The Annes

_Books by Marion Ames Taggart_

AT AUNT ANNA’S BETH OF OLD CHILTON BETH’S OLD HOME BETH’S WONDER-WINTER BETTY GASTON THE SEVENTH GIRL BLISSYLVANIA POST-OFFICE BY BRANSCOME RIVER CAPTAIN SYLVIA DADDY’S DAUGHTERS DAUGHTERS OF THE LITTLE GREY HOUSE DOCTOR’S LITTLE GIRL ELDER MISS AINSBOROUGH FRIENDLY LITTLE HOUSE AND OTHER STORIES HER DAUGHTER JEAN HOLLYHOCK HOUSE IN THE DAYS OF KING HAL JACK HILDRETH AMONG THE INDIANS JACK HILDRETH ON THE NILE LITTLE AUNT LITTLE GREY HOUSE LITTLE WOMEN CLUB LOYAL BLUE AND ROYAL SCARLET MISS LOCHINVAR MISS LOCHINVAR’S RETURN NANCY AND THE COGGS TWINS NANCY PORTER’S OPPORTUNITY NANCY, THE DOCTOR’S LITTLE PARTNER NUT-BROWN JOAN ONE AFTERNOON AND OTHER STORIES PILGRIM MAID, A STORY OF PLYMOUTH COLONY IN 1620 PUSSY-CAT TOWN SIX GIRLS AND BETTY SIX GIRLS AND BOB SIX GIRLS AND THE SEVENTH ONE SIX GIRLS AND THE TEA ROOM SIX GIRLS GROWING OLDER SIX GIRLS GROWN UP SWEET NANCY THE ANNES THREE GIRLS AND ESPECIALLY ONE TREASURE OF NUGGET MOUNTAIN UNRAVELING OF A TANGLE WINNETOU WYNDHAM GIRLS

[Illustration: “_Before she could gather herself together ... Anne felt little Anne’s arms clinging around her waist, and looked down into the shining eyes of the child._”]

_The_ ANNES

By Marion Ames Taggart

Frontispiece By W. C. Nims

Garden City, N. Y., And Toronto Doubleday, Page & Company 1921

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

To Elizabeth

Contents

Chapter Page

I. Little Anne’S Calling 1

II. The Oldest Anne 13

III. The Quiet Room 23

IV. Anne And Anne 33

V. Small Furthering Breezes 45

VI. “The Face That Lit The Fires,” Etc. 56

VII. The Poet’S Corner 68

VIII. Candour 81

IX. Soundings 93

X. The Stray Page 104

XI. Penitential 115

XII. Making Alive 127

XIII. The ILL Wind 139

XIV. Adjustment 150

XV. Opportunity 162

XVI. Revelation 174

XVII. Honour 187

XVIII. Made In Heaven 199

XIX. The End Of The Play 210

XX. Richard 222

XXI. Wilberforce, The Painter 235

XXII. Exits And Entrances 248

XXIII. The Fall Of The Curtain 261

The Annes

Chapter I

_Little Anne’s Calling_

The thin child on the floor was completely engrossed in her occupation, but she never gave fractional attention to anything. She rested on one elbow, her weight on her hip, one long, slender leg crooked under her, the other extended at length over the green carpet, the foot that ended it dropping in and out of its flat-soled pump as it see-sawed from heel to toe.

Suddenly the child sat up, raised her elfin face, pushed back her cropped dark hair from her dark, bright eyes with the back of a slender hand somewhat grimy on its knuckles.

“Mother, I know my vocation!” she announced.

Her pretty mother, as fair and placid as little Anne was dark and dynamic, bore this announcement calmly.

“You must have your hair bobbed again, Anne,” she said. “What made you think of vocations, dear? At seven there is time enough for that; few vocations are decided quite so early.”

“Yes, but I think it is nice to get it off your mind,” Anne said. “I’ve been thinking about it for years, ever since Joan used to talk about it, when she used to think maybe she ought to be a sister. And then Antony came along, and she married him as quick! I’d hate to wiggle around like that! So I’ve wondered a whole lot what my vocation was, and now I know.”

Anne paused for the question which her mother dutifully put to her:

“Do you, dear? What is it?”

“Putting things on their legs. This beetle needs it. He gets on his back and kicks and kicks! It would melt a heart of stone. I turn him over and he feels ever so much cheerfuller! He doesn’t stay right side up; he tips over again, but I think maybe it’s partly the carpet. Anyway, I’m right here to set him going again. Prob’ly if he was a bird he’d sing to me, but poor black beetles haven’t any voice. Crickets chirp, though; do you s’pose black beetles chirp when they are enjoying themselves together?”

Anne had dropped down again on her elbow, but she sat up again as a hope for black beetles awakened in her.

“I think not, Anne; I think they cannot voice their joy,” said Mrs. Berkley, gravely.

Anne sighed and lay out at full length on the floor.

“I s’pose not. But maybe they go singing in their hearts---- Why, Mother, that’s a hymn, isn’t it, mother? Is that a sin? I didn’t mean it; honest to goodness, I never meant that hymn! Is it a sin, Mother?”

Once more Anne was excitedly erect.

“You have been told many times, Anne, that you cannot do wrong unless you mean to, sin is choosing to do wrong when you know what is right,” said this conscientious mother. “How did your beetle happen to be in this room, Anne?”

“I brought him in, Mother,” answered the child. “I turned him over out of doors, but I wanted to sit down and watch him flop. I s’pose I do upset him a little weeny bit sometimes! It’s a great temptation, but then I’m right here to set him going again, and that’s my vocation.”

“It’s really a beautiful vocation, Anne,” said her mother. “To put someone on his feet and help him to walk, only I wouldn’t confine it altogether to black beetles.”

“People?” asked Anne. “Figuravely? Don’t you mean that to be---- What are those stories? You know! All-all glory, or something?”

“Allegories. And figuratively, Anne. Yes, dear. It would be a beautiful vocation to help people to walk, wouldn’t it? And it’s sure to be yours if you’re a good woman, as I pray you will be. One way or another all good women put people on their feet.”

Mrs. Berkley hastily got her needle where it could do no harm, for she saw what was coming.

Anne scrambled to her feet, leaving her beetle on his back, vainly imploring the ceiling with his many active legs. Big girl that she was she threw herself upon her mother’s lap, and hugged her hard.

“Like you, just for all the world, ’xactly like you, you most precious, beautiful motherkins, Barbara Berkley!” Anne choked herself in choking her mother. “You help everybody in this family on their feet, and you just lead ’em right along! I wonder where’d I’d be if ’twasn’t for you showing me lovely things? Just like black beetle allegories this minute! My father, Peter Berkley, wouldn’t be hardly anything if ’twasn’t for you! You know yourself he’d never in this world remember rubbers! And prob’ly he’d die of it. And Joan--well, what in the world do you s’pose she’d do with the baby if she didn’t ask you? And as to Peter-two----!” Words for once failed Anne. Her opinion of her obstreperous fourteen-year-old brother was luckily deprived of expression. He was surer of his own vocation than Anne was of hers; it was clear to him that his calling in life was to suppress Anne.

“Dear me, Anne-baby!” gasped Mrs. Berkley. “You have hugged me breathless and my hair is coming down! Not that I am not glad that you are satisfied with me as a mother, little Anne!”

“Satisfied? Doesn’t that mean sort of getting-along-with-it?” asked Anne, the student of words.

“Oh, no. It means that a thing exactly suits you in every way,” explained Mrs. Berkley.

“Your hair isn’t coming down; it’s only rather loose. It’s prettiest down, anyway; I’ll fix it,” said Anne. “Satisfied doesn’t sound like that when people say it; they say it in a getting-along tone. When Joan got that centrepiece from Antony’s Aunt Lil last Christmas she said: ‛Oh, well, of course I’m _satisfied_ with it!’ Like that! ’Cause she per-fect-ly _detests_ Renaissance lace. And don’t you remember Peter-two made that awful bad joke about it? He said it was re-nuisance. _Nuisance_, you know, mother! Don’t you see? Because Joan put it away to give someone else; that’s what made the _re_ part of the joke: an over-again nuisance, Mother! Joan said it was a perfec’ly stupid joke; she said it was a pun. What makes me remember bad jokes, Mother? I keep remembering Peter’s worst ones. Joan said she was satisfied, but she means to give that centrepiece to someone else; Joan _said_ to Mr. Richard Latham, because he was blind, but Joan didn’t mean it; Joan never means anything not kind, like that! Now your hair isn’t loose, lovely motherkins! I see Joan coming in the back way. She hasn’t brought Barbara---- Mercy me! I forgot my beetle and Joan’ll step on him, kersmash! Joan would never see a beetle; she goes along thinking of Antony Paul and Toots! I don’t blame her; that’s the loveliest baby I ever in all my lifetime saw! And I always did say Antony was ’most too good for Joan, if she is my sister. I never expected in all my lifetime to have a brother-in-law who was half as nice as Antony Paul--so there!”

“Oh, Anne!” sighed Mrs. Berkley, her conscientious motherhood weighing upon her. “My hair may not be loose, but what about your little red tongue, my dear? I am afraid that Peter is right, and that we spoil you, child!”

“Oh, no, no, indeed, Mother!” Anne earnestly reassured her. “You bring me up just right. You let me do about everything that isn’t wicked, only just a weeny bit kind of not like every little girl, but if I wanted a crime you wouldn’t let me have it, and you teach me noble things--catechism and everything!”

Mrs. Berkley laughed her soft inward, chuckling laugh, as she often did at Anne’s speeches.

“Such high-coloured words, little Anne! Fancy craving a crime!

“Joan, dear, the baby must have let you sleep last night. You look blooming, my daughter!”

Mrs. Berkley arose to take into her arms a pretty young creature, all soft tints like her mother--sweet, normal, and contented, not in any way suggesting sisterhood to little Anne.

“Oh, Mother, dearest,” Joan remonstrated in a voice that declared in its first note that it was made to sing lullabies, “as though Barbara were not always good now! For five months, since she passed her third month, she has let me sleep from eleven till two, and Antony and I love to have her waken before four because she is sweetest before dawn. Antony says the truly poetical time to see a baby is at dawn--provided you can get your eyes open to look! Antony is romantic; then he is ashamed of it and pokes fun at himself! Anne, you monkey, why don’t you come over to kiss me? And what _have_ you in your hand?”

“It’s my beetle, Joan,” said Anne, complying with her sister’s request. “I am looking for a safe place for him, where he can get on his legs himself when I am gone. It ought to be something with kind of sticky walls. I don’t mean sticky-that-holds-you, but sticky-that-can-be-stuck-to; that kind. If you don’t mind, mother, dear, I’ll stand your prayer book, and the Imitation, and these other two little pious books around him, because they’re all bound in that soft leather, like gloves, that makes you crawl, and I want him to crawl. It won’t be sacredligious to use them, because it’s for charity, and bowls are dreadfully slippery.”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Joan, staring, though she should have been accustomed to Anne.

“The beetle will be far happier out of doors, Anne,” said her mother. “He will not enjoy walls, even of soft leather. Better let him go and find another when you want to help a beetle on his legs. Anne has discovered her vocation, Joan: it is helping beetles to their legs when they are on their backs and can’t get up. I think that may quite easily prove to be a prophecy of her career!”

Joan laughed. “Heaven help the human beetle that wants to lie on his back if Anne gets after him later on! She would make him walk, possibly fly.”

Anne had obediently carried the beetle out of doors and put him down in the grass. He showed as lively pleasure in being released from her ministrations as many another object of philanthropy would show if a chance to get away were offered it. Anne watched it scuttle off and returned to her family somewhat cast down.

“He kept right side up all right, and went off just as fast!” she announced. “I don’t think he acted one bit attached to me. Maybe beetles aren’t. Maybe if you have a shell you don’t have a heart. That wasn’t slang, Mother! I didn’t say it! Peter-two told me he’d fine me if I said ‛have a heart,’ but I didn’t! Honest that wasn’t the same!”

“No, dear, it wasn’t. That was science, not slang,” Joan comforted her.

Anne went over and seated herself, cross-legged, in the deep window seat. She fell into one of her meditative moods in which she was lost to all around her. Active or contemplative, Anne was always at the _nth_ degree of her temporary condition.

Mrs. Berkley and her older daughter dropped into the intimate talk of a mother and daughter who are also close friends, sharing their experiences of matronhood.

At first Anne listened, wistful, feeling a little pushed aside. Joan had been married less than two years. Anne could remember when she had been to her pretty sister an enviable combination of her discarded doll, her little sister, and the forerunner of the baby, though this Joan herself, still less Anne, had not understood.

This had been almost three years ago, before Antony Paul had come and decided Joan against a convent, while she was still discussing her vocation in terms which had imprinted themselves upon Anne’s memory. Anne had not been her sister’s chief interest since she was four, so it was not that which she missed as she sat in the window seat; it was her mother’s divided interest that the little girl grudged.

Anne’s dog, Cricket, an apprehensive, black-and-tan, bow-legged beagle, came to sit close to his little mistress, snuggling his head backward to beg for her hand. Anne pulled his soft ears and lost herself in ill-assorted thoughts. At last she aroused; Joan was saying:

“Mother, you don’t know men! Of course, there is Father; I must confess you know him perfectly. It takes perfect knowledge to manage a man as you manage him--and he never suspects it! Why, he even prefers to go your way after a step or two in the other direction! But you do that by being you, so sweet and gentle, and--and--well, always right, I suppose! But men are not like father; he is so reasonable! Now Antony is the dearest of dears, but I can’t say he is always reasonable. Sometimes I simply cannot make him see things as I do. Then I give in; it’s my duty. But I’m afraid there’s another side to it. I ought to make him see. Especially now that I have Barbara to train. Antony is so sweet I could get him to do anything if I cried, but that’s a mean trick! A woman to play on a man’s chivalry! I’ve got to study, strengthen my mind, you know! Men are much, much more childish than we are, mother, yet they are fearful to argue with; they’re so horribly logical. And of all things you can’t trust to bring you out in an argument where you expected to land, logic is the worst!”

Mrs. Berkley laughed her little amused laugh.

“It even leads you astray in the construction of a sentence apparently,” she said. “I never knew a young matron who did not think that her study of her husband had revealed depths no other woman had ever fathomed. But I assure you, Joan, men are far more alike than women are. I have no doubt that by and by Antony will be led by you, just as you think your father is led by me. But rest assured, my dear, I don’t lead your father by logic!”

Anne unwound herself and stretched her long, thin legs with a sigh.

“I shall never get married,” she said. “I shall _not_! And it cramps dreadfully to sit with your legs under you on such a hard seat. I see Miss Anne Dallas. She is going to the post office, I s’pose; she has a lot of letters and stuff. She’s going to mail them for Mr. Latham, most likely. She looks as nice! I think queer blue dresses are perfec’ly lovely. Kit Carrington has stopped her. He took off his hat most graceful. It’s the way they do in stories, old stories, when it was long ago, when they doff their hats. So did Kit Carrington. I never knew how it was till now, but that’s what he did: doffed it. Look, Mother. Like this.”

Anne stood up and swept an imaginary hat to her side with a splendid gesture, then let her head droop deferentially and struck a listening pose. Then she straightened her lithe body and turned upon her mother and sister an excited, glowing little face.

“Well, I never knew Kit was in love with Anne Dallas till now!” she cried.

“Anne!” her mother remonstrated. “I really will not allow you to be so impertinent. What a remark from a little girl like you! And _Kit_? You mean Mr. Carrington, I suppose? Mr. Christopher Carrington? And Miss Dallas? Do you?”

“Yes, Mother,” said Anne, meekly. “I forgot. They all say Kit Carrington; he’s so nice. That’s the reason, I s’pose, and young of his age.”

“He must be as much as twenty-three or four,” observed Joan.

Then, inconsistently after her mother’s rebuke, after the manner of older people with a precocious child like Anne, she asked:

“What possessed you to say that Kit Carrington was in love with Anne Dallas, child?”

“I can see he is,” said little Anne, rejoicing in this opportunity to continue the subject. “He got all red and he’s looking at her about like Antony when you come in, Joan; this way.”

Anne thrust forward her head, wreathed her mobile lips into a chastened smile, and rolled her flashing dark eyes in what was meant for an adoring expression. She instinctively heightened her effect by clasping her hands, though Christopher Carrington had indulged in no gestures.

