what could be done with this old
+house, should any one care to lay out a reasonable sum upon it. Frankly,
+old houses never repay much expenditure of money, yet there is a certain
+satisfaction in working out the details of restoration and improvement
+which makes interesting study. Purely as a matter of that sort I have
+fancied such extensions as these."
+
+He laid the plans before her. Juliet looked, bent over them, cried out
+with delight, and called upon Anthony to join her.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Cathcart," she said eagerly, "before you proved yourself an
+exceedingly fine architect; but now you show yourself a master. To make
+this of the old house--why, it's far the higher art."
+
+Anthony glanced, laughing, across at Cathcart, whose face had fallen so
+pronouncedly that Juliet would have seen it if she had been observing. But
+she was too absorbed in the new plans.
+
+"If we could do this," she was saying, "it would satisfy my best ideals of
+a permanent home."
+
+"But, my dear Mrs. Robeson," stammered the man of castles, "consider the
+location--the neighbourhood--the rural character of the surroundings."
+
+"I do," she answered, still studying the plans. "I love them all--and the
+old home most of all. Ever since I knew"--how had she known? they
+wondered--"that a change of houses was a possible thing for us I have been
+homesick in anticipation of a change I couldn't bear to think of. Yet I
+wondered if we ought to go. But if you can make this of the old home----"
+
+She lifted to her husband an enthusiastic face. His eyes met hers in a
+long look in which each read deep into the mind of the other. Then Anthony
+Robeson, like a man who hears precisely what he most wants to hear, turned
+smiling to Cathcart.
+
+"I think you've lost, Steve," he said.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Good Fiction Worth Reading.
+
+A series of romances containing several of the old favorites in the field
+of historical fiction, replete with powerful romances of love and
+diplomacy that excel in thrilling and absorbing interest.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+WINDSOR CASTLE. A Historical Romance of the Reign of Henry VIII, Catharine
+of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. By Wm. Harrison Ainsworth, Cloth. 12mo. with
+four illustrations by George Cruikshank. Price, $1.00.
+
+  "Windsor Castle" is the story of Henry VIII., Catharine, and Anne
+  Boleyn. "Bluff King Hal," although a well-loved monarch, was none too
+  good a one in many ways. Of all his selfishness and unwarrantable
+  acts, none was more discreditable than his divorce from Catharine, and
+  his marriage to the beautiful Anne Boleyn. The King's love was as
+  brief as it was vehement. Jane Seymour, waiting maid on the Queen,
+  attracted him, and Anne Boleyn was forced to the block to make room
+  for her successor. This romance is one of extreme interest to all
+  readers.
+
+HORSESHOE ROBINSON. A tale of the Tory Ascendency in South Carolina in
+1780. By John P. Kennedy. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by Watson
+Davis. Price, $1.00.
+
+  Among the old favorites in the field of what is known as historical
+  fiction, there are none which appeal to a larger number of Americans
+  than Horseshoe Robinson, and this because it is the only story which
+  depicts with fidelity to the facts the heroic efforts of the colonists
+  in South Carolina to defend their homes against the brutal oppression
+  of the British under such leaders as Cornwallis and Tarleton.
+
+  The reader is charmed with the story of love which forms the thread of
+  the tale, and then impressed with the wealth of detail concerning
+  those times. The picture of the manifold sufferings of the people, is
+  never overdrawn, but painted faithfully and honestly by one who spared
+  neither time nor labor in his efforts to present in this charming love
+  story all that price in blood and tears which the Carolinians paid as
+  their share in the winning of the republic.
+
+  Take it all in all, "Horseshoe Robinson" is a work which should be
+  found on every book-shelf, not only because it is a most entertaining
+  story, but because of the wealth of valuable information concerning
+  the colonists which it contains. That it has been brought out once
+  more, well illustrated, is something which will give pleasure to
+  thousands who have long desired an opportunity to read the story
+  again, and to the many who have tried vainly in these latter days to
+  procure a copy that they might read it for the first time.
+
+THE PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND. A story of the Coast of Maine. By Harriet
+Beecher Stowe. Cloth, 12mo. Illustrated. Price, $1.00.