“Anne, really, I dislike this exceedingly,” began her mother, but her rebuke was spoiled by Joan’s flight to the window where she ensconced herself behind the curtains to verify Anne’s report.

Mrs. Berkley had a sense of humour that asserted itself at unsuitable times. She chuckled now.

“Sister Anne, Sister Anne, hast thou really espied Romance from thy window?” she murmured. “Sister Anne, is thy report true of what approaches? But, alas for _your_ little sister Anne’s training, Joan! I can’t join you; they would see me! What do you make out, Joan?”

Joan waved her hand behind her back, signalling to her mother to let her have Sister Anne’s watch tower undisturbed for a few moments.

At last she turned away and came over to her mother, Anne with her; Anne had been frankly watching the conversation in the street, untrammelled by the handicap of adult years.

“Well, of course, Mother, one can’t be sure of such a thing from across the street, looking on at one chance meeting, but it does seem as though our Anne’s keen eyes were not far wrong,” Joan announced. “Kit has an air of profound admiration. I couldn’t say as to Anne Dallas; you can’t tell much about a girl. I wonder! They’ve gone on now, in opposite directions. What a handsome boy Kit is! So manly, carries himself so well! He has the nicest smile I ever saw--except Antony’s! I wonder, I do wonder!”

“Anne is a dear girl,” said Mrs. Berkley. “If it were so--poor Richard Latham!”

“Oh, Mother, you don’t think----” began Joan.

“Anne is a dear girl,” repeated her mother. “Do you suppose it is likely that a lonely, hungry-hearted man like Richard Latham, sitting in darkness all his days, could have such a girl as Anne beside him constantly, writing his poems at his dictation, reading to him in her soft, lovely voice, serving him in countless ways, and not learn to love her? I’ve been hoping it would be so. For why should not Anne Dallas love him? Blindness is rather attractive than forbidding to a girl as sweetly compassionate as Anne. And to take at his dictation his beautiful words, his exquisite fancies, to hear them first of all the world, to come to feel, to know, that you inspired most of them, to write them for him and be the medium through which the world knows them--can you imagine better food for love?”

“Well, now you say it,” admitted Joan, slowly. “But if this attractive Kit, full of charm, young, does come wooing--I wonder! Poor Mr. Latham, indeed!”

“Perhaps we should say poor Miss Anne Carrington?” suggested Mrs. Berkley. “Kit’s aunt would surely take the advent of Anne Dallas hard. She is inordinately proud of Kit, ambitious for him. She has intended him to marry Helen Abercrombie who is intemperately rich in her own right, and is the only child of ex-Governor Abercrombie. Miss Carrington had her here last summer, don’t you remember?”

“With her car and other paraphernalia; of course!” agreed Joan. “Since we are distributing pity, Motherums, we’d better shed some on Kit and Anne, if they are interested in each other, for Miss Carrington would certainly make the course of their true love run uncommonly rough! I must go home to my daughter. Isn’t it thrilling to think that we may have seen the curtain rise on an old-fashioned love drama, with a rival, a stern parent--an aunt comes to the same thing when she holds the hero’s inheritance--the princess whom the young lover should marry, everything properly cast! Anne, you witch-child, you are an uncanny elf! Good-bye, dear.”

Joan kissed her mother and her sister and was gone.

Anne stood scowling at the table cover, motionless for several minutes, unseeing, lost in thought.

“Anne, dear, what is it?” her mother aroused her.

“I was thinking this was the most Annest town I ever saw: Miss Anne Carrington, Anne Dallas, little Anne Berkley; prob’ly lots more,” she said. “When I’m confirmed I’m going to take Ursula for my new name, ’cause there isn’t one of them. Then you can call me that, so everybody’ll know me apart.”

“I can tell you apart, childie, this minute! Come here, little Anne, and let me rock you, though your legs are uncomfortably long for this low chair.” Mrs. Berkley held out her arms invitingly and Anne ran into them.

“Another thing I was thinking when you and Joan were talking about Mr. Latham and Ki--Mr. Carrington--all wanting to marry her. I think we’re not half sorry enough for all the trouble everybody makes God, all wanting the same thing and praying about it! It must be awful to have to say no to such lots of ’em! And He can’t say yes to more’n half when there’s two, just even, you see. It makes me feel sorry for Him. Is that a sin, Mother?” Anne lifted her head out of her mother’s shoulder and gazed at her with profoundly sad eyes.

Her mother kissed the lids down over those great dark eyes. Sometimes her heart ached with fear of this strange child’s future. Then again Anne was so reassuringly human that the pang of anxiety over her unearthliness was swallowed up in anxiety of the opposite sort.

So now Mrs. Berkley kissed down the lids over the meditative eyes and murmured comfortingly:

“Little Anne must remember that God knows best.”

Anne sprang to her feet with a whoop that made her mother gasp.

“Oh, yes, ’course!” she cried, swiftly disposing of theology for the moment. “I hear Peter-two coming in. He promised to bring me elder whistles for Cricket that’ll just about make him come, no matter where he is, and if Peter-two hasn’t done it---- Well, he’ll catch it!”

With which Anne rushed from the room. An instant later her mother’s fear as to her son’s safety--if she felt any--was set at rest by a whistle so shrill that it sent Cricket cowering under the sofa.

Chapter II

_The Oldest Anne_

Christopher Carrington threw the last third of his cigar into the fireplace and watched it as it tumbled over the back log. The back log made him think of his Aunt Anne, always there, always ready to be fired by smaller sticks. He had been restlessly touring the room for fifteen minutes, examining its ornaments, familiar to him from childhood, hardly conscious that he was handling bits of frail loveliness that his aunt never allowed other hands than her own to dust.

Miss Anne Carrington had watched Kit’s adventures without comment, in spite of the strain upon her nerves, eying him with keen suspicion, now and then, giving him furtive glances that saw everything as she turned the pages of her book.

She was a tall woman, and thin, her hair was white, but her light blue eyes were undimmed; her nose was long and decidedly arched; her lips were settled into something that looked like a mocking smile. She looked uncompromising, but not so much so as she was; she looked intelligent and clever, but not as clever as she was.

She sat in a straight chair, a dignified old model, with her feet resting on a small stool. At her side stood the table that held her reading lamp; it was laden with books in French and English. Many of them lay open, face down, for Miss Carrington kept her books to serve her, and did not weigh their welfare against her convenience.

Her nephew, Christopher, was not only her nearest of kin, but her only kin near enough to consider as such. He was so dear to her, and in him her ambition had so concentrated, that existence under her domain had not been easy to him since he had passed the years when she could gratify all his desires by buying him the best sport trappings, outfits, horses, and boats that a spoiled lad could own. This Miss Carrington had done, and yet Kit was so little spoiled by these luxuries that his will was in danger of running counter to his aunt’s ambition for him.

At last Miss Carrington laid her book across her knee and watched Kit’s movements, frankly inviting confidence. Becoming conscious of this, he brought himself up with his elbow on the mantel and, turning toward her, said in that big, cheery voice of his that the old lady never could hear without thrilling to it:

“I beg your pardon, Aunt Anne! Do I give you the willies doing the zoo-tiger act like this?”

“I don’t know their Christian name--though why jungle ways should have a Christian name I don’t see--but if irritated nerves are willies, then, yes, you give them to me,” said his aunt.

She spoke in a light, slightly acrid voice, her syllables articulated like Italian.

Kit laughed.

“Nice Aunt Anne!” he approved her, impersonally. “You always sit on a chap in a delightful way. I’ll be seated, thanks.”

He dropped into the deep chair on the right of the fireplace, stretching out to his great length. But Miss Carrington saw that he at once possessed himself of the tongs and began to open and shut them in a way as tiresome as his roaming had been.

Kit nervous? This hearty, athletic lad fidgeting? Miss Carrington wondered what was on his mind. Being clever she set out to discover indirectly. She had heard a suggestion that she loathed; it had come from Minerva, her maid, and Minerva, true to her name, was, as a rule, right.

Miss Carrington closed her book, first noting the page number, for she scorned bookmarks, laid it on the table, and picked up the latest number of a newspaper supplement devoted to book news.

“Here’s a discussion of Richard Latham’s verse and essays, Kit,” she said. “Quite well done, discriminating, yet laudatory. The reviewer--it’s not signed--considers him an artist who sends out nothing unworthy, who greatly rejoices those of fine perception, consequently the few, yet these to an extent that should compensate him for the smallness of his audience. Really it is praise worth having! I don’t know Richard Latham as I should. I sent Minerva off after I’d read this to buy everything he has published. Cleavedge had only one volume, the one I already owned! So I sent her again to telephone New York, to tell Brentano’s to send me Latham complete. That is the honour of a prophet in his own country!”

Kit smiled. His aunt would not have a telephone in her house, but she was constantly sending Minerva to telephone a message from the near-by drug store.

“And what of it?” Miss Carrington would defend herself. “Is sending Minerva seven times seventy trips a day equal to one’s being on the ragged edge, dreading to be called at any hour?”

Now Kit smiled at his aunt, as she awaited his reply, and said:

“I’m not up in Mr. Latham’s work myself, Aunt Anne. But then I’m far down in lots of poets.”

“We’ll hope you will come to them,” returned his aunt. “From this review it appears that we should be immensely proud of Latham; by and by, apparently, pilgrims will come to Cleavedge to pick leaves from the ivy on his wall. Has he a wall? And ivy? Someone, it seems, wrote Richard Latham lately to ask for the genesis of one of his poems, also ‛what he meant by’ a certain stanza. That is true greatness, Kit; to get inquiries as to the meaning of a poem! There is a letter published here, setting the anxious correspondent at rest. It speaks with authority for Mr. Latham, but is not written by him. It is not badly expressed, rather a nice letter. Signed A. D. I wonder what that stands for--when it isn’t Anno Domini?”

All this long talk about Richard Latham to lead up casually to this question! And so casually reached that Kit never suspected!

He blushed slightly, as Miss Carrington noted, but he answered with his jolly laugh:

“It stands for something that sounds a good deal the same, but is different enough, Aunt Anne. It stands for Anne Dallas, I suppose; she’s Richard Latham’s secretary.”

“Oh, does it? To be sure, he would have a secretary. Pity he is blind! And the secretary would be able to write a good letter. It’s not remarkable; clear, intelligent, a good letter. His secretary must need patience--and no other interests. I suppose he might be more likely to get that in a woman, but I should want a man. However, he can get a woman sufficiently trained for his requirements at a lower salary than a man’s. Anne Dallas, you said? Not a Cleavedge name. Where did he find her? I hope she doesn’t annoy him, but if she is ugly he can’t see it! It would be horrible to a poet to have an ugly woman under his beauty-loving eyes all day, week in, week out. I wonder--but of course you don’t know, you don’t visit Mr. Latham. She can’t be a Cleavedge woman, I should think?”

Miss Carrington talked on lightly, not overdoing her carelessness, but with a voice silvery and indifferent. She watched Kit as she talked and saw him redden, trying boyishly to appear at ease.

“She isn’t a Cleavedge girl; she came from Connecticut, Aunt Anne,” Kit said.

“That’s a state I like!” Miss Carrington approved, heartily. “It’s odd--kindly, too--the present fashion of calling unattached women girls. The letter sounded mature. I suppose it is because she is earning her living that you speak of her as a girl. Is she a widow? Didn’t--no; you didn’t call her Miss Dallas.”

“Good gracious, no; she isn’t a widow!” cried Kit, and instantly regretted his vehemence, for his aunt raised her eyebrows. “Miss Dallas is young; she is a girl, a girl with a lot of girlhood in her; the kind they used to call ‛maidenly,’ you know,” Kit continued.

“I suppose you are forced to speak of maidenly as an obsolete term, Kit, my dear, because what it stood for is out of fashion,” observed Miss Carrington. She had found out all that she wanted to know for this time and was too wise to pursue the subject.

“Of course I don’t for an instant mean that girls are at heart less maidenly. That is a quality necessary to every generation, if civilization is to continue. But the outward and visible sign of that special inward grace is not worn as it was. I confess to regretting it. I claim to be modern, but it really was in beautiful good taste. I suppose a few exceedingly well-bred girls will retain that efflorescence to the end of the chapter, but the present fashion gives such horrible scope to bad taste! I found Helen Abercrombie refreshing last summer when she visited us. There’s a well-bred girl!”

“But hardly maidenly,” Kit could not refrain from saying, though he knew that it was indiscreet. “Miss Abercrombie is a finished product, of course, but she’s too--too---- Oh, well, you know, Aunt Anne! You’re an analyst of the first water! Too finished a product and up-to-the-minute, too architectural to be maidenly.”

“Christopher,” said his aunt, “there is no use whatever in ostrich-talk between us when it comes to Helen Abercrombie! You know as well as I do what is my hope for you in regard to her. To beat about the bush is to talk as an ostrich is supposed to behave: you’d see my transparently covered outlines. In so many words, then, I want you to marry Helen. I’m glad that is said.” Miss Carrington threw herself against her chair back and looked steadily at Kit.

“Aunt!” Kit drew in his breath sharply, protesting.

“And guardian,” his aunt reminded him.

Kit flushed angrily; it was true that his prospects in life depended upon his aunt’s favour.

“It doesn’t seem decent to discuss it,” Kit said. “As if I’d nothing to do but decide to beckon Helen.”

“Between ourselves, Kit, I think Helen has already made the first signals,” said Miss Carrington. “The woman usually does; Thackeray and George Bernard Shaw are right. I should be sorry to see you giving yourself the airs of a conqueror, but as an honest working basis between us we may as well admit the truth that Helen is of the same mind as Barkis.”

“Oh, Lord!” groaned Kit, helplessly. “I’m not in the least in love with her, Aunt Anne. I never could be.”

“No,” admitted Miss Carrington, judicially, “you are not. I think quite likely you never would be. I don’t recall asking you to be, my dear boy.”

Kit looked at her, his honest, rebellious young soul in his eyes.

“Christopher Carrington, listen to me with your intelligence, not merely with your ears,” began Miss Carrington, bracing herself to her task. “I rather like your feeling, which your silence announces more eloquently than words, as novelists say. Youth is the time for dreams. It is for its elders to see to it that the dreams do not become nightmares. I want, I urge you to marry Helen Abercrombie because she is preëminently suitable. She is of our class; she is handsome, highly accomplished, wealthy. She is a woman to help on a man’s career. Not only that, but she has it in her power to launch a man on his career. Her father was the best governor this state ever had. He will be nominated and reëlected this coming year. He is certain to have an important portfolio in a not-far-distant cabinet; it is more than likely that he will be his party’s presidential candidate next time. And that party is going in next time; heaven knows the country has had enough of the muddle of the past years at the other party’s hands! As Governor Abercrombie’s son-in-law you would be secure of a good diplomatic appointment. And there is nothing like such an experience to make a man, Kit! It would give you what nothing else could of dignity, of _savoir faire_. I will not allow you to turn aside from such opportunity. Then, if the not unlikely sequence follows, as President Abercrombie’s son-in-law----”

Miss Carrington shrugged her shoulders with an outward gesture of her open palms that ended her sentence for her eloquently, a trick that she had learned in her own long years abroad. A bright red spot burned in each cheek and her guarded eyes gleamed with the fire of ambition. Kit stared at her; she rarely revealed herself to this extent. He cried: “Aunt Anne, that’s all very fine, but would you have me marry a woman whom I did not love for ignoble, selfish motives?”

“Ignoble!” cried his aunt, sharply. “Do you call ambitions such as any manly man would leap toward, ignoble? Why, what else is there in life but its prizes? The bigger the better, but prizes at least. Selfish, yes! Who isn’t selfish? Children are frightened by words, not men. Of course you’re selfish. But if you enjoy beclouding your conscience tell yourself you’ll use your attainment unselfishly. You won’t, but many better, cleverer men than you, my little Christopher, befuddle themselves with pretty terms. In the meantime win, win, win your ends! Let me tell you, Kit, that there’s more sensible unselfishness in marrying for prudence than for romance: the result of that endures!”

Kit looked at his aunt with genuine pity. He knew that her ambition for him represented all that was in her of ideals, of love. A remembrance of Major Pendennis and young Arthur flitted across his mind; he pitied his aunt, but he feared lest one day he might pity himself.

“You don’t know, Aunt Anne,” he said, gently. “It must be frightful to be married to someone whom you can’t love. In the marriage you urge upon me there would be neither love nor respect; I should not love my wife, nor respect myself. You can’t realize it, Aunt Anne.”

“Bless the child!” cried Miss Carrington with a laugh. “Does he imagine himself at twenty-four wiser than a worldly old woman of sixty-eight? You mean that I can’t realize your bugaboo situation because I didn’t marry. But I was to marry once! Another woman stole my husband. There was excuse for her according to you, for I was going to marry him for ambition, and she loved him madly. I remained their friend, and I saw my vengeance. They were wretchedly unhappy, while I, with my ambition answering to his, would have crowned him.”

Miss Carrington arose and drew herself up to her full height, which was equal to Kit’s. Her narrow slipper of black silk, simply bound, without an ornament, dropped off as she arose. Kit sprang to put it on for her. She leaned on his shoulder and watched him fit the slipper on her foot. She was inordinately proud of her long, narrow feet, and never adorned their apparel.

“You see, my boy, I practise what I preach; I have ample space to stand in. Learn from the parable of the loose slipper and do not cramp your foundations.” She leaned forward to smile into Kit’s face, almost coquettishly.

“My fine lad,” she resumed, “gratify your aunt, who is almost your mother, and make your life what marriage with Helen Abercrombie will let you make it. Trust me, Kit, as a wise woman who knows her world. It will never do to face it wearing rose-coloured glasses. ‛Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,’ and it is my experience that you need not bother about the other part of your rendering. God is sure to take the things that are God’s Himself; you need not render them. They are vital things, too, my dear; your strength, your health, your youth, at last your life. Make sure of all that you can get; it is not too much.”

Kit stood with hanging head, her arm over his shoulders. He was distressed. Never had his aunt betrayed herself to him as now, and the vision of her destitution shocked his manhood, his ideals, his conscience. To have lived almost to her three score and ten, to be so clever, so strong, yet to have garnered no wheat, but only bright pebbles!

“Well, Kit,” Miss Carrington said, altering her tone and withdrawing her arm as she turned to leave him, “I’ll not ask for your answer now; in fact, I don’t want you to answer yet. But I beg you to remember that I implore you to marry Helen Abercrombie, and to marry soon. You are precisely the sort of boy who falls in love and makes a hopeless mess of his life from the loftiest plane of boundless idiocy. You were always quixotically lovable. I’m ready to admit that it is most charming in a boy, my dear, but it is fatal to a man. So listen to your doting aunt, and on your life do not disobey her! What are you going to do while I take my siesta?”

Kit felt, as his aunt meant him to feel it, the veiled threat in her warning, but he answered her question:

“I told young Peter Berkley that I’d give him my collection of postage stamps if he’d come around. I’m looking for him any minute.”

“That is nice little Mrs. Peter Berkley’s boy? The brother of my extraordinary namesake, little Anne? She is Methuselette on one side and an innocent baby on the other. I could greatly enjoy cultivating little Anne Berkley’s acquaintance,” said Miss Carrington. “I complained of difficulty in threading a needle the other day--it was the sewing afternoon at the hospital, an occasion which I grace, but hardly serve--and Mrs. Berkley had brought Anne to thread needles for us. That small elf changeling urged me to make a pilgrimage to Beaupré to get my sight restored, because, forsooth, my name being ‛Anne’ the good Saint Anne would be likely to help me! The mother is a remarkably nice, genuine person; pity she’s so _devote_!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” murmured Kit. “It seems to suit the Berkleys.”

“That’s true. And of course if one is going in for that sort of thing the only possible logic lies in the Old Way. I can see consistency in being _Other_ Worldly, but to be unworldly, my boy, is, as I’ve been eloquently telling you, utter nonsense,” said Miss Carrington, graciously. “I’ll go up now and get Minerva to read me into a nap. Tell young Peter to come another time and bring that clever, queer little sister of his, will you? Anne Berkley and Anne Carrington are far enough apart in years and views to become cronies.”

Miss Carrington stepped back and gathered up an embroidered shawl of Chinese silk which had slipped into a tiny roll at the back of her chair. She hung it over her arm; its long fringe and heavily embroidered flowers brushed Kit’s hand as he held the door open for her to pass through it. He returned to the fireplace and leaned upon the mantel, waiting for young Peter with a heaviness of heart unlike himself.

“A pilgrimage to gain her sight!” thought Kit. “Little Anne’s advice was not half bad. She would not agree to all this; she is as untainted by the world as a blossom in an old-time garden!”

The smile that made his rugged young face so gentle showed that the “she” of this encomium was not little Anne Berkley.

Chapter III

_The Quiet Room_

Cleavedge had received its name from the steep sides of the river which cleft its rocky bank formation. It may have been a misapprehension of a word--strangers spelt it “Cleavage” till they learned better--or the settlers who christened it may have meant to embody in the word the picturesque cleft edges of the cliffs. Cleavedge, with its misspelling, it remained through the growth of the village into a prosperous little city.

Richard Latham lived in a shady street not much disturbed by traffic. Several other streets ran in the same direction, leading more directly to wherever any one would be likely to go, so Latham Street was not greatly disturbed by footfalls, either. The street had been lately rechristened; Cleavedge was beginning to be aware of its celebrity.

In the beautifully proportioned living room of a house that entertained too few guests to require a drawing room the poet passed his days. It was a room built around with bookshelves uncrowded by furniture; its warm-tinted, drabbish walls hung with fine pictures and lighted by lovely gleams of colour in the pottery that occasionally broke the long stretches of the dull oiled wood of the bookcase tops. It was a man’s room, without curtains, or anything meaningless; a room of perfect beauty, inexpressibly soothing. It possessed a sort of visible silence, the silence of the woods; it was a place in which to think and to feel, rather than to act. At one end stood the piano which alone suggested sound, but to one who had heard Richard Latham play it emphasized the harmony.

At the desk, alone in the room, sat a young girl--Anne Dallas. Here she prepared her notes and carried them away to write them out where the clatter of a typewriter could not penetrate this room.

All soft browns was this Anne, hair, eyes, even the tint of her beautiful skin, warmly pale, clear, but of a shade that suggested a page that had lain under the sun’s rays.

Her hair covered her shapely head across the back from crown to neck, from ear to ear; she wore it parted and coiled in the only way its masses allowed her to treat it. There was no attempt at coquetry in the simplicity of her dress, yet no carefully thought out costume could have more perfectly adorned her, nor made her more harmonious to the room, for girl and room were each a foil to the other.

She wrote rapidly, happily humming to herself a slight air that did not get in the way of her thoughts; she smiled as she followed the balanced phrases in which Richard Latham had developed an idea that demanded the best of the language. It was said that Latham used English as no American now used it, that he was the master of a style that could not be taught.

He came into the room as Anne Dallas began another page of her copy.

She rose to greet him, but did not move toward him. She had learned that he liked to go about without anything to remind him of his misfortune. He knew every inch of this room perfectly, literally by heart, for he had himself designed it before he had been stricken. He often went straight to the right shelf and laid his hand upon the book that he wanted.

“Good morning, Miss Dallas,” he said. “‛Richard and Robin were two lazy men!’ I’ll warrant that’s what you were thinking, and that Richard had not cured himself of ‛lying in bed till the clock struck ten.’”

“More likely you were tramping before the clock struck five!” cried Anne.

“That’s nearer the mark than your rash judgment and condemnation of me by a text from Mother Goose!” said Richard Latham, throwing himself appreciatively into his comfortable chair. “I was out at six and I’m nicely tired, just enough tired to want to cut work. Besides, you extracted from me yesterday everything I have to say on every known subject! I shall have to wait to fill up from whatever the sources are that supply ideas. You’re a frightful person for getting a poor fellow going and keeping him at it till you’ve got all his brains down in funny little cabalistic signs. Then the next day you write out pages and swear the utterances that fill me with awe were hidden under those inky wriggles! I don’t believe it! You insist the inky-wriggles wisdom is mine. Stuff and nonsense! Why, I don’t know a fraction of what you say I dictate to you! It’s uncanny. The only thing that I don’t understand, and which gives a tint of colour to your statement, is that I’ve no brains left after one of those frightful days when you wind me up--like yesterday! It’s all curious. Still more so that by to-morrow you’ll wind me up again, and so on, _da capo_. But not to-day, Miss Thaumaturga! Not a bit of work shall you get out of me to-day, not the least preposition for you to set down in a dash or a dot!”

“Very well, Mr. Latham,” laughed Anne, resuming her seat and taking up her pen. “I have quite enough to do to write out what you gave me yesterday. It was a particularly productive day. You are right. Perhaps I shall ask you to listen to what I have when it is written. That will not be till well after lunch; shall you be ready then for me, do you think?”

“No,” said Richard Latham, promptly. “I shall not be. Please put down that pen, which I’m sure you’ve taken up, and put down with it all thought of work. Unless reading aloud is work? Is it hard for you to read to me? You always assure me that you don’t mind it, but I’m afraid you may. I don’t want to be troublesome. To-day I’d like to cut work and be read to. It is quite true that I’ve brain fag, and that you did wind me up to a frightful speed yesterday. I’m conscious that it is you who do it; I wonder how? It’s precisely as if you at once put into me and took out again what would never be in my brain if you didn’t do this. Are you the poet and not I, after all?”

“Hardly,” said Anne, smiling, with the woman’s instinct to mask the trouble that vaguely stirred in her, although this man could not see her face. “I am industrious, but not gifted. If I’ve any part in it, I suppose it is because you feel my delight in what you are creating, and that unconsciously urges you on. I suspect it’s no more than the simple thing we call genius, and that it takes it out of you to ride Pegasus.”

Richard Latham kept his blind eyes turned steadily toward her as if he could see her and would fathom the mystery. He shook his head. “That isn’t it,” he said, slowly. “There is something about you that makes me do my best, and more than my own best. I had other people before you came to help me, and it was a regular grind. No grind with you to start me off and hold me to it, you quiet wonder-worker! But you didn’t tell me; do you mind reading to me to-day? I don’t want to be troublesome.”

He repeated the words with a wistful note in his voice that made Anne spring to her feet and cross to a chair near him. She clasped her hands in her lap, her face sweet with pity. She could not endure it that this man, whose genius she followed breathlessly, should fear to burden others. It stabbed her to know that he never could escape this fear.

“Ah, Mr. Latham,” she said, and she did not know how her voice caressed him, nor how he at once leaped to meet the caress and shrank from that pitiful thing, pity, which may be akin to love, but which is to a lover but a bastard kin that usurps love’s throne, “don’t you know that the hours in which I read to you are delightful to me? Try to imagine what I get from them, with you to supplement what I read! I never tire reading, but----” Anne got no farther. Richard Latham started up with an exclamation, then dropped back into his chair.

“But you would read whether you like it or not, you started to say, then remembered that I might not want to hear it! You would serve me in any way that you could, out of your great, womanly compassion? I know it, oh, I know it, Anne Dallas! I am grateful; don’t think I’m not. It’s a big thing to have lavished upon me. I’m glad that at least you don’t think of your help to me as secretarial duty.”

“Oh, Mr. Latham, if you don’t want to be hurt, then don’t hurt me!” cried Anne, shrinking.

“Forgive me,” said Latham, humbly.

He bent forward and took her hand, not fumbling for it, knowing precisely where it lay, Anne noticed, wondering.

“That was a cowardly, contemptible speech! I believe I wanted to hurt you! There is a confession, and it amazes me as much as it can you that it is true. I told you that I was tired to-day; it’s nerves. Set it down to nerves, won’t you? That sounds like a sneaking plea for mercy, but I don’t mean it that way. You’d rather it were my nerves than myself that were unkind? It would be such a beastly thing to want to hurt you of all people! Confession deserves absolution when it is sincere and contrite, doesn’t it?”

“No. It makes it unnecessary,” said Anne, softly. She was glad that he could not see the tears in her eyes. Never before had this brave and gentle soul betrayed to her the effort that it cost him to be and to do without complaint all that he was and did.

“Kind little Shriver!” said Richard Latham, pressing the hand that held his tighter than Anne knew.

Then he laid it back beside its mate in her lap and arose, laughing.

“It will never do for me to be neurasthenic as well as blind,” he said, cheerfully. “I suspect I’m staying indoors too much; a man should go hay-making--when the sun shines! I’ll fetch the book I have in mind for to-day’s reading--unless you have something you’d prefer?”

He stepped quickly across the room, went to the poetry shelves, stooped, and took from the middle shelf a volume which he slapped on his left hand, brushed it across the top, and brought it to Anne.

“Suit you? Are you in the mood for it?” he asked.

It was Dante in the prose translation. Anne looked at it and smiled up at him.

“Just in the mood for it,” she said. “But I’d like to read the ‛Paradise’--or would you rather ‛begin at the beginning,’ as children say?”

“No, indeed, I’d rather hear ‛Paradise’ myself,” Richard Latham said, and resumed his chair, pulling his smoking table up to it.

“It’s your one secretarial fault, Miss Dallas: you are not a linguist. I’ve a fine old tooled copy of Dante, Italian. I’d like to teach you Italian. I lived over there a good while. Perhaps we may take up----”

He broke off sharply. “I beg your pardon, Miss Dallas; I’m delaying you.”

Anne opened the volume, once more hurt and puzzled. Richard Latham was always so equable, so friendly toward her that she could not understand this new mood. The tone of his last words relegated her to the unbridgable distance of his hired secretary.

Anne began to read at the third book, the “Paradise.” Her voice was troubled at first, but Richard smoked rapidly, apparently unconscious of it, he whose ear was ordinarily quick to hear a note of fatigue in her voice.

Anne loved beauty, and in a few moments she had forgotten herself in Dante’s vision; a little longer and she forgot her listener, which was far more. She read on and on until at last Richard put out his hand to check her.

“You are thirsty,” he said in the old gentle way to which Anne was accustomed. “And it is one o’clock. The sun is around on the other side; that means past noon. We shall not lunch till two to-day; I told Stetson to have a carriage here at three. We are going to have a real holiday, you and I. Stetson is of the party in case I feel like walking in unfamiliar places and need his arm. So put up your book and rest till luncheon.”

“How delightful, Mr. Latham!” cried Anne. “I rarely drive.”

“You are a little girl still, my helpful secretary! How old did you tell me you were?” Richard asked, well-pleased by her pleasure.

Anne arose and dropped a curtsy. Richard felt the motion of her swaying body and laughed at her.

“I am twenty-two, please, sir!” she said in a thin treble. “But I hope to be more.”

“Since you can’t be less?” Richard suggested. “Perhaps you can’t be more, either, in another sense? At least you are a good child, and I’m grateful to you. What nice times we have in this rather nice room which I made once upon a time and still enjoy almost as if I saw it! I’m glad that we have long days to ourselves and don’t suffer many interruptions. Yes, Stetson, want me?” he added as his man put his head into the doorway, knocking on the casement as he did so.

“Little Miss Berkley is here, sir, little Anne Berkley. And young Mr. Carrington--though for that matter the only Mr. Carrington--to see you, Mr. Latham,” he said.

“Bring them in here, Stetson,” said Richard Latham, rising and passing his hand over the back of his head which he had been indulging in a pleasant friction against the back of his chair.

“Please, Miss Dallas, am I too badly rumpled? Miss Anne Berkley is a critical though dear friend of mine.”

“No, not badly rumpled,” returned Anne. Her cheeks were red and her eyes had brightened at the announcement of these visitors.

Stetson returned with them. Little Anne was freshly, beautifully groomed. She precipitated herself upon Richard Latham with a cry of joy, as if she had not been sure of finding him unchanged.

“I’ve not seen you in ages, and I certainly am glad I came!” she cried.

“Thank you, my dear; I echo your sentiments, with the added interest of five times your years,” said Richard, shaking her hand, earnestly.

“No, you don’t love people better because you’re the oldest, do you?” Little Anne corrected him. Then she remembered her duty.

“I brought my friend Kit--Mr. Christopher Carrington, to see you.” She turned, but Kit was talking to Anne Dallas and for an instant little Anne stared, recalling what she had forgotten.

“Well, to think I never remembered!” she gasped. “This is him,” she added, her customary English deserting her under the stress of emotion.

“This is Kit, Mr. Latham. He thought he’d like to know you on account of your works, only I guess----”

She checked herself; Anne was a discreet child, and sympathetic.

“Glad to see you, Mr. Carrington,” said Richard Latham, heartily, using a verb that did not seem inappropriate to him. “I know your aunt, Miss Carrington. She is a clever woman, most interesting.”

“She is a wonder, is Aunt Anne,” agreed Kit. “She would have brought me here, but I met little Anne and availed myself of her friendly offices.”