+
+  Written prior to 1862, the "Pearl of Orr's Island" is ever new: a book
+  filled with delicate fancies, such as seemingly array themselves anew
+  each time one reads them. One sees the "sea like an unbroken mirror
+  all around the pine-girt, lonely shores of Orr's Island" and
+  straightway comes "the heavy, hollow moan of the surf on the beach,
+  like the wild angry howl of some savage animal."
+
+  Who can read of the beginning of that sweet life, named Mara, which
+  came into this world under the very shadow of the Death angel's wings,
+  without having an intense desire to know how the premature bud
+  blossomed? Again and again one lingers over the descriptions of the
+  character of that baby boy Moses, who came through the tempest, amid
+  the angry billows, pillowed on his dead mother's breast.
+
+  There is no more faithful portrayal of New England life than that
+  which Mrs. Stowe gives in "The Pearl of Orr's Island."
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the
+publishers, A. L. BURT COMPANY, 52-58 Duane St., New York.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Good Fiction Worth Reading.
+
+A series of romances containing several of the old favorites in the field
+of historical fiction, replete with powerful romances of love and
+diplomacy that excel in thrilling and absorbing interest.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+GUY FAWKES. A Romance of the Gunpowder Treason. By Wm. Harrison Ainsworth.
+Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by George Cruikshank. Price, $1.00.
+
+  The "Gunpowder Plot" was a modest attempt to blow up Parliament, the
+  King and his Counsellors. James of Scotland, then King of England, was
+  weak-minded and extravagant. He hit upon the efficient scheme of
+  extorting money from the people by imposing taxes on the Catholics. In
+  their natural resentment to this extortion, a handful of bold spirits
+  concluded to overthrow the government. Finally the plotters were
+  arrested, and the King put to torture Guy Fawkes and the other
+  prisoners with royal vigor. A very intense love story runs through the
+  entire romance.
+
+THE SPIRIT OF THE BORDER. A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio
+Valley. By Zane Grey. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson
+Davis. Price, $1.00.
+
+  A book rather out of the ordinary is this "Spirit of the Border." The
+  main thread of the story has to do with the work of the Moravian
+  missionaries in the Ohio Valley. Incidentally the reader is given
+  details of the frontier life of those hardy pioneers who broke the
+  wilderness for the planting of this great nation. Chief among these,
+  as a matter of course, is Lewis Wetzel, one of the most peculiar, and
+  at the same time the most admirable of all the brave men who spent
+  their lives battling with the savage foe, that others might dwell in
+  comparative security.
+
+  Details of the establishment and destruction of the Moravian "Village
+  of Peace" are given at some length, and with minute description. The
+  efforts to Christianize the Indians are described as they never have
+  been before, and the author has depicted the characters of the leaders
+  of the several Indian tribes with great care, which of itself will be
+  of interest to the student.
+
+  By no means least among the charms of the story are the vivid
+  word-pictures of the thrilling adventures, and the intense paintings
+  of the beauties of nature, as seen in the almost unbroken forests.
+
+  It is the spirit of the frontier which is described, and one can by
+  it, perhaps, the better understand why men, and women, too, willingly
+  braved every privation and danger that the westward progress of the
+  star of empire might be the more certain and rapid. A love story,
+  simple and tender, runs through the book.
+
+RICHELIEU. A tale of France in the reign of King Louis XIII. By G. P. R.
+James. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson Davis, Price,
+$1.00,
+
+  In 1829 Mr. James published his first romance, "Richelieu," and was
+  recognized at once as one of the masters of the craft.
+
+  In this book he laid the story during those later days of the great
+  cardinal's life, when his power was beginning to wane, but while it
+  was yet sufficiently strong to permit now and then of volcanic
+  outbursts which overwhelmed foes and carried friends to the topmost
+  wave of prosperity. One of the most striking portions of the story is
+  that of Cinq Mar's conspiracy; the method of conducting criminal
+  cases, and the political trickery resorted to by royal favorites,
+  affording a better insight into the statecraft of that day than can be
+  had even by an exhaustive study of history. It is a powerful romance
+  of love and diplomacy, and in point of thrilling and absorbing
+  interest has never been excelled.
+
+For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the
+publishers, A. L. BURT COMPANY, 52-58 Duane St., New York.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Indifference of Juliet, by Grace S. Richmond
+
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