“Even your aunt is not a better social sponsor than Miss Berkley,” said Richard Latham, bowing to little Anne. “The important thing is that you have come. I’ve an idea! We are going for a long, and, I hope, delightful drive into the country after lunch, which will be at two; Miss Dallas and I were going to take my man Stetson, because a blind man may easily need the help of a strong arm in exploring. I’m sure I can persuade little Anne to go. She’s fond of her namesake, Miss Dallas. What about it, Anne? Will you go if I telephone to your mother and get her consent?”

Little Anne clasped her hands upon her thin little chest.

“I think it would be so deliciously wonderful-joyful that I’d never, never forget it if Mother would say yes!” she cried, passionately.

“Bad as that, superlative little Anne?” laughed Richard.

“Mr. Carrington, if you will lunch with me and go on the drive, and would be so kind as to give me a hand over a stile, or whatever lay in my path, I’ll gladly drop Stetson out of the party. Will you do this?”

“You are awfully kind, Mr. Latham,” said Kit, gratefully. He glanced at Anne Dallas, but she did not meet his eyes. She was looking intently at Richard Latham, and it seemed to Kit that her expression was unhappy.

“I’m only too glad to go, thank you,” Kit went on. “I wonder if I may use your telephone? Aunt Anne will be expecting me to lunch. She won’t have a telephone in the house, but I can call the druggist and get him to send his boy around with a message. Aunt Anne has ways all her own!”

“I can imagine it. My telephone is in the hall; Miss Dallas will show you where. And will you call Mrs. Berkley, Miss Dallas, and get her consent to kidnapping her child?” Mr. Latham smiled at little Anne. Little Anne clasped her hands in her own dramatic gesture.

“Oh, dear, dear, dearest Miss Dallas, please let me call Mother myself! I don’t get many chances to telephone, and I love, just _love_ to do it! And I want to tell mother my own self what a great, great thing has happened to me. You said a carriage, didn’t you, Mr. Latham? It’s pretty nearly always a car. I’m not quite, perfec’ly certain I ever’ve rode--roden--I mean ridden in a carriage. I’ve rode--ridden--in the grocer’s wagon, but I can’t remember a carriage. I’d love to tell mother. And with a real poet! Would you mind, Miss Anne Dallas, if I did it myself?”

“Bless your funny little heart, Anne, of course I shouldn’t mind!” cried Anne Dallas. “Come, both guests!”

Richard Latham, left behind, stood quietly waiting, unconsciously listening to the telephone jingle, to Kit’s strong voice, to little Anne’s excited piping.

Suddenly and unreasonably he felt old and alone. He was not old, but he was alone, and around him in the beautiful room that he had made, with its spacious calm, its books, its pictures, was complete darkness.

Chapter IV

_Anne and Anne_

Minerva came cat-footed up the stairs and knocked at Miss Carrington’s sitting-room door.

Miss Carrington lowered her book, frowning impatiently.

“It’s maddening never to hear you coming, Minerva,” she said. “Luckily my nerves are equable. Now what do you want?”

“Merton sent his boy around with a message from Master Kit--Mr. Carrington. You are not to wait lunch for him; he is lunching out,” said Minerva.

“I wonder where?” murmured Miss Carrington, but she resumed her book as if the wonder were not keen.

“With Mr. Richard Latham, the poet.” Minerva had waited for the question and her eyes snapped with enjoyment at her answer.

“What!” cried Miss Carrington, erect in an instant. “Kit doesn’t know him.”

“It would seem that he must, now,” suggested Minerva. “He’s lunching there. There’s no mistake in the message, because Tommy didn’t merely say ‛Mr. Latham,’ nor ‛the poet,’ but ‛_Mr. Richard Latham, the poet_.’ That’s too much to get wrong.”

“It’s too much, whatever Merton’s boy said. How in the world did it happen?” Miss Carrington speculated. “I suppose the secretary asked him there for some reason----”

“The reason wouldn’t be hard to guess, Miss Carrington,” said Minerva, who knew how to ingratiate when she wished to. “Mr. Latham’s housekeeper, as you well know, is a friend of mine. She goes to Allen’s, the grocer’s, at this hour every day. To be sure he’s not our grocer, but the same brand of cocoa is the same brand wherever you buy it, provided the tin isn’t unsealed, and we haven’t enough cocoa for more’n two makings.”

“Well, Minerva, I don’t want to run short of cocoa,” said Miss Carrington, gravely. “You’ll find my change purse in the small right-hand drawer of my bureau. Don’t charge anything at Allen’s; I don’t like the place. I hope you won’t be long.”

“No longer than is necessary, Miss Carrington. Mrs. Lumley has to be given her head in talking around Robin Hood’s barn--provided I meet her. You can’t talk to her till she’s talked off to you whatever’s on her mind,” Minerva answered.

The sage Minerva had found Miss Carrington’s small worn tray purse, and now she took herself soundlessly away, with complete understanding between herself and her mistress as to what was expected of her.

Miss Carrington admitted her maid to intimacy though not to friendship; a lone woman must of necessity do so. No one else in her life had ever been so deeply within it as Minerva had grown to be during twenty years of service as Miss Carrington’s personal attendant, day and night, in sickness and in health.

Minerva held Miss Carrington at an estimate unlike her friends’ estimate of her; in some ways it was less, in some ways more, accurate.

She realized that Miss Carrington was clever, but she could not gauge her learning as her friends did. She had no way of knowing how witty, how accomplished her mistress was. On the other hand, no one else appreciated so fully her acumen, her efficiency.

With this appreciation, Minerva held her mistress stupid not to have achieved more. What was a maiden lady at nearly seventy, after all? Minerva’s dull sister had done better for herself; she had a husband, the rank of matron. Minerva discounted Miss Carrington’s fierce pride in being Miss Anne Carrington, of the original Cleavedge Carringtons--perhaps because it was too fierce?

Minerva knew her mistress’s faults even better than her friends did, but not the same faults. To her friends Miss Carrington was generous, unselfish, nobly, though faultily, scornful of these virtues in herself, too detached to practise them as virtues, just as she was too much engrossed in her pursuits to be lonely.

Minerva knew that she was not generous, though she lavished money; that she was bound on all sides by herself, for which self and through which self she saw all things, beyond which she never aspired. Minerva knew that she was so far from detachment that all her thoughts were chained to Anne Carrington, except when they reached out to Kit, who was but another form of her self-seeking.

Minerva knew that Miss Carrington’s temper was difficult, not less so that the restrictions which she put upon its vent made it fairly good-mannered. And, finally, Minerva knew that her mistress was neither indifferent to her reputation nor so happy in the use of her clever brain that she was not lonely. She knew that Miss Carrington was cruelly lonely; that her loneliness was growing inward, feeding, battening upon her; that her daily fight was against her fear of the dark, the dark that was within.

Minerva loved her mistress and detested her. Nothing could have induced her to leave her, nor to forego her daily anathemas of her. Miss Carrington depended upon Minerva and detested her; leaned upon the keenness of the judgments of her class; called her by word and act a fool; berated her sarcastically; walked on tip-toe for fear of her; told herself that she would not keep Minerva beyond the season then passing; would have deprived herself of all else to retain her.

It was a curious relation, a strange attitude, equally contradictory on both sides, but it was one common between two women who are rivetted together, whether as mistress and maid, friends or sisters, or even, not infrequently, mother and daughter.

Miss Carrington had ordered lunch hurried, and had finished it when Minerva returned. It had seemed to her an unreasonably long time that she was kept waiting; she greeted Minerva with the remark that she had been forever when she came in.

“It took as long as it took,” remarked Minerva, laying upon the table a small packet tied around its middle with a cotton string. “Cocoa is two cents more at Allen’s than it is at Boothby’s, but that’s only a postage stamp, and often and often there’s little news in a letter though it overweighs.” Minerva dearly loved sybilline utterances.

“Did you meet Mrs. Lumley and was she satisfactory?” Miss Carrington asked.

“As to satisfactory, she is a lump!” declared Minerva with scornful emphasis. “But she did speak of Mr. Kit’s being there, and I know all about it. It seems that little Anne Berkley brought him there with her. As though you didn’t know Mr. Latham! That little witch is a prime favourite of Mr. Latham’s and visits him a great deal; she’s everybody’s favourite, and she would amuse a blind man. And the child is very fond of Miss Dallas, the secretary. So Master Kit gets little Anne to take him there. And he is asked to lunch. And after lunch the party is going driving, with horses, mind you, like their own grandfathers.” Minerva was intensely scornful of this reversion. “Master Kit, the secretary, and the child, Mr. Latham, of course. And Stetson, who was going in case of being needed, is left, and Mr. Kit will be beside Mr. Latham, who likes to drive, but has to be watched and told which way, and all that. And they had a pleasant lunch party, laughing and talking. Mrs. Lumley heard little Anne’s voice a good deal, and they were laughing at her. So that’s as far as any one could tell you who wasn’t one of them. And I’m going to have my luncheon now, Miss Carrington, for chilled cream sauce, which I saw passing through, with cold potatoes, is not desirable. But cold they are, and often will be for me, I suppose, while I do for you.”

“After all, it tells me nothing, except that apparently Kit went there on his own initiative,” said Miss Carrington, rubbing her nose with manifest annoyance. “If the girl had invited him he would not have needed little Anne Berkley’s good offices. If I knew which way they had gone--it’s a good day for a drive.”

“Ah, to be sure; I asked that,” said the thorough Minerva, turning back. “I forgot to tell you. Mrs. Lumley said that little Anne went out to see her after lunch. She is very partial to the child, and Anne never forgets to visit her. She asked Anne where they were driving, and Anne laughed and said: ‛Out to the willow-ware china park.’ Now I ask you if that isn’t exactly like little Anne Berkley? She’s just so nonsensical. Mrs. Lumley says she’s no mortal idea where it can be, but that Mr. Latham and little Anne have all sorts of names for things and people, which they make great secrets. You could easily overtake them in the car, and they poking with horses, if you knew where a ‛willow-ware china park’ might be.”

Miss Carrington smiled.

“No wonder that little Anne and Mr. Latham enjoy each other if they make life as interesting as that!” she mused. “Let me think where it can be. Willow ware--a small bridge--why, of course, Minerva! It’s the park on the west side where they’ve bridged that tiny stream and put up a summer pagoda! Tell Noble to have the car around in ten minutes. I’ll not change my dress. You’ve been out and know what the weather is; get out the coat I need, and bring up that new veil; I left it in the library. Help me dress; first call Noble.”

Miss Carrington hastened upstairs and Minerva went out of the swinging door at the rear, outraged, but muttering:

“It’s as cold now as it can be; I suppose another half-hour won’t matter.”

Within fifteen minutes Miss Carrington was sitting back against the cushions of her car, seeing neither the lovely spring day nor Daniel Noble’s respectable mulberry-coloured back, so occupied was she with her plan.

There were several ways to reach the new park, and on the way thither Miss Carrington did not overtake the carriage for which she was watching. But as her car slowly wound around the pretty though unconvincing mazes of the carefully planned little park, she saw the carriage standing empty, except of a youth, evidently garnered on the spot, who was holding the horses. Three adult figures and a child were standing on the small bridge over the toy stream. It was so ludicrously like the old willow-ware pattern that Miss Carrington smiled at the resemblance, though she was sharply intent upon getting a first impression of the young woman of the group. She saw that the girl was not above medium height, that she was graceful, well-dressed, refined in bearing and gesture. As she raised her bent head and looked straight at the car, Miss Carrington saw a face so sweet, so full of charm that her heart sank.

“Mercy upon us, she’s one of those creatures whose really great prettiness is not equal to their intense femininity; her eyes are beautiful. She’s a permeating creature, and looks as affectionate as good--but not one bit stupid! Oh, poor Kit. That’s a rare type, hard to supplant. I’ve got to see to it that she doesn’t get as far as that,” thought this wise woman.

In the meantime, Miss Carrington was saluting Kit, who recognized her with anything but delight on his tell-tale face, she bade Noble drive on, but slowly. She kept in sight of the movements of the group on the bridge, and timed her return to it by another spur of the road just as the Latham party left it.

“My dear Mr. Latham!” Miss Carrington said, leaning over the side of her car to take the poet’s hand. “I am truly glad to meet you here. I’ve been wishing that I might ask you to come to me, but one fears to be intrusive. I know that the world is pursuing you, as you are retreating from it. I have a find in the book way that I should like to show you.”

“Thank you, Miss Carrington,” said Richard. “You are kind. And you are not to be reckoned one of the world which you imagine is hunting me down; you are my neighbour. I shall be grateful to be allowed to come to see the book, and you.”

He spoke with lovable deference, pitying her as a lonely old woman. Miss Carrington could not hide from his blind eyes and keen intuition that this was what she was.

“Kit, my dear, I am glad to find that you have met Mr. Latham; it was but the other day we were saying that you should know him, if he wouldn’t mind too much being bothered with a lad like you. Little namesake Anne, how do you do, my dear?” Miss Carrington graciously extended her greetings.

“I am quite well, thank you, Miss Carrington. You have two namesakes here now,” said little Anne.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Carrington! May I present to you Miss Dallas? As little Anne says, she is another namesake of yours, an Anne,” said Richard Latham.

“Delighted to meet you, my dear,” said Miss Carrington, graciously, so graciously that Kit’s experience gave him forebodings. “You must be the happy girl of whom I’ve heard, who helps Mr. Latham to enrich us all? And I read your clever explanation of his poem, ‛The Mole.’”

“I am glad that you see me as a happy girl, Miss Carrington. I am completely happy to be doing what I’m doing here,” said Anne Dallas.

“What a lovely voice!” Miss Carrington groaned inwardly. “There is no more dangerous gift!”

“Would it be rank selfishness, Mr. Latham, if I begged this modest girl, who ignores her usefulness to you, and so to us all, to take pity on my friendlessness to-day and go back in the car with me? I am alone. Would you be angry? And will you humour me, Miss Dallas? I drive alone so much that one would expect me to get used to it, but I never do.”

“I’d like to go with you, Miss Carrington,” said Anne Dallas, truthfully. “Solitude in a car is more solitary than a carriage with only one in it. I suppose because the horses are friendly. Mr. Latham doesn’t want me, do you?”

“I don’t need you, Miss Dallas,” Richard Latham smilingly corrected her. “Here is little Anne who will play Casabianca, won’t you, Anne?”

“Do you mean stick? That’s the boy ‛when all but him had fled,’ isn’t it?” asked little Anne. “’Course I will! That’s how I started, and I’d rather stick, if you please.”

“Come, then, Miss Dallas,” said Miss Carrington, and Kit sprang to open the car door, his silence unbroken. “You are also ‛little Anne,’ in comparison with me.”

Anne Dallas jumped into the car and curled down beside Kit’s aunt, surprised, but happy in the friendliness which she was too simple to mistrust. It was with a gloomy face that Kit watched them away, knowing how inadequate to gauge his aunt’s mind Anne Dallas’s honesty was, and fearing mischief from the old lady’s cordiality. He knew perfectly well that in some way his aunt had learned his whereabouts and had come to investigate.

“Now, my dear, tell me how you happen to be in Cleavedge,” said Miss Carrington, turning toward the supple young figure luxuriously nestling beside her. “You are not the sort of girl we are accustomed to here.”

“Don’t condemn me unheard!” laughed Anne, refusing to hear the delicate emphasis that implied a compliment in Miss Carrington’s words; Miss Carrington was sorry to find her able to fence.

“I wanted to do something, and Mr. Latham was kind enough to let me work for him. My home is near New York.”

“Are you alone in the world, such a pretty child as you?” Miss Carrington’s tone expressed sympathy.

“I have a few cousins; no one else,” said Anne. She looked up confidingly into the keen eyes above her. “The war was hard on me. No, not a personal grief; I lost no one, there was no one in it that I dearly loved,” she anticipated Miss Carrington’s question. “But it made me feel that everything I knew wasn’t so, and the bleakness----” She checked herself with a shudder. “But after that I saw that everything that I had known was a thousand times truer than I had thought it was. I suppose everyone went through that experience, but to each of us it was like being born, wasn’t it?”

“Ah!” murmured Miss Carrington, emphatically but discreetly. She had not known this melding with impersonal agony.

“Oh, yes, of course it was what we all felt,” Anne hastily disclaimed difference between herself and the rest of the world. “Then I wanted to do something in this burdened world, even though peace, of a sort, had come.”

“So you help a blind poet? How wonderfully beautiful,” said Miss Carrington, gently. “You are not half known; we all took you for his paid secretary.”

“Oh, so I am, I am!” cried Anne, distressed. “Did I convey anything else? Mr. Latham is not an object of charity. I am in his employ. But--well--I want to do my best for his work, and”--she laughed shyly, but with pretty mischief, that did not hide her pity for Richard--“I am only his eyeglasses, but I don’t want the glasses to pinch, you see?”

“I see,” assented Miss Carrington. “You mean, since someone must serve him in lieu of his lost eyes, you want to see to it that it is someone devoted to him. I still think it is wonderful. How did you hear of him, or he of you?”

“There was an artist here last summer who is Mr. Latham’s closest friend. He is a very good artist----”

“Edwin Wilberforce?” interrupted Miss Carrington. “Decidedly he is. I would not speak so temperately of him; he is a famous and great painter. Did he find you for his friend?”

“He---- Yes,” said Anne. Apparently she was going to say more, but thought better of it. “He told Mr. Latham of me, after he had written me about Mr. Latham, so it was arranged through him that I was to come, and here I am.”

“A most fortunate arrangement,” said Miss Carrington. “I never saw Richard Latham look so alive, so happy, so---- My dear, he is a charming man! I am a selfish woman; people who reach my age through years of solitude are likely to be, but to be so young, with your mind, your heart to devote to a life so highly endowed, yet so denied, is a lot that guardian angels might envy! Richard Latham can never again be pitied, having you.”

Anne straightened herself, her eyes widened with a startled look. She opened her lips to speak, but closed them mutely. Miss Carrington implied everything that she longed to deny, yet left her no opening for denial.

“You are far too kind, Miss Carrington,” Anne said after a moment. “Mr. Latham should not be pitied; he is indeed highly endowed. But as to my help, it is only eyes and hands at his service and these are common possessions.”

“Not stupid, makes no mistakes,” thought Miss Carrington, appraisingly, as she glanced at Anne. “Decidedly I must get Kit away.” Aloud she said: “I was surprised and pleased to find my boy with Mr. Latham. I offered to take Kit to see our poet only the other day. It was satisfactory to find him already with him, even on friendly terms. He is a nice boy; it is not my partiality that says it.”

“He is an uncommonly nice boy,” assented Anne so readily that her frankness left Miss Carrington uncertain whether it were indifference, or the most effectual disguise. “He did not introduce himself to Mr. Latham; little Anne Berkley brought him. Isn’t she a marvellous sprite? I never knew a child like her.”

“She is the other Cleavedge celebrity,” smiled Miss Carrington. “I hope we shall not spoil her. Kit is not a brilliant boy, but he has a good mind, and a still better heart.”

“Which is a better thing to have,” said Anne. “I don’t know him well enough to pronounce, but I should think they were equal in him. Mr. Carrington seems to me one of the rare people who are sane, normal, clever, and kind. He was really beautiful toward Mr. Latham to-day--showed him exactly the right deference combined with frank friendliness. He is just what Mr. Latham likes and needs.”

“Enthusiastic praise, my dear, but Kit deserves it, if you can trust the judgment of one who is to all intents and purposes his mother. I not only dote on him, but I mean to make him a man who will be felt in the world. I expect him to marry a brilliant girl whom he has known for years, who will push his fortunes. I think one of these fine days we shall all be proud of Christopher Carrington.”

Anne looked at her steadily, surprise in her brown eyes. She wondered why this should be told her. She had not known Kit long, but when she saw him the air around her was charged with a feeling that she had avoided analyzing, not admitting to herself that it was there. But now the sense of something that surrounded Kit arose in her memory and insisted on its association with Miss Carrington’s confidence.

“Proud of him by and by?” Anne said. Her colour had deepened, but her eyes were as frank as girls’ eyes can be while they think what must be hidden. “Aren’t you proud of your nephew now, Miss Carrington? I’m sure you are, and that you should be.”

Miss Carrington set Anne Dallas down at Richard Latham’s door. The others had not returned yet. “And Kit will be asked in for tea! Why didn’t I arrange for them to come to me for tea, where I could both watch and ward?” she thought.

She bade Anne an affectionate good-night, begging her to pity an old woman, and come to cheer her loneliness with her pretty ways and face. But when she got home she told Minerva as she removed her coat, that “decidedly she should send at once for Helen Abercrombie to visit her.”

“Well, if you ask me,” said Minerva with asperity, “I would say that when you’ve exposed a film time and again, and not got any impression on it, you may as well put in a fresh roll.”

Chapter V

_Small Furthering Breezes_

Miss Carrington was much struck by Minerva’s figure of speech. She pondered it in her room, feeling that it embodied wisdom.

She was so much struck with it that--to carry it further--she turned over in her mind other films, but none of them fitted her camera, or promised her the picture which she wished to take. She knew many pretty girls, several wealthy ones, a few intellectual and well-bred ones, but she knew no other one who united all these qualities, plus her father’s increasing influence to get for Kit a successful career, as did Helen Abercrombie.

She dismissed each candidate as she reviewed her, and sat down to urge upon Miss Abercrombie a speedy repetition of her visit to Cleavedge, with such eloquence that on the fourth day after the note was dispatched Miss Carrington was able to announce to Kit that Helen would be with them within ten days.

Kit received the news with dismay. He knew that all his ingenuity, and he had his full share of skill in getting out of things, would not enable him to escape the curtailment of his freedom entailed by the presence of Helen Abercrombie as a guest in his home.

“The shackles of civilization” is not an empty phrase. Kit foresaw the difficulty with which he should escape the entanglements of courtesy to his aunt and her guest. He knew that he should have all sorts of cobweb footfalls set for him, binding him fast when he would go to catch a glimpse of Anne Dallas. He recognized in himself a desire to see the girl that made it to all intents and purposes a necessity.

“It will be pleasant, Kit, my dear, to have Helen here in the spring,” remarked his aunt. “You will feel that inspiration of the season which Tennyson has embodied for us in lines no less true for being hackneyed. Remember, my boy, that I’ve made my plans for you clear, and that I expect them to be carried out. Helen is a magnificent specimen of the best type of woman that our race has produced; even were she less fortunate in material ways, she would still be a wife upon whom to build a family. There is no reason why you should not be enchanted with the hope of looking at her all your days, and that’s no trifle! It’s a great thing, let me tell you, to know that the person you marry will always be an agreeable object before you at breakfast, as well as at high, hot noon. It is inconceivable that Helen could ever be a careless creature whose hair straggled or whose collars sagged. A boy doesn’t consider these matters which later set a man’s nerves on edge; they do more toward making marriage a failure than the affinity of which novelists talk--though I’m ready to concede that the affinity is likely to attend upon these subtle causes of estrangement. It is as easy to love the right woman as the wrong one, once you set your mind to it, Kit. So set your mind to loving Helen; she is preëminently the right woman for you.”

Kit did not reply. He took his hat and went out of the house in a melancholy mood. He distinctly did not want to marry Helen, and the more his aunt urged the marriage upon him, with the disenchanting hint of her power to punish him for thwarting her, the less he wanted to marry Helen.

“I’m going down to the Berkleys’,” he thought. “They are the happiest, least worldly people I know.”

He found Joan at her mother’s spending the day there with her baby, little Barbara, named for her young grandmother and promising to have Mrs. Berkley’s sunny temperament and unobtrusive philosophy which made her take most things as a point in the game. Mrs. Berkley played her game straight, a generous winner, a good loser.

Kit was so cast down that he was glad to hear Joan’s laugh and her baby’s shout of glee as he entered; they were intensely happy and complete. It was not precisely with regret that he found Anne Dallas with Joan, holding the incense jar while the young mother swung the censer before the leaping, crowing object of their worship. Such wholesome, natural happiness permeated the room that as Kit came into it his spirits rose with a swift reaction from their depression. He said to himself: “I’ll be damned if I will!” with such force that for an instant he feared that he had spoken aloud.

Anne Dallas greeted him pleasantly, without any sign of especial interest in his coming. Joan was more cordial; she liked Kit a great deal, and was so happy that when the baby was on her knee she absent-mindedly caressed all the world, identifying it with Barbara, who was so large a part of it.

Little Anne fell on Kit with vehement welcome. She gave him her hand with such desire in her eyes to give him more that Kit took it, kissing her cheek.

“I’m just as glad as I can be that you came!” declared little Anne. “I’d like to have you come just purp’sly to see me. You didn’t, did you?”

“I came because I was rather down at the heels, in my mind, little Anne, and this is headquarters for getting reshod,” said Kit, smiling on the child, but glancing toward Anne Dallas, “and you’re no small part of the Berkley cheer. I counted on you to brace me up. Some day, if you’ll let me, I’ll come to see you, just _you_, ask for _you_, and get shown in to see _you_. How’s that?”

“Beautiful!” sighed little Anne. “No one ever came to see me like that--not yet.”

“Why should you be cast down, Kit?” asked Joan with her motherly young smile. “I always think of you as the Fortunate Youth, like Harry Warrington.”

“Say, Joan, that’s a better hit than you aimed to make!” cried Kit. “Harry Warrington wasn’t all around fortunate, and when he’d ceased to be a youth he must have been conscious of what he’d missed.”

Joan had a glimmer of a suspicion of the true cause of Kit’s depression; she glanced at Anne Dallas with the light of her suspicion in her eyes, but Anne said unconsciously:

“What nice old fogies you are to be so familiar with your Thackeray! I shouldn’t catch your allusion but that I read ‛The Virginians’ to Mr. Latham quite lately. And I found Thackeray greater, even in that book, than any one else.”

“You’ll be all right, Kit; you need not worry. As long as you see straight it will be all right with you. Harry Warrington was a stupid youth,” said Joan, hedging for safety, being uncertain of her ground.

“I suspect all youths are stupid,” said Kit. “My aunt considers me so. I’ve just had a lecture on The Whole Duty of Man, and it depressed me. The great A stands for autocrat, as well as Anne.”

Little Anne clapped her hands and jumped up and down, crying:

“Great A--your aunt! Little A--me! Bouncing B--that’s Babs; look how she jounces herself up and down! There’s no cat in the cupboard who can’t see, though!”

“There’s a Kit in the cupboard, shut up with the mice!” Kit shouted the words on his explosive laugh. “And the great A certainly thinks he’s blind! Say, little Anne, Mother Goose with Anne sauce isn’t half bad!”

“It’s fine!” little Anne approved him. “Though I don’t exactly understand the joke. We’ve so many Annes in Cleavedge that it’s--do you know what? An Anthology. That’s what Peter-two said. Cleavedge is an Anthology. Peter made that joke; it’s a pun; Peter-two likes puns.”

“You don’t know what that means,” said Kit.

“I do! I do, too!” little Anne flatly contradicted him, taking a running leap that landed her sharp little knees on Kit’s legs and made him wince. “An Anthology’s a book with lots of things collected into it, like poetry, or fairy stories, or--oh, things that you can put together in one book. I do know!”

“You certainly do!” Kit admitted, handsomely. “Anne, sometimes I’m afraid you’re too learned; it’s fearful to be erudite.”

“I don’t know what that is,” said little Anne. “Anthology’s not such a dreadfully long word--multiplication is one count longer and all children say it’s easy! Mother says it’s all what you hear and learn. She says it’s the same about thinking; it’s just’s easy to think about big things as little ones, and good things as bad ones; that’s what she says. She says it’s all what you’re used to. And my mother tells me about big things quite often.”

“She does, I know; you frequently allude to them,” said Kit, abstractedly.

He was looking at the lovely group across the room: the leaping, gurgling baby; the two fair, flushed young women with the same look on their faces, a look that Kit found natural in Joan, but awesome and mysterious in Anne Dallas, a prophecy that quickened his breath.

“I’ve an Anthology,” said little Anne, taking Kit’s face between her palms with no intention of allowing his thoughts to wander from her. “It’s the one Joyce Kilmer made. There’s a poem in it about Michael the Archangel. You can hear it rush, and it shines. We say a prayer after Mass. It begins: ‛St. Michael, the archangel, defend us in battle.’ I love it. When we say it I can just see him on account of that poem. A lady wrote it. Her name is Katharine Tynan, but she’s called Mrs. Hinkson now because she married him. Now listen! I’m going to say two verses for you, the two which make me breathe so hard, and you see if you don’t love, _love_ ’em!

‛_His wings he hath put away in steel, He goes mail-clad from head to heel; Never moon-silver hath outshone His breastplate and his morion._

_His brows are like a battlement, Beautiful, brave, and innocent; His eyes with fires of battle burn-- On his strong mouth the smile is stern._’

“Isn’t that great, _great_!” Little Anne caught her breath in a sob. “Isn’t he beautiful, and awful? I’m not afraid of him; I’d like to go with him, anywhere.”

“You wouldn’t be afraid of any one who fought for the right, little Anne,” said Kit, somewhat embarrassed by this child’s demands upon him. “And that poem is in Joyce Kilmer’s Anthology? Well, he himself fought for the right.”

“Oh, yes!” Little Anne clasped and unclasped her hands. “He went scouting to find where the dang’rous enemy was hiding, and they found him lying, just as if he was looking over the edge. He was looking for Germans. They were devilish, weren’t they?”

“We thought so, little Anne,” said Kit.

“Well, what do you suppose it felt like?” Anne went on. “I’ve wondered and wondered. It makes me shake. He was looking for Germans, and they shot, and there was God Almighty!”

“Anne!” gasped Kit, honestly shocked.

Little Anne misinterpreted his exclamation. She raised to him her dark eyes burning in her white face; deep hollows were suddenly graven below them.

“Isn’t it?” she whispered. “Just like that! He was looking for devils and there was God! And I think He just said, ‛You nice, brave boy!’ And Joyce Kilmer got right up and ran over to Him. But he left his body looking down over the edge, because they found it there. It makes me cold!”

Anne’s hands were icy as she caught Kit around the neck and hid her face on his shoulder; her body was shaking.

“There, there, little Anne, don’t! I wouldn’t think such things; they aren’t good for you. It’s all over,” Kit said.

He looked appealingly across to Joan and Anne Dallas, who did not heed him; the baby at that moment had captured her mother’s scissors.

Little Anne straightened herself and stared at Kit in amazement.

“Why, of course it’s good for me! It’s _very_ good for my soul to think of it, and I love to feel so cold, and to shake the way that makes me shake! It’s noble shaking; not common scared. If ever I’m a nun I’ll meditate and meditate! You get up in the middle of the night to when you’re a Carmelite, and I think I’ll be Carmelites, they’re the strictest----”

“Anne! Anne Berkley!” Peter’s indignant voice interrupted Anne from upstairs, calling over the banisters.

“Yes, Peter-two,” said little Anne, getting down from Kit’s lap and going serenely toward the door.

“Who let out all the hens? I’ll bet I know!” growled Peter.

“Oh, yes; so do I,” said little Anne. “It was me, Petey, but they didn’t go away. They stayed around; I watched ’em--a while.”

“Yes, a while!” Peter scorned her. “How long? Didn’t father say I had no business to keep hens in town, and I’d have to give ’em up if they annoyed the neighbours? They’re annoying them all right, all right! Over at Davis’s next door scratching up the last lettuce leaf this minute, and all their peas done for! Now dad’ll make me sell ’em, after I’ve bought feed at the price it was all winter, and now it’s spring and the hens were going to pay back some of it! And I was going to set ’em!”

“And have dear little fluffy chicks? I know, Peter dear; you told me,” cried Anne with feeling. “Oh, you don’t think father’ll be so cruel as to stop us?”

“_Us!_ Well, I like your nerve!” Peter’s contempt was beyond his power of expression. “Sure he’ll make me sell ’em. What in the dev--what made you let ’em out? Of all the contemptible tricks! And of all troublesome, meddlesome children! They spoil you, Anne Berkley. You’re a spoiled kid, and I hate to think what’ll become of you.”

“You shouldn’t swear, Peter,” said Anne with the calm dignity of an archbishop. “Of course I’m not spoiled. Do you think my father and mother could? They wouldn’t be seen spoiling me! And the reason I let those hens out, if you want to know, is because one got her head through the wire, and we thought she’d choke to death. Monica was with me. Her eyes just goggled out and her neck got as long! It was fearful! It made us sick to shove her back, but we did. Then we knew if one got choked they all might, so we let ’em out, and I meant to tell you, but I forgot. We watched ’em for goodness knows how long, and they just kept around as harmless! Don’t you worry about father, Peter-two! I’ll tell him how it happened, and he’ll understand. He’ll buy the Davises some more lettuce and peas and things. I’ll get him to let you keep the hens, Peter-two; don’t you worry!”

“And you’re not spoiled! Oh, no. Not a-tall!” growled Peter, returning to his room to prepare for the merry sport of driving his hens out of a neighbour’s garden. The worst of it to Peter’s mind was that he knew that Anne would be able to do precisely as she promised, that her explanation would mollify, if not amuse, his father, and that Peter would keep his hens through her intercession. The thought infuriated him. He turned back to the stairway and called down:

“You get a move on you and come help me head those hens, or they’ll go down to the city hall and dig out the statue of old Carrington on the mall!”

“Oh, Peter-two, take care! That’s Kit’s great-grandfather, or somebody, and he’s here!” remonstrated Anne in a shocked voice, as one always right.

Anne Dallas and Joan managed to have their faces hidden in the baby’s preparations for departure when little Anne came back, but Kit was caught in throes of laughter. He was waiting to walk home with Anne Dallas.

“I hope you don’t mind, Kit?” little Anne said, anxiously. “Peter-two wasn’t hitting at your great-grandfather’s statue, or whoever he is; he meant me and the hens. I’m sorry mother wasn’t home, but I did enjoy your call, Mr. Carrington.” She gave Kit her hand with the air of a fine lady.

Anne Dallas and Kit turned down the street in the May sunshine, with constraint between them that both found difficult to break up.

They discussed little Anne till there was no more to say, even on this fruitful subject, and they talked of Mr. Latham, a theme to which Anne rose with animation.

“My aunt was telling me something that you said to her which I could not understand,” said Kit. “You told her the war had hit you hard, and you seemed to connect that with your work for Latham. I was curious as to where the connection could be. Do you mind my asking? Is it a secret?”

“No, it’s harder to explain than secrets are,” smiled Anne. “It’s not connected, except as I make it so. You see, Mr. Carrington, I have a wee income, but I could make it suffice for my living--that is if I lived so that it would suffice! I doubt you’d think I could. I suppose I’d have gone on living on it, for I’m not an ambitious person; I’m naturally inclined to ignoble content with little ways and little days! But when the war came I--well, as you put it, I was hard hit! It wasn’t as if I were grief-stricken. I had no one in it. But it was as if I had everyone out of it! I mean it took the heart of the things which were most important. I was too young to keep my balance. I got it back, or a new one that I hope, I know, will stand a strain when it comes. When my confusion of mind was set straight, then I knew that I must not sit down in sloth all my life, calling it pretty, misleading names, like ‛contentment,’ ‛humility,’ anything lulling. I made up my mind to use any slight ability that I had and try to----” She hesitated.

“Help,” Kit said, softly.

“Well, at least not grow inward,” Anne admitted. “That’s all. I couldn’t explain all this to Miss Carrington. It does sound silly, but that’s only because I’m not able to do important work. It wouldn’t sound foolish if I were going to--what was it that little Anne was saying to you? Be a Carmelite? Something like that, you know.”

She looked up at Kit with her brown eyes shy and abashed, but he did not seem to consider her silly.

“To be eyes to the blind, to help a poet write what Mr. Latham writes--or I hear that he does; I don’t honestly know much about it yet--seems to me pretty fine,” he said. “Aunt Anne told me that the painter, Wilberforce, got you to undertake Latham.”

“Yes,” Anne assented. “Now, Mr. Carrington, why were you so blue when you came this afternoon? Do you want to ‛trade,’ as children say? I told you my secret.”

“Oh, how can I?” Kit blushed to his hair. “All that I could tell you would sound like a spoiled, selfish kid! Aunt Anne has a guest coming, a young lady, and I’ve got to see it through, and I hate it! That’s about all.” Kit checked the violence with which he had brought out the word “hate,” and ended with a modification of the truth.

“Ah?” Anne raised her eyebrows. She thought that she saw more than Kit said, remembering what Miss Carrington had hinted of Kit’s prospects for marriage.

“But that ought not to be tragic!” Anne continued with a laugh. “It does sound like a boy who had had too much his own way! The only thing for you to do is to make the guest’s way your way. When you are both young that surely is easy to do! Is she pretty?”

“No, she isn’t! She’s a beauty,” grumbled Kit with such an effect of this being the unpardonable sin that Anne laughed outright. “And her way can’t be my way. That’s what Aunt Anne wants me to do: make our way parallel. I won’t! Don’t you give me the same advice!”

“I should not dream of giving you advice, Mr. Carrington,” said Anne with a funny, mischievous little look that further infuriated Kit. “Why should I? Nor shall I let you imply complaint of that doting old lady who is plainly wrapped up in her one affection--you! I’ve no doubt that she knows what’s good for you. Good-bye. And pray don’t gloom at your guest as you’re frowning on me now, for she won’t be out of doors where she can run if she gets too frightened. Fancy being shut up in the house with such an ogre as you look this minute!”

Anne put out her hand with a friendly smile, and Kit abandoned his intention to resent her making game of him.

He smiled at her instead, and joined in her laughter.

“Good-bye,” he said. “I’m coming around to talk to Mr. Latham. I need literature.”

Chapter VI

_“The Face That Lit the Fires,” etc._

“What table decorations would you suggest, Kit? The drawing room is more important but I thought we might carry out the same flower scheme throughout, even to the bedroom. What do you advise?” Miss Carrington waited for Kit’s reply with evidences of extreme solicitude; she knew the value of personal responsibility, that it aroused interest in a pie to feel one had a finger in it.

Kit looked honestly puzzled.

“What are the decorations for, Aunt Anne? What’s on?” he asked.

“My dear boy! As though you didn’t know that Helen was coming! That’s the sort of event one doesn’t forget.” Miss Carrington was arch.

“Oh, Jemima! I thought she came on---- Great Scott, so this is Thursday! I had it in my head it was Wednesday.” Kit’s dismay was comical. “I don’t know what sort of flowers she likes. They’re all right, any of ’em.”

“Don’t you think yellow blossoms? Helen is such a golden-tinted girl. Jonquils aren’t to be had. Roses? But they are not imaginative.” Miss Carrington bowled over her ten pins as fast as she set them up. “I particularly like to have flowers which declare themselves thought-out, selected for their suitability.”

“Orchids,” muttered Kit, crossly. “No, yellow jasmine. Isn’t that the stuff that is so unnaturally heavy-scented?”

“Long sprays of jasmine with ferns, and over across the room great white roses!” Miss Carrington looked delighted. “Yellow jasmine is the very thing! Helen is so wonderfully graceful. I’ll tell her it was your suggestion, Kit. Helen has acquired all the modern ways, independence, equality of mind, and that sort of thing, but a woman is always a woman below the fashions of the varying periods; Helen will be gratified that you were perceptive of her peculiar charm.”

“Well, Aunt, if you tell her of course I’ll have to stand for it; I can’t explain, but the heavy-scented jasmine wouldn’t be my choice as a representative, if I were a girl. What time is she coming? Shall you meet her?” asked Kit.

“She gets here on the 4:12. I’ll send the car, but you’ll go down with it, I assume,” Miss Carrington implied that her remark was superfluous.

Kit shook his head hard. “Couldn’t possibly to-day,” he said. “I had it in my head that to-day was Wednesday, and I told Antony Paul I’d go with him to see a dog he’s dickering for. He asked me yesterday. It won’t matter; I’ll be in long before dinner.”

“Can’t you call Antony Paul and defer the dog’s inspection?” Miss Carrington admitted Kit’s authority on dogs, for which he had a reputation.

“Antony’s got an option only till this afternoon. Another man’s waiting to gobble the pup if Tony drops him. Oh, come, now, aunt, it isn’t necessary for me to go to the station; you’re Helen’s hostess, and for that matter, I’d back Noble against the world as a chaperon or guardian.”

Kit grinned, cheerful over this small victory.

“I suppose you do not need to be told that one doesn’t meet a guest either as her guardian or chaperon. Courtesy is valuable, Kit! And a warm welcome is pleasant to us all. But since you’ve promised young Paul it cannot be helped; I’ll meet Helen. Try to be at home early, please.”

Miss Carrington went away to order the jasmine, and Kit departed to join Antony Paul at lunch, and then go with him to the suburban kennels to inspect the pup that was intended to grow up with baby Barbara.

It was a most promising dog Kit declared when he had looked it over, and managed to rescue his glove from the youngster’s white teeth, not so damaged but that it could be worn home, provided he remembered to hold the thumb well against his coat.

Antony bought the pup and Kit bade it a cordial good-bye, holding its uneasy head between his palms as he looked into the purplish eyes, in process of change from blue to brown.

“You’ve done me a favour, small dog, and I’ll do one for you when chance offers,” said Kit. “I suspect I’ve done you a favour already in helping you to a home with Antony and nice Mrs. Antony.”

“Here, stop undermining me in my dog’s affections!” protested Antony. “That pup has no use for me while you’re around.”

“Dogs and I are natural pals,” said Kit, releasing the puppy. “The trolley leaves on the even hour, Tony; we’ve got to get right out after it.”

Warned by a shrill whistle they ran for their car from the corner. They made it and established themselves on the platform, lighting up their cigars and recovering breath.

“Dogs and I do get on,” Kit reverted. “I like them, though that’s a fool remark. Most men do.”

“Not all, though. How they keep off it beats me,” said Antony Paul. “When you want to say the best possible things about a man you attribute to him the qualities every good dog has, but not every good man, or men who are accounted good by themselves and others. Loyalty, fidelity, generosity, forgivingness, hero-worship, unfaltering love, patience, admiration, confidence--these are the things every good dog gives us. And intelligence! What a fine dog doesn’t know! It’s amazing the way they understand you. I had a dog once, the best comrade a fellow could have asked. When I----”

Kit knew what happened when people started on anecdotes of their pets. He ruthlessly interrupted Antony.

“Yes, I know; that’s the way I feel about dogs,” he said. He turned and knocked his cigar ashes over the end of the car, carefully, as if the trolley platform were carpeted.

“But you know, Antony,” Kit continued the conversation with his own end in view, “a lot of people seem to think it’s all poppycock to look for things like that in humans. People, experienced people, you know, whose opinion ought to count, tell you it’s sentimental to insist on--well, on marrying for love, you know. They say take a nice girl, a suitable girl, one that isn’t going to get on your nerves, of course, and marry for expediency. They say that this kind of an arranged partnership holds out better than the kind that is not arranged, that flies, so to speak, a winged thing from the start. What do you say about it? You’re married to the nicest sort of a girl; of course you fell in love with her; any one would love Joan Berkley, but you’ve got sense, and by this time you must have perception of what various sorts of marriages could be. What do you say? Do you think it’s better to go in for romance? All decent young chaps have a leaning toward it, I think.”

Antony looked at Kit sharply.

“As a rule, Christopher, my son, you are not given to abstract speculation. What’s up? Or don’t you care to tell me?” he said.

“I wouldn’t mind, only it’s currish to talk, you know,” said Kit. “Aunt Anne has ideas about me which I don’t share; that’s about the sum of it. She urges me to ambition, and she thinks marriage would land me at the top of the heap. The top of the heap is all right, but I can’t see her road to reach it.”

Antony and Joan had discussed Helen Abercrombie when she had made her previous visit to Cleavedge. It required no great perspicacity to see that Miss Carrington desired her for Kit. If Helen Abercrombie were the sort of girl that Kit wanted, that would be his business, but it seemed to this youthful pair of Kit’s friends that Helen was not for him. Now, as Antony looked at Kit, he saw that Helen was decidedly not the girl that Kit wanted. He said:

“Well, Kit, old man, as to the top of the heap being a better berth than the side, or maybe the foot, that would depend entirely on what suited your constitution, or whether you found more briars at the top, or farther down. I don’t think ambition as an end is worth what a man sacrifices for it. It’s a means, not an end; the part you play in the world. As to romance, to my mind it’s about the one real thing there is. That’s only another way of saying that life’s pretty punk when you strip it of ideals. And as to marriage without love--now I don’t mean the stuff people call love and eventually haul into divorce courts to make room for the next case of it, but what you and I mean when we use the word--I think marriage without it comes mighty close to sacrilege. It would bring a heavier penalty than you could carry around. I’m a lucky man, Kit, but perhaps it’s not altogether luck. Joan and I are truly married, but we didn’t blunder on our happiness accidentally; we went after it right. Trouble wouldn’t sicken us of each other. If Joan broke down and got--well, not downright ugly, because how could she?--but lost her looks, she’d still have her loveliness in my eyes. And when I’m an old grouch, or if I go stone broke, Joan won’t get sick of me. It’s the real thing, founded on the biggest thing there is. My advice to you, Kit, is to keep off! You’re not a fellow to put up with less than the right marriage. It’s a solemn risk to tie yourself up for life to one person, and I tell you right now I’d hate to take it on ambition. If you’re in love with the girl, that’s another matter; then you wouldn’t marry her for ambition, but for love of her, same as if she were a poor girl. You’ll repent in dust and ashes if you marry a woman that you don’t love. More especially in ashes! You needn’t mention to Miss Carrington that I said so, but the prizes you’d get at the price of your ideals wouldn’t look to you better than a brass scarf pin in a package of popcorn. Selah!”

“Much obliged, Antony,” said Kit, looking grave, though he laughed. “I suppose everyone considers his own brand of happiness the right one; that’s only another way of saying it’s perfect happiness. But I seem to have a lot of faith in your judgment. I’d take your advice sooner than almost any one’s. You’re able to look out of your own windows to see the other fellow’s view. I suspect you’re right. It’s a funny thing that one person attracts us and another person doesn’t! Perfectly all right person, too! You don’t want her though she’s handsome, desirable enough. But----”

“But you don’t desire her! There you are. And that’s good and sufficient proof that there’s where you ought to stop. It’s no funnier than that Joan tucks away whole saucerfuls of strawberries, and is ready to cry for more, while if I eat the smallest saucerful of them I’m crying _from_ them, not for them. It’s our digestion, our acids, our fitness, Kit! Don’t swallow a person who is not to your palate; you’ll be fatally ill if you do, my son,” preached Antony.

“Cannibalistically put, but sound doctrine, Reverend Father Antony Paul!” said Kit. “And what shall you call the dog?”

“Guard, short for Guardian,” said Antony, promptly. “I’m getting him to guard Barbara when she begins her excursions into a dangerous world.”

Kit got into the house quietly on his return and went softly to his room, making signals to Minerva, whom he met in the hall, not to betray him. He wanted to set his thoughts in order before he met Helen. He wanted also to dress for dinner.

He heard Helen’s silvery, prettily modulated voice as he slipped past his aunt’s sitting room. There was no denying that she had many gifts.

When Kit came down an hour later his aunt and Helen were in the drawing room. He looked well with his clear-tinted skin, his fine features set into relief by the expanse of white linen which he wore.

Helen estimated him anew as she arose to greet him. A glance would reveal Christopher Carrington a gentleman; that he could be trusted; that he was kind and upright and that, if he were not brilliant, he had excellent mental powers.

“He does very well,” thought Helen, and extended her hand with a hearty friendliness that instantly demolished Kit’s barriers and made him slightly ashamed.

It was caddish to have it in mind to refuse a hand that was held out as one boy greets another; after all, Helen might not be cognizant of his aunt’s plan, still less coöperating with it.

Kit saw a girl as tall as he was, slender, with perfect dignity and grace of carriage; a handsome face, a well-shaped head upborne with spirit by a rounded neck that had the sweep of line that is best shown by an evening gown. The carefully arranged hair was pale gold in colour; not yellow, but the shade of the palest jonquils.

“She’d look well at a court,” thought Kit, involuntarily recalling what his aunt had hinted of a future embassy through ex-Governor Abercrombie’s influence. But what he said aloud was:

“Hallo, Helen! You’re beating yourself at your own game!”

“Hallo, Kit! It’s this becoming gown. You look uncommonly fit, and aren’t ugly to-night, yourself,” retorted Helen. “It’s fine to see you again, nice Kitten! I like to come here because I can do and say and be exactly as I feel!”

“Yes. I don’t know another girl to whom I can talk as I do to you, Nell,” said Kit, cordially, his old familiarity with her springing up now that he saw Helen in the body. His aunt’s attitude toward her was lost in Helen’s own frank attitude toward himself.

Miss Carrington’s maid announced dinner and Miss Carrington turned to Kit, all gracious smiles and pleasure as she saw the admiration for Helen in Kit’s eyes.

“Take Helen out, Kit. We aren’t a party, but she, being guest, may have as much as that of a dinner party,” she said.

Helen laughed and drew the elder woman’s hand through her arm, patting it as it rested on her diaphanous sleeve which floated from the curves of her beautiful arm.

“Not a bit of it!” she cried. “I’ll take you out, or we’ll take each other, and Kit can trot along by himself, thanking heaven that two such noble specimens of womanhood allow him to watch their gracious backs.”

At dinner Helen chatted merrily with wit and charm on all sorts of subjects, treating Kit and his aunt with much the same kind of friendliness, but giving it to Miss Carrington in warmer degree. She was evidently emancipated from the prejudices of an earlier generation, for she touched on subjects once taboo, treating them as if they were part of daily life without emphasizing them. But Kit remembered that Joan Berkley Paul hardly knew this part of life, and that possibly little Anne would never know it. He thought of Anne Dallas, also, as a sheltered type of mind, as one that sought shelter.

After dinner, when they had returned to the drawing room, Kit asked,

“Does Helen sing to-night?”

“No, Helen doesn’t sing to-night; she waits till she has had a night’s sleep after her journey, because she makes it a rule not to use her voice when she is tired. Helen talks to Kit and gets his view of some of her problems; Miss Carrington says that she has three unescapable letters to write. Bless her old heart! What should we do, we women, without heads to ache and letters to write! Of course it’s obvious that these letters are for Kit’s and Helen’s benefit! So come along, Kit! Take me to your particular shrine, where you smoke, for I’m going to smoke and talk with you.” She put her hand in Kit’s, waiting to be led.

“You’re a great one, Nell!” cried Kit. “What others think you say. Aunt Anne doesn’t know you smoke.”

“Doesn’t she? Well, then, she gives herself the benefit of her ignorance. I’m sure she suspects it, with reason! And feels she’d have to protest if she knew it. Funny, when she’s so up-to-date, that she minds smoking! So many other things are intrinsically wrong, if you’re going to bother about it, and she doesn’t mind them, plays and novels and so on.”

Helen swung his hand as she talked and they went down the hall to the small room at the end which had been set apart for Kit’s use.

Helen threw herself on the couch with careless ease, freeing her narrow feet from the twist of her skirt, and crossing them a little above her pretty ankles.

Kit laid out a box of cigarettes and held a light for Helen, who accepted it with her eyes fastened on his as she drew her cigarette into a glow.

“Fine, Kit! This is the kind I like. Nice boy; you’d never offer me feminine substitutes, would you? Say, Kit, I was looking at you. You’re not a genius, but you have sense. I believe I honestly do want your opinion, though I set out to ask it in order to be nice, rather than from actual craving for it,” she said.

“Go to it, Helen!” said Kit, throwing himself into a deep chair and his used match into a small hammered dish at the same time. “What’s wrong? I suppose I should say: Who is it? since it’s a girl’s confidence that I’m to receive.”

“Oh, piffle, Kit! You know me better than that,” cried Helen. “In fact, it’s the opposite sort of confidence. I’m not a bad-looking girl, you know. Kit----” She paused.

“Ripping. Stunning,” said Kit.

“And my father is at once a coming man and a man that has arrived,” Helen nodded acknowledgment of Kit’s interpolation, “so men, several, want to marry me! Kit, I’m trying to decide whether I’ll ever marry, or go in for a career. Now, just wait! I’ve brains as well as looks; I sing well, but not well enough to follow it up too far. My father could get me pretty much anything I wanted. I don’t care to marry as most women do. I know precisely its value, both as an arrangement, we’ll call it, and as a supplement to a clever, handsome woman’s assets. But I can get on without marrying; in fact, I’m not sure I’d be happy married. I think I can reach my goal, in the shape of a career, just as well unencumbered. What would you say to me as a Power, a Lady-with-a-Salon, a Personage to be Reckoned With in the State at Washington? Look here, Kit, wouldn’t that be a game to play alone? I’d lose a lot of my winnings with a partner. And besides, I couldn’t carry out the game if I married for love. A friendly, able partner would be the only one for that, and they’re not common. Men aren’t often friendly to a girl who is ripping, as you call it.”

“Well, my gracious, Helen, what makes you put it up to me? What do I know about it? And exactly what are you getting at?” cried Kit, perturbed.

“Because, Kit, and you’d have seen this if you weren’t the sort you are, there’s a man who wants me bad; right away, too! And I don’t know. He’s richer than the Ind. I like him, but he loves me. That’s likely to be a nuisance. It wouldn’t do, would it? And I’ve got to decide pretty soon as to him, and I’d like to decide as to myself, too, and get about my job. It’s tiresome to hang along, and time is valuable. Youth for beginnings, you know.”

Helen waited, and Kit looked at her from a new angle. He did not know this Helen. He saw her with eyes that viewed her as a man sees a woman who is desired by other men. And how mistaken his aunt had been to think that she was ready to marry him! She was not considering him; she was frankly his old friend who liked, trusted, consulted him. In this rôle he liked her.

“Well, Nell,” he said, slowly, “I don’t quite see how I can answer you. You’re hard on this man, on all the men you know and whom you don’t care to marry. It’s wasteful for a woman like you, with all you are and have, not to marry, isn’t it?”

“Wasteful?” Helen laughed her pretty laugh. “I suppose I may as well tell you the whole story! I’m thinking of ‛commencing author,’ as our British cousins say. I can write!”

“Sure. You can do anything,” said Kit, sincerely.

“Richard Latham lives here. I’ve never met him, often as I’ve been to Cleavedge. You know him, don’t you? I wish you’d take me to see him, Kit. I’d like his help. I’ve begun something and I’d like to insinuate myself into his acquaintance till I’d dare ask him what it amounts to.” Helen waited, watching Kit under drooping lids.

“That’s easy,” said Kit, unsuspiciously. “I’ll take you there.”

“Good boy!” said Helen, lying back against her pillow.

Plainly Kit did not suspect the long, confidential talk in which his aunt and she that afternoon had discussed him and his possible error in taste and judgment.

“Oh, Kit, how I must have bored you! What a good sort you are to be so patient! As if I had to decide my problem the minute I got here! But you did look so sane and reliable when I first saw you! Let’s put off the momentous decision of vacillating Helen’s fate till the next time--or far longer! I’m getting sleepy, and your aunt must be through with those fictitious letters.”

Helen flung herself off the couch and went out of the room in advance of Kit.

“You smell of cigarettes,” said Miss Carrington as they came up to her.

Helen went closer and laid her long hands on the old lady’s head, as if to bless her.

“One does when one has been where they are,” she said, lightly kissing Miss Carrington’s soft white hair. Her breath was not distinguishable in that kiss.

Kit went to his room conscious of having spent a delightful evening. Helen had treated him in the one way that he could have enjoyed; he was grateful to her for having set him at ease, for banishing a dread for which, he was convinced, she was in no degree responsible. Never before had Kit liked Helen Abercrombie as well as to-night.

Chapter VII

_The Poet’s Corner_

In the quiet room, with the sunlight shaded, for the day was warm, Anne Dallas bent over her writing table, absorbed in her work. Richard Latham sat opposite her, dictating slowly, his head resting on his hand, his face turned toward her. If he could have seen one would have said that he was watching Anne, and even though his eyes were sightless the word was not unsuitable. He was so keenly conscious of her movements, and his sensitive mind was so intent upon her, that he perceived her almost as if he saw her.

Yet this vision of Anne helped rather than hindered the dictation of the lines of his play. That her permeation of his thoughts did not get in the way of his developing the imaginary people whom his brain was moving about like puppets, said as nothing else could say how one with him she was, how completely, how selflessly she answered to his need.

Richard Latham was writing a play. It was both comedy and tragedy, as most real dramas are; it was realism, yet idealized as are all lives which are worth living. It was that day reaching the end of its second act.

No one but Anne Dallas had yet heard a line of it. She took it from Richard’s lips as it formed in his poet’s mind, feeling that she was a part of something unspeakably great; it gave her at once a sense of utter isolation and at the same time a feeling that she was in the midst of crowding splendours which lay beyond the bounds of daily events and their actors.

Anne wondered while she waited for Richard to think out something that he wanted to express exactly, why it was she to whom this experience had fallen. Anne Dallas had not an undue opinion of Anne Dallas. She considered herself one of the majority of average people, not exceeding in face, mind, nor any way, hosts of girls correctly, but tamely, described as “nice girls.” Yet it was she and none of the others who was taking down this play to-day, these words and pictures and characters so beautiful that she felt sure that they would live on long after she had grown old and died.

It was after three, and the rule was that work stopped at three, but Richard was dictating the last lines of the second act. It was tense with emotion, complex in situation, and many of the loveliest lines so far in the play were in this scene. It had not occurred to the workers to think of time.

Anne Dallas looked up and saw little Anne Berkley coming up the walk. Her table was beside the window, and she signalled to the child to be quiet. Little Anne at once dropped down on the steps and began to fan herself with her hat, for she understood the ways of the poet from past experience, and knew that she must wait to be admitted.

At last Richard Latham triumphantly cried: “Curtain!” and fell back in his chair, suddenly realizing that he was tired.

“Will it do, Miss Dallas? Could you judge it as you wrote it?” Richard asked.

“Oh, no, not judge it! It does far too well. I could not judge it. It is supremely fine and beautiful; it sweeps one along with it, but I know that it is the best thing that you have done,” cried Anne.

“I don’t know; I’m afraid it isn’t much good,” said Richard, despondently. “Oh, Lord! To feel something surging against your brain, your lips, almost as if it literally pushed your ribs out, then to be tongue-tied, to feel you’ve played it false when it wanted to be born of you, that you’ve strangled it at birth, or brought it forth deformed!”

“If you could express all that you feel you would not feel enough to be greatly worth expressing. It is neither slain nor deformed, but to you the wings that bore it to you seem clipped. Perhaps they may be, since your conception of it must exceed words, but you have made the rush of those wings audible to others.”

Anne arose as she spoke and rang for tea. She was used to dealing with the poet’s reaction from the delight of creation; she understood it.

“How you help me!” Richard smiled at her and put out his hand; Anne’s skirt brushed it as she crossed the room.

“It’s a hard thing to feel one minute like a tower reaching to heaven, and the next like a toppled card house.”

“Yes, it’s hard, but it doesn’t really matter, because you know it’s only nervous reaction. It would matter if you took the tower or the card house seriously, especially the tower! But you never lose your perspective. It’s a great deal to be a perfectly sane great poet!” Anne laughed, and added, “Little Anne has been meekly sitting on the steps for some time. I signalled her to wait until you were finished. Shall I call her now?”

“Surely. Little Anne is as good a restorative as tea,” said Richard. The little girl came in on her summons with a flushed and happy face; she at once accepted Richard’s invitation to perch on the arm of his chair, though she first violently hugged Anne Dallas.

“I’ve been to instructions,” she replied to Richard’s question. “Yes, I am warm; I am very warm, I am so warm that I’m boiling hot, only I’m not to say that. It’s a pity. I think it’s one of the worst things that ain’t--are not--sickness, or dying, or op’rations, or something, that you can’t use strong words. I think it makes you hotter’n fury to be just about roasted and say you’re warm!”

Richard threw back his head and joined in Anne Dallas’s laughter.

“You often remind me of Margery Fleming, little Anne, and it seems that you share her love of strong language! I think myself it’s a useful safety valve. What instructions are you getting?”

“I don’t mean swearing, not blasphemy,” said little Anne, looking shocked by the idea. “I mean words that sort of rip and hit things. I wouldn’t swear, not for worlds! And I’m going to First Communion instructions.”

Little Anne bent her head as she said this and her thin, flashing, elfin face took on an awed look, awe that her voice expressed.

“At your age?” cried Richard. “Why, Anne, you are too young! When I knew about these things we did not join the church before we were fourteen.”

“I don’t have to join the Church, I’m in it,” said Anne, puzzled. “You’re old enough when you understand. And I do understand. Sister Annunciata says I understand enough to make me dreadful ’sponsible if I don’t try to be worthy. Though you can’t really be, you know. It’ll be next month, Corpus Christi; it comes early. Sister says it’s often later, but it has to come when Easter makes it. But it’s sure to be warm, she says. We’ll have white dresses and veils, all alike, so if a girl is kind of not able to get a fancy one, nobody’ll know which she is. Anyway, mother says pure white and quite simple is the way we ought to look. It is the happiest day of all my life. No matter what other day I have, presents, or parties, or--no matter what--that’s the happiest. How can I wait?”

She threw back her head and lifted toward heaven a rapt, ecstatic little face.

“Do you think it’s possible she will feel that is true? Isn’t it dangerous to tell her this? I’d be afraid of a disappointment and a disastrous after effect,” said Richard to Anne Dallas.

“Oh, no, I think not. Joan would tell us there was no danger. Little Anne’s faith is strong. She cannot understand how happy she is to be an innocent child, but later on she will look back to this day and realize that she was one, and that, in very truth, her First Communion day was the happiest one of her life,” said Anne, softly.

Little Anne jumped down from the arm of Richard’s chair and flew to take Anne Dallas around the neck in a tempestuous embrace.

“Don’t be sorry you are grown up, my darling,” she cried. “You’re not so very much grown up. And you are good! I love you. I’m going to pray for all my dear ones on my First Communion day. You’re one! Sister says Our Lord will love to give me what I ask for them. I’m going to ask to be kept a little girl inside me always. Some people are. It’s very hot--warm, isn’t it? And I see Kit Carrington coming along with a handsome, elegant lady. She’s _awfully_ handsome! They’re turning in here.”

“Do you mind being caught, Mr. Latham? Anne is right; they are coming here. You have time to escape,” suggested Anne Dallas.

“I don’t mind. I like Kit Carrington, and the magnificence of the lady as conveyed by little Anne ought to be enjoyable, even to a blind man. All right, Stetson. Ask them to come in here--or, no, show them into the garden; we’ll go there. It _is_ warm, little Anne!”

Richard Latham, Anne, and little Anne stepped out from one of the long French windows which gave on the garden from the dining room. Helen Abercrombie and Kit had already reached one of the curved benches beneath the elms which interlaced their sweeping boughs over the turf of the upper end of the fine old garden.

Helen was such a beautiful figure in her floating white gown, with her drooping, white-plumed hat shading her golden hair as she arose to meet her host that Anne Dallas, as well as little Anne, was dazzled. It seemed a pity that a poet should not be able to look upon such wondrous loveliness.

“Mr. Latham, I brought my aunt’s guest, Miss Abercrombie, to see you because--well, she wanted to come! Miss Abercrombie, Mr. Latham,” said Kit.

“Miss Carrington would have asked you to come to tea with us, she means to still but I did want to come! Kit is right, and I’ve no better excuse for intruding to add to his,” said Helen, her voice more than ever like a delicate harp blown upon by a breeze.

“Ought you apologize for kindness?” suggested Richard. “I am glad to show you my garden. Kit and Miss Dallas know each---- Oh, really, I beg your pardon!” Richard broke off with a shocked gesture. “Miss Dallas, Miss Abercrombie.”

Helen bowed. She possessed to perfection the art of grading her bows. This one conveyed to Anne exactly the intended impression of her claim to recognition for service rendered to the public, but not as a social equal.

Anne Dallas returned the salutation quietly. She did not miss its quality, but it did not disturb her. She would not have been a woman, a young woman at that, and not have been conscious to her finger tips of the regal beauty of the girl beside her. She did not know that the juxtaposition was planned by Helen to show Kit the contrast between them, but it made her feel like a dull little weed to know that her simple white gown and her smooth, dark hair were contrasting like homespun against the elegant clothing of the other girl and the radiant head held high above her.

“Kit Carrington will marry her!” thought Anne, ignoring the stab the thought dealt her. “Mr. Latham, at least, can’t see us together.” Fresh from the enthusiasm of her day’s work, she told herself that Kit did not count if she could hold her place in Richard Latham’s mind. But she had to remind herself of this.

“It’s not easy to talk to a poet. I have tried to before, but not to one great enough to make it matter how one talked,” said Helen, accepting Richard’s invitation to the bench under the elms.

“Talk to the man, and never mind the poet!” said Richard. “I am not merely a poet. Therefore I wish that I could see you, Miss Abercrombie!”

“Now I know how well you fill the rôle I’m to play to! I already had your measure on the poet side,” laughed Helen. “Who is the child that looks like a changeling? Your niece?”

“This is Miss Anne Berkley, my intimate friend, Miss Abercrombie, but I cannot claim kinship with her except in mind,” said Richard, gravely.

“How charming!” said Helen, carelessly. “How do you do, Miss Anne Berkley? Another Anne!”

“I am well, I thank you,” said little Anne. “There are many Annes in this place, but we don’t know them all, I s’pose. I didn’t like it long time ago, but I made an act of it, so I could bear my name, and now I like it.”

“What did you make of it?” cried Helen.

“Anne means an act of mortification. She has many curious bits of vernacular from the nuns who teach her; curious to others. That is one of them,” explained Anne Dallas.

“How interesting!” said Helen, by this time surfeited of little Anne and not intending to be drawn into conversation with Anne Dallas. Little Anne was quick to feel atmospheres. She flushed and said vehemently:

“The best of all lovely Annes, or anything, is Miss Anne Dallas!”

“Indeed that is true, little Anne, though you and I love each other so well,” said Richard Latham. “Miss Dallas stands between me and darkness; between me and silence, between me and inability to do my work, Miss Abercrombie.”

“What a beautiful thing to say, Mr. Latham! Miss Dallas must feel recompensed at this moment for all that she has done, all that she will do. Yet I can see how bad it would be for you not to have a good secretary.” Helen smiled toward Anne, and over her.

“It would, indeed. But I cannot say that it has ever occurred to me that Miss Dallas was a good secretary,” said Richard, slowly. “Are you too tired to walk about? Do gardens bore you?”

“Not such a garden as this one,” said Helen, graciously. “Please let Miss Dallas come with us. Kit will look after the little girl. I am sure that you are accustomed to Miss Dallas’s guidance.”

“That is another profoundly true remark, Miss Abercrombie,” said Richard. “You will show our best spots to Miss Abercrombie, in case I pass them, Miss Dallas?”

“Gladly,” said Anne, obeying Helen’s gesture to walk at her other hand. “But you know we think them all the best! This garden is one of Mr. Latham’s loveliest, though least-known, poems.”

Little Anne slipped her hand into Kit’s and held him back.

“Who is she?” she whispered.

“Like her?” asked Kit, interested in the reply.

Little Anne shook her head hard. “She is like all the things in fairy tales,” she said. “She’s like a cloth-of-gold, and a fairy princess, she’s so beau-ti-ful! But she’s something like Cinderella’s sisters at the ball. No, I don’t like her, not one bit. What does she want to do? Is she going to try to be Mr. Latham’s--you know! His writer? What do you call it?”

“Secretary? No, indeed, little Anne! Miss Abercrombie is a royal lady; not even a poet would she serve,” said Kit.

“Well, what makes her mean?” asked little Anne, candidly; she had used her keen young eyes and ears to some purpose. “Miss Anne’s ever’n’ ever so much nicer, and ever’n’ ever so much prettier, even if she isn’t, because she looks so kind of dear and sweet. I know she’s being not nice to my Anne, because when anybody isn’t nice to someone I love, and I don’t know what it is they’re doing, that makes me mad, and I remember my vocation.”

“Your vocation, you queer little Anne? What can you mean?” cried Kit.

“Putting beetles on their legs,” said the child promptly. “When they get on their backs and can’t get over, you know. It makes me feel like that. I do not like her one speck, so there! But I s’pose Sister Annunciata’d say I had to because I’m going to instructions. But ought you like everything, Kit? I think it’s fearful to be a saint!”

“Great Scott, little Anne, is that what you’re tackling? No wonder you find this sinful old world a puzzle!” Kit’s great roar of laughter made the others turn back.

“What has little Anne said now?” asked Anne Dallas with a look of such friendly understanding to Kit that Helen was annoyed.

“Don’t tell! Oh, don’t, please don’t tell!” begged little Anne.

“Surest thing you know I won’t tell!” Kit reassured her. “Not now. Sometime when I’m alone with Miss Dallas you won’t mind? Because she’d love to know what you said of her.”

“She knows! She knows we all love her to pieces!” cried little Anne, seizing Anne Dallas around the waist, to the inconvenience of Helen, who drew her skirt away.

“Is this child an orphan? Why doesn’t that Sister Something-or-Other teach her manners?” demanded Helen, indulging her temper at the expense of prudence.

“We find our little Anne’s manners most admirable. Her mother is Mrs. Berkley, and she is so lovely that no little girl could have a better model,” said Richard, patting little Anne’s cheek; it was as hot beneath his hand as he had known that it would be.

Little Anne swallowed hard several times and clasped her hands tight.

“Well, that was a _good_ act to offer up!” she said in a choked voice, and her friends had difficulty in restraining their smiles.

“When you are ready, Helen?” suggested Kit. “I suppose you have confided to Mr. Latham the secret that you were planning to tell him?”

“Not this time,” said Helen, recovering her smile. “Mr. Latham is coming to tea at your aunt’s; then I shall tell him, because there he will be at my mercy.”

“Are not men always at your mercy, Miss Abercrombie? Though I cannot see you, I have divined that,” said Richard, suavely.

“If you are walking our way, Miss Dallas, won’t you come with Miss Abercrombie and me?” Kit suggested.

Again Helen’s temper slipped its leash. She turned toward Anne, looking down on the girl who was a half head shorter than Helen.

“Oh, don’t you sleep in the house?” she said with so much insolence in the simple words that Richard flushed to his hair, and Kit found himself as hard put to it for self-control as little Anne had been in “making her act.”

“Miss Dallas does not sleep at her post; she boards near by, and all day and every day helps me in every way that her charity can devise,” said Richard. “Please do not go yet, Miss Dallas. I want your advice as to the next act, but more I want the honour of taking you home myself.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Latham,” said Kit, grasping his host’s hand so tight that he winced. “I’m proud and grateful that you let me come here. Good-bye, Miss Dallas. Come, little Anne; you’re going to be taken home by me. Helen? Are you ready?”

Helen made her adieux with her most charming grace, including Anne Dallas in her cordiality. She had allowed her temper to get away from her, but she had no mind to let it be the final impression which she left behind her. She was far too wise to stir men to championship of another girl, however her inferior in wit and beauty that girl might be.

Anne Dallas, with heightened colour, responded quietly to Helen’s farewell. She did not betray the slightest annoyance.

“She surpasses in breeding as she does in all other ways,” thought Richard, listening to Anne’s courteous replies, spoken in her soft alto voice.

“Good-bye, you darlingest! You very sweetest and darlingest!” cried little Anne, hugging Anne Dallas, and voicing what they all felt, though the feeling puzzled the child.

Kit left little Anne at her own door; she had walked in utter silence, holding his hand tight, while Helen chatted cheerfully, ignoring little Anne.

“What a queer, thin, dark, clever little creature!” exclaimed Helen after they had bade the child good-night. “Even bright children bore me. I don’t care for crudity in any form. I daresay your least Anne will make a clever woman.”

“Well, Nell, I can’t recall consulting you about little Anne,” said Kit, but so pleasantly that Helen could not resent it.

“Not about either Anne do you mean?” laughed Helen. “That little secretary person is a nice girl. Not particularly interesting, not particularly pretty, but interesting and pretty enough. It’s a mutually lucky thing that she is working for Richard Latham. If he marries her it will be quite well--and of course he is going to marry her. He is blind, so more beautiful women won’t make him repent it, and his wife will not be criticized as his wife would be if he weren’t blind. She would be entirely dutiful, and of course marriage to him will give her a position that she could not otherwise hope to attain. She doesn’t strike one as having connections.”

“Marry him! Anne Dallas!” cried Kit.

Helen glanced at him.

“Certainly. I should say that it was practically settled now,” she said. “Latham would be a step upward for most women, but no one would dream of opposing anything that he wanted. He really is pathetic, so gifted, so handsome, so polished--and so blind! I was not prepared to admire him as I do. It would be wicked to cross him in whatever he desired. I, for one, would not put a straw in the way of his marrying that mousey little secretary, even if I could, and though there are plenty of brilliant women who would gladly devote themselves to him.”

Kit did not speak. He walked on whistling behind his closed teeth.

Helen broke the silence:

“I’m afraid I was not quite pretty-behaved there, Kit! Spoiled children are so dreadful, and, till I discovered that the secretary was also the poet’s dream and to be Mrs. Latham, I hated meeting her; that’s the truth. I don’t mean to be a snob, but social equality is such utter nonsense that it ruffles my feathers. I was annoyed that I had to walk with that commonplace girl, and be shown the garden by her! That is, until I discovered her future standing. So I’m afraid I was a bit horrid. I’m sorry! And of course Miss Dallas is all right in her way.”

Helen leaned forward to smile into Kit’s face.

He threw his head back and away from her.

“Oh, damn--ascus!” he said.

Helen laughed blithely, and tucked her hand into his arm with high good humour.

“You needn’t convert your swear words on my account, Kit,” she said. “I might use one myself were occasion demanding it. If I was naughty, at least _I_ kept my temper, poor Kit! How about it? Did we all?”

“It’s a mighty poor thing to keep,” said Kit. “Get rid of it. Yes, you sure kept your temper, Nell! That’s the kind of temper I remember you had. You’ve kept it, all right!”

“What a horrid boy you are, Kit Carrington!” cried Helen, delighted, but pretending not to be. “I have not a bad temper; I never fly out. I dislike foolish, tiresome, annoying things, that’s all! I’ve an excellent temper to live with. My father says I’m the easiest woman to get on with he ever knew, and a man who has governed a whole state ought to be a judge of one little disposition! Come on, don’t sulk! It would be too stupid to bring an unpleasant atmosphere home with us into your aunt’s house.”

He looked at her; she was smiling, and was wonderfully handsome. Poor baited Kit, disturbed by Helen’s discovery and disgusted with the afternoon, sighed helplessly and gave in.

“You may be the easiest woman to get on with your father ever knew,” he said. “From what experienced people tell us that’s not a strong statement. It’s no fool of a job to handle any woman, they say, and I believe it!”

Chapter VIII

_Candour_

Miss Carrington, seated before the hearth in her sitting room and enjoying the wood fire partly because it crackled; partly because it was too warm for the day, heard Minerva moving about in her dressing room and called her.

“Isn’t Helen back yet?” she asked.

Minerva appeared in the doorway, disapproval in every line of her black taffeta gown.

“Miss Abercrombie came in three quarters of an hour ago; she went to her room and it’s likely is resting there, though not having seen her I am not able to say positively,” she replied.

“Oh, well, Minerva, it will never come to a trial for perjury,” observed Miss Carrington. “Ask her if she will not join me?”

Minerva withdrew and shortly there appeared in the same doorway a figure in sharp contrast to Minerva’s. It was Helen’s, tall and lithe, swathed in a pale blue Japanese negligée, heavily embroidered in white and faintest pink. Her golden hair was dishevelled; one hand carried a box of chocolates, the other clutched her robe and a novel.

“Want me?” she asked, and crossed the room as Miss Carrington invited by a gesture to a chair at her side.

Helen took it and piled three down pillows around her, twisting her body into perfect agreement with the pillows.

“How inconsiderate you are not to come without a summons!” Miss Carrington reproached her. “Aren’t stay-at-homes always eager for bulletins from abroad?”

“I thought you’d be napping, or would come into my room if you wanted me,” said Helen. “There isn’t much to report; a perfectly ordinary visit. Of course the most interesting things about it aren’t those that happened.”

“Precisely. And your keen eyes would see them,” agreed Miss Carrington. “First of all, is there the least ground for my suspicion of Kit?”

“Oh, dear me, yes,” said Helen, promptly. “I more than suspect him, but he doesn’t suspect himself. He is attracted by the girl; he likes her, is ready to range himself on her side if any one doesn’t unreservedly admire her, but the feeling has not taken on alarming proportions. I’m sure he has no notion that he’ll fall in love with her if he isn’t careful, that the ‛goblins will git him if he don’t watch out!’ He doesn’t think she’s a goblin, and he isn’t clever enough to watch out. Please don’t mind me, because you know what I think of Kit! She’s a pretty little thing enough, but not more than pretty. And she has a gentle, amiable way with her, unsophisticated and all that. One of those _good_ girls! Men are drawn by sweetness and goodness at first, and then, when they have to live with it, they are sure to be drawn by the other thing! Beauty unadorned, beauty of character, is pretty deadly daily diet, Aunt Anne-elect!”

Miss Carrington laughed. “These are not original remarks, Helen, though they may be the result of your original research,” she said. “The point is not how wise you are, nor how accurate a prophet, but what Kit thinks of her.”

“Oh, well, do you suppose Kit thinks of her?” Helen asked, lightly. “It strikes me that it is only that she is here, and nobody else is, most of the time. There must be lots of pretty girls in a place this size, but this little brown thing is new. I suppose she must have brains, for Richard Latham finds her the greatest help; he spoke of her as marvellously perceptive, says her criticisms are a great help to him. But Kit has been drawn to her simply because--he is! That’s the only reason it ever happens, of course! And I don’t imagine he has thought about her; not actual, appraising thoughts. She is essentially feminine. I am dead sure he is attracted to her, but I’m also sure he isn’t analyzing himself, nor her, and it ought to be possible to divert his attention. Have a chocolate?” Helen extended her box.

Miss Carrington accepted a chocolate with a twinkle in her eye and a laugh that was not wholly flattering to her guest.

Helen’s embroidered robe had fallen to the floor on each side of her; her white skin gleamed above and through the thin crêpe and lace of her underclothing; her white, lace-trimmed skirt was drawn tight above her knees as she sat back in the chair; her thin, lustrous silk stocking outlined the beautiful curve of her leg.

“If Kit could see you now he might be diverted,” said Miss Carrington.

In her youth, with girls of her own age, she had never been so unreserved.

“Call him in,” suggested Helen. “I’ll tell you in confidence, Miss Carrington, that I never found a trusting youth hard to divert, if I went about it.”

“What did Thackeray say? That any woman could marry any man if she had sufficient opportunity and had not a positive hump? Something like that in _Vanity Fair_.”

“Anticipating G.B.S.? I remember Shaw better than Thackeray. I read _Vanity Fair_ when I was about fourteen. Of course everyone admits that the woman chooses, but how about two women choosing the same man, each with the ‛sufficient opportunity?’ Then it does seem as though the man cast the deciding vote, though that would be only another way of saying that one woman had the stronger attraction. I never heard that threshed out. It’s interesting, opens out vistas. The only thing I’ve heard that might bear on it is that once seven women laid hold of one man. I don’t know what came of that. I haven’t read the Book that’s in much, not even at fourteen!” Helen laughed, throwing herself back and crossing her ankle on her knee as if she had been a man.

Miss Carrington did not smile. Her brow contracted slightly, and her eyes did not applaud Helen.

“You funny old dear!” Helen cried. “When you are so emancipated, boast of your modernity, read the books, novels and philosophy, love the plays you do, why do you suppose you are half-scared of me at times? And you are. I jar you.”

“A matter of taste, Helen,” admitted Miss Carrington. “I was bred up in old-fashioned conservatism. I can theorize; I don’t mind the new ideas in print, on the stage, provided they are cleverly put, but I admit that I like to see young women what I was trained to consider well-mannered. I don’t defend my inconsistency; I’m explaining myself.”

“Atavism; Shintoism,” said Helen, carelessly. “No one is consistent. Taste is stronger than principles, I’ve always noticed that. It will take two generations to get our mental clothing fitted, and by that time the fashion will probably swing back; that’s the way it works. You’ve got your grandmother’s and mother’s minds grafted on your mind. You’ve survived; you were born before the old ways had passed. But to return to our muttons, which means the Dallas lambkin: Richard Latham is in love with her himself.”

“Oh, Helen, do you think so?” cried Miss Carrington.

“Know so,” Helen corrected her. “And I warned Kit. I went so far as to try to ingraft upon his trusting mind the suggestion that no one would snatch her from a man so important to the world, so afflicted as the poet. I hoped that it would seem to him later that he had thought of that himself. And, really, Miss Carrington, Richard Latham is a peach of a man, aside from his poetry. He is charming; modest, clever, gentle, and you feel that he is stainless. I wondered for a moment if it wouldn’t be worth while rescuing him, instead of Kit, from the little Dallas? I could put him on a pinnacle, give him the rewards of his genius while he lived, instead of after he is dead. I could do it alone, and I am always p